United we fail

I bought it. The idea of natural gas being clean - you know, not like crude oil or coal. Blue is a clean colour. And we want SOMETHING to be clean energy. Watching the documentary gasland shook me out of that easy belief. Granted, it is about the system of hydraulic fracturing to harness shale gas in the USA, but it made me realise how little I know about just how we get our gas in Australia and NZ. It made me realise how few questions I am asking.

The documentary was not even trying to be objective - everything from the narrator's whiney monotone to the way they edited interviews was clearly supporting their David vs Goliath type agenda. This movie needed an Erin Brockovich and it didn't have one - the filmmaker didn't appear to be much of a force to be reckoned with. But, by virtue of making this film and just showing some of how the pollution from gas drilling is affecting animals' and people's health across America, it heightens people's awareness and sparks a curiosity to learn more; already I have started doing some online research into just how our fossil fuels are extracted from the earth.

Here's a typically Hollywood type trailer for the film, replete with annoying voice-over. Watch it though - even in these couple of minutes you could learn something. And if you're wondering why to bother as it is an American health issue and you're not American - well consider the environmental impact of this gas extraction which is releasing dangerous levels of carbon into the atmosphere - in one city the film looked at, the gas-drilling carbon emissions were higher than that of all their cars! Now consider that shale gas excavating is big buisiness across the globe, including Australia.

GASLAND Trailer


Shale gas is just one type of energy. How much (or little) do you know about all the other ways our energy providers manage to harness the earth's resources to keep us in electricity?

On the weekend I went to a climate change rally.
(Photo not me or mine - from SayYesPerthRally, lympago.com)

A great morning with surprisingly good music (see video below), great people and for once, speeches we could actually hear and that didn't test our attention spans. But something wasn't so cool - all the cute little kiddies who at first were sitting ever so frog-like on the deck platforms in the wetland garden started increasing in number and migrating to the rush covered islands, trampling all over and pulling out the plants. Ie, a microcosm of our overpopulated areas. The parents did nothing about it so neither did anyone else. A few pointed and mumbled but not one person nearby said a word to the kids - kids who seemed nice enough and likely would have listened to some direction straight away. This 3000 strong crowd who were all at the rally to show they wouldn't sit idly by while our environment was destroyed, these same people were too shy to ask a couple of kids to look after the immediate environment. A bit weird but also very common crowd behaviour, really. You know that thing about 'it takes a village to raise a child?' It's not what happens, though, eh? Sure, schools do a lot of that child-raising these days, but outside of schools, how much do other people help parents raise their kids? I think lots of us get the impression we should just keep out of it - maybe we can acknowledge a child's talent or good behaviour but it's risky to try to console or discipline someone else's child. That book, The Slap, comes to mind (haven't actually read it myself...).

One thing that has broken away from the sheep mentality we often have, is, er, the cattle thing. ABC news channel first broadcast some very disturbing images of cattle being tortured in abattoirs in Indonesia. Not only was it screened on TV, but it was picked up by all the prime-time news channels and current affairs shows. Now maybe they were being sheep-y by showing the same story but putting something like that on TV here in the first place. I'm glad that they were challenging people to face a disgusting reality. It is interesting though that the debate about halal slaughter conditions has been brought in and I hope channels are not screening these features in an effort to prove Muslim laws inhumane. Decide for yourself why they are screening these images most of us would rather not see.

We can achieve great things working together - banning live export of animals is a good example of such a positive step. We can, however, also choose, together to collectively ignore things that deserve not just our attention but our consideration and action.

Positive action is my favourite. Being inspired more often than let down by other people. Here's some inspiration - if not to lofty things, at least inspiration to leave this post on a lighter note. The song is Headlock by Sticky Fingers - the Sydney band that played at the climate rally.