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A bucket of chips turned me onto compost. As a teenager I often bought a bucket of chips. Nothing out of the ordinary there, except one day the bucket had words on it. The precise words escape me, but the sentiment was startling. The bucket told me there were nutrients in an eggshell, and they were lost to the rubbish bin. I only remember the eggshells, but I suspect other food items were included. It was a new concept to me, but an old idea about reusing and recycling waste. People living off the land, and the generation that grew up in the Depression, were forced to reuse and recycle with their limited resources. But to a teenager growing up in suburban Melbourne in the 1960s, cling wrap, dehydrated packet potato and sliced bread, were part of daily life.
At around the same time, my favourite television programs were wildlife documentaries and gardening shows. I came across a curious program about Permaculture. I watched a man, Bill Mollison, filling cow horns with cow dung, and then burying them underground, during a special cycle of the moon. It seemed so way out, slightly pagan to a young lapsed Catholic, but the grass grew so well. I now know, Mollison was part of a 'green' revolution happening across the world, which was based on finding better ways to live lightly on the earth. People like Bill could see the warning signs, the deterioration of eco systems caused by human activity, and he was part of a movement trying to redress the balance.
For thousands of years, it must surely have seemed our world was capable of taking anything we could throw at it. Forests forever, seas deeper than we can imagine, an abundance of clean water, and soil productive for many lifetimes. But in December 1968, when Apollo 8's pictures of the small blue and green plane, beamed through television sets, the earth suddenly became finite. It was like we were all suddenly living in a share house.
Today we can hear the four horsemen of the apocalypse, slapping on their chaps and looking for their boots. The seriousness of climate change; dirty polar bears without their usual cold wash, the memories of long gone rain, and the fear of raging fires, all seem too real.
But back in the 1960s and 1970s a limited number of people were listening. Who were they?
I have called these people Cool Earth Defenders. These people decided to devote their lives to research, education, and practical hands-on solutions, to inform the rest of us about where we were headed.
Today more people are listening.
Now we have Climate Change Minister, and laws are being drafted for the next instalment of the Kyoto Protocol, a climate treaty, at Copenhagen in December. The future of industries like Wind Farms, Solar Power, chip fat fuel cars are all to be further legislated and developed. How will we fare?
As Gore Vidal wrote in 1989, the dilemma of talking too much about the problems with the environment, "But how to do it without every eye glazing over as the familiar statistics sound, merry as a leper's bell?"
Will we tire of the talk of gloom, and just turn to despair, or turn to denial for comfort?
It is time to hear from the Cool Earth Defenders for their stories. How did they survive through the years in the wilderness? What have they learnt about resilience to help us through this next phase?
I have interviewed a group of Cool Earth Defenders, some familiar to the media and others who will never make newspaper headlines. I have gathered together lists of groups, which have sprung up in the very recent past - also trying to inform and educate.
The aim of this website, is to inspire the readers into action. I hope the simple stories about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, will give others the motivation they are not be getting while reading daily updates of gloom. I want the site to promote positive action.
At the moment Cool Earth Defenders is just eight voices, but I know there are thousands more, just like them. Maybe you are one of them.
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