How climate change policy helps farmers

Drought is ravaging the land. Large swaths of eastern Australia are experiencing some of the worst seasons on record. Frosts have wiped out large areas of crops in Western Australia, southern New South Wales and Victoria. Hail has beaten crops into the ground in Queensland.

Tony Windsor.

The government is scrambling to be seen to be doing something meaningful for farmers, particularly in Queensland where traditional National voters are looking to desert in favour of minor parties, such as One Nation and Katter’s Australian Party. In some coastal seats in the state, Labor is also doing well. Hence the scene is set for the champion of the short-term, former agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce, to weave his web of utterances that join the drought, energy and climate scepticism into an electoral defence.

At the same time, the climate change debate proceeds at a crawl without any meaningful policy regarding the risk of increased drought and other weather events. This week a report, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), declared that in order to keep warming within a relatively safe 1.5 degrees Celsius, global emissions will need to be cut by 45 per cent by 2030. Coal power will need to be phased out by 2050. The world has just 12 years, according to the IPCC, to avoid a climate change catastrophe. The deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, rejected the IPCC’s call for transition from coal, saying “some sort of report” won’t stop Australia using up its coal resources. Renewable energy, and the opportunities it offers regional Australia, is still being used as a political pawn.

Read the story by Tony Windsor from The Saturday Paper - “How climate change policy helps farmers.”

Salinity crisis destroying Australia's farmland, but farmers hope to stop it

Australia has a silent crisis on its hands and the threat is looming just beneath the ground of the country's most fertile food bowls.

David Thompson is harvesting native succulent pigface to sell to high-end chefs.

Dryland salinity, which occurs when vast underground salt deposits rise to the surface with groundwater tables, could leave the productive farm lands that inhabit more than half of the country desolate and barren.

Federal Government estimates from the turn of the century put a $130 million price tag on lost agricultural production due to dryland and irrigation salinity.

Read the ABC News story by Kit Monchan and Benjamin Gubana - “Salinity crisis destroying Australia's farmland, but farmers hope to stop it.”

(Story posted on Beneath the Wisteria by Robert McLean)

There’s a low-energy alternative to cremation

The choices you make in life affect the environment. And so do the choices you make about death. For example, a traditional burial involves embalming chemicals that can seep into the ground. And cremation requires a lot of energy. So some people are now turning to a process that’s been called “flameless cremation.”

The alternative to traditional burial and cremation.

Cattoni: “The process is very similar to what the body intended us to do originally when we pass away, and that’s just to break itself down.”

Ryan Cattoni of Aquagreen Dispositions in Illinois says a warm alkaline solution is used to break down the remains.

Read the story by Eileen Mignoni from Yale Climate Connections - “There’s a low-energy alternative to cremation.”