TropEco News - Fifth Edition

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TropEco NEWS www.jcu.edu.au/tropeco

Sustainability Leon Van Wyk talks about his student experience at JCU Issue 5 July - September 2012 100% recycled paper

Editorial

Letter from the Editor Left: TropEco’s editor and Environment Manager for JCU, Adam Connel JCU was at the Premier’s Sustainability Awards, to collec JCU’s Award for Clean Energy Innovation.

Adam (centre) is pictured here with Jon Black, Director-General from Department of Energy and Water Supply on the left and Andrew Powell, Minister for Environment and Heritage Protection on the right.

Photo: Courtesy of Department of Environment and Heritage Protection

Issue 5 July - September 2012 Editor: Adam Connell Sub Editor: Suzy Keys

Contents 3.

What’s happening? Car Boot sale

4.

Sustainability by Leon Van Wyk

7.

Bio Regen System at JCU

by Adam Connell

8.

Cutting our Carbon Addiction

by Adam Connell

10. Planning for a breakdown in the operating system by Lania Lynch

Contribute to TropEco News If you have a sustainability related story or event you want to talk about, please send it to tropeco@jcu.edu.au with any relevant pictures and we may put it up on the TropEco Facebook page or publish it in TropEco News.

TropEco News is published on 100% recycled paper and is also available online. Limited copies are printed to minimise resource consumption.

Cover Photo: JCU Sustainability Student, Leon Van Wyk at the community garden at the Cairns Flexible Learning Centre where Permaculture Cairns meets monthly.

Photo: Suzy Keys

Welcome to the fifth edition of TropEco News. It’s the magazine’s one year anniversary and it keeps going from strength to strength. Thanks to everyone who has supported TropEco News since the first edition back in July 2011 and a big thank you to Suzy Keys for her mammoth effort in pulling each edition together.

What a big few months it’s been for TropEco and sustainability at JCU. In recent months we have been lucky enough to have several guest speakers at JCU including Matthew Wright from Beyond Zero Emissions, Nicole Foss from The Automatic Earth, and Costa Georgiadis, host of ABC’s Gardening Australia, who returned to speak about sustainability, community and gardening. If you didn’t get to see Costa in action you can check out his very entertaining talk on the TropEco YouTube Channel In June, JCU won the Premier's Sustainability Award for Clean Energy Innovation for our energy management initiatives on the Townsville Campus. I was lucky enough to go to Brisbane to accept the award on behalf of JCU. It was great to see all the innovations Queenslanders are coming up with to make our state more sustainable. In all there were 141 nominees for 11 award categories.

In April, we saw the launch of the BioRegen system at Uni Halls, a system that turns food waste into valuable biofertiliser and significantly reduces our environmental and carbon footprint.

We are proud to be the first University in the world to install such a system.

Check out the story in this edition for more details.

2 TropEco, James Cook University, Tropical Queensland, Australia

I also urge you to read the story by Leon Van Wyk, one of our amazingly talented sustainability students, and his thoughts on the new Bachelor of Sustainability degree at JCU and how we can move to a truly sustainable future.

It’s been promising to see some institution level changes happening at JCU in regards to sustainability and this is being led by a newly formed Sustainability Advisory Committee, endorsed by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sandra Harding.

The committee is responsible for embedding sustainability in everything we do as an organisation and consists of key people in senior management who can drive improvements within our University.

Also under development is a Sustainability Action Group, which will sit under the Sustainability Advisory Committee and consist of key people who can get action happening on the ground. More info on these committees will be available soon.

We hope you enjoy this edition of TropEco News and we value your feedback to help us continually improve our magazine.

Cheers,

Adam Connell Manager, Environment Division of Finance and Resource Planning, James Cook University, Angus Smith Dr, Douglas, Qld 4811 P: +61 7 4781 5060 Mobile: 0459 097 253 E:adam.connell@jcu.edu.au

What’s Happening?

2012 Cairns Biggest Car Boot

SALE Sabina Beger reveals how you can help get the JCU Cairns campus community garden going by turning your trash into treasure.

The Inaugural 2012 Cairns Biggest Car Boot Sale will be held on Saturday September 15th from 9am to 3pm at the JCU Cairns Campus. All staff, students and their friends and families are invited to take part to help make this first time event a success.

Lania Lynch, JCU’s environmental coordinator and manager of the Cairns TropEco program, along with other passionate staff and students at JCU Cairns, are looking for projects that will help fund the JCU Cairns Community Food Garden.

This is your chance to get rid of all that useful junk and put some cash in your pocket – remember “one person’s junk is another’s treasure

Lania said, “The Inaugural 2012 Cairns Biggest Car Boot Sale is a great opportunity for the wider community to be involved in supporting the project, recycling their pre-loved belongings, making some money themselves and having a great day networking, sharing great music, food and fun.”

Over 300 sites are available to be rented on the day and there will be a sausage sizzle, coffee, ice cream trolley and a live band. Besides shopping or selling you are also helping a great cause.

The money raised from the booking fees will support JCU’s Community Food Garden. The garden, once in full production, will supply the refectory with home-grown, quality fresh vegetables, fruit and herbs and will reduce the cost of on-campus food.

The benefits include:

ŸVery low food miles ŸA reduction in the carbon and energy footprint of the food on campus ŸProviding fresh produce high in micronutrients, vitamins and minerals ŸProviding food that has not been impacted by long shelf life or artificial sprays and chemicals

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So come and join us for a fun day on Campus!

And if you don’t have a car but have stuff to sell – no worries you can bring a table provided you book a space.

INQUIRIES Event Manager: Sabina Beger Mobile; 0422746165 Email: sabine.beger@my.jcu.edu.au More info: www.facebook.com/carbootsalecairns

If you want to support the JCU Cairns Community Food Garden there will be a donation box available on the day.

Official Sponsors of the 2012 Cairns Biggest Car Boot Sale are TropEco the University’s Sustainability Program and the JCU Student Association.

JCU Student Association Student Support Officer, Michelle Migdale loved the idea and offered sponsorship straight away. “This is a great opportunity to engage the community, both for the university itself and locals alike, to join together for a fun day that also helps a good cause”, she said.

We hope to see you there. More information will be provided through TropEco and @JCU on how you can participate on the day.

TropEco, James Cook University, Tropical Queensland, Australia

BOOK NOW Cost per car space: $10 pre-booked and paid or $15 on the day Contact Sabina Beger Mob: 0422746165 Email: sabine.berger@my.jcu.edu.au

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Insights into JCU’s Bachelor of Sustainability James Cook University’s new Bachelor of Sustainability degree motivated Leon Van Wyk to study at JCU. TropEco asked him to share his experience so far.

I have been living on our planet Earth for close to 20 years. Growing up in Townsville with the wisdom and generosity of my South African parents has presented many extraordinary opportunities.

Right from my earliest years we’ve always been conservation-minded and relied on bicycles as the primary form of transport, using a car only when necessary. Our consumption of electricity, water and fuel have always been well below the average Townsvillian family, partly because of awareness gained from seafaring experiences where one must live frugally.

My family has always had a maritime spirit and sailing the tropical waters off Townsville led to our frequent explorations of Magnetic Island, which eventually became our home.

Empowered by Permaculture After graduating from a state high school I lived on “Maggie” for two years; putting into practice the design science called Permaculture that I was introduced to in Brisbane through a 72hr certificate course between semesters 1 and 2 of grade twelve.

My involvement in the Permaculture movement has been hugely empowering, broadening my networks and giving me a new perspective on life, civilization and the environment(s) in which we live.

I was hesitant about University study due to my supremely pessimistic perspective on society’s impact on the

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people and environment that it depends upon. But after working through some of my assumptions and seeing that JCU was launching a Bachelor of Sustainability degree, I thought it would be a valuable opportunity for me at this stage in my life, in this moment of history.

So I moved to Cairns at the beginning of February 2012 to study, choosing to major in science. The subjects available are broadly grouped into three themes – ecological, social and economic – that reflect the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability and provide three options from which students can choose their major.

In this first semester I have studied Introduction to Sustainability; Science: Nature, Knowledge and Understanding; Environmental Processes and Global Change and Culture, Knowledge and Environment.

These subjects have had some overlapping concepts, case studies and assumptions each taken from different perspectives including sustainability, philosophy of science, environmental sciences and environmental anthropology.

Sustainability perspective challenging The sustainability perspective is the most challenging view for most people to consider, because it renders naked the grotesque totality of civilization’s destructiveness and reveals how our common habits reinforce this cycle of worldwide social and environmental deterioration.

TropEco, James Cook University, Tropical Queensland, Australia

The economic system of our globalized world is not immune to the stressors of resource limitations and social unrest; in fact our perverse economy defines growth of GDP as healthy even when it is squandering our common inheritance of natural wealth.

Triple Bottom Line not enough The shift from ‘conventional’ thinking where decisions are based exclusively on their economic implications (usually short-term) to decision-making based on the triple bottom line of ecological, social and economic factors is a positive trend but it is not enough.

The triple bottom line is often visualized as the three overlapping circles with the zone connecting all three representing sustainability. This is a weak sustainability perspective still dominated by economics because decisionmakers do not have well-structured measurability and accountability systems for the social and ecological costs or benefits.

A stronger perspective would clearly define that the environment sets real limits to what society can achieve, and society in turn sets real limits to what the economy can achieve.

The ‘nested’ model where the economy is surrounded by society which is surrounded by ecology (the environment) is more realistic but less popular because it directly challenges governments, institutions and citizens to reform their understanding of economics, development, policies and regulations.

· This reform of understanding is a tricky process, requiring a holistic alternative to the conventional model that is robust and capable of evolving.

While the Introduction to Sustainability subject does an excellent job of describing the facts and figures about the predicament our society is in (and getting us to contemplate our part in it), it seems to lack a strategy for consolidating this information in the student’s mind.

Rather it is focusing on shooting holes in the conventional world view, challenging the dominant role of economics and politics without providing any comprehensive examples of sustainable alternatives.

Alternative strategies for dealing with some of the issues are elucidated but generally they are not explored in substantial depth to reveal any pragmatic solutions to messy, real-life scenarios.

The best example of this was renewable energy, where generating capacity, geographical suitability, sun/wind/wave reliability statistics are compared to consumer demand, cost per kWh and comparative carbon emissions to fossil fuel sources.

We also looked at growing bio-fuels within current agricultural systems, arable land area, competition with food crops, water and chemical dependency (related to fossil fuel use) to grow these crops, etc. We are endlessly reminded, “these issues are very complex,” but no set of tools has been offered to help us understand the priority, risk level or scope of the potential ramifications.

There are no:

· case studies of regional organizations operating a wind farm for local energy · examples of energy returned for energy invested in growing bio-fuels in agroforestry or other polycultural (many-species) farming methods which provide energy and food from the same piece of land while improving carbon sequestration in soil and reducing need for chemicals.

· exploration of local currencies or establishing credit unions to pool capital in local sustainability initiatives.

Leon is keen to get involved in the establishment of the JCU Cairns Campus Community garden using the three Permaculture Ethics. Photo: Suzy Keys

· case studies on any metropolitan areas restructuring their urban transport systems to reduce fuel use, congestion, air pollution and social isolation while improving amenity of public space and the health of urban populations by encouraging cycling, walking and highly-efficient electrified public transport.

These solutions are being implemented in hundreds if not thousands of locations around the world, along with enhanced systems of education, health-care, village development, food and forestry, waste treatment, poverty eradication and more.

Many of these are manifestations of all three Permaculture ethics – Care of the Earth, Care of People, and Share the Surplus. These ethics are found in every sustainable community, including indigenous groups from the deserts of southern Africa to the Great Plains of

North America and the Pacific to the outback of Australia.

Ethics are fundamental I believe that ethics are the bedrock upon which communities organize.

They are fundamentally important for enabling communities to really thrive over the long-term. Our rational mind (individually and collectively) needs to be guided by ethics that reflect a holistic understanding of our role within nature.

Permaculture uses ecological design principles to regenerate nature and culture, weaving humans back into an ecological web that can sustain its self and nurture future generations.

This requires an understanding of the basic relationships between the various aspects of human culture, and how they are inter-dependent with each other and with the environment.

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Cont’d from page 5

Nothing exists in isolation. To understand a system means to know its relationships with anything ‘other’ while having a fairly good grasp on the mechanics of what goes on within its boundaries. Therefore by working “from patterns to details” we know what interactions are occurring on the metalevel before meddling with internal processes.

Our vision is to create, maintain and evolve a beautiful, productive and resilient community garden that acts as a learning hub while producing food, flowers and soil fertility. It is the social and educational benefits that will be the most valuable products of the community garden, empowering people with skills, guidance and propagation material.

So right now I am grateful to be a JCU student, because the teachers, facilities and resources available are worldclass. I have access to more recorded information through the Library and electronic journals than I dreamed possible only a few months ago. These few years will pass quickly, and change both internally and in the world around us will be huge.

Likewise if we are guided by ethics we work through layer-by-layer from our observations to methods of planning to strategies to the ultimate details, our actions. Designing from patterns to details facilitates full awareness of potential ramifications from our actions and what risks and benefits they are likely to create.

To ensure this project remains active and dynamic over the long-term, we must address the economic viability of the garden as a high priority. Therefore it is possible to use a project like this to integrate many disciplines of knowledge usually kept separate by institutional procedure.

I hope to complete my degree and undertake an extra year to attain Honors in Sustainability. Preferably being based back in Townsville so that I can get re-engaged in the 3000 strong community on Maggie and continue to assist the development of local initiatives that will legitimately boost the island’s self-reliance in an era of global energy descent.

This further justifies the nested domains of economy within society within environment, highlighting why we need to structure the economy to work for society which must be working for nature. This is the opposite of the system that society currently uses, where the lack of holistic ethics allows the economy to ‘develop’ society by plundering our environment.

This undergraduate degree is very interesting and has allowed me to learn about a lot more than just the subject matter being delivered. I imagine that the next 2.5 years will be very valuable for further development of my wholesystems perspective and filling in many of the gaps with details and techniques I’m not currently aware of.

Excited by Hands on Learning What particularly excites me is the prospect for hands-on learning through activities that require getting involved in local community action and/or research. The opportunity I am already chasing up is to be instrumental in the JCU Cairns Community Garden.

This concept has been in development by a dedicated working-group for over two years with behind-behind-thescenes organizational planning and approval processes, and now we’re on the edge of it becoming reality.

Providing students with opportunities to collaborate across disciplines is a most powerful method of learning and will definitely foster a greater appreciation for the scope of the challenge we face as a society.

Sustainability Roles for Students Perhaps this could be a gateway to a new appreciation of the role students can play in advancing the sustainability of a campus through projects such as renewable energy system installation and monitoring (resources, energy and money); bulk-buying schemes through cooperatives; designing and operating car-pools, car-share, bike-share and other low impact transport schemes; organizing and project managing a sustainability festival and/or conference; designing on-site waste and water recycling and treatment systems.

Remember nothing exists in isolation so some of these potential projects would be compatible with aspects of other projects and they could become a network of synergistic interactions.

Grateful for the Opportunities of JCU While I still have grave reservations for the endurance of our civilization, I have mustered the determination to take advantage of the opportunities currently available. My goal is to improve my ability to contribute positively to all of the communities I am a part of.

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Conversing with Costa Costa Georgiadis, host of ABC’s Gardening Australia, recently returned to JCU for an intimate talk on implementing sustainability into everyday life. Costa’s entertaining and thought provoking talk touched on some of the important issues affecting us today. Those attending saw how his actions are changing things for the better through building the key ingredients of a sustainable existence - environmental conservation, local food production and building communities. Costa shows us how to re-learn these activities and teach them to others.

His major theme in the program, “On the Verge”, is an excellent example of how we can utilise small areas in our neighbourhoods to increase food production and native habitat whilst building community spirit and minimising waste.

TropEco captured Costa’s talk on video so why don’t you check it out on the TropEco YouTube Channel.

TropEco donated over $800 to Permaculture Townsville, raised from ticket sales to Costa’s talk.

Right: Ken Bellamy from VRM shows participants how to use the Bio-Regen system that was launched at JCU Townsville campus.

Bio-Regen System JCU Townsville Campus launched a system to convert food waste to liquid bio-fertitliser. Adam Connell investigates.

James Cook University became the first University in the world to install a Bio-Regen system in the University Halls kitchen, when the Vice Chancellor, Professor Sandra Harding officially launched the system on April 20th at University Halls.

and works like an insinkerator, grinding the food to a fine paste and mixing it with water (at approximately a 50/50 ratio) and a solution of microbes. The food slurry is then pumped to holding tanks, outside the building where it is left to ferment for 28 days.

The Bio-Regen system is a simple, clean and effective mechanism to convert food waste into a liquid biofertiliser and removes many of the barriers and problems associated with commercial scale composting of food waste.

The system uses a proven microbial fermentation process to convert the food waste to bio-fertiliser which is highly concentrated and can service a large land area.

The end-product can then be applied to gardens and lawns on campus to improve soil structure, water holding capacity and increase microbial activity, and the excess can be on-sold to farmers or the public as a concentrated bio-fertiliser.

The Bio-Regen units are manufactured by a local Townsville company - BioRegen Photonics. Installed in the kitchen, the interface device is about the size of a drinking water fountain

The University Halls kitchen caters for around 300 students and staff, seven days a week, 3 meals a day, for most of the year. In the first two months of operation, the kitchen diverted approximately four tonnes of food waste from landfill to the Bio-Regen, resulting in 8 tonnes of bio-fertiliser.

Since this time the kitchen has become more aware of the food being wasted - as it is now highly visible to the kitchen staff - and they have subsequently reduced the volume of food waste being produced.

The system is expected to provide a payback period of less than 2 years with minimal ongoing costs for electricity and water. The system has also reduced labour in transporting heavy garbage bags to the waste skips, which was time consuming and presented a health and safety risk.

The benefits of the end-product have not yet been fully realized by JCU, but it is intended to apply the bio-fertiliser to our gardens and lawns through our irrigation lines. The combination of organic matter from the digested food and the beneficial microbes in the solution will help to sequester carbon, retain moisture and improve soil structure, whilst maintaining a living population of microbes in the soil.

Soil testing will be undertaken on key areas of the campus to identify any changes to the soil structure and potentially claim carbon credits in the future.

For more information contact: TropEco - tropeco@jcu.edu.au

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Cutting our...

Australians are addicted to carbon and it’s a dirty habit we need to change now. Australia produced 540 million tonnes of CO2-e emissions in 2010, which is almost 2% of the world’s emissions, yet we have just 0.3% of the world’s population.

Matthew Wright is a ‘man with a plan’ to break that addiction and was in Cairns to address the CAFNEC Reinventing Progress Conference, and contemplates a bright future powered by renewable energy.

Photo: Suzy Keys 8 TropEco, James Cook University, Tropical Queensland, Australia

Carbon Addiction Matthew Wright’s message is clear - it’s time for all of us to cut our carbon addiction today and support a renewable future for Australia. Adam Connell The fact that we are one of the richest countries in the world with one of the best living standards should mean we have the privileged opportunity to showcase to the world how to transition to a low carbon economy.

But, our current political and social views are outdated and put us at risk of falling behind in the renewable revolution on the world stage.

Our future generations may view our current wasteful, consumerist, fossilfuel burning behaviors akin to smoking addiction - a slow process that slowly kills us but we ignore the implications because of the short term pain we may feel in overcoming an issue that appears too big to conquer. Of course, once overcome, we will see the immense benefits in our decision and wonder why we didn’t do it earlier.

Until now, the missing piece in the puzzle has been a lack of strong leadership to help us quit our addiction and move to a renewable future.

Matthew Wright is one such leader who visited JCU to show us how we can cut our addiction to carbon by moving to 100% renewable energy in just 10 years.

100% Renewables Future Matthew is the Executive Director of Beyond Zero Emissions - a not-forprofit organisation whose objective is to map out the path to a 100% renewable energy future for Australia.

The result of this is the Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan - the first of six reports on how Australia can move to 100% renewable energy. The report is published by The University of Melbourne Energy Research Institute and over 30 of Australia’s top researchers have volunteered their time to contribute to the report. It is also endorsed by experts such as Tim Flannery, Professor Ian Lowe, Clive Hamilton and Hans-Josef Fell.

Matthew’s presentation captivated the audience as he dispelled the myths associated with our perceived dependence on non-renewable energy, and shared how the mining industry delayed progress, and why our politicians are sluggish in moving to a renewable energy future. Matthew proved that a 100% renewable future for Australia is economically and technically feasible using the existing, proven technologies of solar and wind power. The only thing holding it back is political and social will.

A great example of progress is Germany’s journey to become ‘the world's first major renewable energy economy’ with nearly 20% of its energy produced by renewables in 2011. A significant proportion of this comes from solar PV and recently Germany broke the 20GW barrier, producing enough energy from solar PV to power 5.1 million homes.

Australia’s climate means most locations can produce almost twice the electrical output from a PV solar panel compared to one in Germany, and in some places, such as Cairns and Townsville, this figure is even higher.

So it’s a ‘no brainer’ to use solar as a major electricity supplier.

Additionally, the cost of solar PV has dropped significantly in the last few years - and much faster than anyone has predicted - due to an increased supply of PV cells coming out of China. This has resulted in solar electricity production costs dropping to below parity with the retail price of electricity, smashing the long held belief that solar isn’t economically feasible. As electricity prices continue to increase, the savings made from solar will continue to be more attractive to businesses and households.

Sceptics would now raise the argument that solar cannot provide baseload power, but Matthew is quick to

counter this with the plan’s proposal to build large scale solar thermal baseload power stations in key locations around the country. The technology is already proven, the power stations take up minimal land area, can store energy in the form of heat for several days and release it when needed, and are more effective in managing baseload power than coal or gas fired power stations. Combined with wind farms across the country, it would provide true base-load power, 365 days a year, without the need for any polluting fossil fuels.

Stationary Energy Plan It may sound farfetched but the Stationary Energy Plan, describes in great detail, how it can be achieved both technically and economically with little to no effect on jobs or the economy, contrary to what the fossilfuel industry would have us believe. In fact there is the opportunity for those working in the fossil-fuel industry to become upskilled and move into the renewable energy sector.

Matthew also mentioned that the Stationary Energy Plan will be continually updated and improved to include the latest knowledge, improvements in technology and reductions in cost of infrastructure, which will make the plan even more feasible over time.

The next plan to be released will be the Buildings Energy Plan, showing how a series of energy efficiency and retrofitting measures - resulting in a modest 20% decrease in energy use combined with renewable energy production can contribute to the 100% renewable energy future for Australia.

To become involved with Beyond Zero emissions, stay up to date with the latest news or to get a copy of the Stationary Energy Plan visit: http://beyondzeroemissions.org/

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Planning for a system breakdown and an uncertain future

Photo: Suzy Keys 10

TropEco, James Cook University, Tropical Queensland, Australia

Nicole Foss and Raul Largi Meijer have been traveling the globe encouraging communities to prepare for the worst when the global operating system inevitably crashes to earth. Nicole shared some of her advice with Lania Lynch.

Nicole Foss is the co-editor of The Automatic Earth (TAE), a web site which integrates finance, energy, environment, psychology and population in order to explain why we find ourselves in a state of crisis and what we can do about it.

Prior to the establishment of TAE, she was editor of The Oil Drum Canada, where she wrote on peak oil and finance.

Nicole Foss gave a public lecture, sponsored by TropEco at JCU Cairns on 11th May, while on tour in the Far North. Attended by 35 community members in Cairns and a smaller number in Townsville, Ms Foss gave a lecture on the on-going credit crunch as the most pressing aspect of humanity’s current multi-faceted predicament. Discussing the global financial crisis, potential outcomes and what we can do about it, Nicole gave audience members lots of food for thought.

Ms Foss shared some information about her speaking tours: Have you found that people are receptive of your information on peak oil, the global debt issue and financial bubbles?

Yes I’ve had a tremendous reception wherever I’ve been. It’s not hard to explain how bubbles work. Markets are fundamentally irrational all the time and they are grounded in emotional responses and collective behaviour as a result of that, and the world simply does not work the way neoclassical economics would have us believe.

There is a tremendous lack of information in the mainstream that explains the world in this kind of way. People are hungry for an understanding of how

the world works and really appreciate being told what’s actually happening and what they can do.

There are plenty of sources online talking about this, but it’s not being discussed by the mainstream. We are interested in understanding how the world works and explaining it. We try to make complexity comprehensible, looking at the biggest picture and explain it to people in ways that are not trying to confuse them.

What are some practical steps people can take to prepare for this or what can I do locally?

On a personal level, I tell people to get out of debt and hold cash and cash equivalents. When credit starts to contract, the money supply will also contract very quickly. At a community level, work at rebuilding community, the relationships of trust that are the foundation of society at all times.

There are so many community initiatives that can be started, such as community gardens and knowledge communities. Anger and fear spread easily, so being part of a proactive community will help to diffuse this.

Community groups can fund bottom up initiatives and use their energy for constructive purposes.

The last time the world went through a great depression and world war, generally people were more self sufficient and did not require as much stuff as we do today.

In the 1930’s, people were far less exposed to the centralized systems we have today, they did most things for themselves, such as home gardens, and had many more practical skills.

Our expectations today are sky high and our financial excesses are

considerably higher than they were in the roaring 20’s, so we need to work on rebuilding our communities and our skill base. The more people are prepared psychologically, the fewer people will find they move into short term crisis management. Sensible things can happen when there is a cushion of time to prepare for a sudden crisis.

Tell us about the Automatic Earth and what you are trying to do with the site?

We want to use the site to chronicle the credit crunch. There is 3 and a half years of information and articles on finance and contributor authors from the web. We are running a fund drive to expand the website to make it searchable and currently the scope of what the two of us can do is limited.

We would like to get it done quickly so we can to get the information out to others.

What motivates you to do speaking tours about the issues you and I have been talking about here?

We could not sleep at night if we did not share this with people. We have collated so much information over the last 3 years, and if we can keep a critical mass of people in the rational camp; able to maintain the cushion of the longer-term decision making, then society will be better off. Knowledge will help people to make rational decisions and not over-react.

For more information go to: http://www.financialsense.com/financial -sense-newshour/guestexpert/2011/06/30/nicole-m-foss/howto-personally-prepare-for-the-comingperfect-storm and www.theautomaticearth.com

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