Guest Speaker – Bruce Cutts
Bruce is a volunteer for SE Environment Victoria. He has a background in Agricultural Science and Plants (Orchids).
Points of discussion –
- Involved in lobbying in Council Elections (Sandbelt Councils) to encourage councillors to recognize the impacts of Climate Change.
- Degradation of farmland is a problem. Growing beef and feeding them. If we were vegetarian there would be five times the food available to people.
- Councils need to plan for sea level rises.
- Environment Victoria current activities – Launch into Multi- cultural outreach to employ multi- cultural people
- Built an Action network e.g. Focusing on rivers.
- Built a coalition of 4 main environmental groups involved with the Murray Darling Basin.
- Gas – focusing on its domestic use. Bass Straight gas is virtually finished. When demand is high, Victoria is using fracked gas from Queensland.
- Not decarbonizing fast enough. Nuclear – storage of waste? For emissions to decrease we need to do away with coal and gas.
- Discussed photos of Mountain Ash. Argument – if you left a forest for 50 years it would be less flammable. Friends of the Earth would like to use technology to spot fires. Vic Forest (now the Healthy Forest Foundation) see forests as a commodity. Running at a loss not profit. Native forests are being destroyed instead of using plantation timber. Regeneration has been a failure in many cases. Salvage logging and indigenous thinning is contentious. Strategic fuel breaks resulted in 6,000 kms of trees being felled.
- Planning Scheme Amendments – the Green Wedge and Agricultural Land Plan finally released last March has been described as a non action plan.
It was a very interesting discussion and a big thank you to Bruce for his time and sharing his expertise.
Other business
Request for funds from the Save Rossdale group.
Nomination for Life Membership