What's the environmental impact of your favourite illicit drug? We dig deep, and the answers are sometimes a bit of a buzz kill. Although there's some happy high news too. Which team member was microdosing during this episode? You be the judge.
We talk climate change, humanitarian crises and conflict with David Spratt, Research Coordinator for the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration . He blogs and publishes reports at ClimateCodeRed.org a site named after his co-authored 2008 book. His latest publication is Disaster Alley: Climate Change, Conflict & Risk featuring a foreword by former Pentagon official Sherri Goodman....
We talk to the eloquent Dr Saamdu Chetri, who leads the country of Bhutan's efforts to measure Gross National Happiness (GNP). Dr Chetri holds PhD in Commerce, Master in Commerce and Post-Graduation Certificate in HRM, and was a founder of the Bhutan Peoples United Party. He now runs the kingdom's Gross National Happiness Centre which has made this small landlocked Himalayan country capture attention all around the world. Dr Chetri is in town for some School of Life events....
This is the second and final part of our conversation with Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow with the Post Carbon Institute and regarded as one of the world's foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels. Listen to the first part on Triple R on demand or on our podcast . Heinberg is the author of 13 books, including some seminal works with titles like The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality , and Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon Worl...
We talk peak oil with Richard Heinberg, Senior (and very fine) Fellow with the Post Carbon Institute . Richard is regarded as one of the world's foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels. He's the author of 13 books, including some seminal works with titles like The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality , and Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World . His latest book is Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path to One Hundred Percent Cl...
We talk with the fascinating Pamela Morgan about her life, which includes being a driving force behind the first two decades the Collingwood Childrens' Farm, and later one of the people to bring permaculture to Cuba during their devastating loss of food and oil imports after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
We speak with Chido Govera, a 31 year old Zimbabwean farmer, activist, educator and founder of The Future of Hope Foundation , a group that is committed to ending poverty, abuse and victimhood at grassroots level in Africa through food security. Chido's background is one of the toughest childhoods imaginable, one that saw her orphaned at the age of 7, with her remaining relatives offering more abuse than support, while she was responsible for feeding and caring for her very elderly grandmother, ...
Our friends, be warned, this is a something of a dark episode. We share (over-share?) about our deepest darkest fears for the future, and ponder the value of fear and anxiety as motivators for change.
Claire Dunn is a former environmental campaigner who had a transformative year living in the bush without technology, or even matches, practicing nature awareness and rewilding skills. She wrote about her experiences in My Year Without Matches. She now facilitates nature based reconnection retreats and wilderness rites of passage. Find out more at Nature's Apprentice .
Author of The Wondrous World of Weeds , Pat Collins, drops us a line to talk all things edible, medicinal and growing for free. And Bushy's offspring, the bird enthusiast Shrubby -- pictured getting instruction in flipping the bird -- gives listeners advice on getting started with chickens.
We talk with environmental lawyer Ariane Wilkinson about what's so bad with the proposed Adani Carmichael coal mine. In summary it's really extraordinarily bad on a both economic and environmental levels. This is a clench your fists episode.
Return guest Simplicity Institute founder Dr Samuel Alexander ponders whether the environment can survive the human brain's emotional biases, and what can the environmental movement can do to get a message out in a 'post-truth' era? And we talk lessons from the dirty ol' bastard of ancient greek philosophers: Diogenese. Sam's latest books are Just Enough is Plenty: Thoreau's Alternative Economics and Deface the Currency: The Lost Dialogues of Diogenes . He also mentions The Dark Cellars Project ...
Why are Melbourne apartment complexes so expensive and soulless? What can we learn from Germany and the Netherlands, and from the few interesting projects around Melbourne to have cheaper, more liveable and less environmentally destructive buildings? Our wonderful guests exploring this topic are Katherine Sundermann, an Associate at MGS Architects and Assemble Papers , and Andy Fergus, an Urban Designer at the City of Melbourne. They mention ' deliberative development ' models in which a group o...
We talk about the future, and different scenarios for how we might just survive it in some style, with Philippa Chandler from the Victorian Ecoinnovation Lab (VEIL) and their project Scenarios 2040 project . Later, Kate talks about My Year Without Matches by Claire Dunn .
We speak with Adrian Hearn, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Melbourne University. He has been going to Cuba every year of the last 16 and has recently received funding from the Australian Government (DFAT - COALAR) for a project looking at urban agricultural practices between Melbourne, Havana, and other cities in Latin America and China. He says Latin America has some of the best practices in the world in resilient and sustainable urban farming, and in Cuba during the stressful period fo...
We're joined by 10 year Triple R veterans (from whom we inherited the Tuesday 7pm time-slot), the architects formerly known as "The Architects": Simon Knott and Stuart Harrison ; along with someone who's had an immeasurable effect on the shape and culture of Melbourne: architect and planner Rob Adams . Cohost Kate Dundas leads a discussion on urban planning, sustainability and liveability, corruption and retrofitting the suburbs....
Nikki Valentini of Growing Abundance tells us about the culture clash at the heart of the transition from dim sims and Pepsi to organic local food in a Castlemaine high school. Later in the show we consider the unintended consequences of green planning and gentrification. We also mention Annie Raser-Rowland and Greening the Apocalypse's Adam Grubb's new book: The Art of Frugal Hedonism .
We talk about everything from bike policy to autonomous cars and robotaxis, as we consider the future of transport, with Elliot Fishman, Director of the Institute of Sensible Transport . Later in the show, we pay homage to that iconoclast, raconteur and the godfather of permaculture, Bill Mollison who passed away on Sat 24th Sept at the age of 88.
Meg Ulman is co-author with her partner poet Patrick Jones of The Art of Free Travel , about their adventures with kids and a terrier riding bikes up and down the east coast for 14 months. All together they make up the entity known as The Artist As Family . We spoke with them about that trip in a previous episode, but this time we find out about their continuing adventures while living a more settled lifestyle, including homeschooling son Zephyr, and the Hepburn Relocalisation Network . In the l...
Humans have been making use of fire for around a million years, but what if we've been doing it wrong? In the first half of the episode we talk how to do it right, with rocket stoves and biochar, with appropriate technologist Joel Meadows. Where there is smoke there is fire, but the reverse need not be true says Joel. Smoke is merely inefficiently burnt wood, and all those coughs, cancers and deforestation through the eons were sadly for nought. Rocket stoves are almost smokeless and can be buil...
We talk changing your life and career in response to environmental fears with corporate world exile Andrew Lucas, now gardening expert and commercial compost maker , and co-organiser of the conference The Future of Local Food . Later in the show we ponder why environmentally themed music sucks. To listen back to our full show the week before on this topic, complete with really shitty (and some good) music, stream it here ....
We speak with Lachlan Simpson about the ever mysterious 'cryptocurrency' bitcoin. Bitcoin has both its many critics (who worry about crime and tax avoidance) and champions (who promote its decentralised, private nature). But this night we explore its environmental impact and energy demands. It turns out it takes a lot of juice to power a cryptocurrency and keep it secure and anonymous.
Zainil Zainuddin grew up on a self sufficient farm in Malaysia but these days she's a researcher and scholar in local food and urban agriculture, currently doing her PhD at RMIT. Some of her studies so far have involved working with home gardeners in Melbourne to figure out exactly how much food they grow. So what does home food production offer urban resilience, and how much can we really grow at home?
Where will Melbourne's food come from as urban sprawl, climate change and farm degradation reduce local growing capacity while the city grows to a projected 7 million by 2050? We ask Seona Candy, a food and urban systems researcher at VEIL (Victorian Eco Innovation Lab), who's recently co-authored the report Foodprint Melbourne .
While three fifths of the world's calories come from just three crops, John Ferris grows over 700 different edible species (not to mentions hundreds more cultivars) at his nursery business, Edible Forest Gardens! It's veritable botanical imaginarium of uncommon food plants, strange and wonderful! He brings some samples in for us to taste. :)
Let's squeeze more people into smaller houses. That's actually the main theme of the show as we think about sharehousing and grannie flats from environmental and happiness perspectives. To help us we have Kulja Coulston in the studio. When she's not presenting The Grapevine on Triple R, Kulja is managing editor of Sanctuary Magazine , which is about sustainable home design and architecture, a publication of the ATA (Alternative Technology Association) . Check out their free Sustainable House Day...
Asking "what is agroecology, and can it save the world?" with agroecologist and permaculture researcher Rafter Sass-Ferguson, who joined us on the wires from Portugal. Rafter is currently a visiting researcher at the Center for Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Change at the University of Lisbon. Check out his work at Liberation Ecology .
Tonight's guest Russell Shields talks food security for asylum seekers. After years with the food rescue operation SecondBite , in 2014 Russell co-founded The Community Grocer , a not-for-profit and social enterprise that aims to improve access for people living in public housing to fresh, affordable food. These days he works at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre , working to ensure that asylum seekers have access to good food, and drives the ASRC Food Justice Truck ....
'Ethicurean' farmer Tammi Jonas joins us in studio to talk about the problems with your supermarket's bacon, and more ethical and tasty alternatives. Tammi with her family runs Jonai Farms in Central Vic raising pastured rare breed pigs, and she's also something of an agrarian intellectual who writes, talks and organises towards a regenerative, ethical food system, including being the current President of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance ....
We talk urban planning and the big issues facing Melbourne with James Larmour-Reid, Managing Director at Planisphere . Planisphere is a planning, urban design and landscape architecture consultancy. James is also the Victorian President of the Planning Institute of Australia. James also helped set up 3000acres -- and urban community gardens on underused land program -- with our co-host Kate Dundas.
