Wednesday, February 24, 2010

ROAD TRIP

LOUD SPACE is currently in Sydney writing this to you. On Monday he left Melbourne bound for Brisbane. SPACE spent Monday night in Canberra, passing the night away drinking home made wine, talking to travellers, who seemed to quickly disengage from conversations with him. In hindsight he remembers being quite drunk that evening, perhaps even animated and excitable, but this behaviour had no comparison to the hang over in the morning.

On Tuesday morning LOUD went to Parliament and was awe inspired by every aspect of the building. While walking through the building, a function was taking place in one of the chambers. Everyone was beautifully dressed, drinking champagne, while a band played in the corner of the room. Finger food served on silver platters by fresh immigrants.

The event had an air of the high and mighty, people drunk on power and status. Question time was too late in the afternoon to consider to stay and watch, but it would have been interesting to see the Garret face the Liberal Parties heat. Canberra is a big town, well planned, new and bureaucratic. A place you enjoy visiting, but somewhere you would never consider calling home. It's small and after driving for fifteen minutes from parliament, you are out of the city and passing through lush green fields that are being irrigated.

Now in Sydney, waiting for traffic to die down, LOUD is working out where he will head to next. Nambucca Heads. Coff's Harbour. Byron Bay. Port Macquarie or Nimbin. Brisbane by Friday. Or Saturday.

The drive has been relaxed and easy, up till now along the M31 National Highway.In Sydney, the roads are badly signed, busy, claustrophobic and tolled. A few near accidents have occurred. From today LOUD will drive along the Pacific Highway. The landscape has changed slowly.
But it all seems to be farmed; quiet and empty, save for the cattle you sometimes see, scattered with a few trees that have not been cut down. One cannot help but wonder what the land looked like before colonisation, when it was covered in forest. Filled with life. When there were no roads.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Automation and another weekend that was.















Another weekend has passed and the Sustainable Living Festival, SLF, is over. LOUD SPACE served as a volunteer for PLUG IN TV and was able to see many products and services available to the public in the name of sustainability. Though intentions for the festival are no doubt noble, LOUD SPACE cannot help but wonder if the festival itself is guilty of being unsustainable.

A train of thought was started when LOUD SPACE attended Peter Singer's lecture on Friday. Posters promoting the evening hung above the stage where Mr Singer spoke. These posters would serve no purpose after the fesitval, and one must wonder if the production of such items is appropriate, especially for a festival such as SLF.

Another question one may ask in the name of sustainability is; was it ethical to fly Mr Singer from Princeton University to the lecture on Friday evening or if it would have made more environmental sense for Mr Singer to have done his lecture by teleconference. (This is assuming that Mr Singer had come to Australia specifically for the SLF. It must be stated again that LOUD SPACE himself is guilty of taking advantage of cheap flights, particularly of recent with AIR ASIA and is not seeking to point the finger, but merely ask questions.)

SLF aside, chickens and half chickens, lie in grease, waiting to be consumed in delis across the country and Lindt Easter bunnies have started to appear at supermarkets again. People line up at cashiers that are no longer manned by humans, swiping their goods under a scanner and then paying for it with cash or card. How much stock is stolen in this manner? How many genuine errors are made by consumers? Perhaps to SAFEWAY and COLES it is still cheaper to lose a little stock whether by mistake or theft than employing a casual, part or full time employee. Automation.

Automative technology such as this has been around for a while now; at parking stations, on public transport and at petrol pumps, but this new addition serves as reminder to everyone about how our world is slowly changing. Changes occurring at such a subtle level sometimes, that people may not even be conscientiously aware of them, except for those who lose their job to these new automative technologies. Hail automation.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Peter Singer



















Peter Singer spoke today at the Sustainable Living Festival in a lecture called Climate Change as an Ethical Issue. LOUD SPACE should have taken notes, but can inform readers of the blog that the lecture was informative and well attended by a cross section of the community. Main topics covered in the one hour lecture were; the dire need to take climate change seriously, the inequalities in emissions between those in the western world and those in the non western world. How the poorest countries in the world will be worst affected by climate change, even though they have contributed to it the least. Proposed methods to cut emissions, and which countries support these, and also the role of the individual amongst all of this.

Mr Singer, a vegetarian himself, ended the lecture by stating how harmful the livestock industry was in causing greenhouse emissions. A few members of the audience clapped upon hearing this, while the rest of the audience, presumably meat eaters, waited for Mr Singer to continue with his speech.

Lessons to take on board from Mr Singer's lecture? LOUD SPACE will take pen and paper to such events next time and that individuals should take responsibility for the way they affect the environment, especially those in the western world, living affluent, unsustainable lives, which LOUD SPACE stands guilty of, perhaps more than the reader. Recognising you have a problem is the first step. Learning more and taking action are the next.

http://www.vnv.org.au/site/htmfiles/eatinguptheworld.htm

http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/

http://festival.slf.org.au/

Units.









Thursday, February 18, 2010

Northcote Plaza









Composting.











Do you have a compost bin? If not you should get one. Yesterday, in a unit in Balaclava, I had a beautiful dinner, lamb cutlets with vegetables and an avocado dip. (Please be aware that LOUD SPACE is aware of the fact that he is a hypocrite for talking about environmental issues while having had meat for dinner, moral and ethical issues aside.)

As I began to do the dishes and clean up the scraps of food, vegetable skins mostly, sliding them all into a plastic bag automatically, I felt a sudden anger take over me. Why? Because I knew I would soon throw the bags into a rubbish bin downstairs, carry on with my evening, while the rubbish waited to be deposited in a landfill, to fester underground for an undisclosed amount of time and I am only one individual with only a small amount of waste. Our city is a city of four million people.

In hindsight I should have taken the scraps and brought them home, to my own hungry compost bin, thus keeping the rubbish away from landfill. But the simple act of cleaning up last nights dinner, happened for a greater reason. It made me realise how much waste there is in our current consumerist society and the small steps individuals can take to minimise their damage to the environment. Eating less meat being one of them.

I have had a compost bin in operation at my house for the past four years now, it is filled with worms and now no food products at my house go to landfill. Everything goes into the compost bin. I have never had any problems with rats or mice as some sources have suggested. Compost bins are unique biological universes and should be considered essential to anyone living in the modern world.

A bin is relatively cheap at around $50. However as I cleared the food into the plastic bag (compost bins also avoid the use of plastic bags) I felt that local councils should be taking more active measures in helping reduce how much waste go to landfills. Can our rates not be used to offer citizens compost bins? The money saved from rubbish collections could potentially be used to finance this.

I have seen councils offer programs, where they will subsidise the price of compost bins, if not pay for them out right, but inevitably these offers have expiry dates, and it is my view that offers such as these should be offered indefinitely.

Unit or flats should not be excepted from this rule. As stated earlier in my post, I was in fact in a unit when I bagged up my rubbish last evening. As I went downstairs I wondered if there would be space for such a bin where the unit stood, or if the entire area would be covered in concrete. I was happy to see that indeed there was a huge patch of grass where a compost bin could be setup. Why was there not one there?

Ultimately it is very important that we start taking active steps to reduce the amount of rubbish we are sending to land fills. I have attached links at the bottom of this post to explain why.

It is important for us to consume less and become more conscious of how our decisions affect the world. I believe in the power of the invidual to make choices but if we are not able to take our responsibility seriously then government should take greater steps to making this a reality. Legislation should be put in place as it has been in San Francisco since last year where composting and the seperation of recycleables and food waste has become mandatory. If we are not willing to make changes our selves, I believe government must step up and make these decisions for us, for the betterment of ourselves and this world. What we need to do is ask ourselves and elected representatives is why is this not being done already?



Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The Kite Flyer















He was the champion kite flyer in the town. He could fly kites better than any other person in the district. He was deaf, but he could tell you that success does not depend on whether you can hear or not. He preferred to fly his kite early in the morning, as the sun rose. When everyone was asleep. An all consuming silence. His kite sailing/cutting through the air.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Monday.















Technology surrounds us, it's influence grows everyday. Cameras watch you on the tram, in stores, on the street. Health insurers, offer half price genetic testing, to see if they should get rid of you as a customer or at the very least increase your premiums, to cover the costs you and they might incur further down the track. Trapster is a new I-phone application that alerts its users to where Booze Buses are everyday. Victoria Police say it is unfortunate that an application that Trapster exists but it is not illegal.

Flemington and Sunshine.