The next General Meeting of Benalla Sustainable Future Group will be on Thursday March 28 from 7.30pm until 9.30pm at the Benalla Uniting Church Meeting Room Carrier Street Benalla, opposite the Coles car park.

Our guest speaker is Warrenbayne local Serenity Hill whose topic is ‘Food, unincorporated’.  ‘Sometimes the best way to fix the system is to start a new one’, https://openfoodnetwork.org.au/.

The Open Food Network was founded by Serenity Hill and Kirsten Larsen in 2012 as part of the Open Food Foundation. It is a platform that supports a food system that is open and fair, where producers and community based enterprises can sell local, seasonal produce online to their community. It has now grown to a global movement.  The meeting will be a good opportunity to learn more about this home grown initiative which has now spread to the UK, Scandinavia, Canada, and France, with South Africa, India and the USA coming soon.

Thank you to Kathryn McQualter of our Benalla Local Food Network for arranging with Serenity to speak to us.

After the business of the meeting and hearing about the Open Food Network from Serenity there will be a light supper.

We look forward to seeing you there.
Regards,
Peter Maddock,
Secretary,
0418 135 330

For our final Benalla Sustainable Future Group General Meeting for 2018 we are presenting some videos about e-waste and Permaculture. 

The meeting will be held on Thursday December 13th from 7.30pm until 9.30pm in the Benalla Uniting Church Meeting room, opposite the Coles Car Park in Carrier Street.

The War on Waste has been very much in the news this year.  We are presenting a short 3 minute video on electronic waste which highlights how planned obsolescence seems to be built into the electronic gadgets we buy.  At least 18 states across the US have introduced “Right to Repair” legislation which would require electronics manufacturers to provide independent repair shops with diagnostic equipment and replacement parts to be able to service their products, https://medium.com/citizen-truth/why-e-waste-is-so-dangerous-and-how-the-right-to-repair-will-save-the-environment-ca7987de6fba?

The second 42 minute video is a presentation by David Holmgren about his book Retrosuburbia.  I notice in the presentation that one of David’s slides says “Why garden and urban farming has a strong future in a world of climate chaos, peak energy and economic contraction”.  David sees Retrosuburbia as an important strategy to deal with energy descent and the financial bubble.

If you would like to see David Holmgren talk in person about Retrosuburbia, he is doing a Strathbogie Shire Council supported Retrosuburbia presentation at Violet Town Community Complex on Friday December 7.

Enjoy a festive supper after the meeting.
​
Peter Maddock
0418 135 330
peter_maddock@iprimus.com.au

The next General Meeting of Benalla Sustainable Future Group will be held at the Benalla Uniting Church on Thursday the 25th of October from 7.30pm until 9.30pm.

For this meeting we are screening the short film Takayna 2018 from Patagonia Films.

Takayna/Tarkine in north-western Tasmania is home to one of the last tracts of old-growth rainforest in the world, yet it’s currently at the mercy of destructive extraction industries, including logging and mining. This documentary unpacks the complexities of modern conservation and challenges us to consider the importance of our last wild places.

The film shows Nicole Anderson a rural doctor in Smithton who runs deep into the Tarkine reporting on the hidden logging activities in the region.  Bob Brown appears in the film and activities around the Franklin River are shown.  A short interview with a former timber worker highlights how small communities relying on extractive industries for employment may feel threatened by efforts to protect the Tarkine, particularly when they feel they are sustainably harvesting old growth forests.

We are hoping the film will lead us to a discussion of how we can save our environment from further degradation when our economy is geared to infinite growth.  Some doubt that economic growth is capable of supporting environmental outcomes.  For instance the Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy has recently challenged the top ten environmental NGOs to a debate on the topic, “Is there a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection?”  While in The Guardian on September 26, 2018 George Monbiot has an article titled “While economic growth continues we’ll never kick our fossil fuel habit.”

Quoting George Monbiot “Let’s be embarrassing. Let’s break the silence, however uncomfortable it makes us and others feel. Let’s talk about the great unmentionables: not just climate breakdown, but also growth and consumerism. Let’s create the political space in which well-intentioned parties can act. Let us talk a better world into being.”

Note that Takayna has some coarse language.  We look forward to seeing you at the meeting.  Tea, coffee and biscuits will be available after the film.

Peter Maddock
Secretary
0418 135 330

The next General Meeting of BSFG is on Thursday the 26th of October at 7.30pm in the Meeting room, The Benalla Uniting Church, Carrier Street Benalla, opposite the Coles carpark.

Our guest speaker is Carole Hammond who is the Team Leader Sustainable Development at Strathbogie Shire.  Carole is engaged in building the smart growth of a 21st century economy and environment for the Shire of Strathbogie. This includes programs across native vegetation and biodiversity, regional stewardship projects, working with Landcare, as well as a range of sustainability, and climate change adaptation projects, such as the ‘Bogie Bulk Buy’, that will contribute to a strong, resilient Shire of the future.

Carole is also the creator of Coolth Sustainability, a multidisciplinary sustainability practice. The consultancy offers accredited thermal performance assessments under the National Housing Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS), and specialist input into environmentally sustainable residential design.

We look forward to hearing from Carole who will speak after the business of the meeting.  A light supper will be served at the end of the meeting.

Peter Maddock
Secretary
0418 135 330

The next meeting of Benalla Sustainable Future Group will be held on Thursday 24th August at 7:30pm in the meeting room at the Uniting Church, Carrier Street, Benalla.

The guest speaker will be Michael Staindl from Beyond Zero Emissions whose topic will be ‘Climate Change: the Bad the Good and You.’ Michael, who has degrees in Nuclear Physics, Computing and Biomedical Instrumentation, considers himself a 'tech-head', and when he had his OMG moment about climate change some years ago he initially thought the problem could be solved through exciting new technologies. However he quickly realised that while we had the technical technologies to solve the problem we didn't have the 'soft' technologies - the attitudes and thinking capability.

Michael's presentation will cover the reality of where we are with Climate Change, touch on some of the positive efforts to address it, then introduce concepts such as cognitive dissonance and wicked problems to try to understand why we are not facing this existential crisis.

​Michael now works full time on climate action and is a producer of the Beyond Zero Emissions community radio program. 

The next General Meeting of BSFG will be held on Thursday October 22nd at 7.30 pm at the Uniting Church, Carrier Street Benalla.
After the meeting we are screening a 40 minute documentary from the Lock the Gate Alliance called ‘Fractured Country: an Unconventional Invasion' about the risks to communities from invasive gas fields.
We also have a 4 1/2 minute video animation from the Climate Institute called ‘What the Paris climate negotiations mean’.
And the BSFG website subcommittee will be presenting this new BSFG website.
Anyone interested in the environment welcome to attend.