Feb 24, 2011 | Deliberative, Joint effort - climate adaptation, Translating the scientific stuff
Just read Stuart Brand’s ‘Whole Earth Discipline, an eco-pragmatist manifesto’. Brand was editor of the optimistic, 70s Whole Earth Catalogue. Now he’s back willing to consider radically different alternative alternatives, in the face of...
Feb 2, 2011 | Deliberative
Guy Abrahams is a founding member of CLIMARTE an organisation which aims to draw together arts practitioners and organisations to make a difference on climate change. As part of this year’s Melbourne Sustainable Living Festival, he’ll be giving a lecture...
Jan 7, 2011 | It's cultural!, Joint effort - climate adaptation
I saw this grafitti on a sidewalk in Melbourne as the Brisbane floods were raging. I’ve often looked at those signs swinging in the back windows of cars and felt that it was naive to imagine they have meaning to people in other vehicles. Yet at a time of...
Oct 27, 2010 | Community Engagement, Deliberative, Joint effort - climate adaptation, Sustainability
I met Fiona Armstrong, a member of the Melbourne climate action group, Lighter Footprints, about a year ago. She was looking to develop an approach to community engagement on climate change that would work for people who might be confused by the current debate. And...
Oct 20, 2010 | It's cultural!, Joint effort - climate adaptation, Sustainability
I read this analogy recently, made by a scientist back in 1987: “The climate system is a capricious beast, and we have been poking it with a sharp stick” (Broecker). Watch out!
Oct 15, 2010 | Community Engagement, It's cultural!, Joint effort - climate adaptation, Stakeholder engagement, Translating the scientific stuff
It’s quite difficult to entice a reader into a book about Climate Change – there’s something so leaden and laden about statistics and science and dispute and above all virtue. So I decided humour would have to help me through. – Ian Mackewan on...
Oct 10, 2010 | Joint effort - climate adaptation
At the weekend I went walking and talking round gardens in my council area – a half day organised by Transition Darebin. The first garden was Sprout. ‘Organic in every sense of the word’ said the worker who took us round. A minute from Thornbury...
Sep 23, 2010 | Community Engagement, Deliberative, Joint effort - climate adaptation, Planning, Sustainability, Translating the scientific stuff
Local Voices continues this week after a conversation with colleague and collaborator Kath Fisher who designed and facilitated this series of forums in regional Victoria. I asked her what she saw as the role of Citizen Climate Juries in our time, when climate issues...
Sep 20, 2010 | Deliberative, Planning
I’ve been reflecting on Rob Carolane’s fear that the Local Voices Climate Jury’s recommendations wouldn’t match the Council’s standards. This is a common anxiety about these processes, and it’s difficult to allay by insisting that...
Sep 12, 2010 | Community Engagement, Deliberative, Joint effort - climate adaptation, People, place & governance, Planning, Sustainability, Translating the scientific stuff
I met Rob Carolane, a community engagement facilitator at the Victorian Facilitation Network’s professional development day this week. My facilitation speciality is deliberative processes. He was excited – he’d recently been a volunteer table facilitator at a ‘climate...
