​With John Lloyd overseas, Brian Howard took responsibility for shepherding us thoughtfully into our most recent session, commencing with a Lateline segment in which 'Bob Katter and Anthony Albanese visit Bob Katter's electorate on a renewable energy 'power trip' . If you would like to know more about pumped hydro as an alternative option for baseload energy, this extremely watchable video (available on the Lateline webpage) is a good place to start.   

Kathy brought along two excellent articles on demand reduction, which we followed up with a recent Leigh Sales interview with Christina Figueres, former UN climate chief, discussing the Government decision to pressure AGL to stay in coal.  Bev then introduced an article which described climate change as a highly complex ‘super wicked’ problem.  Frank,  a scientist, put the view that climate change is clearly happening and must be dealt with, whether or not time is spent philosophizing about it as ‘a super wicked problem’! 

Our final video for the day – from 'The Business' on electric vehicles, included discussion of the impact of the growth in demand for batteries for electric vehicles on Western Australia’s lithium mining capacity.  

Our next session will include ‘a touching and thought provoking documentary about two grannies which challenges the idea that we must continue to shop, consume, amass and keep the economy growing’.  

​On a final note, ‘Spring into Sustainability’ was celebrated at the Library last week with a screening of the ‘Before the Rains’ documentary narrated by Leonardo Di Caprio.   Our own ‘Spring Into Sustainability’ elephant stamp was awarded via the website to U3A Vice President Bill Parris for always keeping the reusable cup he acquired during a walk at Cradle Mountain on hand!

John will be away for our next few sessions.  Brian Howard is taking over the role of convening the sessions with some input from class members and Peter Maddock from the Benalla Sustainable Future Group.  

Bring along an article of interest to share with the group at the Seotember 15th class.  We will be watching a video segment from Lateline in which 'Bob Katter and Anthony Albanese visit Bob Katter's electorate on a renewable energy 'power trip' including visiting a pumped hydro scheme. The link to the program is: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2016/s4729057.htm

If there's time we'll also watch a segment from 'The Business' on electric vehicles.  The link is http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/business/NU1704H156S00# 
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On October 6th Peter Maddock of BSFG and Swanpool Cinema fame will be showing us a film about two older people fighting for environmental justice which we think will be of great interest to our group.

For more news of the coming classes - watch this space.