Congratulations to FoE FNQ member Margie Pestorius who recently won the Local Agent for Peace Award from the Rotary Peace Centre of Queensland University. Here she writes about her peace work and how it relates to environmental protection.

Cause we are the champions of the world.

So here is the rub. The very way that we live has become the thing that threatens to destroy us. To understand and believe the science is to accept that over the last seventy years particularly we have lived well beyond our biological means and consequently our only support system is faltering.

Many of you will have spotted the articles in ABC News and the Guardian about all the frog deaths in the eastern and southern states. This tragedy follows on the heels of the carnage caused by the notorious bushfires of the 2019/2020 summer but the cause is likely to be the opposite situation: bitter cold!

Hope is strong.

If you’ve never written a letter to a politician, now is the time to start. The next federal election could be in November this year or latest May of next year. The most important action that you can take is to write to your local federal member, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition telling them that you will not vote for a representative or a party that does not commit to zero greenhouse gas emissions and no new coal-mines and coal power-stations by 2030. Here is why.

Home, home again, I like to be here when I can.

The universe came out of the big bang about 13.8 billion years ago. Our planet earth is about 4.5 billion years old.

These articles were first published in The Kuranda Paper 

A weedkiller banned overseas has been given the tick of approval by a state authority to be used across the World Heritage-listed wet tropics area in Far North Queensland.

Bayer/ Montsanto offered to pay over A$15 billion to settle thousands of class action lawsuits in the U.S. These were made by people who claim the company's Glyphosate Based herbicides (GBH) caused their cancers. In response Federal Minister for Agriculture David Littleproud has assured the public that he is confident that 'if Australians use it per the label, it is perfectly safe.'

In April, the Cairns and Far North Environment Centre (CAFNEC) hosted their annual FNQ Roundtable in Atherton.  The Roundtable was held on the land of the Wadjanbarra Yidinji First Nations, who shared their concerns about protecting and caring for their country.

Let’s shun the Selfish Society

In 2008, the New Economics Foundation (1) drew together psychological data from many sources to help define the human actions that promote well-being. They declared the most significant of these to be; connecting to the people around us, being active in our bodies, taking notice of the world, learning new skills and giving to others.

It’s a mad, mad world.

“The world we live in should not be treated as normal, and it should not be a sign of good health to become ‘well adjusted’ to a society that is casually practising ecocide, celebrating narcissism, institutionalising racism and assessing the value of all things according to the cold logic of profit maximisation.”