Dec 3rd 2010 News
Posted on 2 December 2010 by e-news
MASG end of Year Xmas gathering. Dec 16th 5pm
The MASG Committee and Staff invite all members and volunteers on Thursday Dec 16th from 5pm onwards to our end of year celebration in the gardens at the back of the Hub. Please bring a plate to share, a chair and refreshments. Singing and some drinks will be provided !!. This will be a chance to catch up with other members, volunteers, committee and staff to celebrate what has been achieved and what is coming up in 2011. All welcome
End of year celebration
Inviting MASG Volunteers to register on MAVN database
Are you one of our unsung heroes who offers up their valuable time to help out on a voluntary basis? If so, your name may be listed on our register of volunteers. Or it may not!
MASG proposes to use the MAVN register to fill future volunteer positions. If you wish to continue helping MASG as a volunteer, would you please contact Jacqueline Brodie-Hanns or Dick Mack at MAVN at mavn@cch.org.au or 5472 4842, or go online here to start the registration process.
Help set up a wicking garden bed for a less abled person
The Shire Council has asked if any MASG members had a few hours in the next week or so to help install a raised wicking garden bed in a council supported person’s house. The council is trialling a project providing some of their elderly and less abled clients with a raised wicking garden bed so that they can grow their own food and flowers.
Food and flowers for all
Council staff will provide the materials and build the raised bed, but they need someone with wicking bed experience to help with finishing it off. If you can help ring council officer Jo Middleton on 5471 1855
The Hub Plot Jottings
The Hub Plot is the new name for the Mount Alexander Sustainability Group Demonstration Food Garden. Yes, we were finding the old name a bit of a mouthful!The Hub Plot has recently been welcomed by Sustainable Gardening Australia (SGA) as their newest pod. We can look forward to working with SGA on some of our workshops planned for next year.
An outcome of the successful heritage tomatoes session was that we organised a field trip to Cheryl Dingle’s remarkable permaculture farm at Maldon. We were quite stunned to see what she’s growing out there. Macadamia nuts, pistachio nuts and a large variety of fig trees grow amongst all her other fruits and vegetables. Thanks Cheryl. Truly inspiring!
Thanks to a volunteer, Dave, we will soon be converting one of the bathtubs into a worm farm.Also thanks to Pam, Tony, Peter, Mark, Heather, Jan, Brian and others who worked hard to get the Hub Plot looking great for the recent open garden days and to Deanna’s dad for donating onion seedlings, Taron & Alex for heirloom tomato seedlings and Matthew for Warrigal spinach.
Please drop in to the Phee Broadway foyer to see the Hub Plot’s flag which is part of the Flying the Flag for Sustainability Project. It looks great. Thanks to Judith for the lovely poem which escorts it.
The Hub Plot gardening group is meeting to work in the garden on Monday mornings at 9am. If you would like to join in and/or help plan our workshops for next year please drop in.
MASG helps get 60 groups to sign onto letter for independent MP Rob Oakeshott
MASG, as one of the organising groups in the 100% renewable energy campaign, helped recruit over 60 groups from Regional and Rural Australia to sign a letter supporting Independent MP Rob Oakeshott and his campaign to see a feed in tariff for renewable energy become enacted in the National Parliament.
Rob Oakeshott and family- supporting renewable energy
The letter was personally handed to Mr. Oakeshott on Wednesday by a sister group from Hastings in his electorate. Download a copy of the letter here (120kb)Letter_to_Oakeshott_from_R_R_groups
Nuclear power is no answer
It’s too slow & too expensive to be an option
NUCLEAR energy will be more expensive than most forms of renewable energy by 2020 according to a paper by the University of NSW energy expert Mark Diesendorf, and it would take at least a decade to get any nuclear plants up and running in Australia.
The paper finds the cheapest renewable energy sources – including landfill gas, onshore wind, conventional geothermal and hydro – are already cost-competitive with conventional nuclear energy power plants.
Trust me...nuclear is the answer (what was the question tho ?)
By 2020, offshore wind farms, solar thermal and solar photovoltaics are all projected to be less expensive than nuclear energy. Only two reactors were under construction in western countries – in Finland and France – and both were over-time and over-budget.
Sydney- plans on being powered by rotting vegies and pooh…
Sydney’s central business district will be powered by rotting agricultural waste and sewage harvested from a 250-kilometre radius around the city, under a new plan to move away from coal-fired energy.
The city’s master plan relies on 27 existing or proposed trigeneration plants, mainly concealed in the basements of public buildings and city offices, to free the city of its dependence on the Hunter Valley coal that accounts for 80 per cent of central Sydney’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The plan comes as the World Meteorological Organisation prepares to release its annual review this morning, showing that 2010 has been one of the three hottest years on record…see the full story in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Serious questions raised over Fracking of watersheds
The New York State Assembly has approved a 6 month moratorium on gas drilling in New York State, a huge victory for those who have been fighting to protect their drinking water from toxic chemicals.
TheAssembly has decided that there is no acceptable level of risk for toxic chemicals in their water supply, a common result of gas extraction by hydrolic fracturing (Fracking) and have legislated to halt further gas extraction whilst studies by the EPA are undertaken. See the legislation here
And farmers in QLD threaten to blockage Coal Seam Gas Fracking
Quote
I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.
Pablo Picasso
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