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ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL AID CUTS AN ‘ACT OF BARBARISM’

By Peter Burdon, ABC

T h e f u n d i n g c u t t oenvironmental legal centres may

have the ironic effect of

galvanising people into fighting

harder for their existence.

Many of us take for granted

the privilege of living in an

industrialised and stable first

world country. As we commute

to work in the morning we could

be forgiven for thinking that our

fragile environment is under

sensible guardianship and that

our elected leaders are doingeverything in their power to

secure this land for future

generations.

Y e t a l o n g s i d e t h i s

complacency, some of us are

worried…even frightened. We

are living at a time when the best

science in the world is telling us

that human beings are on a

collision course with ecologicalcollapse. Moreover, the time

frame for this collapse is getting

shorter and shorter. While

luminaries of the environmental

movement like David Suzuki

remind us to put faith in human

reason, his argument is belied

daily by the descriptions of

barbarism that occupy the

headlines.

In the first 100 days of the

Abbott government we have

been confronted with threats to

repeal the Commonwealth

Environmental Protection and

Biodiversity Act; scenes of

Australia's climate negotiators

blocking progress, wearing T-

shirts and gorging on snacks

during sessions of the Warsaw

climate conference; the approval

of the world's biggest coal port

in a world heritage area; andenticements to BHP Billiton to

reconsider their Olympic Dam

expansion.

Yesterday our descent

d e e p e n e d a f t e r t h e

Commonwea l th At torney-

G e n e r a l ' s d e p a r t m e n t

announced that it was cutting an

estimated $10 million in funding

t o t h e c o u n t r y ' s n i n e

Enviro nmenta l Defenders

Offices (EDO). I t is also

planning to end a long-standing,

bipartisan annual payment of

between $90,000 and $100,000

meaning that the legal centres

will receive no federal support

from 1 July 2014.

For more on this story visit:

www.abc.net.au

PLANET LIFE

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Special Report: Save The

Great Barrier Reef 

Page 4

Emergency Management 

Lets Plan Together

Page 13

Earth Sanctuary Newsletter

December 2013!

Page 2

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Earth Sanctuary Team Roll On...2014 A time to prep!By Dan Falzon and Sarah London

 W herever we may find

 you around the galaxy our

team wish you a Merry

Christmas! We hope your

enjoying the PlanetLifenewsletter and we hope its

 being helpful in keeping up

to date with Climate

Change activity.

PlanetLife is a little

project we started to

ultimately keep our gang

up to dat e with th e

e n o r m o u s d a t a o f

planetary info that is notmaking the 6pm news. We

use it to sling shot our

projects and prepare for

the inevitable disruption

that the unpredictable

climate will bring to all

regions of the Earth. It’s a

 b i g j o b b e c o m i n g

sustainable with your

energy and water supplies

 but if you start prepping

early it will reduce the

problem down the track.

Most Governments around

the world are now insisting

on a minimum of 72 hrs of

supplies in your cupboards

s o t h e aw ar e n e s s i s

filtering through.

Our team enjoy buildingawareness on sustainable

l iving and we f irmly

 believe that by helping

others make the necessary

adjustments in preparing

for climate change, we

ultimately create a safe

environment for all.

2013 has been a big year

for the gang (pictured

above in the Northern

Territory) with thousands

of travelers from all over

the world coming to say

g’day and enjoy either an

eco tour, star show or be

part of our many events on

offer.

Take care and best wishes

over Christmas Superstars!

FROM THE EDITOR

Pictured right is

the Earth

Sanctuary team

at the 2013

Brolga Awards.

The Sanctuary

won Best

Business

Growth NT

Tourism 2013.

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From all over Australia and the World,

kids are enjoying the wonderful displays at

Earth Sanctuary. They are learning aboutthe essential areas of Energy, Water,Shelter, Utilities, Food and Wellbeing.These are the key ingredients to getting

started and we know everyone canmake a difference!.

The Summer is kicking in at above 40 degrees and

Joey has flown in from Melbourne to help start the

Sanctuary’s Quandong Homestead facelift.

20 years of extreme weather here in the Outback

has buckled and twisted the timber around the

Homestead calling for a rejuvenation package.

 At the completion of the job, Joey was just happy

to walk around the old Homestead without

puncturing a tire. Great work guys, plenty of workto go before the 2014 season, stay posted!

Earth Sanctuary Building A Sustainable FUTUREBy Trenz Pruca

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EARTH SANCTUARYBUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

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By Janna Donaldson, savethereef.org.au

 Australians all let us rejoice

For we are young and free

 We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil

Our home is girt by sea

Our land abounds in nature’s gifts

Of beauty rich and rare

To all Australians, how are we and futuregenerations meant to sing our Australiananthem with dignity and respect when wecontinue to desecrate our countries natural

gifts of beauty rich and rare? How can we as anation be so short sighted to support thefurther expansion of the coal-mining industryand further destruction of the Great BarrierReef including its unthinkable removal fromthe World Heritage list!

Shame on the Australian Government andcoal-mining capitalists who are trying to go ahead with the expansion of the mega coalmine industry and subsequent dredging of theGre a t Ba r r i e r Ree f an d sh ip p in gsuperhighways! If these plans go ahead they

are not only dredging millions of cubic metersof seabed floor but will also be destroying anessential ecosystem that we all depend on forsurvival, including species that survive on andmigrate through the Great Barrier Reef andthe thousands of peoples jobs and livelihoods

within the QLD tourism industry, QLD fishing

and agriculture industries.

The mining of coal and its export adds a hugeburden to the carbon loading of our country.Coal is a natural resource that will run outwithin the next few decades. To jeopardise theGreat Barrier Reef, which is one of the world'sgreat wonders for a quick fix short-term gain isnonsensical and verging   on madness to thepoint of insane! It will take thousands of yearsto recover if at all! The destruction will lead tothe extinction of many already vulnerablespecies that future generations of our children

will not have the delight and amazement toexperience.

I urge all Australians again, please do notsupport the further expansion of the coal-mining industry and further destruction of theGreat Barrier Reef including the removalfrom the World Heritage list! We as a nationmust start thinking long- term and start takingaction in ways that will lead to sustainablenatural resource management, human andenvironmental health and life longevity.

 Janna Donaldson, Darwin NT

The Great Barrier Reef

under threat by the short

term management

schemes of modern

politics.

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OCEANLIFE

SAVE THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

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  Japan Times, 18th December 2013

Tokyo Electric Power Co. officially declared Wednesday

that the two reactors that suffered no major damage at theFukushima No. 1 plant in the 2011 disaster are defunct,

meaning the nation will have only 48 operable commercial

reactors.

“With this decision, all of the plant’s six reactors will be

classified as defunct,” Tepco said in a press release following a

meeting of its board. “It is extremely regrettable that we

hugely betrayed the local people’s trust due to the accident

and are deeply ashamed of ourselves.”

Reactors 5 and 6 will be classified as defunct on Jan. 31,

but instead of dismantling them, Tepco may use them as

experimental facilities to support the challenging task of

scrapping the three reactors that experienced meltdowns and

the other one crippled by a hydrogen explosion.The public has been demanding that Tepco scrap both

the Fukushima No. 1 and nearby Fukushima No. 2 plants.

The utility has not made clear what it intends to do with the

four-reactor Fukushima No. 2 complex, located about 12 km

south of the crisis-ridden Fukushima No. 1 facility.

As new accounting rules regarding decommissioning

came into force in October, Tepco is likely to avoid booking alarge extraordinary charge for the current business year

through next March due to a shortfall in funds for

decommissioning.

“We are currently examining the impact of the latest

decision on our accounting,” Tepco said.

After the Fukushima No. 1 plant was hit by the March

11, 2011, magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, reactors 1,

2 and 3 experienced core meltdowns. And the building

housing reactor 4, which did not have fuel inside its core

because it was under maintenance, was damaged by a

hydrogen explosion.

But reactors 5 and 6, which were also under

maintenance at the time of the earthquake, achieved cold

shutdowns through the use of an emergency diesel generator

that avoided flooding.

For more on this story visit www.japantimes.co.jp

TEPCO TO DECOMMISSION FUKUSHIMA REACTORS THAT SURVIVED 2011 TSUNAMI

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By Jonathan Amos, BBC

The bounce back in the extent of

sea ice in the Arctic this summer wasreflected also in the volume of ice.

Data from Europe's Cryosat

spacecraft  suggests there were almost

9,000 cu km of ice at the end of this

 year's melt season.

This is close to 50% more than in

the corresponding period in 2012.

It is a rare piece of good news for a

region that has witnessed a rapid

decline in both area cover and thickness

in recent years.

But scientists caution against

reading too much into one year's"recovery".

"Although the recovery of Arctic

sea ice is certainly welcome news, it has

to be considered against the backdrop of

changes that have occurred over the last

few decades," said Prof Andy Shepherd

of University College London, UK.

"It's estimated that there were

around 20,000 cu km of Arctic sea ice

each October in the early 1980s, and so

today's minimum still ranks among thelowest of the past 30 years," he told

BBC News.

Cryosat is the European Space

Agency's (Esa) dedicated polar

monitoring platform.

It has a sophisticated radar system

that allows scientists to work out the

thickness of the ice floes covering the

Arctic Ocean.

In the three years following its

launch, the spacecraft saw a steady

decline in autumn ice volume, with arecord low of 6,000 cubic km being

recorded in late October 2012.

But after a sharply colder summer

this year, the autumn volume number

has gone up.

Measurements taken in the same

three weeks in October found the floes

to contain just shy of 9,000 cu km.

Thicker ice has been retained in the

Arctic

Part of this stronger performance

can be put down to the greater retention

of older ice.

This is evident particularly around

the Canadian archipelago and North

Greenland, where there is much more

two-year-old and three-year-old ice than

in previous years."One of the things

we'd noticed in our data was that the

 volume of ice year-to-year was not

 varying anything like as much as the ice

extent - at least for the years 2010, 2011and 2012," explained Rachel Tilling

from the UK's Nerc Centre for Polar

Observation and Modelling (CPOM).

"This is why we're really quite

surprised by what we've seen in

2013."We didn't expect the greater ice

extent left at the end of the summer

melt to be reflected in the volume.

"But it has been. And the reason is

related to the amount of multi-year ice

in the Arctic." Dr Don Perovich is a sea-

ice expert at Dartmouth College, US.

He said Cryosat's data tallied with

observations made by other spacecraft.

"In previous summers, some of the

[multi-year ice] migrated over to the

Alaska and Siberia areas where it

melted. But this past summer, it stayed

in place because of a change in wind

patterns. And so there'll likely be more

multi-year ice next year than there was

this year," he told BBC News. The

minimum ice extent in the Arctic this

summer was recorded as 5.10 million sq

km. Again, this was a figure almost 50%

larger than the all-time satellite-low

mark achie ved 12 months previously -

when floes were reduced to just 3.41

million sq km by mid-September.

Area/extent is easier to measure,

but scientists regard thickness/volume

to be the best metric with which to

 judge the health of the ice pack, which

is why Cryosat's unique data-set is so

important.

For a while, it was uncertainwhether the European satellite would

get any autumn measurements this year.

The spacecraft suffered a major

fault in its onboard power system at the

beginning of October, and all science

activity was halted.

But engineers managed to switch

the satellite over to a back-up system

and normal operations were resumed

on 11 October.

"We lost the side 'A' of the power

subsystem we believe for good, although

we still have hope to be able to use part

of it in the future in case we experience

another issue," said Esa Cryosat mission

manager Dr Tommaso Parrinello.

"Since 2 October, we have been

operating on the redundant chain, but

all other subsystems are still being

operated on their prime chain 'A'.

Therefore, the science instruments and

the quality of data have not been

affected."

ESA’S CRYOSAT SEES ARCTIC SEA-ICE VOLUME BOUNCE BACK 

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THE WORLD THIS WEEK5.0 OFF EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

5.1 BANDA SEA

5.1 IZU ISLANDS, JAPAN REGION

5.3 KURIL ISLANDS

5.2 GREENLAND SEA

5.0 BANDA SEA

5.1 SANTA CRUZ ISLANDS

5.0 MARIANA ISLANDS REGION5.1 SANTA CRUZ ISLANDS

5.0 MARIANA ISLANDS REGION

5.8 MARIANA ISLANDS REGION

5.4 FIJI REGION

5.1 SOLOMON ISLANDS

5.3 GREENLAND SEA

5.5 ANTOFAGASTA, CHILE

5.0 SOUTH GEORGIA ISLAND REGION

5.3 SOUTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE5.7 OFF W. COAST OF S. ISLAND, N.Z.

5.1 SOUTHWEST OF SUMATRA, INDONESIA

5.0 STRAIT OF GIBRALTAR

5.0 FIJI REGION

5.2 HUBEI, CHINA

5.6 WEST OF MACQUARIE ISLAND5.1 VANUATU

5.0 HUBEI, CHINA

5.1 VANUATU

5.2 NORTHERN PERU5.0 NEAR EAST COAST OF KAMCHATKA

5.2 NEAR EAST COAST OF KAMCHATKA

5.1 WEST CHILE RISE

5.4 NEAR EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

SINABUNG VOLCANO:

I N C R E A S I N G I NSEISMIC ACTIVITY,RED ALERT.

By Volcano Discovery, 17th December,

2013

The Indonesian Volcanological

Survey (VSI) informed in its latest press

release that a significant increase in

seismic activity was detected during the

past days.

While the volcano has been

relatively calm at the surface,producing only a dilute gas plume with

some ash reaching about 1 km above

the crater, the increase in earthquakes

suggests that new magma is currently

rising and could produce new

(potentially large) explosions.

In particular, low-frequency and

so-called hybrid earthquakes, typical of

fluid movements inside the volcanic

edifice, have climbed to almost one

1000 per day. Continuous volcanic

tremor (internal vibration) at medium

levels has also been detected over the

past days.

Deformation measurements with

tilt-meters on the northern and eastern

flank and EDM (electronic distance

meters) show a fluctuating trend of

inflation, suggesting the presence of anintruding magma body at shallow

d e p t h . G a s a n d t e m p e r a t u r e

measurements are not conclusive from

the VSI report, as quality / temporal

coverage are insufficient.

The exclusion zone was extended

to 5 km radius, and the volcano

remains on highest alert level and

Aviation Color Code Red, because

explosive eruptions with high-level ash

clouds could occur any time.

For more visit:www.volcanodiscovery.com

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Opinion Piece by Michael Kennedy, ABC, 17th

December 2013

The government has swiftly moved to

dismantle several pieces of environmental

protection. It looks like natural Australian places

won't be getting any Christmas presents this year.

In two ABC Environment opinion pieces this

 year, I wrote about a looming environmental crisis

as the Coalition Government's new policies began

to bite. I'd warned about the Government's plans

to devolve their national environment powers to

money-hungry state and territory governments

and to remove Commonwealth protection for the

Murray River.

I'm afraid the news is not good; there will be

no presents for the environment this Christmas.

Let's start with the Murray-Darling Riverecological communities debacle, as it epitomises

the chronically conservative and biologically

ignorant attitudes of the Abbott Government

towards environmental management.

The "River Murray and associated wetlands,

floodplains and groundwater systems, from the

 junction of the Darling River to the sea", along

with the "Wetlands and inner floodplains of the

Macquarie Marshes" had been determined by the

Commonwealth's Environment Minister's premier

scientific advisory body to be two of the most

"critically endangered" ecosystems in the entirecountry.

However, on December 11, in the Federal

Parliament, and at the behest of Environment

Minister Greg Hunt and his Parliamentary

Secretary Senator Simon Birmingham, the

Members for Parkes and Barker respectively

moved that the River Murray and Macquarie

Marshes Commonwealth protections be

disallowed, with the motions carried despite

previous sound and rational defence of the listings

by Labor MP and former Environment Minister

Mark Butler and Greens MP Adam Bandt. Evenfor a long-term and hardened environmental

lobbyist like me, it is hard to sit and listen to one

Coalition MP after another lie before the House

and then kill a crucial conservation initiative stone

dead!

I'm trying to imagine Environment Minister

Greg Hunt's face-to-face with Professor Helene

Marsh, Chair of the Threatened Species Scientific

Committee (TSSC), telling her that he has chosen

to take the advice of the National Irrigators

Council over that of her own committee of

unimpeachable scientists, and for the first time

since the enactment of the first Commonwealth

legislation to protect endangered species in 1992,

reject the listing of two threatened ecological

communities for purely political reasons.

Minister Hunt has just broken the

conventional system of scientific impartiality

practiced by all previous Environment Ministers,

who have accepted the advice of the TSSC since

the Environment Protection & Biodiversity

Conservation Act (EPBC Act) came into force in

2000 and the Endangered Species Protection Act

before it in 1993. The consequences for the

performance of the TSSC, the CommonwealthEnvironment portfolio, and the effective

protection of Australia's biological diversity will be

surely felt in the negative. It is hard to stress too

much how dangerous this precedent is.

For more on this story visit:

www.abc.net.au/environment

WHAT WILL THE ENVIRONMENTGET FOR CHRISTMAS

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SOME MAIN SOURCES AND HELPFUL HINTS

By Eco Friendly Planet

More household waste is

produced between Thanksgiving

and New Year’s than any other

time of the  year–about 6 million

tons of added waste nation wide.

Christmas is the most festive event

of the year. No wonder there will be

plenty of food, decorations, gifts and

cards purchased to celebrate Christmas.

The sad thing is, lots of them are

wasted.

The story of Christmas waste has

become more and more surprising every

 year. Here are some staggering facts

about the waste we every year makeduring Christmas:

 Waste from Christmas Trees.

Fact: Each year, 50 million

Christmas trees are purchased in the

U.S. (Cygnus Group). Of those, about

30 mil l ion go to the landfill .

(Environmental News Network). One

acre of Christmas trees produces the

daily oxygen supply for 18 people.

Hints: Buy potted Christmas tree

so it still can produce oxygen all through

the years and you can use it for another

Christmas. You can also plant it in your

garden. Alternatively, you can buy an

artificial Christmas tree that can be used

 year after year. This way you can

significantly cut your Christmas waste.

 Waste from Christmas Card

Fact:  2.65 billion Christmas cardsare sold each year in the United States,

that could fill a football field 10  stories

high. If each American sent one card

less, 50,000 cubic yards of paper can be

saved ( Use Less Stuff ). Every year

200,000 trees will be cut down to make

holiday cards.

Hints: Send Electronic Christmas

Cards instead.

Recycle or reuse Christmas Cards

 you receive.

 Waste from Christmas Gift

 Wrapping

Fact : Wrapping paper and

shopping bags account for about 4

million tons of trash each year in the

U.S. It is estimated that if every

American family wrapped just three

presents in reused materials, it would

save enough paper to cover 45,000

football fields and if they reused just two

feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles

of ribbon saved could tie a bow around

the entire planet. Due to the

materials( dyed, coated, laminated,

plastic etc ) wrapping paper and ribbon

are typically difficult to be recycled.

Hints: Use reusable shopping bags

when shopping for  Christmas presents.Use only used wrapping paper and

ribbon for your Christmas gifts or use

reusable containers to deliver them,

baskets, mugs, reusable shopping bags

etc.

 Waste From Food

At least 28 billion pounds of edible

food are wasted each year - or over 100

pounds per person. (Use Less Stuff). It is

undoubtedly that the food waste ismounted during Christmas time as it is

estimated that 400,000 people become

sick each year from eating tainted

Christmas leftovers. There is another

study that revealed that if we planted

trees on land currently used to grow

unnecessary surplus and wasted food,

this would offset a theoretical maximum

of 100% of man-made greenhouse gas

emissions.

Hints: Do not prepare excessive

amounts of food to celebrate your

Christmas.

Food is organic compound, it will

generate methane gas if the waste is not

properly managed. Compost your food

waste to help  our planet. Find some

useful compost kits here.

Hazardous Waste from the

Christmas Gifts.

Consider to buy eco friendly gifts.

According to EPA, about 40% of all

battery sales occur during the holiday

season. Remember, improperly

discharge batteries might cause mercury

pollution.

Hint: Buy gifts with rechargeable

batteries instead of disposable ones.

For more visit:

http://1st-ecofriendlyplanet.com/

12/christmas-waste/

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By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com, 13th December 2013

Our solar system hosts a cornucopia of

worlds, from the hellfire of Venus   to the frozen

plains of Mars to the mighty winds of Uranus. In

that range, the Earth stands alone, with no planet

coming close to its life-friendly position near the

sun.

Outside our solar system, however, it's a

different story. Observations using space-based

and ground-based telescopes have indicated that a

new class of objects dubbed super-Earths – worlds

that are about two to 10 times our planet's mass

and up to two times its radius – could be among

the most common type of planets orbiting other

stars.

That's because during the past few years,

astronomers have found plenty of these super-

sized rocky bodies orbiting different types of stars.

Among these planetary systems, those around M-class stars, which are cooler and fainter than our

sun, are particularly important. Because of the

low surface temperatures of these stars, the

regions around them where an Earth-like planet

can maintain liquid water on its surface (also

known as the Habitable Zone) are closer to them

-- making such potentially habitable super-Earths

in those regions more detectable. [6 Most LikelyPlaces for Alien Life in the Solar System

(Countdown)]

Scientists also believe that these smaller stars

are the most abundant in the sun's corner of the

universe, implying super-Earths would be plentiful

in our solar neighborhood, as well.

Nader Haghighipour is a member of the

NASA Astrobiology Institute and the University of

Hawaii-Manoa's Institute for A stronomy. Among

his research interests is figuring out how these

worlds form, and most importantly, how they

arrive in their current orbits.

Some of his work hints that migrating giant

planets could be responsible for the close-in orbits

of smaller bodies. Their massive gravity could

excite the rocks and protoplanetary debris on their

paths and cause them to be scattered out of the

system or coalesce into smaller planets such as

super-Earths.

"When giant planets approach the central

star, especially around an M-dwarf, I'm interested

in how they affect accretion of small planetesimals

in a disc in front of them and how that will result

in the formation of super-Earths, particularly in

the habitable zone," Haghighipour said.

For more on this story visit:

www.nbcnews.com

SPACELIFESEARCH FINDS NO SHORTAGE OF ALIENSUPER-EARTH PLANETS 

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UFO SIGHTINGS AROUND

THE GLOBE THIS WEEK 

Date of Discovery: December 2013

Location of Discovery: Earths Orbit

Photo Date: UnknownSource: http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/images/

ISD/highres/STS106/STS106-314-20_4.JPG

Date of Sighting: October/December 2013

Location of Sighting: Brooks Mountain Range,

A l a s k a , U S A S o u r c e : h t t p : / /

www.coasttocoastam.com/pages/ufo-squadron-

in-alaska

Date of Sighting: December 13, 2013

Location of Sighting: Tijuana, Mexico

Date of Sighting: December 15, 2013

Location of Sighting: Volcano Popocatepetl,

Mexico

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By Animals Australia

Helping animals doesn't have to be complicated,

time-consuming, or even expensive. It's about

being informed and making simple, every-day

choices that can free animals from suffering and

abuse. The first step is knowing which choices to

make.

 AT THE SUPERMARKET

The humble act of grocery shopping provides

the single greatest opportunity to vote against

animal cruelty. Every time you shop, there are

important decisions to make:

Factory farms still exist because unwitting

shoppers purchase their products. If you disagree

with confining intelligent pigs in crates so small

they can't turn around; or performing surgical

procedures on animals without pain relief, then

the choice is simple: join the growing number of

Australians who refuse to buy factory-farmed

products.If you haven't already, find the meat-free

section of the supermarket and try out some of

the new products that are reaching   the Australian

market such as mock mince, pig-free 'bacon' and

 veggie roasts. Opting for cruelty-free alternatives is

the single best way to ensure that farm animals —

who have been excluded from critical animal

cruelty laws — are protected from abuse.

Think twice about eggs. It's becoming

common knowledge that most egg-laying hens are

forced to spend their short lives crammed inside

battery cages where they cannot even stretch their

wings. Avoiding cage eggs is crucial, but there's

more to this story: laying hens in  all  production

systems are killed when their egg productionwanes — years before their natural life expectancy

 — resulting in millions of chicks being hatched

each year to replace them. Only female chicks are

required for egg production, which means millions

of unwanted male chicks are  gassed or ground up

alive each year as 'waste products' of the egg

industry. This is why many animal lovers are

choosing to purchase  egg alternatives  that are

available at supermarkets.

Consider your milk. Avid dairy drinkers may

find it difficult to imagine that the benign milk

carton is harbouring a dark secret. But the truth is,

cows don't automatically produce milk. Like all

mammals, cows only lactate after giving birth. To

sustain high milk flow dairy cows are impregnated

each year. The resultant newborn calves are taken

from their grieving mothers and the cows’ milk

harvested for  human consumption. Close to 1

million unwanted dairy calves are slaughtered

each year at around 5 days of age. Given the

ethics of this practice it’s not surprising that soy

milks, oat milks, rice milks and other dairy

alternatives are gaining popularity among caring

consumers.

Send a feedback email urging your localsupermarket to end their support of factory-

farmed meat and eggs in favour of more humane

alternatives.

Spare a thought for lab animals. Millions of

animals suffer immensely in needless product

testing experiments. Look for household cleaning

products and cosmetics that are not tested on

animals.

For more visit: animalsaustralia.org.

 ANIMALLIFECRUELTY FREE LIVING

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By Sustainable Living Australia

Sustainable living is an amalgam of lifestyle choices

made with the intention of adapting world sustainability

models to the scale of a household or family. Many

individuals who practice sustainable living have formed

communities and neighbourhoods of like-minded individuals

who support each other in their efforts. The goal of

sustainable living is to reduce the vast carbon footprint left

behind through modern life. While some see sustainable

living as a step backward technologically, the fact is that many

who practice this lifestyle do so through the use of some ofthe most advanced technology available.

Defining Sustainable Living 

The basic philosophy of sustainable living is to lead a

lifestyle in tune with the symbiotic nature of life and the

Earth. Those who practice sustainable living ultimately seek

to use the natural principles of ecology to live in the

environment without taking anything from it that can’t be

replaced. Adapting the more general tenets of sustainability

to personal lifestyle choices is seen as a small but important

step in developing a larger society that can live in harmony

with the Earth so that the human race and all life can

continue to survive together into the indefinite future.Factors of Sustainable Living 

Three basic, yet critical, factors exist and are necessary

for sustainability to work: social, economic, and

environmental. Of these three factors, environmental is the

most encompassing. Social and economic sustainability rely

on environmental stability. Social sustainability relies only on

the environment, while economic sustainability relies on both

social and environmental stability.

These factors can also be represented by a Venn diagram

whereby each meets with each other and all three meet in the

centre. When social and environmental factors come

together, bearability is achieved. When economic andenvironmental factors come together, viability is achieved.

When social and economic factors come together, equitability

is achieved. Only when all three factors come together is true

sustainability achieved.

History of Sustainable Living 

Sustainability has been a part of human knowledge since

the first days of agriculture, thousands of years ago, when it

was noticed that crops depleted the soil. As cities grew,

examples of the depletion of natural resources presented

themselves, and practices of sustainability grew. Sustainable

living as a personal lifestyle choice is thought to have

originated in the 19th century.

In the early 1800’s, as the industrial revolution began inBritain, the Luddites posited that some forms of technology

were inherently bad because of the drawbacks witnessed.

In 1854, Henry David Thoreau, American naturalist

and author of Walden, became the first person to write

directly about sustainable living.

One hundred years later, the modern sustainable living

movement was spearheaded by Scott and Helen Nearing,

who published the persuasive book entitled Living the Good

Life.

Another book, The Limits to Growth, written in 1972 by

Donella Meadows, pushed the need for sustainable living and

reached more people than any other work before it. The

book was translated into 28 languages and sold several

million copies worldwide.

Early in the 21st century, several government committees

and United Nations conferences focused on promoting

sustainable living through practical lifestyle choices.

Lifestyle Categories for Sustainable Living 

Because sustainable living is about making lifestyle

choices in the modern world, it is more easily accomplished

by breaking down the requirements of living and living in

society into six separate categories. These categories

represent all of the areas in which sustainable living lifestyle

choices must be made. The lifestyle categories for sustainable

living include the following: shelter, power, food,transportation, water, and waste.

SUSTAINABLE LIVING:  AN INTRODUCTION TO BEING

SELF SUFFICIENT AND LIVING SUSTAINABLY

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Emergency Management

Long-Term Food Supply With a shelf life of up to 25 years, Wise Company’s ready-made foods

are high-quality and easy to use if a disaster strikes.

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