A Summary of the Environmental Actions Taken by the Liberals Since Winning The 2013 Election. Complete with Humorous GIFS.

When the Labor Party came into government during 2007 the…

Clean Energy Finance Corporation and Climate Change Commission were established

Kyoto Protocol was commissioned

They committed to a 20% renewable energy target to be achieved by 2020

and after a LONG debate over the price on carbon they persisted and got it passed in the senate

I’ll admit it wasn’t all good

There was that poorly planned Home Insulation Program.

But the Liberals have been in 6 months and

The Renewable Energy Authority, Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Climate Commission have all been either dismantled or had severe funding cuts.

I campaigned with the Australia Youth Climate Coalition on their Repower Australia campaign to get the Clean Energy Finance Corporations $10b renewable energy investment fund passed through parliament. I rallied and had conversations with 100’s of people and then they’ve just scrapped it all.

Yeah, so ….Thanks Tony

They’ve reduced the renewable energy target from 20% by 2020 to a mere 5%

Something else activists around the country, including myself worked hard to achieve.

They’re drafting plans to abolish the Price On Carbon

and they say they’ll be ‘reviewing’ the laws around marine park no-take zones… but we all know what that means

Meanwhile we have a handful of wealthy Australians weakening our unions and buying out media corporations

Gina Rhinehart is sitting back earning $600 a second apparently…

She’s somehow made Andrew Bolt her pet monkey

Clive Palmer is meant to be earning a measly $1.1b a year …probably saving for his dinosaur theme park which is super important – much more important than having an equitable society, apparently.

Tony is sitting on the front bench like

This is me whenever I see our Prime Minister in the public eye

Aren’t we meant to be proud of our politicians? I’m embarrassed…

This is the truth, this is what we are facing with right now

Our current leader Tony Abbott was quoted in 2010 saying

“The climate change argument is absolute crap, however the politics are tough for us because 80 per cent of people believe climate change is a real and present danger.”

Pretty much saying that they need to introduce policies targeted at climate change to win votes, not because he believes climate change is the real and present threat that it is.

Well Tony I’ll post some references to the scientific concensus supporting climate change at the end of this blog because I can’t stand having a Prime Minister who cannot understand straightforward scientific evidence.

I don’t blame you though because you also scrapped the science minister.

 I hope the Liberals start talking sense soon because I really don’t see whose votes they’re aiming for.

W. R. L. Anderegg, “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 107 No. 27, 12107-12109 (21 June 2010); DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1003187107.

P. T. Doran & M. K. Zimmerman, “Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” Eos Transactions American Geophysical Union Vol. 90 Issue 3 (2009), 22; DOI: 10.1029/2009EO030002.

N. Oreskes, “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” Science Vol. 306 no. 5702, p. 1686 (3 December 2004); DOI: 10.1126/science.1103618

Day four: gift ideas we love

Plastic bag up-cycling 

Ok so before I go into this I just want to say this isn’t a tacky, falls apart as soon as it’s opened homemade gift. I have actually made these before and they do turn out really good (so well that for a while last year I became a little obsessed with plastic bag craft).

Online you can find thousands of plastic bag recycling tutorials, but these are three of my favourites which are not overly time consuming or hard to do.

Yes, even this gorgeous christmas wreath is made out of recycled plastic bags (I made about five of these last year and they are fantastic)

• Recycled Plastic bag Totes – How cute are these! to make them all you will need will be scissors, plastic bags (you can finally start getting rid of that huge collection in the cupboard. Yay!), some baking paper, sewing machine, an iron and some felt + double sided tape for the labels on the front. What you will be doing is fusing the plastic bags together which then creates this really durable material so then you can reuse them over and over again whilst minimising your ecological footprint and maximising the space on your now less cluttered plastic bag shelf 🙂

• An eco-friendly skipping rope  – great for kids + cheap and easy for you. This looks really cool if you have a mixed collection of bags with different colours. Literally all you have to do to make this is braid the bags together and duct tape the ends to make handles.

• Fused plastic bag placemat  – Again this one is done by fusing layered plastic bags together, you can do them as block colours or get a bit creative by weaving or making little cutouts. I’m thinking of making this as a housewarming gift for some friends later on this year

So this is the end of my plastic fantastic post. If you want more ideas as usual have a search on the old internet for some plastic bag inspired crafts. Some people even turn their plastic bags into yarn and then crochet or knit with it (I’m not that talented!), Heres a list of ideas to get you started.

Ways we have been filling our free time now that we’re not shopping

Since we are not buying new thinga anymore we have a lot more time on our hands. We thought it was about time to share some of our latest projects and hobbies we have developed recently.

Big Pop has been cooking up a storm! She has made some delicious meals for her and little pop to freeze and have for dinner 🙂
She has made Chow Mien, yummy slow cooked stews, soups and even cheesecake! All made with lovely local ingredients. Hopefully when our veggie garden is ready to be harvested we can include some of our own produce in the food!

She also made a football themed quilt out of old family scarves we have collected over the years. This was given to some of the family’s most devoted footy supporters for cold nights watching the Saints play… (Hopefully it will also give them some much needed luck for the rest of the season!)

Little Pop has been fairly busy with exams but has found time to start finishing off some old crafting projects she started such as cross stitch, quilts, scarves… (This list could go on forever!)

Little pop also found an old wooden pallet on hard rubbish and salvaged it for what is so far an unknown project. We’re thinking it would make a nice lettuce planter… Maybe something like this…

We have both been reading vigorously (which isn’t something new) but are starting to run out of matierial so are beginning to wonder whether it is better to use the kindle to download ebooks or just buy secondhand hard copies of the books we want.

There are many recycling related Facebook pages we have both been following such as:

Hard Rubbish Melbourne – A group for those who aren’t afraid of a good scavenge, it has a list in the files
Section outlining all the hard rubbish collection dates for each council area.

Recycle in Eastern Suburbs Melbourne – a more localised version of the above group.

Frugally Sustainable has many great ideas for making everyday products and saving money!

And

Upcycled Vintage which is a great blog written by a woman in Adelaide who does up old furniture, she even does custom orders if you’re really interested!

Also – not a Facebook group but equally wonderful is a building demolition team who claim to salvage 98% of the buildings they pull down and then sell them to the public! http://pacedemolitions.com.au/ and http://www.salvagebazaar.com.au/ is a similar online marketplace for surplus and secondhand building matierials 🙂

We’ve also had some success with our vegetable garden we planted not too long ago, but I will save that story for another time 🙂

Natural Floor Cleaning

When we we first bought Puppy Pop about twelve months ago and were toilet training him, understandably we had a few mishaps along the way. I have finally decided to deal with the stains left over from then now that he is properly toilet trained and we don’t need to worry so much.
So I thought I would share a neat Eco-friendly way of getting rid of tough baked in floor stains.

Love Little & Big Pop xx