Carbon trading: who is supporting?

As the government tries to pass its controversial carbon trading legislation, the latest polling indicates widespread public support for it. The latest Nielsen poll finds 65 per cent support the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), while 25 per cent are opposed. Of the 25% opposition, half (that is, 12.5% of the total) are opposed because they don’t believe in climate change, or think the economy is more important. Just over 8% of the total thought Australia should wait for other countries. Less than 5% of the total respondents opposed the bill because it did not go far enough.

However, this poll may not provide the full picture. An Essential Research poll released on June 22 asked respondents to choose sides on the division in the environment movement over the CPRS. The question asked, “groups such as the Australian Conservation Foundation, WWF and the Climate Institute are supporting the Government’s plan for an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), while other groups like Greenpeace, The Wilderness Society and Friends of the Earth want the Government to adopt a more ambitious, tougher scheme. Which would you support?” While 47% were undecided, 29% supported “a tougher scheme”, as against 24% support for the government.

On the positive side, the 65% supporting the CPRS are probably doing so because they do want some action on climate change, and comparing the two polls indicates that the 65% for the CPRS in the Nielsen poll may not be unquestioning support.

The Greens remain adamantly opposed to the CPRS. At the suggestion that much of the public may support the CPRS because they think it “better than nothing”, Greens Senator Christine Milne told Green Left that “It’s a great irony for a Government elected on the promise of climate action that the best they themselves can say about their policy is that it’s better than nothing. But it’s an even bigger irony that it’s not true – the CPRS is worse than useless. It’s a step backwards, holding back the kind of action we need in order to deliver a safe climate to the next generation.

“We’re confident that a large number of people support our view that the CPRS is too flawed to pass, and we will keep campaigning and presenting our zero emissions safe climate vision at the same time as working to convince the Government to make their legislation environmentally effective and economically efficient.”

Liberals: to support or not to support?
Meanwhile, the June 28 Age reports the Liberal party is commissioning a “detailed study of the sectoral and regional impacts” of the CPRS along with independent MP Nick Xenophon. Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull has suggested that his party will move amendments to the CPRS to attempt to support it. However, it remains to be seen whether any more amendments will be acceptable to Labor.

Although the CPRS may pass in the lower house, the Senate is still unlikely. The bill will need support from the Liberals, or failing that from the Greens, Xenophon and Family First Senator Fielding to pass it in the Senate. Fielding has recently declared himself a climate denier, so his support for a bill on climate action is highly unlikely.

Who will pay for the CPRS?
Richard Denniss from The Australia Institute told ABC TV’s July 1 Lateline that rising energy prices due to the CPRS will add billions of dollars to the electricity bills of state-run schools, hospitals and other bodies. "It's inconceivable that anyone could think that the big polluters are more deserving of assistance and compensation than the state governments that provide essential services like health and education," he said.

Backing this up, Milne told Green Left Weekly that “The sensible approach would be to invest revenue from carbon pricing in building the zero emissions infrastructure we’ll need – renewable energy, energy efficiency, smart grids, public transport. It is simple common sense, backed up by economists, that sending the billions of dollars straight back into the pockets of polluters will undermine the scheme.”

Rudd sets autopilot for armageddon
The Waxman-Markey carbon trading bill that has passed the lower house in the US recently has been held up for comparison with the Australian CPRS. Greens Senator Bob Brown told Lateline the US bill was “not big enough to meet the global emergency of climate change… the scientists tell us we must be aiming at 25 minimum to 40 per cent reduction. However, it is a 17 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 over 2000 levels. Our Government's looking at 5 per cent.”

Meanwhile, seven European climate scientists including five from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research have published a paper in Nature entitled Halfway to Copenhagen, no way to 2 °C. The report states that “To constrain global warming to within 2 °C, developed countries would need to cut their emissions to 25–40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and to 50–80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050, according to the best available scientific analyses”.

A target of 25% reductions (leaving out the upper range of 40%) was cited in the Garnaut report as being necessary for stabilising atmospheric CO2 at 450 parts per million (ppm). But prior analysis (published in the UK Stern Report) shows that 450ppm is likely to have up to 78% chance of exceeding 2 degrees global temperature rise. And as David Spratt writes at the Climate Code Red blog, “2˚C is far, far too high, given the now clear evidence that at less than 1˚C of warming we are already on the precipice of climate catastrophe, from the Arctic to the Great Barrier Reef, from the Himalayas to Siberia”.

(This is the unedited original of the article published in Green Left Weekly, July 4 2009 under the title "Poll supports flawed carbon trading")
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Melbourne’s green belt: sacrificed to Real Estate?

Michael Buxton, former senior planning advisor to the government, said on June 9 in the Age “we have Rafferty's rules led by the development community and the Government just rolling over… we are going to end up with two cities - we are going to end up with a whole lot of houses far from services and employment in the outer suburbs and more and more people being shoved into them."


Victorian state government plans release on June 17 to expand Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary for new housing developments, overturning previous commitments made as part of its Melbourne 2030 strategy for containing urban growth.

The June announcement has been criticised widely in the media. Michael Buxton, former senior planning advisor to the government, said on June 9 in the Age “we have Rafferty's rules led by the development community and the Government just rolling over… we are going to end up with two cities - we are going to end up with a whole lot of houses far from services and employment in the outer suburbs and more and more people being shoved into them."

Areas under consideration for urban expansion are in Melbourne's outer west, north and far south-east. These areas include endangered native grasslands, one of the state’s most endangered ecosystems that are home to a total of 68 threatened animals and 26 threatened plants. While new grassland reserves have also been announced, environment groups are skeptical about their effectiveness.

Matt Ruchel of the Victorian National Parks Association welcomed the new reserves in a June 17 press statement but added that this “does not excuse the potential loss of more than 6,000 hectares of grasslands that could be destroyed by new urban developments,”

“Within the proposed expanded urban growth area there are some of the best examples of high quality grasslands and these areas need to be retained as part of the urban parks network within growth areas, not automatically cleared to make way for more housing.”

Government spokesman Matthew Hillard said in the June 9 Age "In these difficult economic times, the Brumby Labor Government makes no apologies in doing what the community expects of it, which is securing and protecting jobs."

State government has also changed planning laws, removing appeal rights against developments by schools or those including social housing. ‘Development Assessment Committees’ are to be set up for decisions on some planning matters, a move welcomed by the real estate advocacy group Property Council of Australia.

Residents’ groups held a rally against these changes on June 10. An article on the Property Council website by Jennifer Cunich called protesters “NIMBYs” and said that critics of the changes “advocate the BANANA approach – building absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone”.

Green Wedges Coalition state on their website that government has “dumped the developer levy it announced to provide for infrastructure in 2005 to avoid development delays and has imposed a new levy on land sales in the new urban growth areas. We doubt this will ever be collected either.”

(This is the unedited version of my article published in Green Left Weekly no. 799)
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A biopsy of our movement

The June 13 Climate Emergency rally in Melbourne is a good opportunity for a biopsy of the local climate movement. Almost a year after the first Climate Emergency rally we can take stock of how much real progress has been made.

A positive protest
The spirited rally of maybe as many as 4000 showed the Melbourne climate movement at its best. A panel of sharp and political speakers played to a receptive and militant crowd. The march down Swanston St and the sit-in outside the Town Hall increased the public impact of the rally and the news coverage of and around the rally nationally was reasonable. The diversity of active groups was highlighted in the colourful array of banners, placards, puppets and so forth that festooned the march through the city streets.

Certainly, this rally was a positive and inspiring event for many. On the other hand, I spoke to at least two activists in the crowd who declared they were quite disappointed in the turnout. Should we be happy with 4000? Or should we be wondering what went wrong given that it was less than the May 17 climate Human Sign at St Kilda? That it was not discernibly bigger than last year’s climate emergency rally?

Just counting the numbers could miss the point. The political message, the public reception, and the way the rally was put together all say a lot too.

The first thing which is very positive is the active preparation for the rally by groups that brought banners, puppets and of course the bicycle band. It helped to turn a walk-down-the-street march into a veritable carnival of politics – as such demonstrations ought to be.

Photo from Climate Action Centre


Secondly, in the lead up to the rally we distributed (an estimate) about 40-50 000 leaflets (out of the 60 000 or so we had printed). These disappeared quite easily and assuming they were actually distributed by the people who took piles, this is a pretty good effort for activists on the ground.

There were four banner drops over freeways, organised by people in Yarra Valley CAG, Moreland CAG, Families Facing Climate Change in Ashburton and WeCAN in the west. This effort may not have had a huge impact on commuters (some banners were taken down very quickly at the request of CityLink officers) but it shows a certain growth in suburban activism (relative to last year’s rally, the only real point of comparison I can think of).

The rally was incredibly visible, occupying the main street for an hour or so. One rally participant noted on Facebook that he thought as he sat outside Town Hall, "Gee, I haven't done a sit-in for years! Well, one where I actually end up getting dragged away!" We didn’t get dragged away this time, but the response from the crowd to the prospects of organising “civil disobedience” actions was positive, boding well for mass protests at Hazelwood later this year.

Weak points
The negatives are mainly related to the degree of participation in organising the event.

Firstly, the number of people at organising meetings was very small. This may make it easy to decide things bureaucratically, but that is not a strength! It was hard to make difficult decisions early on about the slogans and themes for the day because the people in the room only formally represented Friends of the Earth, Socialist Alliance and Solidarity – no-one from TWS, EV, CEN (well I sort of was from CEN); only a few local CAGs sent reps (and not all to the same meeting, necessarily!). We decided that we had to just go with what we thought the climate movement here would support, and seemed to get it right (we didn’t get complaints, anyway!), but could have easily made a wrong call that wasn’t broadly supported.

Secondly, the amount of events on may have detracted from the rally. The simultaneous organising for the Anglesea coal campaign may have taken out a few activists who could have otherwise made a difference organising the rally. The human sign at St Kilda Beach was in and of itself a great event, but LIVE and Bayside used up all their energy in organising that so we lost two groups from the rally organising (who were both key supporters in the 2008 rally). Perhaps the human sign had a greater impact, but it was not an event the whole movement had decided to prioritise at the Climate Action Summit.

Our ability to disseminate information was weak, apart from the apparent ease at distributing leaflets. We had 8000 posters printed (plus TWS did a print run of their own design with a live tree picture, as opposed to the drought-killed tree on the other posters). After doing a paste-up in the West with a friend, I ruefully remarked that we got too many posters printed. He corrected me: we just don’t have enough activists to put them up!

Trying to mass distribute the last 10-20 000 leaflets hit a similar wall. A good mobilisation of 20 people in the city in the morning could have distributed a large bundle, but we could not even mobilise the whole organising committee (who were busy and overstretched, since there were so few of us) and only got three people to the morning we had set for doing it.

Forests, desalination, bay dredging…
It was great that The Wilderness Society came on board this rally fairly seriously. Their “niche” – the forest issue – is objectively crucial to combating climate change but more than that they represent an important group of environmental activists and supporters. (It was especially pleasing to have them on board after last year they refused to have anything to do with the Climate Emergency rally!).

The Watershed anti-desalination campaign group were present, although since the rally had the national demands around climate policy and not a specific anti-desal demand, it was probably to be expected that they didn’t (as far as I could tell) bring the big crowd from Wonthaggi that they did for last year’s rally. Despite sponsoring the rally, Blue Wedges as a visible campaign seem to be pretty beaten down after not being able to stop the dredging going ahead, and I certainly met some activists but not on the scale of 2008.

To make other comparisons with the 2008 Climate Emergency Rally: Having a “hardcore political” rally was more difficult then. Many climate activists, I felt, were more comfortable with the “Climate Emergency” human sign than with the political demands on the poster (and even others were still quite skeptical about using such an extreme term as “emergency”). Remember this was before the 5% CPRS bombshell was dropped, and before the Climate Summit. Rudd still had a lot of cred; it was the projects like new freeways, coal power stations and desalination plants that provided the most obvious example of the government’s anti-ecological course, hence their prominence in the 2008 rally’s demands. I think this shows clearly that the demands of the Climate Summit have caught on with the main support base of the movement.

Now recruiting to the activist core!
It would be good to keep drawing campaigns such as those around freeways and desalination into the climate movement, and in turn drawing the climate movement into supporting their events. While climate activists and their supporters are mostly wised up about the CPRS and the Rudd government’s agenda, the broader community remains less informed. The expansion of coal mining, freeways, and Garrett’s approval of the pulp mill and desalination plants (among others) shows easily understood examples of what the government’s agenda is.

Our movement has set no firm plans beyond the Copenhagen conference and inevitable protests at that time. Yet it is almost unthinkable that we will be satisfied with the outcome of that conference. And 2010 is election year. Will the climate movement endorse, or run candidates? We need to consider these questions, but first we need to use the Hazelwood protests, the 350.org protests, and the Copenhagen protests to grow ourselves a bigger activist core. When we meet at the 2010 Climate Action Summit we must be bigger.

These three big actions/convergences in the second half of 2009 need to be organised openly in a way that we can invite new people to join in. New (and new-ish) activists need to hear (and participate in) debate about how to formulate demands for the movement, how to organise the tin tacks of a demonstration or blockade, how to get posters and leaflets and media releases out there, and so on. We need more activists who are confident to take responsibility for a group or action and run with it.

As a rule of thumb, I would say – the larger the organising meetings the better. Of course we want participants to be grounded in what is going on. A fair representation of all the existing groups is the first element to put in place. But it is entirely possible to facilitate organising meetings with large numbers of people and still get stuff done. It is possible to have new activists participate and learn.

We don’t have an army of full-time administrators and campaigners to do all the work, so it has to be divided up between all of us. Decision making has to be not just transparent and accountable but participatory. People who feel they own decisions will feel responsibility for implementing them.

What next?
Let’s refocus our various campaign groups and local CAGs. Let’s support the anti-freeway campaign and the anti-desalination campaign and the forest campaigns. Let’s get out to the ordinary people on the street with leaflets, film screenings, media stunts, letters to the editor. And make sure you send a representative to the meetings to plan the Hazelwood protest.

We have a broad concern about climate change in the community. Wong and Rudd are working to draw that concern into support for the CPRS. We have to pull every lever to shift public opinion against them.
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Natural Sequence Farming deserves widespread testing!

"Natural Sequence Farming contains three valuable elements for combating climate change. All three promise to help farm productivity and longevity as well... it would be very useful for a government body to take over some whole catchments and implement a systematic test of Andrews’ theories over the whole river system: for example, the Hunter River (following the closure of the coal mines there!), or a tributary of the Murray or Darling river. With appropriate compensation and consultation with the farmers involved, and assuming the results are positive, this could lead to the complete renewal of Australia’s inland ecosystems."

Back From The Brink: How Australia’s Landscape Can Be Saved
Peter Andrews
ABC Books 2006

Peter Andrews’ widely acclaimed book Back From The Brink rests on his accomplishments in restoring and sustaining farm landscapes on his own properties, as seen on ABC TV’s Australian Story and Catalyst . Despite many controversies about aspects of his Natural Sequence Farming technique (especially the use of species considered noxious weeds), his analysis of the Australian landscape, and his remedies for the unquestionably disastrous European settler farming practices are gaining widespread interest. Andrews has recently released a follow-up book, Beyond the Brink (which I hope to review in due course).

By using his own trial-and error experience, combined with wisdom learned from many other sources including scientists, farmers, and the accounts of the land from early European explorers of the continent, Andrews has developed techniques to mimic the way he believes the landscape held water and remained fertile prior to human settlement by the aboriginal peoples.

Because Australia is so flat and rainfall so intermittent, Andrews reasons, for the land to support the teeming wildlife that early explorers reported, there must have been a special way that water flowed through the land. After 150 years of sheep and cattle farming, land clearing and bad management, the land is dried out, facing massive salinity breakouts, and crops are failing.

Let’s listen to how Andrews explains his book’s purpose:
“Since the Australian landscape functioned perfectly well on its own for millions of years, we ought to be able to solve the landscape’s current problems by somehow reinstating whatever it was that enabled the landscape to function so efficiently then.”
He describes the ancient landscape’s patterns:
“In the broader floodplains, water entered the ground through sandy, gravelly ‘recharge areas’ and was stored in the layer of sand and clay that underlies much of the continent. In the floodplains themselves, water travelled in creeks and rivers that… were elevated above the surrounding sediment.”
(He later explains that rivers had banks holding them higher than the surrounding land, banks which were built by sediment carried in the river.)
“A true floodplain was what its name suggests: a plain that was periodically flooded. Rivers and creeks did flow across the floodplains, but they weren’t rivers and creeks as we know them. They hadn’t gouged out a channel. They flowed over the surface of the plain, not through a channel, which meant that, whenever there was enough water, they’d spread across the plains on both sides, which, as we have seen, were lower than they were, and the water would soak into the ground.”

Before European settlers came, river systems looked more like long strings of wetlands and only slow-flowing water channels. Reed beds, clay banks and diversion routes meant that the water flowed right across the surface of the landscape, saturating the soil rather than flowing over the surface. Now days our rivers resemble deep drains, with the water down the bottom of steep banks, running straight to the sea. Because the water in the rivers is so low, the underground water table falls. Where irrigation water is pumped onto areas, it pushes down on the salty water lower in the water table, which is then squeezed sideways through the clay to emerge somewhere downhill, damaging soil and crops. Andrews’ techniques aim to keep a layer of fresh water on top of the salty ground water across the landscape.

The book explains that this view of the cause of salinity is different to traditional views, which suggest that salty water rises of its own accord, for example, or where there are no trees to use underground water and keep the water table down.

Natural Sequence Farming is not just a matter of water flows. To hold the water in the soil, and pull it up so that it doesn’t fall down deeper (squeezing the lower saline water sideways and to the surface downhill), it is vital to keep up the vegetation. Andrews also recommends the heavy use of mulching. It is partly here that he recommends the retention of weeds (even nodding thistle, and serrated tussock). He says they thrive on infertile ground; when they have been slashed down and mulched for a while, the ground will regain fertility and grasses will take over again. So for thistles, “The fact that thistles are growing in a paddock shows that the thistles need to be growing there. In other words, it shows that the soil lacks fertility and needs to be regenerated. Thistles do the job perfectly. What’s needed when soil lacks fertility is an aggressive plant that, one, grows rapidly and adds organic bulk to the soil and, two, deters animals from grazing around it, thus enabling the surrounding soil and vegetation to recover. Thistles do both superbly.” While many might try to avoid introduced weeds like thistle, this technique has the advantage of working with the existing environment and not against it. Just as controversially, Andrews suggests willows can be planted as a fast-growing river bank stabiliser.

These uses of introduced weeds are one of the most controversial aspects of Andrews’ recommendations. But he swears by them, so it may be worth abandoning our preconceptions to try out his techniques on a broader scale.

Andrews claims that the destruction of Australia’s natural ecological balance began seriously with the advent of aboriginal "firestick farming" some 50,000 or more years ago. This also appears controversial. A debate about whether aborigines practiced firestick farming at all in areas like Victoria's mountain forests is currently being undertaken among fire experts (1). While there is a chapter called “Australia’s deserts are all man-made” the book does point out that Australia’s dry situation is in part caused by its ancient separation from Antarctica. When these continents were joined as part of the ancient continent Gondwana, rivers would have flowed across Australia from the Antarctic mountains. Since separating from Antarctica (and moving north into hotter latitudes), ecosystems in Australia have evolved to survive with low rainfall.

Andrews contends that “there were once arid rainforests in Central Australia that survived on as little as 125 millimetres of rain (around 5 inches) a year. The aborigines destroyed them with fire, and where these rainforests once stood there is nothing now but desert… it’s a sobering fact that there were no deserts in Australia before the Aborigines arrived”. As the book is largely unreferenced, this reviewer finds such statements hard to judge: are they simply Andrews’ own educated guess, or a well established view of natural history? A quick web search shows some support for Andrews’ thesis (2).

Andrews also claims his methods will work virtually anywhere in Australia, whether on the coastal plain, the high country, or the inland plains. It’s not clear how far this extends into the wet north, the desert areas and so on, and what modifications of his theory may need to be observed with each area, but that is a minor problem.

Andrews also assumes that farmers will continue to farm great numbers of sheep and cattle. While this currently seems self-evident and desirable to most farmers, it seems unlikely that in the face of climate change our ruminant (sheep and cattle) flocks can be maintained at anything more than a fraction of their current size: they release huge amounts of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. If farmers abandon ruminants – or all hard-hooved animals – on a wide scale this in itself could help with restoration efforts, as their hooves damage the soil structure and water courses considerably.

Despite the controversies I have mentioned, Peter Andrews’ Natural Sequence Farming contains three valuable elements for combating climate change. All three promise to help farm productivity and longevity as well. Firstly, the use of energy intensive, fossil-fuel-derived fertilisers and pesticides can be largely phased out if his system works (also getting rid of a huge cost for farmers). Secondly, the use of mulching instead of ploughing and fertilising locks a lot of carbon into the soil, whereas ploughing and clearing enables it to return to the atmosphere much faster. Thirdly, restoring the water flows of natural ecosystems allows a wide variety of species to return to the landscape – plants, animals, birds and insects. This protects biodiversity, which Andrews sees as an essential element for his system, and certainly crucial for natural systems to survive changing climate.

There is urgency in the book. Andrews thinks that Australia is probably going to have another wet period soon (on a 50 to 100 year cycle of drought and wet). As good as this may sound in the middle of the current drought, our poor water flows mean that big new rainfalls might push even more salt to the surface, destroying huge areas of farm land.

While debate about the use of noxious weeds and the future of cattle and sheep farming will continue, the other aspects of Natural Sequence Farming deserve to be used and tested over wide areas of Australia’s drought-stricken inland. At this stage, in many drought and salinity stricken catchments there is not much to be lost and a lot to be gained.

While many farmers will baulk at such radical changes to their practices, given the financial risk involved, it would be very useful for a government body to take over some whole catchments and implement a systematic test of Andrews’ theories over the whole river system: for example, the Hunter River (following the closure of the coal mines there!), or a tributary of the Murray or Darling river. With appropriate compensation and consultation with the farmers involved, and assuming the results are positive, this could lead to the complete renewal of Australia’s inland ecosystems.

In the meantime, the efforts of community groups can be seen online at the Natural Sequence Association website and Peter Andrews’ ongoing activity at his website.

Footnotes
1. See here and here for a taste of the debate on fire management (including aboriginal practices) at James Woodford's Real Dirt blog.
2. See here for the abstract of one paper describing environmental pressures leading to desertification of Australia’s interior. For an argument that human activity may have impacted, see here. Read the whole article

Environment Commissioner speaks out!

"governments have a strategy of creating channels of grants to tie up activists time in making submissions, and then channel their activity through the safe activities sanctioned by government grants."


I attended a public forum organised by the Western Region Environment Centre (WREC) last night in Werribee. The speaker was Ian McPhail, who is just retiring (age 70) from his position as Commissioner for Sustainability in Victoria. His team has just released (in December) a State of the Environment report, which is brought out every five years (and available on their website). I haven't read the report yet but I was impressed by how forthright he was about political issues.

The presentation he gave emphasised that on many indicators, the Victorian economy has improved it's efficiency yet the overall impact has still gone up. This is not a matter of Jevons' paradox; it's the fact that the economy keeps growing (well, their figures don't take into account recent months!). Victorian Gross State Product (GSP) is going up faster than population, as is waste output. Greenhouse gas emissions and energy use are both increasing overall, despite a decrease per unit of economic output. Water efficiency is up, and although use is flat this is probably due more to the drought and dire shortage than anybody's good intentions.

McPhail denounced the climate-change-denial lobby. He pointed out that when 2500 scientists can come together to agree on a joint statement, it is a rare day indeed, and this is just what has happened on climate change. He ridiculed the quest for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) as " techno-optimism". He said it would only be of any use if it were available, in full scale, now. Of course, it is still at least a decade away according to the more optimistic researchers.

McPhail talked about the seriously degraded state of much of the natural environment in Victoria. 200 years of European colonisation have totally changed the landscape, to the extent that many ecosystems - rivers the worst - are seriously degraded and in urgent need of help. Even many parks are degraded due to weed invasions, past clearing and so on. He compared the landscape to the farmed hedgerows of England: although they may be pretty, they are artificial and as an ecosystem only some 800 years or so old. Nevertheless, our natural environment must be protected for the "ecosystem services" it provides.

The problem with current ecological management systems, McPhail explained, is that although maintaining ecosystems is cheaper than repairing them, it is cheaper still to "liquidate" them as he put it. He suggested it would be good if landowners could derive the same income from maintaining ecosystems as they do from farming.

The Commissioner's office has a degree of independence from state government, and the forthright comments he made are a breath of fresh air from a government official. Perhaps his imminent retirement has also loosened his tongue, but in any case the presentation was well received by the meeting.

Discussion focused, among other things, on the issue of population. Victoria's population is growing, and several questions asked whether this was sustainable or wise. McPhail said that it's better not to get into population debate, because among other things it gives comfort to anti-immigration ratbags. He also said it was entirely conceivable that Melbourne could fit another million residents sustainably. He suggested that it is a different question whether the world could sustain the projected extra billions this century. (I commented in discussion that the only way to reduce population quickly is genocide - but we can reduce our carbon footprint very quickly).

The second speaker was Michael Hill from the Victorian Local Government Sustainability Advisory Body. Like the WREC organisers, Hill was keen that the State of the Environment report be kept in the public eye to have maximum effect on the government, who are otherwise likely to ignore it as much as they can.

A lot of local government activity is around fitting houses with sustainable energy appliances (solar panels and so on). Greens state MP Colleen Hartland pointed out that while she has retrofitted many such items on her house, there are many people who cannot afford the expense, and there is a real need to address this inequity. The Western Alliance for Greenhouse Action (who co-sponsored the meeting) are working with local councils in Melbourne's west to set up bulk-buying schemes of such appliances to bring down the cost for households.

All this is quite positive on one level, but a comment from a man in the audience really nailed exactly what I think about these localised and household-focused schemes. He pointed out that governments have a strategy of creating channels of grants to tie up activists time in making submissions, and then channel their activity through the safe activities sanctioned by government grants.

He also pointed out that in the early 1980s, childcare centres were allocated based on applications by communities. Of course, middle class communities got most of them as they tended to be more literate and better resourced in making the applications. A better system would be a rational plan for where services are needed. Of course, this would not have activists spending valuable time competing with each other for those grants!

My last post outlined some of the radical anti-market politics that are developing at the radical end of the climate movement. These conclusions are drawn from the quite clear recognition that in an emergency, we can't afford corruption and half measures. I think much of the movement is coming from a background of submission-writing, grant-seeking, relatively apolitical local activism in Australia. I hope this part of the movement can find its way out of that to take strong political protest action. More than another eco-living centre or a cheap solar panel scheme, that is what we desperately need right now. Every activist has to pitch in!
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Climate activists against the free market?

The March 14 meeting of the Climate Emergency Network showed a real change in the political awareness of many climate movement activists.

A year ago, it was normal to consider various forms of economic “price signalling” measures like carbon taxes and carbon trading as legitimate and important methods of combating global warming. But at this fairly representative cross-section of movement activists, the ideas of nationalisation of industry, legislatively banning pollution, and mandated industrial changes were given a fair hearing and a positive reception.

Carbon trading has come under increased attack within the environment movement for logistical reasons as much as anything else. It’s so prone to rorts and loopholes and mismanagement. Just witness the European emissions trading schemes on sulphur dioxide (already discussed on this blog).

Carbon taxes have remained popular as a relatively less easily manipulated way of increasing the cost of greenhouse pollution. There have been many debates about the pros and cons of taxes versus emissions trading, and much of the movement's debate on the economic measures necessary has been restricted to these parameters. It has made it difficult to even envision an alternative that does not rely on market mechanisms, let alone for people to make the arguments for such radical measures.

One allegedly more equitable and effective scheme that has been promoted a lot (by some such as George Monbiot, and within Australia by Carbon Equity) is individual, tradeable carbon rationing. There are doubts about whether this really is equitable: it is based on the assumption that poor people use less energy on average, and will be able to sell their excess rations to rich people living in McMansions and driving Hummers; an assumption that can be challenged on many counts. It is also unclear as to why the rations must be tradeable; surely a period of emergency ought to entail shared sacrifice? Tony Benn, the UK left Labour politician, has fairly pointed out that the second world war rationing schemes were not tradeable; black market trading in rations was a crime.

Like all emissions trading schemes, the individual rationing version assumes that some will be less able or willing to transition to low-carbon use lifestyles, and can therefore pay for others to make the initial cuts for them. Unfortunately, we have such a limited time frame to stop global warming before it runs away under its own momentum, that the luxury of paying others to get the ball rolling first is one we can’t afford.

Another important consideration is that the chain of response between consumer behaviour at one end, and production of goods at the other is not nearly so clear and effective as the chain leading in the other direction from production, through distribution and advertising, to consumption. It is far more direct and effective to intervene into the production process than to send it algebraic market signals from people’s choices in the supermarket.

Fundamentally, putting the onus onto consumers also leaves out the non-consumer expenses in the economy: the Australian government is set to spend $35 billion on a new submarine fleet. That monumental expense is not one that consumers can choose, or not, at the supermarket checkout!

Judging by this CEN meeting on March 14, the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place for many activists. Solidarity activist Chris Breen moved that the CEN produce a document to explain why not just the currently proposed emissions trading scheme (the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, CPRS) is wrong, but why “price signal” measures are inadequate in any case to deal with the climate emergency; this proposal was not dissented from in the meeting (although there will no doubt be some disagreement on the document that CEN discusses).

Alternatives to market schemes were discussed. In discussion groups that we divided into to thrash out the ins and outs of the CPRS, I suggested that approaching carbon pollution like asbestos, a deadly hazard to be banned not traded in, would be a better way of looking at it. If the general population is to grasp the seriousness of the climate emergency, this kind of measure will be entirely feasible. Others preferred the comparison with child abuse (which global warming is, among other things): we don’t set a tolerable amount of child abuse, then allocate tradeable permits in it!

Another workshop raised the idea of nationalising industry as an alternative to trying to encourage it to change by market mechanisms. Equally, the folly of replacing our submarine fleet (at such cost, too) was met with as hostile a reception as at a meeting of pacifists.

The Australian grassroots climate movement has organised over 20 local protests at MPs offices this Friday, March 29 to call for the CPRS to be scrapped. Whether the battle is won on the CPRS, the groundwork is certainly being laid within the movement for the radical anti-market measures that will not only be essential for avoiding global warming, but will in and of themselves upset, if not destroy, the neo-liberal free market. This combined effect is of particular importance to the left, as much as to environmentalists. Read the whole article

Foul Salad and Eggplant dip

"Ful Medames" - the Egyptian national dish - is made with Ful (or Foul, as it is often spelt on the cans I buy), the Egyptian word for Fava Beans. The recipe here is similar in ingredients to Ful Medames but takes the form of a salad, taught to me by a friend who had it from a Sudanese Dinka friend of his.
Also the recipe for my favourite eggplant dip - a good accompaniment to the salad, with pita bread.


Foul Salad
Ingredients:
2 cans Ful/Fava beans or equivalent amount of cooked broad beans
1 red onion
250g feta cheese
1 capsicum (red, green yellow or a mix of all 3)
Bunch of parsley
Lemon juice
Cumin powder
Olive oil
Fresh chilli (optional)
Clove of garlic (optional)

Method:
Rinse beans and place in salad bowl. Dice onion, capsicum, feta cheese and add to salad bowl. Chop parsley finely and add it as well. Juice 2-4 lemons (depending on size) into a jar with lid. Add 1 tablespoon cumin powder, and finely chopped chilli and garlic (if using). Add 1 tablespoon olive oil. Shake jar to mix, pour on salad & mix in bowl. Salad is ready to eat!
Alter the quantities to suit your own taste, especially the dressing.

Eggplant tahini dip
(This recipe I adapted from one in the Penguin Book of Herbs and Spices by Rosemary Hemphill, 1959)
Ingredients:
1 large eggplant
1 quarter cup of tahini
2 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
1 dessert spoon chopped mint
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Salt
Olive oil

Preparing eggplant:
If you want a creamy hommus colour for your dip, first peel the eggplant. I usually don't bother.
Chop into small slivers or cubes. You may wish to salt the eggplant to soften it; this means it absorbs less oil (for a leaner dish, I suppose!). Sprinkle the chopped eggplant with salt, leave to stand for ten or twenty minutes, then drain the water that has been drawn out & rinse. Some people suggest you dry the chopped eggplant but I usually don't bother.
Fry the chopped eggplant in olive oil until soft and mushy. If you didn't salt it, you may have to use a fair bit of oil as the eggplant will soak it up. When quite soft, but not burned, place in a bowl. (I have also done this part by grilling or roasting the chopped eggplant, with or without oil - you can experiment if you want to!)

Mixing it up:
Mix all the remaining ingredients into the bowl with the eggplant. If you have a blender or "whizzy stick" you can use this to puree. Otherwise, a potato masher or at a pinch a fork may be used to mash the mix. It doesn't have to be really smooth; chunks of eggplant won't ruin the flavour.

Refrigerate or leave until cool and it's ready to eat.
Read the whole article

Victorian Transport Plan fails climate test

"The report gives the indication that it is about reducing the greenhouse emissions of the Victorian transport sector “from 32.5 to 20.2 megatonnes in 2036” (see the report, pages 118-9). Yet this deceptive sum is a reduction in the projected increase in emissions; the graph on page 119 shows that the transport sector’s emissions in 2006 were approximately 20 megatonnes."


The Victorian Transport Plan (VTP) should be condemned for committing to further unsustainable and dangerous greenhouse emissions. Everyone has to support the efforts of residents’ groups to oppose the various expansions of the freeway network and road freight across Melbourne.

The VTP claims that “Lowering our carbon footprint from transport” was one of the six priorities that have driven the decision making of the Public Transport and Roads and Ports ministers, Lynne Kosky and Tim Pallas.

Elsewhere the report claims that feedback from the public from July to September 2008, prior to the release of the report, indicated that Victorians want (among other things), “Steps to reduce growth in greenhouse gas emissions and consider the environment when planning for transport”.

The report gives the indication that it is about reducing the greenhouse emissions of the Victorian transport sector “from 32.5 to 20.2 megatonnes in 2036” (see the report, pages 118-9). Yet this deceptive sum is a reduction in the projected increase in emissions; the graph on page 119 shows that the transport sector’s emissions in 2006 were approximately 20 megatonnes. By measuring reductions against “what would have happened in the absence of these changes” the report could mislead people into thinking that it is about reducing emissions when really it is only going to hold them at about the current level.


This phony “reduction” of 12.3 megatonnes includes an estimated reduction of 6.6 megatonnes (over half) from “a steady increase in fuel prices (predicted to double in real terms by 2036), and the introduction of a carbon price through an emissions trading scheme.” When questioned recently by a journalist as to when the Federal government’s emissions trading scheme would begin to deliver cuts to greenhouse emissions, the Prime Minister responded that he could not say.

Do Victorians want to only “reduce growth” in greenhouse emissions, or do we want to actually reduce emissions overall? Polls have consistently shown that all Australians want serious action by our government to stop climate change; most recently, a survey by Essential Research for the Australian Conservation Foundation found 63 per cent believe Australia should “set an example for other countries by committing to strong targets to reduce carbon pollution.”

Climate groups are calling for Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions to begin declining by 2010 and decline sharply, with targets ranging from a modest 50% reduction of 1990 emissions by 2020 to the ambitious “Zero Emission Decade” plan for a 10 year transition to zero emissions. This is all based on the most recent climate science. Measured against this ecological imperative, the VTP fails from the start.

The VTP avoids any strong measures that can deliver guaranteed cuts in emissions. Instead it relies on indirect, unpredictable market mechanisms such as those above, minor measures like “Supporting carpooling to reduce the number of cars on the road”, and platitudes like setting “a mandatory carbon emissions target for the Victorian Government vehicle fleet, in consultation with the local automotive industry”.

Most of these measures revolve around the continued (and expanding) use of road transport. For example, ““The Government is working with the local automotive industry on new vehicle technology to reduce emissions. Already Ford Australia has announced it will produce the four-cylinder Ford Focus in Victoria. Toyota Australia has announced Melbourne will be one of only five locations in the world to produce the Hybrid Camry.” This is deception and hype. Four cylinder cars are hardly “new vehicle technology”, and the Hybrid Camry is projected to produce 140 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre – roughly the same as many small cars now on the market, such as the Hyundai Getz at about 145 grams per kilometre.

Even powered by dirty brown coal, electric rail's total greenhouse emissions are around 116.95 grams per passenger kilometer, according to a Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics study in 2004. This compared to a petrol-driven car average of 181.16 grams. This was before large increases in the number of passengers using Melbourne’s passenger rail network, which would have significantly lowered the per-capita emissions for rail.

Rail is significant because not only is it vastly more efficient than individual motor cars (in terms of infrastructure costs, space, fuel/energy, emissions) but as a largely electrified network it can become virtually zero-emissions if Victoria takes the essential step of phasing out fossil-fuel based power. At this point there will be no competition between road and rail for greenhouse emissions intensity: the difference will be practically inifinite.

The VTP announces some large new rail infrastructure projects, which have themselves been subjected to much criticism by transport planning advocates. For climate action groups, the key problem is the ongoing expansion of the road and rail network. It is important to get new public transport right, for the maximum benefit to commuters and the maximum reduction in car use and hence emissions. However, money sunk into damaging, fossil fuel reliant road infrastructure is only contributing to the problem.

Victorians should be calling for

• An end to new major road construction and the expansion of existing major roads
• The expansion of the public transport network, aiming to make it available for all regular commuter journeys undertaken
• Moving freight, especially containerised freight, to rail for all except local movements, and taking heavy diesel emitters (trucks and diesel locomotives) out of suburban areas
• The electrification of the rail freight network to include it in the zero emissions transport sector.
• Encouraging bicycle use in all suburban areas by providing a connected network of bike paths and bike lanes separate from traffic.
• Expanding renewable energy generation to reduce and eventually replace all fossil fuels in power generation and hence electric transport

Support your local transport campaigners! Read the whole article

Socialist Alliance's climate campaign strategy

"Capitalist governments may step in to force the individual capitalists into a collective response to the collective threat. This is how the authors of Climate Code Red (Spratt & Sutton, 2008) illustrate a collective, emergency response to the crisis, using the example of the US government’s war planning when they entered WW2. However, there are differences between a war and climate change that could upset the analogy, at least if the government in question were pro-capitalist."


Sara Moss writes in Alliance Voices Vol. 8 no. 1 that “It is simply wrong to argue, as some have tried, that only socialism can provide an answer to Climate Change.” She makes the argument that capitalism can stop global warming. As we have outlined in the SA Climate Charter, to really stop global warming would basically need new industrial revolution. Would capitalists allow it or undertake it? They have had the technological potential for such innovation for decades yet instead have invested into finance because it is seen as less risky. Will the current financial crisis force them to invest back into new technology and innovation?


The short time scale we have to address climate change doesn’t give me much hope. We have less than ten years to begin the sustainability revolution if we want a good chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. Will capitalism do it in that time?

As Ian Angus writes “Unlike previous anti-pollution campaigns that focused on single industries, or specific chemicals such as DDT, stopping greenhouse gases will require wrenching change to every part of the economy. Restructuring on such an enormous scale is almost certainly impossible in a capi­talist framework — and any attempt to make it happen will meet intense resistance.” (Confronting the Climate Change Crisis)

Capitalist governments may step in to force the individual capitalists into a collective response to the collective threat. This is how the authors of Climate Code Red (Spratt & Sutton, 2008) illustrate a collective, emergency response to the crisis, using the example of the US government’s war planning when they entered WW2. However, there are differences between a war and climate change that could upset the analogy, at least if the government in question were pro-capitalist.

The key difference is that in a war there is an enemy nation. In climate change there is none. Because of this, the quicker one takes action in a war, the more likely to beat the competitor (enemy) nation. In climate change, since nations are still in capitalist competition, the incentive is to wait for someone else to start making the radical changes first, while “our” corporations continue squeezing just a few bucks more out of coal and oil and gas. In other words, there is a definite and obvious threat of immediate loss if war is not responded to appropriately, but the losses from climate change disaster are further off. The losses from abandoning fossil fuels could potentially be much sooner, and the industries that are invested in fossil fuels and related technology are the bulk of the big multinational monopolies: cars, oil, mining, petrochemicals, energy. Of course, a capitalism without fossil fuels is theoretically possible; you would just have to get rid of most of the currently existing capitalism in order to achieve it!

Capitalists do not factor long term threats and opportunities into their financial decision making; this is reflected in the stock market bubbles we have seen in the last decade, and the spectacular crash we are witnessing now. Sara writes that “If there is profit in it, capitalism will find a way to save the planet” – but only if there is not a greater profit to be made in some other less worthwhile activity in the short term.

Can, or will capitalism really solve the crisis? I have yet to hear a detailed explanation of how from a socialist viewpoint. If serious action is taken by capitalism, it is likely to be too late for many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. If we continue to assume it highly unlikely that capitalism can prevent climate catastrophe, then we ought to have a fairly clear plan of how a socialist government could do it.

Social Justice and the climate charter

Sara appears to imply that the average single mother on welfare would not see the relevance of our detailed proposals for action against climate change. I think that single mothers on welfare are just as likely as anyone else to be concerned about climate change. However, the “technical” focus of our documents does have a particular target audience which is environmental activists (a fair few of whom are single mothers and/or on welfare I could add).

Our climate charter set about to explain three essential things. Firstly, that the problem of climate change requires an urgent and radical response. Second, that such a response is clearly possible with current technology. Lastly, that capitalist governments are pursuing an opposite course. This is a radicalising series of conclusions to draw for many environment activists, who have mostly followed conservative strategies of lobbying, compromise and, in effect if not always intent, loyalty to the market system.

However, that target audience is a focused and specific one, and the climate charter is designed largely with that in mind. The Gold Coast comrades are to be thanked for pointing out this weakness in our climate change propaganda (including much of what is printed in Green Left). It often lacks a certain popular and agitational edge and broader appeal. A “shorter, sharper campaigning tool which emphasised a Socialist approach to climate change by pinpointing the failure of market capitalism to find solutions that put the interests of people first” as Sara puts it would be very valuable.

As much of the climate action movement is now adopting many of the ideas that we also adopted in the Climate Charter, perhaps it is time to alter our focus in our next publication. What will climate change mean for ordinary Australians? And although the solutions are quite tangible, simply installing solar panels (assuming you can afford them anyway) is not going to fix it. We need a more detailed look at what working class (and and all) communities can do to fix the problem: build a mass protest movement.

However, it would be wrong to suggest that working class people do not want to hear the technical aspects: the argument that yes, we do have the technology to fix it. There is a lot of scientific propaganda that renewable energy cannot meet base-load and so on. Hell, there’s still an undercurrent of climate change denialism being promoted to the less educated through mouthpieces like Andrew Bolt.

It would be really good if Gold Coast branch members who are concerned about this could articulate in more detail what they think we should in fact say about climate change in our publications.

Another too-narrow focus?

Sara writes that “The Howard legacy has left a disempowered “underclass” who still suffer under a draconian welfare system and a growing working poor. These people comprise part of our membership and, at present, a potential constituency for our ideas.” Obviously we have more than one policy and it is good to hear the Gold Coast branch is making good use of our welfare policy. In the example given by Sara, no doubt the welfare policy would be the most appropriate thing to hand out.

But the “underclass” or “working poor” are only one part of the working class. What Sara refers to as “a large and, in world terms, very comfortable middle class” is largely part of the working class, in fact if not in consciousness. As a party which aims to lead the whole working class we must include and support the working poor, yet working class people have other concerns, including a great many who are indeed worried about climate change, who are anti-war, and so on. In fact many of what could be called the “underclass” and “working poor” are quite concerned about these issues too.

Misconceptions about the environment movement

Sara’s comments about there being many “bourgeois environmentalists” who are “downright hostile on class terms” are in my experience incorrect. There are indeed consciously right-wing environmentalists, but I have met almost none who are activists, and I am heavily involved in the climate movement. In fact the general ideology of most environmentalists, activists more so, is traditional liberal politics – critical of capitalism but without an alternative, like many of the working class.

When Sara writes that “The “aspirational” middle-class… are not our constituency and there are poor prospects for finding comrades among them, at least until a significant change in material conditions changes the political landscape” she seems to reduce the appeal of socialism to an economic critique of capitalism, and help for poor people. Yet we have a broader vision of socialism that can appeal on many other levels.

There is the potential for mass movements to develop out of these broader issues. “Finding comrades”, i.e. recruitment, is crucial, but we are not in movements just to recruit – we should build strong movements because they can challenge capitalism and give the working class valuable experience in struggle.

As a political party, not a single issue campaign, we have the challenge of balancing these diverse issues and finding the best one to push at any given time. This seems to be where Sara is leading, but some of the arguments she uses are in my view leading in the wrong direction.

My own suggestions

I think we need to make more of the human impact of climate change.
If agriculture has to be largely abandoned inland of the Great Dividing Range, that will cause mass migration to the coastal region, food shortages, and a large decline in the (capitalist) economy with all the effects of job losses and so on.

The rush to build desalination plants instead of empowering communities to conserve water amounts to a massive privatisation of water, handing control of this basic human right to multinational corporations for profit. It is estimated that the cost of the Wonthaggi plant in Victoria will be passed on as a 500% increase in domestic water bills.

If, as currently seems likely, the Himalayan glaciers disappear by 2050, the resultant drying out will mean starvation and refugee movements on a scale that will make 20th century disasters look tiny.

Loss of the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu is indeed a horrible prospect too: culturally, for tourism workers, and for biodiversity. But reducing environmentalism to saving pretty scenery is an unfortunate trend that we must avoid.

As documented well by Friends of the Earth in Victoria, poor people will suffer most the effects of disease, rising prices, heatwaves and all the other negative health and social impacts of climate change. Indigenous people, being particularly disadvantaged already, will probably suffer worse still.

We also need to criticise the Emissions Trading Scheme in more detail. It is not just that it won’t work at the pace and scale that we need action; it is a typical capitalist measure to make workers pay for capitalist mistakes. Like they are passing on the bailout of financial institutions to the taxpayer, corporations will pass on the cost of any carbon credit scheme or carbon tax to the individual consumer. The widely accepted ecological principle “polluter pays” is going to be ignored as the working class consumers will pay corporations to (maybe) clean up their polluting industries.

It’s a pity that the welfare charter is such a poor cousin to the climate charter in production values and the attention paid to it by branches. I invite all branches to look at Gold Coast and any other branch that has used the charter to campaign, and see what they can learn.

Is “Greening” SA wrong?

There is an assumption in Sara’s argument that we are simply trying to (opportunistically) pinch members from the Greens and their supporters. This is not the reason. We think the Greens, like many environmental organisations, have been slow to adopt the position of urgency that SA did with our Climate Charter. Although the Greens are now updating their positions, they went into the 2007 election with very modest targets, as compared to SA’s expressed target of 90% reduction in emissions by 2030. As a result, I believe the SA activists in the climate movement are respected as SA activists. We have the policy to back it up. On the other hand, some Greens activists tend to even be apologetic for their party’s tardiness.

If all this was about was competing with the Greens, of course, we could leave it there and say Look – we got one up on the Greens! But that is not the point at all.

Our aims in the climate movement are to build it positively, to help it grow, and to lead it in the direction of real solutions. If the more conservative wing of the movement tries to lead it in the direction of supporting market mechanisms to fix the problem, any extra credibility we have with the rest of the activists when we argue against that is vital. Of course we want environment activists to join SA. Some changes to our propaganda on climate that I hope Sara and I can both agree on ought to help in this respect by explaining our socialist approach more clearly. But it is not the only facet of our strategy.

This is all important for SA branches and members who are heavily involved in the environment movement. However, I am not arguing that environment campaigns must always be our no. 1 priority. All branches should support any climate campaigns that occur in their area, because a new mass movement is developing. But it is still quite uneven. In some areas, a branch may try it out but then find they can grow better and provide more useful input into the union movement, or welfare rights, or indigenous solidarity, or any one of our other campaign areas in their region. Each SA branch needs to make those decisions based on their own assessment of the opportunities presented to them. That is how in Melbourne (and I think more or less in most branches), we have found ourselves quite involved in climate change activism (whereas earlier we have had good experiences with Palestine solidarity, union work and other issues) But where branches achieve success on another front we all need to hear about it and consider if our branch, too, can replicate these successes whether it is with our welfare charter or something else.

(Originally published in Alliance Voices Volume 8 No 2, November 2008)
Read the whole article

3 curries

Two lamb curries and a spicy veg stew.
Spicy and sweet flavour combinations. Dairy free, wheat free, gluten free.


Lamb and pumpkin curry
This uses a basic Indian spice mix and can be as hot or mild as you like. The pumpkin gives a thick and smooth consistency as well as a sweet taste. Dairy free, wheat free.


Ingredients
1 large onion, diced or sliced.
Ginger (about 1 inch, cut into fine slices)
Quarter of a medium size pumpkin, peeled and diced into smallish cubes.
Vegetable oil for frying
¾ to 1 kilo of lamb diced into large cubes
4 fresh tomatoes
1-2 Bay leaves
4 Cardamom pods (pound to open pod slightly)
1 cinnamon quill (or equivalent cinnamon/cassia bark)
1-2 teaspoons salt (to taste)

Spice mix:
1 teaspoon each of cumin, fennel, fenugreek, and two teaspoons coriander seeds. Dry-fry in a pan or saucepan until giving off strong aroma, then grind to powder with a mortar & pestle. Mix in 1 teaspoon chilli powder (or to your taste), 1 teaspoon tumeric powder, ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg.

Method
Prepare the spice mix as above.
Heat the oil in a large pot, add the chopped onion and ginger. Fry on high heat until onion begins to brown. Add spice mix, a little water to moisten, and pumpkin. Fry briefly then add lamb and tomatoes. Stir thoroughly then add water to cover with the bay leaves, cardamom and cinnamon. Bring to boil, stirring, then reduce heat and simmer (stirring occasionally) until pumpkin disintegrates into dish. Add salt and extra chilli as needed. Serve with sprinkling of fresh greens such as parsley or coriander, and plenty of rice. Should serve 6-10 with sufficient rice.


Lamb and spinach curry
As with all my recipes this one is wheat free and dairy free; in this case it's also gluten free. I don't know if it could be adapted to a vegetarian recipe very easily but you're welcome to try!

Ingredients:
Dry spice mix
1tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
2 tsp coriander seeds
½ tsp fenugreek seeds
½ tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp turmeric powder
½ tsp laos (galangal) powder (optional)
½ tsp cinnamon powder
chilli powder to taste (suggest 1-2 tsp hot)

sautee
3 tbsp olive oil (or other vegetable oil e.g. sunflower)
2 medium onions, diced roughly
1" piece of ginger, sliced thinly
3-6 cloves garlic, chopped (optional)

Main bulk & sauce
1 kg mutton or lamb, diced roughly
4 large tomatoes, chopped in halves or quarters
3 tbsp almond meal
1 pint (1/2 litre or 2 cups) boiling water
chopped spinach (250g frozen packet or 1 bunch fresh)
2 tsp tamarind concentrate or 2cm cube of tamarind pulp soaked in a quarter cup of hot water.
salt to taste

Method
Preparing the spice
Heat a small saucepan on high heat and add the cumin, fennel, coriander and fenugreek. Shake saucepan around lightly to allow seeds to settle across bottom. After a minute or two the fragrance of the spices will be rising strongly – then tip them all into a mortar (before they start to smoke!). Add peppercorns and grind with pestle until all seeds are crushed to powder. Add other dry spices and mix together.

Sautee
Heat 2 tbsp oil in a large saucepan or wok on high heat. Add onions, ginger and garlic and stir-fry until onion is caramelised (turning translucent) and sautee is giving off strong aroma. Add dry spice mix and stir. When it is thoroughly infused into oil (before it burns) add the diced meat. Stir it until the oil and spice mixture is thoroughly coating the meat. Continue stirring until meat is browned all over, splashing a little hot water into wok/pan any time the mix starts to stick.

Finishing
Once the meat is browned, add almond milk (to make: mix almond meal into paste with a little cold water, then add boiling water and mix). Stir gently. When it is boiling add the tomatoes and stir gently. When boiling, turn heat down and simmer. (About now would be a good time to put some rice on!) Stir occasionally to prevent sticking. When the liquid has reduced and thickened a bit, but not yet sticking to pot/wok too much, add the tamarind and salt. Continue to simmer, stirring more frequently, until the sauce is quite thick and is beginning to stick to the pot/wok. Add the (defrosted/chopped) spinach, mix in thoroughly, then add one last tablespoon of oil and turn the heat up to full. Stir vigorously as it heats up and fries the curry for a couple of minutes. Then you can turn the heat off and it is ready to serve!


Spicy pumpkin stew
I like a sweet and spicy dish. This recipe uses pumpkin for both sweetener and thickener, and can be used as a template for cooking with a wide variety of ingredients (it's only a stew, after all!). This can be a meat or vegetarian recipe as you please, and is dairy and wheat free (providing the stock and vinegar don't have wheat). Serves 6-8, and takes about 1 hour to cook.
The quantities, and range, of spices in this recipe are pretty over the top. I was in an odd mood when I made it; but the end result was pleasing to me! If you're cautious, use less spices.

Ingredients:
1 large onion
¼ of a medium size pumpkin
1 large zucchini (aka courgette)
Vegetarian version: 3 cans Borlotti beans
Non-vegetarian version: 1 can Borlotti beans and 500g diced chicken on the bone, pork, or stewing meat of your choice)
Half litre vegetable stock
1 bulb of garlic (or less if you prefer!)
1 cinnamon quill
3 whole cloves
2-3 Bay leaves
12 Pimentos (Allspice) or 1 tablespoon of ground allspice if whole pimentos unavailable.
1 whole nutmeg, ground (or 2 teaspoons nutmeg powder)
1 teaspoon chilli/paprika powder
2-6 small pickled (or fresh) chillies (optional – hot or mild, to taste)
Oil for frying
salt
brown or red wine vinegar

Method
1. Prepare stock if making from cubes or powder.
2. Chop the pickled/fresh chillies if using, chop the onion roughly, chop the pumpkin into smallish pieces
3. Heat 2 tablespoons frying oil in a large pot. Add the chillies and onion and fry on high heat, stirring, until onions start to brown. Add pumpkin and meat (if you are using it)
4. Splash in 1 or 2 tablespoons vinegar and stir, then pour in stock and add cinnamon quill, cloves, bay leaves, pimentos, chilli powder, nutmeg.
5.Peel the garlic cloves and add to pot whole. Chop zucchini into round slices and add to dish. Top up with boiling water to more-or-less cover vegetables and meat.
6. Bring to boil then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes with the lid off. Add 2-3 (heaped) teaspoons of salt. Drain canned borlotti beans and add.
7. Simmer until the pumpkin has begun to disintegrate into the stew. You can crush it with the stirring spoon to verify. It should act like a thickener.
8. Serve with lots of steamed rice

Variations
You can adjust the quantities of spice to suit the tastes of those you are cooking for (especially chilli and garlic). You can substitute different vegetables for the zucchini (okra, celery, tomato etc) or just leave it out, omit the beans or use a different kind, substitute something else like sweet potato for the pumkpin and so on. Read the whole article