I stumbled across this car parking stand-off in Calton. The cars are parked behind an apartment block. The laminated note attached to the toy car reads:

"DO NOT REMOVE. This is the property of unit one. We pay rent for this carpark and thus shall utilize it for whatever vehicle we see fit".

At the moment all the fresh drinking water we use to shower in and to do our laundry is going straight down the drain after a single use. On top of that, most of us are using more fresh drinking water to water our gardens.

This is a shame - because treating greywater on a neighbourhood scale is pretty straightforward - in principle at least.

Possible location of greenhouse housing reed beds

Precedent: Image below is of a 'Living machines'; a type of biological treatment systems based on the processes of wetlands which are housed in greenhouses, and can be used in small urban areas.

Outside view, and reed beds inside a 'Living machine'

Do you ever wonder if it might be easier to generate the sort of massive changes we need to make to our lifestyles if we were engaged in some kind of war or a pitched battle?

The problem is that when it comes to environmental issues there really is no enemy. We can direct our aggression to a few amorphous corporate entities, and maybe people who drive massive 4x4 SUV’s if you're so inclined. But really, the actual enemy is ourselves.

This poses a dilemma because we’re really not good at coping with the ‘enemy within’. The enemy which is us.

Improving our sustainability is more like going on a diet than it is like going to war, and we all know how successful the average diet is.

We’re simply better at initiating changes to our attitudes and lifestyles when we’re at war – which is probably why we try to cast problems into that mould even when it’s completely counter productive to do so, perhaps we create the war against drugs, or attack Iran and Afghanistan as part of a war against ‘terrorism’ because that's the only way we know how to respond.

So anyway. Good news. I think I found someone who can be our scapegoat...our environmental bogey-man.

I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” – fascinating and entertaining in equal measures – and he recounts the story of an engineer come chemist called Thomas Midgley Jr.

Thomas Midgley Jr. is the devil. Except he's not really. He's just a scientist with few scruples who was well respected by many in his day, and that is what makes this sorry tale so scary.

If you ever get a chance to borrow a time-machine to travel backwards in history in order to ensure someone is never born, consider visiting Mr and Mrs Thomas Midgley Sr.

Thomas Midgley Sr. was an inventor, and his son Thomas Midgley Jr. initially trained as an engineer, but eventually took after his father to become an inventor as well.

The first problem Midgley turned his attention to was engine knock and associated fuel efficiency. His unfortunate solution was to add a lead solution to the fuel (tetra-ethyl lead or TEL). There were less toxic solutions available which he discovered at the same time, but lead was the cheapest, had the least offensive odour and was the most efficient, so Midgley ran with it. And the evidence indicates that he ran with it while being fully aware of the toxic affects of lead in the atmosphere and in the human body.

People started dying almost immediately from the affects of his innovation. By the mid 1920’s more than 40 factory workers who produced the lead fortified fuel for Ethyl (the corporation who produced the product) were dead or deranged. The Ethyl factory in Deepwater was nicknamed the 'House of Butterflies’ by the workers because of the hallucinations they experienced while working there.

Midgley’s crime is that he knowingly introduced a "creeping and malicious poison" into the environment, and also that he then deliberately assisted in the large scale corporate cover up which followed for the next 50-60 years.

TEL is still being produced, although we stopped adding it to fuel in the 1980’s. Of course we’re stuck with the lead; which is now in the atmosphere forever.

So just in case you think that’s not enough to earn Midgley some kind of serious enemy-of-the-planet status – just wait, there’s more...

The second problem Midgley addressed was the serious one of poisonous gases leaking from early refrigerators.

“Midgley set out to create a gas that was stable, nonflammable, noncorrosive, and safe to breathe. With an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny, he invented chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs.”

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

For the first time in my life I saw the horizon as a curved line. It was accentuated by a thin seam of dark blue light—our atmosphere. Obviously this was not the ocean of air I had been told it was so many times in my life. I was terrified by its fragile appearance.

Monday was the first day of spring here.

I celebrated by biking around in the sunshine with my daughter, doing an informal playground tour, and chatting happily to people we met about the weather.

And today is another beautiful spring day. Walking around in a t-shirt (maybe being a little over confident of the sun) I found myself thinking about how today was the perfect day to go hunting for Easter eggs. But of course we don't do Easter in spring here - we do it in Autumn just as the weather is getting grimmer and the winter winds are starting.

It's crazy stuff, after all Eostre was the goddess of spring, and the Christian celebration is supposed to be about rebirth. On the first warm spring days like today I feel like celebrating all those things - but in March/April - it's all academic.

And our Christmas is even more ridiculous. Christmas is a profoundly wintery event: It’s holly, puddings, candles, yule logs and all those reworkings of pre-Christian Winter solstice celebrations (Yule, Natalis Solis Invicti, Saturnalia).

And all these things are beautiful on the coldest, shortest, darkest day of the year…Christmas is supposed to be a little twinkling light in a dark cold place.

But we celebrate it right in the middle of summer. Hot turkey dinners, sweaty tinsel and fake snow in the heat and dust. It’s a little sad...we should be dancing around maypoles instead.

Melbournes seasons, based on writing of Dr. Beth Gott of the School of Biological Sciences, Monash University.

Click image to see larger

I'm not saying we should do the whole Christmas in July thing- but I think it's a shame. It's a shame because when we have a beautiful spring day like today - we have no way of celebrating it.

And I also wonder whether this serves to increase our sense of disconnection from the landscape and the ecological systems that we exist within.

When the people who established the city of Melbourne arrived, they bought with them the Roman calendar, their northern celebrations, and a year which is divided into four seasons - along with their ideas about the landscape and how it works. Those of us who still live here have inherited all of these things.

How many of us still think of winter as a time of dormancy, and summer as a time of growth and life, rather than something closer to the opposite? Or else think of wild fire as a purely destructive force, rather than a process which brings life and regeneration, without which many fragile ecosystems would die?

The Wurundjeri people certainly didn't have a 4 season calendar; they based their seasons on the local weather conditions, and the behaviour of plants and animals. I've drawn up a (possible/approximate) Wurundjeri calendar above, alongside the traditional Roman seasons, and a seasonal calendar created by researches looking at the climate and ecosystem of the Upper Yarra. Makes for interesting comparison.

Would we be less disconnected from our environment if we had seasons that were more responsive to the local ecosystem? What would happen if we didn't think about the seasons as Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter - but as something like Pre-spring, True Spring, High Summer, Dry Summer (Old man summer), Autumn and Winter?

And if, instead of being fixed to the climatic conditions of far off European landscapes, those six seasons were linked to the markers of actual seasonal changes as they happen here - like summer grasses flowering, the appearance of kangaroo apples or of tadpoles spawning in the Yarra?

(images on right: Chocolate bilby (the local easter bunny), and Christmas on Bondi Beach)

I've been reading about these bioregional thinking questions – adapted by Bill Devall and George Sessions in their book Deep Ecology. It's an interesting test to do on yourself - I can't answer more than half - which is a bit depressing. I tested Adrian (my partner), and he did quite well actually. Anyway, good luck, let me know how you go...

1. Trace the water you drink from precipitation to tap.

2. How many days till the moon is full? (Plus or minus a couple of days.)

3. Describe the soil around your home

4. From what direction do winter storms generally come in your region?

5. Where does your garbage go?

6. How long is the growing season where you live?

7. Name five resident birds and any migratory birds in your area.

8. What primary geological event process influenced the land form where you live?

9. From where you are reading this, point north.

10. Were the stars out last night?

When I started writing this blog I was planning to focus on small interventions on a scale just slightly larger than a single household. I wanted to look at the possibility of getting together with the people next door and sharing resources; like for example having a solar hot water system which is shared between five houses, or organising an organic food buying co-op, or maybe a car club.

What I've discovered is that a lot of the sustainability improvements which would be most effective as a way of reducing our carbon emissions or water usage either work on the scale of the individual house - or else on the scale of a neighbourhood (150-250 houses).


Because small decentralised systems tend to have a smaller ecological 'footprint', are more efficient and just generally more sustainable than large scale centrally organised systems, it makes sense to start thinking about providing as much of our energy, food, water and social/cultural resources locally.

But how do we make that work? How can we organise ourselves on a neighborhood scale to enable the implementation of local sustainable systems?

I'm trying to think of some useful models. Here in Melbourne I can't think of many organisations which work on that scale: Our local government functions on a much larger scale - the City of Yarra, our local council, manages something like the equivalent of more than 100 neighbourhoods. Too big.

Maybe a local school is a useful model? A lot of schools would have 200 or more families enrolled, and they would be managed locally by a school board with some key decisions or design processes being carried out on a regional or state level.

Come to think of it - the toy library we go to in Clifton Hill would have 200 or so families involved. They have one or two full time paid staff hired by the council and these staff manage the library, gather fees and organise the families to volunteer their time two to three times a year.

Perhaps it could work similarly here, council could hire a someone to manage or facilitate local neighbourhood-scale groups. This person could provide advice and some financial support while allowing the impetus, and most of the key decisions to come from the residents. Large scale, expensive or potentially hazardous interventions - like black water treatment, could be handled by council in the same way they would deal with proposals from any developer.

In 1994 our then premier Jeff Kennett merged three local councils (Richmond, Collingwood and Fitzroy) and parts of the City of Melbourne and City of Northcote into the City of Yarra, forming one big mega-council. I believe the idea was to improve efficiency and reduce costs, and maybe increase quality of decision making & outcomes - and I imagine that in some areas it was probably effective in doing so. The downside is that government on this scale makes it difficult for the individual voice to be heard. It becomes difficult for small scale neighborhood lead interventions to be handled effectively. And the anonymity and professionalising of local government on a larger scale tends to discourage citizen participation.

I don't know how many people lived in the old City of Collingwood, but there are almost 70 000 people living in the City of Yarra now. Thats almost ten times larger than Christopher Alexander's ideal of the 'Community of 7000'. And ten times larger than Jefferson's 'ward republics'.

What we need is new models to enable us to control our energy, our water, our waste and other resources on a neighbourhood scale. But what are they? Anyone have any ideas?