Going green at the grassroots

Time flies. It seemed like yesterday that I looked out the aircraft window to the summer brown below close on 20 years ago. Three observations struck me on that first arrival in Melbourne.

Stepping out into the neighbourhood, to be greeted by a cheery "G'day", was a pleasant welcome, from people I did not know. Australians are friendly, I thought.

The wasteful consumption, I struggled to accept: the throwaway habits that conceived of the Styrofoam cup, cling wrap and plastic bag.

And the short-term fixation on instant gratification seemed at odds with the preferred model of deferred capital accumulation.

Am I the misfit katak (frog) who had strayed from beneath the tempurung (coconut shell), I wondered.

David Korten assured me. Dr Korten, founding head of the People-Centred Development Forum then based in Manila, had come on a lecture tour.

Korten's message was in the vein of alternative development advocate E.F. Schumacher (Small Is Beautiful, 1978).

Schumacher and Korten argue that the developing world is being led down the path to over-development. That model has imposed on the world a complexity that inhibits sustainable development, and damages the global environment.

Phew, I thought. Katak me has not been left in the wake of development after all; just down a different path.

These past weeks have affirmed the virtue of that path, with the precipitate action that government has initiated on climate change and global warming.

There has been much argy-bargy - as they say down under - since climate change adviser to the government, Professor Ross Garnaut, released his draft report on July 4.

Between those convinced about the science and those who are yet to be persuaded; among those who have no doubt, but know there will be a cost, and squabble over who should pay; and among those "woe is me" wringing their hands over what anybody can do about the problem.

That's nothing new. The world has been quibbling over these questions since the Kyoto Protocol was intorduced in 1997.

What of Malaysia: what ought government, industry and people do about it?

One thing that should be said first about Australians. A poll taken after the government presented its "green paper" response to the Garnaut report shows Australians backing the government doing something to reduce carbon pollution.

An Age/Nielsen Poll shows that 54 per cent of Australians are satisfied with the leadership of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on this issue.

Sixty-eight per cent are prepared, if they have to, to pay more for goods and services to help cut back on the emission of greenhouse gases. Seventy-seven per cent say Australia should do what it has to do, regardless of what other countries do.

So what might Malaysians do?

At the level of government, Rudd and counterpart Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi would have found comfort in each other's company when Rudd stopped over in Kuala Lumpur on his way home after attending the Group of Eight Outreach Meeting in Hokkaido last month.

These two middle-power nations have a role to bridge between the position of rich nations who insist developing (and heavily polluting) China and India (and others) have to do their bit, and the developing nations who demand their right to work towards parity with the rich.

Beyond the diplomatic niceties, Kuala Lumpur could show developing nations what they might do in committing to action (however tentative) in the way some people see Rudd doing: driving Australians to lead the rich by example through the adoption of a carbon emissions trading scheme.

Deforestation accounts for 20 per cent of global emissions. It's a bigger culprit than transport.

Kuala Lumpur could keep a closer eye on logging - and practices of the forest industry - within Malaysia's borders, and corporate exploitation of Malaysia's neighbours such as Papua New Guinea.

Grand climate change schemes take time. While the schemes take shape, people can "think global, act local".

Korten's people-centred development comes to mind. Or what Melbourne environmental consultant Tim Doeg calls "nana-technology". That's nana, as in nenek (grandmother). Nothing to do with atomic or molecular particles, as with nanotechnology.

Live as nenek used to live - simply, but efficiently.

It's not rocket science, and it need not be expensive. Doeg, 51, has been living it since he was captured by nature bushwalking in his university days. A career spanning the physical and ecological sciences has culminated in a green-inspired home, which Doeg and partner Carolyn Crowe have maintained for 10 years.

They have invested in big-ticket items such as rainwater tanks and solar panels. But nana inspires old-fashioned ideas at every turn, which brought them to the attention of The Age.

Doeg and Crowe are not alone. Movements such as Sustainability Street and the Alternative Technology Association have risen from the simplicity of living of people such as Doeg and Crowe.

People have split hairs over the science and the economic cost in the climate change debate. At the grassroots, as Doeg tells the New Sunday Times, people get on with the demand side of the equation - using less, reusing, and recycling.

Attitudes of mind have to be changed before political and economic superstructures on the supply side can be transformed.