1.1 Articles

(Nichols, D. Grey Fantail)

9. Birds are a Liberation that Never Ends: Richard Flanagan 2019

Section
1. Build the Nature-Human Relationship
Chapter
1.1 Articles
Page
1.1.9

This delightful piece by Richard Flanagan captures as well as anything I’ve read the great gift and sheer joy of birds: “Few things induce volts of happiness in me like the common cranky fan (Grey Fantail) when it meets me near the water tank and bursts into its elaborate dance, up and down like a demented Mata Hari”. But, their wonder and mystery is going, “and along with them there will have vanished a larger sense of what the world is and who we are in it”.

Australian bird of the year (2019) | Environment | The Guardian

 

1Flanagan, R. 2019. Birds are a Liberation that Never Ends. But to Enjoy their Company is to Know an Inconsolable Sadness. The Guardian. October 31st.

Explore More Articles

1.1.1. The Cry of a Growing Silence

This beautiful piece is about the loss of birds, of wonder and of boyhood in Anson’s home place – the northern plains of Victoria. I think the opening image: “Jigsaw pieces of new silence begin to join” is as poignant a metaphor of environment...
Learn More

1.1.2. In Praise of Pardalotes

Keeping with the bird theme (sorry, I am a birdwatcher since childhood) is this lovely little piece by John Woinarski who studied pardalotes for decades. John celebrates their tiny, dumpy, yet purposeful beauty, and the gift of their presence and ...
Learn More

1.1.3. More Greed and More Loneliness

Broadening the outlook to the human condition and a sickness at the heart of modern society, Michael Leunig names our delusions and our disease as only he can. This article is the first time I can remember the obeisance to the economy being called...
Learn More

1.1.4. The Really Inconvenient Truth

It is awkward intruding one’s own musings with such fine company. Such an act can be seen as a piece of egotistical opportunism, or even a shallow trick, like that played by the supermarkets when they package up desirable fruit and vegetables with...
Learn More

1.1.5. Running out of Gas

Keeping to the big picture, Growthbusters produced this excellent and wide-ranging podcast in 2019 that seeks both to cover the big issues for the environment and address their deeper causes. Interviewer and text: Dave Gardner “Our two guest...
Learn More

1.1.6. Submission to Victorian Government Extinction Inquiry

Deliberately moving between scales, this submission to the Victorian Government Extinction Inquiry by local friend, Heinz, skilfully joins the personal with the institutional, the global with the ‘backyard’ (in this case, the Western District of V...
Learn More

1.1.7. Understanding the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future

Extending the idea of a submission on the state of the environment and extinction, the following paper moves from Heinz’s more personal and local perspective to that of a global outlook. As such, this most powerful of papers could have been includ...
Learn More

1.1.8. Capitalism, the Doomsday Machine

In a typically thoughtful and incisive piece, Richard Heinberg tackles the global belief system – capitalism – and finds that “the machine is still on its path to world annihilation”. He then neatly summarises four major responses to the looming c...
Learn More

1.1.9. Birds are a Liberation that Never Ends

This delightful piece by Richard Flanagan captures as well as anything I’ve read the great gift and sheer joy of birds: “Few things induce volts of happiness in me like the common cranky fan (Grey Fantail) when it meets me near the water tank and ...
Learn More

1.1.10. Killing Nature in the Mind

I am lucky enough to look out on this from my loungeroom window every day. These great rock ranges began forming 400 million years ago and Mt Abrupt’s obdurate slab face mocks my petty existence. I suppose I should be angry about this, feel slight...
Learn More

Explore Other Sections

1. Build the Nature-Human Relationship
1. Build the Nature-Human Relationship 1.1 Articles 1.2 Art Installations 1.3 Books 1.4 Buildings 1.5 Film, Documentaries, Podcasts 1.6 Music 1.7 Paintings 1.8 Photographs 1.9 Poems 1.10 Spiritual Responses
1/11

1. Build the Nature-Human Relationship

This section is designed to foster appreciation and insight that will – hopefully – lead to novel ways to build a better relationship between human beings and Nature. This section is also atypical ...
Explore this Section
2. Reduce Consumption
2. Reduce Consumption

2. Reduce Consumption

I hope Reneé Descartes would forgive us for saying that, at least for the modern world, he was wrong.  When, in 1637, he said: “I think, therefore I am”, he could not have anticipated that the majo...
Explore this Section
3. Replace God of Growth with God of Quality
3. Replace God of Growth with God of Quality

3. Replace God of Growth with God of Quality

In a supposedly secular age there has arisen a global religion and god like never before, a religion whose reach and power makes every other belief system before it seem pitiful and insignificant: ...
Explore this Section
4. Work, Volunteer, Act for the Environment
4. Work, Volunteer, Act for the Environment

4. Work, Volunteer, Act for the Environment

What we do in our day-to-day lives can have great impact. Section Four divides up these actions into three groups – Work (4.2 & 4.3), Volunteering (4.4), and Action, e.g. voting, protesting, et...
Explore this Section
5. Reduce Population
5. Reduce Population

5. Reduce Population

Even on top of Mt. Everest, in one of the remotest, most difficult places on earth, there is a great traffic-jam of people jostling for position. And yet, ever more vociferously, we deny that overp...
Explore this Section
6. Ensure Media Acknowledgement of Environmental Context
6. Ensure Media Acknowledgement of Environmental Context

6. Ensure Media Acknowledgement of Environmental Context

The media is one of the three, great ‘poles’ of power in the world (alongside political and corporate power) and how they frame and present ‘the environment’ has a profound effect on how we respond...
Explore this Section
7. Stop Further Loss of Natural Habitat and Species
7. Stop Further Loss of Natural Habitat and Species

7. Stop Further Loss of Natural Habitat and Species

New York is an exciting, mesmerising place. Human culture is extraordinary and often wonderful. Our powers of transformation of the natural world seem limitless. The trouble is, we don’t seem to be...
Explore this Section
8. Assist Energy Descent and Transition
8. Assist Energy Descent and Transition

8. Assist Energy Descent and Transition

Our current energy largesse is an extraordinary ‘gift’, an unprecedented gift of the ages; millions of years to produce and from millions of years ago. Coal, oil and gas, forming...
Explore this Section
9. Support New, Environmentally-Aware, Economic Systems
9. Support New, Environmentally-Aware, Economic Systems

9. Support New, Environmentally-Aware, Economic Systems

Just as with the previous section – ‘Energy’ – which is, inescapably, all about fossil fuels so pre-eminent and extraordinary has been their dominance and transformation of the world in the last 20...
Explore this Section
10. Reduce Wastes to the Rate of Natural Assimilation
10. Reduce Wastes to the Rate of Natural Assimilation

10. Reduce Wastes to the Rate of Natural Assimilation

Section 10 will attempt to organise this enormous topic by addressing the context and status of pollution in 10.2, before focussing in on air pollution; particularly greenhouse gas pollution and cl...
Explore this Section

T10: Structure

State of the Environment
1. Build the Nature-Human Relationship
1.1 Articles
1.2 Art Installations
1.3 Books
1.4 Buildings
1.5 Film, Documentaries, Podcasts
1.6 Music
1.7 Paintings
1.8 Photographs
1.9 Poems
1.10 Spiritual Responses
2. Reduce Consumption
3. Replace God of Growth with God of Quality
4. Work, Volunteer, Act for the Environment
5. Reduce Population
6. Ensure Media Acknowledgement of Environmental Context
7. Stop Further Loss of Natural Habitat and Species
8. Assist Energy Descent and Transition
9. Support New, Environmentally-Aware, Economic Systems
10. Reduce Wastes to the Rate of Natural Assimilation