Michael Short: Jason Kimberley, welcome to The Zone and thanks for your time.

Jason Kimberley: Thanks for having me.

MS: You’re here to talk to about your particular brand of activism, Cool Australia. It could be seen as kind of an intergenerational environmentalism. You are trying to educate young people, you are using really clear and plain and simple language. And you’re talking about sustainability and the environment. Could you please start by telling us about the genesis and evolution of Cool Australia?

JK: I was down in Antarctica with a couple of mates of mine trekking at the end of 2005, and being there in a place that is so beautiful yet hostile at the same time was just an incredible experience. And people talk about it being a moonscape; it was other-worldly. When you’re in Antarctica you remember as a kid thinking `oh how could you stand up right on the bottom of the world, wouldn’t you fall off?’

So you’ve got these sort of things going through your mind, I’m actually here now, I’m in this place that I’ve always dreamed of. It is the only continent that I’d never visited, and it was quite a profound effect on me, just having a think about the world around us. And I came back home and I was researching a book about it, and in the process of the research I got more interested in the environment down there in the Southern Ocean and around what was happening to the penguin colonies, the albatross, how the whales were slowly coming back but had largely been pushed the brink of extinction.

I read about the Chileans who were coming down and netting boatloads of krill, completely an unregistered operation and there’s not many boats patrolling the Southern Ocean, and they were hauling all this krill back and using it as an additive to put into pellets to feed cattle that were grazing on cleared Amazonian rainforest to grow hamburgers to send to the Americans, who, one could argue, didn’t need any more hamburgers.

I thought this is just so wrong and bizarre on every level, but because the so-called externalities are not costed at every level, it goes on because somebody’s making a dollar out of it. So I thought what else is going on like this. I had a look around and did some further research and discovered a thing called the North Pacific garbage patch, and the deforestation that was happening around the world, and the loss of mangroves and wetlands, and I thought geez I thought I knew a bit about this stuff.

So I asked some mates and colleagues about what was their understanding and did they know about what was going on in the Southern Ocean etcetera and as it turns out no one had a clue. I found all of that quite shocking and I thought, well, if we don’t know what’s going on, if don’t understand some of the challenge we’ve got, then we can’t go about fixing it.

So that got me pretty pumped up and I said to myself as soon as I finish this book I want to do something about addressing this. So the book was finished, the book was published at that was all terrific and then I did some of this unofficial research again that I do and asked all my mates and people I meet, and asked them what’s the problem and why don’t we understand the message about trashing our environment.

And the feedback was there is a lot of dry science, it’s pretty boring to hear scientists talk, I switch off, it hard for me to relate to something that’s happening in Antarctica, let alone the long-necked turtle in the Mary River or whatever, so I thought let’s do something that is relevant to our cities. Something like 75 per cent of all our emissions are produced in cities and let’s do something that can speak to people at their level of understanding.

So, without making things simplistic, we simplify the message and we’re talking in plain English, and talking with a sense of humour, because people like to have a laugh and be entertained and there’s all this doom and gloom and save the planet, it’s the end of the world – and all this sort of conversation I don’t think is constructive and I don’t think it helps.

I and a very small team of two other people – Lyn Freebairn and Krista Nisi – set out to create a website that could engage, entertain and be relevant to people right now. So within six or eight months of us launching the Cool Melbourne website we had 10,000 fans on Facebook, we had about 5000 people signed up to be members and we were really onto something.

That was the Genesis of it all and then we added in the educational components and we’ve since expanded to Cool Australia.

MS: So, it’s not an accidental organisation but it’s an organisation that started with an idea and that idea has resonated.

JK: Yes, because if it had no interest or no relevance then no bugger would’ve clicked on and been interested and we would’ve died in the arse and fallen away like so many others. But the fact that it resonated and gave us confidence to keep going is the reason we have continued to expand. We always hoped that would be the case, but you never know with these things.

MS: Our Cool School is fundamental to the whole thing and has run across Australia now. There are well, well over 100,000 students involved. You’ve got 10 flagship schools. There is some big growth planned there. Can you talk little bit about what’s happening at that level, with the education side of things?

JK: Again, this is something I knew absolutely nothing about. If somebody had said to me three or four years ago, okay you’re going to work in the education field I wouldn’t know what to make of it but you travel your path and you end up in these unusual places.

We have been asking teachers, asking schools, `what is it that you need?’ And the last thing a teacher needs is an extra thing to do. We established that very quickly. So Our Cool School is all based around the ease of use. It had to be relevant to the state school curriculum, the thing that teachers need to address, and incorporate some environmental understandings into those curriculum points.

So we have set it up so that when a teacher is teaching maths or English or science or geography or whatever it might be, they can teach those lessons through biodiversity or energy or fish or food or forests or climate change or whatever it might be.

Maths is something kids can find really boring, because it’s just so dry and it can be very difficult to understand. And apparently people are turning away from maths in droves. One thing we’re doing is not just adding or multiplying or subtracting, but you’re counting your energy use or your water use or multiplying out trees and habitats in your local park or the school grounds – so it’s got some relevance. A lot of what we do is try to bring relevance to existing subjects by incorporating real-life understandings through our environment and learning how to live more sustainably.

MS: What can you say to reassure parents that might be feeling or wondering about propaganda? How can you get into the schools like this? What accreditation is involved? What are the checks and balances involved?

JK: All schools are very independent. They all really run their own race. Some state schools aren’t particularly fond of the state governments, so getting a government tick, which doesn’t exist, but that wouldn’t necessarily help you either.

It’s really about getting to the different teacher organisations, whether that be the science teachers or the geography teachers’ association, the English teachers’ association. Then you’ve got the independent schools associations in each state – you’ve got to the large ones like the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese for example and the same in Sydney, and then there are the smaller divisions around the states.

It’s a matter of going to them and saying here is what we’re doing. We are non-political, we’re unaligned. We present what’s happening in the actual world. Then we ask the questions are you happy with the way we are doing things? What ways could we improve it? And what are some of your ideas? At Cool Australia we really concentrate on the challenges we all face, investigate solutions and explain how you can get involved. It is a real three-step process. That is what we present to the teachers and the reason the teachers love it is because we have done all of our research and we make teaching easier for them.

All our research has been done by master’s graduates in environmental education who understand how our world works and understand how to express that to students. What we provide is online resources where teachers can go on to our website and literally download a learning activity or lesson and take it straight to the classroom.

The feedback we get from teachers when we do workshops is `I’ve just learned in 30 minutes what would take me 50 hours of research’. We understand teachers are time-poor. They always want to get fresh, updated new information and we update our site every day. We feel as though we’ve got the latest news, the newest technology, any changes or events happening around the world and we can incorporate that into our lessons. So it really has to be accepted by the teachers, and then the step on from them is by the students.

MS: When you say you are non-political, you are also saying that it is very much based on research and science. Are you concerned that the mainstream media is still giving climate-change sceptics for example undue prominence when there is such a clear global consensus that the science is beyond reasonable doubt and compels action?

JK: It’s interesting, Michael. A lot of people ask me about that and I’ve thought about it a lot over the last few years and it depends if your outlook on the world is that of a doctor or from a lawyer’s perspective.

If you come from a doctor’s perspective, and you go and see your doctor and he says `Michael you’re carrying a bit of weight, your diet is no good, you’re smoking a bit too much and you’re drinking a bit too much and if you continue with these behaviours I can tell you there is a 92% chance that you’ll be dead within 10 years. You have two options; you can start changing your behaviours to extend you life or you can say no, stuff, it, I’ll just crash when I crash or I’ll go and see another doctor’. Most of us would take on the advice from the doctor and say hmmm, 92 per cent chance, that’s pretty serious. I’m going to go and have a think about how I conduct myself and make changes. Now a lawyer would say: ‘Listen, 92 per cent chance, well there is still a large 8 per cent of doubt around all of this; need to have beyond reasonable doubt, so I’ll go on with business as usual until I get 100 per cent certainty. I can’t accept 92 per cent’.

A lot of our politicians have got backgrounds as lawyers, not so many as doctors or scientists And I think a lot of us tend to say well here’s a particular argument, I’ve found three flaws in it so therefore the argument falls over. I really think your understanding of climate change says more about you, your view of the world and your political persuasions or your outlook on the world than it does about the science of climate change.

People talk about believing or not believing. That is rubbish. You either understand it or you choose not to understand it. That’s a really important difference and I’m reminded of the words of Upton Sinclair, the New York journalist from the turn of the last century, who said it is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. I think that’s the problem we are stuck with at the moment.

MS: Which is related to the first law of public policy, which is the pig with its snout deepest in the trough squeals loudest when you pull it out. There is a lot of vested interest in these debates. Do you think the media, the mainstream media, is presenting these debates and participating appropriately in change in the community and in education or do you think there is undue prominence given to some of scepticism?

JK: Media thrives on conflict. We all understand that. But I think sometimes we forget that. And I think tabloid media thrives on conflict more than most. We need to understand how the media operates. It is convenient to blame the media, but I also think that’s been going on for a long time, and whilst it might be inconvenient and a hindrance and a pain in the bum for those of us who are trying to say here’s what’s going on around the planet, trying to blame the media is not the solution.

The solution is getting out and getting active and getting involved. All around Australia, and all round the world for that matter, communities that are really starting to build up in their own right taking on some of the challenges around improving our natural environment.

They are helping each other to create action, whether it’s food gardens or composting, and in their own way taking steps towards a sustainable future. Now all our grandparents did this. They didn’t consider themselves greenies or left-wing crazies. They did it because it was the right, proper and sensible thing to do.

In our consumerist age we have got away from all that. We have lost track of connecting to our natural world. I meet farmers who would not consider themselves conservationist – you know, `fertilise the bush, bulldoze a greenie’ type of people. These are mates of mine and you go into their sheds they’ve got every piece of tin that has possibly been on the farm for last 40 years, they’ve got balls of twine, they capture their own water, they take care of their land because if they don’t, they bugger it and destroy their source of income.

They are planting trees, they’re looking after the land, they are nurturing and understanding of the natural world. They do it because it is the right thing to do, because it makes sense and because it is the right way to go.

MS: And it’s related, Jason, to something you said right at the outset, isn’t it? And that is what the carbon tax or pricing carbon is about; pricing externalities of behaviour. Do you find that kids just kind of get that concept?

JK: I tell you what they get the concept of, it’s responsibility. So we’re asking Australia’s 500 biggest polluters to take some responsibility for the pollution they create. And people say oh, it’s not pollution it’s life-giving carbon. When it rains too much, we call it a flood. We don’t just say too much rain. It’s a flood. And we have got too much carbon. It’s pollution. So let’s put that aside.

Kids understand responsibility. I talk to about 10,000 kids a year, going out to different schools around the country, mainly in Victoria, and I said to them do your parents talk to you about responsibility. And they say yes, they do. And I ask in particular relation to what. And they say manly our bedroom; putting things away, keeping things tidy, putting things were they should be, looking after our things so they last longer, not breaking things, sharing, looking after others. And I say yes well we need to start thinking about our whole planet as our bedroom and start looking after it.

For every tree we plant, we chop down 10. With the destruction of wetlands around the Murray Darling basin, 80 per cent of birds and 90 per cent of fish have disappeared. The destruction of mangroves, a breeding ground in estuaries, breeding grounds for lots of fish that live in the ocean and rivers and also birds and crabs and everything that goes on in between. So we’ve got a choice, we can continue to destroy or we can learn to change. The choice is ours.

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