In this issue:

1. Quick [ASK]
2. Welcome and announcements
3. Other people's activities coming up
4. Denial and deceit
5. Update your diary
6. Books and materials you can use
7. Quotes that mean something

1. Quick [ASK]
A key principle when managing holistically is the assumption that ones decisions and actions could be wrong. For more than thirty years now there have been suggestions - based on both science and reason - that we have a problem, and that it has a name: human induced global climate change. As individuals, states and nations, even if the science was not supporting the view that a problem exists right now, morally we must surely conclude that pumping CO2 and other gases into the atmosphere could be causing a problem, and be trying to prevent it.

2. Welcome and announcements
This is the first [ASK] for several months, and I thank you for your patience. Much has been going on.

I participated as a candidate in the NSW election last weekend, as a member of the Climate Change Coalition, led by Patrice Newell. We were what the name says, a coalition of 21 independent candidates (we are NOT a registered political party) seeking to bring the issue of climate change 'front and centre'.

We didn't do too well at the ballot box, but more people are now aware that there is a problem. At least we tried!

3. Other people's activities coming up
Sally Fallon's Australian Tour, May and June in most states
Vicky Poulter (Weston A. Price Foundation) tells me that author Sally Fallon (Nourishing Traditions and a number of other books) will be touring in May/June. Find out more about the real benefits of traditional foods - grass fed meat and milk products, and many more natural and traditional foods. For details go to the Weston A Price site.

Steps to Sustainability Conference, 26-27 June in NZ
John King, Holistic Management CE in NZ is organising the annual NZ conference, to be held in Timaru and local districts. The program will be available shortly. It will include farm tours and outstanding speakers. Details will soon be on our web site.

Call Suzie on 0425 327 577 or email her if you are be interested in being part of a group representing Australia at this excellent conference program.

As you know, when it comes to entrepreneurship, the Kiwis tend to show us a clean pair of heels - there is lot's to learn over there!

Holistic Management International's Gathering, Albuquerque, New Mexico - November 1 to 4, 2007
This will be an absolutely fantastic event. Both Joel Salatin (Salad Bar Beef) and Temple Grandin (the lady who does incredible things with stock handling) are booked to speak. Again, expressions of interest now would be good. Call Suzie on 0425 327 577 or email her.

The best holistic managers in the world will all be in the one room, and I cannot rate this event highly enough.

4. Denial and deceipt
A couple of weeks ago Erin Brokovich, one of the few people in the world to ever have a major Hollywood movie named after her [Erin Brokovich, released in 2000], was in Australia. She was invited to Australia by the "Climate Change Coalition" a group of 21 non-aligned independents at last weekend's state election, who share the view that human induced global climate change is the issue that confronts us all from here on, in.

Erin addressed more than 650 people at a dinner at the Convention Centre, Darling Harbour. Her message to us was very simple. She reminded us that when evidence exists that there is a problem, denying that evidence may exist is a form of deceit. "Deceit", she said, "affects us all. It robs us of information." In my view it is even more viscious than that: deceit robs us of choice, and that is unpardonable. NB: Denial that evidence might exist is different to disagreement about the meaning of the evidence. It is a human right to disagree about that.

A key principle when managing holistically is the assumption that ones decisions and actions could be wrong. For more than thirty years now there have been suggestions - based on both science and reason - that we have a problem, and that it has a name: human induced global climate change. As individuals, states and nations, even if the science was not supporting the view that a problem exists right now, morally we must surely conclude that pumping CO2 and other gases into the atmosphere could be causing a problem, and we should be trying to prevent it.

My country, I am sad to say, has taken the view that because we alone cannot solve the problem, we should deny the problem until the big players come into line. In the process we have been deceived most dreadfully. At its heart this is a moral issue, and as a nation we have been immoral.

You might accuse me of hopping on to a bandwaggon for political expediency - Michael Duffy wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald the other day that I am one of those conveniently hopping aboard the "global carbon train" - but I would argue that is plain wrong. Here's why: In 1994, at my very first meeting with Allan Savory he looked me in the eye and said, "Human induced global climate change will be with us till the end. Either we will defeat it, or it will take our entire civilisation out."

Brian Marshall and I immediately took the cue, and tried to do something about it. In 1995 we were negotiating the Copeton Dam Learning Site at Inverell. On the table was a formal proposal that Copeton be part of an international three-site trial (Copeton, Dimbangombe in Zimbabwe and a site in the USA). The trial was to be conducted by the Sandia Laboratories for the express purpose of gathering data on sequestration of CO2 in animal maintained grasslands. Sandia labs has a history of big science - they developed the 'A bomb' for the US government during WW-II, so this was a world class science project.

I am sure it will come as no surprise to you if I report that the proposal was rejected by senior state bureaucrats on behalf of their government. This was my first brush with denial. It was actually deceit because it did rob us all of vital information about human induced global climate change. My point is, I have been involved in reversing climate change for 12 years, and even so, that is twenty years less than Al Gore and Allan Savory, and many others. I care about this problem, and I am excited by the opportunity it presents.

What is the problem?
In my view there are two distinct parts to human induced global climate change. On the one hand we have to stop inducing it. The 'problem' is partly an attitudinal one - we must decide we have a problem, and partly a technical one: we have to modify millions of aspects of our technolgies so that less and less CO2 is actually emitted. I'd be willing to wager that if our federal government were to take the situation seriously and placed our country on a war footing, and gave it the necessary resources, we would have the future emissions side of the problem licked within five or six years.

The big question is: what do we do with the so called 'legacy loadings' of CO2 - the material that humans have already placed up there in the atmosphere? If we already have a global problem then it is the legacy loadings that are causing it, not future emissions!

It pays to analyse the problem for a minute. Hundreds of millions of years ago a vast quantity of vegetation was created through the photosynthetic process - a biological process still used by nature and harnessed by farmers every day to grow crops and grass. The earths CO2 loads were converted into carbon which was safely stored deep in the earth as coal, oil and gas, and into oxygen which was released into the atmosphere for us to breathe. In recent years we have re-released vast quantities of the stored carbon to again become atmospheric CO2. The wheel has gone full circle.

Right now there is NO known (or envisaged) technology available to recapture the vagrant CO2 released during the industrial era, or to remove the material released by farmers ploughing and burning their land. We have only one tool to remove the legacy loads, the biological tool called photosynthesis.

We HAVE to invoke the grasslands of the world in order to address the problem, as the problem is too big for forests alone. Here is the fun bit: most of the grasslands of the world are brittle-tending and to sustain them we will by necessity involve vast numbers of managed, grass-eating animals. If we cannot consume the meat, wool and other products these animals traditionally produce for profit then the world will have to pay land managers to run the animals for the single purpose of sequestering soil carbon.

Here is a change of paradigm! It is conceivable that once again vast numbers of animals will be born, live, work and die on the land - and never once be sold for what we know as their traditional products.

Exciting times, folks!

5. Update your Diary
BOOK NOW FOR: Teleconferences scheduled in the next little while. They are each 'no-charge' and feature outstanding speakers from within our movement.

April 17 (April 16 in the USA)
Dr Mark Dangerfield discusses ways that are being developed to measure baseline carbon levels on family farms.
For more details and to book go to teleconferences

You can download the audio of previous Teleconferences from the Gym site. Go to sound tracks

6. Books and Materials you can use
"The Omnivores Dilemma" ISBN 0-7475-8675-6
Michael Pollan

Perhaps the most exquisitely written book I have ever read. Fantastic! Michael Pollan is a journalist with the New York Times Magazine. This book traces four meals from the ground up - an industrial meal (McDonalds), an organic meal, a meal produced on Joel Salatin's propertry, and a meal hunted and gathered by the author.

The book gives you an insight to the US industrial agriculture model, and how it controls prices in all our countries. As part of his research Pollan purchased and followed his own steer through the production chain, and in doing so gained much knowledge. The section on the organic meal looks at the large scale organic industry in California, and provokes considerable thought about where the organic movement is now, and where it is going.

The section on Joel Salatin is ever so revealing. Joel is always excellent at revealing what he wants to disclose of himself, and he excites many people in the process. Pollan shows that he understands the real Joel Salatin even better than Salatin understands himself, and it is all good stuff. The final section is terrific, very much the story of the boy from the city learning, as an older man, how to shoot the pig, gather the mushrooms and berries, and with his own hands prepare and cook a wonderful meal.

By the way:
Most books we recommend are available at The Book Connection in Dubbo, NSW
Ph: 02 6882 3311 Fax: 02 6882 3311 or email them
(Also ask David Pankhurst about their Mail Order Catalogue - it is terrific)
or
Scorpio Books in Christchurch, NZ
Ph: 03 379 2882 Fax: 03 379 2886 or email them
PS: You may need to reserve your order for the next printing, as Dave Pankhurst tells me the current printing is geting hard to find.

EXTRA
Trees and carbon credits:
My sister, Anna Connery E-mail her here has for sale 6,600 tree seedlings, comprising
Eucalyptus punctata - 600 well grown seedlings ready for planting, 1,000 smaller seedlings ready by early April. Total 1,600
Eucalyptus nobilis - 1,960 well grown seedlings ready for planting.
Eucalyptus viminalis - 2,040 well grown seedlings ready for planting.
Acacia melanoxylon - 1,000 well grown seedlings ready for planting.
Total for 4 species: 6,600

The trees are located at Merriwa, NSW. Anna can give you exact location (provenance) of the seed sources for each species, and happy to talk pricing. Her phone number is (02) 9907 6022

7. Quotes that mean something
"There is no traffic jam in the extra mile."
--source unknown

"One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do."
--Henry Ford

"Maintaining a complicated life is a great way to avoid changing it."
-- Elaine St. James

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