Backlash
real farmers, real food
Social calendar not fully booked up for the weekend? Consider taking a 12.5km stroll on the beach from Byron Bay to Brunswick Heads – it’s not compulsory to go the whole way – with the lovely COREM crew on Saturday May 28. Get all the details and register for the walk at corem. org.au. Money raised will go to COREM’s Revolving Community Energy Fund to complete projects such as the Mullumbimby Showgrounds solar PV installation. Q Q Q Q
Byron’s freshest produce direct from the growers BYRON BAY
Thursday 8am – 11am Butler St Reserve
BANGALOW
Saturday 8am – 11am Behind Hotel
This week is your chance to bring back all those overdue library books you’ve been hoarding and not incur a fine. Richmond Tweed Regional Library is waiving overdue library fees for one week only to celebrate Library and Information Week (May 23–29). The library’s community engagement coordinator Suzy Arthur-Smith says the amnesty is ‘an act of kindness’ in a week dedicated to celebrating the joy that reading brings to people’s lives. And if you’re not yet familiar with the library’s services, which include online borrowing, go to rtrl.nsw.gov.au. Q Q Q Q
Public consultation on the NSW government’s controversial biodiversity law changes got only one airing on the north coast, and that was at Coffs Harbour. According to the Nature Conservation Council, the changes will ‘add extinction pressure to the state’s 999 threatened animal and plant species by accelerating land clearing, release millions of tonnes of carbon pollution into the atmosphere by increasing land clearing’ and ‘undermine federal government programs
that pay farmers millions to retain bushland’, among other detrimental impacts. Public submissions close on June 28; see the detail at https://www. landmanagement.nsw.gov. au/have-your-say.
the hair & makeup studio
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The damage to professional journalism continues, with the ABC’s helpful Fact Check unit to be axed, reportedly with 12 news positions being made redundant. It seems an extraordinary, if not suspicious, management decision at the start of a federal election campaign when the public needs all the help it can get in working out which politicians are telling porkies. Q Q Q Q
And in this week’s follow-on from our 400ppm page last week we offer: ‘The global community is badly prepared for a rapid increase in climate change-related natural disasters that by 2050 will put 1.3 billion people at risk, according to the World Bank. Urging better planning of cities before it was too late, a report published on Monday from a Bank-run body that focuses on disaster mitigation, said assets worth $158 trillion – double the total annual output of the global economy – would be in jeopardy by 2050 without preventive action.’ Yet another wake-up call. See a full report at http://bit.ly/ WB158tn
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BYRON BAY
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A tip of the lid to Colin Cook for introducing us to Place http://place.trust.org, the site which ‘explores the complex social, economic and political effects of inadequate land rights’ and also looks at projects on the ground throughout the world working to solve the inequities.
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Ph 6688 4480 888solartek.com.au 48 May 25, 2016 The Byron Shire Echo
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