Hello Legends :)

I’m Sara, my nickname is Fuckgiver - I’m addicted to play, but I’m pretty allergic to rules.

I ended up with this nickname after I had an existential crisis - which resulted in me accidentally starting a global movement that impacted about 10,000 people in 30 countries over 24 hours.

This accidental movement was the result of a series of questions I asked myself about what it means to be human, which you might like to explore here.

I love questions and getting really curious about how things work. My least favourite question is “what do you do?”

A few days ago, someone introduced me as an “impactivist” and I thought that was pretty interesting.

At first, I thought WTF does that even mean?

I asked myself why someone would introduce me like this - and then it kind of hit me…

Maybe that’s exactly “what” I am (for now anyways).

When I’m not out in the wild playing, or on some mermaid inspired adventure - I spend most of my time geeking out, observing numbers, patterns and systems, trying to understand what is happening and how we can co-create the future we actually want on this planet.

And to be honest, when we look at the pure numbers around our collective consumption and waste production, we all know it isn’t awesome and that we need to design new systems, so we can evolve and design ourselves out of this mess.

But that’s not very inspiring is it?

It actually messed me up real good for a long while, until I decided life is a game we are all playing, where the purpose of life, is simply to be life - and to see how much positive impact we could possibly have.

Van Life brings together all of these things for me - low impact living, combined with bringing play and positive impact throughout our journeys. We understand and are mindful that we have an impact on the planet and the environment by driving our vans to and from destinations and this is discussed in comparison to Adani later in this article.

So, normally I spend my time creating solutions for the world - instead of focusing on problems.

But something happened last week, which is so urgent and fucked - and needs to be avoided at all costs for the sake of one of the most magical places on the planet.

So here’s what’s up:

Last week the Environment Minister Melissa Price approved the groundwater plans for The Carmichael Adani Coal Mine.

Haven’t heard of it?

Here’s the low-down:

It if it goes ahead, it will be the biggest coal mine in Australia and over the lifetime of the mine, will add 4.6 BILLION tonnes of carbon into our atmosphere.

Additionally, we are well into the first year of the 12 years to doomsday countdown the IPCC released -urging us to change our current trajectory and to be honest, we haven't done a whole lot yet!

Further recommendations include keeping 80-90% of fossil fuels in the ground, which obviously means, no more coal mines and no more oil or gas mines!

And you know what? I’m confused because we have awesome technology like solar which is now cheaper than energy from fossil fuels. So now it’s not just an environmental argument, because it literally doesn’t make financial sense to build anymore coal mines.

The thought of the Adani mine being one step closer to going ahead is just ludicrous. But the bit that gets me right in the gut, is that this proposed mine is adjacent to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef system and World Heritage Site.

Random. But did you know The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms and that up to 85% of our oxygen is produced by marine plants?

So, basically if we want to be able to breathe and play in magical places like this:

We need our political leaders to stop saying things like this:

Ok, so let's change gears, and jump into solution mode - because as one of my favourite environmental heroes, Bob Brown, would say:

“don’t get depressed, get active”

So what else do we know?

53.5% of Australin’s don’t think the mine should go ahead.

We also know there is about 30.5 % of people still unaware of the mine or open to making comment on it.

So let’s start by changing that.

After my last hang with Bob Brown, I asked him how he was successful in saving the Franklin River in the 80’s and he said it was won by raising the awareness of what was happening and then those aware people using their voices.

We are preconditioned to believe that we are just one person, and that we can’t change the world - but the reality is we are changing the world every moment, each and every one of us is - and collectively that change can be exponential and an unstoppable force of nature (because guess what, we are nature).

So legends, it's time to use our voices - to show up - to be loud - to not let the likes of a greedy few make corrupt and destructive choices that will impact our collective future.

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So, what can you do?

Join the Bob Brown Convoy from Melbourne, which will then lead up the east coast of Australia to the Galilee Area (you can come just for a day or the entire time).
Make sure everyone you know, knows about #StopAdani
Talk to all the politicians about this as we lead up to the Australia Federal Election and let's make this a #ClimateElection
Find your local action groups and collaborate.

Thanks for the read legends - I believe time, attention and love are our only real currencies and I appreciate you spending yours on this article and for helping to protect our magical home. Watch a little clip to learn more below.

PS. Not sure about burning fossil fuels to convoy up the coast? The estimated impact of 2000 cars travelling 8000km for the convoy is approximately 2-5k tonnes of CO2eq. The impact of the mine going ahead is 4.6 BILLION tonnes of CO2eq. So the impact of the drive compared to the anticipated impact of the mine is well worth the effort - to avoid the loss of The Great Barrier Reef, the health of our planet, ourselves and most importantly our future generations.

Come on a Convoy with me to Save our Australian Reef