This time of year can bring with it a sense of urgency, a yearning to put things right; being present with our kids, keeping in touch with friends, walking more, eating less, breathing deeper, being better….

I don’t know what the average use-by-date of a New Year resolution is, but going by my own history Labour Day seems to be a pretty good guide.

These feelings of inability to change also applies to the Earth; the floods, the fires before them, the bleaching of the Barrier Reef – the seemingly impossible task of shifting the course we are on make it easy to fall into a funk.

But this time of year also allows for time to pull back and see what has changed over not 12 months but decades.

When I was born our commercial whaling industry had hunted whales almost to extinction, wetlands were still being drained to make way for new farmland, we’d created a hole in the ozone layer with CFC’s, urban water tanks were illegal and almost every chook egg was laid by a hen in a cage.

Concepts such as conservation, recycling, solar power, organics, animal welfare, repairing things were treated with suspicion while notions such as climate change, circular economy, Indigenous thinking and regenerative agriculture practically didn’t exist.

In some parts of this state just owning to environmental beliefs was enough to get you beaten up.

Month to month the arc of our collective Earth journey can be as imperceptible as the curve of our planet itself – but pull back over decades and we reveal that we have turned in a such a wide circle that sometimes it’s hard to see how much we have changed.

This year;

– there were more whales migrating up and down the East Coast than in the past hundred

– CFC’s have been gone so long they’re as unfamiliar to my kids as telephone books

– in ever increasing numbers we seek out Indigenous ways of being and connection to country

– our take-up of roof-top solar in Australia is the highest per-capita in the world

– we have more land under regenerative farmland than any other country

– our wetlands are not only protected but are being recreated and repaired

– when I looked around my supermarket, I couldn’t find a single box of caged eggs

Over the last 40 years CERES, Australia’s largest environmental educator, has been central to changing this arc of our Earth story.

Since 1982 the 1.5 million students who have come to CERES and the many, many more who have learned with CERES in their own schools have become leaders in their homes, schools, farms, businesses and parliaments.

And while our personal resolutions may fall by the wayside if we pull back and see the changing arc of our collective Earth story there is much to hope for.

With our heads, hands and hearts we welcome you back to CERES in 2023.

Have a great week

Chris

Fair Food supports regenerative farmers and makers and proudly gives 100% of our profits (over $2 million so far) to CERES and our School for Nature and Climate.

Fair Food’s first deliveries for 2023 begin this Thursday January 5th