Mark Bachelder (pictured) orchestrates the community calls for the Foundation for Safe Climate from his home in California, reaching out to the world.

I met Mark by chance and in an illustration of how small the world is, he and a recent guest on this podcast, Osprey Orielle Lake, know each other well.

Mark is interested in climate matters and sees much of the solution to the present dilemma to be found through conversation and during our chat, I alerted him to the six-week series being organized by the Melbourne-based Conversation at the Crossroads - "Ethics in Turbulent Times: How to Bring Society to Higher Ground".

Mark Carter (pictured) from Flight Free Australia was clearly the first person to call when it was announced that Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport would receive Federal Government cash to make the complex's third runway a reality.

A story in The Melbourne Age - "Melbourne Airport’s $3 billion third runway cleared for take-off" - told of this development.

Mark explains how his group draws inspiration and sustenance from the European organization, "Stay Grounded" and is affiliated with the locally-based group, "Climate Action Network Australia".

High-speed rail is an alternative to flying and one view can be read in an article on The Conversation by Phillip Laird, "High-speed rail plans may finally end Australia’s 40-year wait to get on board".

The Geelong-based, "The Sustainable Hour" talked with Mark earlier in the year and this episode of "Climate Conversations" includes the audio from that interview, which happened before the confirmation announcement of the the third runway.

Shepparton's Ray Russell (pictured) and his Mooroopna business partner, Marty Rogers, built their first electric bike, "The Phantom" in 1987.

Building the bike was, in a sense, the easy part, bringing changes to Victorian State Government road rules was truly the hard part - it took months and months of dedicated lobbying by many people, including a former CEO of Victoria's Bicycle Network, Harry Barber.

Ray and Marty produced 80 Phantoms and one is presently on show in Shepparton's "Museum of Vehicle Evolution (MOVE)".

Ray, who is still enthusiastic about electric bikes, and recently graduated to a carbon fibre mountain bike, believes it is such things as mountain bikes with their go-anywhere capacity that can reshape human movement in Shepparton.