The only thing I remember learning about in school relating to the environment is rocks. That's it. Rocks and minerals. Now I'm sure rocks and minerals are important, but these days there are certainly more important things that kids should be learning in school about the environment. I want kids to graduate from high school (and middle school and grade school) understanding what global warming is, understanding why conservation is important, and believing that they can make a difference on this planet. This issue is so important to me because, more than anything, I believe that environmental literacy in children will transform the environmental movement in the future. It's simple; as more people understand the problems, making large-scale changes just might be easier.

As everyone watches the cane toad's advance into the Great Lakes with baited breath (along with a lot of lobbying, campaigning and frustration), here in Western Australia we have been watching cane toads advance to our state for years. This toad was purposely introduced in the 1930s to control the French's cane beetle that threatened sugar cane crops, and it has been spreading across the country ever since. Cane toads are poisonous, harming native wildlife by eating small animals and poisoning the larger animals that try to eat them.

In addition to water diversions, Australia and the Great Lakes region share another challenge: state disunity. In both the US and Australia, state disunity has prevented the appropriate and timely actions and policies required to protect our major freshwater sources. Recently, some of the most notable points of contention between the Great Lakes states are in regard to wind farms, the Asian carp, or water diversions.

Australia is the driest continent on Earth. So what can we possibly have in common with the water-rich Great Lakes states? Water diversions, for one thing.

Here in Western Australia, we have been piping water out of Perth to the Goldfields since the end of the 19th century. The Golden Pipeline, a 560 km aboveground drinking water pipeline, was an amazing feat of engineering and the reason that Australia was able to have a gold boom at all. In fact, our ingenuity with water (along with our abundant supply of minerals) is one reason this dry country is able to thrive.

Together, Budweiser and Great Lakes Forever have been offering the Great Lakes Forever Photo Contest for the past four years. Each year the grand prize winning photo from the amateur and professional divisions is placed on Budweiser's Great Lakes beer coasters. Last year, the winning photos were printed on more than 120,000 beer coasters that were distributed throughout the Great Lakes region also feature fun facts and actions people can take to protect the Lakes. The contest is a unique partnership between one of the world's largest beer makers and a regional non-profit organization working to protect the Great Lakes.

The Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation is a non-profit organization formed in December of 2000 with the primary goal to conserve, preserve, and protect Michigan’s water, as well as the public trust of those waters.