When Australia was first colonised, the invaders brought with them their values and attitudes from ‘back home’. They took no account of facts later revealed about Australia’s landscape, soils, flora and fauna, but continued to import familiar varieties into unsuitable conditions.
We need to turn Australia on its head! We also need to recognise the value of caring for land, practiced by our First Nations.
You do not need to clear land to graze cattle and sheep for meat (and profit) when kangaroo meat tastes like a cross between venison and buffalo. In actual fact, the extent to which, world-wide, we rape the earth to make a profit while wasting food on an unimaginable scale, it is small wonder the world is fighting back!
We have vast areas of desert in Australia where no one can live and nothing grows. Yet, by developing solar farms, we could harvest the sunshine! Regular recharging stations, with small shopping centre facilities, could mean that electric cars could travel long distances, recharging both vehicle and body at intervals.
With all its sunshine, supplemented by wind power in suitable locations and backed up by batteries, Australia could be a regular powerhouse with not a plume of smoke in sight.
The other thing which Australia overdoes is re-inventing the wheel. Suitable research of overseas developments would enable us to develop much more effective recycling processes.
We have two really major issues yet to be dealt with.
As a matter of urgency, we must deal with our polluting waste before the damage done destroys habitat and its inhabitants. This needs instant attention.
But, simultaneously, we need to stop manufacturers from creating the waste that is generated through all the cardboard, polystyrene, plastic etc involved in packaging goods. When the end result of a process is to destroy life then it can hardly be classified as a convenience.
As a child in the UK, I remember biscuits and sweets being weighed in the scales and tipped in a paper bag. The shopkeeper used a scoop but wore no plastic gloves and we all survived! Sometimes we go overboard with cleanliness.
(An aside: – I remember a very cute cartoon by Mabel Lucie Atwell which hung on our bathroom wall in my childhood. It depicted a little girl with extremely grubby knees, standing with a sponge and soap in a bowl of water! The caption read: “Mother says cleanliness is next to godliness, but I say it is next to impossible!”)
Humour notwithstanding – it seems ironic that in our endeavours to save lives, we run the risk of destroying them.
In the near future I shall be meeting up with a group of like-minded people in my locality to sort out a program to research developments elsewhere which are dealing effectively with waste recycling, which, in turn, we could then recommend to our Environmental Protection Authority for discussion and implementation by government.
If anyone in your immediate family is still under 20, then you surely have a personal interest in ensuring that they will be able to survive in a world affected by global warming. Each group that starts working in this way could start a snowball effect – which we desperately need!
To me, it seems that the people whom we have elected, particularly those in Canberra, have more interest in retaining power and lining their own pockets than in ensuring a future for our children. We have to force them to take action – and, together, we can do it!
We do not need to go to the bloody lengths of the French Revolution! But we most certainly do need to let all out governments know that they are far from doing the right thing by us – and make them take notice!
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The thing about the Coalition is they don’t take long to re-group. Remember their plumping for the widely-distrusted if not loathed Turnbull within their own ranks as a stop-gap until Minchin and his cronies sorted themselves out? Then they sucked the foolish narcissist into the transparently-concocted ‘utegate’ and the dopey ‘Looney Toons’-named Godwin Grech as a fall guy to oust Turnbull?
As far as they are concerned, elections are an aberration. Indeed, the undoubtedly evil Dutton said as much.
What is it- ‘eternal vigilance?’ That’s hard to exercise with a MSM as rancid as ours. The only hope the MOR has to correct our malaise is a wholesale pogrom, spiteful if necessary, by the ALP.
Good luck with your group. Suggest you set up a facebook page to share your findings. If you are not sure what this would look like I recommend the canwin page (climate action now Wingecarribee) as one the spreads a lot of information.
A major problem for Australia since colinisation is the introduction of hoofed animals e.g. cattle,sheep,horses and goats. These animals have ripped up Australia’s perilously thin top soil ( similar to the SCG after the rugby game the other night), All indigenous animals to Australia have padded feet thus ensuring that the top soil is not ripped up and blown away. Less and less good top soil make it more and more difficult to crop and graze. Australia’s meat of choice should be kangaroo,emu or any other soft padded animal e.g. camel.
ABC News had a story this week about the ash left from burning coal and the pollution it was causing to water. Then a potential solution, making building blocks that were cheaper and lighter than concrete but the company couldn’t sell them. There must be a role for government in both stopping the pollution and supporting alternative uses. Like turning old tyres into road surfacing. So many innovative solutions to waste control but gutless governments won’t act. Good luck RJ
We are told, at the moment, that recycling is not commercially viable. In many cases, it is cheaper to make new things. Now if you were going to subsidise something under the grandiose title Climate Solutions Fund, would you choose new coal-fired power or would you subsidise/facilitate the reduce/reuse/recycle industry?
When our National Curriculum was reviewed in 2014, Kevin Donnelly said that including sustainability as a cross-curriculum focus was “bloating” the curriculum and crowding out more important things like “A greater focus on Western civilisation and Australia’s Judeo-Christian heritage in the history curriculum” and “was impacting on the time available for religious schools to imbue the curriculum with their own values and beliefs.”
He also recommended that “Four of the “general capabilities” – critical and creative thinking, personal and social capability, ethical understanding and intercultural understanding –should no longer be taught across the whole curriculum.”
Educating our children to be socially and environmentally responsible and fostering critical thing and creativity must return as a priority.
On a positive note, my daughter, who is an early childhood teacher, went to Sydney yesterday to see how another pre-school was incorporating sustainability. She said they had a pile of stuff, literally including the kitchen sink, and they looked at how those things could be repurposed for use in the centre eg as a water play area or to grow plants in or whatever. (I didn’t get a chance to ask her more about it yet).
Our kids are already getting active about demanding we adults do better. Our schools are a great place to encourage their interest.
I very much admire your pro-active approach Rosemary. May you continue to inspire others.
Uhm … RosemaryJ36: “The other thing which Australia overdoes is re-inventing the wheel. Suitable research of overseas developments would enable us to develop much more effective recycling processes.”
This statement ignores the historical fact that Australians have been in the forefront of inventions for the past 230 years. We led agricultural machination into the 20th century with Mackay Harvesters, Howard Agricultural Machines and others. We led many medical research ventures into human health, the list is only matched by the number of vocations that are chosen.
The present adult sensitivity to environmental health was developed in school programmes of the 60s, 70s & 80s because “the kids were the future”. Nothing has changed.
@A J O’Grady: You have overlooked the most damaging species; the meddled headed Homo sapiens agriculturalisatae who thinks making $2 per acre per year while creating $20 per acre per year environmental damage is good profit because they will not have to foot the rehabilitation costs. A bit like MDB water theft is good practice because SW Qld and NW NSW broad acre farmers get the first and only use of available MDB water flows.
@RomeoCharlie29: A very sensible idea that will be filed in Canberra and completely forgotten by politicians and bureaucrats alike who are more concerned with plundering the various allowances available to politicians and public servants.
Yes, make them take notice!
The actions of young climate activists might help:
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-s-young-climate-activists-to-strike-again-and-people-are-listening?cx_navSource=related-side-cx#cxrecs_s
All music to my ears except the clanger appealing to people with someone in their family under 20 they’d be concerned for, in order to be interested in saving the planet. To me that’s just self interest in another guise. It is possible to not want to see the whole thing destroyed and to feel affected and to want to weep at every species that goes under – to be horrified at the levels of consumption and waste, even if a person has no family at all.
New England Cocky, It is not all Homo sapiens that have caused the problems that afflict Australia. Aborigines had good sense and good planning that was sustainable and sensitive to managing and working with nature.The Colinisers and their ilk today are only interested in short term profit, greed and corruption. One has only to look at the mining industry and how they want to pass on mitigation costs onto taxpayers in their race to privatise profits and socialise losses.
King 1394 – thank you for the very sensible tip.
Romeo Charlie 29 – thanks – I did see the article about that and it is another for the list of what can be usefully recycled.
Kaye – we are always hearing about the economy – doing well or not – and we hear loads about the GDP. But the whole point of having a government supervising the economy is that it is supposedly intended to be performing for our benefit – and we know how much truth there is in that! At this point in time it would be suicide NOT to spend money on slowing, stopping, reversing global warming. If we fail to do that, then we can forget about commercial viability because commerce won’r have any customers! If we were surgeons, we would be amputating a limb to stop gangrene from spreading to the whole body!
Yvonne Robertson – if we do not use people’s self interest we will self destruct! ANY lever that motivates people to take effective action NOW has to be pulled!
New England Cocky – One of the worst things this government has done has been to cut the wings of the CSIRO. It needs to be boosted 200% and put to work again – but not all changes are scientific. During WWII in the UK, we recycled everything. It was ingrained in us and was our civilian continuing contribution to the war effort. We now need to engender a similar attitude – particularly in developed countries addicted to the throwaway approach to life. EVERYONE needs to think twice about disposing of ANYTHING, replacing ANYTHING and WASTING ANYTHING.
It never ends. We are mugs.
https://www.perthnow.com.au/politics/state-politics/alleged-corrupt-public-servant-organised-tokyo-bathhouse-visit-for-liberal-mps-ng-b881133390z