Returning to a business as usual paradigm is understandable, but it is a lost opportunity.
Australians should work together to ensure their fellows are safe and not alienated from comforts that bring contentment and allows a worthwhile contribution, but rather than rebuild processes and infrastructure that worsened the difficulty, we should be exploring and investing in a strikingly different way of living.
Most of us, including me, have been seduced by the bounty we enjoy in this modern life, a way of life funded by the consumption of what those who follow should inherit.
So rather than spending with enthusiasm to re-build a life dependent on practices known to worsen climate change, that money should be directed at understanding a different way of living.
Australia already has many voluntarily set up Transition Towns organizations, groups that are working to prepare their communities to live and flourish in a low-energy future, and they, and their communities, would benefit greatly from Federal Government recognition and funding.
Resilience is an idea often discussed at such groups and it is essential those presently dealing with the aftermath of floods understand that concept.
Transition groups, we have one in Tatura (about 18km east of Shepparton in Northern Victoria), explore how we can live a fulfilling and contented life in a future that is missing many of things now considered normal.
Rather than simply return to a life as it was, Queensland and Victorian people affected by the floods, along with the broader population, need to re-imagine life and apply cash from the levy to re-engineer of life.
The starting point in any community re-building process is equality, something many would argue is impossible to achieve, but that error in thinking doesn’t devalue its pursuit as research illustrates equality positively impacts on the poorest to the wealthiest.
This levy is an opportunity to help communities become resistant to similar future difficulties and resilient enough to survive them should they happen again, something climate change makes almost certain.
