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| Human energy was the key to feeding the nation when the oil ran out. |
However, rather than piece together numbers that will sustain the city, they have really picked apart the city’s future.
True, if tomorrow is to be like yesterday, then the budget, as presented recently, is what is needed.Tomorrow, though, will not be like yesterday as the financial and physical infrastructure of the world, and by implication Greater Shepparton, is deteriorating and teetering on collapse.
Rather than budget for the creation of a city that allows for what contemporary society understands as growth, we should be budgeting for the creation of a resilient city, a city that will have the social and physical infrastructure that allows it to survive the unfolding shocks of the coming decades.
The Global Financial Crisis of a few years ago was little more than a curtain raiser to what we will see when the world exhausts its oil reserves and the chaos embedded in climate change begins to impact on the wellbeing of communities around the world.
Life’s fundamental needs – food, water and shelter – will become a priority and only those supported by a strong and resourceful community; a community in which those in charge have allowed for those impending difficulties, budgeted for and created a resilient infrastructure.
Our council should be re-zoning inner-city areas to encourage in-fill development to allow for residential living in the heart of the city and with it the resurgence of a market-like structure in the central business district so that most everything important to day-to-day living is within easy walking or cycling distance.
Just as was the case in Cuba in the 90s when, for multiple political reasons, its supply of oil vanished, food become such a priority that within a few years cities were growing, within their boundaries, some 70 per cent of their vegetables.
The dilemma was sprung upon the Cubans, but it is something about which we are aware and so our council should be encouraging all to grow what food they can and, beyond that, establishing community gardens at strategic places throughout the city, so creating neighbourhood resilience.
It should be promoting, and through zoning make possible, the creation of living areas in, around or on commercial premises meaning people can live close to their work, making travel by motor vehicle, which will ultimately be difficult, unnecessary.
The ride from here to the end of oil is going to be bumpy, but with the finish line in sight, each of us, and particularly our local council, needs to do what we can to prepare for coming, and certain, difficult social and ideological changes.
