Considering life retrospectively

The dynamics of a drought can only be understood retrospectively.

Floods - are they the opening
gambit in the next drought?

What happened throughout the Goulburn Valley in the past few days is hugely different, but it too can only be understood retrospectively.

People throughout the area, particularly those living in Tallygaroopna and Congupna, wrestled with an excess of water, the reverse side of the drought coin.

Accurately pinpointing the beginning of the recent south-eastern Australian decade-long drought never happened, but had we understood that, our communities would have been able to avoid the worst of the difficulties.

Knowing a decade with scarce water supplies was about to unfold, we would have planned and conserved our resource, easing practical difficulties and ensured people were psychologically prepared for the certain changes in their lives.

Drought, however, is remote from the minds of those presently wrestling with the outcome of record rains, filling sandbags and doing what they can to protect their property from rising water.

Considering the reality that we never really know when a drought has started – strangely, considered in retrospect, this could be the start of another – how do we know whether or not the flooding of late should be attributed to changes in our climate brought on by human activities.

The climate change doubters, or skeptics, will rush to the barriers declaring recent record rains were simply cyclical and little more than nature doing what nature does, while the global warming adherents will argue the event fits exactly with scenarios predicted by the climate scientists.

So while knee-deep in water, do we mark this as the beginning of a drought; a predictable and understood cyclical event; or is it evidence of human-induced climate change?

It is the latter argument that is beyond question and, yes, it may well be the beginning of another decade long drought and, no, it is not a predictable and understandable cyclical event.

Had it been predictable and understandable, the events that filled the pages of this newspaper in recent times could have been avoided.

Climate change is subtle and silent and remains that way until we experience events such as those of the past few days, but it is something which we can neither touch nor see.

So while we need to band together and support all those troubled by the floods, what is even more important is that entire communities need to gather and consider their response to a demonstrably changing climate.

Dr Cameron Hepburn

Our behaviour is the root of the trouble and it was only on Thursday that a visiting professor, Dr Cameron Hepburn told nearly 300 people at a Melbourne lecture that about half the complications leading to climate change would be eradicated if we stopped subsidizing technologies dependent on fossil fuels.

The saved money, he suggested, could then be used on a small suite of climate change abatement policies to support Australia’s carbon tax.

Life looked at through the rear view mirror is easily understood, but Dr Hepburn, like us, does not have one and so is eager to understand future workable climate change abatement processes.

Our narrative around which Australia has been built is lost, or distorted

Those who gather in Canberra to govern our country have lost, or grossly distorted, the narrative around which modern Australia is built

Canberra's Parliament 
House seems to be built
 on pointless rhetoric that
appears to have little
to do with the effective
 management of the
Australia.

Pointless rhetoric of our federal politicians is rarely about the effective management of the country rather, it is more about discrediting those who have a different political view.

The 24-hour news cycle has its upside, but the reverse of that is the seemingly silly almost minute-by-minute examination of the lives of politicians, celebrities and their ilk.

Living under the heat of such a fierce spotlight and trapped by public expectations of a faultless performance, our politicians are left without time to reflect, consider and dare not demonstrate any apparent weakness by admitting that they are unsure or simply do not know the answer.

We, the polity, are to blame for that.

Australia, as does the rest of the world, faces pressing problems with the most serious, and the most unyielding, being human induced climate change that will bring unstoppable transformations to our lives demanding that any worthwhile response be bi-partisan.

Rather than simply point-score at the expense of counterparts, our politicians need to work together to prepare Australia to deal with a threat that if left unattended, has the potential to not just seriously disrupt life as we know it, but actually decimate the community.

In recent times the country has almost ground to a halt as we argue endlessly about some insignificant triviality, suggesting we choke on a mosquito, while we swallow, with ease, a camel; the camel being the threat of climate change.

Climate change is just the first order of threats as hard on its heels and invariably implicated in a multitude of ways, is resource depletion, species extinction and an imploding world economy.

You would imagine that with a trio of threats, of which anyone alone has the potential to cause relentless difficulties, those Canberra cronies would put aside their pointless child-like bickering to prepare the country the most all-encompassing challenge it has every experienced, vastly bigger and more consuming than either of the World Wars of the 20^th century.

Courage, commitment and conviction has lifted humanity to where it is at now and should we successfully take the human project any further, those same traits are urgently important and the first to demonstrate that bravery, allegiance and passion must be those who gather in Canberra.

The challenge of steering Australia through the ideological changes of coming decades is so massive that only the most courageous need apply; only those who are genuinely committed to our country’s long term welfare and care little about personal gain, or party leadership; and only those prepared to compromise and so make decisions that will steer us away from present consumptive life styles.

Conversation darts about in pusuit of water

Conversation darted about as it tried to pin down the bizarrely complex, convoluted and knotty issue of water.

Nearly 50 people gathered in Shepparton’s Harder Auditorium today (February 22) to hear a little more about the seemingly never ending discussion about the future of the Murray Darling Basin.

Yesterday’s meeting was set up by the City of GreaterShepparton as a part of its role in the Murray River Group of Councils (MRGC), that is the rural cities of Mildura and Swan Hill, the Shires of Gannawarra, Loddon, Campaspe and Moira.

The meeting, set up to primarily allow discussion among participants and encourage submissions to the Murray Darling Basin draft plan, was led by Bendigo-based associate planner from consultants, RMCG, Rozi Boyle.

Shepparton mayor, Cr Michael Pollan, introduced Ms Boyle, but omitted to mention that the consultant did not actually represent the Murray Darling Basin Commission and so initially she was the target of comments from those unhappy with some aspects of the plan.

Once it was clear that Ms Boyle was simply explaining the process and in reality was neutral on the issue, most simply reverted to discussing issues with others at the meeting.

Simon Furphy, using his calm solicitor-like skills, outlined his position and seemed to find quiet and unspoken support among those at the meeting, except for one fellow who spoke up encouraging the council to include everything he said in its submission.

Yesterday’s conversation was not about if and when a plan will exist as it has been decided a plan will happen and timeline for action has been settled.

What, however, is still uncertain are what the plan will actually say and submission are still being sought, both from individuals, groups or bodies, such at the MRGC.

A further similar meeting will be held onThursday, February 23, at Mooroopna’s Westside Performing Arts Centre from 6pm for two hours.

More detail about the plan can found at www.greatershepparton.com.au or the Murray Darling Basin Authority website – www.mdba.gov.au.

Speed and road deaths inextricably linked

Death will occur in less than second in a serious road collision.

The image used by Victoria's
 Transport Accident Commission
 to encourage a reduction
in speeds.

The speed at which a person dies as their car crumples is alarming with the sequence of events that kill being explained at a Shepparton “Cool Heads” program last year.

Death arrives at a speed that exceeds human response and although its finality is catastrophic, further complexities for occupants arise when one or more are injured, severely or otherwise, and often subsequently left with devastating life-long disabilities.

The collisions are the outcome of fatigue, inexperience, inattention, stupidity, vehicle failure and, contrary to the view of a recent correspondent to this newspaper, speed.

Even the slowest of us should be able to deduce that speed – a statistically confirmed fact in the causation of road collisions – is the product of fatigue, inexperience, inattention and, most certainly, stupidity.

A motor vehicle, again it should be clear to even the dullest of us, is a heartless immobile contrivance that awaits human input and reacts to simple instructions many of which may well come from one who is tired, inexperienced, inattentive and beyond and within all that, stupid.

Therein lies a recipe for almost certain disaster, for with stupidity in control, seasoned by inexperience, inattention and fatigue, this heartless metal contrivance is taken to  speeds beyond the abilities of whoever is in charge and, of course, those of the vehicle.

Evidence explaining events leading up to road collisions are the same the world over and so it is common to read such things as: “When the facts are truthfully presented, however, the behavior of the implicated driver is usually the primary cause. Most collisions result from excessive speed or aggressive driver behavior.”

That evidence is easily found as most internet search engines will, almost as quick as you can die in a road collision, find confirmation of collision causes and without doubt will list speed as being among the prime instigators.

Gustave Flaubert

Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission is the reservoir into which the residue from the state’s road collisions collect and being acutely aware of the role speed plays as it stalks our roads, the Commission has worked tirelessly to reduce such stupidity. 

It understands how speed increases the likelihood of collisions, but faces implacable opponents who, should something go wrong because of their arrogance, ignorance or stupidity, find perverse comfort in attributing responsibility to conditions, others, vehicle failure and just about any variable, except themselves, and certainly not the fact that they drove above the applicable speed limit.

French author, Gustave Flaubert, lived and worked before motor cars existed, but seemed prescient when he said: “To be stupid, selfish and have good health are the three requirements of happiness. Though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.”

Easing climate change with a four-hour day

Ideas for easing climate change are as varied as they are many.

Our modern world has exploited
in just 200 years a resource
that took billions of years of
sunlight to create.

The equation seems, however, on the face of it, pretty simple and easily understood.

Modern lifestyles of the developed world, in particular, have exceeded or exhausted the natural world’s ability to cope – we have created a global dystopia, the disruption earth’s inherent ecological balance.

A few of us, in relative world population terms, live as if humans are detached from the rhythms of nature, ignoring the reality that we are in fact integral to it.

Just a couple of centuries ago we discovered how to access the magical power of fossil fuels (ancient sunlight) and now after such a short time we have nearly exhausted a resource that took nature billions of years to create.

We have been wasteful in the extreme and now the bill for that frivolity is coming due and should we choose to ignore the debt collector, civilization will be decimated.

Complete restitution is beyond us, but we can make inroads on the interest with a systemic behavioural change and within that a seismic-like revolution to the economic foundations of our communities.

Each of us should be limited, by law, to working four hours a day, no overtime and no double shifts with the outcome being five days at four hours being just 20 hours a week.

Consequently people would be inherently financially poorer and so vastly less able to consume and use products that are only available because of an economically driven society whose richness hinges on the prolific use of fossil fuels that are unquestionably the root of the complications that are changing the world’s climate.

Conversely, and importantly, people would suddenly be, by comparison to today, “time-rich” and so able to use those free hours to grow food, make things, enrich their neighbourhoods through simply being there longer, set up and implement sharing schemes reducing the need for every household have one of everything and begin the long societal haul to the creation of the “five-minute life”.

Such a life would mean that most everything important on a day-to-day basis was within five minutes easy walking or cycling distance.

Should a business want to operate longer hours, then it would need to hire another team of people for a further four hours changing completely the employment/unemployment nexus.

Most contemporary economic gurus will declare such a change as unworkable, alluding to consequences that would bring society to its knees.

However, what is truly unworkable is the business as usual paradigm and its 40-hour week; bequeathing a rich middle class that, in 200 years, has nearly exhausted the world’s fossil fuels, depleted obvious energy resources and left a benign environment and atmosphere in tatters.

Touching the 'untouchable' will secure our future

The sacrosanct eight-hour day might seem untouchable to adherents of the present scenario, but a four-hour day in most industries would see a similar amount of work undertaken and completed with hitherto unseen efficiencies.

The "responsible men" gather to plan how
 they can ensure the 'many' work harder and
 longer to boost the bank balances of the few.

Those who only see the welfare of man linked inextricably to the economic paradigm and therefore have no understanding of the richness of human contemplation and the fruitfulness of humanism would weep at the idea of people doing what they love rather than having their shoulder to the wheel.

An eight-hour day is a fantasy for many and a move to halve that would need a cultural change of tsunami-like proportions, which undoubtedly would be accompanied by threats from the “responsible men” about the inevitable collapse of society.

Contemporary work injects discipline into our lives, bringing with it a certain contentment arising from that understood regime and so to live with what would effectively be a half-day holiday every day, people would need to re-think their affairs enabling the fortification of personal resilience and survival understandings that future scarcity will make imperative.

Naturally, a switch to a four-hour day would bring complexities, but from those subsequent intricacies would emerge people who were psychologically more intact, happier, better workers and, importantly, vastly improved communitarians.

Suggestions of a four-hour work day will bring, no doubt, a chorus of comments ranging from “stupid” to “won’t work” from those unable to see the finer attributes of life and whose futuristic vision is limited to what they can see through the prism of growth and its attendant consumerism.

A four-hour work day will naturally slow our exploitation of earth’s finite resources, first by reducing our manufacturing throughput and so resultant output and secondly by an overall reduction of our monetary wealth and, one would hope, a decline in our apparently inexhaustible desire to accumulate.

The seismic-like cultural change of a four-hour day would ricochet through the whole of society and with such a short working day it would be advisable to live where you work, or at least within easy walking or cycling distance, bringing an urgent reality to the idea of a five minute life – that sees most everything critical to day-to-day doings being just five minutes away.

The idea that is “work” will be re-shaped, restructured and re-thought with many working either at home, or from home, and travelling, maybe weekly, to a central place.

Work is essential to our mental and emotional health just as is the “balance” we are always encouraged to bring to our lives about many things.

Should we have the capacity to understand how our egos ignite to underpin the consumerism that drives the capitalistic ethos, then maybe we can find a true balance in our lives between work and living.

Addicted to the pleasurable rock of life

Work has always been, and still is, the rock to which my life is anchored, as is that of many others.

Bruce Springsteen

That, however, is a habit I don’t want to break as it pointedly enriches who and what I am. It makes me, in my view, a better person.

Naturally it is easy to be philosophically flippant about the pleasure work brings when not locked into seemingly endless and equally pointless and heartless sweat inducing toil, reminding me of the words from the Bruce Springsteen song “Factory”:

“End of the day, factory whistle cries,
Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes.
And you just better believe, boy,
somebody's gonna’ get hurt tonight,
It's the working, the working, just the working life”.

Work, for me, however is not about that sort of drudgery (of course some jobs  have had that flavour), rather it has largely been an ongoing joy through which the human interaction brightens my being, makes me smile and brings satisfaction to every day.

Interestingly though, our addiction to contemporary understandings of work, sees us devote a hefty, and almost irrational portion of our lives to maintaining a structure that ultimately enriches only a few, while the many toiling endlessly, get little.

The “responsible men” who, by what they make appear default, but which is really intent, and call the shots in society repeatedly bleat about the need of the “many” to work harder and longer, for less, to ensure, they argue, the integrity of an economic system that ultimately serves only them.

The disparity between rewards to the worker and ever bulging bank balances of the few is what ignited the unrest that become known as “the occupy movement”.

The “occupiers” have my support and sympathy as I can sense the injustices they live with and the subsequent unfairness that assaults them every day as a system deemed to be as it should be favours only a few.

However, as understandable as their cause is, it seems somewhat ill-directed in that it seeks equity, or at least an increased sense of fairness, in a system that is in itself fundamentally flawed.

The literal meaning of work has been so distorted by capitalistic tub-thumpers that it equates more now with drudgery than a vocation or a soul-enriching contribution to the broader betterment of the human experiment.

Modern times have seen most people enslaved to an economic paradigm from which we need to urgently disengage, both individually and as a society.

Economics is invariably politics in disguise and is structured with the intent of the few to profit, control and provide substantial individual short-term comfort ignoring, to the long-term peril of all, the ecological significance of our finite world.

•Next: Considering the four-hour day.