Wolves, externalities and finding balance

Externalities are not something most of us understand or have ever had to concern ourselves about, until now.

The idea of putting a cost on carbon was just a small step toward helping us understand that an externality is a real cost that someone, somewhere has to burden.

The Yellowstone National Park - the
 return of wolves brought new
life to all aspects of the park.

Corporations and businesses of the world, including all those in Australia, have for centuries cheerfully ignored, to the benefit of their bank balances, the real cost of externalities.

Of course, it is unfair and irresponsible, to lump responsibility for ignoring externalities upon only business, as individuals, you and me, are equally liable for how the machine, that is the economy, works as we are also intimate players in the activity.

Speaking on a panel at Shepparton’s Eastbank before the naming of the winner of the 2014 Indigenous Ceramic Arts Award, Arts Victoria’s Liz Little said “Everything affects everything else”.

Liz was obviously speaking about art, but she could have been talking about externalities for everything we do clearly impacts everything else.

A clear and obvious example of that comes from America’s Yellowstone National Park where wolves, which had been missing for 70 years, were reintroduced in 1995.

Although a predator, the wolves controlled the size of deer herds, forced them to different parts of the park, allowing amazing regrowth or trees, plants and shrubs encouraging the return of birdlife; beavers began damming streams and rivers again encouraging the return of various species that thrived in the pools; and balance was returning to the park.

Ms Little wasn’t talking about wolves in Yellowstone Park and nor was she talking about externalities when she said “Everything affects everything else”, but her comment was prescient.

Her truism takes us direct to the problem and until we are prepared to put a cost on our externalities, those things we dump in our atmosphere, our oceans, our rivers and many landfills, we will continue to soil our own nest, making it ultimately unliveable.

Australia’s “great big new tax” (the carbon tax) was a first, and timid step toward seeing people here at least acknowledging that “Everything affects everything else”.

It was also a somewhat apprehensive move toward having us understand the real costs, financial and otherwise, of externalities and the complication of ignoring the rather brutal reality that “Everything affects everything else”.

Solutions to this dilemma are straightforward and simple, but as they require significant changes to our behaviour they are not socially palatable.

However, necessity will soon override any reservations as our abuse of those externalities will brings changes to what we see as normal.

Maybe it is time we familiarized ourselves with the idea behind the Yellowstone Park wolves and brought the balance back into our lives.

 

Advice for all who draw a breath from Professor Jeffrey Sachs

Goulburn Valley people were probably few among those who recently almost packed out Melbourne’s Town Hall.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs.

Globally renowned economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs talked about matters that maybe appeared remote to the concerns and interests of northern Victorians, but in fact were relevant to everyone who draws a breath.

The professor has credentials sufficient to near fill a lengthy document, but he was visiting Australia, and subsequently speaking in Melbourne in his role as Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Welcomed to the discussion on Wednesday, May 21, by the chair of the Monash Sustainability Institute, Professor John Thwaites, and then by City of Melbourne’s chairman of the council’s inner Melbourne climate action network. Cr Aaron Wood, Prof Sachs outlined the wonders of modernity.

He gave credit to coal for the growth of civilization – electricity equates with growth, he said  – even heaping praise on the contribution it had made to human life on earth, but was then critical of the unintended damage electricity arriving from coal-fired power stations had caused to our atmosphere.

John Thwaites.

As one of the world’s major exporters of coal, Australians, Prof Sachs said had to make some serious decisions to make either in stopping the mining and sale of coal or investing heavily in helping the world understand and use carbon capture and sequestration, an unproved process and yet the only one that could make coal safe and so useable.

He was concerned about the future welfare of the world saying that climate change could not, and would not be resolved by putting up a few extra solar panels.

We needed, according to Prof Sachs to make significant changes to how we lived as we were pressing many planetary boundaries and had already exceeded some.

He said we are pressing on the accelerator when we should have our foot on the brake.

The professor is astonishingly erudite when considering global economics, and appears to stand with most others when reflecting on how humanity advances and yet successfully mitigates the worst impacts of climate change, or at least what is causing our climate to change.

Our ceaseless and careless use fossil fuels has unquestionably improved many aspects of human life lifting us from what was virtually a hand-to-mouth way of living when the prime source of energy was animal, human and a limited use of renewable energies – wind and water.

The modern live that is now so entrenched that the needed change is almost beyond comprehension, and yet it is the very energy that has made everything we enjoy possible that has seriously disrupted and damaged our atmosphere.

The optimists among us admit to serious changes in how we live, but generally and broadly life appears to go on pretty much within boundaries of what exists.

Prof Sachs appears to stand with that group and although he didn’t articulate how he saw the future, he did say that it would be dramatically different if we failed to attend to the drivers of climate change.

However, many it seems pretend (and maybe that is too strong a word, but few can articulate a workable alternative) that what we presently enjoy will continue in some recognisable form.

Cr Aaron Wood.

Prof Sachs urged those at the town hall not to discount nuclear power pointing to clear difference  between the deaths suffered from coal, which were in the millions, compared to nuclear, which was only in the hundreds.

He is not, in any sense, as advocate of the “business as usual” scenario, which he illustrated through graphs was simply a journey to disaster; difficulties for  humanity arising from global temperatures five and six degrees in excess of pre-industrial revolution levels, taking conditions on earth way beyond anything that humans have ever experienced or lived through.

Evidence clearly illustrates, a point made abundantly clear by Prof Sachs, that nearly all of the known fossil fuels must stay in the ground if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change and to do that we have no option but a dramatic and never-before-seen change to human behaviour that demands an immediate reversing of human consumptive and fossil-fuel energy usage.

Rather than globalization, we should be looking at, and working on “localization”, building resilience in our local communities and switching to what some described as “10-minute life” – that is a situation where everything we need to day-to-day contentment is within a 10 minute walk or cycle of where we live.

Work, or at least purpose, is psychologically important to humans and conscious of what Prof Sachs says, we need to re-shape, redefine and reorganise human purpose away from the idea of profit and growth to one of collaboration and resilience that is about human survival.

Idealistic and utopian? Maybe so, but it is a dream we must follow for the only other route is that which denies humanity its fulfilment and sends us crashing into disruptive times from which escape for most is impossible.

A budget built on ignorance, arrogance, elitism and social naivety

Ignorance, arrogance, elitism and social naivety underpin the latest Australian Budget.

Everything is life is ideologically driven, even these thoughts, but opinion that surrounds them and their associated beliefs that endorse them, or otherwise, are disparate and seemingly limitless.

A financial budget arising from a democracy and intended to serve those living within that democracy is a complex beast and the author, or authors, always face an intrigue that exceeds their ability to deliver.

Present budgetary intent to deliver smaller government camouflaged as savings and efficiency, and “repairing the budget”, contrasts with the facts as explained by Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph E. Steglitz.

Writing in “Globalization and its Discontents” about the East Asia crisis of the late 1990s, Steglitz argued that nations that best endured the crisis where those with strong government participation.

Using the recent budget to pursue its ideologies, our government seems to have dropped the reins, and even dismounted, and handed control of its charger over to chance and private enterprise.

As we rush ill-equipped into a world unknown, it seems we are being asked put our trust in faith and leave fact and reason to rust.

The rather brutal facts are that humanity, and that includes you and me, and of course Tony Abbott and his cohort, presently faces its greatest ever threat and urgently needs both scientific facts and all the information it can get about those realities from reliable sources.

Joseph E. Steglitz.

The institutions that both provide facts and help us understand that information were punished or disbanded in the recent Budget, yet millions have been set aside for the provision of chaplains in schools – a place where science should be exemplified, but it is being usurped by faith.

“Trust us” is the plaintive cry from Joe Hockey as he tries to assuage our wounded intellect that is left limping and staggering about from a blizzard of broken promises.

Trust is not one of those things that cannot be bought and beyond that, the intent of our present government became obvious, and our suspicions triggered, from the moment it left the ministerial science seat empty, illustrating it preferred fantasy to fact.

Anecdotal asides, driven by populist credos seem preferred, leaving the administration of Australia locked into thought processes that might have had some relevance a century ago, but inadequate in every sense for a future that every shred of scientific evidence illustrates will be quite different for what was.

With yesterday’s men at the helm, and collecting knights and dames as we go, we sail blithely about with the poor, pensioners, students and the states stoking the boilers, allowing the rich, flaunting their ideological map, to loll about as we seek refuge on Fantasy Island.

Modernity has disguised the fact that we are 'the' invasive species

Modernity has blurred the line between what is and is not an invasive species.

"Leviathon"
 by Thomas
 Hobbes.

Of course reference to history will quickly clarify any doubt, but what was once, foreign, rare or not naturally occurring is frequently so common and accepted that it is thought by many to be “native”.

Australia, New Zealand and smaller south Pacific nations were once wonderful examples of how their isolation had resulted in what had been hitherto unseen and unknown species.

However, just one species, Homo sapiens (wise man or modern humans), that’s you and me, has followed in the footsteps of its ancestors colonizing almost all available space on the planet.

Expansive intellectual prowess has launched modern man to the top of the food chain, pushing many other species, from massive to microscopic to extinction or the margins and now, it seems those smarts are going to be the seeds of our undoing.

Not many centuries ago there was certain, and necessary equilibrium about the earth with birth and death in both animate and inanimate “things” being timely, equating with what was needed to ensure environmental balance.

Modernity, driven by the wants of the “wise man” as opposed to his/her actual needs, changed all that leaving us balancing precariously above a chasm.

Troubles bigger than you and I block our escape and there appears to be an absence of endeavour from both international and national institutions to actively pursue societal changes that would avoid the fall.

Seeking to attribute the blame to someone or something, many turn their gaze to the uncensored and unfettered rush of capitalism that has plundered earth’s finite resources in its pursuit if infinite growth and profit.

Modern life, despite its critics and those who pine for what was, is unquestionable better than what existed and described by Thomas Hobbes inn 1651 book, “Leviathan”, as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

Homo sapiens have become earth’s true invasive species, threatening not just all other species, but even its own future, and even, maybe, its own extinction.

However, let us not be too despondent for just recently the British-based Philosopher’s Mail noted in a story about “Welcome to the Dawn of Capitalism”, in which the criticism of the hunger for growth and profit was acknowledged, it said: “But perhaps the good future depends not on minimising Capitalism but on radically extending it”.

“If we could just address our deeper needs more directly, our materialism would be refined and restrained, our work would be more meaningful and our profits would be more honourable. That’s the ideal future of Capitalism,” it said.

Maybe we are “the” invasive species and maybe it is time we engaged our naturally endowed intellectual prowess to become more refined and restrained to live more meaningful and honourable lives?

Court complex construction announcements ignore unfolding realities

Recent announcements to spend $73 million on a new court complex in Shepparton ignore quickly approaching realities.

Part of the existing and soon to be
 replaced court complex in Shepparton.

The present need is blatant, but unfolding needs are not near so obvious.

Administering justice within the walls of what exists in High St is, from all reports, staggeringly difficult, but the tightening of world realties will make it impossible, even after digging deeply into our pockets to build a “sheer concrete and glass” court complex.

The collision of world events, which will be upon us within a decade or so, will demand, even on a regional basis, decentralization rather than the energy-intensive centralization of institutions, even something as seemingly remote from energy as our courts.

Resources upon which we now habitually depend and undergird our modern lives are finite and yet we continue to reinforce institutions and create processes whose usefulness and durability depend, and hinges upon the false belief of the infinitude of those resources.

Even within just decades, a brief time compared to the more than 70 years of what exists has served our community, the movement of people around even the Goulburn Valley will become increasingly difficult, and expensive.

Rather than investing in and building one monolithic structure we need a totally decentralized legal system in which justice can be administered in all the smaller centres that make up Greater Shepparton.

Many argue, from a position supported by indisputable facts that the world has already passed that moment from which oil resources inevitably decline to become fearfully expensive and so the province of the wealthy.

The burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and the breeding of animals for human consumption, have damaged our atmosphere and extensively changed weather patterns to such a degree that we will have to live where we live.

Meaning that travel, even in a limited sense within the Goulburn Valley, will be more difficult, expensive and time consuming, suggesting the administration of justice should be dispersed in our smaller communities rather than a centralized, shimmering concrete and glass complex in Shepparton.

Ideas driving Shepparton’s new court complex are from the dying energy-rich carbon era and so rather than further embedding those, we should be working toward and building an institutional and structural system that will endure in an energy-poor post carbon society.

Electricity produced by renewable energy will ultimately be abundant, but only if we stand together and disable the intent of Australia’s present decision makers and so a mosaic of court houses linked by the National Broadband Network will provide local justice for local people, in local institutions staffed by local people.

It means more jobs for more people in more places throughout Greater Shepparton and builds resilience in more communities wrestling with the dilemma of the post-carbon era.

 

Complexity is wonderful, but we need to simply it - urgently!

Complexity brings many bonuses, but benefits we urgently need to simplify.

The wonderful advances arising from that complexity can only be realized and made a lasting positive if we are able to better understand how we go about claiming our space.

Geo-engineering - Taking a
spanner to the world.

The prevailing idea that humankind is of pre-eminent importance and therefore justified as it stomps about the planet building an uncaring military/industrial complex is one that abhors decency.

Physics insist that everything seeks equilibrium and it is only through the application of energy that humans can escape the hard-edged boundaries of those scientific limitations.

And it has been with an alarming degree of indecency that we, you and me, have used fossil fuels to disable those equilibrium-seeking scientific realities.

Subsequently, while we wallow in the wonders of a lavish life provided by our unrealistic and unhealthy dependence on hydrocarbons, the thin envelope surrounding earth and upon which we depend, is quickly, in geological terms and even human terms, becoming less effective.

It has become an abused commons into which we have dumped the residue of our fossil fuel-energized lives disrupting the finely-tuned balance that allowed life on earth, from the microscopic to the massive, to procreate and prosper.

In more than a decade of listening to, and participating in, the climate change conversation, discussion has shifted dramatically, particularly in past year or so, from mitigation to adaptation.

Mitigation, because of our greed, quite bluntly, was never going to happen and now even those who blatantly deny the human finger-print, at least on the public stage, are championing geo-engineering to stabilise a climate they said in the previous sentence was not in need of repair.

Adaptations using even more of the processes that are the essence of our troubles reflect Einstein’s view that “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Beyond that geo-engineering is unproven and brings with it consequences which we don’t yet understand and we may well not be able to grasp the meaning of the emerging difficulties until it is too late.

Scientists are sceptical by training and so rarely, if ever, present their work in terms of blunt ultimatums, but ever so slowly that is changing and more and more they are telling us that life on earth, and that includes you and me, is under severe threat.

I weep as I write for it is not evident that we have the needed courageous intellectual athleticism to step back from what it is that drives industrial civilization.

For a few years I have advocated a four-hour work day, no overtime, no double shifts in a neighbourhood, all powered by renewable energy, where walking and cycling is commonplace and in which you work and share with your neighbours – that is more urgent now than ever.

Chests thrown out, back-slapping, strutting and preening, 'Team Australia' arrives home

“Team Australia” arrived home recently, chests thrown out, amid much back-slapping, strutting and preening.

The Washington Consensus makes
 puppets of all it
touches, including whole nations.

The travelling party from the big end of town, the business boys (and they were mostly boys) who lock arms in a club that understands, and cares only about growth and profit, toured with Prime Minister Tony Abbott to Japan, Korea and China.

Surrounded by a phalanx of billionaires, Mr Abbott visited that trio of Asian countries to talk up Australia and point out it is “open for business”.

He went to sign-off on free trade agreements; deals he believes will benefit all Australians, but which history has shown will only enrich his already rich fellow travellers.

Free trade is integral part of globalization, which has done nothing but make the wealthy wealthier, worsening inequality and ripping the rug out from under small businesses.

The stance taken by Mr Abbott and his rich cohort reflects the Washington Consensus, a 10-point plan that the U.S. Government and international economic institutions have successfully used to rob resource-rich underdeveloped countries.

The oddities of Mr Abbott’s thinking are intriguing as usually it is the less developed countries that fall into economic traps set by wealthy and influential nations, but in this case Australia, under the PM’s insistence, has been a part of its own deception.

Third-world countries that fall under the spell of Washington Consensus-like programs are stripped of their resources, and natural trading advantages, bringing on bankruptcy from which they are allowed relief only by agreeing to punishing trade arrangements.

Forced into free-trade agreements that favour, invariably, the developed countries; and the small businesses in the target country are pillaged and forced to align with huge corporations and so are destroyed and vanish – they go broke.

Driven by what appears to be a hint of desperation to demonstrate his promise of Australia being “open for business”, our PM has played the country itself as his trump card and has laid us bare on the trading table.

The people who could make a meaningful social difference to Australia are being treated like criminals and secreted to the likes of Manus Island, while those whose only interest is in exploitation, profit and growth are ushered into our dining room with a flourish reserved for royalty.

Money, it seems, can easily cross international borders, no papers, no passport and no identity required, but should you be a struggling individual or family escaping a life of oppression and you bring no riches other than who they are, then Abbott’s Team Australia throws up the barricades.

Speaking during his Asian tour, Tony Abbott puffed out his chest and declared “Australia has had a very good day”, failing to acknowledge that it was really his rich friends who had a very good day.