Manifest
warnings about the increasing entropic pace of the human infrastructure pass
largely unnoticed.
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| Coal is the villian in climate change. |
Many
who discussed evolving difficulties, including the head of the NASA
Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and the climatologist who
first warned of our changing climate, James Hansen, were roundly criticized.
He was, in the 80s, something of a voice
in the wilderness and despite the views he expounds now having the support of
nearly all the world’s scientists and fellow climatologists, legitimacy still
eludes him in many circles.
The world he envisages is not encouraging
with its extreme weather events, being droughts, huge dumps of rain, a broad
increase in temperatures; changes in traditional and well understood
weather patterns, meaning once productive areas will no longer be so; and
seasons foreign everywhere and disrupting life of every form.
The practical infrastructure and weather on
which humans depend is under direct threat.
Today’s decision makers are governing for
today appealing to short-term thinkers, but those more expansive thinkers among
us, Hansen was one, understand the importance of us acting now to ready the
world for the testing decades ahead.
A story in a recent issue of Melbourne’s Age discussed the intent of Victoria’s
State Government to spend billions of dollars establishing a massive newcontainer port in Port Phillip Bay.
The argument, it seemed, was about where
the port should be when it really should have been about whether the Victoria
of tomorrow even needed such a facility.
Governments, State and Federal, need to
invest in infrastructure, but rather than spend heavily on what is already
obsolete we should be spending those billions on building a resilient Victoria;
a Victoria able to cope with the rigours of a future in which communities will
bounce and ricochet through times decidedly different from anything ever
experienced.
Entropy is only forestalled when energy
is applied and initially it was slowed by tireless human effort until we
uncovered the secrets of fossil fuels to reshape the disorder brought on by
entropy, but unaware for decades that the resultant carbon dioxide it produced
was hurting our atmosphere.
The export of coal, the greatest villain
in the carbon dioxide stakes, is the prime reason for the proposed new
container port, but beyond that will be the State Government’s intention to
ensure business continues as usual.
Rather than maintaining failed 20th
Century policies we should be investing in infrastructure such as sophisticated
public transit; consider rating and taxing structures that favour small
business; the refurbishment and reinvigoration of neighbourhoods and
communities on which our future will depend; and an end to corporate subsidies;
reduce our military commitment and distribute more fairly the wealth arising
from Australia’s natural resources.
