Yes, each of us needs to do what we can to ensure the
survival of Shepparton’s SPC Ardmona processing plant, for the moment at least.
One need not look too far or too deep to see and understand
good reasons why the factory and the infrastructure it depends upon play a
critical role in the economic wellbeing of this community.
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Broaden you view and quickly it become obvious that the much
lauded level-playing field is, and always has favoured the few.
Yes, we need SPC Ardmona to stay about for a while, but just
long enough for us to learn about, and understand what it is we need to do to
build a Goulburn Valley-wide community sufficiently resilient enough to
withstand the unfolding society-wide shocks of the next few decades.
Rather than allow our communities to become implicated in
the narrow financial definitions of globalization and instead of pursuing ever
expanding growth, we should be working for “just enough growth”.
Success of a business should not be measured by a particular
percentage growth each year, rather through its contribution to the community
from which it draws its workers and to how many people it provides regular
employment.
Success should not be measured through the raw brutality of
the bottom line, rather whether or not that company is an integral player in
the richness of the community in which it operates and within that how it
embraces and cares about everyone from initial suppliers to the final customer.
Without stumbling into the rhetoric of the doomsayer, let’s
us acknowledge that the future, even the immediate future, is going to be
different from what has been, and is.
So what do we do? First, and of critical importance is to
support this newspaper’s campaign to press our politicians to support short
term goals of SPC Ardmona.
We need as much time as we can leverage to ready ourselves
for an energy-depleted future as we surrender a lifestyle that is enlivened,
almost totally by oil and coal.
Technophobes promise all sorts of wondrous energy solutions,
but the few existing and scalable ideas, beyond simply using less, are solar
and wind.
Support solar and wind ideas; support projects that
encourage people to initially use less energy; live closer to where you work;
cycle and walk where possible and look to your community to source whatever it
is you need, including your food.
Join and support groups which are doing what they can to
help us understand how we live fulfilling lives in an energy depleted future;
read, read and read, and listen, listen and listen to learn about the societal instability
that is arising from the exponential growth of recent decades.
For the record: our Federal MPs have received my SPC Ardmona
plea.
