If you love Australia, climate change should scare the hell out of you

I love Australia.

Australia is a nation on the extremities, where climate change
 will affect and strip away what we love much sooner than
will occur in Europe and North America.’

It’s not a thing you hear too often from progressives. Mostly this is because we don’t go in for the pathetic jingo-nationalist, quasi-militaristic “love it or leave it”-style patriotism that John Howard attempted to link with a love of country.

But I do love Australia. I get an absurd amount of irrational pride when I hear of Australians doing well.

When I read stories that Indigenous rock art might be among the oldest in the world I get excited and think, yeah suck it, caves of Cantabria!

I can still remember where I was when John Aloisi scored the winning penalty against Uruguay (jumping up in my home in Cairns and cutting my hand on the overhead fan), and like all sensible Australians I let out a deep groan whenever I hear someone start yet again an “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie” chant at the tennis.

Read the story from The Guardian by Greg Jericho - “If you love Australia, climate change should scare the hell out of you.” 

And the elephant wasn't even in the room at Mooroopna drought summit

The elephant, it seems, wasn’t even in the room during the recent Drought Summit at Mooroopna.

Federal Agriculture Minister, David Littleproud.

However, the Federal Agricultural Minister, David Littleproud, the Drought Envoy, Barnaby Joyce and the Federal Member for Murray, Damian Drum, and about 100 agitated others were.

Sadly, I wasn’t there, but inquiries suggest that had the elephant turned up, it would have been turned away as the thought that we had caused the troubles that malign the lives of our farmers did not have much currency among those in the room.

Australia, like the rest of the world, is barrelling down the climate change highway.

Most everything the climate scientists predicted has and is happening, but with one significant difference; it’s unfolding somewhat quicker than envisaged. Yes, the abyss is almost visible.

There was, according to reports, a widely held view at the drought summit that the water shortage compounding the troubles of our farmers was a “man-made drought”, meaning the country’s water resources had been badly managed.

Such conversations are little more than a distraction from the real game, the fact that our disrupted climate system has changed weather patterns and the reality is that we get less rain where we need it and more where we don’t.

And when we do get it, it comes in great bursts, quickly runs off, leaving a scant amount to soak in, and as it vanishes so does some of our rich and valuable top soil. The long-term benefit fo that downpour is damnably slim.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) knows about the elephant and in it latest report outlines the climate effects of 1.5ºC and 2ºC warming and discusses the efforts that will have to be taken to hit those targets; targets that current emissions-reduction pledges get us nowhere near where we need to be. 

The IPCC said our transportation, land-use, building, energy, food, and other systems need to be redesigned from the ground up to reduce emissions and prepare for a warmer world.

Drought envoy, Barnaby Joyce.

The conversation we must have to prepare for that warmer world is not one Minister Littleproud, Drought Envoy Mr Joyce, or local Member, Mr Drum, are willing to initiate as the essence of where the discussion must go contradicts their fundamental political ideologies.

It was only a week ago that the leader of the CSIRO’s Earth Systems and Climate Change hub, Dr David Karoly, who is known to many in the Goulburn Valley, echoed an earlier comment when he said Shepparton was inline for successive days of 50 degrees Celsius.

Those temperatures combined with a drought, man-made or otherwise, will force acknowledgement of that elusive elephant and with it serious discussion about seeing Australia embrace the idea of a “climate emergency”, something now being discussed by Britain’s House of Lords.

And while we contemplate that idea, it is interesting to note that Australia, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, has just left its hottest March on record.

Darkened poker machines promote epiphany of how it should be

The darkened poker machines stood like tombstones in a cemetery.

The players stood silently in the eerie dusk-like light of the auditorium as the haunting sounds of the Last Post echoed around the room.

Screens dotted about told of the drama and alluded to the obvious cost of war and cast the minds of those silent poker players back to the chaos in which thousands were injured or died for Australia, freedom or whatever it was that ignited their passions.

The ninety second emotive package accompanied by a sombre, but authoritative voice designed to elicit understanding and sympathy for war, encouraged we recall conflicts past “lest we forget”.

Echoing around this momentary poker machine graveyard in an environment even the most adventurous thinkers among those who died could never have imagined was a story of war that elicited an emotionally shallow response that overlooked the real societal debt.

The obvious and blatant costs of war are easy to identify, for it is measured in the death and injury to thousands of military people, millions of civilians and immense damage to the infrastructure upon which we all depend.

However there is a cost we can’t see or measure; a cost that is embedded deep within societies; a cost that emerges generations later and although mistakenly believing we are inured to repeating earlier errors, we do exactly that and with renewed vigour set about to kill each other.

Ghosts past march across the screens as a sentinel to alert us of previous ills and quieten our primeval need to confront the other, but nationalistic hubris erupts from such displays and has the reverse effect enhancing our belief in militaristic solutions.

This year is the centenary of what was originally known as “The Great War”, but became known as the “First World War” when in 1939 the world was at war again in “World War Two” when humanity stooped to new depravities as we busied ourselves slaughtering each other.

Considered in geologic terms, humanity is still in the crib and although we need to understand our history, it borders on obscene to devote so much of our time, ingenuity, commitment and money to pinpoint a fleeting moment from a century ago.

Our flirtation with this twinkling in history only distorts and delays the growth of humanity to further understand that progress is a product of collaboration, cooperation and communication rather than conflict and violence that arises from the preservation of baseless, and therefore unimportant cultural beliefs.

The world’s annual military budget creeps towards $2000 billion (Australia’s was an indecent $26.2b last year) and rather than seek comfort through bigger military expenditure, we need to look elsewhere and it is not to be found in the preservation of memories from our modern past.

The dilemmas brought on by impartiality

Impartiality frequently frustrates many decent things.

Singer's book, "One
World: The Ethics
 of Globalization".

Equally, it is also often the keystone in allowing less than favourable things to happen to individuals, the broader community and, in a wider and crucial sense, to the wellbeing of the planet.

Partiality among humans is immensely powerful among families and friends, but erodes as relationships between people become increasingly distant and then collapses completely to become impartial, even disinterested, once people become “the other”.

Writing in “One World: The Ethics of Globalization” moral philosopher, Peter Singer, said; “Our real desires, our lasting and strongest passions, are not for the good of our species as a whole, but, at best, for the good of those who are close to us”.

Singer wrote that more than a decade ago and although the challenges of climate change were then well known, they had not evolved to be so internationally divisive as they are now, but his observations were prescient.

Within Singer’s writings are the reasons for our disinterest, our impartiality, in how our behaviours are impacting on earth’s atmosphere.

Life, particularly for most in Australia, is pretty good and so with rare exceptions we imagine ourselves as distant from anyone or anything that is worsening climate change and so have little sense of how our behaviour contributes to what has be called the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced.

We are, it seems, trapped within the paradigm that Singer discusses where he says that “Our real desires, our lasting and strongest passions, are not for the good of our species as a whole, but, at best, for the good of those who are close to us”.

Addressing the dilemmas and dangers of climate change demands that we explore and understand impartiality, and embrace it with an urgency that will hopefully allow us to act appropriately to mitigate the unfolding damage to our atmosphere.

Impartiality has been one of the great frustrations experienced by international support organizations and they have found that through reducing their appeal for help to a personal level by using an image of a sole person needing help, they made the connection between recipient and potential donor partial.

With the reason for funding now igniting our “real desires, our lasting and strongest passions”, the support sought was frequently forthcoming.

The damage to earth’s atmosphere is happening, by human standards, so slowly and its effects are frequently so remote from our daily affairs that most of us have a decided impartiality about climate change.

Many of us are unable to make the connection between our behaviour and what is happening with our climate and subsequent worsening weather it brings upon us because we are impartial and largely oblivious to anything beyond family, friends and immediate concerns.

Many seek comfort in 'My Country' as climate change tightens its grip

Many retreat to the emotional comfort of “My Country” when forced to confront the reality of Australia’s changing weather patterns.

The legacy of Cyclone Oswald charges down Australia’s east coast bringing with it record rainfalls and subsequent flooding to many coastal areas and brutal winds that have ripped apart those same communities.

Dorothera Mackellar.

Tornadoes erupt without warning from this decidedly different combination of winds and heat over the oceans and land producing circumstances described as “never seen before” by a meteorologist.

Storms and rains of that never seen before intensity in the north of Australia, brutal bushfires in Victoria, heat of such intensity in central Australia that the Bureau of Meteorology had to use new colours on its maps to depict the event and still we argue and procrastinate about the realities of climate change.

It is unquestionably a reality and the longer we drag our feet, and continue with “business as usual”, the worse these so called “weather events” become.

However, the more dramatic and damaging the apparently disparate “weather events” become the more many people turn to the writing of Dorothea Mackellar for comfort.

Writing early last century, while in England, in a time absolutely unrelated to what is happening early this century, Mackellar attempted to assuage her loneliness by writing her memorable poem, “My Country”.

The second verse is the most quoted:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

Those eight lines of poetry written remote in time and distance from what is happening today in Australia are still alive in the minds of those unable to accept the reality that humans, a plague on the planet according to some, have changed the world’s climate systems.

You and I alone cannot have any measurable impact on the world’s weather systems, but we can change our attitudes and work together to build a more resilient community; a community that might be in a position to endure the unfolding changes to our weather patterns.

Writing on Saturday, social researcher, Hugh Mackay, discussed that in recognizing the early signs of climate change, some countries had embarked on clean and renewable energy sources, but there appeared no sense of urgency in Australia.

Writing an imaginary retrospective view for Australia day, Mackay said: “Even if it was too late to avert disaster for much of the world’s population, surely people realised a clean planet would be better than a dirty one for the survivors.”

Yes, Mackellar lived in a different time and wrote for a different time and although that Australia still exists, it demands a different response.

Opportunity and reason lead to the Shrine of Remembrance

Opportunity, and reason, was cause to visit Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance last week.

The St Kilda Rd sign
pointing to the exhibit.

Entering from the nearby St Kilda Rd a sign alerted me to the reason for my visit, a temporary exhibition entitled “Peace”.

The overall energy of the exhibition warranted curiosity, but particular interest arose from that fact and that included in the display was the print, “Journeys and Destinations” by Melbourne’s Benjamin McKeon and Nathalia’s Bill Kelly.

Bill and Ben’s collaborative print represented Australia at the 50^th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights International Print Portfolio.

This print was inspired by the human right: “Everyone has the right to the liberty and security of person” and one of the limited edition prints sits in the collection of the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG) library, Switzerland.

Being at the height of the remembrance “season”, the shrine was alive with people from guides and advisors through to a seemingly ceaseless steam of school groups and others obviously eager to see the shrine and experience the sense the wonderment it invoked.

Interestingly, while the “war” section of the shrine captured the interest of most, while the “Peace” exhibit languished almost unnoticed in one corner of the main entrance area.

The drama of conflict appeals to, and seems to ignite, human emotions, while peace, the reason for the shrine appears to escape the understanding and interest of most, and so the idea that today we can live peaceably appears well down the hierarchy of importance.

Remembrance is obviously a key reason for the shrine, emphasized by its exquisite placement on high ground just south of the city making it obvious and ensuring the reality of conflicts to which Australia has been a party are constantly considered.

“Journeys and Destinations” by Melbourne’s
 Benjamin McKeon and Nathalia’s Bill Kelly.

The idea that we acknowledge those who died or suffered to preserve the life we presently enjoy warrants applause, but as we do that, it is important we escape the violent and quarrelsome paradigm promoted by the military/industrial complex.

Just last week a climatologist told an Echuca conference considering an indigenous response to climate change that a world-wide effort to mitigate that unfolding difficulty would cost some $30-40 billion a year, which is considered by most to be too costly.

However, confusingly and in what was a stark contrast, he pointed out, that the world spends about $780 billion each year of military machinations, not including the death or injury to thousands of people, the damage to property or the accumulating injury to the earth’s atmosphere.

Peace was one of the four “pillars” on which the shrine was founded, but it is something that will forever elude us unless we expand our thinking, challenge and change our adversarial behaviour, understand mutuality and be cautious with our use of language.

Let's abandon male-madness to align ourselves with the power of ideas, ingenuity, literacy, art and science,

Official visitors to most any country are greeted by a show of force.
Countries, almost without exception, immediately flex their military muscle, or at least a symbol of it, as that guest walks from their plane.

Influential German
 American political
theorist, Hannah Arendt.

This flashy show of military muscle frequently does not end there either for as the visitor undertakes their tour of all, or part, of the country the idea that we are psychologically wedded to the violence is repeated.
Soldiers bearing arms, jets flying over and occasionally military vehicles rolling-by seem to punctuate the official’s visit.
This constant reference to the military, and by implication our willingness to kill others, is a centuries old affectation of countries even though they may well be the happiest, smartest and least belligerent of all societies on the planet.
It seems we are unable to get beyond this testosterone driven male driven-madness that equates strength with goodness.
Probably we can all point to moments past in which strength lead to goodness (I can’t), and any claims of such instances would be rarities and despite that, demonstrations of potency should not be a reason for one to favour another.
Rather than turn to brute, rude and raw muscle to convince others of our legitimacy, it would be masterly if we stepped beyond those base human values and turned our attention, and so the spotlight allowing our visitor to see for themselves, to demonstrating our understanding of, and affiliation with, the power of ideas, ingenuity, literacy, art and our allegiance to the veracity of science, all of which stands beyond the superstition that has cruelled much of the world.
Our guard of honour should be an assembly of our finest minds – philosophers, artists, scientists, mathematicians, authors, doctors, chefs, famers and others who use intelligence and/or wisdom rather than force to advance a point of view.
It was author Hannah Arendt who said: “The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the more probable change is to a more violent world”.
Conscious of that, our visitors should leave with a clear understanding that ours is country that sees it future unfolding in a positive manner through the sweeping use of intelligence as opposed to force.
So, in short, let us abandon Australia’s identity being underpinned by violence and become a country that celebrates, and rewards, those who work to enrich the idea of non-violence among people.
Non-violence is inherently linked to peace, which interestingly is a concept that is also beyond the understanding of many for peace is not simply the absence of war.
Peace, strangely, is about aggression, but an aggression that is overtly about the pursuit of ideas and ways of living in which kindness is the preferred, and first option.