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.

 

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.

Rich deposit brings Australians rich responsibilities

Australians were recently warned that in having one of the world’s richest deposits of uranium meant we also had equally rich responsibilities.

Prof Robin Batterham

Our former chief scientist, Professor Robin Batterham, now with the University of Melbourne’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, reminded us of that challenge while summarizing a panel discussion entitled: “Fukushima: The Facts and the Fallout”.

The Japanese nuclear power plant was irreparably damaged in Japan’s earthquake and tsunami early in March this year and late last week the situation at Fukushima was upgraded to a level equivalent with damage at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986.

With about 30 per cent of the world’s uranium, Prof Batterham said all Australians needed to take an active interest into whom the ore was sold and, subsequently, the intended use of that same uranium.
Although the uranium, coal, gas, or what little there is of oil, leaves our shores it is still, in a disconnected but serious sense, Prof Batterham said, our responsibility.
The ultimate use, or misuse, of that uranium, coal or gas is critical as the residues of its application can come back through our water, food supplies or the atmosphere to damage our health.
Of course there is the further complication in that whatever finite resource it is we are exploiting, we are using another irreplaceable resource to recover it.
Considered in isolation, uranium power may well be emission free, but the reality is that it is not as massive amounts of fossil fuel is needed to mine, transport and finally safely store the waste and, importantly, build the power station itself.
Gross energy costs, and the resultant damage to our atmosphere, might be less than coal, but the costs are more than society should be prepared to pay.
Arguments that liquefied natural gas (LNG) should be excluded from Australia’s proposed carbon tax have been raised by the Australian-owned oil and gas producer, Woodside.
The company’s claims LNG will help deliver a "better world" and so should be excluded from the carbon tax.
At 16, I worked in Bass Strait with an oil survey company and fellow who understood the implications of our work urged me to buy shares in the then fledgling Woodside company.
Knowing nothing of the share market, I didn’t, but I should have taken his advice as those shares that then cost about five cents are closing on $50.
With our blessing, Woodside have plundered our resources for decades and it is time they paid some tax.
True, gas is less polluting, but recovering and distributing it is energy intensive and in gross terms is a massive contributor to our nation’s carbon dioxide emissions.
The broader welfare of our world should not be sacrificed to the short-term profits of one corporation.
(April 13, 2011)

Carbon tax will be irrelevant, but we need to prepare

Proposals for Australia to introduce a carbon tax have dominated public discussions.

Dr Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.

The amount of carbon dioxide emitted by Australians, and anyone else for that matter, is intimately connected to consumption, meaning, simply, that the more we consume the more carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere.
That elementary fact was clearly illustrated during the recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC) – with the world experiencing a cash crisis, consumption and subsequently production slowed resulting in a measurable decrease in our emissions.
The GFC saw the economy escape and bolt free, but a carbon tax is about tackling global warming with some discipline and imagined control over the mysteries of the economy.
However, something else is happening, something that will easily surpass the impact of both the GFC and the argued about carbon tax. We are running out of oil!
Everything our industrial world exists because of oil and rather than argue endlessly about a tax we yet don’t understand, we should be apply the ingenuity we are using to win or lose that debate to prepare our communities to live in a low-energy and “oil-less” world.
Life as we know it today and as it will be tomorrow will be as different as a blink and a wink – strikingly similar, but decidedly different, both in intent and purpose.
Rather that waste time piecing together something ultimately useless, our efforts, from the Prime Minister down, should be aimed at understanding how we can live well in a low-energy world.
The road from here to the end of oil in about 30 years will be exceedingly bumpy.
Much needs to be done, but the absolute first priority is to psychologically prepare people for what will be a transformative revolution to life styles.
Discussing life changing events, the late Dr Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said we go through five stages – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance.
The end of oil, that will resolve any need for a carbon tax, will see whole communities experience all those paradigms articulated by Dr Kubler-Ross.
The proposed carbon tax is a divisive distraction that will be both irrelevant and unimportant when the oil runs out.