Warnings ignored as government worsens entropic pace

Manifest warnings about the increasing entropic pace of the human infrastructure pass largely unnoticed.



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 20^th 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.

Far too little, far too late!

Proposals to upgrade the rail infrastructure on the Seymour line are far too little, far too late.

Prof Kevin Anderson.

Rail is unquestionable to most environmentally friendly way to move people and goods, but the climate change broadside that is about to pin us down will ensure we are not going anywhere.

Rather than invest time, money and effort into figuring out how we can maintain the status quo, that being “business as usual”, those energies and resources should be directed at strengthening communities, making them more resilient and so more able to cope with the unfolding and unquestionable changes.

Rather than worry about our rail network, we need help people understand and create the “five-minute-life”, that is, a way of living which everything important in our day-to-day lives is five minutes cycling or walking away.

Writing in his latest book, “The Conundrum”, American journalist, David Owen, argued that if we are to endure the emerging difficulties; we should not be going anywhere.

His “stay at home” philosophy is about each of us using less energy and so reducing our carbon dioxide emissions; emissions that according to the world’s leading climatologist, James Hansen, are making the world an uncomfortable place.

"The Conundrum" by
David Owen.

Hansen’s thoughts, and warnings, have been repeated by a former director of Manchester University’s Tyndall Centre, the UK's leading academic climate change research organization, Professor Kevin Anderson.

Watching what is happening in and around Shepparton suggests that many continue blissfully unaware of the shifts in lifestyle predicted by the likes of Hansen and Anderson.

After two century-long indoctrination into the capitalistic insistence on growth, most of us, myself included, are unable to escape the mantra that life should be bigger, better, faster, safer, happier and packed with consumer goods, mostly resulting from fossil-fuelled energies.

A few minutes spent listening to either Hansen or Anderson will remind us, that our future will be somewhat different from that decades-long promise.

Interestingly, a friend recently said many young people have fallen into a depressive malaise because of such doom and gloom, but there is little I can do other than apologise.

However, what we can do as a broader society is encourage our governments, at all levels, to force us into decided austerity; an austerity that would enforce a degree of poverty and so slow our consumptive behaviour.

Hansen and Anderson’s thoughts were reinforced when the ABC reported last week that carbon dioxide levels were now higher than at any time in the last 800 000 years, while the last decade in Australia was the warmest on record.

To ease the doom and gloom malaise my friend pointed to, we need to invest time and energy into making our neighbourhoods and our communities more inclusive and happier places, rather than making them easier to leave.