Energy is the foundation of life

Energy is the foundation of life in the Goulburn Valley.

Whatever form you choose: it makes our cars go, warms and cools our houses, makes the trees and grass grow, fattens our animals, takes us around the world and takes our kids to school, allows us to make and use things and, in a more intimate sense, literally makes our heart beat.

Energy in all its varied forms is what has allowed humans, who have understood it best, to build and develop a complex society which, without energy would collapse.

Read Ugo Bardi’s “Extracted” and you begin to understand that fossil fuel-based energy upon which modern civilization is founded came from two specific periods in earth’s history, 90 and 150 million years ago.

It is unlikely the world will ever exhaust its fossil fuels, rather they will become so expensive and difficult to extract that economically, we will be forced to leave them in the ground.

Beyond that, there is the further complicating factor – the burning of fossil fuels has altered the chemical makeup of earth’s atmosphere and is changing weather patterns to such a degree that humanity is edging closer to the abyss.

Some people have thought deeply about this challenge and on Friday of next week, the Shepparton-based group, Slap Tomorrow, will present a forum in Mooroopna at which the idea of powering tomorrow will be explored and discussed.

Leading discussions will be the Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales, Dr Mark Diesendorf.

Dr Disesnedorf, who has written the book “Sustainable Energy Solutions for Climate Change” is convinced, and can illustrate how Australia could be powered now by renewable energy, if we only had the will.

With him will be a director of Applied Horticultural Research and an adjunct Professor of Horticultural Crop Physiology with the University of Sydney, Dr Gordon Rogers

He has a PhD in crop physiology, and 24 years in agronomy and crop physiology specialising in sustainable horticultural production systems, crop water uptake and irrigation in horticultural crops.

Dr Rogers can help farmers understand how they can apply renewable energy to their agricultural processes.

Dr Mark Diesendorf.

A third speaker is a PhD student from the University of Melbourne, David Coote, who has focussed his studies and research on community-scale woody biomass energy systems, the integration of bioenergy with solar power, small scale on-farm use of renewable energy and biodiesel manufacture.

Overseeing the September 26 forum will be thinker, comedian and advisor to the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne, Rod Quantock.

The world’s conventional energy sources are either past their peak, or unusable and next week’s Slap Energy forum will shine a light on a new and renewable energy future.

Newspaper readers can help make an idea a reality

Newspaper readers have much to do
 beyond just read - they have a critical
role in  the achievement or world peace.

Readers of this newspaper (first published in the Shepparton News) have a significant and important individual role to play in achieving world peace.

Should that sound outlandish, just remember world peace is simply an idea and nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

Interestingly it is an idea that appears to have wide currency for frequently people declare that world peace is what they most desire.

Maybe such an answer sounds politically correct and simply gives the respondent a warm and fuzzy feeling as it makes them feel as if they are at one with the universe, even if for a moment.

That said, there is a difficulty for the intent, or wish seems to get lost, or at least politically distorted, when it is contaminated by the rush, wants and needs of the real world, and so the statement is simply rhetorical and never makes it into the realms of practicality

Such a suggestion does the idea of peace a serious disservice for the absence of confrontation, violence or pugilistic-like behaviour is what is real; what’s not real and absent all remnants of civility is the so-called “real world”.

In that “real world” we argue, and frequently resort to killing each other, over almost anything.

The 20^th century was passionately violent and the “great peace”, as described by some, from after WW2 through to the beginning of the 21^st century fell that way as humanity lolled about gorging itself after discovering the keys to nature’s pantry – fossil fuels multiplied fabulously the efforts of every individual.

Distracted by that energy abundance we partied and built like there was no tomorrow, seemingly oblivious that there is actually a tomorrow; a tomorrow populated by people we haven’t meet yet and to whom we have an ethical and moral responsibility.

And so we return to peace.

Ask most people and they are eager to leave the world in good shape for those that follow, or that is what they say.

We need to husband what energy we have for while it does many things, it leverages peace, but peace, real peace begins with you; your thoughts, your speech and your behaviour, and, of course, how you treat your fellows.

Peace in its finality is a complex beast, but it begins and is built on a simplicity that is foreign to the complexities of our modern world.

Most believe they contribute naught to the violence that pervades our world, but we need to be careful; careful in many ways, but particularly in whom we hand responsibility for we don’t need leaders and other decision makers who militarize the language.

The solution is not in subduing the other and winning, rather it is collaborating and co-operating to stand side-by-side rather than face-to-face.

The incoherency of democracy stumbling from a 'low blow'

Writing coherently about something that is decidedly incoherent is difficult.

Democracy stumbled recently as it took a low blow with the repeal of the carbon pricing mechanism and so appears ill-equipped to untangle the complexities of climate change.

Former Australian PM, Kevin Rudd, among others, including many from the other side of the ideological divide, have declared climate change as humanity’s greatest ever moral challenge.

That observation follows an even earlier comment from former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter who said in 1971 that the energy crisis was “the moral equivalent to war”. Climate change is about many things, but chief among them is our frivolous use of energy.

Few, if any have argued for the abandonment of democracy, a social governance process that has underpinned societies for more than two centuries , but it was no less than Albert Einstein who said a problem cannot be resolved by the thinking from which is arose.

The world now faces difficulties created and encouraged by democracy and so applying the Einstein maxim that revered social governance process should now be questioned.

Democracy allows for debate, difference of opinion, the rule of law and within and around those attributes, tolerance.

That heady mix of values are now entrenched, most certainly in developed countries and although they now have a foothold in many other places, their import is as varied as the cultures which have embraced them.

Returning again to Mr Rudd’s 2007 observations, he noted then that climate change was so vast that it was beyond politics.

His prescient comments apply to what presently exists – climate change is unquestionably the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced and democracy appears unequal to those challenges.

Beyond that, the magnitude of what is ahead appears to escape the understanding of the Abbott-led government.

Yes, addressing the causes and mitigation of climate change is something that is beyond politics and demands creative, innovative and courageous ideas that appear to exceed the capacities of existing egalitarianism.

Democracy as an ideal is to be celebrated, but it was adherence to its fundamentals that gave rise to the Anthropocene – a scientifically recognized era acknowledging the influence of man; an era of industry, growth, conflict and profit that has disrupted the world’s climate.

Sadly, the climate change conversation has been politicized creating a “them and us”, a “goodies and baddies”-type discussion, which is simply wrong for no-one is correct or incorrect, no-one is either good or bad rather, we’re all responsible and so together face the unintended consequences of the natural expression of our species’ will to survive.

So where do we go from here?

Work hard to understand and reclaim democracy; support those who epitomise its values and step away from those who don’t.

Climate change is bring a decidely different future

Survival is going to
 need deep thought.

Tomorrow will be different from yesterday, no surprises there, but gone will be the status quo and many perceived freedoms.

 

Unmitigated climate change, a dilemma presently troubling the world, is something to which many are antagonistic for it brings with it the inevitable demise of most everything people in the developed world take for granted, especially imagined freedoms.

The discovery of fossil fuels along with the realization of and release of its embedded energy, set humanity on a troublesome trajectory that at first brought unimagined bonuses, but has now created equally unimagined complexities.

Humanity, interestingly, has the intellectual capacity equal to what is happening to our climate for when looked at analytically, it was our endeavours that unleashed the process, and now we understand the science.

So, we know what causes the difficulty and we know how to approach the solution, but the question is still, and it has never changed, are we intellectually bold enough, and sufficiently courageous, to implement the solutions we know exist?

The burning of oil, one of the prime causes of climate change, along with coal, suddenly saw those in developed countries, and other places to a lesser degree, freed from much physical labour as a barrel of oil represents more than 20 000 hours of human work.

Almost overnight many people went from being tied to the daily toil of sheer survival to a comparative life of luxury as oil, and coal, were put to work ending, largely, man’s drudgery.

This emancipation of our time wasn’t, sadly, put to figuring out how to husband this effectively free energy and so ration it rather, we wrongly assumed this was party-time and in about three centuries, we have nearly exhausted this rich resource.

Correction, it is unlikely we will ever exhaust earth’s fossil fuel resources rather our continued burning of them will disrupt human life to such an extent that we will no longer be able access or use them.

Freedom is an elusive smoke and mirrors concept, now you see it and now you don’t, and subsequent to the fallacy of the liberation promised by the military/industrial complex, we need to look to another freedom in which the needs of nature are equal to the wants of man.

Modernity has brought many advances allowing humanity to thrive, but within most enhancements has been an almost secret ideology that has gradually removed our freedoms, ensuring our behaviour enriches a relative few with most of the costs lumped upon the environment.

Should we value our freedom, then its survival depends almost entirely up us happily relinquishing some aspects or it.

The successful mitigation of climate change rests with you and me foregoing many traditional wants, readjusting our aspirations and understanding that genuine freedom is inextricably linked to discipline.

Surviving soon will simply be tough enough without such things as 'Tough Mudder'

Personal fitness regimes appear proportional to the rise of our dependence upon fossil fuels for energy.

The massive amounts of
 human energy expended on
events such as 'Tough
 Mudder' will be needed soon
 to  simply survive.

The latter has led to the former as there is an obvious relationship between our addiction to fossil fuels and the collapse of the need for human energy to undertake work.

Hence the emergence of regimes, or places, to repair subsequent human feebleness, a natural by-product of the sedentary life that is dependent on energy from somewhere else, that arose in lockstep with our habitual use of fossil energy.

Becoming increasingly dependent upon fossil fuels for energy, human muscle fell into disuse and following the emergence of boxing gyms in the 1930s, exercise regimes became an increasingly regular part of life.

In the past decade many have profited handsomely from an increasingly bizarre array of exercise programs that have proliferated, including curiously named events such as “Tough Mudder”.

The personal energy we now use for what is mostly recreation, in which many exhaust themselves to collapse, was in earlier times needed to simply survive, although many continue to deny that our hungry wants are taking us back to what once was.

The discovery of fossil fuels, along with an understanding how they could be used as a substitute for human and animal energy, liberated mankind from the demanding daily necessary exercise regime of hand-to-mouth survival.

Fossil fuel energy companies plead a contrary view, but the simple facts, supported by undeniable realities, illustrate that the storehouse of ancient energy is becoming exhausted and on a human time-scale we will have little choice but to return to personal manual labour.

The gymnasium of ancient Greece, beyond being a place where people trained for major public events, encouraged political discussion and frequently had a library attached, which was quite different from the stack of magazines in today’s gymnasiums.

Much discussion presently goes on between those pursuing various exercise regimes, but most of it is shallow, of little consequence and frequently is of little relevance to fundamental human needs.

Human energy will soon be again in demand for although we might see and explosion of renewable energy sources, it is unlikely that beyond some energy source not yet imagined, our daily needs will still only be satisfied through the use of our muscles.

Obesity and diabetes are modern problems that equate with too much time doing too little, unlike our predecessors who had to spend a few hours every day to ensure food was available.

That usually vigorous endeavour included much incidental exercise denying obesity and diabetes, but left time to connect with family, neighbours and friends.

Our exercise in the future will come vicariously as we bend our backs to ensure personal and community resilience and Tough Mudder-like frivolities will be unimaginable, irrelevant, and unnecessary.

A discussion initiated, a discussion continued, but never finished

A discussion that began in August in the columns of this paper continued recently in the office of the City of Greater Shepparton’s mayor, Cr Geoff Dobson.

The mayor of the City of Greater
 Shepparton council,
 Cr Geoff Dobson.

The mayor, an amiable fellow near the end of his second term in that role, which, he says, will be his last, seemed remote from the political intrigue often associated with such roles.
Discussion canvassed many ideas, chiefly; however, those examined many times, and particularly in August, in this column.
The mayor appreciated considered views and both he and I wondered why those with an interest in the future wellbeing of our city did not take the time to make an appointment to talk with the mayor, whoever he or she might be.
People with a view about how the city can, or should, behave and respond to its community responsibilities should, it was discussed, formally talk with the council, rather than simply expand on their views among friends.
Without individual and thoughtful input from ratepayers, as opposed the emotional recklessness of groups, the council, in Shepparton’s case just seven people, is forced to operate in an incestuous vacuum, or at least a process driven by personal ideas or simple anecdotal opinions of others.
The connection between community wellbeing and so its accessibility of food turned talk to community gardens; public transit and its ever increasing need was discussed; talk shifted, at one point, to the need of increased residential density in the city, that being shop-top residences as an example; and, the mayor having another appointment, our cordial conversation ended.
The mayor encouraged me to consider initiating a group that was not (these are my words) argumentative, confrontational or critical, rather simply people who thoughtfully considered the city’s future and wellbeing, and then a few times a year presented its findings to the council.
Leaving the meeting, it soon became obvious that the “elephant in the room” had been overlooked.
Not even discussed and so inadvertently ignored had been the question of energy, a question so large, which, if answered successfully, holds the key to the future of Greater Shepparton.
Energy, in all its facets, is the essence of the Goulburn Valley, without which Greater Shepparton would be substantially different for what we know and enjoy today, even with an abundance of water.
Some groups, conscious of its importance, have taken steps to address impending energy crises with ideas that have been enthusiastically embraced.
That enthusiasm, in this case solar energy, illustrates that the community is often intellectually and physically ahead of local, State and Federal Governments.
That trio, however, is frequently hedged in by democracy, which is a lovely idea in principle, but works best for those with the loudest or most persistent voice.

The sun sets on the era of cheap and abundant energy

Pause, if you will, look back and take in the spectacular sunset as the era of cheap and abundant energy slips below the horizon.

Windmills could again be common as we
 witness the sun set on the era of cheap 
and abundant energy.

It’s over: nearly three centuries of phenomenal growth ignited by humanity’s cleverness and hard work, made possible by the unleashing of ancient sunlight in the form of fossil fuels, is ending.
The feast is finished and a famine of energy is shaping to bring on what is in fact a true famine, a decided dearth of food to feed earth’s ever-growing population.
As with other life forms, human numbers ballooned when the circumstances allowed and in that goldilock’s-like epoch, those years when it was not too hot or too cold and we had, thanks to oil, a team of labourers working non-stop for us.
However, those “labourers” are tiring and soon, after a couple of centuries of our wasteful use of the ancient sunlight that became, among other things, oil, the tireless work they have done will again fall to us, changing our lives in ways we can’t yet even contemplate.
Enjoy the sunset for the following sunrise will be a red sky in the morning, which, if we take note of a sailor’s adage, will be a warning.
I feel like weeping as the realization that this wonderful life is ending sweeps over me, but then my optimism returns as the wonder of human resilience, innovation and tenacity fills my mind.
We have lived for nearly three centuries as if the limitations of nature were irrelevant, arrogantly striding the world confident that humanity had successfully manipulated the world to suit itself when all along it was Mother Nature who was actually in charge.

The late
E.F.Schumacher.

We stand between an emotional sunset and a troubling dawn that will introduce us to a new era in which the comforts of the past couple of centuries will evaporate, meaning the essential positivity that has sustained us for decades will still be in demand, but directed at different outcomes.
The dichotomy between never-ending growth, something most economists consider the epitome of good business, and earth’s ecological finitude illustrates an alarming, and a societal threatening, misunderstanding of realities.
The late author, E.F.Schumacher, discussed the realities of primary and secondary goods with the former being provided by nature and the second by human effort.
Beyond that, however, there are tertiary goods where fanciful abstractions on the world’s economy created from nothing are ultimately worth nothing.
The serious shrinkage of fossil fuels, complicated by a crumbling economy takes us closer to the abyss, but standing between us and that fall is the richness, versatility, resilience and tenacity of our fellows and if we stand with them, then that striking sunset will lead to a different,  but better,  day.

Building a lifeboat in Shepparton to survive the 'perfect storm'

To the Mayor and Councillors,
Economic difficulties have ricocheted around the world and although Australia, and by implication Shepparton, has avoided a direct hit, the collateral damage is growing as are the conditions for a perfect storm.
The City ofGreater Shepparton Council is one of many, but the most important of bulwarks to protect our community from the rigours of a failing and flailing economy.

The seven-strong City of
 Greater Shepparton Council, led
by its mayor, Cr  Geoff
 Dobson (right),
 who can build Shepparton into
 a "lifeboat city".

That “perfect storm” has arisen from a collision of circumstances that some skeptics still doubt – humans, that is you and me, have irreparably damaged our atmosphere causing huge shifts in weather patterns; our growth mandated economy is breaking down; the fossil fuels that underpin the energy on which the world as we know it depends are severely depleted, or becoming uneconomic or impossible to recover; and the technology that many pay homage to and declare our saviour, is bankrupt.
Bankruptcy is something that has crossed the minds of many recently and it is something that will devour entire communities in decades to come and so rather than scurry of to a secluded hut in the bush armed with a loaded gun and rations, people need to bond with their community and work with council to build hope and resilience.
Difficult times can best be surmounted if courageous and decisive leaders step forward and who better to do that than those already elected to such a role, our councillors.
Our unfolding future will be decidedly different from the immediate centuries past, which were awash with easily accessible and effectively free fossil energies.
Starting from today, council needs to build a community that will answer human needs and happiness without the fossil fuels that have lifted it to its present stature.
Food will be a priority and council needs to create several significant community gardens throughout the city; fuel being rare and expensive means significant effort should be applied to the creation of frequent, fast and reliable public transport and both cycling and walking should be made easier and encouraged; planning and zoning should encourage increased residential density in the heart of the city; and as the modern world edges towards collapse, council needs to instigate throughout the community, ways and means for people to learn about and understand the skills of yesteryear.
Applying the adage that it is never too late, council needs to engage with the community and so exploit our richest resource – people and their innovation and resilience – to build on the rich wisdom, and hard work, that fortified the Greater Goulburn Valley.
Difficulties beyond what is understood and expected will emerge with alarming rapidity and Shepparton, guided and cared for by the council can become what is known in post-fossil fuels era nomenclature as a “life-boat city”.