Shepparton people know or care little about sea level rise

Shepparton people mostly know or care little about sea level rise.

Why? Well, it is geographically irrelevant as it has none, or almost no effect on the daily lives of people in the Goulburn Valley.

Most see it as situationally unimportant as the nearest ocean is about 200 km away and on the other side the Great Dividing Range, and as Shepparton is about 115 metres above sea level concerns about rising seas simply don’t compute.

And of course that is correct and so the ocean shoreline is something mostly preserved in the minds of Sheppartonians for holidays; sea level rise is most certainly not front of mind.

However, the behaviour of the world’s oceans is, interestingly, something we should be acutely curious about as our behaviour here, as remote as we might be from the world’s oceans, impacts, in turn on their behaviour, or more correctly the world’s ice sheets that hold sufficient fresh water to raise the levels of our oceans by more than 60 metres.

Many argue such massive melts and sea level rise are unlikely this century and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has suggested only about a metre by 2100, but scientist Jason Box who is studying ice melt in Greenland believes we will see two metres by the end of the century.

And again, that is irrelevant to most in the Goulburn Valley as two metres is wholly inconsequential to people here, or is it?

Well, yes, it is a concern, or should be. 

We can be distracted by many things when the discussion turns to sea level rise, but in essence it is connected directly to human behaviour; our behaviour right here in Shepparton and whether or not we remain locked into our energy-rich ways or do we argue for, and support structural changes  to our community, including such things as the embrace of renewable energy and a total rethink of how we move about the city, and so what our city looks like and how its infrastructure works.

Shepparton is strangely contradictory for it is in one sense modern and sophisticated and in another locked into values, ideals and habits of the mid-20th Century and it is our adherence to the latter that manifests itself as sea level rise.

Writing recently in The Guardian, Jeff Sparrow discussed the wonder of technology, something from which Shepparton his richly benefitted, and quoted author Elizabeth Kolbert, who said: “It may seem impossible to imagine, that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we’re now in the process of doing.”

That observation, Sparrow wrote, was made 13 years ago and the warnings from scientists, he added, have grown both more specific and desperate – and yet the march to destruction has only redoubled its pace. 

Hard to grasp, hard to get you head around? Of course it is, but understand it we must and to better do that, read Jeff Goodell’s book, “The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World.”

A Federal Budget loaded with irrelevant numbers

Last week’s Federal Budget was irrelevant.

The idea of a budget is not irrelevant, but a list of financial strictures that pander to life as we know and understand it, is wholly inappropriate.

Life in Australia ranges in extremes from damn difficult to obscenely prosperous, but beyond our daily difficulties, most people live relatively happy and expansive lives.

Those who profit from what exists stand with the advocates of more and lament any budgetary changes that limit their opportunities to further boost their bank balances.

Contrarily, those on the other side of the scale and whom, for various reasons, have seen much of the country’s wealth bypass them, equally lament changes, with their protests being almost unheard.

Australia is unquestionably the lucky country; well, for the moment.

Australia, as does the rest of the world, faces a collision of events that any budget built around existing economic dynamics is fundamentally flawed.

The world is changing, no surprises there, but it is changing in a way that is publically unacknowledged by the world’s financial gurus, among them those who are calling the shots with regard Australia’s future, be it economic or otherwise.

There is a rude immediacy about how the world operates with liberal democracy holding us hostage to the next election and more colloquially, to the next episode of television’s “The Block”.

Rather than piece together a budget, good or bad depending on personal situations, ideology or political adherences, that responds to populist needs that further fuels business as usual, we should be endorsing courageous decisions that prepare us, for the shocks ahead.

The workings of the world, and by implication Australia and so the Goulburn Valley, depends almost entirely on oil or some derivative of it and with more than half the world’s easily accessible oil already gone, it is going to become increasingly expensive as it becomes more difficult to extract.

To counter that, the government needs to enthusiastically invest in the public infrastructure and discourage private profiteering that arises from exploitation of the public domain.

The issue that will trump all concerns our changing climate and although there should have been a budgetary response three decades ago, it is still not too late, although any effective response will now need to be innovative, bold, courageous and be an immediate break with the “business as usual” paradigm.

Australian society will need to be seriously decentralized; public transit systems massively refurbished and upgraded, while there is an equal divestment in the private infrastructure (roads); community infrastructure and resilience needs to be bolstered; food security needs to be localized; and while work is psychologically important, it needs to be re-imagined and restructured allowing people to work fewer hours, live closer to their work and spend more time strengthening communities.