Pandering to a dead paradigm

Celebratory applause has welcomed news of a new residential development near Mooroopna whose obedience, it seems, is to a dead paradigm.
The Victorian Government has tipped in $2 million toward a $6.5 million project in Mooroopna’s “West growth corridor”.


Mooroopna's railway station
 - effectively cut off from
 the town.

Applying values that have held our gaze for decades, the so-called corridor, north-west of the town, of nearly 300 hectares will allow for about 1600 housing allotments and become home for some 4000 people.
In an era of seemingly endless energy, including easy access to a wrongly assumed infinite flow of oil, and a time when we were unaware of how residential sprawl equated with size of our carbon footpint, such applause would have been appropriate.
To excavate a weary cliché, “the times they are a-changn’”, or more accurately, have changed, and although predictions are invariably wrong, the future of the “west growth corridor” is, in an energy constrained world, decidedly questionable.
Rather than cast our lot in with a project that breaks new ground, literally, we should be redirecting that cash toward the total redevelopment of central Mooroopna allowing for an increased density of residences with access to near car-free public spaces and, of course, the opening up of the railway station to those on foot.
Density does not equate with overcrowding, rather with thoughtful placement of residential areas generating a distinct sense of community that is mostly missing from many modern housing estates.

A former Mooroopna fellw, Jack Findlay,
won the world motorcycle championship
in 1975 and his feat is acknowledged at
this stature in the middle of the town.

Ideas from the mid and late 20^th century that saw housing estates developed on the basis that people wanted detached homes on individual blocks, remote from community services and absolutely car dependent, continue in present times and provides, it is almost certain, the template for what is envisaged near Mooroopna.
What is planned for the corridor appears to be the manifestation of thoughts remote from an acceptance of facts illustrating an understanding that rather than encouraging remote residential expansion, we should be working towards the reverse; the creation of a new central Mooroopna.
The utopian vision is vibrant – the future of the former Ardmona fruit factory is not bathed in optimism and that space should become the heart of the new Mooroopna providing easy pedestrian access to the railway station with the other end of that public space open to the town’s existing main street; surrounded by residences of two or three stories; a public vegetable garden; shops and a variety of government services.
Like it or not, we face a future of scarcity in which the skills of the artisan will become invaluable and spaces, places and facilities should be allowed within the “new Mooroopna” at which these people could work and their services be accessed.
The “five minute life” would be possible – home, work, shopping, socializing, leisure and public transport all within easy walking or cycling distance.
Whether or not Mooroopna is ideally sited is debatable, but the fact is that it is where it is and so short of uprooting the entire town, something that is impracticable and undesirable, those with the cash and the planning power should be revitalizing the heart of the town.
A “new Mooroopna” would be that heart, contrary to the west corridor growth plan which does nothing to appease the need of community rather; it worsens world troubles and simply enriches the few who endorse such expansionist plans.

Oil scarcity may be the solution to global warming, but just the beginning of our difficulties

Oil scarcity may ease the dynamic that is producing global warming.

Final exhaustion of this dwindling finite resource, the elephant in the room, will see the collapse of the world’s industrial complex and as it crashes over the abyss, with it will largely go the human contribution to carbon dioxide.

Above: The image used
to portray a town in
transition.

The damage we have done to the atmosphere will, according to leading climatologists, will be with us for thousands of years, and so that moment will not end the difficulty, just not worsen it.
The end of oil, depending what advice you take, is 30 years away or double that if you listen to the optimists.
Others argue that such a moment will not really matter too much as technology, and human ingenuity, is simply waiting in the wings for its call to centre stage.
A few things – our ingenuity will ease the coming difficulties; technology won’t, or can’t, help; the end of oil will not be the end of our difficulties, in fact, it will be just the beginning.As industry, as we know and understand it, crashes into oblivion, so goes the financial superstructure on which the world’s welfare hinges, along with our ability to feed the world’s billions.
Listening recently to Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, Mike Hulme, it was interesting to hear that the one hiccough in the past 200 years to man’s contribution to carbon dioxide came with the Global Financial Crisis about four years ago.
As the world’s economic system spiraled out of control, industrial systems slowed noticeably, equally slowing our consumption and in turn denting humanity’s global carbon dioxide output.
The end of oil will damage, even more dramatically, the world’s economy and so reduce even further our carbon dioxide output.
So that is the good news – the end of oil eases significantly our damage to the atmosphere, but with it comes the bad news, difficulties we can’t imagine.
Everything that makes life as we know it complete, from food to football and trains to tampons, exist because of oil.
This elephant in the room, the exhaustion of the world’s oil, is rarely acknowledged and being something hugely exhausting to think about, it is sort of mentally discarded with the rationalized cover-up being “technology will solve the problem”.
It is mainly those actively involved with the Transition Towns movement who willingly talk about what will be a pivotal moment in humanity’s history and who are actively preparing both themselves and hopefully their respective communities.
The Goulburn Valley is fortunate to have a transition group working, almost beneath the public radar, in Tatura hoping it can prepare individuals and the wider community for this challenging moment.

Oil scarcity will make high speed train viable

The tyranny of oil scarcity will force the viability of a high speed rail (below) network along Australia’s east coast.

And that moment, despite the views of many skeptics, will be upon us sooner than imagined.
Ideas to improve on and expand existing rail networks have come too late and rather than spending billions of dollars on the nation’s oil-hungry infrastructure, investments should have been in rail, not what are now dead-end roads.
The money sunk into our roads has spawned an intricate web of implicated industries all of which depend upon the survival and enhancement of this infrastructure.
Had we adopted a different emphasis, we would now have a wholly different range and type of sustainable industries wrapped around an equally sustainable rail network – we wouldn’t have any fewer jobs, rather different jobs.
Recently it was reported that Infrastructure Minister, Anthony Albanese, had been told that a fast rail link between Sydney and Melbourne was not viable as it couldn’t compete with air travel in terms of speed and so wouldn’t attract enough travellers.
However, report criteria seems to overlook the world’s quickly vanishing oil supplies that will make air and road travel prohibitively expensive and by default enhance the mass movement of people and freight by rail, even though it might be slower.
Projected costs of $110 million a kilometre for the high speed train network will be cheap when considered retrospectively from among the ruins of a nation that failed to take timely action as the world’s oil supplies began to run dry.
Our attention should, however, be on more than one train running along Australia’s east coast and be expanded to take in the country’s entire rail network.
The Goulburn Valley’s railway lines should be rebuilt or refurbished and our links to and from Melbourne, for both freight and passengers, should be fast, frequent and stylish to make it our preferred mode of travel.
Short of an innovative and as yet unknown technology filling the industrial and lifestyle chasm that oil scarcity will reveal, an improved and enhanced rail network will enable us to maintain business as usual, for a while at least.

Prepared or not, vote we must and then those elected must be allowed to act strategically

Australians and by implication Goulburn Valley people are in many instances ill-prepared for Saturday’s federal election.

The pre-election campaign has so far told us much, but in reality nothing of import.
Much of what we have heard has played on the credulity of Australians and at every turn avoided the scepticism and honesty that our country’s well-being hinges on.
Isolated pockets of the needed ingredients no doubt exist, but it is not evident among those who will probably be in charge of our affairs after Saturday.
Little has been said about climate change, although Liberal leader Tony Abbott recently described it as “crap” (maybe the polls have softened his view) and the present Prime Minster, Julia Gillard, will refer it to a group of ordinary Australians to consider the matter – sorry Julia we can’t afford even more procrastination.
Oil scarcity, an undoubted reality that will be upon us in the next decade or two, hasn’t yet even rated a mention.
Peak oil, as it is colloquially known, will be, according to the president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Prof Ian Lowe (above), a more significant problem than climate change and although it has the potential to ease global heating, it will, in doing that, desecrate our world.
Social problems that will arise from oil scarcity and climate change are presently beyond our understanding and are of such magnitude that either our politicians either aren’t aware of the difficulties, or if they are, refuse to talk about them for fear of “scaring the horses”.
Present conversations about Australia’s future appear irrelevant considering our low-energy future in which the world we know and understand will be replaced by something that escapes our comprehension.
The Greens, as evidenced by their name, have some understanding of what is ahead, but as yet I have not heard comment from anyone that suggests they sense what is ahead and within that what we should do and how we should behave to ensure Australia has resilience equal to the certain difficulties ahead.
Vote we must, but then those we elect need time to think, plan and act strategically to counter global heating and, more importantly, prepare Australia for oil scarcity.