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.”

Patrick Crudden forced you to look inward and unearth our better selves

Some people unintentionally force us to look inward and unearth our better selves.

Patrick Crudden was on of those people. He made you a better person, simply by knowing you.

He died last week and gone now is a stalwart of Shepparton’s literary scene, a gentle yet sweeping knowledge, and a man who helped make Shepparton an intellectually richer place.

Patrick became known to me through his creation of the Country Festival of Writing in Shepparton, and then through becoming a member of the Goulburn Valley Writers’ Group, of which he was the then president.

We came though from different worlds for Patrick was a devout Christian and, which, in my view, are beliefs substantiated by myth, but those fundamental intellectual differences did not impair our friendship rather, they strengthened it.

'He made you a better person, simply by knowing you' ....

How could that be?  Respect, it seems, was the key ingredient as we could both see the passion with which the other held their views and so never ventured into what was an unspoken no-go area. 

Never in the 20 years I knew Patrick, did he proselytize, attempting to change my views, but it was always obvious where he stood and what values he endorsed, which comfortingly and interestingly, were strikingly similar, except for that one basic and fundamental difference, he saw the world through the prism of Christianity, I didn’t and don’t.

Patrick was a true gentle man, passing through life pushing a significant bow wave, but, oddly, never making a ripple. He had a sense of decency about him; a decency that surpasses that of most people I know.

Oddly, the detail of Patrick’s history never seemed that important to me, rather, the man that stood before me had such a consuming presence that it was only the “now”that mattered.

Patrick’s presence was in my life long before actually meeting him as his daughter, Julie, her husband Wayne and children lived just two doors away.

Holding Patrick’s hand late in the afternoon and several hours before that last sentence was written, Julie and I reminisced about being neighbours and her lively son, Andy, who was the primary conduit.

Andy, about three or four at the time, was urgently in love with my daughter and her best friend, both about 16, and we smiled about the wide-eyed tale he told of finding a wombat hole while on holidays.

Patrick had been a confidant, counsellor and an inspiration to many and with a life anchored in Catholicism, it’s not surprising that he was a regular volunteer at Shepparton's Vinnies store.

Friend John Lawry was eager to introduce a philosophy-like session at Shepparton’s U3A and Patrick quickly aligned himself with the idea and along with John became the prime driver of what was to become “Socrates’ Cafe”, something which he said helped fill the vacuum left after the death of his wife, Bev, and was “Keeping me alive.”

Patrick was a thinker, a man of the word (literally) who loved, and told a good story, seemed to enjoy all forms of writing, whether poetry or prose, fact or fiction, and just last week, with the final chapter written, the book of his life was closed.

We missed a chance we never really had

We have missed our chance.

Well, not really for we never, in fact, had a chance.

Rachel Carson wrote
'Silent Spring' warning
us that our
 capricious wants were
damaging the earth.

Humanity is headed in precisely the wrong direction for rather than improving the values under which humans flourish, they are worsening.

Inequality is greater now than ever; fewer people than ever control the world’s wealth, be that economic or material; class distinctions are greater than ever; and peace is more distant than ever.

What exists and the choices offered on Saturday, is and were contrary to what is needed if society is to thrive and arrive at a point from which we can build resilience.

A friend argues that “what” is without substance or reason until we understand the “how”; demonstrable realities, both big and small, refute that view, illustrating that until we understand “what” we want, “how” is hollow and irrational.

What we need is to escape from the environmentally destructive rigours of the corporatocracy that has routed democracy and in which the economy is sacrosanct, while the wellbeing of people is seemingly irrelevant.

We live in a world in which authoritarian or totalitarian governments are eschewed, but that is exactly the guise under which most of the world’s corporations and other successful businesses operate.

Solidarity and success for them comes through a command and control system, which, beyond a few rare instances and the constructed guise of democracy, are effectively despotic with an allegiance only to profit and growth.

Donella Meadows
told us about
the realities
of the 'Limits
to Growth'.

Rachel Carson, warned us in her 1962 book “Silent Spring” of how our industrial way of life was destroying nature at an alarming rate and a decade later, a team led by Donella Meadows, wrote and published “The Limits to Growth.

Carson and Meadows were castigated by the business as usual brigade, but the authors told truths, which today are being realised with the added complication that the ceaseless and careless burning of fossil fuels has damaged our climate to the extent that civilization itself is under threat.

Professor David Karoly from the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne recently warned at Swanpool that immediate cessation of our carbon dioxide emissions was our only hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

No option on Saturday offered anything remotely like that, in fact quite the reverse, and so now it falls upon us to gather under the umbrella of intergenerational responsibility and bond with those who want to preserve people rather than profit.

What do we do? We acknowledge that not all is not as is should be and that the promises that influenced our vote on Saturday will do naught to ease the situation; and stand and work with those mostly volunteer groups that aim to build resilient communities able to endure an unfolding age of scarcity.

Bank's result should be applauded, but questioned, seriously

Australia’s Commonwealth Bank should be applauded for its reported profit of $7.1 billion.

The Commonwealth Bank
 as it was in 1912.

The bank has fulfilled its “reason” beautifully and because of that epitomises the essence of the capitalistic customs in which civilization is enmeshed.

The bank is performing and behaving exactly in accordance with those behaviours; yardsticks set by the community, both here and overseas.

Considerations of the past year of operations by Australia’s biggest bank are neither right nor wrong, but find their place in either camp when subjected to personal ideologies.

The Commonwealth Bank Act in 1911 resulted in the founding of the bank in 1912, empowered then to conduct both savings and general banking business.

Today, the bank has grown to a business with more than 800 000 shareholders and 52 000 workers in the Commonwealth Bank Group.

The Commonwealth Banks Restructuring Act of 1990 converted the Commonwealth Bank from a statutory authority to a public company with conventional share capital and part-Government ownership.

On 17 April 1991, the organisation became a public company with a share capital governed by the Corporations Law and then was fully privatised in three stages from 1991 until July 1996.

So, as a private company the bank has adhered to the philosophies and ideals on which it is built in that it has enriched stakeholders, been a good corporate citizen and portrayed itself as a beacon of decency in the financial dynamic.

Detached from the intricacies of the financial world and remote from its demands and urgencies, criticism can easily and quickly percolate to the surface, particularly, if one is immune to the fascinations of finance.

Stripped of all its finery and various ornaments the world of money has supressed the beautiful intricacies and wonder of being human and is little more than sophisticated gambling in which the main players rarely lose.

The finance industry is the engine of “business as usual” and buttressed by distorted constructions of what is best for man, a few grow fabulously rich and many equally poor, as we roar, with our eyes shut, our breath held and our good sense stilled, toward the abyss.

Shrill and comforting adages leap from the lips of the business as usual boosters, but they take no account of mounting environmental costs; debts that are beyond payment by the world’s existing financial infrastructure.

The way ahead is about restructuring and retrofitting our financial system, saying “good-bye” to existing, but costly social, resource and environmental good times and putting out the welcome mat to an austerity that will bring with it an enriched way of living we don’t yet understand.

Profits of $7 billion; more for many corporations are something our earth can no longer afford; we should demand that people have priority over profit.