Professor Karoly will bring his knowledge of climate change to Shepparton

The intimate and intricate challenges of climate change will be explained in Shepparton on Tuesday, November 23.

Melbourne University’s Professor David Karoly (below left) will talk about the implications of climate change and, in particular, its impact on Victoria.

Prof Karoly, a lead author in the third and fourth assessment reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is currently with the School of Earth Sciences at the university.

All of his research, he says, has confirmed that the main cause of global warming over the last 50 years is due to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

His address on Tuesday will be at the university’s School of Medical Health auditorium in Graham St, Shepparton, starting at 7:30pm. Admission will be free.
Prof Karoly will provide an update on the extensive scientific basis for observed climate changes over the last 100 years and the reasons why most of the observed increase in global temperatures is due to increasing greenhouse gases from human activity.
His address is entitled “Climate change: an update on the science”.
He will also describe the likely climate changes over the next 100 years and what we need to do if we want to slow the rate of global warming.
Prof Karoly will discuss coming global changes and how they will affect Victoria.
Those with any questions about the November 23 lecture should direct them to Robert McLean at 5822 1766 or via email at robed@sheppnews.com.au.

Listening in Echuca and sipping latte in Melbourne

On Monday last week, I listened in Echuca as farmers complained of city based latte-sipping people giving them advice; on Tuesday, the following day, I was doing just that, sipping a latte in Melbourne (below right).

And what follows will undoubtedly be interpreted by some as just that, advice. However, rather than advice this is simply an observation.

I was just one of more than about 1200 at Monday’s Murray Darling Basin Authority’s community consultation to discuss its guide to its plan for the basin.
I was not alone at Echuca’s Frontera Basketball Centre, obviously, but that sense settled on me when it quickly became obvious that my sentiments were decidedly different from most others at the meeting.
Many who took the floor during question/comment time often said “All in the room would agree” with this or that lumping me in with the great ruck of thought at the meeting.
Immediately I considered a personal protest declaring my independence, but sensing a lynching – mine – would soon follow, I swallowed my objection and so, through my acquiescence, joined those protesting.
However, most farmers I know love what they do and wouldn’t swap their way of life what I witnessed on Tuesday – latte-sipping people in business attire taking a break in sunny Collins St from the rigours of their world.
That being true, there seems to be an inexplicable anger directed at city people by those from the country, who assume, wrongly, that their city cousins enjoy the good life at the expense of country folk and in doing that, have the audacity to tell them how to manage their farm.
Such a view is unwarranted and although it might bring those who hold them some momentary comfort, it is poorly thought through as farmers without consumers is about as effective as a ship without the sea.
The Collins St latte-sipper and the true country farmer, as opposed to the Collins St farmer, are obviously different in every sense, from their way of life to their skills, but they mysteriously need each other and have an unfathomably equality that allows for, and ensures, the flourishing of society.
That would be something, I’m sure, each would think, in quiet moments, about the other.

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.

$20 billion to maintain our overseas aggression - Why?

Armed with all the destructive technology available, or more correctly what we can afford to buy from the state supported military-industrial complex; our politicians roam the world looking for a fight.

Look hard enough and, of course, you will find one and we claim that the subsequent violence is honourable, moral and in the greater good, whatever the cost, be it in the obscene amount of money it costs or the death and momentous disruption caused to the lives of others.
Our overseas troop commitments, primarily in Afghanistan are, according to recent figures, costing us, that is you and I, people who are raising kids, attending church, working, enjoying a beer and sunny days in the park, nearly $2 billion a year to maintain our rage.
Australians have been in Afghanistan for more than a decade and simple arithmetic puts the cost, at present value, at $20 billion, an amount that makes any major public and civilian project here seem like small change.
Applying different values our alternative energy systems could be stunning, our train network brilliant, our education life-changing, health services spectacular and poverty eradicated.
The thought of the disarray we have wrought upon another culture through force in the name of the greater good sees me reach for the anti-depression medication.
A decade of confrontation in those distant countries sees the maintenance of a mentality solidified after a life soaked in violence that is embedded in our psyche during teenage years spent watching aggressive movies, television shows, computer games and then, later, surviving in today’s competitive commercial milieu.
Ask those you next meet about Australian values and you will probably hear about such things as “fair dinkum”, “mateship”, “honesty”, ‘’friendship” and “giving people a fair go”.
All honourable and worthwhile attributes, but after a decade of plunder, and death in another country’s culture they are somewhat transparent leaving us entrenched in a disagreement that has mutated into something we no longer understand.
Supporters of the conflict, trapped by politics, pride and militant personalities, want us to stay the distance – I ask how far? At what cost? And, critically, why?

David Suzuki takes centre stage, vicariously

David Suzuki is responsible for this column, well, not directly, rather vicariously.

Several other already written pieces, in my view equally important, but not having the same urgency, were pushed aside after reading the scientist and environmentalist’s newest book, “The Legacy: An Elder’s Vision for a Sustainable Future”(below right).
Dr Suzuki (right) took less than 100 pages to articulate the difficulties we (humanity) face, how those difficulties evolved and then provided an understanding of the biological equations on which humanity depends and must observe if it is to endure.
Earth’s thin biosphere and the richness of its buried sunlight (fossil fuels) has enabled us to prosper in every sense, allowing our numbers to grow exponentially and now, according to Dr Suzuki in a word picture he painted, we are just one minute away from exhausting everything that makes the world habitable for humans.
He illustrated our nearness to the precipice through encouraging readers to imagine a test tube of food with just one bacterium when the clock starts and then just 59 minutes later, because the bacterium grows and divides and experiences exponential growth, the test tube is all but filled.

The test tube in its finite size and food supply represents earth and its other resources, the bacterium represents humans (us) and as there is no other test tube, and so space, Dr Suzuki illustrates that we face an uncertain future.

Humanity faces a dilemma that most can’t or won’t comprehend and the urgency Dr Suzuki illustrates collapses for the want and strong a decisive leadership, a leadership that will introduce restrictions to and imposts on our freewheeling lifestyle that is eroding, quickly, our place here on earth.

Humans are, unquestionably, the smartest beings in the universe, but that intelligence brings with it a burden; a burden that could see the human race extinguished.

The need for those strong, decisive and positive leaders is, after reading Dr Suzuki’s newest work, pressingly urgent, but equally urgent is the need for followers – people who understand and accept the articulated dilemmas and want to work with those leaders to ensure the world we bequest to those who follow continues to be habitable.

Island's collapse and book launch dynamic similarities were unsettling

Similarities between the 17th century collapse of the Easter Island population and the social dynamics at the recent launch of a book acknowledging Shepparton’s 150th birthday have crowded my thinking.

Listening as the former Member for Murray, Mr Bruce Lloyd, launched the coffee table-like book – Water: The Vital Element, 150 Years of Shepparton’s Growth – I couldn’t avoid thinking about the demise of the small Pacific Ocean island’s population.
That, you could argue, may be a long bow to draw and although I might agree, the similarities were unsettling.
The people of Easter Island (above right) lived comparatively happily, but for reasons not fully understood they were addicted to building huge monuments to assuage their superstitions and used most all the island’s trees to enable their transport.
Here in Shepparton our superstitions might be different, but allegiance to them is as damaging as those at Easter Island for instead of our community blooming into beautiful fulfilment it limps ahead paying homage to values that trouble our planet.
Those at the book launch celebrated many things, and people, as they should, but in doing so helped perpetuate the many myths that negate the long-term unfolding welfare of Sheppartonians.
The idea that growth is good prevails and the subsequent contagion, although it has always been a human instinct, accelerated wildly with the impetus of the industrial revolution and so has been a part of Shepparton’s 150 years.
Growth has served the district well, but then in the 1970s scientists began to truly understand what impact humans were having on earth and so while our addictions were enriching they also had a dark side.
That dark side was only surreptitiously evident at the book launch in that our inherent drive for growth that is the energy of Shepparton’s history is also the essence of the paradigm now holding the world hostage.
Our insistence on the growth and success equation is now such that it is almost superstition and myth, but those beliefs bring difficulties similar to those of the Easter Islanders and to use the words of recent visitor to Shepparton and former Greenpeace CEO, Paul Gilding, threaten “the survival of human civilization”.

A challenging conversation that needs a truly visionary outcome

Those who attend today’s (Tuesday, October 12, 2010) consultation to consider proposals for the conservation and management of water in the Murray-Darling Basin face a significant challenge.

It seems they will need to look at the proposals in the here and now and then, importantly, consider them, in what is near a magical and seemingly impossible trick, through the prism of 1000 years hence.

According to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s “Guide to the Proposed Basin Plan”, the basin is a critical part of Australia’s economy and the nation’s food security. The basin, it says, contributes 39 per cent of national agricultural production and provides water for three million Australians.

Today’s conversation is about a finite resource and infinite aspirations.

What is advocated and how Australians respond to the proposals is obviously important to the here and now, but it is the “1000 years’ time” question that is truly and deeply important.

Most of us can comprehend what has happened (the past), but it is a rare soul who can project his or her thoughts to encompass the unfolding of events (the future) and so most live in a short-term world where 25 year view is considered visionary.
The Murray-Darling Basin has been, in one way or another, implicated in the Australian landscape for millennia and in just 200 years we have raped, exhausted and plundered its resource to sate our thirsts and grow rich and fat on the abundant food it allowed us to grow.
What has been proposed has been described as a “slap in the face for primary producers” by one commentator and as “un-Australian” by another.
Critically, and importantly, we need to rise above such views as they are founded on populism ignited by concerns for the here and now, but in what seems an odd contradiction we need to apply ourselves and act appropriately in this moment to ensure the basin continues to serve the nation’s water needs for 1000 years.
It is somewhat generous to imagine the authority was looking that far ahead, but at least it appears to go well beyond the here and now, something that deserves our applause.