We consider Victoria's future from amid the wreckage of the recent federal election

Looking about from among the wreckage of a recent federal election, we must now decide who we want to best administer Victoria.

Times are somewhat unpredictable, but what has been predictable is the public response to those difficulties.

Most people, understandably, want the good times handed down by cheap and easily-accessible fossil fuels to continue uninterrupted and any disruption to that paradigm is greeted by the embrace of whomever, or whatever, promises the continuation of business as usual.

Subsequently we see a rise of those who pine for the good old days and so vote for those who promise a return to that way of life, ignoring the human and ecological cost, and opposed to those who trumpet a government that puts long-term concerns ahead of short-term satisfactions.
A fellow who understands long and short-term implications – in geological terms long is millions of years, short is hundreds – will speak tonight at Shepparton School of Medical Health in Graham Street.
Professor David Karoly (above right) from the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Earth Sciences will give a free lecture about climate change from 7:30pm.
A Professor of Meteorology and a Federation Fellow with the Australian Research Council Federation, Prof Karoly was involved with the preparation of the Fourth Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
He will discuss the world’s weather in general and focus, in particular, on what is happening in Victoria. Issues of why our weather is changing and how, subsequently, we should behave will also be discussed.
Tonight’s lecture is a coup for Shepparton as Prof Karoly is recognised as one of the world most powerful thinkers about the reasons for and the implications of climate change.
Recently, I listened as science historian, American Naomi Oreskes, talked about her new book, Merchants of Doubt, which explains how the same people, a few scientists addicted to growth ideologies, proffered theories that raised doubt in such things as smoking, acid rain, the ozone hole and climate change.
Prof Karoly introduced Professor Oreskes and his naturally pleasant nature pervaded about 300 at Melbourne’s State Library to transform an evening with a rather brutal message into a satisfying encounter.

Racing around Shepparton in the hope of understanding what it is like to live with a disability

Finding your way around Shepparton and attending to your daily needs is generally pretty simple, unless confronted with complications of having a disability.

Come Wednesday, November 24, about 25 Shepparton people will experience those complications when they adopt a disability in the city’s first “Realistic Race”.

Shepparton MP, Ms Jeanette Powell (right), will be among those who will race around the city searching for clues to enable them to follow the race to its next stage, using a pattern similar to that of television’s The Amazing Race.

“Race” may well be in the title, but with their adopted disabilities, the local personalities will be a little lost as they struggle rather than race around the familiar streets of Shepparton with both physical and intellectual disabilities.

Some will be confined to wheel chairs, verbal skills will be absent for a few, others will have few cognitive understandings, hearing might be a challenge for some and all will have to wrestle with the perception of those they engage with during the Realistic Race.
Shepparton Access Chief Executive Officer, Wendy Shanks, said her organization had organized the race with the support of City of Greater Shepparton with the hope of breaking down barriers between Goulburn Valley people with a disability and the wider population.
The November 24 race will start at one o’clock and end three hours later after the five teams of five have explored, and learned something about, Shepparton experiencing it as a person with a disability.
But it was more than that as they also learned something about the alienation a disabled person encounters go about their daily business.
Having been on the periphery of a disability, I understand the alienation, the loneliness and one’s inability to participate in the normal machinations of your community and the sense that you don’t really belong.
The sense of belonging is among the most important of human needs and while the November race might make us aware of many dilemmas facing Shepparton’s disabled, importantly it might also enhance their sense of belonging.
Disabled people need many things, but importantly what they need is your understanding, friendship and a sense that they belong.

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.