Do what you can to ensure SPC Ardmona's future, momentarily at least

Yes, each of us needs to do what we can to ensure the survival of Shepparton’s SPC Ardmona processing plant, for the moment at least.

One need not look too far or too deep to see and understand good reasons why the factory and the infrastructure it depends upon play a critical role in the economic wellbeing of this community.

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Broaden you view and quickly it become obvious that the much lauded level-playing field is, and always has favoured the few.

Yes, we need SPC Ardmona to stay about for a while, but just long enough for us to learn about, and understand what it is we need to do to build a Goulburn Valley-wide community sufficiently resilient enough to withstand the unfolding society-wide shocks of the next few decades.

Rather than allow our communities to become implicated in the narrow financial definitions of globalization and instead of pursuing ever expanding growth, we should be working for “just enough growth”.

Success of a business should not be measured by a particular percentage growth each year, rather through its contribution to the community from which it draws its workers and to how many people it provides regular employment.

Success should not be measured through the raw brutality of the bottom line, rather whether or not that company is an integral player in the richness of the community in which it operates and within that how it embraces and cares about everyone from initial suppliers to the final customer.

Without stumbling into the rhetoric of the doomsayer, let’s us acknowledge that the future, even the immediate future, is going to be different from what has been, and is.

So what do we do? First, and of critical importance is to support this newspaper’s campaign to press our politicians to support short term goals of SPC Ardmona.

We need as much time as we can leverage to ready ourselves for an energy-depleted future as we surrender a lifestyle that is enlivened, almost totally by oil and coal.

Technophobes promise all sorts of wondrous energy solutions, but the few existing and scalable ideas, beyond simply using less, are solar and wind.

Support solar and wind ideas; support projects that encourage people to initially use less energy; live closer to where you work; cycle and walk where possible and look to your community to source whatever it is you need, including your food.

Join and support groups which are doing what they can to help us understand how we live fulfilling lives in an energy depleted future; read, read and read, and listen, listen and listen to learn about the societal instability that is arising from the exponential growth of recent decades.

For the record: our Federal MPs have received my SPC Ardmona plea.

Forty five minutes of life lost, never to be recovered

Some 45 minutes of my life was lost, never to be recovered, sitting through a rather pointless discussion at a recent meeting of the City of Greater Shepparton.

A common sight in the 19th
century, but motor oil trucks
will be a rarity in the 21st.

It wasn’t just my life, it was also that of all seven councillors, its staff at the meeting, the gallery of about 50 people and a reporter from this newspaper.

My views about where humanity is heading are less than encouraging and the intellectual fracas at the recent did little to alleviate or in fact change them.

Sitting through the discussion, I was unable to escape from the thought that in being unable to avoid status quo thinking, all ideas are dead on arrival.

Discussion about drainage in Shepparton East appeared at first something of a “no-brainer”, but quickly the conversation devolved into one about the meaning of words, amendments, notices of motion, withdrawal of amendments, explanations about existing council policies, conversations about procedural matters between the mayor, Cr Jenny Houlihan, and senior officers, until the original motion was finally put and passed.

In a world where all will be as it was, the near hour-long deliberation probably made some sense, but any thoughtful person willing to dispassionately acknowledge the unfolding dilemmas is sharply aware that cumulative changes illustrate the future will not be anything at all like what was.

We face disturbingly different times and so rather than having our council discuss such distractions as drainage schemes, we should be having a council of war.

Although the responsible men, from our PM down, never talk about such things, our future will be punctuated by problems of food, water and energy shortages, complicated by a climate foreign to human needs.

So rather than use valuable time discussing parochial problems, council needs to avoid such narrow thinking, consider the wider picture and then apply processes that will ensure the resilience of our communities; resilience that will prepare us for fulfilling lives, despite serious reductions in both energy and food.

Agriculture and so our present food system is critically dependent upon oil and natural gas, both of which are seriously depleted, despite the chest-beating about how to retrieve previously inaccessible coal seam gas and unconventional oil.

The bounty common in our
supermarkets may soon not
be so common.

Science illustrates that recovery of both is limited, can disrupt much of the surrounding geological structure, pollute aquifers causing irreparable damage and is water-use intensive, all processes we can ill-afford.

The bounty we see on our supermarket shelves is there, obviously, because of much hard work by many, but primarily because of the hydrocarbons that allow for modern food production processes.

Council needs to dramatically reduce our water use and plan for a robust resilient future in which surplus energy in all its forms will be short supply, being dramatically different from what we have known.

Making a conundrum even more of a contortion

Life often throws up fascinating conundrums.



Environment Minister, Greg Hunt.

The latest arose when reading the “Ministerial Foreword” of the Emissions Reduction Fund green paper put out by our Federal Government on which public comment has been invited.

Nothing is more critical than preparing Australians to deal with the unfolding dilemma of climate change and so the content and intent of the Green Paper makes it the most important document in our country’s history.

Written with a sense of intergenerational responsibility, the Green Paper, which has at its heart the Coalition’s Direct Action Plan for the control of domestic carbon dioxide emissions, could make Australia a leader in climate change mitigation. It won’t though.

The final paragraph his Ministerial Forward, Australia’s Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, wrote: “Our goal is to conserve our natural environment while ensuring strong economic growth”.

Mr Hunt is celebrated in many quarters as a remarkably intelligent, quick thinking fellow, making it curious that he fails to understand that such an observation is contradictory.

Strong economic growth and preservation of the natural environment are diametrically opposed.

The first is about the creation of high entropy goods resulting in obscene waste that is offensive, and ultimately destructive, to the latter, the natural environment.

The irony of the document arrives in the “Executive Summary” where is says: “The Australian Government acknowledges the science of climate change and supports national and global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”. It clearly doesn’t.

That is a cleverly worded statement as acknowledgement of and resultant action because of that recognition are decidedly different things and nothing our relatively new Tony Abbott-led Government has done yet suggests it actually understands the seriousness of the science.

Australia is considered a mature civilization and in claiming such a lofty position, the responsible men ought to take the time to read the thoughts of Melbourne-based philosopher, John Armstrong who wrote, “In Search of Civilization: Remaking a tarnished idea”.

He said: “Civilization is seen as a rigorous artifice, designed to save us from ourselves. Life is regarded as a mess that needs to be cleaned up.

“We need to subordinate our wayward desires to law or rationality or justice; ideas that carry a prohibition, that deny our wishes,” he wrote.

So here we face another conundrum – are we or are we not civilized? Should we opt for the latter then there is nothing else we can do but demand that our Federal Government act in a way that illustrates deep concern for those yet unborn and so without a vote or influence.

A target of five per cent drop in carbon emissions by 2020 is pitifully inadequate and if the world is to have any understandable chance of avoiding catastrophic change we need 80 per cent this decade.

 

Saving simply depends on using less of the commodity, whatever it is

Saving anything depends, simply, on using less of that commodity in the first place.

Should you want to reduce your telephone bill, make fewer calls; reduce your petrol bill, drive less; preserve your bank account, don’t take money out; use less electricity, don’t turn it on.

That rather simplistic advice just won’t work in our modern, complex society as invariably the costs that overwhelm us, are all largely unavoidable regardless of what they might be.

Advice about all those matters proliferate and despite the claims of many it is not often you can find any, or even one, that allows you to hold your place in modern society while saving money.

GV Community Energy (GVCE) is a rare beast in that it operates within the confines of the commercial market, is not-for-profit and is truly there to aid and serve the community. It is driven by care, not profit.

The group “erupted” into life with a massively successful public meeting in Murchison at which more than 400 people almost unanimously agreed with the idea of establishing a bulk-buying scheme of residential solar panels.

From there, the group began considering the overall energy consumption of homes and has partnered with the Melbourne-based company, Cherry LED Lighting to show people how they can switch to LED lighting and benefit from the savings.

Cherry LED Lighting General manager Ben Wright recently explained the benefits of LED lighting at two Benalla seminars, the first in a series of roadshow to travel around the Goulburn Valley.

Ben explained that Cherry LED is Australian owned and all the products they sell are designed in Australia for local conditions and although made in China, the design and quality requirements are so demanding and specific that all production contracts are individually negotiated.

Working with Cherry LED Lighting, GVCE has arranged a group-buying scheme to minimise purchasing and installation costs leading to a home lighting system that dramatically improves savings, both financially and in terms of electricity consumption.

GVCE and Cherry LED Lighting have done the energy sums for you and those combined with the vastly longer life of the lights themselves, then savings, both economically and environmentally are clearly measurable.

The LED light is applicable in both residential and commercial applications and is evidence of how technology can play an instrumental role, albeit small in this case, in mitigating climate change

.

However, small individually it may be, but insignificant it is not when considered society wide.

Using the example of a house with 27 down-lights, Ben explained the savings in carbon dioxide gases annually was more than 2600kg, representing removing 2.5 cars from the road over a decade.

Saving anything, in this case energy, is simply about initially making the correct decisions.

 

 

New Year's Eve - a time to resolve to become more resolute about learning

New Year’s Eve is that moment in the year when many resolve what they will do to ensure changes in their life.

Bread and circuses were the staple
 diet of ancient Romans.

Such resolutions are usually about altering some personal behaviour, exercising more, being friendlier, drinking less, giving up smoking, changing a job or maybe, growing some vegetables at home.

All appealing ideals and worth pursing, but watching world events, listening to learned and articulate people and reading widely, it’s obvious that New Year’s resolutions will have to be less narcissistic, somewhat more altruistic and broadly more concerned about the other.

Life, as it is presently understood and enjoyed will become increasingly remote as this decade ends and another begins to unfold.

The bounty we presently enjoy every day, and especially at events such as Christmas just passed, can be traced to the first agricultural revolution about 10 000 years ago when humans made tentative steps from the life of hunter gatherers to settled agriculture.

Abandoning the practice of always being on the move in search of new hunting grounds, tribes put down roots, and geographically fixed communities took shape with civilization being born.

The arrival of agriculture bought a surfeit of energy, albeit small, but an excess sufficient to create an economy in which the resultant tokenism that allowed it to operate became known as money.

That tokenism has in itself no value being little more than a claim on past, present and future energy which was initially little more than human, animal or that provided directly by nature through wind, water or the sun.

Those energy sources where, for millennia, ample, but then we discovered and learned to exploit fossil fuels to build today’s modern world, but after about 200 years that resource is nearly exhausted and a by-product has been a damaged and disrupted climate system; a change the threatens humanity.

So, a worthwhile resolution would be to learn more about, and appreciate, the growing scarcity of energy and subsequently decide what you are going to do about your intergenerational responsibilities – how are you going to ensure that your grandchildren are going to live a contented life on a planet sucked dry of easily accessible energy?

The ancient Romans fed the populace bread and circuses in what was an abuse of the social compact and the distractions of that era are evident again with stories of moon landings, energy-rich entertainments, meaningless political chatter, resource-based wars and border confrontations are distracting us from the facts that energy is in short supply and our climate is seriously damaged.

A New Year’s resolution?

Learn about the world’s parlous energy state and beyond joining and supporting a local group encouraging resilience, learn about and respond with enthusiasm and optimism to climate change.

The demise of Holden brings moment of sadness, spiced with apprehension about our response

Strangely, I felt quite emotional when the news broke yesterday about the 2017 demise of Holden.

Strange, because of vehicles my dad owned, I grew with an allegiance to Fords, but had never really identified with the Ford-Holden debate.

The past decade had seen me become quite sensitive about the inordinate amount of public money being spent on the car industry, either in its sustenance or in provision of roads and other public infrastructure afforded the motor vehicle.

Public transport made huge sense in that the cost to individuals was vastly cheaper and the societal costs, including such things as injury and death and damage, that which is obvious and that which is not so readily apparent, was equally massively reduced through the use of trains and buses.

Good sense told me that the world didn’t need a private car industry, rather an intricate, efficient and well quipped public transport system that would be rich in jobs and having made the transition from private transport use to a public system we would find most of our needs adequately answered.

The demise of the car industry, even this tiny segment, seemed for someone concerned about the impact of private cars on earth’s atmosphere, and their wasteful use of earth’s finite resources, like a moment for jubilation.

So why the sad face

Rather than sad it is apprehensive for from here we can evolve to become a society that puts the public need ahead of private wants in that we could see this as an opportunity to launch a new way of doing things.

The need for Holden epitomizes
our addiction to private
answering our private wants.

Apprehension arises from our deep addiction to private wants that will likely frustrate the much needed societal changes that are about resilience, sharing and putting the public need ahead of individualism, a much celebrated trait in modern society.

Interestingly, Holden has been a part of my life – the car first rolled into Australian life when my first birthday rolled by and the last Holden will roll off the assembly line when my 70s roll along.

That, really, means nothing, just the hope that another 70 years will not pass before we can understand the folly of our dalliance with globalization, and how dearly we are paying for that liaison.

Hopefully we will also apply ourselves to creating processes not beholden to the mercy of fossil-fuelled fantasies such as those to which the motor industry is obliged.

Holden played an integral and important part in Australia’s development, but it’s time is past and rather than hover over the corpse we need to shift our gaze to a future that will be quite different from what was.

Declining energy reserves, a damaged climate and a disordered economy suggest we should be focussing on affairs closer to home.

A human plague worsened by untrammelled growth

Pope Francis - he has spoken out
about untrammelled growth.

Humans are a plague on the earth and one of their constructs further worsens their presence.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being human rather it is our behaviour in that we have colonized most every available space, domineering earth’s resources, almost to the total exclusion of other species.

The dilemma of our untamed tumour-like growth – population numbers are rising exponentially; energy use is surging; debt, both private and public, has exploded; our consumption of food, and the chemicals needed to produce them, is alarming; species are become extinct at an unprecedented rate -  is evidence of our wilful denial of earth’s finitude.

Concerns about blindly pursing growth were raised by Pope Francis in his first papal exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel”.

He said, “While the earnings of the minority are growing exponentially, so, too, is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few.

“The imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation…. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules…. “The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything that stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule”, the Pope said.

Freeing people from doing things to simply survive and so being able to make things they could profit from was a spin-off of the agricultural revolution.

That revolution brought a security guarantee and being released from the need to find food every day, people could then spend time producing a “luxury”, trade it profitably and then enhance their lives.

The idea of profit was born and further enriched by the discovery and understanding of fossil fuels and with that trade and consumption became an entrenched way of life.

There was however, as with everything, an unintended consequence.

In our rush to build and boost profits, we were blind, wilfully or otherwise, to those effects, with few ever talking about finite resources or the additional complication of greenhouse gases that were changing, quickly, the human-friendly climate.

The profits grew, the resources became even more finite, and the human-friendly atmosphere worsened and the troubles described by the Pope became more ingrained.

The surplus of energy that first arose from the agricultural revolution that was small by today’s standards, but sufficient to allow people to engage in non-subsistence activities.

That new and “free” energy distorted and disrupted our values, disconnecting us from the balance we had long lived within and extinguished our understanding of how to live a worthwhile, resilient and sustainable life using less exogenous energy.