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.

Fire warnings hit a psychological road block

Living in Shepparton was no disadvantage to knowing what was happening in the Victorian districts devastated in February’s Black Saturday bushfires.

Some caught up in that maelstrom declared they had not been warned of the impending disaster. Shepparton was remote from the firestorm, but most in would have known, I’m sure, that some of their fellow Victorians decided difficulties.
Recently the Victorian psychologist and author, Danielle Clode, talked about her new book, “A Future in Flames” (right), and in answer to a question about why people had not heard the advice in the lead up to the fires or warnings about the collision of ideal fire weather events, she argued most were mentally and emotionally unable to assimilate those alerts.
Life had evolved as imagined, but they had never visualized it being interrupted by fire and so smoke was, until they actually saw threatening flame, nothing more than a controlled burn-off.
The psychological road block we witnessed in February is again evident as we plummet toward decided difficulties brought on by significant human induced changes to our climate and an oil scarcity that will upend our lives.
Look around and most everything in sight is there because of oil and that bountiful supply of energy has shaped our way of living, and, more importantly, our mindset.
We have been mentally crippled, myself included, by earth’s generousity and it is a rare soul who can see how they and their fellows will live in a low-energy future.
Scientists around the world constantly alert us to our excesses, but with fossil fuels and resources so implicated in our lifestyles, few of us are able to imagine an escape or even see a need for one
Beyond that, comforted by doubters who excavate irrelevant detail attributed to an equally irrelevant fields of science, most of us who are unable to make sense of complex climate science, continue with business as usual and so worsen emerging and existing difficulties.
Warnings about the bushfires were many and frequent, but strangely not heard by those who most needed to hear them; the warnings about global heating and oil scarcity have been loud and frequent, but I doubt we are listening.

Adversity may help us avoid true difficulty

Personal adversity, a friend recently suggested, is the only thing that will convince most people of such things as climate change, oil scarcity or food security.

That idea was echoed on Friday night by one of the speakers at the 20th anniversary celebrations of the Goulburn Valley Environment Group (GVEG).

Nearly 200 people gathered at Shepparton’s Eastbank centre to acknowledge that moment in group’s life and listened as Paul Gilding (right) warned of serious looming adversity.

Gilding - a former chief executive officer of Greenpeace, both in Australia and overseas, a consultant who discussed and worked on environmental issues with some of the world’s largest companies, an advisor to many government and private organizations and one who has always encouraged social justice - suggested the adversity, pointed to by my friend, might only be five years away.

Gilding reflected earlier congratulations to the group but then added: “This is no longer just an environmental issue, rather the survival of human civilization”.

Friday night’s message from Gilding was not all glum as he was excited about human capacity to deal with a crisis and our willingness to act quickly when our “backs are to the wall”.

He pointed to the adversity of World War Two as a demonstration of our ability to deal with such a difficulty when just four days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor the American car industry switched from the civilian market to building war machines.

Friday night’s conversation appeared in stark contrast to another held only four days earlier in an adjoining Eastbank room when Governor of the Reserve Bank, Mr Glenn Stephens, predicted a “fairly robust upswing in the domestic economy”.

Rather than a robust economic upswing, Gilding said we will soon see the end of growth bringing on an era when things will get “ugly”.

Among those riveted to Gilding’s comments was the founding president of the environment group, Mrs Barbara Leavesley, who had travelled back from Airey’s Inlet for Friday’s anniversary.

Other speakers were the former GVEG president and co-convenor of Solar Valley Goes Solar, Geoff Lodge, and director of the Victorian Office of Environmental Sustainability, Gordana Marin.

'Reality Bites' gives us the truth about non-fiction

A note to your partner or a business email are mostly non-fiction writing as is "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (below right) by English historian Edward Gibbon.

The former are little more than daily doings while that latter is the exquisite sustained art of a non-fiction author.
While fiction writing demands a special type of imagination, the author of a work of non-fiction also needs a generous amount of those thought processes, combined with an instinctive adherence to facts.
Interestingly, the nonfiction author has, in terms of their writing, an allegiance to fact and it was that very need to lead to the birth of Australia's only specific literary nonfiction festival, Reality Bites.
Working at the time with the then Noosa Council, Bernice Child, discovered Queensland's Sunshine Coast to be poorly served in terms of writing and books.
Conscious of that fact she instigated the festival three years ago and although Council still supports it, the event is now organized independently by the Sunshine Hinterland Writers' Centre, a group of volunteers, including the program director, Annette Hughes, who moved to Cooroy on the coast's hinterland to care for aging parents.
Annette, previously a literary agent in the publishing industry, now devotes much of her free time to organizing, planning and articulating the festival's vision.
The 2011 festival will be the fourth and rather than being over two weekends, it will be scaled back to just one with particular focus on workshops enabling local, developing writers the opportunity to learn from established authors.
The one-weekend festival will be an opportune time for fresh volunteers to learn about the workings of the event before embarking on the longer, more complex two-weekend biennial event.
Cooroy has a new "green" library, opened earlier this year, and early plans for next year's festival call for a tent to be pitched on its grass covered roof as a venue for much of the program.
Details of the 2011 festival have not yet been finalised, but just as soon as they are, Annette says they will be posted on the Reality Bites blog.

Submit to our primal selves and we will create harmony

Walking recently next to an Asian woman talking on her mobile phone I didn’t understand a word, but then she laughed and I understood immediately.

Laughter escapes the rigidities of language – it’s a communication everyone understands, irregardless of race or background.
In fact most human emotions can be understood, or at least sensed, by everyone.
The impact of laughter is obvious, happiness is a little more subtle, but often obvious, joy is similar; fear if not seen is still palpable; sadness may not be blatant, but tears make it so and although contentment is difficult to describe, it becomes evident when you look at a way of life.
Confusion brought on by language confirms the adage that we should take little notice of what people say, but keenly watch what they do - actions speak louder than words.
Much of the difficulty in our world, be it personal or somewhat more sweeping, can be traced to a failure to recognize and acknowledge an emotional state or even something more subtle, body-language.
Upon entering a room of strangers, you seem to know immediately, without anyone uttering word, which of those people you like or dislike suggesting that something about our survival, even beyond body language, is connected to our primal being.
Beyond the façade that all humans wear to help us understand race, status and a host of other surface values is a human being living with all the emotions, difficulties and delights each of us experience on the big wheel that is life.
Many of the world’s cultures have gravitated to Shepparton and to live in harmony we need to think about, respect and honour those inexhaustible and “raceless” human qualities of laughter, delight, happiness, courage, fear sadness, discipline, skill, morality and a sense of belonging..
The next time you encounter someone who appears different than yourself, then look beyond what you can see and connect with the essence of the person, the human who lives inside and in a fundamental sense feels all the same emotions as you.
Like the lady on her mobile phone, your new friend laughs just like you, I can guarantee that.

Weekend-long discussions about the stewardship of our earth

Nearly 20 people spent the weekend in Tatura considering stewardship of the earth.

But, there was more to the two-day of discussions than that.The weekend-long session had been organized by Tatura Transitions – a small group of like-minded enthusiasts’ conscious of the difficulties humanity faces as climate change and oil scarcity really begin to impact on our lives.

Recognising and acknowledging those changes are seen by many as apocalyptic, the group is eager to see the people of Tatura, and others in the Goulburn Valley, embrace the idea of transition as it would enable them to change their ways of living and so exist comfortably and profitably in a low-energy future.
Transition is not about casting away all that is good about life and living a subsistence lifestyle, rather it is about living in a sustainable way, the builds community making our towns and cities more sociable; escaping from the present industrial way of life that has an emphasis on growth, profit and confrontation that disregards the wellbeing of people with a preference for machines; improving our food security; sharing with our fellows and broadly helping people understand the role nature plays in underpinning their lives.
The emerging difficulties brought down upon the world by the activities of our booming population are complex in the extreme and as knowing how to respond to them is equally complex; the Tatura group asked two transition trainers to share their understanding of how the shift can be made.
Jane Phillips and Jacinta Walsh, both from Castlemaine, and each with some 18 months experience of helping similar groups in three states, first helped the group understand the realities of climate change and peak oil and then spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday explaining and consolidating the transition idea and within that the rich benefits to community.
Dentist, Ross Musolino, is the “face” of Tatura Transition, but his commitment to the idea of seeing his town living successfully in a low-energy future has seen others quickly identify with his views and enthusiasm and so after two days of intense training, the group was bubbling with excitement.
The transition concept works in communities all around the world and sometime soon it will be unleashed in Tatura.