Tag Archives: conservation

Not making it any more

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by Economics, Environment • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Don’t know if you saw the recent tv program on the geological history of Australia. Some early stuff I didn’t know. For example that enormous mass of iron ore in WA was deposited when the first primitive organisms that could generate oxygen began doing so and all the iron in the seas rusted. The iron and other ores around Broken Hill generated in the deep seas which then ran through this part of the continent. Coal and gas of course laid down when the then lush tropical vegetation died and rotted and was buried far underground by sediments. All flukes really, that the deposits occur in Australia, and flukes dependent on conditions that can never be repeated from millions, even billions, of years ago. No more of that stuff being made on this planet.

On top of the land surface Australia had a rich biodiversity of abundant plant and animal life, also the result of millions of years of evolution and ecosystem development. This biodiversity sustained Aboriginal people in considerable comfort for around 50,000 years, and then provided the basis for English colonists to fell timber, graze sheep and cattle on the extensive grasslands, and grow crops where the soils were deep and organically rich. Not building diversity and rich soils any more.

There’s an old, sorta joke, which says “Want to invest in a sure thing? Buy land, they’re not making it any more”. It’s a message that should have been given to every citizen of Australia to use as a reminder that resources are limited. Instead we have behaved for two and a quarter centuries as Australia Unlimited. Big country, plenty of soil, plenty of trees, plenty of mineral resources. Now the crunch is coming, and there are a couple of urgent responses we need to make. We need to ensure that a good proportion of the staggeringly huge profits being made from digging up those made-once-only mineral resources come back to benefit the 21,999,997 of us who are not mining billionaires. That they are used to create a stronger better Australia as a solid home for us when resources start to dwindle or the demand for them disappears. One of the things we could do with it is sort out infrastructure needs as the climate changes – infrastructure like efficient irrigation, like decent efficient transport, like support for large scale renewable energy projects. And support for individuals in education, health, aged care and so on. The recent budget, trying to balance all those needs, pulling up the blanket to cover the head only to expose the toes, is a classic example of failure to use the mining resources wisely.

And the other response is to stop destroying remaining forests and to start restoring soils to good health. Not least because we need the environment as healthy as it can be to meet the changing climate.

What’s that other saying? Oh yes,”A stitch in time saves nine. Time we started urgent stitching.

Non-Human persons

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by Education, Media • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

For a while now the people trying to protect dolphins from their brutal slaughter in Japan have argued that dolphins with their very high intelligence, close family bonds, sophisticated communication, should have a right to be protected (as “non human persons”) in the same way humans are from slaughter and exploitation. Similar claims have been made to try to get captive whales out of amusement parks. And the same claims could of course be made for the whales being hunted and killed year after year in our southern seas by the Japanese, and in the Arctic by Norwegians and Icelanders.

Obviously the right thing to do, to add to the calls for the great apes (Chimpanzees, Orang-utans, Gorillas) to be given similar status for the same reason. The heart-breaking stories of habitat destruction, and of mothers cradling dead babies, babies calling for mothers, in all these cases should be enough to stop the hunting of these animals, their incarceration in zoo cages or small pools, and their use in medical experiments. We must surely be civilised enough to recognise this now.

But I would be inclined to look even more widely. I think we could consider extending similar status to a number of species that are among the most intelligent and social of their kind. I am thinking for example of dogs and cats, bears and pigs, fruit bats. Of birds like crows and magpies and the larger parrots. Perhaps of live-bearing reptiles and fish. And even of some invertebrates like octopus and the larger spiders.

In British culture we long ago gave up brutal use of animals for entertainment in bear and bull-baiting, dog and cock-fighting, although all of these continue today in countries like Spain and even in America. It took a long time to bring them to an end in England, but it’s hard to imagine anyone arguing for a return to them now. In parts of the world too other intelligent animals are tortured to extract bile for phony medicines, skinned, slaughtered for cheap food, have their habitats destroyed for palm oil plantations, killed with poison baits, nesting trees knocked down. It will take time to get across the idea that many animal species are so intelligent and aware that we should stop all ill-treatment of them too in other countries, but we could make a start in our own.

One day our great-grandchildren will look back and say “People used to do WHAT to dolphins and chimpanzees?”

I can hear that thunder roar

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by Climate Change, Environment • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Yet more Queensland floods. Third time in about a year for some towns? Was struck by one farmer’s comment – “I’ve lived beside this creek for 65 years, but I have never heard anything like the frightening roar of the water last night”. The roar would clearly stick in his mind the rest of his life as something beyond anything experienced since a small child growing up. I am willing to bet that he would be saying to himself, not just “what the hell is going on?” as the creek roared and floodwaters rose, but “what the hell is going on?” in a more general way. Also willing to bet that more and more farmers, hit with more and more disasters, are asking themselves the same thing. Possibly asking themselves why their trade and political representatives haven’t been telling them.

Evidence for climate change on the ground, where people actually experience it (especially farmers, ears eyes nose to the ground), was never about “a drought” or “a flood” or “a hot day”, in spite of the pretence by some that this was what was meant. Which led to the obvious retort, well, of course we’ve had droughts, floods, hot days before. Led to nonsense from Senator Joyce whenever there was a cold day in Canberra “so much for global warming, ho ho”.

It was always about RECORD events – record high temperatures, record long droughts, record high floods, record sequence of high temperatures, record numbers of floods, record warm nights. Of course years vary from “good” to “bad”, vary particularly with the oscillation between La Nina and El Nino events, always have. But on an upwardly rising curve of air and water temperatures, with more and more heat stored in the oceans especially, the extremes of weather will become more extreme. More and more high temperature records will be set, more and more record flood events. Indeed it now seems clear that the El Nino-La Nina cycle will become even stronger (a recent study for New Zealand has shown, but the same will apply to eastern Australia) and with higher frequency.

So more and more farmers, both here and in NZ, are going to experience events they have never experienced before. Are going to have to try to deal with extremes – of record floods following record floods, of longer droughts, of longer sequences of higher temperatures. I doubt there is a farmer in the land at the grass roots level who doesn’t know this, doesn’t sense the change in the seasons, the response of plants and animals to those changes. With your ear to the ground everyone can hear the roaring sound of climate change arriving.

Give the order

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by Climate Change, Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

You all remember Old King Canute taking his throne down to the beach, right – “Cnut set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes. Yet “continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. Then the king leapt backwards, saying: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”

Possibly true, possibly not. It was a thousand years ago, if it happened, and our media finds it impossible to recount accurately something that happened 1000 minutes ago. But if it wasn’t then it should have been. Should have been read out to every subsequent king and baron. Oh not the god nonsense of course, they did enough of that for themselves, but the idea that the most powerful person had no control over the natural world and its “laws”.

Certainly should be read out to Ms Gina Rinehart, richest woman in the universe, well, Australia anyway, and probably the one with the greatest hubris, now that Maggie Thatcher and Sarah Palin have left politics.

She was fairly private and low key until a couple of years ago. Then she emerged in the front of a crowd of well-dressed protesters, with professionally printed signs, bused in from a nearby office to stand at attention on astroturf. It was a very small crowd, but with the use of a camera carefully focussed just on the front row, managed to give the most inaccurate record of an event since US soldiers pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in a pretence it was a sign of popular support for the invasion.

But I digress. There was Gina (was she holding a sign? I forget) chanting with the others “Whaddawe want? No taxes for billionaires. Whendowe want it? Now”. No, I made that up a little bit, a rough translation but capturing the essence of the event.

Made so much noise that day and other days through the media they won the debate, tax essentially dropped, prime minister dumped from office partly as a result. Power, sure, but not much different to the power the very rich have been exerting in this egalitarian society for 200 years.

And then I read this and suddenly we were into much more sinister doings. Into the American world of the Koch Brothers, and PACs, corporations as people, and the Heritage Foundation.

So it has gone ahead. Last few days have seen Rinehart taking the major shareholding in Fairfax, Plimer appointed to her boards. And the IPA, apparently also supported by her financially has, over the last few years, become ubiquitous almost daily across all the media of the ABC. Some of the details about this are available here and here and here.

So we are reaching a situation where Murdoch controls 70% of the Australian commercial media, Rinehart in effect will control much of the rest, and the IPA is ensuring that the ABC takes a strongly right wing view of every issue and climate change is scarcely ever mentioned.

So expect over the next decades, that these powerful people will ensure the election of an ultra conservative Coalition government, the media will release only information it wants released and will tell you what to think about it, that no action witll be taken on climate change in any way, and environmental protection and regulation will be smashed. I can see no way of stopping this no matter how many of us blog away in our small corners of this brown land. Twenty billion dollars versus twenty million people in a democracy? No contest.

But then in ten years time I have a picture of this lonely woman sitting on a throne on a beach. Behind her a gaggle of shock jocks and climate change deniers and mining CEOs and conservative politicians. One of them is saying “Give the order, O great Queen, and it will obey”. She is holding out her hand to the sea and commanding “climate stop changing”, but then she gets drowned by the rising water levels and I can see her no more.

Ignorance is strength

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by Education, Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How can every human being on the planet not spend their days being puzzled about pretty much everything?

Every day I ask myself questions like: How does that work? Why did that happen? Who was responsible for that? What was the purpose of that? Where did that come from? Constantly, one or more of the interrogatives – Who? What? Why? Where? When? – applied to the natural, political, built, mechanical, social worlds.

Can never remember a time when I wasn’t curious, puzzled, interested about the world around me. All children are I thought. But it seems many adults lose the curiosity. Seem to settle for a quiet intellectual life in which people they believe are authority figures tell them how things are, the way they are going to be, and they accept the propositions as given.

How else can you explain the willingness of the 99% to vote, in spite of conservative failures over 50 years or more, against their interests and elect neoconservative governments? How else can you explain the lack of action on climate change? How else explain the successful campaigns by rich miners (originally a typo almost had them as rich moners), by alcohol sellers, poker machine makers and clubs, developers, fishermen.

How else too can you explain the following of fundamentalist religions, of fake medical “cures” like homeopathy and naturopathy, of faith healers and “psychics”, of get rich quick schemes, of populist politicians.

And how else explain why we, the people, accept incuriously what the mainstream media tells us, asking no questions so told all lies. No one it seems is puzzled when they are told one thing one day, the opposite thing the next day; or when told about two identical actions by two political leaders, one of which is great the other abhorrent.

No one is puzzled when the ‘reasons’ given for starting a war turn out to be completely spurious; when behaviour said to be perfectly safe turns out disastrous; no one is puzzled that “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia”; no one thinks it odd that “The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation”.

Oh yes, quoting Orwell is so 1980s isn’t it? But it seems increasingly that not only are political parties and whole countries using it as a manual for controlling and manipulating the public, but so are the media. Think of just three aspects. Winston Smith’s job involves dealing with “unpersons”, people now deemed politically embarrassing, so he alters records, changes photographs, to ensure that the person has not just disappeared from modern awareness, but from history as well. Then, to fill a gap where the unperson once appeared he invents “Comrade Ogilvy, a fictional party member, who displayed great heroism by leaping into the sea from a helicopter so that the dispatches he was carrying would not fall into enemy hands”.

Finally of course the idea of our tv screens watching us hasn’t happened (although …), but the tabloid press tapping phones, going through rubbish bins, and governments using spy satellites and getting internet records means the sense of privacy, lost in “1984″, is rapidly being lost here.

Inner Party member O’Brien says that in the future “There will be no curiosity”. And he is right. The public it seems now have no curiosity. And therefore the media can create a fictional narrative, an alternative to reality, that people will simply accept as truth. And in that reality they will also accept what conservative political leaders tell them.

So, I hear you ask, what is the answer?

Well, you don’t need me to tell you, the answer is “education” of course, teach kids to question, not rote learn, to be curious … oh, sorry, no, can’t keep that up.

Do you think the Inner Party doesn’t know that? Why else have preschools been privatised, religious and other private schools been massively funded, public schools and teachers constantly attacked, demands always made for more “3 Rs” (plus trade courses) to be taught and none of this “contentious” stuff about climate change or politics, ethics classes attacked and religious ones (with “chaplains”) encouraged, all attempts to encourage thinking slammed as being brain washing by the Left? Why the call for kids to leave school early and get jobs? Why the determined defunding of universities, the encouragement to teach more business courses and less “Arts”, the push for private paying students, the defunding of student unions, the constant attacks on any political involvement by students, the constant attacks on university lecturers for being Left Wing?

The 1960s and 70s gave the Inner Party a big shock. This is what happens when children are taught to think in school and university and they were having no more of that. So they have thrashed the curiosity out of education (with the willing acquiescence of the Labor Party, also not keen to see too much curiosity about its own policies and behaviour).

So no, I don’t have an answer. Anyone for a job in the Ministry of Truth? Plenty available.

Where the pine-clad ridges raise

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by Environment, Media • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

This morning (15 January 2012) I experienced an unpleasant sense of deja vu as Australia’s tv channel 7 ran a propaganda piece for the so-called “mountain cattlemen” who are battling the federal government to once again allow their cattle to smash up the national parks of the high country. The new conservative Vic state government saw it as a high priority to give approval, and now only the Australian govt stood in the way.

The program was almost identical to one made in similar (though with the opposite politics in state and federal levels) political circumstances, and by the same reporter, then working for the main rival commercial tv network. The only differences were that on this occasion most filming was done at a country show, and was done before the political protest rather than during.

I was so outraged by the latest version that I put in a formal protest:

“Reporter Nic MacCallum presented a report on cattle  in high country. The report purely presented, in the most emotive and political terms, the views of “mountain cattlemen” with the obligatory film clip from “Man from Snowy River”. Ecological claims, political statements, were made absolutely unexamined, no contrary view of any kind presented. MacCallum ended with the cattlemen making threats of political action against “Canberra”. They then came back to the studio where presenters made statements about the ecology and how harmless cattle were, and how bad it was Canberra didn’t understand the real world, how it was “red tape” stopping this perfectly rational action of putting cattle back into national parks.

Not a single dissenting view was presented during this propaganda piece. Not a single ecologist was interviewed , the federal minister was uninterviewed, no historical background was presented, the issue was completely unexamined other than as pushing the cattlemen’s position.

This is the worst piece of unbalanced tv I think I have ever seen.”

The question, or a question, is why did both tv networks present this story in the same way? Are they idiots? Exercising power – doing it because they could? Did they think the bulk of their audience, primed by years of such reporting would approve the message. Were they ingratiating themselves with conservative politicians and bushies? Were they looking forward to the excellent televisuals of a protest? Were they showing a left wing minister who really has the power? Were they flattered to be seen as onside with these rugged sons of the earth? Are they idiots? I report, you decide.

To show how  little had changed from 2005-2012, here is the email I sent following the coverage of the ‘cattle in the high country’ political battle between Victorian and Federal governments in 2005 by Channel 9′s Today Show. It is as relevant now as it was then. Over and over again the commercial media, and now also the ABC, choose the first narrative model when it comes to environmental stories, and they are helping kill the planet. I received no reply from Channel Nine. 

From: David Horton
Subject: to Jebby Phillips
Date: 9 June 2005 10:52:52 AM
To: todayshow@nine.com.au

To follow up on my earlier email complaining about the Man from Snowy River segment. I am currently working on my new book. Here is the part I have written about the Today story this morning. You will see why I am angry. I am a little puzzled as to why you never allow, or require, Nic McCallum to do the second story. I have my own guess as to why you don’t (and I can’t believe it is because you think you don’t have an audience for the second story) but I would be interested in your explanation. You are not alone of course, all the media outlets follow the first script. 

“It is a story that has been repeated often over recent years, and the narrative is clear. The ‘Man from Snowy River’ is an icon. He is an icon because he was the subject of a poem which every schoolchild learns and then of a film and a television series based on the poem. So he is a fictional construct, unlike say Ned Kelly, Phar Lap, Don Bradman or Simpson and his donkey. Even though he is a fictional character though, the existence of a movie with a star means that the actor can become the icon made flesh, and indeed in the recent protests the star of the film was the star of the protest, and in turn of the breakfast television segment. 

The segment, as always, was pure propaganda of a Leni Riefenstahl kind. This is an Australian icon here, so there are images of campfires roaring in the mountain, riders on horses, magnificent cattle, whip cracking displays. Interspersed are images from the film with notes that some of the real cattlemen took part in the film, and music from the film soundtrack. Images and the media and reality blur. No need to say anything really, powerful images conspire to stimulate powerful emotions, and here we are aiming to stir the emotions both of the commuter and office worker with dreams of open spaces, and of ‘trail bike riders. hunters, four wheel drive owners, farmers’ all of whom were also taking part in the protest. We have our desired audience of red blooded men and wannabe redblooded men onside with barely a need for any script. 

But a final touch is needed and the narrative allows for it. ‘What was your reaction when you heard the news that cattle were to be excluded from the National Park’ asks the reporter of the protest organiser, as rugged a redblooded cattleman as you could ask for in the casting department. ‘I cried’ says this tough man and the propaganda is complete. 

Nothing can defeat the rugged Australian cattleman icon of course. Bushfires, drought, steep terrain, wild horses, fierce cattle. Only one thing can do it, the unfeeling bureaucrats in the city. The effeminate city men and their co-conspirators the whacky greenies. This brutal combination may bring our icon down, and he knows that at last the odds are stacked against him and he cries. For him to cry means that the cause must be just, the odds immense, and his tears, not wasted, appeal to the camera for help and through the camera to the real men of Australia who will come to the rescue, shoulder to shoulder. 

We see the enemy briefly, very briefly, in this segment. In a brief nod to ‘balance’ we see the minister concerned, typical city man in his grey suit hiding his grey soul. He is seen at a press conference explaining the reason for the decision, but the narrative doesn’t allow for more than a fragment of that, the minister commenting that cattle cause damage, and the reporter sneering that ‘they say it will mean more wildflowers’. Wildflowers! Namby pamby stuff when there is an Australian icon at stake here and a tough man has been reduced to tears by these flower loving whackos. 

Back to the icon, asked to comment on the damage ‘claim’, ‘no, no, we have been managing this country for 170 years’ says the icon. In an earlier interview the film star pseudo icon is asked the same question about damage and is allowed to say that ‘opinion is evenly divided’ on that. There is no follow up question as to what he means, but it is clear from the context. Cattlemen don’t think, or don’t care, that the cattle cause damage, or don’t think that it is damage (wildflowers indeed). On the other hand all scientists in Australia know that there has been extensive damage which is continuing and is now exacerbated by the after effects of fire and drought. Whether or not ‘opinion’ is divided between cattlemen and scientists, there is no division between scientists on the facts. 

The story could have been presented from the totally opposite point of view. The reporter could have found an iconic and photogenic ecologist who has worked in the high country. The ecologist could have introduced the reporter to the masses of scientific study showing the conservation problems in the high country, how little wilderness is left and the implications of that, and specific studies on the effects of cattle on this fragile ecosystem. The animals and plants under threat or near extinction could be listed and their importance in maintaining ecological balance in this country, particularly as global warming gathers pace. 

Then the ecologist, together with a number of other ecologists expert in different aspects of the high country – vegetation, marsupials, birds, frogs, insects say – could have taken the reporter for a trip. The camera could have lovingly lingered over areas where cattle have been excluded, with soothing music and the occasional sunset, while rugged and down to earth ecologists in moleskins and jumpers, ruddy faced from years or decades of being out in the bush studying ecology, could have explained what the camera was seeing, how complex it was, how long it had taken to evolve, why it was important, and why they are so passionate about trying to save it at the eleventh hour. This high country is unique to Australia, they could explain to the camera, an Australian icon that has taken millions of years to evolve, and it is close to being lost forever. 

Then they could take the cameras to see the damage that cattle have caused to grasslands, trees, shrubs, the impact of their hooves on ponds and swamps and riverbanks. There will be tears shed here by these tough ecologists, but the reporter may want to keep those for later. Tears are rarely shed by tough pragmatic ecologists, trying to do a hard job for Australia’s future. Difficult to defeat them because of their hard work and dedication. The only thing that can beat them is the powerful media coming in on the side of the cattlemen and forcing a government backdown. The final scene could be a roaring campfire in the mountains, the reporter sitting around it with these dedicated people. ‘What did you think when you heard that the federal government might intervene to keep cattle in the National Park?’ he could ask. ‘I cried’ would say the leading ecologist. Fade away to a sunset with perhaps the Pastoral Symphony in the background.

Aux armes, citoyennes

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

The other day a storm erupted on Twitter and in blogs about an article in a magazine. The argument was about little*, really, a storm in a teacup, but it raged for several days. The even odder thing was that it didn’t pit right against left, but consisted of feminists, female and male, arguing with each other as if enemies.

The popular mythology is that feminism has triumphed, men and women equal in society. A great symbolic photo in November showed President Obama being greeted on arrival by female Governor-General, Prime Minister, ACT Chief Minister. Women head major corporations, institutions, public service departments; succeed in all professions (including the military).

But underneath the neat symbolic photos and the few excellent women at the top, things are not quite so rosy. A woman prime minister? She is the subject of misogyny, often really nasty (with threats to kill her), every day. Women’s pay is still much lower; while one or two make it to the top, most of the next management levels are still men; the battle for paid maternity leave revealed many politicians who want women back in the 1950s; equal opportunity legislation is attacked; sexist jokes flourish in “anti-pc” times; adverts openly portray women as either dumb or harridans; many women proudly say “oh no, I’m not a feminist”.

In Australia and elsewhere, gender equality, taking off like a rocket in the 60s and 70s, is falling back to Earth as the last booster fails.

The bad guys are winning, and the rocket falls with gathering speed, back to where it started. Many of us I think sense this, but don’t quite know what to do about it. Which is why, I think, the storm erupted the other day. Nerves are edgy, opinions are varied, approaches are debated, solutions hotly contested. The heat is on and temperatures are fraying.

Much the same in other areas, most notably conservation, gay rights, education, social services. Everywhere you look it seems, conservative, religious, business, political operators, with the active help of large sections of the media, are pushing back successfully against the social and environmental advances of the 60s and 70s. The political scene is like the aftermath of a battle, a battlefield where small groups are trying to fight a conservation battle here, a childcare battle there, a battle for gay marriage on the other side, support for unemployed being challenged on one hand, glass ceilings are replaced with concrete ones over the road. If we fight these battles singly we’ll lose them all.

Time I think, not just for all women to work together to change views from “I’m not a feminist” to “I’m not a feminist, but …”, to “of course I’m a feminist, want to make something of it?”, but for all progressive groups to work together. It was hard coming out of the fifties, when the conservatives were taken by surprise by the progressive movement. This time they are ready for us and have the weapons.

Progressives united can never be defeated.

* this is not to say the issue, the use of the word “hysterical” to describe a woman writer’s tv appearance, was not of interest/importance, just that by any measure it was a small issue in relation to the reaction. Although that reaction was compounded, rather like a nuclear chain reaction, by the vehemence of the opinions expressed and the increased personalising of the debate.

Note
The original article by Justin Shaw is here
Three of the major subsequent debaters have also posted on the topic (as have many others apparently):
Tammi Jonas
Ben Pobjie
Jennifer Wilson

If there are any blog readers who like what I have been doing on the blog it would be good if you could put in a vote for me in the “Shorty Awards” blogger category. Really good! You have to say, in a few words, why you are voting for me (@watermelon_man) in the blogger category. And that’s it really.

Government for Dummies

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by Environment, politics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

It is not just the media which aims at the lowest common denominator these days, and not just politicians (notably Abbott), but government itself.

The stupidity and ignorance of the limits placed on wind farms by the new Victorian and NSW governments is only exceeded by the stupidity and ignorance of the people whose “opinions” they are responding to. Both in turn exceeded by the cynicism and viciousness of the people manipulating the useful idiots.

Whether it’s water in the Murray, prescribed forest burning, smart meters, speed cameras, cattle in high country, phone towers, sharks, and now wind farms, whatever the complex issue requiring research, analysis, specialist scientific knowledge, and a modicum of common sense, governments instead rely on the yobbo in the street informed only by shock jocks, think tanks, religious nutters, and astroturfers, working on behalf of vested interests.

The planet is in great peril, we need great wisdom to stave off disaster. At a time like this why would political leaders seek the advice of the most stupid in society?

Government of the dummies, by the dummies, for the dummies.

Gaiathan

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by Environment • Tags: , , , , , , ,

The idea of the human body as metaphor is not new. Thomas Hobbes in “Leviathan” (1651) invented an ideal commonwealth “ruled by a sovereign power responsible for protecting the security of the commonwealth and granted absolute authority to ensure the common defense. In his introduction, Hobbes describes this commonwealth as an “artificial person” and as a body politic that mimics the human body. The frontispiece to the first edition of Leviathan, which Hobbes helped design, portrays the commonwealth as a gigantic human form built out of the bodies of its citizens.”

Last century Lovelock came up with the metaphor (though he didn’t see it as metaphor) of “Gaia” – the whole planet as a kind of self-regulating ecosystem. Some truth in that as in most things, but it became something of a monster eating its Frankenstein later.

But various circumstances got me thinking about the idea again recently. Came up with (as I realised in retrospect) a kind of combination of Hobbes and Lovelock – Gaiathan.

The human body (as all animal bodies) is a beautifully functioning machine – self-regulating, dealing with disease and injury, growing, compensating for changing conditions, reproducing, and so on. So are the ecosystems of this little planet we call home. Very close parallels. One species explodes in numbers, another increases to prey on it and bring it back to normal. Disasters of fire or flood set in train succession sequences, individual organism repair mechanisms. Climate changes, species compositions change in response. A prey species evolves defence or escape mechanisms, a predator evolves counter measures. A tree exudes chemicals, or physically excludes rival trees; when it dies others fill its place. A species is almost wiped out by pest or disease, survivors evolve resistance, species recovers.

So ecosystems live on, change with stability, just like a growing human body. But with the human body events can damage the stability. A massive wound; major bone break; poor nutrition; lack of trace elements; a new strain of disease; too much alcohol, nicotine and other drugs; environmental extremes, and so on, can all set the body on a downward spiral to death. Defences and self-regulation mechanisms overwhelmed.

Same with ecosystems. Change ecosystems by overhunting, or clearing, or dumping poisons, or splitting up, or introducing exotic species, or extracting too much water, or setting up noise and light sources, and the resulting imbalances may well prevent ecosystems recovering from, say a storm.

All pretty obvious, although the analogy seems not to occur to developers and politicians and farmers and miners, who assume that any amount of damage short of nuclear annihilation is of no concern at all.

But there is another part of the body-planet analogy that has only occurred to me, because of circumstances, lately. These days the medical profession has a panoply of tools available to tackle any medical problem known to humanity. Surgically and pharmacologically doctors are ready to swing into action as soon as you put your hand up to say “not waving, drowning”.

Before you can say “Ah” you can be infused with toxic chemicals, have a stomach full of pills, have bits of body removed or modified, have radioactivity administered externally or internally, get nutritional substances, have electronic and mechanical devices fitted into various parts of body to perform functions, get extra blood, be put into chambers with extreme conditions of oxygen or pressure or temperature.

All well and good. All often in fact bloody brilliant and at least life altering if not indeed life saving. Trouble is the law of unintended side effects. Take steroids as part of cancer treatment, bugger up your stomach; take aspirin for heart, bleed freely; replace hip, poison your muscles.

And then, and then. Have additional medicines or operations to fix first lot of side effects, develop new ones. Try to correct those in turn and something else goes down tubes. By the time you finish you are taking bucketfulls of pills, have a body full of modifications, and are much much sicker than you were when you began the whole thing.

Same in the ecosystem. The foresters and farmers and politicians who confidently announce some intervention to fix an ecological problem (up to and including climate change) are heading certainly for unintended consequences. Burn or thin forests, clear mangroves, introduce “biological controls”, reintroduce species from zoos, shoot predators, recreate extinct species, replant trees, add nest boxes, spray water into air or iron into oceans, and you may fix one thing while setting in train terrible consequences in other aspects of the ecology. Try to fix those and something else goes wrong. Things fall apart.

Take home message? Better to be healthy in first place, look after body and ecosystem, than trying to repair damage later. Like throwing a malfunctioning clock against wall, you are very unlikely to improve things.

Dig for victory

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by Climate Change, Environment • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

In world war two the British had a slogan “dig for victory”. It was aimed at getting people growing their own food and all over the country lawns were ripped up, roses removed, and potatoes and other vegetables planted. The logic was that Britain was involved in the “Battle of the Atlantic” where German U Boats were sinking many cargo ships, and it was harder and harder to ship essential things like oil and materials for building Spitfires, and shipping food was more and more difficult. So, grow your own. Much the same encouragement in Australia I think, and after the war people continued to grow their own. Every household had a fruit tree or two (all different so you could exchange) and we all had potatoes, silver beet, what have you.

But then supermarkets arrived an it was far easier to get your vegetables wrapped in plastic on demand, with little effort except wheeling a shopping trolley, and gradually the backyard vegetable garden died out along with bicycles and wood stoves. The old world was dead, long live the new world.

The other day I bought a “raised garden bed” kit (the actual “soil” in the garden being rock, so that carrots grow upside down in it). Not alone it seems. There are many different manufacturers making all kinds of designs and sizes, and gardening magazines, and nurseries and hardware shops, are full of them. The backyard vegetable garden is back it seems. Back for a number of reasons.

Concerns about chemicals used on and to grow commercial vegetable crops; concerns about GM food; dissatisfaction with the small range of commercially profitable varieties used; dissatisfaction with foods stored for a long time; a sense of achievement in going outside and bringing dinner in from your own garden.

But there are more general reasons why this movement is a good thing. Shipping food huge distances may not run the risk of sinking by UBoat any more but it does result in considerable greenhouse gas production, and must be reduced. It will in any case become more expensive as energy costs increase. Secondly, as we have seen last week, the mass production of many commercial vegetables has been subsidised not just by cheap energy but by unsustainable water use. As the battles are fought to try to restore some life to the Murray Darling River the days of massive over use of cheap water will come to an end, and with it the growing of huge crops of fruit and vegetables in semi desert areas.

‘Dig for Victory”? Not in its original sense, but dig for sustainability certainly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some carrots to plant, some spinach to harvest. The vegetable garden my grandparents had is reborn, everything old is new again.