Monthly Archives: April 2019

What to do about drought

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What to do about drought

If you live in Australia long enough there are a few things that you will experience first hand.

You will witness the removal of a sitting prime minister by his or her best mates.

There will be storms and floods that will drown livestock, wet low lying carpet and put an array of dents in the bonnet of your Holden Commodore.

Hang around some more and you will come close to a bushfire because many of the native plants are highly flammable, especially when they dry out, the wind gets up and it’s 40 degrees Celcius in the shade, and they burn with terrible ferocity.

And there will be drought.

At some point, probably several, there will be weeks and months when it is so dry even the bones are thirsty. Likely this will coincide with temperatures that basking lizards find challenging. This is the truth and it always has been the truth.

Australia is not called the land of drought and flooding rain for nothing.

What to do about drought?

Well, it will happen. No amount of rain dancing, prayers and speeches from aged ministers can change this fact. There will be drought and it will be hard, harsh and intense for everyone who lives off the land.

So here is what we should do

  • Accept
  • Prepare
  • Let things go

Accept

The first thing is, do not to treat drought as a natural disaster or blame it on climate change, even if the frequency and intensity of drought might be changing for the worse.

Drought is an inevitable, unstoppable reality of life on a large dry continent, accept it.

Prepare

If anything is as inevitable as death and taxes, then it makes a lot of sense to do the boy scout thing and be prepared.

This means drought proofing water supplies, food production systems and the wider economy.

The many specifics would bloat this post but we are talking about investment in water infrastructure, grazing practices that retain groundcover, rural insurance subsidised by city folk through realistic food prices, choosing the local supply chains that are sustainable… the list is long.

Then, and this may be that hardest of the three, let things go.

Let some things go

It may not be possible for Joe to rear livestock on a property that has poor soils, no reliable water and was infested with rabbits for 50 years since the 1920’s. That landholding might just have to rest.

It may not be that the cod in the Murray can survive a drought if we choose to put the water onto the crops. Should we choose the cod, then we have to let go at least some of the irrigation.

In drought, there are zero-sum games everywhere that require specific choices.

Accept, prepare, let go

Accept, prepare, let go is very different to do nothing, act surprised and prop up poor preparation with drought relief payments.

We should give it a try.

Why it is wise keep judgement to yourself

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Why it is wise keep judgement to yourself

My mum, who is chinwagging with the angels, always used to say that you should not judge people.

Sage advice.

We are not supposed to pass judgement even though it means we have considered matters and reached a sensible conclusion because if we get it wrong or judge harshly all that happens is that we sour relationships and upset people. And, as we all know, people are easily upset especially when they feel judged.

On legal issues, we leave judgement to the judge because she should be across everything presented for both sides of a case. On everyday issues… well, none of us is really in full possession of the facts and we let opinion rule.

My mum was against opinion despite having a few of her own.

So we should avoid judgement in our day to day so as to avoid the risk of getting it wrong. You never really know the truth of a person’s motivation unless you’re really good at reading behind their eyes.

Only there is more.

There is also discernment, the ability to judge well. As Wikipedia states…

“Within judgment, discernment involves going past the mere perception of something and making nuanced judgments about its properties or qualities. Considered as a virtue, a discerning individual is considered to possess wisdom, and be of good judgement; especially so with regard to subject matter often overlooked by others.”

Berated for judging, heralded for nuanced judging, because if you are good a discernment then you have wisdom.

Oh my, how fickle it all is.

Don’t judge but be discerning.

Reminds me of Joe Jackson’s ‘It’s different for girls’ lyric

Mama always told me save yourself
Take a little time and find the right girl
Then again don’t end up on the shelf
Logical advice gets you in a whirl

Here is some healthy thinking on this conundrum

  • Make it a habit not to judge
  • When a judgement is required keep it to yourself
  • Only tell anyone your judgement when forced by a sharp object
  • Don’t try to explain your judgement
  • Never try to justify any judgement even if it is forced out of you
  • Practice discernment on yourself
  • Remind yourself that discernment is so rare it is nearly extinct

Smile instead

Oh yes, and listen to your mum.

Why are carbon emissions increasing?

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Why are carbon emissions increasing?

The climate is changing.

After a few glasses of Chardonnay, even the most ardent sceptic would concede this reality. And the consequences are increasingly dire. The headlines of fire, flood, heatwave and crippling cold (all increasing in frequency and intensity because more energy is retained in the global atmosphere-ocean systems) are more frequent and dramatic, yet are only part of the story.

The everyday consequences are far-reaching too.

Ask a Sydneysider how often they turned on the air conditioner this summer; pretty much every day they’d say. Extreme heat keeps people indoors and makes them worry about their energy bills. Cold in Chicago does the same thing. There are some heavy psychological challenges from these consequences that run far deeper than cabin fever.

Then there is the guilt trip.

Rhetoric and considerable evidence have convinced most of us that climate change is our fault, the consequence of profligate emissions of greenhouse gases coming roughly a third each from our needs for energy, transport and agriculture.  

We are also told that the solution is emission reduction.

So why are global greenhouse gas emissions increasing?

First reason is
context

One inevitability of the industrial revolution that began in the late 1800’s is that most human societies are not only dependent on fossil fuel energy, but they have also used it to grow.

More people, with ever greater needs and wants. This success means that use of fossil fuel to power people and agriculture are greater than ever. Indeed, most of the carbon emissions have happened in the lifetime of the baby boomers. Three-quarters of our fossil fuel burning has happened since ABBA won the Eurovision song contest in 1974.


This is a ‘locked in’ reason. We cannot go back and make different decisions any more than we could turn off the needs and wants of the 4 billion people around in 1974 or the 7.5 billion people doing their thing today.

Just like we cannot go back and imagine if Mouth & MacNeal from the Netherlands had won Eurovision in 1974 with their little ditty, “I see a star”. They came second.

Second reason is
behaviour

Estimates suggest that up to half of all greenhouse gas emissions are the result of inefficiencies and waste: poor construction practices, food waste, sloppy supply chains, replacing goods that work fine with shiny new ones.

We also like to copy ostriches. Subsidies to fossil fuel businesses are estimated at $5 trillion globally. That is a lot of money to prop up emissions we are told we should be curbing.

Third reason is
we don’t want to stop emitting

The willingness to make the sacrifices to our lifestyles and wellbeing, real or perceived, to reduce carbon emissions is absent for most of us. Way too many everyday issues are way more important to us than breaking a few weather records. So what if they have to shovel some snow in Chicago.

The formal government agreements to counter individual indifference have failed too. The infamous Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, that’s 20 years ago. Since then global emissions have continued to rise.

There is some hope that renewable energy sources are becoming cheap enough for us to want to use them purely for back pocket reasons. This will see emission rates stall and even for coal and oil trail off towards an ignominious retirement (they will not go gracefully).

Again the reality is that market pressure was always needed to move the dial. Climate advocacy, legislation, or protocols were never going to generate the necessary willingness to act.


Source: Boden, T.A., Marland, G., and Andres, R.J. (2017). Global, Regional, and National Fossil-Fuel CO2Emissions. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A. doi 10.3334/CDIAC/00001_V2017.

Will global greenhouse gas emissions stop increasing?

Yes they will.

Most likely emissions will decline to pre-industrial revolution levels for three main reasons:

  1. Fossil fuels will become scarce and eventually run out
  2. Conversion of land for agriculture will slow to nothing once all the land that could be farmed is farmed
  3. Low to no emission alternatives to our current behaviours that produce greenhouse gases will be cheaper but just as satisfying

A more significant question is not will but when.

Should the three reasons follow their natural course it could be decades or longer before emissions slow and reverse back toward the natural background rate.

This means that every day in Sydney or Chicago will be a headliner for its extreme heat or cold, until it’s the norm and the headline changes back to the inane actions of famous human beings.

Why are global greenhouse gas emissions increasing?

Because of people.

Trite perhaps, but true nonetheless.


What do you see?

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What do you see?

Magnificent beach isn’t it?

What do you see?

Wide expanses of sand, huge vista, no buildings and just one person and their dog as far as the eye can see (almost).

I’m guessing you would travel quite a way to visit such a place, especially if I tell you that it was a balmy 30 degrees in the shade when I took this photo.

This is Jimmy’s Beach at Hawks Nest, NSW, just one of the many truly beautiful places on the east coast of Australia.

On our walk along the crisp clean sand we saw dolphins in the ocean, a sea eagle flying over the dunes past sooty oystercatchers, pied oystercatchers, turn species too numerous to know, and any number of interesting shells. We’ll ignore the bull ant that bit my wife’s foot as we passed through the fringing woodland. That was truly painful.

You cannot see all these things in the picture but it is easy to imagine them and believe that they are there and that we saw them on our visit, even that you would see them too if you go there.

You should, it is a fantastic place.

But what else do you see in the picture?

There is a sign that says ‘No vehicle access past this point’.

The tyre tracks extend either side of the sign. This suggests that not everyone heeded its instruction. Clearly many a 4×4 passes up and down this beach, tyres let down to the lowest tolerable pressure. Most are driven by middle-aged white dudes looking for a place to throw a fishing line into the water. A few of them do it for a living.

You can also see footprints. Well, more like depressions in the sand, but evidence that many people visit this place. Obviously not all at the same time; but people are here, often. The sand is not blown into the ridges you’ll see in a desert, it is pot marked, trodden on.

Whilst at first glance Jimmy’s Beach looks like a remote wilderness, an unspoilt gem near the edge of the world. It isn’t. A time lapse image would tell us that people come here all the time, walking, jogging, swimming, driving, fishing, birdwatching, picnicking, sunbathing, surfing… any number of beach time activities.

All these visitors love it.

Many pinch themselves at their good fortune to be there. Some may not be that aware. Either way it is a public place that the law of the land says can be used by anyone so long as they abide by a few rules designed to prevent abuse of the privilege.

And that use is on the increase. In the campsite there is a flotilla of caravans drawn by large 4x4s with their tyres optimally inflated. These are the homes of choice of grey nomads, the older contingent of Australians enjoying at least part of their retirement on the road. They make up a sizeable chunk of the 12 million caravan and camping nights a year around the country and its increasing as the population ages and more people take to beachside touring.

How will Jimmy’s Beach fare as numbers of visitors increase?

Well the sand will be fine. The tides will ebb and flow and the waves will crash every minute of every day until the sun explodes.

We can be less confident about the animals.

As each visitor strolls quietly along toward the turns resting on the wet sand only one thing happens. At some point the birds take to the wing and fly off.

If this happens a few times a day then it is all in a day’s predator avoidance for an animal that is vulnerable on the ground. If it happens a few times an hour, then the energetics of it may bite. If it happens during mating or brooding it could influence breeding success. And there need be no intent to disturb. Walking along the beach is enough.

Does this mean restricting access to Jimmy’s Beach? No. What it means is that there are always an array of consequences that the presence of people have on nature, like it or not.

Our challenge is to recognise this and to plan accordingly.

So, what else do you see?