Chapter 5 : The Environment
The climate is changing. Droughts are becoming more extreme and floods more damaging. A radical climate requires a radical change in our thinking, behaviors, and actions. If our environment is becoming wild, then we need to tame it before it tames us. We have already seen harsh environmental consequences with massive bushfires, prolonged droughts, and destructive floods, and according to scientists, this is just the start of things to come.
A study by Dr Falster of the ANU says the possibility of megadroughts lasting up to 20 years is on the horizon. They have happened before. Only now, with the effects of climate change, they will be worse and more frequent. How could any farmer last for 20 years without rain? It's impossible!!! And banks won't want to talk to farmers ever again.
Remember in 2019 when newspapers talked about "Zero Day". That was the day when country towns like Dubbo, Tenterfield, Stanthorpe, Warwick, Tamworth and Nyngan would have their taps turned off because there was no more water in their reservoirs, rivers and dams. And that was just towards the end of a ten year drought. See how they go with a 20 year drought. Before the drought is finished they will all be ghost towns.
Normally, our leaders will wait for events to unfold because there are more votes to be gained from "saving us". If they did that this time and there is a 20-year drought, the agricultural industry will fail. It is much more cost-effective for our economy to take pre-emptive action on climate change. Plus, we don’t really know what all the tipping points of climate change are for our world. We could be blindly crashing past some of them without a care in the world (pun intended). The science has been right all along. When are we going to trust it and start taking pre-emptive action? The nay-sayers will drive us to disaster if given half a chance.
Think of our new suburbs in the city. When developers remove all the trees to build the maximum number of properties, the temperature in those suburbs fluctuates much more than in the bushy established suburbs. Now expand that across the continent. Imagine how much we could reduce temperature fluctuations in Australia and generally reduce the temperature on this continent if we could eventually green the entire country. Imagine how much we could reduce soil erosion, improve soil structure, and reduce evaporation if we could increase ground cover.
We need the entire world to participate in reducing carbon emissions to fight global warming. We can't affect how the rest of the world attacks this problem. To tell the truth, I am underwhelmed by the commitment of the world as a whole to take this situation seriously enough. The solutions I provide in this blog are within our control. These actions I propose will improve our land and lessen the effects of global warming. They won't solve the world's global warming problems. Though they may tip the scale in the right direction and we will know we did way more than our fair share to help.
The Government could require those coastal corporations to provide a proportion of the water they pump for environmental flows. As the supplies of energy provided by increasing numbers of farmers grow and the coastal corporation profits grow, allowances can be made for increasing environmental flows. A form of this is already happening in South Australia. A considerable proportion of Adelaide's water is being supplied via a desalination plant, which replenishes their reservoir. This means less dependence upon the Murray River for their water. A river system that is often under incredible stress. And this program is largely funded by the Federal Government because the problem starts upriver in other states.
Possibly enough water may be available in the future for the creation of massive temperate rainforests, which would be immune to bushfires because such environments are always too wet to burn. If artificially maintained at a constant moisture content through specially designed irrigation, these rainforests could act as fire breaks. They may even influence weather patterns positively if large enough. They may also develop into ecotourism hotspots if designed carefully enough from the start. That might help fund their development and operation.
Every time we export some agricultural product overseas, we are, by default, exporting water. It costs us a certain amount of water taken from our environment to produce that food. This is an arid continent. We can't afford to export water. But we have an abundance of sunlight. We can't afford to approach farming with the same mindset as other countries. We have to do better. We have to trade sunlight for water. It's just so obvious.
Climate change is a global issue, and we need to prepare ourselves for possible global events. In the northern hemisphere, if the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) turns off, Europe and North America may go into a mini Ice Age. The crops being produced at present will no longer be viable. They will need to import food. If we take action now and massively increase our ability to produce food, can we be the right country in the right place at the right time? And how will changing ocean currents affect us if temperatures keep increasing?
As much as 40% of the population of the planet gets their fresh water from melting ice coming off the Himalayan Mountain Range. What if it fails to provide because there is much less ice to melt in the future? CO2 levels have been measured since 1958. In the Northern Hemisphere, in Spring and Summer, CO2 levels drop because the leaves on deciduous trees absorb CO2 during photosynthesis. In Autumn and Winter, CO2 levels rise in the Northern Hemisphere as leaves on trees fall and decompose. What if we covered our country with evergreen trees? It might make some difference just when CO2 levels are peaking each year in the Northern Hemisphere.
It's not enough that we go net-zero on carbon emissions, as all the scientists are begging us to do. We need to position ourselves in the right way so that when others cannot or will not provide for themselves at a net-zero level, we can do it for them. And at the same time, we can profit because we took the threat seriously whilst there was still time to do so.
If and when systems fail internationally due to climate change, massive pressure to immigrate to Australia will occur. We need to be ready for that outcome. Even the collapse of the Pax Americana system could trigger mass migration to Australia. We need to prepare for that possible outcome too.
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