Tomorrow I am allocated 5 minutes to present. This is what I will be saying. Fee free to borrow any of it for your submission.
Despite living in inner city Glebe, far removed from Narrabri, I eat, my children and grandchildren eat and I have a small health food manufacturing business. So the indefinite continuance of a good quality, nutrient dense and abundant food supply at an affordable price is very important to me.
One advantage of an external consultant is that they can bring different experience and a wide angle lens to the discussion.
If we were to have the luxury of an InterGalactic Planetary Consultant specialising in resource management, what would their recommendation be to us today?
If they were to do a thorough job they would presumably do an analysis of our history, human, intellectual and physical assets and liabilities as well as man’s past and current engineering, planning and management capabilities.
Historically the consultant may note that 8 of the 9 civilizations extant at the end of the bronze age, about 1200 BC, at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean were destroyed due to drought, famine and war.
As part of the analysis of our present situation the consultant may discover that this week the UN estimated if we continue as we are, we have less than 60 years left of arable farmland. This is potentially an extinction level event.
Assessing the quality control of our engineering, the consultant would presumably take into account the following:the use of nuclear power plants and the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, the use of oil tankers and Exxon Valdez and other environmental disasters, the use of deep water offshore oil drilling and not only the Deepwater Horizon spill but the environmentally disastrous handling of it, the oil pipelines in the US and Canada and the hundreds of environmentally destructive leaks, the use of fracking and the many examples of aquifer and soil pollution the use of space rockets and the Appollo disaster and, closer to home, the calamatous mismanagement of the Murray-Darling
and accurately conclude that where there is a risk involved the current state of man’s development is inadequate to the task of preserving a safe, clean environment.
Poor soil management techniques, over-use of commercial fertilizers and lack of regenerative farming might also rate a mention.
If the consultant were really top notch they might also note the hardest illogic to spot, the missing elements that should be there but are not. Like the Bradfied and other schemes that, if constructed, would divert water to the West of the Great Dividing Range sufficient to permit Australia to be the world’s food bowl.
The consultant may conclude that the list of man’s accomplishments might be long but our level of unethical conduct, greed and under-engineering has led to an impressive list of failures.
So they would probably factor into their recommendation the gross mismanagement of our human and environmental resources as evidenced by:the depleting levels of aquifers and food reserves around the world, the unstable political climate, the unethical nature of much of our population, the profit motivation of corporations and inadequate supervisory managament or governance structures that appliy little to no restraint to the greed of many who make it to top management positions andthe disatrous under-engineering and poor quality control which sabotages our attempts at problem solving, ever more potentially to the level of species extinction.
The consultant may even look, as I did some time ago, at the sale of much of Australia’s agricultural land, water resources and food production to China and wondered how that would pan out if China had a food crisis and our Chinese owned food production was all shipped offshore.
Unfortunately, with the present drought in Northern China and the floods in the South and West, we may not have to wait too long to find out.
The consultant may even look at the Sun’s historical and future effect on our climate and agriculture and note we are due for a mini-Ice age in the next few decades which will lead to a reduced percentage of the world’s presnt farmland being arable and lower yields from that land.
Given the above, I suspect our consultant would advise us here in Australia that nationally rather than foreign owned, arable land and unpolluted aquifers were so high on the level of survival assets that absolutely nothing should be permitted to jeapardise the preservation, improvement, expansion and optimal use of them.
Probably being aware that the psychotic lives in the past, the neurotic in the present and only the sane plan for the future, I suspect our consultant would consider it insane to think otherwise.
Our consultant may even remind us that food was the top item on Maszlow’s list of hierachial needs and, harking back to the 8 civilizations that perished 3,000 years ago, ask, have we progressed a long way technically without a concurrent level of advance in our foresight and planning?
Unless we can improve the planning of our resources such that we can answer that question confidently and resoundlingly in the negative then potentially our grandchildren face a much bleaker future than I would like to leave them.
Thank you for your time.