Monday, April 26, 2004
Consumer Citizens

The shenanigans up at Maleny seem to be taking a fairly predictable course.

As expected the battle between some residents of Maleny and the local council on the one hand and Woolworths/Cornerstone and some other residents of Maleny on the other, is being played out in the media.

Woolworths have put in place a further moratorium (60 days) on development at the site, in order to give the council an opportunity to consider buying purchasing the site at market value.

Two days ago Woolworths wrote a personal letter to the Mayor of Caloundra City Council, informing him of this moratorium. Should the Council decide to buy, Woolworths would naturally be seeking compensation for the loss of opportunity to run a profitable operation in Maleny. He also implied that he was speaking for the site’s owners, Cornerstone Properties (who purchased the land to lease to Woolworths). Woolworths are disappointed, because previously the Council had supported the application from Woolworths – they had given planning approval, after all.

Helpfully, the General Manager of Corporate Services, Woolworths copied this personal letter to media.

The Mayor of Caloundra, Cr Aldous of course responded, through the media. He suggested that Woolworths should not seek compensation from the ratepayers of the council. Furthermore, he clarified the issue of support: yes, the council gave approval, but it was quite clear at all stages of the process that the council did not support the Woolworths scheme, therefore the conditions laid out in the approval effectively discounted the building of the kind of store Woolworths would desire. Outright refusal would have been proved unlawful on appeal, without a doubt.

Of course, it went to the Planning and Environment Court (like the Planning Inspectorate), where the council explained that it knew it had to approve the application and that it was merely attempting to the control the development for the benefit of the local community as much as possible. This argument was accepted, but the contentious conditions were still removed or amended.

So what do you do when you want to undermine grassroots opposition? No doubt digging out the Wise Use Movement handbook to plan your attack.

A common feature is to label the opposition as a minority extremists, or worse still, as NIMBYs. This has been done already done. We now know, for example, that 45% of the shoppers at the Woolworths down the hill in Beerwah, come from the Maleny area. What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander.

Next up, is the tactic to plant scare stories in the press. This morning’s paper revealed that a supporter of the store had received death threats from protesters. He and the ‘silent majority’ of people are frightened to speak out. No doubt, there will soon be a localised ‘Maleny Action Group’ grassroots movement (orchestrated, very subtly, by Woolworths and the developers).

This action group will talk about loss of jobs, young people will have to leave town etc (of course, I’m sure they only reluctantly leave town, those shelf stacking jobs can be quite lucrative).

One thing we haven’t seen are any SLAPPS (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Protest). Although these will no doubt come into force once the 60 days are up. All of this is straight out of text book anti-environmental campaign.

Of course, the most ideological line of attack is the market. Residents should “vote with their feet” if they do not want a Woolworths in their town, according to the Cornerstone MD. If Woolworths fails (like the Red Rooster takeaway before it), there will remain a single concrete block structure that can only be filled by another multiple retailer like Woolworths. Again, the residents will not want them, as it is not Woolworths that they protesting over, just the retailing and design outcomes in their town centre.

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Wednesday, April 21, 2004
A sad story

My elder brother and I don’t get on and we fight. A lot.

Although smaller than me, he knows all the tricks and is much stronger and is better protected. I have come close to getting him a few times, he always wins the day.

He has always has a bit of a chip on his shoulder. When he was younger one day he had a near-death experience at the hands of a physco-kid. It was pretty shocking and I don’t think that anyone will forget it, but boy, does he remind us of it when he is in trouble. He seems to think that the entire world is against him, but really they just don’t like how he is acting at the moment.

Since that day he has always assumed that he is special – as if no one else had ever experienced pain and bullying.

I don’t know whether is he trying to shake off his ‘victim’ image, or whether he is just self-centred, but now he has turned to bullying me. It all started when our parents made us share a room. Sure - I was unhappy, but eventually I realised I couldn’t have everything my own way.

As he is smaller than me he has always managed to keep our bigger brother onside; to fool into thinking it is all my fault and to keep our parents out of it all. (Secretly, I think my parents are scared of our big brother.)

For a long while, my elder brother has been knicking my stuff. Slowly but surely he has knicked all my best things to use them himself. When he comes looking for stuff to knick, he breaks other stuff just looking for it. Some of my stuff he has had so long, everyone now thinks that it is his ! There are a few things that he has given back, once he realised that they were useless or our parents noticed they were missing.

Sometimes I try to get them back while he is asleep, but when he notices, he just comes back and takes even more.

Recently, as well as the stealing, which continues, he has developed a real nasty streak. (I also think he has been in trouble with the law, but our parents can’t do anything about that either.) He has barricaded me into my bedroom and I have to ask his permission to go even to the kitchen. It is so humiliating. He also punches me - in front of everyone - trying to provoke me into fighting him.

But still no one seems to notice or care. Or, if they do, they won’t do anything about it.

Just last week, to look like the 'good guy' in front of our big brother, he gave me back one of my things that he had taken ages ago. It was pretty ragged now and useless on its own, without the rest of it, which he told our big brother that he was going to keep for good.

So now, all of a sudden, he expects me to be grateful because he is giving me back my stuff that he had stolen. Our big brother thinks that this is great and now he is trying to persuade our parents that I should be thankful too.

He still doesn’t let me out of my room, he has still got most of my stuff, I am hungry, I had to pack in my job and he still treats me like dirt.

When will the UN Security Council actually do something about it?

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Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Made in China

The residents of the village of Maleny are sitting in trees attempting to prevent bulldozers clearing the land to build a supermarket.

Maleny is a ‘quaint’ village in the Blackall Ranges, 80km north of Brisbane. In addition to the 'longer serving' residents, the small holders, horticulturalists, artists and basket-weavers, it is also inhabited by ex-city types, fleeing the suburbs and the 9-5 to run tea shops and cuckoo clock shops for tourists.

By all accounts it is a happy, peri-rural community that has managed to retain some bohemian charm despite the influx of wealth.

Local systems of non-monetary exchange and a range of independent retailers (including a grocer that sources locally) have emerged, ensuring its ‘alternative’ label thrives.

But now a plot of land, adjacent to the Obi Obi Creek, is the cause of some controversy. The owners have leased it to Woolworths (supermarket) who wish to build a store on the site, right in the middle of the village. The locals are not at all happy.

Clearing of the site began suddenly last week, right before the locals took to the trees, under the watchful gaze of a surprisingly large police contingent.

(The State Government has actually intervened, holding up the clearing, but only because it is investigating whether the demolition company had the correct permits to knock over a few trees on the creek bank – not in opposition to the scheme in principle.)

The development of the creek bank site would also interfere with the local platypus population, already under pressure from developments up and down stream.

Back in December, Woolworths had put the scheme on hold. Aware of some local opposition, they went back to the community to 'consult'. Now they have listened they are going to build it anyway, as ‘similar sized stores, in similar sized towns had been profitable and successful’.

Every letter to the editor in local papers is opposed to the development and it would be remarkable if there was any wider support for the proposed development in and around the village at all.

So why is Woolworths continuing with the development if there is to be a focused, aggressive campaign against them? It is estimated that Woolworths would create 7 new jobs to the loss of 10: surely this means that the residents of Maleny would benefit from the improved efficiencies that bring their groceries to retail. The net loss of 3 jobs in every 10 is a small price to pay for what the consumer really wants: low prices. The developers (apart from this hiccup over a few trees) have all the necessary permits to build, having recently won an appeal against Caloundra City Council in the Planning and Environment Court.

Besides, many of trees were not natives anyway. It's not exactly pristine land.

Caloundra City Council had identified the site in its IPA (Integrated Planning Act) scheme (similat to the 'Local Plan' in UK) as an area for retail development. Therefore the developers could go ahead, provided they applied and subject to conditions.

But the conditions were pretty stringent and the appellant appealed on the grounds that the conditions (48 of them in all) represented a de facto refusal. (It was supposed to – the conditions on open space retention would have discounted one larger store, but would have allowed several smaller outlets.) The interim IPA scheme, against which the development was assessed, was a throwback from the ‘bad-old-days’ of Queensland development.

When other local retailers slowly slip by the wayside from the increased price (only) competition, what would be left: a monolithic grocer, sourcing produce internationally, employing staff on low wages and low skill; not to mention a huge retail development scarring the pleasant, slightly messy street-scape. But the store would be profitable, as there would be no choice on where people shopped.

So is this a case of extremist tree-huggers and wealthy NIMBYs versus a friendly high street store, just bringing lower prices to the community, or, is it a case of concerned residents seeking to retain a village atmosphere, open space and a few platypus against big faceless corporation profiteering?

Well that depends on whose press releases you read.

www.courts.qld.gov.au/qjudgment/QPEC%202003/QPEC03-042.pdf

But if it is any consolation to the concerned residents, this appeared this morning’s Courier-Mail:

“I AM sure the residents of Maleny will be able to find a platypus or two, once the Woolworths is built. They will find them stuffed, in Aisle 9, labelled ‘Made in China’.”

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Thursday, April 15, 2004
Dirty Work – but someone’s paid to do it

The death and mutilation a fortnight ago of four civilian contractors in Fallujah marked the beginning of a hardening of US/Coalition military tactics in quashing both the Sunni and Shi’ite insurgency.

On an individual level the murdering then desecration and despoliation of a body is morally repugnant, however, angry mobs have been known to perpetrate hideous atrocities and so this case should not come as a shock – it is not without precedent.

But why would four civilian contractors be the target of an angry mob? They are not the occupying force, but merely ordinary people helping to rebuild Iraq and establish some sort of normality to an embittered country.

The truth is – they were part of the military apparatus of the occupying force. They were four of the some six thousand private security armed mercenaries that are currently contracted by the US government to carry out non-combat and non-mission critical work in Iraq.

The four were heavily armed employees of Blackwater Security Consulting. Blackwater has a $37.7 million dollar contract with the Bush administration to train 10,000 US troops in Iraq. Blackwater is also a subsidiary of Halliburton, the conglomerate that Vice-President Dick Cheney is former Chairman and is still taking a healthy pension. But this is probably coincidence.

Blackwater has the contract for the armed protection of Paul Bremmer, the US administrator of occupied Iraq. Private security firms are now the coalitions third largest contributor of personnel to the coalition’s forces (after the US and UK) – that is the third largest army.

These security firms are staffed by ex-soldiers and retired special forces goons who are attracted by the high salaries and perhaps high risks. Retention of experienced and highly trained military operatives is rumoured to be getting difficult, such is the loss to these growing firms. Blackwater’s turnover has increased 300% in the last three years.

They were not telephone engineers or air traffic controllers; those who you would immediately understand to be ‘civilian contractors’. They were in fact ‘soldiers-for-hire’ - something that was not made clear in White House/Defense Department statements and only came to light a least a week after the incident. They were referred to as 'coalition contractors' or simply 'Americans'.

Was this because

1. the killing of a civilian mercenary in a ‘combat zone’ should not have happened,


2. the US government does not wish to highlight the number of these combatants currently operative or


3. had they known, the incident would not have enraged the American public to quite the extent desired by the Bush administration?

Or maybe this fact was just overlooked?

But should that make any difference? It should certainly not have made a difference to the atrocities that followed the grenade attack but it does explain why their vehicles were a target for a mob of angry insurgents. Fallujah has hardly been a place where the occupying army have been met with open arms and these mercenaries are as much a part of the occupying force as any regular soldier.

So next time a ‘civilian contractor’ is murdered, just wait a while, until after the White House press conference and then ask – are these ‘contractors’ on the payroll of the US President, as Commander in Chief of US forces, or on the payroll of the Vice-President, as ex-Chairman of Halliburton?

• Blackwater Security Consulting


• United States Department of Defense

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Sunday, April 11, 2004
The destruction of a Marine Park

Sometimes a decision gets made and you wonder just what the hell was that person thinking.

One such decision is the permission given for an aquaculture company to develop a fish farm in Moreton Bay Marine Park in South East Queensland.

It has been declared by the Beattie (Labor) Government as a “project of State Significance”. This gives the Minister powers to by-pass the planning regimes of the local authorities. Of course, they still have to ‘consult’, but that doesn’t mean that they have to ‘listen’ or ‘take-note’.

Specifically, the proposal was referred to Environment Australia (Federal body) and the Commonwealth Minister deemed that the proposal is a controlled action under the provisions of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).

The EPBC Act allows for a bilateral agreement between the Commonwealth and States relating to environmental impact assessment of controlled actions. The purpose of such an agreement is to minimise duplication through accreditation of the Queensland environmental impact assessment processes.

The Queensland Department of State Development (DSD) is the nominated lead agency to coordinate and facilitate a collaborative government and industry approach for the sustainable development of aquaculture in Queensland. The sustainable development of aquaculture is a priority issue for the Department.

In plain English this means: The activity is controlled but an agreement between the Federal and State government has allowed the Queensland governments environmental impact assessment to be the regulating document.

That is lucky, because the Queensland State government is the ‘nominated lead agency’. That’s a bit like the tax inspector assessing his/her own tax assessment form….“Well, I can’t see anything wrong here then….”

There has been no independent environmental assessment.

The contract has been given to Sun Aqua. Sun Aqua’s director is Dr Julian Amos, one time director of Hydro Tasmania, who are busy flooding valleys down south and a former long-serving minister in successive Tasmanian Labor governments. Old Brisbane Mayor, (Labor, also) Jim Soorley, threatened war against government, if the plan ever went ahead – threatening obstructive tactics (legal and physical) against any development: “It will go ahead, over my dead body’.

In addition to overwhelming public opposition and rejection by all conservation groups the Nationals and Liberal Parties in the State Parliament have stated their objections to it.

For it’s part, the South East Queensland Regional Association of Councils (SEQROC) resolved at a meeting late last year to re-affirm its objections to the plans as it posed a “high environmental risk”, it is to be built, ironically, in the most pristine area of the bay, it could increase toxic algal blooms and the precautionary principle should apply.

SEQROC is a meeting of the Mayors of all adjacent Councils to Moreton Bay Marine Park, representing nearly 2.4 million people.

And the objections continued: In a pre-election mud-fight at City Hall, where the three main Mayoral candidates (Newman, Quinn and Hutton) slugged it out in a public debate, all three spoke against fish farming – perhaps Newman, most vociverous of them all. If Newman has the ‘mandate’ to build five tunnels through the heart of Brisbane’s transport policy, then he has the mandate to oppose – at every single opportunity – the implementation of the Moreton Bay fish farm.

Now, individuals have the right to develop businesses and property within the law and regulatory frameworks. Just because your neighbour may not like your new extension, does not mean that you should not have the opportunity to build it. Public objection, even widespread objection should not necessarily stop a development: that is the tyranny of the majority.

But a major scheme such as this – one that threatens a public good (the Marine Park), has been subject to a questionable regulatory framework and has virtual unanimous popular objection must not go ahead.

As ever, the battle will be played out in the media, rather than through ‘real’ politics. Sun Aqua has learnt all the lessons from major polluters seeking to spoil grass-roots movements. This letter to ‘Simon’ of the Queensland Conservation Council is just a taste of what is to come:

Let the battle begin.

As an afterthought, it may well be a good idea if this scheme goes ahead. It is likely that Moreton Bay Marine Park would suffer from escaped fish, effluent pollution, lyngbya algal blooms, anti-biotics bioaccumulating in wild stocks and so on; but at least it would be on our own doorstep.

It would be in full view of decision makers, consumers of cheap fish and the aquaculturalists seeking to expand, instead of floating off an unknown corner of SE Asia where we can easily ignore it.

This following link provides an interesting outline of the issues that face fish-farming in sheltered water ways. It is interesting that the author ends on a note suggesting that fish farming could be sustaintable if “more environmentally sound ways of raising farmed salmon” are implemented.

What do you thinks this means? Better cages that are better situated, or just more drugs, genetically modifies sterile fish and more technology, pushing us down path dependencies that are even more unsustainable?

Happy Easter

Links:

• SUN AQUA


• Queensland Conservation Council


• Department for State Development and Innovation


• Moreton Bay Marine Park

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Wednesday, April 07, 2004
The 200km City

Very soon, every kilometre of land between Tweed Heads and Noosa Heads - a distance of some 200km - will be sealed in concrete. A boat trip north along the coast would reveal a continuous ribbon of residential, commercial, industrial and recreational human land-use. This is the epitome of urban sprawl.

Only the protected oceanic coast of Bribie Island will be left green, but this only disguises the developments on the mainland coast on the leeside of the island – rapidly being engulfed in the maze of ‘canals’, golf-courses and water-front homes that is Pumicestone Passage.

Urban sprawl is a bad thing. That is something that everyone agrees on. So why does it still happen?

Sprawl ? Not here mate

Personal notions of 'urban sprawl' are contested. Rising aspirations, fuelled by increasing wealth, building on the cheap and ever more land being released for development has allowed many residents of South East Queensland (SEQ) to move out into the new suburbs, to experience the fairy tail lifestyle that was once out of reach for ordinary Australians.

Once you are in the suburbs, safely installed on your 809 square metre plot, urban sprawl takes on a whole new meaning. It is something that happens beyond your suburb, on the fringes, next to where concrete meets tree. Our perceptions have changed with our experiences - and with that, our attitudes towards growth management, voting intention and sustainability.

Urban sprawl has generated a greater Brisbane metropolitan area that is the geographical size of London but with less than a quarter of its population. On the one hand this offers great opportunities for high quality urban and suburban living. On the other, this is sad indictment on poor planning for growth.

The 'Los Angelisation' of South East Queensland

The causes of urban sprawl are as well documented in SEQ as they are in Los Angeles. A population explosion (over 1000 people per week are moving to SEQ), inappropriate housing densities, reduced occupancy rates of dwellings due to second home ownership and changing life patterns, little political commitment to grapple with and cheap access to petrol. All this has been soaked up in new rural land release and property sub-division encroaching on the remaining protected green space.

In recent years the phenomena of double figure property values increases in major population centres is forcing people away from amenities and services into dormitory developments that span the major highways, well away from existing water supplies, public transport networks and local shopping precincts.
Tentative answers lie in planning for growth that does not celebrate the politics of the lowest common denominator - of rolling over and accepting no limitations on SEQ's and the planet's sustainability. 'Growth Management' is the prevailing paradigm of planners: smart growth that finds best outcome answers to where this growth is going to occur.

But this regional planning framework requires more than the voluntary association it receives currently. It needs the command of statutory force to compel State and local authorities to adhere to sustainable regional strategies. It therefore needs the involvement and consent of the people that are going to live this strategy. Smart growth is all about planning infrastructure development to ensure that residential development, public amenity and transport infrastructure overlap.

Controlling urban sprawl cannot be done without protect green space - drawing 'red-lines' if you like. Red lines not just surrounding urban growth ('green-belts') but those passing through, around it and within it, creating wildlife corridors, sustainable transport options (by this I mean walking and cycling) and providing vibrant and equitable recreational open space. This is going to be difficult. Already, 83% of SEQ lies in private hands.

It is tricky, questioning aspirations, but breaking the public perception that high density equals low quality when it comes to residential development will require a sea change. There is strong opposition to high density developments in the inner suburbs. People are concerned about their own house prices and 'sort of person that lives in an apartment'. It involves in-fills, conversion of empty industrial units into highly livable developments.

Brisbanites need to come to terms that acreage eats up remnant vegetation and suburban living needs a progressive and equitable housing mix. Imaginative high quality, high density housing schemes will keep people closer to their schools, public transport nodes, shops and services. It will, dovetailed with progressive transport policies draw people out of their cars. Currently, only 8% of commutes in Brisbane are by public transport. When population and sprawl continue this will exacerbate.

Brisbane is a city of 1.5 million people in a region of some 2.4 million. The pushing of ever-larger highways from the Brisbane to the periphery of SEQ has enabled car-driving commuters to travel further and further. This undermines efforts to generate sub-regional economic centres of employment that encourage the dispersion of skills and jobs creation away from Brisbane city centre. The notion that large urban centres such as Ipswich and Rochedale are just ‘dormitories’ for commuters must be challenged. The Gargantuan developers that create whole towns must be forced to introduce mixed-use developments, not to create empty white-elephants, but be supported by partnerships of government and business to reduce worker’s commute times and improve quality of life.

An opportunity exists in sprawling SEQ. Brisbane's obsession with evermore development brings huge levels of new-build - new-build that needs the most stringent of environmental assessments. Sustainable building is far more efficient at the building's outset than later in its life.

Over 40% of new mortgage lending in SEQ is for investment and second properties. One benefit of this is a competitive rental market - yields for landlords are well below industry expectations. Another, more worrying by-product of this is the increasing levels of second home ownership - particularly in newly opened rural areas in the Sunshine Coast. Second home ownership pushes occupancy rates down, closes local businesses and drives up house prices both in the suburbs and in the get away areas. Second home-owners should bear the full cost of their unsustainable habits through progressive taxation of properties that are not sole dwellings.

Paradise lost?

SEQ promotes itself as a destination that provides high quality sub-tropical living. Urban sprawl will envelop many of the region’s attributes that make it so in a self-defeating dynamic. Costs of servicing this living will spiral and irreversible ecological degradation will occur long before market mechanisms kick in to push people away - leaving Brisbane as an urban spagetti bolognaise of red flat roofs and winding concrete freeways, resembling coastal California.

Is it density and design or is it sheer numbers? According to the Regional Strategy for Growth Management (SEQ2021), even the 2021 figures will only push SEQ's population density up to a figure still well below that of the South West Region of England - one of the most rural areas of the UK.

However, if the projected 60% rise in population brings a 60% increase in land turned over to suburban cul de sacs, carparks and shopping malls, SEQ would be finally, completely devastated. Unprotected farmland and remnant vegetation would all but disappear, Australia's already shocking commitment to combating climate change would be buried and the rivers would run dry. Resources would have been squandered for quick buck and a place in the sun.

Will what made SEQ a desirable place to live be lost? Probably not. “Sea-Changers” is the label given to the new generation of Australians seeking a life by the ocean. Will they profess to wanting uncomplicated lifestyle, more space and ‘a better place to bring up a family’, they soon fill up their lives with commuting and the things that made their complicated lives in the city unbearable in the first place. Ecological reasons for their move – to be closer to forest and remnant bushland - do not figure at all.

Not at all ! Shopping Malls are what we came for

Indeed, Sea-Changers main gripe is that their access to local services is poor: they wish they didn’t have to drive so far to the shopping mall and doctor’s surgeries. Suburbanites require only more suburbia, gold courses and other developed recreational amenities. But fear not, economic multipliers will operate to ensure that outer suburbs are soon filled with larger schools, larger hospitals and larger carparks.

It seems that the pro-development tone will continue, post election, for Brisbane at least. A Liberal Mayor that promises more roads and tunnels, more shopping malls adjacent to main roads and more growth will up the development rhetoric and have the developers that funded his $1 million campaign chomping at the bit for a piece of the action.

However, the next four years could see a more sober Gold Coast, but time will tell whether the rookie Mayor will be able to tame the development beast.

Moral issues govern the rights and wrongs of population growth. Do Queenslanders have the right to pull up the drawbridge and say "no more"? One shire council, Noosa, already has a population cap – a limit to growth. But this will just create niches for the wealthy, excluding access to any affordable housing, discounting equity and stagnating cultural vibrancy. We should not allow people to isolate themselves in lifestyle communities sold to them through glossy TV ads depicting well-watered gold courses and man-made canals. If the growth must come, we must all share the brunt in terms of financial cost and ecological destruction. Only then will we wake up to the issues staring at us coldly in the face - the 200km city - while we sheepishly avert our gaze.

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Hail God, the all-probable

LONDON: A British physicist has calculated that the mathematical probability of God existing is 67per cent.

Stephen Unwin, a committed Christian who said he previously thought it was 90per cent likely that God existed, used the 200-year-old Bayes's Theorem to arrive at his calculation.

He weighed the existence of evil and suffering against miracles, divided into supernatural events and miracles that occur when prayers are answered. He factored in free will, humankind's goodness and sense of morality, and philosophical arguments for and against God's existence.

In the immortal words of Douglas Adams....that about wraps it up for God then....

Follow this:

'Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [as the Babel Fish] could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

'The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing."

'"But," says Man, "the Babel Fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore by your own arguments, you don’t. QED."

'"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn’t thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

'"Oh that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra-crossing.'

Douglas Adams R.I.P.

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Sunday, April 04, 2004
Changing Global Climates

Can we change global climates to combat global climate change? This idea – of indulging in massive engineering projects to fight the impact global warming – is now being taken seriously by normally quite sober climate scientists.

This could be interpreted in two ways: First, it could be seen as a severe panic reaction by climatologists to the slothish pace and dithering of the major emitting nations in bringing down CO₂ emissions. It could be simply self-preservation for example. Furthermore, climate change may well create its own dynamic (drying of forests, releasing more CO₂ and so on) and we may already be beyond the point of no return.

Alternatively, and I think more likely, it could be interpreted as the guardians of a long term global future free of global warming have been brought inside the industrial development paradigm to advocate ‘techno-fix’ as the answer to the world’s ills.

At a recent conference in Cambridge, UK, leading climatologists were openly suggesting that engineering schemes to combat global warming will be seriously considered within a year. The US Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee has recently recommended over US$60 million be put into researching such schemes. (Well, being one of the international community's Kyoto pariahs, they would, wouldn’t they?)

Of course, the research bodies (such as M.I.T. Boston) that are the homes to these climate scientists will be openly advocating inquiry into these schemes. It is these very institutions that will be the major financial beneficiaries of such public funding. So much for the ‘objective’ view of scientific inquiry.

Schemes to alter the planet’s climate are not new. Soviet technology from the 1960s claimed to able to ‘seed’ clouds to encourage them to precipitate and boost cotton production (perhaps the most ‘thirsty’ of crops). Technologies that are now being mooted to ‘fix’ global warming include small, hydrogen filled, reflecting balloons high above the oceans and giant satellite mirrors to directly reflect the sun’s solar radiation before it even enters the earth’s atmosphere.

These schemes slot nicely into a Promethean discourse of environmental protection: the enduring ingenuity and opportunism of mankind will always find a way of protecting and enhancing the species’ lifestyle. The easy answer – of refraining from releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere to remove climate change from the equation, only suppresses this ingenuity and restricts freedom and economic growth. What we need to fix big planetary issues is not abstinence but big planetary engineering projects.

This will allow energy from fossil fuels – ‘our’ resources - to be exploited until they are exhausted. CO₂ levels in the atmosphere could be allowed to rise as the worst parts (the global warming and its associated undulation of low-lying areas, the melting of icecaps, the destruction of ecosystems and the general catastrophic environmental damage) of the greenhouse effect could be averted. Better still, advocates claim, the increased levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere (8 or 12 times the current levels) would have a beneficial effect for plants and agriculturalists – allowing forests and crops to grow at a faster rate and help, presumably, the world’s poorest to thrive. Wow, that is an argument you just can’t argue with.

Get real! Who is buying this? Engineering feats that stave off climate change and improve our welfare. It is George Bush’s private fantasy but so far removed from reality that it is shocking that it is being even mooted by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, the Kyoto mafia). It demonstrates just how far business and oil extraction interests have infested global governing bodies. As if the evolution of carbon-sinks and emission trading was not concession enough to the US.

How is the balance between reflecting the sun and emitting CO₂ going to acquired precisely? What are the effects on plankton and algae levels in the areas blotted out from sunshine? What is the impact of increased levels of CO₂ in the upper atmosphere on hydroxyls scrubbing the air and ozone that protects us? Why cannot simple abstinence from burning fossil fuels and releasing CO₂ be the answer? Just who is going to insure against the enormous risks of getting it wrong? How could we place the future of global warming in the hands of a view technicians operating the satellites from their laptops?

And, without getting too sanctimonious, what gives us the right to control the climate over every other natural object?

We must go back to the ‘laws’ of ecology: You cannot only do one thing! Creating technologies to combat climate change instead of grappling with issues that generate it will most likely create further path dependencies that are more perverse and more damaging than what we have at present. Rolling out more of the same technology will not solve any ecological problem, only shift it somewhere else.

Wrapping it all up in the cloak of a win-win situation (ie. we can continue to pollute and farmers in the developing world will benefit) is just a further example of the power of rhetoric in the conveyance of science has furthered the interests of big business and oil. The IPCC must not be diverted from their ambition to averting global warming through combating its cause – burning fossil fuels.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

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