Monday, February 21, 2005
Serious about the law
So fox hunting and hare coursing have been consigned to the same social dustbin as badger baiting and cock-fighting. Unfortunately for rabbits and rats, they remain on the “wanted” list, but maybe their time will come.

On the day after the Hunting Act 2004 came into force, an estimated 270 ‘hunts’ convened across the UK. Many met up, had a sherry or two, a bit of a whinge, then headed home; some exercised packs of hounds, others hunted foxes within the law.

Joining the sherry-quaffers, hundreds of volunteers also turned out for the occasion, armed with cam-corders and cameras, encouraging huntsmen and women to operate legally, in the same way speed cameras discourage drivers from speeding.

During their show of strength, many monitors were abused and intimidated, at least one was assaulted and another group were lucky to survive when their van was shunted off the road by one of the ubiquitous 4WDs which seem to accompany hunts.

In their show of strength, huntsmen and women killed some 91 foxes on the first Saturday. According to the Countryside Alliance, this is ‘business as usual’; according to the League Against Cruel Sports, this is quite a respite, if you are a fox. (It suggests that normally up to 400 foxes are killed each week.) As this activity has never been regulated no one knows how many foxes get killed and the truth is probably lies somewhere in the middle. But as more hunts met last weekend than normal, the kills-per-hunt rate was probably much lower.

The 90 or so animals killed legally were killed through ‘modified hunting’. This practice involves ‘stalking or flushing out’ a fox for reasonably swift dispatch by a competent marksman. This falls within the allowed exemptions in the Hunting Act. But this can only be done by up to two hounds at a time and only to protect property. However, the statute is broad in this area, effectively allowing any landowner to have a fox flushed and shot to protect – say – game birds, being bred to be shot themselves.

The Countryside Alliance maintains that most of the 91 foxes killed were done so legally, with only ‘one or two’ killed by hounds ‘accidentally’ – though of course, this is still against the lawⁱ. One incident in East Yorkshire is likely to see police investigation after one hunt allowed its pack to get out of control after it picked up a fox’s scent trail, chased the creature for 2 miles and then tore it to pieces.

Of course, not being in control of an animal is not an excuse in law. If my Rottweiler savaged a small child’s face, my lack of control over my dog would actually contribute to my culpability. To allow a pack of hounds to get beyond control and to kill a fox is no different. Investigations in East Yorkshire should hopefully lead to prosecutions which will discourage more people who are out ‘exercising’ (‘exercising’, please!) a pack of hounds, which have been bred to kill foxes, from breaking the law again and again and again.

So who won this first round? Against all odds, it was probably the law. The Hunting Act 2004 is not a law designed to protect foxes from being killed. It is a law designed to protect wild mammalsⁱⁱ from being killed inhumanely – such as by being chased until exhaustion and then ripped apart by dogs, for the simple pleasure of simple people.

The foxes killed over the weekend would have suffered considerably less by being merely flushed out into the open and promptly shot dead.

For those people intent on galloping around the countryside on horseback dressed in red and black coats, bleating on a horn and exercising a group of hounds, the Hunting Act 2004 would have had little impact.

The only area where law enforcement would have been difficult is when the suspect activities take place out of sight, on the huge sprawling rural estates that belong to the very Lords who resisted the Hunting Bill in Parliament for so long. Out of range from the monitors - unless they are trespassing - this could be the last bastion of law breaking – but then it often has been.

We do not live in a perfect society. As a result, there were a number of gratuitous incidents involving violence against wild animals on the first weekend, such as the incident in East Yorkshire. But another incident, this time in Shropshire, when the carcass of legitimately killed fox was simply tossed into a pack of hounds in front of hunt monitors will keep tempers warm. Was this against the law? Perhaps not – but it maybe contributing to the law being broken, the next time that these hounds are taken out for innocent exercising with the scent of fox blood in the breeze.

There will always be those who choose to be cruel to animals. In the same way that traffic legislation does not prevent everyone from speeding and killing, the Hunting Act 2004 will not prevent everyone from being cruel. Laws in a democracy tend to frame what most people see as unacceptable behaviour; of course, they never actually stop it. Laws also take time to become part of the fabric of society. Everyone thought seatbelt legislation would be ineffective, but now buckling-up is second nature. Owning a slave, I am sure, once felt natural. Hunting mammals with dogs for pleasure will soon be considered similarly alien.

Violence and intimidation against those out filming the exercising hounds will win few new friends for the hunting fraternity. Hunt saboteurs are used to acts of aggression perpetrated against them, but on the first weekend of the ban a number of hunts were enthusiastically attempting to obstruct people going about their lawful business and filming the hunts’ activities. If hunts are serious about staying within the law, they need to build greater trust with those monitoring them.

But of course hunts are not serious about acting within the law. Huntsmen and women – and a fair proportion of the UK – not only think the Hunting Act 2004 is a bad law, but they wish to see it buried and hunting for pleasure reinstated. Hunts are quite open about attempting to find loopholes in the law in an effort to continue to hunt foxes with dogs, the way they have always done. Where loopholes cannot be found, they will simply break the law and front up the ₤5,000 fine. Cannot they be content with the more humane killing of a fox, as enshrined in the Hunting Act?

That hunts are openly seeking to exploit loopholes - in the cruel killing of an animal for pleasure - is akin to taking their anger with the government out on the foxes, out of nothing more than vindictiveness.

Say heaps, really.

Endnotes

1. It is only a defence if a person charged under the Act can demonstrate “that he reasonably believed that the hunting [being undertaken] was exempt.


2. Apart from rabbits and rats.

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Sunday, February 20, 2005
Are Kyoto's Sceptics getting louder, or just more desperate?

While the evidence builds, the attacks on scientists, environmental groups and the doom-merchants of human-induced global climate change become fiercer. On 16th February, the Kyoto Protocol became legally binding on the nations that ratified. This event has been met with an all out assault from “The Sceptics”, who – though not necessarily building in numbers – are become louder.

The majority of us are not climatologists. Some may have a good grasp of the issues and may even have taken a stab at interpreting the raw data themselves. But unless you are working at the frontline of climate science, you rely on the media and media savvy-scientists to filter the evidence for our consumption. This is the interface of science and politics.

A priori judgements are therefore abound. When science meets politics and trillions of dollars are at stake, scientific method is shunted to the background and we take our cues from trusted sources which reflect our existing values. Sceptic or advocate – there are few that are ambivalent about whether anthropogenic CO2 is causing climate change.

But as the New Scientist [12.02.05] points out, most of The Sceptics can be accused of having a certain interest in the status quo. Many are employed by lobbyists or industry front-groups, funded by business - the extractive industry in particular. None of the most vociferous Sceptics, NS, pointedly notes, are actually climatologists. Most are economists, business people or scientists from alternate disciplines ("Meet the sceptics", New Scientist, 12.02.05).

Typical of this, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail [18.02.05], recently ran the archetypal sceptic-advocate op-ed feature on climate change. The Sceptic’s position was promoted by a biologist, Dr Jennifer Marohasy, employed by the self-confessed free market think-tank, the Institute of Public Affairs. The advocate for Kyoto was Frank Muller, an adjunct professor who has previously worked in climate change policy units in different levels of government and for the UNFCCC. Okay, so both have their agendas – but only one has experience of working the science of climate change.

In his field, J. M. Crichton is respected as one of the more successful and industrious protagonists. In his recent book, “State of Fear”, he describes a world coming to the realisation that climate change is nothing but an evil conspiracy, perpetrated by environmental ‘extremists’, willing to kill to hide the ‘truth’. But, of course, Crichton’s forte is purveyor of pulp fiction (after successfully studying medicine); he is notable for such pseudo-scientific extravaganzas as Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain.

That San Diego has not so far been traumatised by a savage T. Rex, brought back from extinction, should be ample confirmation that Crichton’s musings on climate change should not be interpreted as serious scientific postulation. Yet at a recent conference on climate change, hosted by the UK’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Sceptics were gleefully distributing free copies of Crichton’s novel.

But surely, The Sceptics have something more to offer than science fiction and compromised cronies? To be fair they do.

Meet the sceptics

A great deal of uncertainly over the data and the meaning of the data still exists. The extent to which human actions can impact on something as vast and complex as the planet’s climate system is contentious. Tracking levels of atmospheric CO2 against mean temperatures over the last 30,000 years can reveal as many trends as you can shake a stick at, dependent on where, when or how you compare apples with pears. There are, after all, lies, dam lies and statistics.

Huge uncertainty also remains over the efficacy of climate change modelling – so bold are the assumptions that are built-in by scientists. Accepting the physics – that there is a plausible mechanism for CO2 acting as a greenhouse gas – climate change modelling still makes conjectures bordering on the scientifically unacceptable. Assumptions are made on the behaviours of both negative feedback mechanisms (automatic processes pulling the planet back towards stability) and positive feedback mechanisms (those that lead to self-perpetuation, pushing the planet towards a runaway greenhouse effect).

Clouds – their behaviour in and effect on a warming world – have proved to be notoriously difficult to model. For example, a warming world would increase evaporation and create more water vapour, which could generate more clouds of water droplets, which would then reflect more heat back into space, before it has even entered the atmosphere, thus working to cooling the planet. This is an example of negative feedback – a reversion towards the normal; the number of ‘coulds’, emphasising the number of assumptions made.

Alternatively, increased temperatures that increased evaporation could fill the atmosphere with more water vapour – far more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. Additionally, increased cloud cover could trap ever-greater amounts of heat in the troposhere, thus creating a positive feedback mechanism potentially leading to a runaway greenhouse effect. Further feedback mechanisms are also little understood, such as net effects of changing levels of polar ice and vegetation cover and oceanic currents. It is this still primitive knowledge that generates huge differentials in the modelling results, which undermines the credibility of Kyoto proponents.

The balance of negative and positive feedback is likely to be the extent of any global climate change. Modelling can only go so far – and the effect of the clouds, ice and vegetation remains little understood – so far.

Sceptics also accuse climate scientists of ‘toeing the line’; recollecting Thomas Kuhn’s critique of the scientific community’s tendency to work within established ‘paradigms’ in his "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". Rather than refutation being the dominant model of the scientific method, researchers are reluctant to challenge established theories through fear of castigation and loss of funding or credibility. The Sceptics see human induced climate change as the only game in town – an industry band-wagon as it were, drumming up fear and cajoling conformity enforcement, with all the usual emotive connotations of Stalinism and burning any sceptical heretics at the stake (See www.couriermail.news.com.au).

Crichton’s portrayal of zealous scientists betraying their discipline and crossing the line between science and ‘faith’ is undoubtedly based on the reading of Bjørn Lomborg’s "The Sceptical Environmentalist: Measuring the real state of the world". Lomborg has routinely been the most persuasive critic of climate change, accusing scientists of outright fraud and condemning environmentalists as purveyors of doom for believing the scientists. In Lomborg’s reformed activist view (he was once a member of Greenpeace), ‘we’ve never had it so good’.

But indisputably, most Sceptics are motivated by political and business affiliation, guilty of accusations they themselves level at the fear-mongerers. This may make their scientific assertions dubious but it does not make their judgements meaningless and it provides some important lessons for the scientific community and environmental groups that advocate Kyoto.

Responding to the threats of climate change is an overtly political issue. While climate scientists would wish to see policy responses formulated through objectivity alone, this will simply not happen. Scientists are jostling to control the agenda with powerful interests that seek to persuade otherwise. Scientists should be aware that they will be challenged by those with other specialist skills - in presentation, public relations and political lobbying; a formidable range of talents when you’re armed merely with line-charts and reams of figures.

And climate scientists also need to be aware that some Sceptics do not necessarily dispute the physics or the impact of climate change, but rather consider the uncertainty to be so great that we are better advised to avert our attention to more pressing issues. For instance, we are more certain that sub-Saharan is already experiencing an HIV epidemic of such magnitude that it could decimate the population. If politics involves a process of allocating funds to competing priorities, for many, responding to tangible human suffering occurring on such a scale, is vastly more important. So while human induced climate change may be happening, it is simply isn’t that important to rich voters for whom climate change could be bonus, bringing Mediterranean winters to northern Europe.

But despite what that eminent advocate of the sciences, George W. Bush, may say, amongst climate scientists there is really little dispute that there are serious problems that need significant policy responses. Mainstream climatology is in agreement that we will experience big changes in climate if anthropogenic CO2 emissions continue unabated. Nor is this a Kuhnian paradigm, enforcing consensus; Sceptics are either ill informed or have pecuniary interests in the status quo.

Not so fast

Both the mechanism and the evidence are there. Glaciers and ice-sheets are melting faster (See http://news.bbc.co.uk), less UV-radiation is being reflected back from the planet’s surface, the pH of the oceans is decreasing (See http://news.bbc.co.uk), regional and global temperatures are increasing (See www.bom.gov.au) and, most importantly, CO2 levels are some 33% higher than pre-industrial days, before we began to burn fossil fuels and chop down all the trees (See New Scientist 12.02.05, pp. 38-43).

Life on Planet Earth is robust. For it to have sustained life for some 3.85 billion years this versastility is a prerequisiteⁱ. It has experienced mass extinctions, asteroid impacts and volatile volcanic episodes which have altered atmospheric chemistry and blocked out the sun. Indeed, palaeontologists have suggested that the constantly changing planet – from tectonic shifts and mountain building to encroaching and retreating ice-sheets – has been an important factor in driving evolutionary adaptation. A stable and successful species has less incentive to evolve than one faced with a changing environment.

But it is the rate of contemporary change, caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions, that is potentially catastrophic - for poor nations of people and for biodiversity. Unfortunately, neither are in positions of power to influence global policy responses.

For these reasons the Australian Government’s stubborn refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol is an embarrassment. It has signed it and negotiated the most generous deal in the industrialised world (“The Australia Clauseⁱⁱ”), but has so far failed to abide by both the principles - that reductions in emissions from transport and energy should be at the core - and its binding requirements.

The Australian Government’s position is backed neither by science, precaution or solidarity with the rest of the world. It is backed only by selfishness and John Howard’s commitment to strategic dependence on the USA. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly uncertain whether the Howard administration even considers anthropogenic CO2 emissions is an issue for climate change, following recent comments from the Federal Environment Minister, Ian Campbell, who said that he didn’t really know. This is nothing less than shameful.

The Sceptics have their lobbyists in Canberra and Washington and their media proprietors sat outside the doors of editorial offices – their voice is being heard loud and clear. ‘Balancing’ the views of The Sceptics with the global consensus - that anthropogenic CO2 emissions is damaging our future - is akin to suggesting that the world is not actually spherical due to the existence of the Flat Earth Society.


Endnotes

i. Perhaps the most extraordinary example of negative feedback is recent evidence which suggests that when the Great Barrier Reef gets a little warm from too much sunlight, corals and their symbiotic algae release dimethylsulphide, an aerosol that stimulates the formation of cloud cover. (See www.publish.csiro.au)

ii. Including land clearing in its carbon accounting has been the sole reason Australia remains on course to meet its Kyoto target. Now that Queensland has stopped chopping down trees, Howard can breathe easier. Removing land clearing from the equation would see Australian CO2 emissions at 123% by 2010.

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Saturday, February 12, 2005
Bryson's Short History
Brilliance and Stupidity

"A Short History of Nearly Everything": A reprise
By Bill Bryson

In a "Short History", Bryson has told a great story of mind-blowing natural wonder and the sometimes crazy people who have sought to understand it. From the origins of all matter (very, very small) to the depths of the universe (very, very big), back down to atoms (smallish), to sub-atomic particles (small), to sub sub-atomic particles (getting smaller all the time) and then a gallop through the geological history of the planet (very old), the birth and near extinction (several times over) of life, the driving force of evolution and its modern synthesis with genetics before, finally, reaching – nearly exhausted - the rise of the human ape, Bryson has managed to squeeze it all in.

In criticism, Bryson does resort to stupendous science-y factoids a little too readily; “atoms are so small you can fit well over a hundred of them on your thumbnail”, or “the entire universe weighs almost twice that of the Springbok’s front-five” or “wow, the explosion at Krakatoa was REALLY loud”, but for the most part his science is as deep, as it is broad, as it is interesting.

Towards the end of the book he recounts the rise of an especially versatile and intelligent ape, which evolved quickly and eventually fanned out to all parts of the globe. Bryson poignantly reflects that this particular ape became capable of such astounding intelligence it was able to begin unravelling some of the universe’s deepest secrets. Yet it was also capable of quite malign carelessness and stupidity.

Extinctions have followed the spread of homo sapiens with uncanny frequency, suggesting it is not exactly a spurious connection. A deficiency in a solid grounding in ecology could forgive the fist human pioneers, who decimated giant sloths, tortoises “the size of fiats”, the moa and the hapless dodo et al. And greed and an ideological commitment to untrammelled capitalism could at least explain some more recent extinctions and the pushing of thousands of species to the verge of disappearance.

But Bryson grimly acknowledges that a fair number of extinctions have been a result of the nothing less than idiocy, on behalf of a species of ape that now considers atomic theory old-hat and has sent a space robot t roam around on the surface of another planet.

But it gets worse:

This is what makes the story of scientific advancement so frustrating. It is capable of breakthroughs in knowledge of enormous magnitude, while at the same time it has – with great irony - led human society to view nature as something that, once vaguely understood, can be subjugated and treated with impunity as something extrinsic to the world we inhabit.

The Bonobo, or pygmy chimpanzee, is homyo sapiens’ closest genetic relative. 5 months ago, the New Scientist magazine reported that a recent study has concluded that no bonobos had been found in a survey of their last remaining habitat in the Democratic Republic of Congo. [See www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424796.300] To all intents and purposes, our closest living relative, it seemed, had been driven to extinction in the wild; another victim in the relentless march of human progress.

The Bonobo, though protected in reserves, was still subject to excessive hunting as a source of meat protein from local people. Locals had been driven to hunting primates for two reasons. Firstly, 10 years of ceaseless civil war has disrupted local supply lines and had led to many tens of thousands being displaced. Secondly, fish, the usual source of protein from many, are becoming scarce, due to overfishing, not by local fisherman, but by international boats from Europe and North America, operating under licence from the DRC government.

Fortunately, a further study of Bonobos let the human race of the hook, as some apes were found; though it is still not certain that the population can sustain itself, with or without continued hunting. [See www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524854.900]

That we can push our closet genetic relative to the brink of extinction suggests that other less visible species don’t really stand a chance. It is estimated that nearly 16,000 known species (including 1 in 3 amphibians) are currently staring into the abyss (figures from the World Conservation Union).

Bryson rightly ends his romp through the history if scientific discovery on a note of caution, maintaining that although life is robust – it had to be to survive this planet, so hell bent on making it difficult – it has not yet faced such a challenge that the domination of homo sapiens entails.

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Science: good, bad and ugly

A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson

Scientists are oft known for their ambition - even their vanity – but most certainly their argumentativeness. Indeed, the scientific method is based on refutation of established paradigms and it takes confident researchers to challenge reputable colleagues and institutions. To gain credibility, papers must be submitted to the most intensive peer-review.

However, geologists are not scientists who are normally characterised as jealous zealots, locked in suspicious battle over the interpretation of fossils and sediments. I think back to my geology teacher at school: Neil "Aye-Eye" Mitchell; a genuine imparter of knowledge, but most of all, an enthusiastic geologist, who at the slightest provocation, would produce a clinometer, H₂SO₄, a magnifier and hammer from his tweed jacket pocket and begin a vivid description of the most obscure piece of rock.

But this has not always been the case; ‘stone-breakers’ have not always been imbued with such sanguine affection. At the dawn of the discipline (oh, alright then, as the discipline was being 'carved out'), in Victorian Britain, geologists were either wealthy amateurs, or more likely, specialists in other fields, such as anatomy or medicine, professions known more for their ambition and status.

At first, I was reluctant to take my science from someone so far renowned only as a travel writer and social commentator. But I was comforted to note that Bill Bryson, for his "A Short History of Nearly Everything" had devoted some three years of his life to research his book – the time it takes to complete a Bachelor of Science Degree, I guess.

But Bryson brings a travel writer’s whimsical wit to the history of the planet and the story of science and the odd-bods who became its pioneers.

Bryson has spent his writing life carefully watching and attempting to understand the people he meets. And, of course, scientists (despite some evidence to refute this) are people. They can be austere or happy, inclusive or (more often) reclusive, but most of all guarded and vindictive, just like everyone else. Especially when some other scientist happens to disagree with them. And that even goes for geologists.

"The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists", by M.J.S.Rudwick (1984) is an account of such a disagreement from the late 1830s. Fierce debate had broken out over exactly how plant fossil rocks appeared in very different geological successions in Wales and Devon. Two leading stone-breakers working in Wales, the Reverend Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison, disagreed intensely with another working in Devon, Henry Thomas De la Beche. The debate raged for years over the presence, or otherwise, of an unconformity and of a particular Greywacke sandstone ("Old Red Sandstone").

Rudwick’s account is taken up by Bryson:

"Some sense of the strength of feeling can be gained by glancing through the chapter titles [of ‘The Great Devonian Controversy’]. These begin innocuously enough with headings such as ’Arenas of Gentlemanly Debate’ and ‘Unraveling the Greywacke’ [sic], but then proceed on to ‘The Greywacke Defended and Attacked’, ‘Reproofs and Recriminations’, ‘The Spread of Ugly Rumours’, ‘Weaver Recants his Heresy’, ‘Putting a Provincial in his Place’ and (in case there is any doubt that this was war) ‘Murchison Opens the Rhineland Campaign’."

'Putting a Provincial in his Place' must rank as one of the great scientific put-downs and proves that even characteristically inoffensive geologists can succumb to ruthless stereotyping and dismissive renunciation of observations that don't quite fit the bill. And whoever poor Weaver was, you gotta feel sorry him. All he probably did was mis-name a few specimens.

The controversy was eventually settled - as all battles fought in "Arenas of Gentlemanly Debate" should be – by expedient compromise: inventing an entirely new geological System, the Ordovician, in between the Cambrian and the Silurian.

(Incidentally, Rudwick’s book rates the conduct of scientific method amongst Gentlemanly Specialists (and okay, professionals and industrialists) from this period as substantially more rigorous than the post-WWII consensus resultant of the government funding of research and education, as famously criticised by Thomas Kuhn in "Structure of Scientific Revolutions".)

Whilst I am not generally enamoured to the shenanigans of eccentric aristos from the 18^th and 19^th Centuries, science in this era was really only accessible to the well-to-do. Hence early scientific research tended to be dominated by peculiar Gentlemen who would otherwise have been dismissed as fools had they been born poor. In "A Short History" Bryson recounts all kinds of oddities from the past: The geologist Reverend Buckland – whose ambition in life was to eat at least one of all God’s creations from aarvark to zebra; Henry Cavendish - famed for measuring the weight of the Earth – who was so shy that guests were required to not acknowledge him and to converse only with themselves in the hope that he would overhear through a fear of him running into hiding and Richard Owen, the founder of the publicly accessible Natural History Museum in London, who stole so many ideas, specimens and credit for discoveries (including that for discovering dinosaurs) that he was eventually thrown out of the Royal Society.

Vindictive stone-breakers, xenophobic physicists and carnivorous Reverends are all part of science’s rich narrative and you do feel something went wrong somewhere when more than half of all scientific research became devoted to military technology.

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Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Neurum Creek Bush Retreat
To get two nights away, we joined the great Friday get away northbound on the Bruce Highway at 4. Still, on reflection, when you are sat there under the stars, tents are up, after a good steak, beer in hand, under the stars by 7.30, it all seems worth it.

Some were up early the next morning in an attempt to find platypus in the creek, sadly to no avail. Although they are not especially shy, they are still quite rare. Like most Australian creatures, they are not very resistant to pollution and have fickle breeding habits.

Saturday morning we attempted to scramble through “spider gorge” to the top of a range of hills behind the campsite. From the bottom, from the cleared areas, it looks like you could scramble up them in half an hour. Once you get in them, the vegetation is so dense and the gorge so steep that can’t even tell which of them you are climbing up. You also spent half your time ducking and weaving through masses of spider webs.

After about two hours climbing and scrambling up – we hadn’t reached the top and had no idea of much further there was to go. There was no way to get out of the gorge without a machete and no way of seeing more than 15 metres further up. It was pretty hot and we were running out of water, energy and enthusiasm so we decided to turn around. Chatting with the owners back at the campsite office, we found out that you can get to the top (ie there are no huge cascades/waterfalls) and traverse back down along one of the ridges. With kids that would take you most of a day, so we will have to go back in the winter when it is cooler.

It is recommended that you take ½ litre of water per person, per hour when walking in the summer. I am not quite sure how that works out – eleven of us, walking for 5 hours, would have needed to take 27 ½ litres of water for a full day’s walk! Definitely a winter pursuit.

The gorge was virtually pristine, probably with only a handful of visitors each month. There were vine thickets, palms, gums, fungi and the some amazing examples of staghorn ferns: a landscaper would have been proud. Unfortunately, we didn’t spot any snakes; only a huge goanna. It is nice to get off the beaten track every once in a while.

To cool off in the afternoon we headed down to the creek for a swim. No crocs here, only platypus and turtles. (Though we saw neither.)

Sunday was similar format: walk in the morning and swim in the afternoon. Not that walking in the morning made any difference – it was still about 35° even at 10am. This time we walked up behind the campsite for views eastwards over the northern end of the D’Aguilar Range.

Swimming in the afternoon down at the creek again for a couple of hours. Again no platypus, but that probably had something to do with the noise of the kids.

3pm signalled time to pack up and sit in the traffic again, this time southbound on the Bruce Highway.

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Monday, February 07, 2005
SEQ Regional Plan update

Under pressure from regional Councils, infrastructure creaking under the weight of excess demand and the possibility of seeing a city emerge that stretched 200km from the Gold Coast to Noosa, the Queensland State Government has pulled out all the stops to produce a draft South East Queensland Regional Plan. The deadline for comments on the draft SEQ Regional Plan is 28th February.

The draft Plan has three broad objectives:

1. Allocate enough land behind an urban footprint to accommodate higher density urban growth to 2026 (or 1 million people)


2. Support alternative activity centres and integrate land use and transport


3. Remove some land-zoning decisions from Councils to protect ‘Regional Landscape and Rural Production’ (RLRP) areas from continued sub-division.

The government agency charged with drawing up and implementing the plan, the Office of Urban Management, is now in the process of dredging through the thousands of submissions. It is estimated that there will have been some 10,000 responses by the end of the month.

Evidence from press reports, letters to the editor and opinions raised at the many meetings, show that responses will fall into five broad categories: Developers and land-owners on the regulatory margins; Councils and other public agencies; Community submissions; Rural production communities; and Environmental groups.

1. Developers, large and small: Most submissions are specific requests to amend the regulatory maps to shift land parcels from one side of a policy boundary to another, namely, to allow sub-division and development of land, which is now potentially ‘locked-away’.

   Over the years, many large developers have been quietly stashing away substantial plots of land on the assumption (based on ‘so far, so good’) that it would be rezoned by the council and money making could commence. On a smaller scale, individual land-holders have been holding out for a superannuation bonus from sub-dividing their plot, selling it off and enjoying their retirement.
   

   Both these groups have been speculating that future rezoning and/or sub-division would improve the value of their holdings. The Regional Plan has put the kybosh on much of this – and no compensation will be due. The Regional Planning Minister has been at pains to point out that you do not have planning approval until you have planning approval.

   Most large developers can afford to take the financial hit or lobby long and hard enough to ensure the regulatory maps are amended to suit their requirements. Small time speculators will not have this luxury.
   

   Of course, developer and business groups do not argue for changes out of their own self-interest; theirs are ‘moral’ objections to the Plan. They are simply seeking to protect the interests of your average battling Aussie. Urban growth boundaries and increased housing densities impinge on the right of landowners to build the home of their dreams.

   The urban footprint has allocated enough land to accommodate the population growth at densities that are little higher than currently experienced in suburban Brisbane. The Plan will curtail rural residential (“acreage”) and focus developer energies on redeveloping brownfield sites within existing urban areas And whilst this might be not be what the building industry exactly wants, it is the primary stated aim of the Regional Plan and a move towards less environmentally destructive growth.
   

   Instead of new communities leapfrogging existing suburbs to the cheaper greenfield sites on the margins, consolidated development should occur, protecting green space and regulating for a more environmentally sustainable SEQ. (That said, it is planned that the vast majority of new dwelling to 2026 will still occur on previously undeveloped land.)

   
   
2. Council submissions: Council submissions will be generally prosaic and supportive, with only some minor additions and clarifications put forward. This is expected, as the South East Queensland Regional Organisation of Councils (SEQROC) has been the most vociferous in bringing this matter to the attention of the State Government.
   

   A number of gaps, some substantial, have so far been recognised, but most submissions will be of nuance with only minor amendments to the policy boundaries.

   The only daylight between the State and SEQROC lies in the provision (or lack of perceived provision) of infrastructure; from roads to water to schools and utilities. State commitments will be detailed in a (later) Regional Infrastructure Plan. However, SEQROC has concerns with this as it is being conceived with consultation with both local and Commonwealth Government and could suffer from a lack of complementarity.
   

   The only notable exceptions to the harmony will be the submissions from one or two rural councils, deeply concerned over development restrictions in the rural areas. In Boonah Shire, for example, over 98% of the land area is within the regional landscape designation.

   
   
3. Community submissions from public meetings: To its credit, the State has undertaken widespread community consultation. The Regional Plan has been the most engaged consultation process ever.
   
   Despite being a plan to manage urban growth, most city dwellers will remain relatively unaffected by the regulatory provisions. They may see an acceleration of existing trends, towards transport orientated and higher density dwellings, but the Regional Plan has taken only a light-touch approach to regulating development within the urban footprint. Zoning here will remain within the purview of Councils.
   

   But rural dwellers will be significantly affected and, as a result, public meetings out in the shires have been keenly attended. The Plan will limit opportunities for rural activity centres to expand significantly and will curtail existing major centres from sprawling into surrounding green space. Regulatory provisions ban the continued sub-division of these areas.

   “That will do nicely”, has been the cordial response from the typical rural residential dweller who commutes into work by car. Not only is their rural amenity protected, but the ban on further sub-division and ‘urban development’ within the regional landscape area will improve their property prices substantially, as supply of new rural housing stock becomes more scarce.
   

   However – and this is point not lost on the bureaucrats - rural communities have also put forward much more sophisticated objections than simple NIMBYism, with many arguments attacking the presumptions on which the Regional Plan is built, which assumes that population growth is inevitable, sustainable and good.

   
   
4. Rural production communities: More traditional rural communities, still engaged in that business once called ‘farming’, see the Regional Plan as an unfair limit on their opportunity to expand.
   

   The primary objective of the Regional Plan (indeed it is “Desired Regional Outcome #1”) is a “Healthy and diverse regional landscape where key environmental, natural resource and rural production areas are protected, enhanced, used sustainably and adaptively managed”. For the rural community, this outcome is nothing more than a paradox. Protecting the scenic amenity of the regional landscape area can only be at the expense of limiting development in these areas.

   The Regional Plan will only allow for a minium-100 hectare sub-division in the rural areas. This is to protect productive agricultural areas from being further whittled away into unproductive hobby farms and ‘acreage’ rural residential plots (that need all that space to park the 3 vehicles each property typically has).
   
   

   In reality, in SEQ rural production has been beating a steady retreat, financially supported by the slow seepage of farmland to developers. This has led to huge swathes of the Sunshine and Gold Coast hinterland being transformed into mid-density masterplanned residential developments. In cutting off this line of credit, rural production in SEQ is now forced to compete in an international commodity market, or adapt to appropriate new rural economic opportunities such as promoting their food provenance and the supply of locally grown, organic produce. But this will only be possible if zoning approval can be obtained to support changing business needs.

   The agricultural community’s ambivalence towards the Regional Plan is justified. Many see the Plan patronisingly assign rural areas the role of play-things of city-dwellers, providing recreational, nature-based and scenic amenity opportunities to weekenders driving out from the urban centres to visit quaint curiosities. The implications of this being that lifelong farmers must re-skill to staff tea-shops and ice cream kiosks, whilst their communities are barred from reaping the benefits of the financial opportunities of the booming Queensland ‘Smart’ economy.
   


5. Environmental groups: From one perspective, environmental groups will see much to commend in the implementation of the SEQ Regional Plan. Green space, natural environment and coastal habitats have all been protected from further development. Although urban green space has no designated protection in the Regional Plan, there would be little incentive for councils to amend any current urban zoning. The Regional Plan has also upset some big developers, so whatever the outcome, good or bad, green groups can get some satisfaction from seeing that big business does not always get its own way.
   

   However, the Regional Plan does fall short of what most green groups were calling for and their submissions will highlight this. It does not seek to strengthen the Integrated Planning Act 1997 definition of ‘sustainable development’ (which is as robust as wet tissue) and it does not have ‘ecologically sustainable development’ as an explicit objective. It does not allude to any strategy which would seek to increase the amount of protected estate in SEQ, either through buy-out or negotiating access agreements with private landholders and there is only passing comment on implementing demand management of for transport, water and energy infrastructure. Most pressingly, the Regional Infrastructure Plan (released in May 2005) will be unlikely to include major policy commitments to any public transport programs.
   

Of course, the SEQ Regional Plan is simply a planning instrument and, as such, is neither the panacea to an ecologically sustainable South East Queensland, a developer’s free lunch, nor a way of securing a better future for rural producers.

The issues and interests at stake are complex, ingrained and generally incompatible. Statutory designation of productive and natural habitat areas should protect these areas from the continued encroachment of the unsustainable, rural residential invasion. In addition, sparse housing is costly, both to the environment and the Treasurer, to service, requiring new roads and long utility supply lines. It leads to more vehicle trips, more greenhouse gas and unfit kids. Unfortunately, it is also the accommodation of choice for both the developer and the resident. Developers love it because it is cheap and sells well (all bundled up in glossy ‘lifestyle’ packages) and the residents love it because it is cheap and closer to what the ad-men dictate is the ideal Queensland life: somewhere on the edge of paradise.

But protecting productive areas from development does not guarantee the survival of the agricultural sector – that’s up to the consumer - nor does it necessarily lead to better environmental outcomes as acreage properties are commonly more conducive to wildlife protection than intensively productive farms. Both these goals still require good government, the right strategies and right-thinking consumers.

At best, the SEQ Regional Plan, alongside subsidiary strategies mandating sustainable housing, rural futures and water and energy efficiency, for example, will promote ‘development’ that is less stressful on the environment and protect the diminishing natural habitat that remains in SEQ. But a truly sustainable future, is still miles off.

This is because the Regional Plan has demonstrated the Queensland Government’s commitment to pursuing a policy of allowing continued and rapid population growth. True ecological sustainability will never be achieved with such a commitment. The public consultation has revealed a growing sense of unease over such high levels of population growth (and hence consumption growth, natural habitat destruction and pollution) and many have questioned the basis on which the Regional Plan was predicated. To be sure, the majority of people probably remain ambivalent to this, and a fair proportion would strongly support continued growth (it being ‘good for business’), but a growing rift is emerging between the politician’s growth rhetoric and people’s visions on the future of Queensland (and Australia).

Australia, as a continent, is renowned for its poor soils and fickle climate. As a result, its environment and the level of resources, available to everything that scrapes a living off this rock, is precarious. Western society brought many new technologies and plant and animal species which have increased its productivity vastly, but it is recognised that Australia consumes much, much more of its gross biotic quota than generated. Only New Zealand (with 3 million people) lives within its means, according to Greenpeace.

Of course, politicians adore ‘growth’. It dignifies their rhetoric that people wish to move Queensland and it flatters economic growth figures, which is touted as the sole measure of individual well-being. It is a very simple equation: more people = more GDP = re-election. But limits to this growth, without destroying natural habitat and the environment, are very real.

How this discourse plays out in democratic terms, while the mainstream political parties continue to support growth will be interesting. But small steps may be adequate. Currently, merely achieving open, rhetoric-free debate on population caps is problematic. It is attacked from the right and religious right as smacking of utilitarianism and secularism and attacked from the left as being coercive. The only persuasive critique of continued population expansion is from an ecological perspective, which is a clear target for the ‘business as usual’ / ‘whey-hey, never had it so good’ brigade (aka the ‘battling’ Aussie).

These are future battles. And, as a recent immigrant to this region groaning under the rate of growth, I will watch with vested interest.

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