hink of it all - of the life that is! Study your friends and foes!
Study the past! And answer this: "Are these times better than those?" The life-long quarrel, the paltry spite, the sting of your poisoned pride! No matter who fell it were better to fight as they did when the world was wide.
New five year report is in: Victoria in population boom/ecological decline
THE Victorian Government has all but given up on a long-standing pledge to contain Melbourne's urban sprawl, announcing another big expansion of the metropolitan boundary for new housing.
Six years after setting a "clear boundary" for the city in the Melbourne 2030 policy, the Government has succumbed to a booming population, a housing shortage and resistance to high-density development in established suburbs.
A separate analysis predicted that Victoria's population would grow by more than 40 per cent by 2036, with Melbourne alone adding 1.8 million people — nearly twice the number forecast in Melbourne 2030.
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Even though it is three days old this is important news for Victoria. Why? Because it's evidence that despite spots of attention given to issues of sustainability here and there we have little control over our future in the face of the contemporary religions of growth and materialism. The population is growing with no end in sight and too many of us want the McMansion and the large block. Significant population growth, and the materialism championed by this population, represent human ideas which do not seem to correspond to a reality defined by finite resources and interconnected, dynamic eco-systems:
Just two days after the Brumby Government announced an extension of Melbourne's urban boundaries, the state-appointed Sustainability Commissioner has warned of serious environmental damage on the city fringes and called for the boundaries to be fixed.
Five years in the making and the first of its kind, the mammoth State of the Environment report by Sustainability Commissioner Ian McPhail also boldly contradicts other aspects of State Government policy.
It slammed Victoria's emission reduction policies as being too weak and peripheral, while the "ecological footprint" of the average Victorian was calculated as being three times bigger than the world average.
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Enough generalising:
With more than half the state's vegetation already cleared and a further 4000 hectares disappearing each year, the state is described as the most cleared in Australia.
Yesterday's report said 75 species had become extinct from Victoria and a further 935 were rare or threatened.
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No surprise here, surely. We might leave pockets of land uncleared in our rush to create land for housing and farming but this simply dices up wildlife habitats which need to be connected. Nature is not a collection of little isolated 'zoo's' dotted here and there but rather large, interconnected eco-system(s).
The State Government's tactic of withholding environmental flows from rivers to secure drinking supplies was putting river health at "serious risk", according to yesterday's State of the Environment report.
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There are so many of us consuming water at such a rate and with so much wastage that our traditional water catchments and dams are becoming insufficient to meet demand. Thus we degrade more eco-systems (namely ones based around and dependent on rivers) by draining their lifeblood, sending it it via flows and pipes down to a thirsty city and surrounding suburbia. Creating dependency on rivers for our drinking water supplies is not smart if this contributes to their eventual demise.
A step change increase in the provision of public transport services is required, particularly in outer suburbs, to drive a shift from private vehicles," Dr McPhail says in his report.
Metropolitan Melbourne stopped (building new) public transport in the 1950s, when cheap motor vehicles and cheap petrol became available," Dr McPhail said.
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Our dedication to lavish suburban living is pushing the geographical boundaries of suburbia outwards all the time, meaning that more and more people need to drive to get to key central locations like the city. This is causing more pollution, road congestion, and stress.
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This is a brief summary of the news surrounding the report and its findings: that Victorians are slowly but surely grinding down 'their' environment. Now why should we all, from environmentalists to industry leaders, care?
The Government was urged to accept that natural systems were the cornerstone of a strong economy, and was warned that Victoria's wealth would eventually suffer if the degradation of rivers and land continued.
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Like the economic-centric argument which holds that a prosperous economy is essential to everyone regardless of whether your an ambitious capitalist or not, in that even artists, humanists, sports people (or any group) could not do what they do without an operational economy, the environment would seem to take an even more fundamental place in such reasoning.
The environment lies at the heart of the economy. If economics is essential to a multi-faceted liberal society then the environment is fundamental.
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