So we slap a few PV panels on our open-cut mining equipment and maybe run our coal trains on recycled chip oil ... we know what we do here ... we dig stuff up and flog it overseas. The waggons leave full and come back empty. It's what we've always done.
We strip-mine the place - top-soil, water, forests ... you name it - it's all for sale. We improve nothing, we build nothing we live on what we've found. Our commitment to being clever peaked and faded after the triumph of the Victa lawnmower and the Hills hoist.
Our addiction to the myth of endless cheap power is the only reality we know. It's lasted a century. It must be eternal. We cannot imagine any life without cars of some sort, without switches and flying in our jet-lagged kiwifruit from Italy.
So we will blanket our landscape in CSG pipes and wind turbines. We will do whatever it takes to be comfortable and have some machine do all our work for us, to keep on consuming everything and producing nothing until, like a larger version of Nauru, all the stuff we've found here has been flogged off.
You have found small to medium businesses in Tasmania willing to invest in new technology, in new power, in making stuff? Really? Here in Australia? We don't do that here mate. It's like asking locusts to leave something for their kiddies.
Not saying we can't. Just that we won't.
He made further clarification on some points here:
That living "in the bush" is not a viable alternative option. Not for everyone. Not for their entire lives. People get old and tired and need to be closer to the towns. And the actual costs of going it alone - even as a group - are prohibitive, ecologically and financially.
I have learned that many older "hippies" had set aside the permaculture adventures of their youth and were living essentially suburban lives on 1,000 hectare community titles.
That they burned just as much diesel as the local farmers and were dependent on an income from work, commuting 30ks each way (sound familiar?), that their verandahs were covered with enough lead acid batteries to sink an aircraft carrier and their fading utopia was drowning under the weight of lantana, their escaped garden plants and Bell-bird associated die-back.
The other thing - perhaps the underlying driver for a lot of this - is that while the kids and grandkids of these "hippies" often came back for visits - they all wanted to live somewhere else - in town, at jobs, and also leading very suburban lives. There was a diminished pool of fit strong labour - hence the increasing use of diesel.
But also the PV systems - which were HUGE and State of the ART - would hop the fence after 3 days of grey skies. No grid. So on goes the Genny... pop pop pop all along the valley.
Now 40 or so households all had $20,000 worth of gadetry slapped on their roof - and all up they had a total of three days worth of power. Absurd economics when you add it up.
A lot of the problem is that they half-did stuff right at the start. They paddled their own canoes. The available technology was not designed for more community-based notions of energy supply. It still isn't by and large. But also there were limits on the extent to which they would - or could - live in a "community" - they all wanted their own bush hideaway, or that's how it has ended up after 40 years.
So to summarise, the notion of going it alone is not in fact sustainable - not physically, not socially and certainly not economically. That doesn't mean we don't do things differently and better, but alternatives need to be more than just youthful adventures. Long-term, stable, as self sufficient and productive as possible, and somewhere where diesel is forever banned. Oh yes and learn to manage the bloody landscape while it's still there.
The one thing I have taken away from the bush is that small regional towns are a far more interesting prospect when it comes to building medium scale, long term alternatives. I'm still learning how to do that.
Incidentally the Carbon Price and subsequent trading system is very clever... probably too little too late for mine ... but very very much an Australian approach - not an import at all. And clever. Just not big and hard enough to effect enough change in enough time to avoid anything ... but let's see.
Well worth reading is this bit of information about bell bird dieback.
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