Alice Springs Green Desert
What has happened to the ‘Wet’ this year. It should be well and truly in swing by now, but the sun is blazing out of a blue sky again today. No sign of a monsoon trough squatting over the peninsula with long periods of drenching rain. I was hand slashing the vegetation along the road and down some tracks today (with a machete). I spent nearly 3 hours in the rainforest and the leaves were crunching underfoot, with not a leech to be found. The weather and lack of leeches has been good for my guests, but does not bode well for the future, both short and long term. In the short term the creek is so low that the hydro system is teetering on the edge of shut-down again. I already have the smallest nozzle fitted and down to about 1/4 full power, but I just checked the water flowing over the intake weir and by tomorrow that little trickle won’t be there and the machine will be sucking air and the power will crash further. In the slightly longer term, if the ground water doesn’t build up soon, the next dry season may be even worse for creek flow. In the long term, climate change may make this season the new normal, with longer dry seasons and difficult adjustments for agriculture, forestry, fisheries, tourism, biodiversity, endemic species survival, domestic water availability, fire regimes, disease control (eg dengue), and my ducks. Ducks live a surprisingly long time and may live to see major changes, though I dare say they will not trouble to document it.
Is there anyone out there who still doubts that climate change is happening now and rapidly? Apart from our elected government of course, who give a remarkable impersonation of the three wise monkeys. Unfortunately, yes. My own brother, not unacquainted with scientific matters, thinks it is still in the realm of ‘natural variation’ and not anthropomorphic. Get real. I love you still Peter despite this glaring flaw. Mountains of data and evidence have now accumulated to show climate change is real, it is fast and coming to a corner store near you! Actually it is coming to you. Right now. It is coming to our children like an avalanche. My generation has been the most culpable in stealing from the future. We have used up natural resources at a prodigious rate, we have overwhelmed the natural system’s capacity to absorb our wastes, we have trashed forests, degraded soils, depleted fossil water, driven fish to extinction, poisoned rivers, made the air almost unbreathable in large cities, and to top it off, we have signed the tab to our kids. We have not left them a legacy, we have left them huge debts. The financial system is now totally addicted to debt. Borrowing from the future, lumbering the kids now playing on swings, with the hangover from our binges.
For anyone of a tender age, I’m thinking less than 30, you have been shafted. Totally worked over and hung out to dry. A rational response to this would be to go out and shoot anyone over 50. I don’t advise this as the over 50’s still have great control over the military, police and just about any administration which has control of cash. Don’t expect this to change any time soon. In fact harming anyone is outside my personal ethics. What you can do is to carve out a little hole in the economic system where you are under the radar and have control of your own economics. I think I have managed this rather well in the last few decades. Low cash flow, large rewards.
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