April 28, 2005
What is it about Australia?
One thing about this country is that we have more raw resource just waiting to be dug up, packed into ships and floated overseas than just about anyone. Certainly any first-world country. By and large we buy the same resources back off of other countries like Japan after they've turned them into cars and paper.
So, when it comes to energy efficiency our Government is not really all that interested. In fact, the Productivity Commission, a Federal Government initiative, recently released it's draft results of it's inquiry into the economic and environmental potential offered by energy efficiency.
Now, your average high-school student (they do tend to be rather idealistic) can tell you that energy efficiency is good because: it's efficient; it helps protect the environment (ie: the greenhouse effect); and it improves the nations ability to produce and survive in a world of limited (all resources on the planet, with the exception of sunlight are only available in a limited amount) resources.
But no. The productivity commission says otherwise. It says, "Australia must achieve the right level of energy efficiency for its own context."
What does this mean? Well, basically, we have coal. Lots and lots of coal. It's cheap to dig up and easy to burn to make energy. Sure, it's dirty, it's adding CO2 to the atmosphere as well as particulates which form part of the problem of global dimming, View image(which by the way makes a nonsense of there being unlimited amounts of sunlight), but who cares?
Does Australia? No, not really. When you get down to it, we just don't care. The 'I'm alright jack, stuff you' mentality is clear in as much as the first people to suffer from some of the effects of global warming will be our immediate neighbours in the Pacific. Tiny islands like those in the The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).
The smartest thing anyone working in a heavy polluting industry ever did was to call someone an environmentalist. The tag's used now days not so much to refer to someone who spends their spare time communing with trees and hugging wombats as someone, anyone infact, who deigns to point out that the planet is heading into deep water. Calling a rat that runs about looking freaked out when you set his cage on fire a 'pyrophobic animal' is the rough equivalent. Everyone who is not insane should be an 'environmentalist'. We all live in the same environment and there's nowhere else for us to go.
Posted by IndianInk at 11:09 PM
April 27, 2005
Timor gap crap
What Australia is doing to East Timor is just plain bogus.
Australia gave Timor a hand a few years back. Did we do so simply so that we could create a small weak nation (unlike Indonesia) which we could more easily bully into an outrageously unfair oil exploitation arrangement? The country needs it's oil and gas income far more than we do, yet we continue to play hard ball over the 'negotiaions'.
Let them have a fair go.
Posted by IndianInk at 10:05 PM
April 12, 2005
Frogs akimbo
The problems of renting are manifold. The ever-present sense of pouring hard-earned money into the mortgage of another. The neighbours (who own) who set about painting your fence to match theirs, assuming you have no say in it anyhow. The dilemma of gardening. To plant or not to plant. The issue of wall-hangings. How do you put up a picture without poking a hole in the wall?
All that pales beside the problem of the frogs.
We've been in our current house, renting, for almost six years. Early on we heard a POK! Pok! POK! noise coming from the small back garden. Realising it was a frog plaintively calling for a mate it occurred to us that if he managed to find one, where was he going to get it on? Frogs need water to mate and lay their eggs.
So, we set about creating conditions favourable to frogs. Standing water, shaded by over hanging plants and a way to climb out once they were in.
Soon, success! Frog spawn appeared on the water of the blue ceramic pot we'd set up. The tadpoles that grew were fascinating to watch. We dropped in lettuce leaves and the occasional ham scrap.
This was followed by more spawns, and more. It soon became evident the tadpoles didn't need us to feed them and the whole project was declared (by us) to be a rip-snorting success. So much so that many summer nights were filled with a syncopated symphony of Pok! POK! PoK! pok! noises, followed, and this is important, on occasion by the answering brrrRRRRRK! of a female.
Now however, we have to leave. The garden is made up almost entirely of potted plants and the now several water holding vessels are also portable and will go. We installed a small pebble encrusted fibreglass pond by digging it into the ground. We'd be willing to leave it behind if we had the slightest hope that subsequent tenants will will keep the frog dream alive. We don't entertain that hope.
For one thing we've never used a chemical on the garden. Frogs are very sensitive to environmental pollutants as they absorb them through their skin. For another, the noise takes some getting used to.
The breed is also quite common so there's no hope of transferring the tadpoles to a waiting recipient desperate for Striped Marsh Frogs. The place we are moving to is both cold and to distant (it's apparently not a good idea to transport frogs to far afield as this can spread disease).
So, it's a quandary. Maybe a solution can be found. I'm open to suggestion. Just nothing that involves French restaurants.
Posted by IndianInk at 11:14 AM