Aussie environment destruction

 Interesting book I and 3/4 the way through, Collapse - How societies choose
to fail or succeed, Jared Diamond (I can recomend it). There is a chapter on
Aus that is good reading. The chapter is titled "Mining Australia" and says
essentially that for decades ockers have mined not only minerals but also
soil nutrients, timber resources, moisture/water and fishing stocks.

The bit about timber I found expecially interesting. I am aware that Aus
exports timber, we get oz hardwood in NZ for decks and the like. I presumed
that it was from a sustainable resource. According to Diamond this is not
the case. The rate of timber growth is slow for you compared to say NZ. Once
a forest is stripped of mature trees the conditions for regrowth is quite
difficult and can lead to the drying out, even desertification, of the soil.
Not sure I will buy any more Aus hardwood if that is the case.

He reckoned that much of the nutrient value of your bush is held in the
trees themselves. I have understood for a while that your soil is low in
nutrients given its age. It seems the trees store much of the nutrients and
recycle it through the growing cycle as they shed leaves or die and decay.
Once the trees are gone so is much of the nutrient. The trees could curvive
and grow as they existed in a closed cycle with the existing nutrients
recycled many many times. Once the nutrients were stripped away by forestry
there was nowt left in the soil for regrowth. If true, a really fascinating
example of closed cycles in nature and the way ignorant human activity can
destroy it.

He also described in some length the salinisation of your soils. I knew
about it however the author described in length how the salt pans came to
exist, how irrigation can cause the salt level to rise and dryland
salinisation results from leaving productive land bare for much of the year
allowing rain to wash salts through waterways or raise it to the surface.
The soluable salts then infest waterways.

This isn't a criticism mind, kiwis have done a good job of habitat
degredation as well. I guess our environment is not so fragile in many ways.
I did not realise just how fragile the Aus environment was (aside from your
droughts).

Comments welcome.
rob

 
It is exactly the same in any other western country which is rich in
"natural resources".  The only difference between Oz and other western
countries is that Oz has a (generally) extremely fragile soil and being a
very old continent, limited fertility except for thin coastal strips.


Without reading the book, it is impossible to know what he's writing about
or which areas of Oz he is writing about.  I presume he may be writing about
old growth forests.  What is happening in the destruction of old growth
forests in several of our States is simply criminal IMHO.  As is the spread
of Pinus radiata into our much of our fertile farming lands.


The importation of exportation of ANY products on or off the land on which
it is raised or grown is mining.  If you eat meat or vegetables that are not
grown on your own land, or wear clothes that are not produced from your own
land, you are involved in mining the fertility belonging to someone else.
We all do it and have done since time immemorial.  I don't know anyone who
can only survive on the products of their own land or return all their
wastes to their own land.

If you have been reading this ng for some time, you may recall that at one
stage Otterbot made the comment that there is no such thing as unproductive
land.  She was (generally) right because any land can be made productive but
it at the cost or mining somewhere else for nutrients. Tree cropping is
perhaps the most "sustainable" form of cropping but it is dependant upon the
soil and I have no doubt that there are some areas of Oz that could be very
much depleted after a single tree harvest.  I can't think of any area off
the top of my head but I don't know about all our timber growing areas.


If he wrote that about dryland salinity, then he doesn't know what he's on
about.  Dryland salinity and salinity on irrigated land have differing
causes, as is perhaps the salinity of WA (which I have read has largely been
caused by millenia of onshore winds bringing in ocean salt which has then
settled on the land).  That latter explanation could be pure crud, but I've
certainly read of that being an explanation for WA.

But having said that, European farming techniques did not suit most of this
country (and certainly not the dry interior) and it has taken till recent
decades for that fact to become evident.  Dryland salinity is being
combatted effectively but slowly and it will be an ongoing battle for
decades.  I know very little about salinity on irrigated land.

 

chapter

indeed true, however I never realised the extent of the fragility of Aussie
forests. I find it odd that the forests are still felled given that the
resulting land is not much productive for anything else. Even worse,
exporting wood chip to Japan to be made into paper. Were the export of woods
sustainable I could at least understand. As it seems the export is not
sustainable it is surprising. We learnt a few years back to stop felling
native forests, including chipping our native beech trees for export to
Japan. Moreover, our native forests have a much better ability to regenerate
than Aus forests it seems given better soil we have.


unproductive

surface.

I summarised in (very) brief. The explaination is much moe detailed. The
explaination seemed plausible enough in the book.

rob

 The problem is understood to be
1) Inability to do everything at once by independent farmers. Due to
COST and ignorance in the past.
2) Corporations who are only mining for money, who stuff the country
they re mining in. (They have no heart soul or care, as someone else will
pick up the tab) They wont pay.
3) The general public too busy to do anything about this, and sticking
their heads into the sand, hoping it will go away.
4) Governments, who are backed by big business (Read : Overseas
CORPORATIONS with local names eg Gunns timber in Tasmania) who toe the
corporation lines.
5) The need for greed to survive by others.
6) Local properties which have been sold of to foreign nationals .
7) The supposed  inability for Australia to develop and invest in its
own country.

Read this >>>
We have a right to a fair trial.
Can we say the same of machines or corporations?
"'A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and
existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law,
it possesses only those properties which the charter of creation confers
upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence. These
are such as are supposed best calculated to effect the object for which
it was created.'..."
The legal attitude in America must be considered in Australia
Corporations are created by humans to further the goal of making money.
As Buckminster Fuller said in his brilliant essay The Grunch of Giants,
"Corporations are neither physical nor metaphysical phenomena. They are
socioeconomic ploys - legally enacted game-playing..."
Corporations are non-living, non-breathing, legal fictions. They feel no
pain. They don't need clean water to drink, fresh air to breathe, or
healthy food to consume. They can live forever. They can't be put in
prison. They can change their identity or appearance in a day, change
their citizenship in an hour, rip off parts of themselves and create
entirely new entities. Some have compared corporations with robots, in
that they are human creations that can outlive individual humans,
performing their assigned tasks forever.
Wisconsin, for example, had a law that stated: "No corporation doing
business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer consent or
agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property,
free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any
political party, organization, committee or individual for any political
purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any
kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for
nomination, appointment or election to any political office." The
penalty for any corporate official violating that law and getting cozy
with politicians on behalf of a corporation was five years in prison and
a substantial fine.

Before I am accused of being a pinko commie, this is everyones
nightmare. This explains the reasons why things are as they are and why
some countries have a  legitimate beef with others...



FarmI wrote:

 

that's right, but can i point out: i use inputs that other people don't
WANT! (and are free as well :-)

so what you say is 100% right, & i'm getting off the track a bit, but i'm
profiting from other peoples' waste & more peeps would be better off to do
that (imho). it's amazing. frankly i think that as well as creating less
"waste" in future, we will all be learning about how other peoples' "waste"
is a goldmine.

Tree cropping is

do do do read "back from the brink" by peter andrews. not least because he
explains this. it's a top read, i'm telling you :-)
kylie