4 comments on The Bullroarer - Tuesday 8 July 2008
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4 comments on The Bullroarer - Tuesday 8 July 2008
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GAIA Host Collective
While everybody is worrying about high oil prices I think they should worry more about the collapse of the Murray Darling food bowl. Desalinated water won't grow enough food and the associated emissions will make the problem worse. Having canoed and sailed a dinghy on some of the lower Murray lakes I think they are doomed. Instead of trying to resuscitate a corpse I think some areas (eg Lake Albert) should be bulldozed shut and allowed to fester into a sulphurous saline stew. Other sections of river course should be dredged to keep a narrow channel flowing to the sea. If the dairy farmers won't leave graciously buy them a mini desal plant or pay them to do nothing. Either that or keep believing in magic.
Well - there is plenty to worry about and we need to keep all of it in mind - but I agree that if the Murray Darling collapses completely it will cause us much more trouble than peak oil will.
We can switch away from oil - we don't have as many alternatives for growing food - and climate change is largely out of our hands unlike responses to high oil prices.
The Murray used to run dry before they diverted the Snowy, e.g. 1915. This is going to happen whether we "fix" global warming or not [of course running out of fossil fuel will fix it, ice age to follow]. Australian food production is good on average over time and/or space. We need a system where farming activity can move around more, and we need more food storage. Hell, the world needs more food storage: with no reserves we are just waiting for a big volcano or monsoon failure or something and we'll have 100 Ethiopias running at once.
Robert,as you say,Australia has always had a wildly variable rainfall over most of the continent.This may well get a lot worse in some areas, with climate change.The science is uncertain about the location and extent.We also have to factor in the widespread degradation of agricultural areas due to past(and present) soil mining practices.Salinity is another growing problem.
The most urgent issue is the role of fossil fuels in agriculture.Cereal crops are almost all broad acre dryland farming.Even with minimum tillage methods the cost of diesel will rapidly push a lot farmers into bankruptcy given the high level of debt that they normally carry.
There is some risk that Australia could largely cease to be a grain exporter and the worst case scenario would be a domestic food crisis.
In keeping with the present blind leading the blind style of governance in Australia I have seen very little discussion about the points raised above let alone any attempt to address them.