Australia stock-taking

 

Gumbayngirr country, today called Coffs Harbour. Where the original inhabitants were pushed into fringe camps. A detailed account of this time can be found here.

Expansion seems to be hard wired to the European project, or even 'man'. Grabbing the neighbour's stuff, walking into other people's places and behaving like 'vandals'. The new 'living space' is always gotten by military aggression. The world is a playground to extract and enlarge the pursuit of more and more. A planet becomes tabula rasa to subdue and treat as a quarry in the metabolism (pdf) of rapidly multiplying flag-waving chest-pounding nationalists in a post-nationalist world. The 'blank slate' to project the pathologically insatiable hunger for more is actually a bio-diverse array of life and culture which is eradicated to convert all into a machinery of fossil fuels, stuff, meat and profit. "Nothing but bush" thinks the Australian mindset and bulldozes bio-diversity and replaces it with a dull and impoverished mono-culture. Land, water, ocean and air degradation follows. The unique Australian flora and fauna is replaced with poodles, ponies, meat, and pink weeds.

Pandanus

The project of 'civilisation' comes to a grinding halt as it becomes obvious that the 'stuff' is running out, the bills are piling up for the heritage damage and pollution. The planet itself has been brought to the tipping point of becoming uninhabitable ( for life as we know it).  A culture of mean stewardship and dysfunctional oikos management is a bankrupt 'lifestyle'. As we drive our only home against the wall with eyes wide open, we are already eying the next habitable planets for evasion and expansion.

So much could have been learnt from the way of life of indigenous peoples, living in small populations and valuing human culture and law...


More viewings:
I am Aboriginal, film by John Pilger
Australia Day,  Ken Oathcarn, Rap News Video
"Nothing but bush" cartoon


More readings:
Aboriginal history of the Coffs Harbour region, PDF
Australia Day is a time for mourning, not celebration, Guardian,  260115
Henry Reynolds: If We Are To Re-Think Australia Day, Where Should We Begin, New Matilda, 220115
Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Tradition, Truth & Tomorrow, The Monthly


Audio:
Padraic Gibson / Paddy Gibson, 1788: War for Eora Country - Genocide and resistance in early colonial Sydney


There could be 50 C days in Sydney and Melbourne... Guardian / CSIRO


Images
via Old Camp at Coffs Creek, Tony Hart 

2014 Earth's warmest year on record - but we are air conditioned

"The globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for 2014 was the highest among all years since record keeping began in 1880." The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA

Coal powered air conditioners rattle through suburbia, shops and malls. All doors are wide open to invite possible customers in. People and pets are advised to stay indoors in the land of the great outdoors.  Livestock are precooked on treeless paddocks. Wildlife will have to manage somehow. The media disseminates images of beaches with jolly beach bodies cooling down before racing back to their ac suv to carry them to the next cool location.

Houses seem to be built for another geographical region, but not Australia.  After 100s of years they have not come to terms with the climate, let alone unhinged catastrophic climate change.

" ..You see the same housing design from Hobart to Emerald to even Darwin, and that's madness... Australia's houses are poorly adapted to extremes of temperature. Houses with little shade, green space or surrounding trees, and with dark roofs and low ceilings, mean that the only way to cool them is to turn on the air-conditioning", Dr Hanna, Ecomagazine

Whatever the seemingly temporary dwelling is, just bang a legionnaires disease dripping air conditioner on it and 'she'll be right'. Should there be a blackout it is always handy to blame possum for dark malls and melting businesses where nothing goes without electronic gadgets.

Stay cool Bellingen

"Historically in Australia, more people die from heatwaves than they do from any other type of natural disaster," Professor Steffen

Leaving the habitable planet option behind, out of control fires rage over the country. While the climate is "getting out of control", Australia chooses to stick its head into the hot beach sand and tolerate the increasing emissions of greenhouse gases.

 "About 10 per cent of fires are lit by children." Dr Janet Stanley, Monash University, abc

Images:
'Stay cool' Bellingen CBD, where local motorists turn the park into a car park
Blackout, eu

Heatwaves, blackouts and infrastructure breakdown, CSIRO
Hot and bothered: our health under climate change, ECOS
Urban areas see more heat waves, environmental research web


More readings on the 'life style' of bankruptcy
Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, 1945