Interesting article. Climate change, whatever its cause, is still with us -
it's the melting of the polar ice caps and the effects on the fauna there,
the de-icing of Greenland, changes in migration and breeding habits of birds
and fish and sundry other observations logged all over the world which give
me pause. My father, a mining engineer and geologist and conservative
sceptic if ever I met one, points out the rhythm of the Ice Ages &c, and
that Antarctica was once tropical jungle. But he has become almost a
greenie in his old age, since he's of the opinion that even if it's in the
natural cycle of things, human beings are certainly helping it along. Most
studies I've read emphasise the uncertainty of predictions, and offer a wide
range of scenarios, ranging from mild to apocalyptic; the only people who
seem at all certain are those who claim (like our local right wing pundit
Andrew Bolt) that it's all a pack of lies dreamed up by ratbag
environmentalists.
Still, the negative effects of human intervention on the environment is
pretty obvious here in Australia, where we are undergoing what someone
recently called "a silent tsunami" of drought, the on-going and what will be
- unless it is somehow dealt with better than it is now - ultimately
disastrous degradation of our water resources caused by mismanagement of a
delicate eco-system, which means these days permanent water restrictions in
Sydney (where water reserves are now something like 30 per cent, and this at
the beginning of summer) and Melbourne (the ads on saving water are constant
these days). This has happened quite quickly, in the past decade. And I
also wonder why the spectre of the current imminent and seemingly
unstoppable extinction of one quarter of the world's species - a fact that
no one is arguing with - doesn't give people equivalent nightmares to
climate change.
Best
A
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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