You're right Alison. Canada used to think 'we' had unlimited reserves
of fresh water but now it's clear, with the mountain glaciers melting
that this may not be the case; & then there's all the talk of charging
for water, & the capitalists lining up to get in on the ground floor of
this new money-maker.
Doug
On 3-Jan-05, at 6:04 PM, Alison Croggon wrote:
> 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
>
>
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 Canada
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
We both know the reason why you called
So stop wastin’ time tryin’ to soften up my fall
I know you wanna sweeten up the taste
But if you don’t mind I’ll just take my sorrow straight
Iris DeMent
|