Category Archives: Environment

Letter to IFAW’s Fred O’Regan

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IFAW is the International Fund for Animal Welfare, Fred is the CEO.
They send out a set of postcards to people who have been active for their campaigns, hoping to trigger the reciprocity principle and receiving donations.

Fundraising is big business, and the biggest benefactors are the companies doing the fundraising, not the good causes.

Hi Fred

Thanks for the postcards.

Contrary to your expectations in terms of the reciprocity principle (social psychology) that you’re trying to trigger with your marketing, I will not be making a donation, as I a) object to the approach and b) object to the amount of money that you apparently put in to things other than doing what your organisation is actually for.

Regards,
Arjen.

Upper Hunter – mining pit

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In 2008 I drove through the Upper Hunter. Less well known than the international tourist magnet aka wine theme park the Lower Hunter Valley. By the way I call it a theme park because while it contains over 120 wineries, only about 3% of Australia’s grapes are grown in the Hunter area. It can be nice to visit though, particularly the smaller places. But I disgress…

The Upper Hunter also has some awesome wineries (Callatoota Estate, for example – the owner likes his Chardonnay but I took a liking to the port) and it is of course much more quiet. That is, fewer tourists. We did have to dodge several large trucks and other vehicles on the small roads. Why? The Upper Hunter is being carved open for mining. My last experience on the ground there was, as I mentioned, in 2008. But take a peek at an aerial map of the area:


View Larger Map

Zoom in closer to the grey blotches and see for yourself – and the scale of these areas. A friend who recently drove through on his motorbike reported that he saw a hill disappearing.

It’s crazy. This is about short term profits and a long-term wasteland. Australia is short of quality top-soil. Once it’s gone, that’s it. You can’t just replant something later and expect it to all be fine. Not vineyards, or other stuff. The wine growers I spoke to were already telling about the dust on their vines and other aspects affecting their farms. And I figure that the new landscape is not much of a tourist attraction, either.

Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math | Rolling Stone

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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719

Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is

Peak Phosphorus

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Phosphorus is, while being essential to farming crops and an essential nutrient for humans (and other animals!), a relatively scarce resource – and it’s running out. Australian soil is particularly poor in phosphorus anyway, but the “running out” story is essentially global – it might just happen faster to Australia.

Two Australian researchers (Dr Dana Cordell & Prof Stuart White of the University of Technology, Sydney) won the 2012 Eureka environmental research prize for their work in this area. See the Conserving Life’s Building Block article.

See also the Wikipedia entry on Peak Phosphorus, with links to other resources. It correctly identifies that current large scale agriculture practises with artificial fertilisers is a big contributor to the problem – we actually know for a fact that that’s not the only thing where that method of farming is a problem. This use of fertiliser is known to only increase production for a short period, but then it really drops off. So it’s not a sane approach anyway.

My family sources its fruit & veg via Food Connect, which sources from Organic farmers in a 3-hour drive radius around Brisbane. There is also a  Food Connect operation in Sydney, and other similar business elsewhere. In addition to this we started a veggie patch of our own again at the new house, which is also fun! Once we’re done with renovations we’ll get a few chooks also – right now we just have a worm farm and compost, which works fine for producing great crops.

Based on past performance, I’m going to put the sad prediction here that in response to phosphorus depletion, Australia will import even more foods from Asia and elsewhere. After all, that’d be a net import of phosphorus, therefore avoiding the immediate problem. It’s not really a solution, it would destroy local capacity and capabilities even further, and that doesn’t even address the (IMHO) important issue of “food sovereignty”.

Australia can and should be capable of feeding itself. If we don’t, we’re going to be in deep trouble in the long-run. It’s fine to import and export, but we should be able to feed ourselves if necessary.

Stanford biologist and computer scientist discover the ‘anternet’ | School of Engineering

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http://engineering.stanford.edu/news/stanford-biologist-computer-scientist-discover-anternet

A collaboration between a Stanford ant biologist and a computer scientist has revealed that the behavior of harvester ants as they forage for food mirrors the protocols that control traffic on the Internet.