Brave Creatures

Here in Australia the weather is well and truly freaking out. A week before Christmas here in Melbourne the temperature was around 32°  every day for a week, and in Melbourne that means dry heat. A week later and it was 18° and snowing in the Victorian High Country.

At Christmas!

Now for your northern centric bores, remember thats like saying it was snowing in San Francisco or London on June 25th.

Freakish!

Of course it did help contain the once in a century bush fires that were at the time ravaging an area the size of Belgium in the states north east. But apart from that small dump of snow, the country appears to have been unbelievably dry. Farmers in the Murray Darling Basin*, one of Australia's bread baskets, conveniently placed in one of the most naturally arid regions in the country, are entering their seventh year of drought. Meanwhile  most capitals are  employing quite sever water restrictions and Melbourne's reservoirs are expected to drop to 20% by May '07.

Its disturbing, in an Al Gore kind of way.

I went to a party up in Lismore for New Years Eve, Tropical Fruits, and the landscape in New South Wales could not be more different to Victoria. Its green and lush still, while down here it is frighteningly dry and brown. The party was fairly good, but it got fairly cold over night and because I was re-hydrating responsibly I found that I was heading to the bathroom every 20 minutes or so. I say "bathrooms" but in fact there was not much in the way of facilities on offer and because boys will be guys† were going where ever they liked.

It feel like we had become nothing more than a clandestine mechanism for moving water from one place to another while warming it slightly. Its as if the Lismore Shire Council was secretively flouting the water restrictions by using 2000 gay men as a watering system for their lawns.

Aside from anything else it resulted in an evening of "no don't sit there...or there..no not there either".

But I digress.

In actuality its been a higher than average rainfall year for Australia. No really, it has. Its just that its not raining on the places we live and farm - which used to be where it rained all the time. Thats why we lived and farmed here.

But it seems that has changed. According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, 2006 has not only been one of the hottest years on record, its been one of the strangest and the Australian farming districts heading for a decade of drought its pretty clear that Australia is going to need to lead the world in addressing climate change. I know I am banging a well gonged drum at the moment, but this needs reinforcement at every level because the reality of the situation STILL Doesnt seem to be sinking in with most people.

Its going to take more than a few peeing faggots to solve the problem. Its going to take a concerted effort, changes in habits (do you really need to flush), government and public programs and a willingness on the part of businesses to look to get ahead of the climate change curve and advantage from the differences rather than suffer. But before they will do that, there needs to be government pressure to push them in that direction.

As my friend Sharon says - Carrot AND Prickly Stick.

The question I have for you dear reader is - what the hell are you doing? What have you changed in the last 12 months to reduce power usage (power leads to carbon remember), reduce emissions and reduce water usage.

At the very least, have you written to your local member, or the Minister for the Environment and Heritage letting them know that you are concerned with the issue and you want them to address it more directly? If you dont say anything, they don't know - and an email takes literally 10 minutes. 

Think about it - ok? 

* Actually its name, I am not just being camp 

† And some girls actually

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 6th, 2007 at 9:55 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.