[Green-Activist] Science poor State Premiers drive us blindly into frightening future

[Sheila Newman]

This was post about the desperate measures of a science poor State Premier was posted by Mike Stasse to Running on Empty, Oz (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/roeoz) on Friday (Yesterday) at  08:50:29 am :

It has much in common with the pathetic reliance on the religion of economics' high priests as practised in Victoria.  Slight editing by Sheila Newman for clarity of context.

Please pass it on:

"/Apparently, our esteemed [Queensland] premier [Beattie] has spouted something about the end of the world as we know it in Parliament.  I don't know how broadly this has been broadcasted in the media, but the Gympie Times sure 
picked up on it, and the editor wrote a dismissive article about it.  I felt it was a golden opportunity, and wrote the letter below in response./"
/
Mike./

"I read with interest your editorial in yesterday's GT which 
dismisses Beattie's armageddon vision for Brisbane if the damned dam 
is not built.  Whilst Beattie is totally wrong about the dam, I'm of 
the opinion the armageddon bit should not be so easily dismissed.

35 years ago, the Club of Rome wrote a report called "Limits to 
Growth".  This document predicted that within 100 years of its 
writing, if unfettered growth was allowed to continue, civilisation 
as we know it would end in collapse.  Now that we are 35% of the way 
into this period, all the signs are there this could happen.

Australia will be as good as out of oil within 10 years.  By then, 
the rest of the world will have also peaked, not least Saudi 
Arabia.  By then, will it have rained?  You say "surely Mr Beattie's 
government could not be so stupid and so irresponsible that it has 
allowed a life and death situation to deteriorate to the point where 
the survival of millions depends on the last desperate bid to build 
this one dodgy dam".  Well they have, haven't they, and here is why.

Exponential growth has a nasty habit of blowing up in one's face.  
Take a test tube and put one bacterium in it.  If that bacterium 
splits every hour, then after 1 hour you'll have 2 bacteria, after 2 
you'll have 4, after 3 there'll be 8, and so on.  When there are 
1000, you probably won't see them yet, and all the bacteria will 
just think everything's honky dory, and hum along, growing 
exponentially.  Eventually, however, the test tube will be half 
full.  Just how long do you think those bacteria have to work out 
they're in deep trouble?  Why, just one hour!  And if they allow 
themselves to fill the test tube, they'll need a whole two test 
tubes, within the next hour, or succomb to collapse (dare I say, 
feed on each other?).

The world has 'one hour' left to sort out this mess.  And don't give 
me that rubbish about how clever we are with technology, because 
technology relies entirely on the same resources we do.  I don't 
want the test tube to fill, that would be hell on Earth, and we 
certainly do not have another planet to conquer.
Water and energy are at the core of what constitutes civilisation as 
we know it.  They are essential to our food production, and/or its 
import, among other things.  The rest of the world is no better off 
either, with the USA's aquifers and oil fields falling dramatically 
too.

All this drawing down of the Earth's vital resources is totally 
unsustainable, and growing as fast as the world's economies.  All 
this talk of nuclear power stations and dam building is nothing less 
than governments clutching at straws, unable to cope with limits to 
growth.  Beattie (and Howard and Bush and Blair.....) simply cannot 
see beyond the sacred cashcow we call growth, blinkered by God knows 
what.

We must change things, and we must do it together before it's all 
too late.

Mike Stasse
mstasse {at} yahoo.com
Cooran"


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