Philosopher Val Plumwood wrote of ‘captured bureaucracies’, where public servants are either drawn from industry or eventually go to an industry position, effectively working as industry representatives in public service jobs.8 Public servants should have no personal or financial links to the industry they may be assessing.
Any decision by a minister or senior public servant that goes against advice from the experts in their department or working in the field needs to be scrutinised, and substantiated. (This should apply in health, defence, education and other portfolios, as well as planning and all other areas.) Overwhelmingly, political and planning decisions are made based on inadequate data, or data that contradicts experts’ assessments. Adequate on-ground, baseline data must be collected before decisions are made. Without baseline data you can’t assess what effects there may be, or assess what effects are happening. Instead developments are approved with self-monitoring to determine if there will be health or environmental damage. If that damage occurs there are often few, if any, repercussions, except a ‘try to do better’.
Development approvals should include a ‘polluter pays’ principle. For a development to be cost-effective, it must be able to clean up after itself, and compensate those adversely affected by it. Environmental protection legislation is an empty shell unless conditions are independently monitored, and breaches are both policed and reparation enforced.
6 Eat good food
All food choices are ultimately political decisions. English sweet biscuits needed colonies and slaves to provide the sugar. Tomatoes airfreighted from Israel, garlic from Mexico and snow peas from China means our strategic policies are dominated by the need to ensure the oil that lubricates it all.9
Good food connects you to the world. Refusing to eat bad food is one way to make change happen.
Good food isn’t frozen, or at least not for long. Place skull and crossbone symbols on all packs of frozen carrots – I have never met a frozen carrot that I’ve liked. Feeding kids frozen vegetables should be a minor crime against humanity – you’re training the kids’ palates to accept crap.
Good food isn’t refrigerated, either, or again not for long. (Widespread refrigeration is a blessing on one hand, but it’s also meant that many humans now eat food that has had most of its flavour sucked away by prolonged cold.)
Good food is fresh. Good food is seasonal. But most of all, good food is idiosyncratic. It’s just what the eater feels like at that moment. Good food either means growing stuff yourself or knowing how and where to buy, be given or swap reasonably local, mostly organic tucker – all of which needs a time-rich life and lots of social contacts, unless you happen to be a hermit with a really good garden. It means learning how to cook a basket of tomatoes oozing juice, a choko invasion or a dozen mushrooms from the back paddock that sprang up overnight and the yabbies the kids caught before breakfast, rather than following recipes.
But also: eat anything made for you with love. (Or – in the case of possibly fatal consequences – at least make a show of doing so).
7 Become a moral omnivore
A moral omnivore eats whatever are the most ecologically sustainable foods – and that may include meat. Vegetarianism isn’t necessarily an ecological virtue, though eating much less, and different, meat certainly is. (Vegetarianism may be a spiritual or even a social virtue, but that’s different.) Large-scale fruit and vegetable production fences out wildlife, killing them as surely as a bullet, but more nastily.
Most animals raised for meat in Western societies contribute to an ecological blight, especially anything lot-fed, like beef, industrialised hens or pigs, fish farms that need four tonnes of wild fish to produce one tonne of farmed fish, or even crocodiles farmed on chicken carcasses. But meat can also come from free-range hens that scratch around the yard one minute and are in the pot the next (if you are a very, very good chook dispatcher and plucker, anyhow) without even a second of fear. It often makes more sense ecologically to imitate peasant cultures and raise small animals like hens, pigs, guinea pigs, rabbits, guinea fowl, goats and fish to dispose of weeds and kitchen scraps, and to provide small amounts of meat to be eaten as flavouring or on rare feast days.
It makes even more ecological sense to eat feral animals, because large hunks of our country are vanishing into feral gullets and under feral feet. Twenty-five years ago our entire gorge was ‘dry rainforest’, a canopy of Backhousia trees, maidenhair ferns, sandpaper figs and tree ferns. And then a hobby farmer released his goats into the gorge – the price for goat meat had plummeted and he didn’t want to pay to take them to the market.
Once-green gullies became orange desert as the plague of goats grew, changing the bush to parkland with only tall trees, the young ones nibbled to death and then to bare eroded earth. As the big trees died there were none to replace them, just as the shrubs, orchids and hundreds of other species were lost to the goats’ browsing teeth.
It is taking a significant effort just to keep the goats relatively under control. (Eradicating goats completely from this area would require more resources than we can mobilise.) The most motivated hunters are those who plan to eat the meat, or serve it to friends. But similar plagues are happening right across Australia. Feral goats, pigs, rabbits, carp, cane toads – okay, maybe I’m not advocating we eat cane toads, but they do make interesting leather.
I don’t like killing things. I would much rather the government put all the research dollars slashed from biological control programs into sterilisation (instead of a lethal disease) for feral goats, rabbits and the others. But at the moment the ferals are munching away the world I love. And the most humane way of controlling them isn’t to trap them and truck them – crammed and terrified – to a distant market, where they may well be sold for meat anyhow, but to get an able shooter to kill them with one swift bullet. (If a shooter needs more than one bullet to kill an animal instantly they shouldn’t be hunting.)
Nor am I advocating game hunting in national parks. At the moment, no one in Australia is tested for their ability to hit a target before they get a gun licence, or even on their ability to handle an actual firearm, much less be an effective and humane hunter. The written exams are ludicrously simple, and almost impossible to fail, even with no study or knowledge of laws and regulations.
Humans are omnivores – look at our teeth. We have tearing, chewing and grinding ones. We can chomp, rip, nibble, suck, lap, sip and guzzle – the least specialised mouths on the planet. Now look at what our culture doesn’t eat. Aztecs pressed together mozzie eggs to make a sort of caviar. Is this really more repulsive than eating fish eggs? Grilled locust abdomens (another pest that needs controlling, due to over-clearing and over-spraying) are tastier than most factory-made snack foods. How many of our pests – from silverfish to termites – would no longer be problems if we ate them, as other cultures do? (Make sure the silverfish or termites haven’t eaten anything toxic in the past three weeks, and try them fried light brown and crisp, to fit a little more closely to our culture’s food preferences.)
If drivers were legally obliged to eat what they run over (other humans excepted) there might be less roadkill.
8 Learn to love the shabby and give up the addiction to the new
The average age of the furniture at our place is about seventy years, with nothing younger than a decade. And while Buckingham Palace might boast that their furniture is centuries-old antiques, ours isn’t, although all of it was built to last. Even the washing machine has passed its twenty-ninth birthday.
Once upon a time things were made to last. Grandma used the iron and vacuum cleaner she was given as wedding presents till she was eighty-six and moved into a nursing home, and I used that vacuum cleaner for decades after that. Good 1920s construction.
Most modern machinery is obsolete within three years these days, often less. People don’t want their consumer ‘durables’ to last longer. They want a new model kitchen every seven years, a remodelled bathroom, cars with the latest gad
gets. (My truck is even older than the washing machine. A few bits melted off in a bushfire twenty-seven years ago, but it still hauls in the wood.) Even gardens are instant – annual flowers that give a rush of brilliance, annual vegie gardens that must be tended to give food.
Short-lived things mean you have to keep on hurrying to replace them: shop for a new TV, compare new cars, plant the lettuces to replace the ones eaten or gone to seed. All this newness takes time. It takes mental energy, too, that could be spent finding our place in the universe (in my case, just next to the wombat hole). Even the way most people understand home and community these days is short-lived – you upgrade to a better house or a nicer spot by the sea. There is little compulsion to say, ‘I’ve put down my roots. They’re going nowhere, except further down.’
Too much money leads you to silly choices, like the holiday on a Thai beach, and a long exhausting journey to get there, instead of a quiet mooch across the local sandhills or along the river to the swimming hole.
9 Accept that ‘natural’ or ‘native’ does not necessarily mean ‘best’ or ‘harmless’
A species that is native to one part of Australia may become a weed or pest in different conditions, like Cootamundra wattle or the flying foxes that killed trees in the Sydney Botanic Gardens. Natural pyrethrin insecticides, which cause allergic reactions in perhaps two per cent of those exposed to them, may harm human health more than artificial permethrins. Genetically engineered does not necessarily mean bad, though it may well be bad if the only reason for the design has been profit, not public good.
10 Get it in writing
Be wary of anyone in authority who refuses to, or doesn’t get around to it.
11 ‘Critically endangered’ may not necessarily be the best criteria for preserving an area or species
I fight to preserve critically endangered species because they are an index of the complexity of the land. The simpler an ecosystem, the more vulnerable it is. In our valley certain species thrive in dry times, others in wet years; a multiplicity of species make the whole more resilient, able to withstand extremes.
Endangered species may be an index of ecological health, but not – necessarily – valuable in themselves. A development may be held up or be excessively modified because of the presence of a single endangered species, like the green and golden bell frog. I am fond of the endangered green and golden bell frog – they visit our bedroom, catching insects attracted by my reading light – but their extinction may not matter in the long-term ecological health of the valley. Other species may take their place. (I say ‘may’ here. I do not know.)
12 Be deeply suspicious of anyone who says, ‘That’s impossible!’ unless they can substantiate it with a minimum three-year study of the proposition
There are two great myths about living a sustainable lifestyle. The first is that our standard of living is going to have to fall. Our lives will become grey and meaningless while we squat in the dark in a mud hut. And the second is that it’s impossible.
There’s magic in the word impossible. It means we don’t have to try. I’ve lost count of the number of ecologically positive things that are supposed to be impossible:
It’s impossible to grow as much food without pesticides or fungicides. Then why does productivity go up – not down – in countries that reduce pesticide use? Answer: Pesticides kill the predators that control the pests. A reliance on pesticides and fungicides increases pest problems.
It’s impossible to grow fruit and veg without shooting/trapping/poisoning wildlife. No it’s not. Grow decoy fruits.
It’s impossible to produce meat, dairy products and eggs in an ecologically sustainable and humane manner. Tell that to our pampered grasshopper-and fallen fruit-eating chooks, and Jackie the Cow (deceased). Much meat, dairy and egg production is unsustainable and inhumane, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be so.
It’s impossible to run a community on wind or solar power. Of course it’s possible. It’s happening. Solar power is currently the cheapest form of new Australian power, as opposed to power from existing power plants. (This is partly because of current subsidies and taxes.) It is not, however, the easiest to get access to, nor are our electricity grids usually designed for a large amount of locally generated power from roof top solar or wind systems. The answer is to redesign new grid systems but also to link communities to local power sources, only accessing the grid in peak load times, or using one of many ways to store surplus power, such as using solar power to pump water to a high point, where its fall will generate hydro power at a peak load period.
It’s impossible to build houses that survive bushfires, floods, cyclones and even tidal surges. CSIRO has successfully trialled bushfire-safe houses. The Netherlands is pioneering flood- and tidal surge-proof houses. Japan is pioneering towns that may survive major tsunamis.10
It is possible to live a fulfilled, rich life while doing all of the above.
13 Be cautious. Be kind. Be wary of anyone who tries to make you angry. Expect war, too
Caution allowed humans to survive on this continent for 60,000 years. Unless there is immediate danger, a slow decision deliberated upon by many for years is likely to be better than a fast one. Lady Macbeth’s ‘If it were done when ’tis done, ’twere well it were done quickly’, as she prepared to stab her king, is a superb illustration of someone subconsciously knowing that they are about to embark on something they would not do if they waited and evaluated. If you find yourself uttering similar phrases, or hear leaders saying them, assume the decision is likely to be, at best, unsubstantiated, and at worst, disastrous. Be even more wary of those who try to make you share anger. Think of those leaders in the past or present that you abhor: have they all at some stage used anger against a common enemy to gain power over their followers? Hatred is contagious. So is kindness. There is a quote frequently attributed to the Dalai Lama: ‘Be kind if possible. It is always possible.’
Kindness can be an effective weapon, but it does not mean you won’t have to make grim and hard decisions. If the land can only support so many people or animals, who and how do you choose will live there, or is it kinder to wait for desert to take over so they may all die? If one person or racial or religious group attacks another, what is the kindest way to proceed?
This is not a rhetorical question, implying that force is the best or the worst solution. Foreign aid (‘we will bribe you to act the way we think you ought to’), biological warfare with one of the many blights poppies are prone to, thus wiping out the opium money behind various dangerous groups, or tranquillisers in the water supply allowing the easy and fast occupation by a peacekeeping force are possible, though not necessarily desirable, nor are the last two acceptable under the strangely antiquated – but probably needful – protocols of modern warfare. Allowing a stranger, enemy or potential enemy, to be kind to you is arguably even more effective than helping them. Humans resent those with the power and resources being kind to us. We are more likely to feel warmly to those we have helped or protected. An Institute of Effective Aggressive Kindness might offer interesting insights.
Beware of anyone who tries to make you angry: that anger will give them power over you, and probably not for good. When times are hard – drought, heatwave, crop failure, recession – the solidarity of hating a common enemy can make you temporarily feel better. Expect more droughts, heatwaves, crop failures and recessions. Expect more hatred. Expect more war. In World War 2, Germany fought for Lebensraum (room to live) and Japan fought to gain access to the resources they had been denied. Battles for desirable land or resources or even the best bunch of fruit predate humanity. Future wars will be fought for the same millennia-old reasons, but with new methods and technology.
14 Beware of the terrapath
We call humans who don’t feel empathy with other humans sociopaths or psychopaths, so little empathy that they can hurt or kill and feel no guilt. Maybe we should begin to call those who have no feeling for the planet terrapaths.
How do you recognise a terrapath? Terrapaths are the ones who know that what they are doing, whether it be mining or logging a forest, will hurt the other species of the earth and simply don’t care, as long they make a profit from the activity. Others even take a joy in destruction – the pyromaniacs, or those who find the disorder of untamed nature so frightening that they long to concrete it all over.
I suspect true terrapaths are rare. Often those who hurt the earth aren’t aware of how much harm they are causing, or don’t have the confidence or the habits of mind to look for different ways to do things. Most humans have just never learnt how sapient Homo sapiens can be. If humans can’t outwit cockroaches, pear and cherry slugs, fruit fly and possums, and work out how to gather timber, grow food and utilise minerals without irreparable harm to other beings, we don’t deserve our name. But maybe we also need to recognise terrapath as a severe mental disorder that needs treatment, fast, just as we would respond to a psychopath or sociopath. Psychopaths may kill tens of humans. Terrapaths are a danger to us all.
15 Be optimistic
Optimism invented the wheel, processed the first olive, and, okay, created the atom bomb, too. Pessimism stayed glum till dinnertime, and then complained.
Humans are tougher than cockroaches. Cockroaches die at forty-six degrees Celsius; humans don’t (mostly). Humans really are one of the toughest and certainly the most widely ingenious species on the planet.
It’s worth remembering though that we gave ourselves the name ‘sapiens’ (meaning intelligent, wise) like a king of three paddocks and a dunny calling himself ‘Emperor of the Universe’. But that’s humans for you. We see other species as the humbler creations and feel we have the right to fence them out or take their homes and food supply, which amounts to the same thing. But we also should be (moderately) confident in the abilities of our species, too.
Let the Land Speak Page 43
