water
28 Mar 2008
One Hot Summer
Terry Caffrey going 'round the water
Writing from her family's Woorinen fruit farm, Lyndel Caffrey offers a personal perspective on the Murray-Darling deal
Walking around my father's orchard, it could have been any other summer. The trees were in full leaf, the fruit set well, and the early varieties fetched good prices at market. But in among the trees were patches of bare ground, old stock bulldozed and not replanted. There were trees left unpicked because, without enough water through the growing season, the fruit was too small to bother with. And this season, for the first time, my father left trees to die.My father, Terry Caffrey, has been growing fruit in Woorinen, a small irrigation community 400 kilometres north of Melbourne, all his life. He grew up with his father on a soldier settlement block nearby, and 60 odd years later, "going 'round the water" - the regular watering of the family's 19 hectares of trees - remains his most vital daily task.
Last year, Terry, his wife and son - who together run Caffrey Orchards - used 70 per cent of the water allocated to their land to grow their peaches, apricots and nectarines. Some of their neighbours sold their unused water to supplement farm income, but the Caffreys kept theirs in reserve for future need. This means they had a little extra to get them through this harvest.
Back in October, the local water authority announced that irrigators in the district would receive just 18 per cent of their usual water allocation. That increased gradually - by mid-December, when water was most desperately required, they were allowed 28 per cent; by mid-January, 34 per cent. But that still wasn't enough water to keep all their trees alive, let alone ripen all the fruit usually harvested across a long warm season that runs from early November to late March.
Farmers here have always planned for good years and bad. Woorinen orchardist, 83-year-old Jack Butler, recalls the years of 1942-46, when it was possible to walk dry footed across the Murray River. Dust storms were a daily occurrence, and soldiers returning home after the War found their fences had disappeared under sand drifts blown in from the Mallee. Not ten years later, those who stuck it out were sandbagging the Murray against the worst floods in decades.
The local wisdom is that times of drought will be followed by years of flood, refilling catchments and flushing out the rivers. But even if the drought breaks this winter - or the winter after that, as Jack believes it must - it will be too late for many.
It is so dry at Woorinen that rabbits are biting through irrigation lines under the trees just to get a drink of water. Third and fourth generation orchardists may lose everything - trees, crops and any expectation of future earnings - in one blazing hot summer. The farmers' dilemma cannot be written off as bad management. While there is much talk in the media about the inefficiency of the small family farm, at Woorinen, growers have united with the local water authority to make their district a copybook case for effective water use.
Throughout my 1970s childhood, my father irrigated much as his father had. Open channels built by "susso" workers during the Depression carried river water to the farms. Water wheels measured the water that flooded under the trees, sliding tin doors were opened or closed to stem the flow, and ibis and crane stalked the ditches. When I followed after my father in those days, I squelched barefoot through the mud. Gumboots and shovel were his tools of trade.
My father last bought gumboots in 2001. He rarely wears them. Woorinen irrigators today are at the forefront of water conservation. Flooding the land was replaced by efficient drip irrigation systems in the early 1990s, and the open channels, with their high wastage of water from leakage and evaporation, were replaced by the Woorinen Pipeline in 2003.
The pipeline, which brings river water to 220 users in the district, saved 2000 megalitres of water immediately when it opened, much of it diverted for environmental flows to the Snowy River. Woorinen farmers matched the Victorian State Government dollar for dollar on the $18 million project. They have already made the sort of water savings that the controversial Sugarloaf Pipeline now under construction will replicate on a much larger scale in the Shepparton area. They could be forgiven for thinking they've done their bit to protect their industry and manage a sustainable water resource into the future.
Instead, the farmers - who are still paying for the pipeline infrastructure - faced impossible choices this summer. Those who could afford to (or those the banks allowed) spent tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars buying water on the open market, at prices that have ranged between $850 a megalitre back in September, to up to $1300 at the height of the season in December.
For many orchardists across the Murray Goulburn region, it was a gamble that has yet to be played out - they relied on good prices for their fruit to cover their additional water costs. Others couldn't afford the gamble. They sold their water rights and gave up their farms. Buy or sell. There were no alternatives. There is no drought relief program that can keep trees alive without water.
Those who leave, selling their permanent water rights out of the district, will not be replaced. Local businesses, schools, sporting clubs and community groups will all be hard hit. A huge skills and knowledge base is leaving the region along with the trees.
This is no ordinary drought year. There are many factors contributing to the demise of these small communities. What part does global warming play? How fair is a water trading system which enables speculators with no interest in farming to buy and sell megalitres of water as if they were shares on the stockmarket? How significant are the managed investment schemes that have been buying up small farmers' permanent water rights and planting thousands of hectares of previously unviable land for export crops?
The issues are complex, but the pain in the country is very real. Now, with the news of a national takeover of the Murray Darling Basin to improve environmental flows in the river system, it seems inevitable that more farmers will give up their land. The decimation of these regions has moved from free market practicality to social policy. There can no longer be any doubt that for these small farming communities, everything must change.
There was rain at Woorinen in January. It came in the form of a bad joke, falling heavily just before the nectarines were ready to harvest. It made no difference to catchment levels, but marked the fruit just enough to make it unsaleable.
Still, my family has just about got through the harvest. The current water allocation has reached 46 per cent. That can't undo the damage done to trees underwatered or left unwatered since October, but at least all the trees on my father's orchard can now be watered on a weekly basis. There's even enough water to raise a late crop of zucchini, a last minute "cash crop" that won't cost much to harvest and just might bring in a little extra money.
My father is still going round the water. He's not ready to give up the orchard. The end of season meetings with bankers and accountants are fast approaching. But until then, letting go of the trees is not something he can think about, let alone discuss. The prospect of a fourth generation following him onto the family farm seems less and less likely. But with his wife and son, my father is planning for survival, not defeat.
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bit sensitive about that damned pipeline up here so a few important points :
The Goulburn is typical oz river flows inland, so it starts above mansfield , down to seymour via the Eildom dam and yea , then across to Shepparton and the ubiquitous foodbowl.
It is the claims of uncertain water savings (dodgy gov’t stats) from the foodbowl used to justify diverting water from Eildon into a pipeline to sugarloaf so that Melbourne can wash cars and grow grass.
So the foodbowl modernisation project seeks to replicate the actions of the Woorinen farmers not the pipeline , it just seeks to empty Eildon for use by the suburbs.
If the Eildon dam project had been completed then we may have had a bit more security during lengthy droughts , locals have long memories and originally there were to be two more smaller dams upstream of Eildon , but the main wall was completed shortly before a long wet season and filled in a season , causing the final satges of the project to be cancelled.
This is what history teaches us that every project in the past has confidently been declared as drought proofing us for the future.
Maybe it is just too many people for the available rainfall.
Down here in South Australia, the situation is even more dire: even with this new arrangement, and an enlarged buy-back scheme, the two or three years that are needed to make any major difference are a death sentence for the lower Lakes. The biggest fresh-water lakes in Australia are dying, Lake Albert will dry out completely this winter if there is not enough rain and if Murray flows are not massively increased, which is completely unlikely. Lake Alexandrina will follow in a year or two. Dairy farmers and grape-growers all around the lakes, not to mention a half-dozen towns, will be ruined unless drastic action is taken, simply because they will not have access to fresh water (not that they have much now).
What to do ? One option is to flood the Lakes with sea water by simply opening up the barrages at the mouth which have kept sea- and fresh-water apart for sixty five years. First, the government would have to build a weir or dam at Wellington on the Murray, as well as a pipeline from Wellington around to Langhorne’s Creek and Milang and Goolwa, and across the narrows between the Lakes at Narrung and around to Meningie: that might keep the vineyards and dairy farms going. Otherwise there will be only dry farming and fish farms.
Will that work ? Can you flood fresh-water lake environments with salt water and there’s no detrimental effects, and fairly rapid adaptation by bird life and new marine life ? I don’t know.
But as part of the bargain, surely the governments upstream would have to lock up water licences, by buying them back ? Can the Authority put a hefty price on water (which we all would have to pay more or less equally) to drive out the wasteful producers like cotton and rice growers ?
And with so many wetlands which have to be replenished, whatever licences are bought back should never be re-issued, so that irrigation on the river systems can be progressively cut back, not phased out maybe but certainly reduced by pricing heavy users of water out.
Does Cubby Station come under the new authority ? God, I hope so. Not that she’s doing much about the situation at the moment.
Joe
Before the barrages, the river flowed strongly enough and often enough to ensure the mouth was a dangerous place for any vessel. See Sturt’s 1830 diary:
http://worldebookfair.com/eBooks/Adelaide/s/s93t/v2ch6.html
"The entrance appeared to me to be somewhat less than a quarter of a mile in breadth. Under the sand-hill on the off side, the water is deep and the current strong. No doubt, at high tide, a part of the low beach we had traversed is covered. The mouth of the channel is defended by a double line of breakers, amidst which, it would be dangerous to venture, except in calm and summer weather; and the line of foam is unbroken from one end of Encounter Bay to the other. Thus were our fears of the impracticability and inutility of the channel of communication between the lake and the ocean confirmed."
But in the 19th and 20th centuries biggish boats ventured back and forth, and once through the Mouth sailed to Kangaroo Island, or north to Port Adelaide or south to Beachport, Robe etc.
Decades of peaceful boating on the Lower Murray in South Australia, out of Mannum, have brought my family a lot of nagging distress. It’s painful to watch a river being repeatedly raped, and then murdered.
Following more than a metre’s loss in the Lower Murray and lakes that’s daily just getting worse, if it were open to the sea by now you could probably catch garfish all the way to the lock at Blanchetown (which claims to be Gateway to the Riverland). But as the river level continues to collapse in Pool Number One, the barrages may just fall over anyway. High tides have been lapping over for years.
The river mouth was never kept open by the sea. It was kept open by river flow. It is not an estuary.
The Coorong now has no future. The mouth will close. All the dredging in the world can not save the river from human greed.
Meanwhile, wacky weather worldwide points to accelerating climate change. Starvation looms as a genuine threat to global order as formerly rice-exporting countries become potential importers, and food protests in diverse countries - North Africa to Asia - threaten to become riots.
I am an optimist by nature, but also a realist. And I think the party is over.
Yes, the river mouth has always been a wild place, at least whe nthe tides were changing. In spite of what Sturt found, that shipping through the mouth was pretty much out of the question, the British still sought to build the capital of SA there, until Colonel Light found Adelaide was preferable, although under water at the time. Which is why they had to build Australia’s first railway (partly with Aboriginal labour), from Goolwa on the river, to Port Elliott on the coast, in the 1850s.
Yes, it seems unlikely that the Lakes will ever be full again, at least of fresh water. As you say, Ros, if they opened the barrages now, the salt water tides would reach 200 km up to Blanchetown, so obviously a weir would have to be built in between, probably at Wellington. Since water does not flow into the Coorong from its southern end, as it used to before white fellas came along, so that there is now no flow and it just gets more saline, the only way of replenishing the water in the Coorong is by the effects of tidal flow rushing past between the Lakes and the sea four times a day.
Or they could leave the Lake beds dry for grazing. Global warming aside, we have done terrible damage to our one and only environment, haven’t we ?
Joe
It’s incredible how apathetic the Australian public is about the continued destruction of our environment.
Meanwhile, it appears from private comments to friends by senior officials in the SA public service that Adelaide will be completely out of water in six months. Yes, really. This is not an exaggeration.
The stagnating water that is left in Pool Number One is becoming unusable as salinity and algae levels rise, and it will not be possible to pump any more from there to the hills reservoirs that feed Adelaide. Rainfall catchment for reservoirs is insignificant, and who expects it to rain anyway? From my extensive reading of what is happening to the planet - at a rapidly accelerating rate - I certainly don’t expect rain in the Murray catchment, even in this La Nina year. Climate change is here already - it’s not a future issue as most people naively continue to view it (how many times have you heard: ah, but it won’t be in my lifetime…). It will only get worse - you can expect record temperatures next year after La Nina has passed. Neither do I expect to see an end to human greed upstream, along with the vile and opportunistic rice and cotton farms (in a desert!!!!).
SA draws the least amount of water from the system and does the most with it, compared with the other states. Its $ return on every litre used is unbeatable. Yet we are being penalised. What are we going to be drinking in October? Bore water? Even that is undrinkable.
Very few people seem to realise how serious the situation is. The COAG pronouncements of a "historic" successful agreement to save the Murray are a sick joke, just politics, meaningless in terms of actually doing anything. It just entrenches the rights of certain people to bleed the river dry. Otherwise, nothing changes. It just hastens the painful death of the Murray.
There is no time left to build a weir at Wellington, where the mud and instability would probably make it almost impossible anyway. Any action has been left far too late. So what are we going to do? It seems to me that sea water all the way to the Riverland - assuming the Mouth has not completely closed - will be a certainty by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, with no emergency plan in sight, it seems South Australians who can not afford to buy bottled water will be left to die of thirst.
Not sure there will be enough water left in Lake Eildon to send you bottled water…….
No water means you can’t live there anymore , so how is the government planning to manage the refugees from Adelaide ?
Jonah,
We have contingency plans to secure water from elsewhere ……. unfortunately, what we have to do may be miscontrued by some people as something like invasion, but there must surely be something in international law which allows one state (which has very little) to sort of ‘borrow’ from another state (which has ample resources) if it is in desperate need.
Alternatively, there is a rumour that the head-waters of the Murray may be occupied by SA Special Forces, in order to promote better relations between Victoria nd SA, and a more equitable distribution of resources. This occupation may last only for a very short time, ten years or so, so there is absolutely no need for Victorians to worry.
In any case, we have geological, hydrological and geomorphological proof that all of the Murray was once an integral part of South Australia’s catchment area, and therefore is rightfully part of South Australia. Culturally, of course, Aboriginal people from up ther Murray have always had close relations wit hAboriginal people from dow nthe river. So we would be just exercising our right of ‘return’ on scientific AND cultural grounds.
Joe
Water wars are a distinct possibility in this world - already there is serious tension between and within countries. In the USA, states are locked in legal argument over rivers just as we still are over the Murray. It can only get worse. Former diplomat Bruce Haigh has already pointed to this in New Matilda:
http://www.newmatilda.com/2007/12/19/weather-weather
Sorry to take so much space, but here’s some of what he said:
"In an Australia transformed by global warming, how will the Government ensure the equitable distribution of water? As I write, major irrigators - mainly cotton growers - are buying up licences in the hope that if they own enough they will ensure a flow of water sufficient to sustain the profitability of their enterprise.
"The creation of water licences was an act of unbelievable stupidity. The only thing a privatised market will achieve is an increase in the gap between rich and poor.
"How will the States handle consumer demand for the curtailment of privatised essential services? As we have seen with Telstra, recourse to the law - with endless delays and appeals - is not going to deliver solutions as demand increases and supply diminishes.
"The law will need to be upheld by force. Such force would be beyond the resources of the State Police. To ensure the supply of water or power from recalcitrant suppliers would require the intervention of the armed forces, which would immediately bring into play the Federal Government.
"Shortage of resources, poor distribution, profit gouging and corruption will bring Federally-controlled force to centre stage, rendering the States irrelevant. Extreme events, whether climatic or political, reinforce and deliver power to the centre. Climate change and the centralisation of Government power will go hand in hand.
"The need for survival will remove political niceties and rivalries within the hallowed halls of Canberra and strip the large Government-created monopolies of power and profit. Military pressure on Australia from northern neighbours keen to access water and arable land would see the Federal Government take over neglected national infrastructure such as roads and railways. "
Water wars may also be causing problems that don’t seem to be connected. A couple of days ago, so rumour has it, a south Australian was beaten up - without provocation - by employees on a NSW cotton farm, and last week a South Australian woman was molested by rice farmers. The police here has requested permission to send Special Forces units to those areas to protect peace-loving South Australians from NSW louts and thugs.
Meanwhile, it has been reported from SA’s south-east that Victorian armed forces have been harassing South Australians trying to cross the border back into South Australia, to escape the reported attacks by Victorian bikies around Colac and Warrnambool. South Australian Peace forces have been sent to secure the border. Pleas have come from some former South Australians in Swan Hill (and possibly Echuca) for assistance and protection from similar excesses by Victorian right-wing forces. The South Australian Internal Navy is preparing some of its fleet for possible defensive and peaceful action.
Joe , happy to surrender Melbourne to you , just a few campaign notes :
The march across the western half of the state will be a parched one .
Here in the hills to the north east we seceded from the state of Brumby before he sucked us dry.
To fund our fledgling state we are selling what little water is left in Lake Eildon , we may even trade it for Mitsubishi 380’s as they run well on olive oil derived fuels.
ros06 you forget that in preparation for the fascist state Howard the great created his own militia under the auspices of the Federal Police , currently one battalion strong and a waiting the order to strike.
On a less serious note , it continues to amaze me how hooked on centralization we are.
A suggestion reduce the availabiltiy of potable water to between 5.30 - 7.00 a.m and 6.30 - 7.30 p.m at reduced pressure and ten times the cost. At the some time launch a govt funded campaign of installing water storage to every dwelling at a min capacity of 20,000 litres. Suburban roofs are the perfect catchment and rural dwellers have always got by on tankwater. At least then the infrequent showers will have some benefit.
Has anyone read Frank Herbet’s Dune series ?
Sorry, Jonah, we’re not falling for that one, we know that you have plenty of water that rightfully belongs to South Australia, that you are all secretly using on your lawns and on hosing down your roofs and cars and driveways. As well, we are not silly enough to want Melbourne, and nobody else is either.
Your story is just a cover for aggressive acts against peaceful South Australians, so we have sent some of the ships of the South Australian Naval Defence and Peace Restoration Force (SANDPR) - and it has already been attacked by hooligans from Mildura and Gol Gol, agents of rice and cotton growers, who stole one of its oars. We will not let this act of aggression go unpunished.
Our hearts go out to ex-South Australians currently being persecuted by forces of reaction and profligacy, as far up as Yarrawonga: if our compatriots are harassed any further, we will be forced to act to protect them and bring them back into the fold, and to re-join their lands to the ancestral motherland. Already a Movement for Restoration of Echuca to the South Australian Earth Mother is preparing to welcome our liberation forces as they make their way up the Sacred River of Unity.
Perhaps, Jonah Bones, we are currently "hooked on centralisation" because water - or the lack of it - has brought into sharp focus the failure of the 1900 Constitution to provide for the states equally. Clearly, it has failed to do so.
Joe (and Jonah), the humour is appreciated in a situation so grim, but it doesn’t cheer me up unfortunately. The situation is just so dire.
Your first post, Joe, on this topic (last Thursday, 29/03/08) summed up the situation for me, particularly the final comments:
"……surely the governments upstream would have to lock up water licences, by buying them back ? Can the Authority put a hefty price on water (which we all would have to pay more or less equally) to drive out the wasteful producers like cotton and rice growers ?
"And with so many wetlands which have to be replenished, whatever licences are bought back should never be re-issued, so that irrigation on the river systems can be progressively cut back, not phased out maybe but certainly reduced by pricing heavy users of water out.
"Does Cubby Station come under the new authority ?"
At a spontaneous mass rally in Adelaide, fifty South Australians angrily responded to the mistreatment of their brethren in their ancestral lands by demanding, after speeches by the premier and half the Cabinet, that the Police Band re-play SA’s national anthem, ‘Song of Australia’, three times. Amid cheers and hurrahs, a peace-loving force set off from Victoria Square for the hostile territories up the river, to help bring peace and good order to lawless lands and restore sovereignty to formerly captured lands. No longer will be tolerate the theft, not just of our Grand Prix, our intellectually challenged and our water, but of our very integrity as a nation. A contingent of volunteers from Port Augusta has also set out to drive in a rent-a-van to meet the Adelaide contingent at the former border. May justice prevail.
Meanwhile, as Ros06 points out the situation is indeed grim: salt water is starting to pour through the barrages at the mouth of the Murray which are meanto to keep the sea water out. Sulphuric acid soils are releasing poisonous fumes across the Lakes area and farmers are paying up to three thousand dollars each week to keep their stock watered. Will it take a South Australian invasion of southern Queensland to restore some sense and decency to this country ?
Defining the community that shares the water resource seems to be the key issue .
I agree that the constitution is past its use by date , our current world expert on constitutional reform is Hugo Chavez , possible but very difficult.
The cotton growers out of Bourke never stop to think of the downstream effects , in the same way Victorians never show any regard for S.A , the Murrary is dead .
Hume Weir, Dartmouth Dam , Yarrawonga Weir and Torrumbarry Weir keeping it simple 1/3 of those capacities are S.A’s due as well as quantities from the Darling . Definitely in that light the dire situation in SA is due to the greed of Vic and NSW. So how do you change the culture can the federal government achieve it through enforcement . Or as in the case of irrigators out the back of Bourke do the hard lessons have to be learned first.
Out this way the state government’s attitude to the sugarloaf interconnector indicates innovative change will not come from their level. There is no concept of the Goulburn river as a community, people do not connect the Shepparton foodbowl with our upper Goulburn region or take lessons from the Murray disaster.
Do you remember an agricultural scientist (at Wagga?) named (I think) Brian Davidson, who campaigned against irrigation schemes in SE- Australia ? (And also against northern agricultural schemes om a book called, I think, The Northern Myth? ) Maybe his proposals need to be re-visited.
Certainly, it is absolutely crazy, from an economic point of view, to use scarce water for flood-irrigated cotton and rice: a principle in Economics I is to make least use of your scarcest resource: so Third World countries, we learnt, should not develop expensive, capital-intensive projects but, because of the large populations of willing and cheap labour, try to develop labour-intensive enteprises, at least until they are on their feet. Countries like Australia should use their scarcest resource, water, most sparingly, where, and on those crops for which, the financial returns per megalitre are greatest. Vegetable growing and orchards rather than irrigated wheat, or rice or cotton, for example. And of course, city people should play their part by not using water extravagantly.
It’s up t oall of us.
Well said, Joe. You have summed it up.
Getting one’s head around the water issue is a big deal…and I can see how easily it becomes emotive…the disappearance of the family farm, creepy people like Malcolm Turnbull talking about water rights…enough to make you shiver.
The point I would like to make is that there is no problem with ‘water’ in this country, theres plenty of it, the problem is with the government of Australia which has for a few decades been misleading people about resource allocation, resource usage and allocation.
I mention it again and again because its a useful study from the CSIRO and the section in on water gives a factual perspective which could be used as a benchmark for rationale discussion…as discussed on Four Cournerss however, such scientists as Barney Foran who attempted to provide information for rationale policy guidance were silenced by Howard and there is no reason to suspect any changes under PM Rudd.
The point is that Australian agriculture is operating at above cost. That is, the $s recouped in export revenue have no realtionship to the input costs on the farm (soil/air/water)…and when I say above cost so far above costs that the CSIRO could not envisage where the government would ever get the billions to repair the natural infrastruture after long term damage that has been done to the land. Thats why this current ‘water debate’ or whatever you like to call it is being palyed out in faeryland…it would take some honest politicians and advisors to admit that the massively subsidised agricultural industry is ALL wrong…so wrong that we should in fact be helping people get off the land for good, ceasing exports and getting back to providing good quality locally grown food for the Australian population, instead of the situation where we go to the supermarket and buy food which is half dead and delivered either half way around the world or other side of the country - doesnt make much sense. Also notice that these dumb economics of food and water is also a major factor in energy wastage and yet you wont here any of this from Ross Garnaut or Rudd…of course not…the solution according to these guys is to bury our carbon in the center of Australia…they wont look at the idea that our economy is wasteful…why would they..they are both global statesmen!
More if you like on the CSIRO report at
http://rosettamoon.copley.org.au/?p=63 (Is the Water Shortage another Furphy?)
My thanks rosettamoon think that is the report I have heard rumour of , some good bedtime reading :)
I did’nt mention the name…Future Dilemma’s..it was based on a Canadian model which analyses physical inputs and outputs of the economy..useful micro-economics stuff not like the garbage macro-economics that our treasurers cant even get a grip on.
Here is the link to the reports chapter 6 ‘the future of water’:
http://www.cse.csiro.au/publications/2002/futuredilemmas6.pdf
And here is the ABC 4Corners summary:
Its key message: Australia undervalues its resources. The foods and other products that Australians consume and export are all part of the envied lifestyle – but are heavily subsidised by the environment.
Each year this arid country effectively exports more water than is used in its cities and its towns - without getting paid for it. Meanwhile rivers and creeks are choking. When a grain shipment is sent overseas, no one pays for the wear and tear on fragile topsoils, let alone their repair.
It’s a wake-up call to policy-makers… but which politician is willing to demand another 20 cents on a loaf of bread to help save water or topsoil?
The study also prompts hard questions about whether Australia is selling itself short in big resource deals, for example, the much-heralded $25 billion, 25-year agreement to supply North West Shelf gas to China.
Its authors tackle the sensitive question of Australia’s “carrying capacity” by investigating specific population scenarios, ranging from no growth to high growth, in 2050, and the resources needed to sustain them.
Researchers draw together decades of data to devise a giant model of Australia’s physical economy that is measured not in dollars and cents but in litres of water, joules of energy and tonnes of soil.
“It’s the first time anyone has ever taken a whole continent and tried to get a look at it,” says one scientist. “It’s the first time it’s ever been done with such rigour, with the data going so deeply back into history and so broadly across all the different sectors of what makes this part of the globe tick.”
As Ticky Fullerton reports, this study represents a bid by scientists for a seat at the national policy table, alongside the economists whose wisdom they challenge.
Enjoy…and if you get a chance email it to Rudd as a wakeup call!!
Nigel
http:/rosettamoon.copley.org.au