Pixelated Semantics

A schizotypical inventory

Rotting and burning

A telling article from the SMH today, quoting Jared Diamond:

"While 60 per cent of Australia's land area and 80 per cent of its human water use are dedicated to agriculture, the value of agriculture relative to other sectors of the Australian economy has been shrinking to the point where it now contributes less than 3 per cent of the gross national product. That's a huge allocation of land and scarce water to an enterprise of such low value. Furthermore, it is astonishing to realise that over 99 per cent of the agricultural land makes little or no positive contribution to Australia's economy. It turns out that about 80 per cent of Australia's agricultural profits are derived from less than 0.8 per cent of its agricultural land ...

Most of Australia's remaining agriculture is in effect a mining operation that does not add to Australia's wealth but merely converts environmental capital of soil and native vegetation irreversibly into cash, with the help of indirect government subsidies ..."

He goes on to state

"Australia still clears more native vegetation per year than any other First World country ... rotting and burning of the bulldozed vegetation contribute to Australia's annual greenhouse gas emissions a gas quantity approximately equal to the country's total motor vehicle emissions"

However the Herald's writer does not leave us in the despair of statistics, but almost joyfully concludes "in historical terms, we're not edging towards a turning point, we're sprinting" - a sentiment I suspect that is more palliative than realistic. There are an awful lot of Australians yet to see this situation clearly at all, let alone change their destructive habits. This "news" should be clearly understood as sobering and not at all reassuring, and without seeking to declare war on agriculturalists, perhaps will hasten the demise of the political and cultural stranglehold of a sector that has held Australians virtually to ransom for generations on the false promise of "wealth" that is in fact worth about a handfull of salt.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 10:40 am ::