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Damage control - a greater problem than climate change

By Valerie Yule - posted Thursday, 14 May 2009


There are now many books about the damage to the earth caused by people, yet the damage is accelerating. What has happened to all the precious metals and other minerals extracted for thousands of years, and which now require even more earth-damaging mining to find more? Why is the waste accelerating?

Where are the “unspoiled beaches” of my childhood? They used to be a tram-ride away. People seek other unspoiled beaches now, to spoil.

This sounds like wallowing in gloom - but it is meant to be crying “Fire!” which always causes people to do something.

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Even small things can have big consequences in preventing damage. Governments do not always have to be the bodies to pay for all the action.

Australia could, for example, stop the baby bonus after the second child - so that we are not hypocrites if we try to help other countries to stabilise their runaway population growth. Going from a global population of 6 billion to 9 billion people in 50 years really is something to be terrified about. The drivers of population growth need to be challenged for promoting their own interests so selfishly.

There can be more urgent research about sustainable food-growing, and another way to prevent bushfires than burning off with its accumulating loss of nutrients through smoke.

We can urge that 4WDs do NOT go off the beaten tracks to spread more destruction. Goats should not be given as overseas aid to places where they will eat out sparse vegetation. We can stop tolerating the pests and vermin that are increasing even in our cities. We can salvage and re-use whatever we can, and find thousands of jobs for salvage, renovation and repairs, to replace the thousands of jobs that at present waste resources and lives. Boycott products with built-in-obsolescence. Insist that our cotton clothes are durable, to reduce the environmental costs of cotton-growing. We can save more forests by halving use of paper through not wasting it, and by not destroying so much good housing to build worse - without which tree-hugging is futile.

We can consider what exactly soldiers are doing to help the poverty-stricken populations in lands where they can appear as foreigners, without even language to communicate, but at immense environmental costs.

Native Americans are reported to thank the creatures that must eat for food. We can think of how the petrol we are driving with was once trees, billions of years ago. Our councils and galleries can have pictures of Then and Now, so everyone can see what we have lost or gained, and realise what we may still lose or gain.

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Jonathan Swift said several centuries ago, that whoever could make two blades of grass grow where one grew before was a greater benefactor than - I forget who, but most of the celebrities we venerate. Today we need to be able to make trees and grass grow where nothing now grows.

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About the Author

Valerie Yule is a writer and researcher on imagination, literacy and social issues.

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