The policies of our two main parties bear no relationship with this analysis. Both will try to expand the economy: praising and calling for more increase in 'consumption', i.e. ever greater demand on a finite natural environment. Both will assist conventional transport: assistance to the car industry, more money for roads. Both will assist the further expansion of fossil fuel use through exports and encouragement for fracking in the Cooper basin and elsewhere. Both favour high immigration which together with strong encouragement for more consumption imposes a double whammy on Australia's natural environment.
Recognition of the need for a radical change of economic and social direction is inevitable. We need to face it now when there are still supplies of relatively cheap but soon-to-be-declining readily available energy and to use that energy to make the transition to a society based on renewable sources living a dynamic steady-state economy. Once these traditional energy sources are beyond reach it will not be possible to build the renewable energy infrastructure.
It seems to me unlikely that either would-be leader will embrace this alternative view but that within the lifetime of the incoming government our energy/resource/economic system will begin to seriously unravel. The then leader will not understand what is happening and will have no answers.
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At this crucial time in human history Australian politics could not be in worse hands.
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About the Author
John Coulter is a retired medical research scientist who spent the last eight years of his working life, 1987- 1995, as a Democrat Senator for South Australia. He is no longer a member of any political party. He has been heavily involved with the conservation movement since the mid 1950s at all levels from local to international.