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Conclusions

 

Australian impact on global climate is insignificant. Our main contribution is likely to be indirect by way of diplomatic efforts to change global behaviour or through research into solutions that can be applied globally. Climate is likely to change no matter what we do. In Australia we are all too familiar with the effects of natural climate fluctuations. 

The degree to which human activity changes climate is related to our level of resource utilisation.  Although energy consumption is very important in this equation so too are mineral extraction and processing, farming and land clearing, pollution of oceans and lakes and the shear number of humans and their consequent demands for food and shelter.  Not only does excessive population lead to stresses on the biosphere of the planet; it makes huge numbers of people highly vulnerable to relatively minor changes in that biosphere.

Sudden climate change is just one of a number of a range of potential catastrophes that might befall the planet. It is important that while doing all possible to mitigate the impacts of increasing resource exploitation we:

  1. commit more resources to means to respond flexibly to climate change than to trying to prevent it and;
  2. treat the disease (over-population) not just the symptoms (like greenhouse gasses).

We need to focus on the possible. An appropriate response is to ensure that resource and transport efficiency is optimised and energy waste is reduced. 

Another is to explore less polluting energy sources. This needs to be explored more critically.  Each so-called green power option should be carefully analysed for whole of life energy and greenhouse gas production against the benchmark of present technology before going beyond the demonstration or experimental stage.

Much more important are the cultural and technological changes needed to minimise World overpopulation. We desperately need to remove the socio-economic drivers to larger families, young motherhood and excessive personal consumption (from resource inefficiencies to long journeys to work). 

Climate change may be inevitable. We should be working to climate “harden” the production of food, ensure that public infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, hospitals, utilities and so) on are designed to accommodate change and that the places people live are not excessively vulnerable to drought, flood or storm.

Only by solving these problems will we have any hope of finding solutions to the other pressures human expansion is imposing on the planet.  It is time to start looking for creative answers for NSW and Australia now.

 

 

Richard McKie                   

October 1990 /March 2000

 

 

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Travel

Burma (Myanmar)

 

This is a fascinating country in all sorts of ways and seems to be most popular with European and Japanese tourists, some Australians of course, but they are everywhere.

Since childhood Burma has been a romantic and exotic place for me.  It was impossible to grow up in the Australia of the 1950’s and not be familiar with that great Australian bass-baritone Peter Dawson’s rendition of Rudyard Kipling’s 'On the Road to Mandalay' recorded two decades or so earlier:  

Come you back to Mandalay
Where the old flotilla lay
Can't you hear their paddles chunking
From Rangoon to Mandalay

On the road to Mandalay
Where the flying fishes play
And the Dawn comes up like thunder
out of China 'cross the bay

The song went Worldwide in 1958 when Frank Sinatra covered it with a jazz orchestration, and ‘a Burma girl’ got changed to ‘a Burma broad’; ‘a man’ to ‘a cat’; and ‘temple bells’ to ‘crazy bells’.  

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Fiction, Recollections & News

Oppenheimer

 

 

When we were in Canada in July 2003 we saw enough US TV catch the hype when Christopher Nolan's latest ‘blockbuster’: Oppenheimer got its release.

This was an instance of serendipity, as I had just ordered Joseph Kannon’s ‘Los Alamos’, for my Kindle, having recently read his brilliant ‘Stardust’.  Now here we were in Hollywood on the last day of our trip. Stardust indeed!  With a few hours to spare and Wendy shopping, I went to the movies:

Oppenheimer, the movie - official trailer

 

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Opinions and Philosophy

Electric Cars revisited (again)

  

Electric vehicles like: trams; trains; and electric: cars; vans; and busses; all assist in achieving better air quality in our cities. Yet, to the extent that the energy they consume is derived from our oldest energy source, fire: the potential toxic emissions and greenhouse gasses simply enter the atmosphere somewhere else.

Back in 2005 I calculated that in Australia, due to our burning coal, oil and sometimes rural waste and garbage, to generate electricity, grid-charged all-electric electric cars had a higher carbon footprint than conventional cars.

In 2019, with a lot of water under the bridge; more renewables in the mix; and much improved batteries; I thought it was worth a revisit. I ran the numbers, using more real-world data, including those published by car companies themselves. Yet I got the same result: In Australia, grid-charged all-electric cars produce more greenhouse gasses than many conventional cars for the same distance travelled.

Now, in the wake of COP26, (November 2021), with even more water under the bridge, the promotion of electric cars is back on the political agenda.  Has anything changed?

 

Read more: Electric Cars revisited (again)

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