Why we needed and need an “Australian Treaty” or a boycott of Australian farming

This morning, I found the alarming news that Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have soared by 82 percent since 1990. This is far above the appalling eight percent increase allowed under the Kyoto Protocol – let alone the 99 percent reduction without any reductions abroad that would have been required under a rational treaty.

Although it took me a decade to realise how unsustainable farming Australia’s Paleozoic-age soils actually is, the revelation that most of Australia’s greenhouse emissions come either from land clearing or bushfires shows that directing pressure exclusive towards the car and fossil fuel industries is wrong. Instead, we need to pressure for a large-scale revegetation of Australia’s farmland and a really radical transformation of southern Australia’s economy from farming-based to ecotourism-based. Under the likely disappearance of the winter rainfall zone and drying of the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers, Australia would have the following alternatives:

1. find another source of irrigation water, which could be either desalination or pipelines from the always relatively well-watered and increasingly wet north of Australia.
2. convert relatively intensive farming to the low-intensity cattle rearing historically found in central and northern Australia
3. do nothing and permit the area to become the desert wasteland found in the interior of Western Australia

None of these would avoid the huge costs in species loss and carbon absorption that a poleward expansion of twenty degrees in the edge of the Hadley circulation (which marks the maximally arid latitude) would produce.

In contrast, a genuine effort to revegetate southern Australia’s farmland would at least reduce the extent of species loss and, potentially do a great deal to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. In my opinion, requisite revegetation of southern Australia’s farms possesses no limit. Lying invariably upon extremely old soils severely deficient in phosphorus, nitrogen and trace elements, and often toxic in salt, they are suitable for agriculture only via advanced machinery and fertilisation. Moreover, Australia’s Paleozoic-era soils are a strictly non-renewable resource contrariwise to the very young soils of Eurasia, the Americas, New Zealand or even East Africa. Even with strictly organic methods, farming in Australia is less sustainable than in those regions, especially when one factors in the carbon storage of native flora adapted to the poor soils.

More than that, the extreme efficiency and cheapness of Australian farming squeezes out all traditional cultures elsewhere in the world. The suicidally low fertility rates in Eurasia, most of the Americas, and New Zealand reflect how traditional farming communities, even if culturally often flawed, have dissipated and been replaced by crowded, noisy cities whose effect is to create a radically materialist and self-centred culture quite unlike Australia’s spacious suburbs where families can quietly grow. Full revegetation of Australian farmland would also create vital opportunities to save ecologically critical land, especially in southwestern Western Australia where winter rainfall has declined by 40 percent compared to 1885 to 1967 averages.

We should undoubtedly set a goal of all southern Australia’s farmland being revegetated merely as a precaution against likely rainfall declines. However, the problem is that the government, deprived of agricultural exports, may not have nearly enough money to pay by itself for such an immense long-term project – no matter how ecologically essential it is.

In this context, we have two choices:

1. to campaign for an international “Australian Treaty” to make sure that Australia’s farmland is revegetated. Such a treaty is far more justifiable ecologically than the 1959 Antarctic Treaty (now celebrated as a landmark) which protected a continent whose immense ice cover makes any economic activity incredibly inefficient and whose absence of native biodiversity makes the actual cost thereof insignificant. In theory, an “Australian Treaty” would be a very good idea, for it would preserve something immeasurably more ancient and unique than the Antarctic Treaty and give economic opportunities to use the solitary natural resource in most Eurasian and North American nations. In practice, however, Australia’s political power internationally and the difficulty of outsiders enforcing an “Australian Treaty” is overwhelming
2. for people abroad to consciously avoid buying Australian farming products and recognising that, even if they are cheap, they are produced at an unacceptable ecological cost. This idea has been put forward (without knowing the best reason) by extreme conservatives, and they are to be credited for realising that local family agriculture is the only defence against demographic decline. If combined with a real understanding of how ecologically destructive farming in Australia is and efforts by parents to show how radically different soils in Australia are from those in other “developed nations”, such a boycott could serve to limit Australia’s farming exports and encourage innovation taken for granted overseas. The problem with this method is that it does not address Australia’s superabundant mineral resources and resultant overpopulation, and the dependence even of locally-centred people on these minerals. This could even encourage more overpopulation in Australia as its farms increasingly feed a local population.

Combining these two strategies is a worthy goal, but another undoubted key is shutting down the fertilisers that permit Australia’s extremely cheap, but unsustainable, farming. This issue is itself problematic and requiring extra attention.

How industry will redirect to Australia

In today’s Sydney Morning Herald, eminent climate scientist Guy Pearse points how how China’s action on climate change is putting the Rudd Government to shame and that Rudd is being heavily influenced by the notion that Australia can burn coal more cheaply than any other nation. His point that China is

“closing down inefficient ones at the extraordinary rate of Victoria’s Loy Yang B power station every three weeks. Chinese coal-fired power generation is already cleaner than ours”

and that

“China is also investing in renewables at twice the rate we are per unit of GDP”

This is the most utter shame for a nation whose per capita carbon emissions should be set, even by fiat decree, at no more than one twentieth the world average and probably as little as one-hundredth.

In terms of climatic and ecological impact, Australia should merely to be a member of the international community rather than an absolute pariah state to have by far the best public transport in the world and utterly rigid laws against any private ownership of motorised transport or transformation of bushland to mining or farming uses.

The problem, which is still not grasped by anybody, is that in spite of the cheap labour costs of Asian nations today, this cheapness cannot last simply because they have relative to Australia a very limited supply of land for a very large population. If we exclude the areas under (mostly discontinuous) permafrost, China has about the same supply of land as Australia, but most of it is steep, so that it has fifty times the population on half as much or less usable land. India is worse, with the same population on probably half as much usable land as China.

Australia’s surfeit of land naturally pushes down the cost of farming and ultimately of living in general, with the result that at an “equal” level of development the dollar or other currency unit goes much further in Australia than anywhere else. As I have said many times, this eliminates the incentive to innovate, but that lack of incentive for innovation makes for much more favourable conditions for family development, which as has been noted tend to breed an extremely conservative culture. In the context of Australia’s need for extraordinarily high environmental standards, this problem of a pacified majority in spacious housing is made worse by a powerful car and fossil fuel lobby linked as a “greenhouse mafia” and able to dictate to politicians what they may do – which quite simply cannot correspond with the ecological need to be by far the smallest per capita energy comsumer in the world.

"Not So Hottest 100"

Today, my brother introduced to me a list that musician Dave Graney had, following the leadership of The Australian, referred to as "the not-so-hottest 100" by ABC youth station Triple J.

The point that there were no female artists may be the less surprising when one considers that Australia's fragile, arid environment and (as I point out here) superabundant natural inorganic resources do not allow for the mystical, feminine, arty, nature-loving type of artist that has produced so much of the great music of the past forty years and which is very rarely done by anybody other than a woman. It is true that women trying to play rock and roll proper can be highly ineffective because they so often come across as posturers, but when women focus upon their own natural gifts and abilities they can be as good or better artists than men. This is as true of Edith Sitwell's poetry as the music of, say Laura Nyro or Kate Bush or Björk or the Cocteau Twins.

The claim, though, that it nonetheless was a "not-so-hottest 100" by Graney is rather silly when one sees that in fact he manages to praise quite a number of these songs, viz:

4. Joy Division: “Love Will Tear Us Apart”: Great song. Singer's death took it into Barbara Cartland territory forever.

8. Red Hot Chili Peppers: “Under The Bridge”: Therapy. Though their songs do stand a lot of continuous pounding on the airwaves and still sound fresh. Took until the 1000th involuntary hearing for me to rise to that opinion.

19. Metallica: “One”: These boys are deserving of any award.

22. Massive Attack: “Teardrop”: Don’t know this one. I like most of their stuff.

26. Michael Jackson: “Thriller”: Brilliant. And popular.

27. Powderfinger: “My Happiness”: I applaud any Australian act who has penetrated the mob skull this far.

30. Jimi Hendrix: “All Along the Watchtower”: Great performance and recording. Nobody could follow this guy in any area. Used to great effect in the film Withnail and I

31. Metallica: “Enter Sandman”: Of course. A great track.

32. New Order: “Blue Monday”: Late night student disco favourite. I always love to hear this.

41. Michael Jackson: “Billie Jean”: Classic. He must be getting lonely as there are so few brothers in the house.

43. The Beach Boys: “God Only Knows”: Classic.

45. Queens of the Stone Age: “No One Knows”: I’d prefer something from Era Vulgaris Maybe “In The Hollow”. This is undeniably funky though.

48. Beastie Boys: “Sabotage”: Yes, innovators and crossers of boundaries. Loons. Icons.

55. Bob Dylan: “Like A Rolling Stone”: Yes, it's almost worth all the ******* talk about it.

61. Blur: “Song 2”: Why not?

62. Nine Inch Nails: “Closer”: Yeah, it’s nasty!

70. The Prodigy: “Breathe”: Yeah, they’re nasty too

71. The Smiths: “How Soon Is Now?”:Their best song. Great Bo Diddley grooves. Where's Bo?

76. The Stone Roses: “Fools Gold”: Yes. A real one-off classic.

79. David Bowie: “Life on Mars”: I would have had five or six Bowie tracks. Can’t argue with this. “All time”, remember?<

84. Bob Marley and The Wailers: “No Woman, No Cry”: A sentimental track, I would have gone for something more bouncy by The Wailers.

85. The Dandy Warhols: “Bohemian Like You”: Yeah, they’re groovers.

88. The Rolling Stones: “Gimme Shelter”: Great chord sequence. Great vibe.

90. Kings of Leon: “Sex on Fire”: Good subject and they look better since they dropped the fake beards.

93. Massive Attack: “Unfinished Sympathy”: Yes, a classic.

95. Stevie Wonder: “Superstition”: A stone-cold classic from the groove to the bass sound to the lyrics. Written for Jeff Beck, but so good Stevie had to do it himself.

98. Led Zeppelin: “Kashmir”: Great drums and the mellotron. Of course!

Given Graney's praise for these songs, it is just like any ordinary list with which one has major issues with. I have met so many of these lists that it becomes quite familiar to me - for example I certainly like some of the music that appears on Rolling Stone's lists of the best albums. The criticism that does occur, too, is often really aggressive and rude, at the same time lacking the skill Joe S. Harrington used to make such crude language palatable (I still keep a highly edited copy of Harrington's wonderful early-2000s best albums list for giving to people I meet).

Is it too early for a list?

Recent weeks have seen my e-mail filled with lists of the greatest albums of 2009. Although I have a genuine love for lists of the "best" or "worst" books or albums or even individual artists, I have been largely disappointed by these lists.

I will confess that I have had far more to think about musically than music of the last decade, especially as Piero Scaruffi, and by now my own listening experience, tell me that most supposedly innovative music takes clear and obvious cues from such artists as Can and the ISB. This is however ignored by people who, like I admit I was for a long time, merely contented with enjoyment of music rather than understanding it in a broader manner that allows one to see how music developed and even how it interacted with other art forms.

The recent lists, however, simply do not take this into account. For the most part, all one sees are lists that do not relate albums of the 2000s to their influences or the history of music. The recent list by Rolling Stone is an example, and even though the information upon which it was based is taken from is over half a decade old and I have never heard the music, I can agree with such omissions as Mastodon and Tool. Other lists by lower-profile publications are very similar in character.

The bone of the issue is that we cannot see clearly what recordings will last well beyond the ending decade. We will have to know what music has been genuinely trend-setting and/or has remained completely unique before we can think of a genuinely accurate list. This in fact takes much more than merely an immediate examination - in fact it is more likely to take decades.

Cricketers Who Missed Out: An Introduction

The 2008 issue of Wisden discusses several high-class cricketers who missed out on being a Cricketer of the Year, and profiles Abdul Qadir, Bishan Bedi, Wes Hall, Jeff Thomson and Inzamam-ul-Haq. I myself am not certain about Thomson and Qadir, neither of whom did their best bowling in English conditions, and could have favoured Gundappa Viswanath on number of runs scored alone, Sarfraz Nawaz on the basis of his strength and his English record, or Trevor Goddard, who must have been unlucky not to be chosen in place of Frank Tyson in 1956. (Tyson's selection is an oddity being based on his doings in Australia as he was injured for half the English season).

Ever since I first read the article at the beginning of this year, I have wanted to have a look at another group of players (of whom one is mentioned in the linked text) who missed out on being a Cricketer of the Year for reasons quite different from the five players mentioned above. In the Wisdens of 1913, 1921 and 1926, there were no Cricketers of the Year. Instead, there were special portraits of Almanac founder John Wisden (1913), Pelham Warner (1921) and Jack Hobbs (1926, as a result of his record run-making in 1925.)

Ever since I first noted these omissions as a result of merely looking through Wisden's Births and Deaths of Cricketers, I have wondered who missed out as a result of these decisions. Recently I have tried to contact Wisden without success about this question, so it is clear to me I must work on this sadly neglected issue in cricket history myself. I thus plan to discuss likely and potential Cricketers of the Year for 1913, 1921 and 1926 in my next few posts.

I will point out here that at least in 1913 and 1926 there is considerable likelihood that some members of the most probably Five Cricketers of the Year were actually chosen at a later date. When I first looked at the issue of Cricketers of the Year missing because of the 1913, 1921 and 1926 special portraits, I entirely overlooked this. Now, however, I realise I must not only look at the likely choices who never did obtain another chance, but also at gaps the presence of Cricketers of the Year in 1913, 1921 and 1926 would have created from the actual choices of later Wisdens.

It is a pity I have obtained no photographs of most potential candidates, but I hope you will learn much nonetheless.