Removing an incongruent dislinkage between pollution and greenhouse gases

For a long time - notably in my old Urban Environments class at the University of Melbourne - there was a tendency to believe that polluted cities tended to have very low greenhouse gas emissions because they tended to be compact Tropical (or in an earlier era, Enriched) World cities where mass transit was run at a profit, but where heavy industry was not subject to pollution regulations for such gases as SO₂, NO₂, volatile organic compounds and CO.

This tendency has affected the conservative side of politics especially. Conservatives give a free pass to the exceptionally bad greenhouse gas emissions of Australia and South Africa, on the basis that their strongly capitalist political systems are likely to be more efficient at controlling local air pollution, regardless of the cost in terms of global emissions of CO₂ of low-density cities and exceptionally powerful road lobbies.

Via my email link to Care2, this is the top ten most polluted countries in the world:

Rank	Country	Ecological Region
#10	Bosnia/Herzegovina	Enriched
#9	Mexico	Tropical Enriched
#8	Egypt	“Arid Northeastern”
#7	China	Enriched
#6	Saudi Arabia	“Arid Northeastern”
#5	Botswana	Unenriched
#4	Pakistan	Enriched “Arid Northeastern”
#3	India	Enriched Tropical
#2	Mongolia	Enriched
#1	Iran	Enriched “Arid Northeastern”

Via another link from the Italian MilanMun school, which aims to give people experience of living outside their own land and to understand its problems, an equivalent list - more subversive than Care2, I will state, is:

Rank	Country	Ecological Region
#10	Kuwait	“Arid Northeastern”
#9	Nigeria	Tropical
#8	Iran	Enriched “Arid Northeastern”
#7	United Arab Emirates	“Arid Northeastern”
#6	Egypt	“Arid Northeastern”
#5	Saudi Arabia	“Arid Northeastern”
#4	Senegal	Tropical
#3	Pakistan	Enriched “Arid Northeastern”
#2	Botswana	Unenriched
#1	Mongolia	Enriched

Countries of the Sahara and Arabian Deserts I have listed separately because, though they are nothing like the Unenriched World geologically and have heavy supplies of nutrients that Australia and Southern Africa lack from mountain building and dust, they do strongly retain some of the ecological qualities like cooperative animal societies, nomadism and irregular breeding so typical of the Unenriched World but absent in the cooler parts of the Enriched. Their economies are also strikingly similar to Australia and Southern Africa, illustrating how the contrast between Australia and Southern Africa versus the rest of the world is more nearly Eastern Hemisphere/Western Hemisphere than Southern Hemisphere/Northern Hemisphere.

The case of Gaborone, in probably the most similar country to Australia in the world once cultural veneers are dismantled (as they should have been in 1991 when Tom McMahon published his groundbreaking Global Runoff: Continental Comparisons of Annual Flows and Peak Discharges), is telling for advocates of capitalism as the solution to pollution. Like Australia, Botswana and Gaborone has an arid climate and abudant supplies of land and minerals, plus a government and “ruled” classes unwilling or unable to tackle the long-term environmental problems this abundance can create.

The similarity between Australia’s bad greenhouse gas emissions and the pollution in Gaborone and Johannesburg: a mining industry that largely controls the government - is not entirely lost on Kevin Williamson’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, but what Williamson does not grasp is that big business with unlimited resources taking over government is likely to externalise costs much more than big government nationalising oil. The wealth mineral corporations in the Unenriched World possess from mining industrially essential raw materials permits them to directly write government policy in their own interests, and to prevent any regulation that would affect their interests. As huppi.com shows, the most poorly regulated industrial or mineral economies, like Australia, have the poorest environmental records because big business can with the aid of government externalise is costs, like drying of Perth’s former water supply or air pollution in dryland cities.

In contrast, a government nationalising an oil company is likely to be under much more pressure from the ballot boxes or mass mobilisation as is general in the Enriched World. Thus, when government has the upper hand in partnership with business, it is less immune to pressure for regulation even when ecologically this is greatly less pressing than in Australia or Southern Africa.

Why international condemnation of Australia is hope for the planet

Hearing of a ridiculous debate on GOLD-FM about whether the government should:

1. build the wasteful East/West underground toll road
2. spend more money on other roads

had made me wish to draw attention to the critical issue of how Australia’s exceptionally bad greenhouse gas emissions must be the initial target of every international environmental treaty.

Australia has the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world, yet has the fourth highest biodiversity of any country in the world according to the Encyclopedia of Biodiversity.


At the same time, Australia has probably the lowest average terrestrial and marine secondary productivity (that is, animal biomass per unit of land or water volume) of any country – let alone continent – in the world. Combined these imply that conservation of Australia’s exceptionally ancient and infertile landscapes should be one of the highest priorities for the international environmental movement. Even species listed as “Least Concern” due to “having an extremely large range” by the IUCN need to be considered carefully because home ranges for species in Australia can be more than 1 km² in most of the continent as against many pairs per hectare in the Enriched World.

More than that, Australia’s large mineral resources give its governments a refused opportunity to pay for conservation of areas of land that Enriched World nations like the United States would struggle to do – especially were it to charge entry fees to visitors who might acquire appreciation of how different the behaviour of Australia’s flora and fauna is from animals native to the northern and western hemispheres.

In this context, the building of freeways – or even maintenance thereof – by any government in Australia is despicable. Australia has no need for these roads: they are a primary source of increased traffic congestion and financial losses for railways – to which Australia’s flatness and fragility makes it quite uniquely suited among the continents. Building of freeways is nothing more or less than the same policies that Australia’s governments have adopted to disastrous effect for the past eighty years, with very bad environmental consequences for the species-rich southwest and no reduction in traffic congestion. No doubt freeway building is viewed as convenient for outer-suburban families who desire privacy, but this “heart drain” from the Enriched World is unsustainable given Australia’s inherently low productivity in both food and water.

In a recent paper ‘Green Light for Green Agricultural Policies? An Analysis at Regional and Global Scales’, Wolfgang Britz, Thomas W. Hertel and Janine Pelikan show how local conservation in the exceptionally low-biodiversity European Union has the effect of potentially increasing cropland in the high-fragility Unenriched World by minimally 716 km². This figure is small, but a more rigorous elimination of EU farm subsidies would increase cropland in the Unenriched World by between 3,000 and 4,000 km². Eliminating East Asian farm subsidies would probably push this figure above 10,000 km² of extremely marginal land which stores a large amount of carbon in its native flora (adapted to negligible high- and medium-grade phosphorus). That figure is for a useful comparison about equivalent to converting the entire protected area of southwestern Australia – already plagued by a linear 1.1 percent rainfall decline per annum since 1967 – to cropland.

Since it is that sort of land that would be converted under these conditions, one wonders whether the Enriched World would be better spending the money it outlays on farm subsidies trying to condemn Australia and Southern Africa for their poor conservation records? The fact that sanctions by the international community helped bring down apartheid gives, in my view, some clues about how the Unenriched World should be treated for its very poor conservation record – at all events considering its high biodiversity and low productivity. If the Enriched World were firmly united, it could tackle Australia in particular very effectively if it argued (correctly) that Australia is very largely responsible for problems related to man-made climate change outside its borders. Demanding a rigid zero- or negative- (via revegetation in areas expected to become arid) greenhouse policy for Australia will do much more in the long term than all the regulations Eurasia and the Americas have put up at high cost for little gain.

With international condemnation – or even the threat of suing – Australia’s road and coal lobbies would come under pressure never known from very weak political protests or feeble posters seen at recent visits outside Carlton North Post Office. That would be hope for the planet’s survival like nothing else could be!

Most hilarious joke I’ve ever seen

A few days ago, trying to find any footage of rugby games from twenty years ago when my brother used to say the object of the game was biting ears, I found the most hilarious typo/joke combination I have ever seen:

• “At 2:20 look for Fatty Vautin in Roosters jumper. Very rare as he spent alot of his time in reverse grade.”

• ”Reverse grade?... you mean the grade where they have drink beer and have a shower before the game, then run around backwards....·”

Although I am sure that “reverse grade” was a typo, the reply is just so funny!! In actual fact Vautin spent the vast bulk of his time with the Roosters in first grade, playing at most six games in reserve grade at the tail end of the 1990 season. The way it could be believed that even strongly-built and fast rugby players could run around backwards is ludicrous, as is that they would do that when the object of rugby is to move the ball forwards!

A new house?

Although she has been concerned about the possibility that our back wall would for over a decade - at one point we worked intensely to remove a Chilean willow and ivy vine to stabilise it - it is only very recently that my mother has acted decisively about the crumbling structures of our home of fifteen years. The recent order of the Melbourne City council that all potentially unstable walls within the local government area be demolished has caused her limited finances great difficulties because the combined cost of demolishing and rebuilding the back and side walls could be a large fraction of my mother’s yearly salary - at a time where I am doing as little as ever to find some work that could ease the home’s dependence on her salary at Penleigh.

A week and a bit ago, my mother thought that the wall would be demolished and rebuilt by Tuesday 16 April, but the dangers of a standard demolition delayed the job of the demolition of the back wall until the last minute. I watched the demolition and - without showing it to the builders or even to my mother when I spoke to her that night - did feel concerned about the western wall between our courtyard and the living room next door.

Still, it is a shock to see that the western wall may need demolishing, and that we may have to move into a new house. With my brother working overseas, Mummy even thought of moving to the gorgeous climate of Tasmania with its 21˚C summers because of the lower cost of housing (and energy with less need for air conditioning) compared to suburban Melbourne! I have often thought that even if we did have to move to have the western wall demolished we could save money by moving into a relative’s home, but Mummy dismissed the possibility and said that there would be enough housing to rent.

Having not moved for a long time and acquired so much material - though I do try to be discriminating nowadays and do have a feeling I am more efficient with money than for a long time - it would not be easy to move. Yet, the side wall and even the front glass-brick wall may soon need replacement as the cement in it is just as loose, and especially in the summer it would be too uncomfortable to stay.

Class war in the Enriched World: alive and well in 2013

Yesterday when visiting my half-sister, I watched on a brief spurt of ABC news (after the first half of the 1996 Semi-Final between Brisbane and Carlton) a number of contrasting reactions to the death of Margaret Thatcher, from entirely typical praises from politicians to unions who had suffered at her hands condemning everything she stood for. Some of these unions partied, to the point of handing out “death cake” and calling Thatcher a “bitch” or “witch”.

Popular opinion seems to hold that the days of class war in the Enriched World are largely over – and conservative opinion from people like the Mises Institute tend to think that the working masses were never the people who drove the growth of what they call “socialism” or “big government”. Instead, the radical Austrians believe that big government and the large deficits that in the Enriched World are an inherent cost thereof were produced entirely by academic communities.

The occurrence of these parties at Thatcher’s death suggests that in fact class war was prominent and remains alive in the Enriched World. The only difference seems to be that the ruling classes are less ecstatic about the conservatives they support. The fact that Thatcher’s supporters can proclaim in a sentimental manner how:

“Parties rejoicing at the death of Margaret Thatcher are a tribute to her, a close friend said – because it shows she won.”

is proof how the ruling classes of Britain really do not know how to counter the problems of government debt and economic decline. They cannot do anything to lower relative prices – the sole route to long-term competitiveness in lands where orogeny and glaciation have wiped out key industrial resources like bauxite, manganese and iron ore – but their knowledge of how finances work means they cannot simply impose the income caps and nationalisation that Enriched World masses still demonstrably want. The Australian here possesses somewhat similar flaws, not recognising that letting the people make decisions meant they would choose to try to take from whom they saw as rich.

In fact, there is no way Thatcher’s plans of limited government have had any influence on the larger culture of the Enriched World. The militantly atheistic nihilism of AC/DC and the Sex Pistols must rank as far more influential among those who grew up in Thatcherite Britain than the ideals of a ruling class in some ways clinging to past glories. So does the radical egalitarianism of libertine academics who established their positions during Thatcher’s reign.

What we need to recognise is that in the Enriched World, class war became a natural consequence of the “industrial reversal” which turned the pre-industrial societies “haves” into the ultimate “have-nots” devoid of substantial mineral resources and no longer having the unique advantage of its young and fertile soils. Pre-industrial Europe, Asia and the Americas may have had very strong class divisions, but their effects were nothing like what they are when a doubly-deprived working class evolves.