Climate Change or Global Warming

The famous Watergate journalist Bob Woodward was speaking on the BBC today about his working life being an investigative journalist. He said that one of the most important things he and other journalists needed to do consistently is to be tough, to demand answers.

Over 30 years ago the hard questions he and his colleague Carl Bernstein asked about corruption in the Whitehouse landed an American president, Richard Nixon, in jail. But Woodward commented that over the years both he and other leading American journalists had grown too soft. For example, he had not asked those hard questions over weapons of mass destruction pointing out that WMD debates came not long after 9/11 so America's focus including his own, was turned elsewhere.

This week attention is focused on Bali where governments of the world have gathered to make tough decisions to curb climate change. Climate change?

The investigative media organisation IndyMedia is asking those tough questions trying to get to the bottom of why many journalists in Australia and elsewhere either ignored the plea to act on global warming or spent more space covering the sceptical view, thus raising doubt in the public's minds. This worked to limit their anxiety about the issue - and their lobbying power.

Climate change sceptics used ad hominem arguments to distort and disuade. Eco-activists and scientists like Professor Ian Lowe, the Wentworth Group, and many others globally including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) continued to challenge the nay-sayers but the global media was often loathe to treat their science and their warnings seriously. With Al Gore's documentary, the truth was now out in the open. The time for debate and misreporting was over.

Drought came. The river basins and river flows began to retreat especially in inland Australia. The Murray River, the lifeblood of the country, was dying.

In his boook 'When the Rivers Run Dry' (2006) journalist Fred Pearce documents the parlous ecological state of rivers globally and says of the Murray that its death is evident in the giant river red gums that line its banks.

'The trees live up for a thousand years, hunkering down during droughts and then spreading their seeds after floods. But if the drought goes on too long, they die' (2006:249).

His book tells the story of rivers across the globe whose quality and flow are under severe threat. The risk is too great but the precautionary principle, it seems, is not being applied. For example, underground aquifers are being mined - drained - water is not being replaced.

Pearce calls for a water ethos - 'an ethos based ... on managing the water cycle for maximum social benefit rather than narrow self-interest' (348). It recognizes that in many religions rivers are revered as sacred, holy places for pilgrimage and baptism. Its significance in Aboriginal culture is found in 'waterholes and billabongs ... physical manifestations of the process of creation itself' (350).

A water ethos venerates water sources, cherishes water and respects all rivers - including the Brisbane River.

Reference:
Pearce F, 2006, When the Rivers Run Dry: What Happens when Our Water Runs Out, London, Transworld Publishers.

Heat

One in ten (!) of the world's large rivers runs dry every year before it reaches the sea, the magnificent Murray is one such river. The danger to rivers globally was raised this week as part of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report: Global Environment Outlook: Environment for Development.

At the very time when the planetary crisis was announced by UNEP following a study from 1400 scientists across the globle, the courts in London were debating the validity of showing Al Gore's An Inconvenient truth to school students without an accompanying critique of Gore's conclusions. This court ruling and the scientific evidence seem poles apart.

The UNEP report made a startling statement: 'The future of humanity has been put at risk by a failure to address environmental problems including climate change, species extinction and a growing human population.'

The thought of the extent of ecological damage and the human cause of this life-threatening problem should be so shocking as to galvanise urgent action but UNEP says that governments worldwide have their collective heads in the sand. And in Australia as well.

The earth is overused and undervalued. The UNEP report found that human consumption and its accompanying ecological footprint is signficantly outstripping the earth's resources to match the demand. Biodiversity was next on UNEP's list of great concerns with 30% of amphibians, 23% of mammals and 12% of birds in danger of extinction.

There is not much more to say. It is a frightening picture.

Breathing the River

Carbon dioxide, and its impact on the global ecosystem, has been the topic of media debate in Australia this week as the ABC airs the anti-'Inconvenient Truth'-global warming documentary. It's simply the sun's fault, the doco. says, not the fault of humans. This falls happily into the lap of those who seem unaware of the interconnected land, sea and sky ecosystem problems, or turn their backs on ecological devastation.

It was David Suzuki some years ago who pointed out that, often, the effect on the natural environment is not noticed as the incremental damage occurs little by little. Suddenly there are no trees in an area, or the air becomes over-polluted, or the traffic becomes clogged, or the water runs out. Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke (2004) in their book Blue Gold tells us that the water is under severe threat, globally, of running low and then, running out. A recent ABC program pointed out that, for example, that glaciers in Bolivia are melting at such as pace that the iced water from the Andes mountains that supplies the people, will disappear. Then where does the water come from?

Anita Roddick (2004:48) in the book 'Troubled Water: Saints, Sinners, Truths and Lies about the Global Water Crisis' (written with Brooke Shelby Biggs), tells us that 'water is a closed system'. What is fascinating about what they say next really brings home the water issue -
'All of the water that exists on earth today existed when the planet was first formed. The water in a dinosaur's drinking hole 250 million years ago may be the same water in your afternoon tea tomorrow.'

The book is filled with vignettes of water shortages, and water pollution globally. From scarcity to damming rivers, from sewerage outfall to privatisation, there is a thirst in the world; rivers are thirsting; rivers need 'cleaning'; rivers need to be healthy for the wellbeing of human and other-than-human.

Breathing the earth, the life giving oxygen, from trees and the oceans, supports our existence. The image of the mangroves at the beginning of this blog is a reminder of the sweet breath of the tree - to me - to the tree - to me - to the tree - to me. That's why caring for the precious ecological processes is so important. Being aware of the little-by-little removal of trees, especially in water catchments/watersheds, as well as whole-scale logging of rainforests and bulldozing of bushland, and the constant development which flattens the land, these things engender a world where nature is, sadly, in the descendent. Without the life giving processes of the dynamism of refreshing water exchange and clean air flow, our lives are .....well, you decide.

Here in my new home place, the chain saws are at work whereever you look/hear. The bats are losing their feeding trees, the possums are losing their tree houses, the birds are losing their trees to perch and search, and sadly, our lives become less full. But by the river there is life and a sense of wellbeing that the river gives. Thank you river.

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References:
Roddick A with BS Biggs, 2004, Troubled Waters: Saints, Sinners, truths and Lies about the Global Water Crisis, Chichester, West Sussex, Anita Roddick Books.