< …an inability to see and accept that focusing too narrowly on economic growth and material prosperity and opportunity is creating growing social and environmental costs that jeopardise our future as a nation. >

Absolutely Peter.

< Public concern about the environment, including climate change, has receded in recent years >

Yes and no. No I don’t think overall concern has diminished. But relative to other concerns, it is perhaps not as prominent as it was, because concern for a host of other things has greatly accelerated in recent times.

< The reasons for the lack of progress are not, now, primarily to do with poor policy or lack of public funding >

Now this is where I have to disagree. The fundamentally poor policy position is the one that puts economic growth and material prosperity ahead of social and environmental wellbeing.

Public funding is not keeping up with our increasing pressure upon the environment.

The biggest problem of all is one that you didn’t mention – the issue of very rapid population growth, which works in two major ways against the health of our landscapes, environment, social wellbeing and sustainable future.

It directly impinges on the environment by making it necessary to develop ever more human landscapes from natural landscapes, and it necessitates the great bulk of our economic income be spend on ever more services, infrastructure and resource-provision for ever more people… rather than leading to an increase on environmental expenditure and hence remediation.

Our current very high immigration rate ROBS us of healthy landscapes, as well as all the other essential elements for a healthy sustainable society.

This article simplistically examines the landscape in isolation.
The pricing of carbon (energy) and water have simply added to the cost of food production and its transportation!
People are simply not going to keep producing it for less return than they can get from bank deposits; or worse, at an endlessly continuing loss.
No college professor would volunteer his/her services for nothing, for a decade or more?
Yet a few of them apparently expect our food producers, to do just that!
Many are simply bulldozing their orchards for just that reason.
Green demands for higher prices on all phases of production via higher energy, (carbon) and water costs, have been an unmitigated disaster for most rural producers/economies!
Yes we could have and should have priced carbon.
However, with a vastly more rational model.
i.e., a cap and tax model that only taxed that carbon above the cap.
That cap could have been the current level, with only that above the cap being taxed, progressively more punitively; with the cap progressively lowered over time.
This model would achieve the goals of decarbonoising the economy, without cruelling the economy or sending our food producers to the wall!
Sure, we can import all our food.
Many oil rich countries import far more than they can grow, given their burgeoning population numbers.
The consequence of extreme wealth and or, a captive energy market.
Perhaps we should emulate that example? After all, if you include the Great Barrier Reef; we could be the richest oil owning country in the world. (Potentially)
Kenya is reafforesting much of its landscape, but only so it can replace oil with timber, in its production boilers!
The Author also quite adroitly avoids examining just how do we feed 9 billion people, all while forcing the cost of producing it far and away ahead of wages growth.
Substituting fully imported oil for that which we could produce locally, would immediately reduce transport carbon production by around 75%!
And indeed, make producing and transporting locally grown and harvested food, a profitable exercise once again!
Rhrosty.

I was under the distinct impression that there was a natural reversion .. that the major landscape clearances post WWII had come to an end, and that the pendulum had swung back, as it has in other advanced countries..

However, to link environmental pressure with population as Ludwig has has repeatedly tried to is absurd.. the vast bulk of our population increase is settling in already long established cities and towns.

The two key industries as far as pressure on the environment are concerned are forestry and agriculture .. are they expanding or contracting? And, no, they are not linked to population as such in Australia. Ag depends on foreign food prices which are high but have come of the boil...

While we're on the subject what is the author proposing we actually do.. buy up farm land and replant it??

Reafforestation should start in our north. But not as the Author probably imagines.
That reafforestation should be rubber plantations, diesel trees, avocado/tropical fruit orchards, neem, cashew and kapok trees; plus cabinet trees, for the fine timber furniture trade, and so on. Trees store carbon whether vertical or horizontal!
Some eucalypt types should be lopped quite early in their development.
This would then force them to branch out in many directions, and those branches could be harvested progressively over time, (eucalyptus oil, Methane and charcoal/bio-char production), without destroying the tree or its environmental impact, or erosion prevention.
Fire management must be replaced with much more intelligent and more environmentally friendly, intensive cell grazing.
The very short term nature of this practise breaks open the soil, allow more of the rainfall and organic nutrient to penetrate; whereas, burning bakes it and prevents that, with more subsequent run-off, erosion and or flash flooding.
Moreover, burning as an annual management practise, sends tons and tons of Co2 and essential nutrient skywards, where they eventually descend and deposit in our oceans, where they do nothing but harm!
Trees have an enormous thirst!
In fact, an acre of trees, will evaporate 2.5 times more water vapour than an acre of open water.
This is the principle reason, I believe, this endeavour should proceed apace first, in our much wetter north.
The eventual evaporation from large scale forestry practise, can then recharge the monsoon and send it progressively further and further south, where the reafforestation program could be then simply be repeated and repeated?
Trees also lower and therefore concentrate the salt, in the salt water table.
Eventually, even the hardiest tree will asphyxiate, if the salt water table becomes too salty.
Early warning signs that this may be happening, include die back.
Alternatively, many small and modest dams would force more water into the landscape, thereby putting an envelope of fresh on top of the salt water and forcing it lower.
This sanity also traps alluvium, and prevents it flowing further, say out to the marine environment, where it does nothing but harm.
Rhrosty.

I agree with the the thrust of your article Peter. Curm, have you traveled through any of the 40 m ha of dry land agricultural areas in WA, SA, inland NSW, Qld, Vic and NSW (including the 'wheat belt')? Anyone can see there's too few tree left in those landscapes; perhaps less evident to the untrained eye is that this causes salinity and soil erosion, which are steadily worsening.

Yes commercial solutions are needed and are available. But as Peter says Govt needs policies, including a carbon tax to catalyse tree growing industries. There are plenty - oil mallees, bluegums and pine for wood, wood chips, oils, charcoal and most importantly bio-fuels and electricity generation. See report I co-authored:
http://www.greenswa.net.au/energy2029.

<< I was under the distinct impression that there was a natural reversion .. that the major landscape clearances post WWII had come to an end, and that the pendulum had swung back, as it has in other advanced countries. >>

Swung back?!

Not likely, Curmy!

The rate of land-clearing has slowed right down, but cleared land is not being converted to natural vegetation to any more than a very tiny extent here and there.

Now Mr Can-do-enormous-damage-in-Queensland Campbell has virtually abolished the Vegetation Management Act and opened up a whole new phase of clearing. And this time it is clearing specifically of the parts of the landscape that were not allowed to be cleared previously, because they have particularly significant ecological values, help protect waterways, have highly erodible soil types or slopes, etc.

<< …to link environmental pressure with population as Ludwig has has repeatedly tried to is absurd.. the vast bulk of our population increase is settling in already long established cities and towns. >>

Erm, yeayus…. largely in new suburbs on the edge of long-established centres, which mean the conversion of bushland into intensively humanised landscapes.

<< The two key industries as far as pressure on the environment are concerned are forestry and agriculture… >>

Er yeeeeayus!!

And they most definitely ARE connected to population growth, both via the direct supply of resources for an ever-rapidly-increasing domestic demand and via the generation of economic income, to supply funding for ever-more services and infrastructure for an ever-rapidly-increasing domestic demand!

Hells bells Curmy, how you can argue that rapid population growth is not a huge factor in the degradation of the natural environment, and indeed of many humanised landscapes as well, is just completely beyond me!