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The Forum > Article Comments > Unleashing Shakti: our power to transform > Comments

Unleashing Shakti: our power to transform : Comments

By Vandana Shiva, published 4/8/2009

Fossil fuels have fossilised our imagination, our potential, and our creativity.

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With all due respect to Vandana Shiva, what is needed are some practical suggestions for getting us on the road to sustainability. Unfortuneately when you start getting into specifics it gets too boring (check the Health care debate in America), and nobody wants to read a boring article with specific ideas for getting sustainable. I assume Vandana's full book has some, but you certainly wouldn't know it by this "edited extract."

I've got a couple but nobody may care. Perhaps Vandana herself is checking up and can comment.

All for Australia. We don't have the right to tell anybody else how to be sustainable. Let's get our ship in order, then we can show by example that living sustainably is the best way. We can't shove sustainability or any policy down another country's throat (not that we have that power anyway).

1. Net zero immigration (easy to do and results obvious).
2. Carbon tax. Low ($20/tonne) to start then building up depending on conditions. Petrol wouldn't even go up by the weekly fluctuations in Sydney (<2%). Electricity up by 3 to 10% depending on peak time or not.
3. Mandatory percentage (3% of total expenditure?) of recycled products for all government purchases or they payinto a federal govt fund that produces renewable energy.
4. 10% of Government vehicles that don't travel long distances (How often does a Sutherland Shire Council vehicle go to Broken Hill?) must be electric powered. % to increase every year.
5. Slow increase of total renewable energy generation from 2% to 5% over the next 8 years.

What else can we do that is practical that would get us sustainable? I hope Vandana Shiva is checking
Posted by ericc, Tuesday, 4 August 2009 4:12:06 PM
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"Climate chaos, brutal economic inequality, and social disintegration are jointly pushing human communities to the brink. We can either let the processes of destruction, disintegration, and extermination continue unchallenged..." etc, etc, etc...

Isn't it just a little surprising to you that while all this has been going on we have been able to support the largest human population on earth ever, increase life expectancy worldwide, lift billions of people out of poverty, and produce a happy and productive society, led by a West in where crippling ill-paid work has been largely outlawed, and most people can look forward to a long and satisfying old age? But that's OK -- never let the facts get in the way of a good old rant.
Posted by Jon J, Tuesday, 4 August 2009 5:44:54 PM
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Well said clownfish (and thank you for the recent reminder of the great works of the people's poet.)

Well said Jon J.

Q&A, so much for me thinking you were a scientist.

If this article is meant to be satirical, it is genius - Trey Parker and Matt Stone could incorporate the meaningless waffle into one of their scripts, although, I confess to stopping half way through - I had to go outside for a breath of reality.
Posted by fungochumley, Tuesday, 4 August 2009 10:23:27 PM
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Jon J,

A graph of human wellbeing against time tends to look like a rollercoaster, not a steeply rising curve. There are big jumps in prosperity when important technological advances occur, more productive new crops are introduced, or the number of human competitors are drastically reduced, as with the Black Death. After one of these peaks, there is then a slow decline back into misery, as mismanagement occurs and the number of mouths expands to consume the resources available. See, for example, what happened to real wages in Europe between the Black Death and the Industrial Revolution.

http://www.paolomalanima.it/default_file/Articles/Wages_%20Productivity.pdf

http://www.ata.boun.edu.tr/faculty/sevket%20pamuk/publications/pamuk-black_death-final.pdf

Average heights also decreased over this period, a sure indicator of malnutrition during childhood.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/medimen.htm

No doubt the folk back in 1420 also thought that the prosperity would go on forever, just like you.

If everything is so rosy, why is the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation saying that there are more hungry people in the world, in both absolute and relative terms? Why are world grain stocks at their lowest level in more than 40 years?

http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/newsroom/docs/Press%20release%20june-en.pdf
Posted by Divergence, Wednesday, 5 August 2009 11:55:59 AM
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So some think that Vandava can be dismissed as a nit-wit dreamer.
All I can say is check out her CV on Wiki---very impressive indeed.

She also won an Alternative Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy of the small is beautiful alternatives to the dominant inherently destructive paradigm of more and always bigger---a system in which EVERYONE loses, including the so called winners.
Posted by Ho Hum, Wednesday, 5 August 2009 12:55:31 PM
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Col
I think you are misinterpreting what Vandana Shiva's article is all about.

rpg
So, you have nothing to say about the article - are we to assume you concur with the author?

Mark
<< The business about using agricultural land to grow fuel is stupid, I agree but the idea comes from some bizarre union of greens and agricultural interests. End it immediately! We will know when the alleged shortage of fossil fuels has become serious to indulge in that sort of nonsense ...>>

Hmmm
Were you aware that the Bush Administration was subsidising some South American countries to adopt policies to clear rainforests and plant corn crops? This was not done for food production but for feedstock to the US biofuel industry. It turns out that to fuel the US transportation sector alone requires an area the size of India. Somehow, I don't think George W and Co were all that "green".

Canada is already doing the tar sands and shale oil thing - do they know something the rest don't?

Clownfish
Could it be that Shiva is just trying to impress on people that we (all of us) have to find better ways of doing things? Or that we shouldn't be taking the same actions that have caused so many problems in the first place - you know, business as usual?

Jon J
We have some very serious global issues to deal with, we have to take our blinkers off - there is no magic pudding.

Fungo
Our problems are not about the science, really. It is about ideology, economics and socio-cultural differences - but you knew that. I'm bemused why Col hasn't brought forth his "socialism by stealth" mantra - maybe we can tease it out of him :)

Ho Hum and others
Some think that by adopting better ways of doing things means we are going to live like neanderthals again - these people lack vision, ingenuity and creativity. They have their head buried in the sand and their feet stuck in the mud.
Posted by Q&A, Wednesday, 5 August 2009 3:34:23 PM
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