Keith "So wilderness will become increasingly important to the survival of life on Earth as human populations grow and natural environments will become more fragmented, degraded and under greater stress."

Why will it become increasingly important? You don't explain that, you just say it as if its a given. If you need some wilderness as an example of how "wilderness" used to be, there are plenty of examples - we don't need to keep all of it surely? Do we need a hundred million elephants just in case? Absurd, yes but so is your argument.

"Wilderness, the ultimate self sustaining system can provide the inspiration for an ecologically sustainable society. Its undisturbed catchments supply a pure, higher, more constant water yield than disturbed catchments."

Not much bloody use to us if we can't dam them is it - so now because of the constant drone of eco mantra, we have to build desalination works everywhere and ultimately Nuclear Power plants to run them, as we can't run them on coal fired power forever can we (CO2 is bad evidently, but no one knows for sure since proof of that is difficult to find).

So self defeating all this - I love clean forests and untouched areas as well, but the reality is that we pay our taxes, and elect governments to supply us with our needs, regardless of various lobby groups, like the eco types, who don't want change or progress.

In time, there will be a backlash, because there always is a backlash against out of balance thinking like this. People will begin to vote in to power people who supply their actual needs rather than their aspirations to eco purity - it's difficult to water the garden or have a glass of "eco purity". Reality will prevail.

What effect for the World if only Australia curbs its emissions by an ETS tax while the rest of the industrial nations carry on as usual? If the C is rising in the atmosphere it requires a great deal more vegetation and preservation of the wilderness to consume it and in the process of photosynthesis provide the oxygen for life, not a tax. Over 2 billion extra souls breathing the oxygen over the next 40 years will demand that it be so.... one way or another.

Hei Yu, wilderness does not take C, or CO2, you probably mean, from the air. It simply recycles it, making it basically carbon nutral. This does not matter to me, as I don't believe in CO2 driven AGW.

If you want it out of the air, you had better start cutting down every tree on earth, on a cycle of perhaps 100 years or so, & using the timber for something lasting, regrowing the cut timber, of course.

Keith is typical of these types. Wants to lock up all his wilderness for himself, & his bushwalking mates. He wants to deny any access to those who can't walk long distances.

Then he claims ridicules age for Oz forests, denying the fact that all of it is a product of the aboriginals, & their 40,000 years here.

This then allows him to want keep fire out of these forests, turning them into time bombs. I wonder how many this kind of thinking killed last year.

To say he makes me sick, is putting it rather lightly, his stupidity is no excuse. I am just vindictive enough to wish to see this type of vandal made to pay for what they have cost others.

I appreciate your concerns Keith, but there is one big problem - you seem to have just accepted that the population will continue to grow rapidly. Well if you are not willing to tackle this issue, and our crazy continuous-expansion economic ‘philosophy’, then you may as well forget about the rest.

Bigger population – more stress on the environment, more pressure to open up wilderness areas, more money put into immediate problems and less into national parks and wilderness protection.

If you want to protect wilderness areas, and to develop a sustainable society, then the most important thing to do is to strongly push for population stabilisation and the achievement of a dynamic steady-state economy that is not predicated on never-ending rapid growth.

Try to destroy nature, wilderness and the Green Domain which was here first (upon which all of life depends)and we will destroy ourselves.

In fact that is exactly what we are doing.
Such IS the INEVITABLE outcome of the Western power drive altogether. Which is almost unstoppable because it has the momentum of 3000 years of HIS-story driving it.

http://www.fearnomorezoo.org/trees/learn_tree.php

http://www.aboutadidam.org/readings/bridge_to_god/index2.html

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~spanmod/mural/panel14.htm

Well said Ho Hum

Ludwig, agreed population is out of control, but it is only a part of the actions we need to address. We cannot destroy what little natural ecosystems are left - we, like all life on earth, depend upon the natural cycle of climate, water interacting with the flora and fauna.

The one species this planet can do without, whose extinction will not cause even a blimp in the balance of ecosystem earth is the human species. It is up to us if we want to stay here.

If only the planet had more people like Keith Muir we would be in much better shape than we are today. Sadly consumerism, greed and vested interest has much more influence with government than sublime beauty and fragile landscapes. As a result we see our water catchments sacrificed to destructive industry, the air that we breathe mortgaged for new coal mines and our ancient forests felled to feed Japanese paper mills.
Endeavouring to protect Australia's unique natural heritage is not some kind of weird green eco madness..it is logical sane and rational. As Thoreaux once said "In wildness is the preservation of the world"

Hasbeen,
Please don't comment on things you clearly don't understand, you write on things like this and in doing so, subtract from the sum total of the world's understanding on everything. The younger generation is confused enough without you inventing new science

what a pity that the author has completely failed to mention the one major influence over all Australian wilderness which has been as crucial as climate, biodiversity and soils in creating and then maintaining wilderness: namely, the Aboriginal people and their all-pervasive influences which have changed and then managed/used our so-called wilderness areas for the past 40,000 years. Any discussion about wilderness which doesn't acknowledge Indigenous influences and the need to actively return them to our landscapes is fatally flawed.

Bernie

I think you are missing the point.

If all humans were to suddenly vanish from the face of the earth - the wilderness would be just fine. Humans are the only part of the ecosystem that the ecosystem can manage without.

Rain would still fall, kangaroos would still bound, fish swim in the seas and waterways and so on.

Aborigines co-existed within Australia's ecosystem far more successfully than the later immigrants, with less destruction and change. That time is long past, we are now having to deal with the reality and result of our massive changes to the landscape and extermination of many flora and fauna.

Severin - if all human beings suddenly vanished from the planet, Australia's wilderness areas would quickly and permanently change for two reasons. First, weeds and feral animals would quickly dominate those parts of the ecosystem where they had competitive advantages or ineffective natural control agents. Inland Australia would be overrun by camels, donkeys, horses, pigs and rabbits (to name just a few) together with cane toads in our north and weeds such as tamarisk.
Second, the landscape that Capt Phillip found in 1788 was an Aboriginal-moulded one where the Indigenous people had modified virtually all parts of Australia to suit their needs (for example, they had caused the extinction of the mega fauna and changed most vegetation assemblages through their use of fire). If Aboriginal people are removed from Australia along with the more recent migrants, the country will go back to what it was 40,000 years ago, dominated by less frequent but more intense and larger bushfires. Under this scenario, the wilderness will still be wild but it will change even more radically than has happened over the lat 200 years.
It's for this reason that any discussion about wilderness in places like Australia where the original inhabitants have had thousands of years to influence the landscape must include a commitment to maintaining those Aboriginal landscape influences.

Any discussion about wilderness which doesn't acknowledge Indigenous influences and the need to actively return them to our landscapes is fatally flawed.
Bernie Masters,
There were only about 300,000 inhabitants of this country before the outsiders thronged in. There was no industry no, housing, no infrastructure, no nothing. It is literally pointless to draw any comparison to what is happening to the country nowadays. Even if 22 million people would suddenly adopt the original Aboriginal lifestyle than wilderness as we know it would disappear in a flash. The point being, there are just too many people ! Over time nature controlled overpopulation with decease but the intelligent among us have managed to destroy that mechanism. So what's the answer ? WAR, of course ! On one hand we destroy nature to keep more & more people & on the other hand we don't have the means or brains to accommodate them all. Pretty stupid of these intelligent beings, eh ?

Albeit in a somewhat clumsy way, the article does highlight the basic conundrum of human life on this planet.

The aspirations of people, that have been developed and refined over the past dozen centuries or so (a mere blip, of course, on the earth's overall timeline, unless you are a Creationist) have resulted in a no-win situation vis-à-vis our natural habitat.

The purist view of this is that we are raping and pillaging the environment, and this must stop.

The realist view is that while idealism has its place, "man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery."

To continue to live at our present stage of civilization requires an "us or them" attitude, where the "them" are various flora and fauna that may need to be sacrificed to our requirements.

The alternative is, of course, a form of regression. Of unlearning. Of returning to a way of life that is more "primitive".

Just as there can be no progress without sacrificing the environment, there can be no protection of the environment unless we halt progress.

That's the basic dilemma.

We all have our lives to live. As do folk in China, India and the African sub-continent. Placing the issue of "survival", or "growth" or "preservation" or "sustainability" in an Australian-unique context is to ignore the fact that we live on a planet with six-plus billion other people.

Some time before the sun starts to cool and the earth freezes over, we will have to reach some form of equilibrium. But that equilibrium will be global. Any attempt to take unilateral action will founder on the rock of other people's ambitions - even if these ambitions are no more aggressive than mere personal survival.

Is it a problem? Yes.

Will we solve that problem by giving nature priority over ourselves?

No.

Bernie

Obviously the landscape would change with the disappearance of humans - that was not the point I was trying to make. After a period of imbalance among plant and animal species, natural order would eventuate. But that is not going to happen any time soon.

Humans aren't likely to go extinct (notwithstanding nuclear, massive meteors and the like). Therefore, we have a damaged environment that we must adapt to if we are retain and hopefully mend what remains.

This does not mean returning to live in caves, we are much smarter than that. It does mean moving towards sustainable clean energy sources. And reigning in our populations - else we lose what wilderness is left.

I am sure that there is vital knowledge with the elders of our indigenous people - is it too idealistic to envisage a collective solution or will narrow vested interests retain dominance?

Amicus - try reading the article properly, he does explain why wilderness will become more important. you're way off track if you think the author is advocating increased protection of wilderness just so we can see how it "used to be". Also, have a look at the catchment for waragamba dam, and then have a look at the catchments etc that will be impacted by this new mine.

Hasbeen, you make ME sick. grow a brain.

We need more people like Keith to bring some balance to the debate and to highlight the fact that the world's resources are not infinite and that our current model of growth and "development" is grossly unsustainable.

Actually, mbd, the numbers don't stack up particularly well.

>>We need more people like Keith to bring some balance to the debate and to highlight the fact that the world's resources are not infinite and that our current model of growth and "development" is grossly unsustainable.<<

From where I sit, there doesn't seem to be much of a shortage at all, of people pushing this barrow.

However, there is a substantial absence of people who can indicate what we need to do about it. Short, of course, of the simplistic notion of locking the nation's doors and letting no-one in.

Nobody seems to be able to follow through on any one individual strand of this argument.

What would happen if we stopped digging up and exporting coal? Or if we imposed unilateral restrictions on imports? Or if we "manage" our population growth, with all the intervention that such a policy would entail? Where will the "sustainable clean energy source" that Severin talks about, come from, if we leave ourselves short of money to invest?

All we get when we question these warm-and-fuzzy, wouldn't-it-be-great-if-only scenarios, is just a bland shrug, a pitying smile, and a "she'll be right, we could all adjust".

But we never actually get even a stab at a proper examination of the economic and social issues involved.

Would we be financially better off? Unlikely. So just how much "belt-tightening"should we expect? And which socio-economic group would bear the brunt? The young? The elderly? The rich? The poor? The unemployed? There will certainly be a few more of those to worry about.

It is oh-so-easy to say "protect the wilderness" and feel warm and gooey inside with the righteousness of it all.

But quite frankly, when the chips are down and it's me or (metaphorically) the Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat, my kids would not thank me for giving the smelly little beggars house room.

Why can't Australian's find room in their hearts (or landscape) for (metaphorical) hairy nosed wombats? We've already cleared and degraded a significant proportion of the continent. Are we really so sad, self obsessed and avaricious as a species that nothing else is allowed to co-exist?

Its strange that some people want everything accessible by vehicle, or want to ruin most of nature (what little is left) for human use.

Lets face it, if I live in a city and never see another wilderness view, who cares!

Well I care! We CAN share the world with nature. We can make some small modifications to how we we make money, how we travel and how we farm in order to accommodate nature.

And why wouldn't we? Because not only does nature give us clean air and water and new drugs and countless other direct benefits, but it also gives us wonderful plants and animals, great vistas to immerse ourselves in, wild beaches and lakes to enjoy and mountain tops to climb.

This is about offering something unique to humans, and to acknowledge that other forms of life are important too. It is clear that some of the other correspondents are struggling to accept that. Thankfully they are not in the majority.

Keith Muir, thanks for alerting us to this important problem.

Pericles,

You can trash the environment (and reduce the number or humans that can be supported) in two ways, by being very greedy and ignoring the future, or by boosting the population to very large numbers so that people are forced to trash the environment in the interests of immediate survival. There are plenty of examples of collapses due to both in the archaeological and historical records. I have referred you (on another thread) to Steven LeBlanc's book "Constant Battles" (by a Professor of Archaeology at Harvard). Another good source is David Montgomery's "Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations". Collapses also can also occur when population growth makes safety margins too thin, as with the Irish Potato Famine. The deaths and suffering that go with a collapse are horrendous.

You seem to think that we can't stabilise our population, so must begin the downward spiral to extinctions, drastically reduced living standards, and ultimate collapse. This is nonsense. Our fertility rate is slightly below replacement level and has been since 1976 - no problem there.

Countries are no longer at risk of invasion by other states unless they are small and/or very poor because of nuclear weapons. Australia could have these in a matter of months and would have them if there were a serious threat on the horizon, regardless of the posturing of current politicians. No nuclear weapons state has ever been invaded.

Excessive immigration, legal or otherwise, is only a problem if a country's elite has chosen to tolerate or encourage it in their own economic self interest. Chiefs have always been ready to sell out their people for a few strings of beads. Elites can and do change their tune on this, however, when there is sufficient pressure from the bottom up. The US had essentially a zero net immigration policy from 1921 to 1965. See the graphs in the following publication from the Center for Immigration Studies, where you can see that low immigration is often correlated with periods of prosperity.

http://www.cis.org/1965ImmigrationAct-MassImmigration

Pericles

You sometimes display a misanthropic attitude to your fellow humans. Living with our environmental means does not require bunking in with hairy-nose wombats. Your arguments are more than a little hysterical.

We don't have to plunder the environment indefinitely, as others have explained we can (and in some countries have) bring our populations into balance. We also have just started to create technologies that will kick the non-renewable habit. Just recently, in my own home town, in my old alma mater, RMIT, a far more efficient solar panel has been invented, much smaller in size:

"Revolutionary solar panel more than doubles efficiency"

http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2010/03/02/2834502.htm?site=melbourne&program=melbourne_mornings

Lighten up and listen. Get all warm 'n fuzzie and rational.

I am obviously not getting my point across very well.

I am generalizing. Trying to examine our attitudes to cutesy widdle animals in contrast with how we see our relationship with the rest of humanity.

>>Are we really so sad, self obsessed and avaricious as a species that nothing else is allowed to co-exist?<<

Well yes, in a global sense "we" are. As in, the human race is just another animal fighting for survival. If that means competing with the Hairy Nosed Wombat for the resources we need, then it's nothing more than "us 'n' them", really.

Forget about Tasmanian tree-huggers for a moment, an immensely lucky and privileged breed, and think instead of the average Mumbai slum-dweller.

http://artsytime.com/life-in-slums-of-mumbai/

What would they do with a Hairy Nosed Wombat, do you think?

Blue Skies is fairly typical of the Polyannas amongst us.

>>Well I care! We CAN share the world with nature. We can make some small modifications to how we we make money, how we travel and how we farm in order to accommodate nature.<<

No indication of "how" or "who". Just "yes we can".

Just wishful thinking.

Divergence is in the (quite extensive) team that uses the problem to justify an anti-immigration solution. There's really nothing anyone can do for people like that.

And Severin, you are absolutely right as always. (Except for the misanthrope and hysterical bits, of course).

>>Living with our environmental means does not require bunking in with hairy-nose wombats... We don't have to plunder the environment indefinitely<<

Of course we don't "have to".

But there is nothing that we can usefully do unilaterally, either as individuals or as a country, without facing those uncomfortable questions that start "what will be the effect of...[enter your preferred action here] on the people of this village/town/city/country?"

Except, of course, if you were to discover a source of non-polluting renewable energy.

That we then share with the world.

But you would still have to ask that question: "what will be the effect of having an infinite source of clean energy"

Will population still be a problem? If so, why?

Pericles poses the question whether the continuous and relentless increase of population will be a problem for everything else. Well, he didn't quite put it that way but it is worth contemplating the impact of more than 2 billion extra souls over the next 40 years. The F.A.O says 2.3 and the U.N. 2.9 billion, an increase of about one third.

It may not be significant in the Western World but it certainly is a difference in the Third World. Population to our North in Greater S.E.Asia is increasing at the rate of 20 million every 3 months, (F.A.O. figures a year ago) Not only will they breathe oxygen provided by the existing vegetation but they will require some form of shelter that consumes part of the vegetation, plus clean water and food.

As lifestyle of the wealthy nations is beamed to a TV in the open window hutch of the grass hut to the dozens seated on the ground , the wealth displayed by the media is envied to the extent that hitherto a life of stoop labour in the paddy is now not acceptable - the viewer is conditioned for the better life of "Big Max, and bread and butter"

Therein will lie the problem of consumption of the Earth's resources. No more from lands already drained of resources above and below ground but from so far untouched territories, forests and marginal tundra still apparently available. Is this what the boat refugees from Sri Lanka and the Middle East see in Australia?

We broadcast our image to the World. Many have risked,(and lost), their life for the dream of peace and plenty while there are others, currently on trial, hell bent to destroy it. The U.N. has warned of food riots and a modern day exodus from trouble nations of the Middle East and Africa. Will the pressure of another 2 billion souls in such a short period of time allow the natural world to provide and then sustain? or will it be the scientists and farmers finding ways and means to do so ?

Pericles old mate - I'm not going to put the boot in here, but I think you're talking through your arse.

You know next to nothing about wilderness, and quite deliberately it seems. There's much more to it than "cutesy widdle animals", as you put it.

Hate to say it, but sometimes you sound like a prat.

(Yeah, so undoubtedly do I on occasions...)

CJ Morgan

Ditto

Pericles, it is not about "cutsie widdle animals", it is about maintaining and enabling biodiversity, from the smallest microbe to the largest animals (including us). On this topic you appear no better informed than religious fundamentalists.

I have been over this soooooooo many times with you in the past, provided links you have clearly not bothered to read or you would still not be prattling on about cute animals and "fuzzy" thinking.

You are capable of debating with skill and from AN INFORMED standpoint, on this you display neither attribute.

If I am not doing particularly well explaining my point, you guys aren't exactly being clear in your objections to it.

(CJ) >>You know next to nothing about wilderness, and quite deliberately it seems. There's much more to it than "cutesy widdle animals"<<

It has nothing to do with cutesy widdle animals per se, they are merely a metaphor. So if you'd like to park them for a moment as red herrings, perhaps we can concentrate on the main game.

(Severin) >>Pericles, it is not about "cutsie widdle animals", it is about maintaining and enabling biodiversity, from the smallest microbe to the largest animals (including us).<<

Absolutely right. I agree.

I am looking at it from the broadest possible view: the (very short) history, current plight, and extremely fuzzy future, of mankind on this planet. To narrow the discussion to saving this animal or that plant in a specific geographic area simply underlines the need to think this thing through at a different level.

We have reached a level of civilization that allows us the luxury of thinking about the requirements for physical survival on this planet, including the need to maintain a balance between what we take out and what we out back.

And what we know is that, generally speaking, the more primitive (as we like to call them) societies took and gave in equal measure.

Generally speaking also, from the time that we started building cities, we took, but didn't give back.

I have no doubt whatsoever, as I have also said on many occasions, that this imbalance will necessarily lead to, or at least accelerate, the extinction of human life as we know it today.

The only point where we appear to differ is that you seem to think that unilateral action will make a difference. That saving the (metaphorical, remember) hairy nosed wombat is in itself a Good Thing To Do.

I consider that akin to standing in front of an approaching bush fire with a glass of water, saying "if only everybody had a glass of water to pour on it, we'd be saved".

Pericles,

I am no more anti-immigrant than you are anti-salt if you don't want a whole tablespoon dumped on your dinner. In reasonable numbers, immigration has significant educational and cultural benefits for the host population, and some enterprises, such as science, have a profoundly international character. I would be jumping up and down just as much if we had no immigration at all and the unsustainable population growth was coming from Australian babies. Unlike you, however, I don't see mass migration as a sacred cow to which everything else must be sacrificed.

As a number of us have explained, it is quite possible to stabilise our population on a national level. If numbers are not too big, we can afford to give everyone a decent standard of living and some choices in life without having to degrade our agricultural land or wipe out other species.

Unlike you, I don't regard residents of other countries either as helpless victims of the evil white man or as childlike little brown brothers that we have to rescue. Development really should be easier for them than it was for our own ancestors. They know it is possible and what policies are necessary to achieve it, and can also learn from our mistakes and leapfrog over obsolete, dirty technologies. It took South Korea 35 years to go from being tied with Senegal for poorest country on earth to fully-fledged member of the First World, and it was about the same for Taiwan and Singapore. China has been making enormous progress in lifting people out of poverty. If other people are determined to turn their situation around, there is a lot we can (and should) do to help, but if they persist in supporting corrupt and incompetent leaders, in denying justice to people in other ethnic or religious groups or in other social classes, and in keeping women barefoot, uneducated, and pregnant, there is nothing we can do about it, except prevent their problems from becoming our problems, so far as possible.

Pericles

<< The only point where we appear to differ is that you seem to think that unilateral action will make a difference. That saving the (metaphorical, remember) hairy nosed wombat is in itself a Good Thing To Do.

I consider that akin to standing in front of an approaching bush fire with a glass of water, saying "if only everybody had a glass of water to pour on it, we'd be saved". >>

You completely underestimate my intelligence, after all this time. Or your comments are a deliberate, petulant slur. Whatever. We appear to be talking at cross purposes and as with any debate about sustainable futures - getting fcuking nowhere!

Divergence has a quite remarkable turn of understanding. (quote).. "but if they persist in supporting corrupt and incompetent leaders, in denying justice to people in other ethnic or religious groups or in other social classes, and in keeping women barefoot, uneducated, and pregnant, there is nothing we can do about it, except prevent their problems from becoming our problems, so far as possible "

Such a perception is rare and should be the foundation cast in stone of opposition to this "free for all- all for free" refugee/immigration policy of successive Governments and more particularly, this one.

An ordinary man's analysis usually questions whether similar benefits exist for Australians moving for whatever reason to other countries? and why would we give millions in aid to royal, religious,military of despot regimes with estates in Europe and gold in Swiss banks and at the same time give refugees greater benefits and opportunities than we give our pensioners.( Source:Centrelink) The majority of these people are fit men who have run away and that says more about them than if, by doing so, "they contribute to the cultural diversity of the Nation".

We broadcast our Nation to the World. Many have risked their life and a debt of thousands for the prospect of a journey to peace and plenty who could have banded together with their wealth to fight for their causes. But there are others whose ideology would destroy it and in the process kill the innocents and blow themselves up believing that they will dwell in paradise for having done so. (www.pointofviewSA.wordpress.com/and still they come

Petulant? Moi?

>>Or your comments are a deliberate, petulant slur. Whatever. We appear to be talking at cross purposes and as with any debate about sustainable futures - getting fcuking nowhere!<<

No slur intended. But I agree with the rest of your summary.