continued ;
The principle of sustainable developement & use of resources like a religon is better practised than preached .
To give an small example of how I've seen the true colours of the green with envy brigade . Around four years ago I changed from overhead irrigation to drip system for our veg seed contracts. This fantastic method (perfected in Israel I think ,don't quote me ) provided a threefold increase in gross return per meg of applied water , a reduction in the need to spray & respray after wash off from irrigation , reduced power consumption for pumping , ability to water at any time , an efficient fertiliser application system & better infiltration into the soil with no runoff .
Now you'd think the local planeteers flitting about with their water watch & landcare committies rabbiting on about waterways ,farmers bad ,soil erision , farmers bad , trees , farmers bad , frogs , farmers bad , salinity , farmers bad & don't forget farmers bad , would be interested in my project . No way , doesn't give the right impression that farmers are bad . Plenty of interest from other growers though .
So when I describe certain supporters of a political movement that makes a lot of noise but offers no sensible ideas & plays on the inexperience of youth for support as envy driven tree hugging people hating greenies I mean what I say & I have my reasons .
The article suggests that the greens may have a greater future in the parliment . I dissagree . In fact I believe as soon as their impact was felt they would rapidly go the same way as the fairys at the bottom of the garden .

Jamo: Nicely put. Yes I agree the current crop of Greens are reactionary, without vision bunch. But as a force, I feel they represent pressure to promote better ways, alternative ways to produce. That is what the likes of Perseus fail to recognise with his rantings here and elsewhere.

I was delighted you picked up on the Israeli technology. Here is a fifty year old country is showing an older bigger country like us on doing it better (and on parallel to that country, the whole of Australia supplied from Tasmania leaving mainland Australia to produce more creatively)

The Greens are applying pressure on the "miles per gallon" and "bags per acre" with a mendicant mentality. Out of the Greens we might learn to do it better, more creatively and with less of an eye to Canberra for the next handout with the next inevitable vagary.

Fair enough Jamo.

I really think that the best opportunity for a green future lies with Labor.

If they could just see the merit in making a huge switch from basing everything on economic growth to basing it all on sustainability, then we just might get somewhere.

If they continue down the same old path, which is about 0.000001% different from the Libs, then they are bound to stay in the wilderness.

The Libs are happy panderers to their all-powerful short-term profit-motive big-business support base. Labor is a little bit less tied down by that.

Labor should be supported by the unions, who should have little concern about adjusting policy in favour of the long-term viability of our society and all things related to it and should therefore support the notion of ‘sustainability first’.

It was interesting to note that even the Nationals in Queensland made some pretty interesting environmental noises when they were really struggling prior to Borbidge winning power in 1995. This was a long way off-track in most peoples’ view, but they would argue that it was just a sensible extension of real concerns of rural people.

So the same sort of thing could happen with Labor.

If only we could just find a way of making it happen very soon, instead of waiting until fuel prices and other resource issues become much more critical.

Jamo's experience is typical of farmers all over the country. And the Remcos of this world will continue with this moronic "bags/acre" drivell to try and portray Australian farmers as laggards. He clearly has no effective contact with farmers at all as he is very careful to avoid anything specific.

The greens will never talk about the uptake of "minimum till" technology on Australian farms (invented here), let alone zero till methods that maximise moisture retention, maximise biomass retention and improve soil structure and fertility. No, they are still babbling on about soil degradation and erosion to portray their intended targets for dispossession as "undeserving".

There's one thing not being mentioned by either side of this debate, no matter what you think about how the land has been used, it won't matter in the end. Forget global warming, soil degradation, salinity, land clearing, better framing methods or chemical and GM methods and the greens.

When the extinction rate of living species, thats currently a pandemic, reaches a certain point, the entire system will collapse. Because all farming relies on the biodiversity and input of living beings to function and produce. Chemicals, GM, better farming techniques, will be useless if the life forces providing the chain of existence for all living beings are driven to extinction, its all over. The biodiversity of the planet will collapse and take us with it.

You can't grow anything on dead soil, you need insects, birds, native animals to keep the chain going. The present farming community has no interest in that, just how much they can get out of the land in the cheapest and quickest way. For them, its more important to keep their egos inflated, by continuing with failed practises against all the evidence on their own farms. Once there is a big enough break in the biodiversity chain, it will collapse everything above that break. We're at the top of that chain, doesn't that ring any alarm bells, or just frustrate your ego's.

For a race that prides itself on its intelligence and ability to evolve and survive, we're to stupid to see anything but the mirror in our heads

Alchemist, short of a nuclear winter scenario, I think your concerns are unfounded, at least in the big picture. On some regional and local levels yes, perhaps.

No matter how aggressive humans become in overtaking natural ecosystems, how much we deplete soil fertility or cause salinity to manifest itself, or how big the magnitude of global warming, agricultural systems will survive, and in a pretty vigorous form.

Even very significant changes in overall ecosystem support mechanisms won’t cause many of them to totally collapse. They might cause massive changes, with large proportions of species going extinct, but vigorous species will survive and maintain or regenerate the system. Look at the area around Queenstown in Tasmania, which suffered massive acid-rain damage over many decades, with the resultant loss of nearly all vegetation and topsoil off the hills. It is bouncing back, albeit with a lot of it highly altered.

However, on regional scales, such as parts of the Western Australian wheatbelt with low-fertility soils and massive salinity issue, agriculture will take a very heavy hit, especially when the economics massively change as fuel prices rise. But again, it will survive, just in a considerably altered form.

Yes farmers are interested in maximised produce in the cheapest and quickest ways. But they are just a subset of society in this regard. Many farmers, being on the environmental frontline, are seeing the light and switching to better practices.

So I think we need not worry too much about the extinction rate, the continuation of short-sighted practices or the collapse of ecosystems or agricultural areas. What we really need to worry about is the continued coherence of society, which I believe will be very sorely tested by the end of cheap fossil fuels, within five years. When liquid the fossil fuel era ends, human expansion, and all the continuing increasing pressure on our environment, that goes with it, will be severely reduced. We are on the cusp of the massive population adjustment that we have to have. The trick will be to get though it without degenerating to anarchy and a Mad Max scenario.