I would paraphrase Diamond by saying too few of populations past and present have a connection with sustainable thinking. Hence the failure of contemporary society to prevent climate change and less affordable energy. I'm not sure if arresting the deterioration of a natural system is quite the same as restoring it to a pristine state. For example I'd say the lower Murray is getting back to health when you can catch cod everywhere weighing over 50kg. That's also why wood chips from old growth forests are worth far more than $150 a tonne; if you wanted to restore that forest it would take centuries so there is no recognition of the replacement cost.

I would paraphrase Jared Diamond by saying he did no research into the environmental situation Australia then published a chapter about what we should and shouldn't be doing.

What a tosser.

The worrying thing though is the coverage he got when he was in Australia.

We can't really blame him though - look at the idiotic philosophy masquerading as science featured in Tim Flannery's new book. And he actually lives here.

What is happening to science?

t.u.s

Well said, Jennifer. The major problem is that so many apparently well-educated and hopefully well-intentioned people so readily respond in an ignorant and emotional way without regard to the facts and science of an issue. This is a far bigger threat to the well-being of ourselves and our planet than are many of the scare-mongering issues such as those promoted by Professor Extremelypressurisedcarbon.

There is a worrying element of intellectual laziness here. I first became concerned about global warming around 1989, when I was briefed by, among others, Sir Frederick Houghton, the leading IPCC scientist at the time. Houghton was a genuine scientist, unlike many of his colleagues he didn't exaggerate findings and concerns on the issue but was clear as to the limited extent of the IPCC's knowledge and understanding . There did seem to be grounds for concern, with a need for much better understanding and evidence before one could be definitive, and I've tried to stay well-informed since. The more I've learned, the more sceptical I've become that this an issue requiring drastic action.

If Jared Diamond had not recieved the gong then we'd know little about him.
I think its specious for Diamond to keep asking why did Europeans conquer other parts of the world instead of societies from some other part conquering Europe. The irony is that Diamond, while intending to transcend racialized explanations of difference and domination, actually descends into a geographical and biological determinism that comprises the bedrock of racism.

No wonder he's so attractive to so many.

See these if you are interested in more critique of this Mr Nobody.

William H. McNeill, "History Upside Down," NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, May 15,
1997 and his exchange with Diamond in the June 26, 1997 issues of the same
publication

James Blaunt's review in GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW vol. 89, no. 3(July 1999), 391-408

Gale Stokes, "The Fates of Human Societies: A Review of Recent
Macrohistories," AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW vol. 106 (April 2001), 508-25

Diamond's pitch is not restricted to Australia's degree-qualified suburban elite. His impropriety is far more insidious.

He has cast a far greater confidence in Australia's environmentalism, when robbed of instinctive fulfilment by urbanisation, in a manner which is not dissimilar to the Pauline Hanson phenomenon.

How readily the metroploitan masses jump onto the politcially-popular band-wagon.

Disenfranchised Australians, living on the periphery, won't argue land management ineptitude.

They will, however, contest their statutory entitlements to benfeit from environmental solutions to identified problems that maximise returns and minimise costs.

Fanning the flames of environmental tradegy sells books and rallies troops, just as surely as disarming the nation and reinstating traditional land rights elicits extreme right-winged Hansonims at the polls.

Thank you, Jennifer Marohasy, for keeping watch over our national integirty.

I live and work in the middle of a farming area, so perhaps am
more qualified to comment then Jared :)

Farming has changed dramatically in the last 25 years and that
will continue. Jennifer is correct, modern farming methods in
Australia are far more sustainable then they ever were. Our
original mistake was to copy Europe. Now we have developed our
our systems and methods, which IMHO are superior to theirs
in terms of sustainability.

One thing is for sure. I'd rather eat meat and other produce coming
from Australian farms, where alot of the animals still eat grass
and clover, then some of the output from American factory farming.

Right with you, Jennifer,

Aa a retired WA grain farmer, reckon our families seen it all over the years, dryland wheat farming as well as running particularly sheep has messed up the land not so much by farmers themselves but by outside urgers, especially bank managers and livestock agents, and as well of course govt ag' advisers.

A big problem, of course, is battling families starting in debt, two or three good seasons also making new cockies overconfident, said by some to be the worst thing that could happen to any new chum, especially if the banks and stock companies get overconfident also.

Even in the 1930s with plenty of bush left around after three dry years saw the worst blow and more land gouged out than has happened since. That was because five or six good years made us overconfident, virtually trippling our flocks by buying in, as wool was better than wheat during the Great Depression.

Ask any old cockie if he's still alive and he'll say the same. Further, us oldies have to admit that with sensible use of chemicals to allay overworking the ground back allied with minimum cultivation, even with still the odd run of dry years we've got a future, though we could wish our dear friends the Americans would give us a go and stop dumping cheap subsidised wheat on our markets.

But as far as Jared is concerned, he can go jump', for there will be a time in the future when our money pits run empty of the stuff we're shipping to China et al, and if we can look after the land better, giving certain credit to modern science, not all, along with our politicians gaining a bit more commonsense, Australia might still have a future. In dryland Australia it pays to be cautious, however, and make sure to take lessons from the past, possibly not necessarily from old cockies.

GeorgeC, WA - Bushbred

Jennifer Marohasy says that all Australian farms are operated sustainably and no farming practices have ever contributed any salinity to Australian rivers. Oh sorry, was that a little misinformation and propaganda. I guess I just got caught up in the momentum after reading this article.

When Jennifer Marohasy mentions misinformation and propaganda everybody should stand up and take note, because she is an expert.

Ms Marohasy says that Jared Diamond told his Brisbane audience that Australia should phase out agriculture all together. She doesn’t mention that Diamond does not say anything like that in 'Collapse,' so did he really say that in Brisbane? Is that what you mean by misinformation, Ms Marohasy? Or is it propaganda?

Diamond says SOME Australian farms are being operated unsustainably primarily because they are in areas where the soil is poor and there is inadequate rainfall in most years. When he was on ABC TV talking about 'Collapse,' the farmers on the show agreed with this point. Same as Bushbred above. They said that many farms are too small for the dry conditions and the farm owners can’t afford to rest the land in dry years because they need the income to survive. The farmers said that some, not all, overstocked after good years (again like Bushbred). That is why Ms Marohasy is the propaganda champion. Diamond agrees completely with Bushbred, but she’s got him thinking that they disagree.

Diamond never said all Australian farms should be shut down. He said SOME farms were operating unsustainably and were being supported by government handouts, which was damaging the environment. Is that a statement that you disagree with Ms Marohasy?

On salinity, Diamond says significant areas of the Western Australian wheat belt are severely affected. Marohasy flips this around by saying Diamond gets his information from green groups, and the green groups said the Murray is dying, but it really is better than it was 20 years ago. Not back to its original condition, of course, and part of the “salt interception scheme” is to dam water that runs from the salty areas. That means less flow to the Murray, which is not good, but it helps the salinity concentration for Adelaide, which is good.

The Murray is in no way - all fixed up, as is implied. I’d say that was misinformation.

C’mon Ms Marohasy we can do better than this. I’ll bet that there are a few exaggerations and mistakes in 'Collapse,' but the basic message in Chapter 13 is that Australia will be better off if all the farming and grazing properties are run sustainably, and that there is still time to get it done. Isn’t that a worthwhile goal?

Lets get some solutions and support the farmers, so that Australia’s farms are all being operated sustainably, and farming can continue forever in Australia.

Eric Claus

Ms Marohasy’s comments on land-clearing are truly flabbergasting, and this is supposed to be one of her key research topics, according to the IPA website.

She writes; “Yet the hard data indicates that even during the height of clearing …..there was a net increase in forest cover of 5 million hectares in western Queensland”

My goodness, even with clearing rates of hundreds of thousands of hectares per year, for many years, the increase in the area of forest was greater. What?

Ms Marohasy is presumably referring to some highly dubious stats on thickening and perhaps encroachment, plantations and maturing regrowth. Well, thickening does not lead to increased areas of forest cover. It leads to the thickening of existing forests, woodlands and scrubs! So this shouldn’t be included at all, and it was no doubt the greatest component of her purported rapidly increasing forests. Encroachment of native trees into grassland is a very minor phenomenon, significant to some landholders, but small-scale all-told. Similarly with maturing regrowth. And of course, new forests being planted were also of a very minor extent compared to this massive clearing rate.

Ms Marohasy has surely completely destroyed her credibility with this effort.

Jared Diamond could have researched his chapter on Australia a little better, but his message is rock-solid.

I agree entirely with Ericc’s two postings above.

Ludwig, your ignorance leaves me breathless but not surprised. The additional forest in Qld at the height of the clearing was vast areas that had previously not been classed as forest because the canopy was less than 10%. That is, they were paddocks with a few trees. Most never had a lot of trees while some of this land had been cleared many years ago. And when the number of trees increased, the paddock was then redefined as a forest under the national forest inventory. Ergo, there was an increase in the net forested area.

Diamond was guilty of demonising Australian farmers. And, curiously, discrimination on the basis of occupation or family background was the one part of the international covenants on discrimination etc that did not get enshrined in Australian law like race, religion, sex etc. If he shows his hideous face around here again it will be eggs and tomatoes big time.

Dear Perseus

What you say may be true (from your second sentence on). But this increase in forested area is of very minor extent compared to the enormous clearing rates of the 90s.

You have (quite deliberately I am guessing) avoided the real issue: Do you think that the increase in forest cover, in terms of area, not thickness, had increased during the 90s to an extent greater than the enormous clearing rate? If not, then what’s the point of your posting? You are really nitpicking at one component of thickening.

I live in the bush, in the headwaters of the Murray-Darling basin. My business depends directly upon the fortunes of the local agricultural industries which, if they haven't already exceeded the carrying capacity of our environment, are very close to doing so. Some of my neighbours and customers who have farmed in this district for generations have recently gone out of trying to make a living out of their farms because they are no longer sustainable. The same will happen with my business unless I can increase the income base by diversifying to appeal to the increasing numbers of seasonal workers and displaced 'grey nomads' who pass through the district.

While some correspondents here have responded enthusiastically to Marohasy's reprise of her environmental Pollyanna act on behalf of big business, they should be aware that her article has more distortions and porkies per hectare than our place has rabbits, and that her 'analysis' (read 'propaganda') runs completely counter to the respected scientists in CSIRO, MDBC etc who actually work in the field, rather than for a neoconservative 'think tank' as Marohasy does. However, I guess she's just doing her job as a paid attack dog for the far right.

Although some minor errors in the detail of Diamond's chapter on Australia detract from the overall quality of 'Collapse', I suggest that this is because he is attempting to synthesize grand theory to account for phenomena that span all continents and societies, and across millennia of human history.

Marohasy does not have that excuse: her project is to create 'spin' for those who wish to continue to degrade Australia's fragile environment in pursuit of short term economic gain. However, I suppose that mendacity is so much a part of her work that she might be forgiven for not recognising it in herself.

Jennifer Marohasy repeats a claim, first made in February 2004, that woodland and forest cover in Queensland has increased by 5 million hectares in 10 years.

While the officially reported forest cover may have increased over the past decade, this reflects improved satellite mapping techniques that enable more vegetation to be detected. The relevant Federal Government departments warn against claiming that actual forest cover has increased on the basis of nominal increases in reported cover due to improved methodology.

Sorry Ericc, but without dams and water regulation in the Murray, it would not flow at all during dry periods. Before regulation, the Murray would become a series of swamplands and shallow ponds when there was a severe drought.
It has been documented by pioneers in the west of New South Wales and happened countless times before the evil Europeans arrived in Australia.
I find it terribly amusing (and a little scary as well) that people think our rivers have always been free flowing and that us nasty people have changed what mother nature intended.
Dams create a constant flow - occaionally they may flood and only very occasionally do they run completely dry.
You know Ericc, your house is equally foreign in Australia as dams. But it gives you a regulated environment through winter and summer, heat and cold, wet and dry.

t.u.s

"people think our rivers have always been free flowing". Gee, I never would have suspected that such a thought existed until I read The Usual Suspect's post.
But then it could be a bit of creative writing of similar standard to the original article.

Eric, 1. I don't say "all Australian farms are operated sustainably" - I dispute Diamond's contention that agriculture has irreversibly destroyed the environment and it is on the verge of collapse. I suggest that there are issues to be address (e.g. overgrazing) and that these issues should be addressed with our minds open to the evidence. 2. In Brisbane Diamond said we are living on the world's most fragile continent and during a period of climate change therefore we should phase out agriculture altogether. Read page 415 and 416 of his book and he is a little more coy but writes: It would be a first for the modern world if a government [i.e. Australian] voluntarily decided to phase out much of its agricultural enterprise .. 3. I suggest you check your facts and figures on both river and dryland salinity.
Ludwig, 1. The 5 million hectares is official state government data - see the reference. I would be interested to know what stats you rely on? 2. Not sure how your message can be "rock solid" if you have the detail wrong?
Mahatma Duck, Which bits did I get wrong?
Dr Paul, I think you are confusing the national State of the Forests Report which came up with an increase in forest cover of 8million hectares, with the Queensland government data which shows a 5million hectare increase just for Queensland

Ludwig, you need to take a good look at the satellite data if you think non-forest clearing is nitpicking. Go to www.nrm.gov.au/slats and look up Landcover Change in Queensland 1999-2001.

If you add up the percentages in table 8 (lines 1-7,11,15,18&19) you will discover that in every period from 1991 to 2001, non-forest clearing exceeded 50% of the total. This was mostly "Tussocky or tufted grasses", "low trees (<10m) and <10% foliage cover" or "medium trees (10-30m) <10% foliage cover".

Land with <10% foliage cover is essentially a paddock with a few trees in it. The resident species are all grassland species, not forest dwelling species. They are not disadvantaged by tree removal.

And for the lazy, I will save them the trouble of adding the totals.
For the period 1991-95 non-forest clearing was 50.0%,
For the period 1995-97 non-forest clearing was 53.1%,
For the period 1997-99 non-forest clearing was 50.41%, and
For the period 1999-01 non-forest clearing was 50.46%.

And it should also be noted that partial clearing, thinning, is also recorded in the clearing stats. It is assumed to be forest that has been removed when the forest is still there, maintaining ecological functions. You have been seriously misled.

And as for Dr Paul, the statement that the huge flux in forest area was the result of better technology was almost plausible until one remembers that out of 35 million hectares of positive and negative revisions accross the country, they did not identify a single hectare of regrowth. They attributed the whole lot to "improved technology" yet felt the need to mention 50,000 piddling hectares of new plantation and landcare window dressing. Their credibility is zero.

Thankyou Perseus

So let’s assume in line with these stats that clearing of old-growth forests comprised about half of the total clearing figures in Qld. This still leaves an enormous extent of old-growth clearing.

You stated that the additional forest in Qld “was vast areas that had previously not been classed as forest because the canopy was less than 10% and in which the canopy had thickened to over 10%”. So it is only the fraction of thickened vegetation that has crossed this threshold that has been added to the forest total. Any grasslands that have developed a woody layer to less than 10% cover don’t count and any woodlands that already had a 10% cover don’t count either. So this statistic is really just picking out a small fraction of the total thickened vegetation. And yet this small fraction is supposed to be greater than all the clearing that occurred in the 90s!

We simply cannot tell from SLATS imagery, or any satellite imagery, or even aerial photos in most cases, when comparing pre 90s and post 90s images, whether many areas have thickened up across this threshold or not. Where we can see a significant change, we can’t assert that the thickened woody vegetation is over 10m tall and therefore within the definition of a forest. And it is impractical to get to more than a small fraction of sites on the ground, to check it out.

Then there is the ludicrous definition of a forest, as including any wooded vegetation with >10% crown cover (and >10m tall). Would you consider a Mitchell grass flat with scattered boree trees of, say 11% crown cover to be a forest? Not in a fit! It seems like a definition of convenience, designed to get the maximum change from non-forest to forest.

All of this means that the interpretation is wide open to large-scale error, and to enormous bias by those who are that way inclined

Thus, I say that many of the stats on this stuff are a million miles from Jennifer’s assertion of being “hard data”

Thanks for your comments, Jennifer. I think it is great when the author responds to the commentators. We can all learn a lot.

1. and 2. Your interpretation of Jared Diamond’s view on Australian agriculture and mine are different and I am happy to live with that. I believe that there are many properties that are not operated sustainably in Australia. I hope that efforts will be made to get them operating sustainably.

3. Please correct me if your view on the salinity in the Murray Darling is not “It’s all fixed up and there is nothing more to worry about.” That is certainly the impression that I get from your article and from your comment above.
When I read the Murray Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) website http://www.mdbc.gov.au/naturalresources/salinity/salt_interception/SaltInterceptionWorks.htm
it says the following:

“Salt interception works are large-scale groundwater pumping and drainage projects that intercept saline water flows and dispose of them, generally by evaporation. Since 1988, the States of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia together with the Commonwealth Government have funded the construction of salt interception works that resulted in a reduction of 80 EC units at Morgan. To achieve this reduction, these salt interception works have together pumped about 55 000 megalitres of saline water from the watertables each year, resulting in about 550 000 tonnes of salt being kept out of the River Murray each year.”

These saline groundwater pumping projects have cost over $100 million and $2 million per year in energy costs alone. That is 20 million kW-hours and (assuming coal fired power), 18,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases plus all the other pollutants associated with power generation.

At least as much new groundwater pumping will be needed in the future to keep the salinity down in the Murray, and then land use solutions, such as revegetation with natives and crop rotation will have to be implemented so that groundwater pumping can be phased out. None of this will be cheap or happen quickly.

That is why I don’t think it is appropriate to imply that the salinity in the Murray is all fixed up.

Wrong Ludwig, wrong Ericc. You may not assume that 50% of Qld clearing is "old growth". It is merely woody vegetation that falls within the definition of forest. Much of it is defined as "remnant" but this term is designed to give the ill-informed observer the impression that it is old growth without actually being so. Remnant is any vegetation that is 50% of the 'normal' canopy cover, 70% of the 'normal' height, and the same composition as the original. And this has captured vast tracts of regrowth forest of comparatively recent age.

Other parts may technically fall within the definition of old growth due to a number of shade trees left in a paddock after original clearing (mostly selective ringbarking by blackfellas) and a subsequent regrowth event has supplied the canopy cover threshhold to (often wrongly) get classified as remnant. If you go to Table 6 of the above SLATS reference you will see that in 2001 some 26% of all clearing was on land that had no woody vegetation in 1990. And the reporting of "remnant vs non-remnant" clearing does not indicate what portion of the remnant clearing was actually remnant grassland clearing.

Ericc, while the MDBC would like to claim credit for reducing salinity, the real achievers were farmers themselves and nature. Put simply, one cannot have a worsening salinity problem if the water table is being lowered. And while the MDBC was busy pumping saline water from points of salt concentration at great cost, farmers were doing a much better job by pumping out the fresher water for irrigation before it got to the salt load. It paid for itself in the crops produced and the salt stayed where it was causing no harm.

But, of course, an "earth sciences" community with a vested interest in funding chose to portray even this beneficial effect as a problem caused by farmers. They were demonised for increasing salinity and aquifer depletion in the one breath.

As all ways the truth is some where in the middle.
But Jennifer let me help you rest easy you are not one of Australias elites. :-0

We need people like Jennifer and Jared they mark the road and show us the middle path.

Ericc, You keep quoting me wrong. I never said the Murray was all fixed up. I simply stated that salt levels have halved over the last 20 years. Can we agree on that one point - as a start?

The truth lay closer to Jen’s contribution. Excellent work , and keep it up.
All in small steps.

Jennifer Marohasy wrote: "Australia’s elite really have forgotten where their milk, bread and trout come from."

Nearly all of Queensland's milk now comes from Victoria and we have virtually no dairy industry left in Queensland today, thanks to the 'free' market 'reforms' of recent years. I learnt this last Friday 4 November at a public meeting in Montville, Queensland, which used to have a large dairy industry, from Andrew McNamara the Labor member of the Queensland Parliament who gave the gave the famous speech back in February concerning Peak Oil ( see http://www.energybulletin.net/4654.html).

The only reason it is economic for milk to travel all of that distance is the current unsustainably cheap price of oil, which cannot last. When that changes we will have to either go without milk, or find a way to somehow rebuild our dairy industry having lost almost all the knowledge which kept it going, and having lost most of the best dairy farming land to property speculators.

Also, both Jennifer and Jared Diamond have omitted to mention that our agriculture is also unsustainably dependant upon non-renewable fossil fuel in another sense, that is nearly all of our agriculture requires both fertilizers and pesticides manufactured from petroleum. In other words, we are literally eating petroleum. How we can either feed the world, or maintain our current levels of agriculture productivity after this resource runs out by the middle of the decades starting 2030 at the latest has not been explained. For further information, see article by Richard Heinberg at http://www.museletter.com/archive/159.html

Perseus, the extent to which regrowth vegetation has come back to within the definition of remnant under the Vegetation Management Act, is not of “vast tracts”. It was a very minor component in the clearing of remnant vegetation. For vegetation to come back to this state, it cannot be of “comparatively recent age”. It generally takes a couple of decades to grow back this far. And of course landholders try to minimise the amount of regrowth that gets to a height and density anywhere near that of the original vegetation.

Anyway, vegetation that has advanced to such a state should simply be thought of as essentially equivalent to old-growth, as it holds just about full original ecological values. So this point of debate really is lost. So what if the remnant vegetation that was cleared had been largely near-mature regrowth??

We can’t base our conclusions on the stats, because just about every figure you look at on this whole issue is fraught with problems in how it was derived or interpreted. You have levelled plenty of criticism about some of the shortcomings in these figures, but you are at the same time using them to build your whole case. You can’t pick out the bits you like and ignore or condemn the rest.

I base my views on nearly 25 years experience in Queensland, having witnessed the vast clearing of the 90s in the wet tropics lowlands, central Qld (eg Nebo to Duaringa) and far southern Qld (eg Dirranbandi and St George areas), having had a great deal of experience in assessing remnant and non remnant vegetation, having observed thickening and encroachment across the state and having done enormous amounts of satellite image and aerial photo interpretation. I say profoundly that there is no way that the increase in forest cover in Qld in the 90s or even throughout the history of European settlement, in terms of area, has been of a greater extent than the clearing of remnant vegetation in just the one horrific decade

Wrong again, Ludwig. Most species can achieve the 70% height threshhold in no time when a chain is used, leaving viable root mass in situ. The dryer Qld forests are mostly lignotuberous, with stored energy for rapid regrowth. A coppiced stump on my place hit 20m in 3 years.

There is also some serious fudging of threshholds. One coastal forest (1200mm RF)had the canopy cover of sites 100km inland (800mm RF) used as the "normal extent". It had formed an 80% canopy but was assumed to have a normal 40% canopy so bits of adjoining paddock with shade trees at 20% canopy were captured as "remnant".

I have observed NRM officers surveying "normal height" over a 5ha sample, deliberately avoiding reference to mature plots in adjacent State Forest. It was akin to calculating the "normal height" of humans from the heights of primary school kids. The Act carefully avoided the word "too" from the term "the height to which the trees normally grow (too)". And this enabled the widespread capture of regrowth as remnant.

To call this stuff "nearly mature forest" is highly misleading. You have also compared new regrowth to remnant clearing when the real test of sustainability is the rate that regrowth reaches remnant status. In the upper Brisbane valley the area of existing regrowth (still growing)suggests the annual rate of new remnant formation is about 18 times greater than the remnant clearing rate.

Also, official clearing stats have always recorded the percentage of woody vegetation left in each catchment but provide no indication of the original woody veg cover. So the Condamine, with only 27.9% woody vegetation appears to have been drastically altered but, in fact, the original forest cover was only 35% anyway. It is a gross misrepresentation by omission but par for the course in public sector land management.

Crikey Perseus. I don’t know what magic fertilizer you use, but in my world, regrowth, the vast majority of which is from root stock, takes many years to get anywhere near 70% original height, and 50% original cover, except for rainforest, where pioneer Acacia species come back much faster. But in that situation, the composition of the canopy is quite different to the original, and thus the vegetation is still classed as non remnant. If regrowth has attained 50/70, then it is much more akin to old-growth vegetation than it is to a cleared paddock. So it rightly gets placed under the banner of remnant vegetation. It no longer matters whether it was previously cleared, or how old it is. You haven’t questioned the veracity of the 50/70 rule, so I think you just have to accept this.

Regarding the (alleged) fudging of thresholds. Again I say, you are being very critical of some stats and/or the methodology behind them, while using other stats from the same broad dataset on which to make your case. You just can’t do that!

You entered this debate with; “The additional forest in Qld at the height of the clearing was vast areas that had previously not been classed as forest because the canopy was less than 10%” You have highlighted various aspects of the whole tree clearing picture that you think are bodgy, but nothing can be bodgier than this. It is simply the most extraordinary claim. You have steadfastly avoided any response on this in your last 3 postings. Instead, you have beavered away at attempting to make this absolutely enormous extent of clearing in the 90s seem much less significant. Well, anyone who has any feel for this business isn’t going to buy that. And I am sure they must be laughing at the notion that the small portion of thickened vegetation that crossed the 10% canopy cover threshold could be of a greater extent than this decade’s worth of clearing. I think we have exhausted debate on this issue.

Hi Jennifer. Sorry for taking so long to respond.

Yes, I heartily agree that the Murray is much improved from 20 years ago, just as a patient who has had successful open heart surgery is much improved compared to before the operation. A little difference is that the surgery to save the Murray is ongoing and will need a lot more effort over the next 10 – 20 years, if it is to be ultimately successful.

That is not my point, though. You criticise Jared Diamond for using misinformation and propaganda, but you do the same thing. When you say that the salt concentration in the Murray is halved in the last 20 years and you imply that the problem is therefore solved, that is just as misleading as the “Murray is dying” campaign by the Green groups.

I don’t think spin doctoring on either side helps get the problem solved. I think you are doing the right thing by pointing out that the salinity in the Murray has dropped at Morgan and I applaud your efforts in going through Chapter 13 of ‘Collapse,’ and commenting on the places where Jared Diamond has been misleading or has his information wrong. I hope you keep doing that sort of stuff. I think you are trying to find solutions to environmental problems that are more evidence based and that is a goal that we should all strive for, but when you spin the evidence or leave something out, then it becomes harder to find good solutions.

I think you have a lot to offer Australia in our efforts to live sustainably and we need your help if we are going to be successful.

Ludwig, I have read some seriously silly statements in my day but your suggestion that I cannot use one set of data to refute other data is “sind doch nur scheisen gestalten”.

The data on forested area is compiled by the National Forest Inventory (ACT) while the State-wide Land And Tree Study (SLATS) satellite analysis of clearing is done by QLD DNRM. The remnant maps are prepared by the Queensland Herbarium. But even if it was all done by one entity it is ridiculous to suggest that because one detects an error in part of a work then the entire work becomes invalid, or worse, is off limits to those who detected the error. That is ideology not science.

For the record;

SLATS detects woody vegetation cover and clearing of that cover. It can detect significant reductions in canopy cover and can determine what use the cleared land was put to. It can classify that woody veg cover by composition but the task of measuring fluxes in veg composition is well beyond budget. They do not measure natural changes in canopy.

The Qld Herbarium maps remnant vegetation as well as possible under grossly inadequate budget. Particular Regional Ecosystems (RE’s) have had their area substantially revised in consecutive map versions. RE 12.3.11 for example, had one map version with 69,300ha left out of an original 315,000ha, and another had only 49,000ha left out of an original 129,000ha.

The National Forest Inventory defined what a forest is and measures the area that falls within that definition. And last time uncovered 35 million hectares across Australia that had changed status, either from non-forest to forest or the other way. There was an extra 7 million hectares of forest in Qld.

The “bad news” of clearing is easy and cheap to detect while the “good news” on regrowth is hard and expensive to detect and a political decision was made to only fund a half truth.

Less than half of Qld clearing is forest clearing. Remnant is not old growth and regrowth is very substantial in Qld

Perseus and Ludwig,

FYI, At the bottom of the following post at my weblog

http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000990.html

is a link to an unpublished report by Bill Burrows on some of the politics of regrowth/vegetation thickening in Queensland. Cheers,

I agree Perseus!! Less than half of clearing in Qld is forest clearing….. if you include reclearing of regrowth and some clearing of non-forest vegetation. Remnant is not (all) old growth….. presumably you inadvertently left a word out there, and regrowth is very substantial in Qld. But this is beside the point of our debate. And again you have completely avoided the core issue on which we find disagreement, which I put straight to you in the third paragraph my last post.

Enough.

Regarding your comments on Jared Diamond in your first post; He is not guilty of demonising Australian farmers. There have been many bad practices undertaken by our society since 1788, of which farmers and graziers have played their part. Yes, people on the land are partly to blame, but not wholly, for issues like overclearing, overgrazing, soil-loss, salinisation, thickening, the spread of weeds, etc. All of society is to blame; politicians, those who elect politicians, businesses who put profit first, those who consume the produce won off the land or gain from exporting that produce, and those who care about environmental issues but fail to address the big issues (yes I have a real beef with ’greenies’ as opposed to true environmentalists or ‘sustainabilityists’). Diamond was levelling due criticism, and not demonising anyone.

You wrote; “If he shows his hideous face around here again it will be eggs and tomatoes big time”. Well! Now isn’t that a bit extreme? The fact is, Jared Diamond is pretty much on the right track, and I’m sure if you read his books, you will sympathise with someone who is trying to break us out of our mind-numbing complacency over issues that we should collectively be putting as much energy into as the allied countries did under threat of invasion in World War II – an unmitigated full-on effort. OK so you disagree with some of his stuff. But taking such a polarised condemnatory stance can only work against your credibility, in the eyes of all who read such statements, no matter which side of the fence they may be on.

Ludwig, your capacity for apparent denial is breathtaking. All of my posts went to the point that the amount of actual forest clearing that took place was overstated by at least 100% (ie. less than 50% of recorded clearing was actually forest clearing) A large portion of the actual forest clearing was partial clearing that left a forest still in situ. And the excellent work of Bill Burrows, backed up by more than 1400 sample plots across Qld, makes it clear that thickenning is present over more than 60 million hectares of pasture and woodland. For you to then suggest that it is inconceivable that new forest formation could not match or exceed the rate of forest removal suggests that you either have a retention problem or a simple ideological one.

Your disembling on the issue of blame for so-called environmental crimes does not alter the fact that the impacts have been grossly exaggerated and that the blame has been laid at the feet of farmers.
It is government and a science community with vested interests that have manufactured the bullets and the fact that greens and "yellow science journalist" have fired those bullets does not refute the fact that farmers have been the target.

And your pathetic little sermon regarding my attitude to Diamond may have had the barest touch of plausibility had it not come on the very morning that I was informed that another farmer had just blown his head off in despair at his treatment by an officialdom completely devoid of a capacity to empathise. If he had been a public servant he would have spent the past two years on stress leave with full pay.

His name was Joe Camilleri. He was a good man who deserved a whole lot better than he got. It is Remembrance Day. I'm going out to buy a poppy, and I have nothing more to say to you.

Perseus wrote : "And your pathetic little sermon regarding my attitude to Diamond may have had the barest touch of plausibility had it not come on the very morning that I was informed that another farmer had just blown his head off in despair at his treatment ..."

I fail to see the necessity for holding either Jared Diamond or Ludwig morally culpable for this tragedy.

It's obvious that we will all have to pay a high cost to repair the serious degradation of our natural environment, or we will pay even more dearly in years to come.

It is probaly inevitable, that in the possibly overly bureaucratic attempts by governments to forestall environmental catastrophe, some unfair burden will be placed on some farmers as seems to have happened to Joe Camilleri to whom Perseus referred.

The answer is not for governments to give up, but, instead, to find better, fairer and more transparent ways to regulate the behaviour of farmers.

Furthermore, there should be alternative means for farmers, who cannot farm sustainably, to earn their livelihoods.

One suggestion has been that the Government simply pay farmers to look after the land. As a community we would pay for this service through our taxes

However, such as sensible solution is forbidden by the 'small government' dogma which is promoted by Jennifer Marohasy and the Institute of Public Affairs for which she works.

Thankyou Jennifer for the Bill Burrows referral.

I agree with him that there has been massive thickening since the ‘disappearance’ of aboriginal burning practices. Some of this has resulted in complete ecosystem change, but the vast majority hasn’t.

I disagree that remnant vegetation should represent pre-European vegetation. This is his primary basis for labelling the management of tree-clearing in Queensland a “dumb legacy”. There is no way that we should be basing the whole Vegetation Management Act on pre-European vegetation. That is simply crazy. Coming up with reliable concepts of vegetation as it was at that time and mapping it across the whole state would be just impossible. Mapping existing vegetation is enormously complex enough. Vegetation that has changed due to one natural ecological factor; fire, should be considered to be just as natural now as it was then. It is no less pristine.

Anyway, there is facility within the Vegetation Management Act to treat thickened vegetation.

Tighter restrictions have been placed upon us due to past irresponsible practices. This is happening in many facets of our society, it is by no means restricted to tree-clearing. It is an inevitable consequence of the demand on our resource base getting horribly out of sync with the ability of that resource base to keep supplying that demand. Unfortunately, those who cleared irresponsibly, under a government that allowed them to do so, and even compelled them to do so, have got away with and it is others who now suffer. But again, the same applies across our society. And we ain’t seen nothin’ yet in this regard.

The Beatty government has made a genuine attempt at reform in one of the most needy areas – wholescale environmental destruction. And they have attempted to base it on good science. They need to be commended.

Landholders had all the warning and all the time in the world in the lead-up to the implementation of tree-clearing restrictions in September 2000. Many took advantage of that, and clearing rates soared. Those who didn’t can’t accuse the government of inadequate opportunity to ‘take care of business’

Gosh, Daggett, you certainly have the official line down pat. Which department do you work in? "forestalling catastrophe" indeed. It is the classic rationalisation of the perpetrator of injustice, otherwise known as spin. I made no accusation that either diamond or Ludwig were directly involved in Joe's death. Let me spell it out for anyone with an unencumbered wit.

The character, scale, intensity and significance of tree clearing in Queensland has been grossly exaggerated by a bureaucracy that has surrendered it's independence to the political arm. It has been aided in this misrepresentation by a science community that has recognised where it's bread is buttered and delivered the specified product as demanded.

This gross misrepresentation of fact has been used to justify measures to address the issues, as they appear to those who have been subjected to the misrepresentation. And commensurate measures were then implemented.

The inescapable conclusion is that a measure that has been implemented to deal with a grossly exaggerated problem can be nothing else but a disproportionate response to the real situation. And a disproportionate response can be nothing else but an unreasonable response to the circumstances. And when such unreasonable responses are enshrined in policy and law it can be nothing else but injustice and persecution.

Joe Camilleri died, unable to cope with the systematic persecution and injustice meted out to him by the State. Truth is, indeed, the first casualty in war and it follows then, that those who would make truth a casualty are engaged in the same act of war as those who have a more direct hand in the killing.

Time and again through history, ordinary men and women have shown that they are only capable of meting out injustice after someone else has demonised the victim. "by their deeds shall ye know them"

Perseus : I can see from Bill Burrows article that there is a plausible case in favour of allowing the clearing of some regrowth areas given the evidence that much of it has resulted from the suppression of fire since Europeans displaced the aboriginal population.

If you are able to read Chapter 1 of "Collapse" which concerns Montana, as state of the US, with ecological problems simiar to that of Australia, you will see that Jared Diamond is also aware of the problem of the thickening of vegetation:

"On the other hand, the public also dislikes the proposals for forest thinning programs that could make the forests less flammable, because people prefer beautiful views of dense forests, they object to 'unnatural interference' with nature, they want to leave the forest in a 'natural' condition, and they certainly don't want to pay for the thinning with increased taxes. They fail to understand that western forests are already in a highly unnatural condition, as a result of a century of fire supression, logging and sheep grazing. (p 46)"

However, there remains a political risk that the pendulum might swing back towards open slather clearing which would would be clearly unacceptable. The bottom line is that farmers, or any other social group, must not be allowed, in pursuit of their own economic interests, to destroy the fragile ecology of this continent upon which we all depend. Our Governments must have the right to act on our behalf to prevent this. If it is true that, at the moment, they are more strict than what is absolutely necessary for the preservation of a healthy environment, then that can be changed.

We should also question economic justifications for permitting the more damaging farming pracices. Bill Burrows states that "selective thinning of thickening vegetation ... is uneconomic."

If certain modes of agriculture cannot be made economic without causing irreparable harm to our environment, then they should be abandoned.

Your last para, Daggett, almost gets to the point. The precautionary principle only applies in cases of serious or irreparable harm. You and your kind have assumed that any intervention by man is not only harm but, serious and irreparable harm. This is not the case and doubly so when the character, scale, intensity and significance of an activity is grossly exaggerated.

How can the clearing of regrowth and thickenning amount to irreparable harm when the very existence of regrowth is unambiguous evidence to the contrary.

And on the question of economics, it seems the urban community is more than willing to export local manufacturing jobs to low wage economies in the interests of consumer benefit by cheaper products. But the same community will not have a bar of importing low wage workers into the bush to carry out the numerous ecological works that could be done but cannot currently be done at domestic wage rates. These are jobs that currently do not exist but they should exist and the only way they can exist is with a system of temporary guest workers. We cannot use Mexican illegals like our major competitor.

"And you tell me, over and over and over again, my friend", (as the song goes) that we must be economically viable in an international economy, and meet high environmental standards that urbanites need not meet themselves, but we are denied the labour market flexibility that would make it all possible.

Ecological sustainability is a lot like fighting for King and country. Few were able to argue against such a widely accepted ideal but many soon found that there was a big difference between the high ideal and getting butchered by incompetent boofheads. Plus ca change.....

Perseus wrote; “The inescapable conclusion is that a measure that has been implemented to deal with a grossly exaggerated problem can be nothing else but a disproportionate response to the real situation. And a disproportionate response can be nothing else but an unreasonable response to the circumstances. And when such unreasonable responses are enshrined in policy and law it can be nothing else but injustice and persecution”

We have the most total disagreement here.

The bottom line of this regulatory approach is to strike a reasonable balance between productivity and conservation. It is also very strongly in the interest of long-term productivity to protect environmental values. It affects people unevenly - this is where compensation is really vital, and where the Federal government should have come to the party right from the start. But, if they had, the Act would have been implemented much sooner in all probability, which would have meant much less ‘panic’ clearing and many more disaffected landholders. Many landholders have said, and not so quietly; “thankyou Mr Beatty for giving us the opportunity to clear all that we wanted to before the restrictions came in”. A few landholders have actually said things to me like; “you think Beatty has been heavy-handed on tree-clearing? Bah! He was responsible for enormous clearing rates before the Act came in”.

The Beatty Government could have brought in the new restrictions quickly and with minimum publicity. They could have ended broadacre clearing, straight-up. Afterall, this notion has been around for a long time and every landholder in the state knew of the potential for easy land-clearing to very quickly be curtailed. Instead, everyone got all the warning in the world.

Alternatively, the government could have done nothing, allowing massive clearing rates to continue, making it necessary for a subsequent government to deal with. The whole environment would have been much more degraded by then, and sympathy for green in issues stronger. Consequently, restrictions would probably have been more severe and less fairly apportioned. Or they could have implemented some pissy token effort, with the same results.

More next posting

Continued from last posting

The government could have struck a more balanced approach between productivity and nature conservation. Rather than regional ecosystems having to be 90% cleared before it came under category of Endangered and 70% under Of Concern, they could very easily have said that there will be no more clearing of any REs that have reached 50% remnant. Also, the rules for regrowth coming back to remnant under the Act, ie 70% original height and 50% original cover, could very easily have been 50/50, with no requirement for the canopy composition to be the same.

The notion that thickening can be traded off against clearing is entirely a productivity point of view. But from an ecological point of view, both are negatives. The fact that thickening has occurred very extensively in Queensland should not for one moment lessen the fact that the massive clearing rates needed to be curtailed. A fair and reasonable balance has been struck – there is provision for treatment of thickening.

Yes, this is uneconomic for some landholders, but then so is the treatment of regrowth, weeds, soil erosion, maintenance and building of fences, dams, etc.. for some landholders. Saying that thinning is uneconomic for some, as Bill Burrows has, is to pull out one economic factor in isolation. We could just as easily look at the other side of the coin; clearing or thinning or sewing with buffel is unviable for the plants and animals of that community.

Grappling with the perspectives is difficult. It is one thing to have some knowledge of the whole business and be able to quote lots of stats, but it is another thing entirely to gain a realistic perspective. I have spoken to hundreds of landholders, at length, about all of this. But no one seems to have as much difficulty with perspective as Perseus.

In conclusion, the issue is nothing like a “grossly exaggerated problem” and neither is the response to it.

You continue to refer to massive clearing rates when the governments own data shows that half of it was pasture maintenance and another quarter was only partial clearing, leaving woodland habitat intact.

And I seem to recall that there was already $100m on the table back in the mid 90's to compensate for the endangered 10% vegetation. That is, there was an admission of state responsibility to compensate. To then take it to a total ban but with the same old $100m on the table and blame the feds for not pitching in, is pure political spin.

A balance between an exaggerated problem and an actual farmers right cannot be anything but an imbalance. And contrary to what Beattie, former Minister Robinson and all the culpable officers concerned would like to see, this issue will not go away. Every farmer will look out from his back step as he puts his boots on in the morning and takes them off each night and see the evidence of malgovernance before him.

And somewhere, sometime, the class action will kick in and we will have the final say on Beattie's place in history. Don't you worry about that.

Perseus, you have gone off on some interesting tangents and also have erected, and successfully demolished, a number of straw men.

Why would you presume that I favour the export of manufacturing jobs? I have already lost at least one job as a result of such decisions made by selfish short-sighted investors, and my current job is not secure, either. Of course, some privileged sectors of our society do well out of this, and, I would add, a few not-so-privileged sectors as well, but by losing all of our manufacturing skills we will only become dependent on other countries, and in the longer term, we will all become much poorer.

You advocate the importation of low-wage workers, to do the work you seem to think Australians either should not, or would not, want to do.

What kind of solution is that? Would you then have them deported again, or would they remain, but as some kind of second class citizens, or would they eventually be allowed the same rights as existing Australians?

The biggest challenge we face is to somehow find a way to get this largely dry and infertile continent to support it's 20,000,000 inhabitants when we no longer can use cheap fossil energy to enhance our soils's productivity. Increasing our population will only make an already bad situation worse.

We must, as a national community make the necessary sacrifices.

We must do similarly to what President Roosevelt did in the 1930's, that is, put to work restoring our environment, the hundreds of thousands now out of work, or who are working in menial social useless occupations such as telemarketing or junk mail delivery.

They must be paid decently so that they don't suffer inordinately from performing this urgently necessary task. The necessary taxes should be raised from the rest of society, regardless of the inevitable loud indignation that will come from 'small government' ideologues.

I thank Perseus for the mellow response. Hey, we found some more points of agreement:

I agree that the compensation factor has been woefully inadequate. But you have got to point the finger at the Federal government for that.

I also agree that the funding for regional ecosystem mapping, and the prompt attendance to landholders who have inaccurate mapping on their properties, has been really minimal.

But no matter what spin you put on the breakdown of clearing figures, the fact remains; the clearing of remnant vegetation was absolutely massive, and had to be curtailed.

I have often wondered why there hasn’t been a much stronger reaction against this whole business, including massive protests, class actions, etc. I have come to the conclusion that this is because the overwhelming majority of landholders can see exactly why it has been implemented and agree with it in principle. Most landholders with whom I speak, who often have inaccurately mapped regional ecosystems or remnant vegetation on their properties, and who have to go to a lot of trouble to get it corrected before they can proceed with clearing or development, freely say that they understand why the restrictions have been brought in.

Many landholders are environmentalists at heart. I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard; “I’m not a greenie, but….” The people on the land have first-hand experience with the consequences of mismanagement by way of overclearing, overgrazing, etc (mostly not their own mistakes). Many if not most are only too happy for restrictions to apply to them if they also apply to others, especially the big landholders, who could otherwise potentially clear huge areas, and their neighbours, whose actions could affect them.

Of course, there is the full gamut of views out there, right up to Perseus’ complete condemnation end of the spectrum. But in my humble experience of regular discussions with landholders all over north and central Queensland for many years, most by far are somewhere on the other half of the spectrum.

Daggett, There is currently a proposal by the Pacific Islands Forum Nations for Australia to develop a temporary workers visa so that a fixed number of young islanders can come to Australia to do the jobs that European backpackers do not fill at present. We have a temporary visa system for the people whose subsidies have destroyed any notion of level playing field in agricultural markets but we do not have one for those who seek nothing more than an opportunity to get ahead.

And it is not just fruit picking. Rural Australia is tied to international markets but is saddled with domestic wage rates. And this means that only the high yield proportion of the total amount of work to be done, actually gets done. The remaining proportion, like environmental repair, weed control, manual thickenning control etc, has a lower economic yield that does not cover domestic wages and so, does not take place at all. It is why selective ringbarking jobs gave way to ball and chain clearing. The jobs are still there but they do not exist at domestic wage rates. Local workers do not want to do them at lower rates and should not be compelled to do them at lower rates.

Provided they are clearly identified as jobs that are only available at lower rates, and are quarantined from the domestic labour market, then there is no logical reason to prevent someone from a poorer nation from doing that job (for a fixed time) at a rate that makes it worth their while. And those who would preclude such an option while making pronunciamentos on ecological viability, etc, using microchips made by workers on 90 cents an hour, is the grossest hypocrisy.

And to blame farmers for environmental harm while consistently opting to buy imported product that takes even less environmental care in its production, and is therefore cheaper, is also gross hypocrisy. And to proclaim environmental high moral ground while ignoring a market based solution to serious environmental problems shreds all credibility of the proclaimer

Ludwig, all this anecdotal stuff about landholders agreeing with the veg leg is pure departmental spin. Next you'll be trotting out the farmer equivalent of 'the good nigger', you know, the one who takes every injustice as evidence of his diminished status. And who spends his time in gratitude for the wise guidance and modest benevolence of his intellectual and moral superiors. It cuts no mustard with me, buster.

You have spent all your time justifying the need for what has been done but very little time on what has actually been done and the way it has been done. And the way it has been done is beyond disgraceful, it is criminal. Lets get this straight, any flimsy environmental pretext does not justify the use of any means. Almost every day we uncover some new instance of departmental sleaze that has been perpetrated under the pretext of environmental good intentions. All of it by urbane and affable folk who are dedicated to their family and their jobs. And history has repeatedly shown that good ordinary folk need their victims to be demonised before they can bring themselves to cause them harm.

You are no different to the train driver on the Auschwitz line.

Perseus, you wrote; “Ludwig, all this anecdotal stuff about landholders agreeing with the veg leg is pure departmental spin”.

O for goodness sake! It is my personal experience. Nothing to do with any department. You sure can come up drivel.

Can’t you see that making such ridiculous statements as; “…..trotting out the farmer equivalent of the good nigger…” and “You are no different to the train driver on the Auschwitz line” not only does you and your cause absolutely no good at all, but is very destructive to your arguments. It immediately tells all the good level-headed readers of this forum, no matter what their views may be, that you are anything but level-headed.

Perspective Perseus. Perspective instead of extreme polarisation. You have no sense of balance

Lets look at the facts, Ludwig. You are a departmental officer who has spent a great deal of time ignoring the facts relating to the character and scale of clearing, regrowth, thickenning and remnant forest Vs remnant grassland. And in response to the specific evidence of Burrows, SLATS satellite data, remnant data etc you have consistently returned to generalised political statements of opinion.

And in the last few posts you have attempted to paint my views as extreme and far removed from the broader farming community. You even had the gall to imply that there was majority support amongst farmers for the Beattie policy on clearing.

Your claims are totally at variance with the voting figures for Qld. Outside the major coastal cities and mining towns, the community overwhelmingly votes National or independent conservative. Most of these sitting members have two party preferred support of 70% or more. In the purely rural booths that support goes to 80-90%. The green vote, on the other hand, is only 7% in the cities and drops below 4% in the regions. And that 4% rarely even owns a cheap house block let alone a farm.

And in light of this, to venture an opinion that a majority of farmers support the government's approach, excludes self delusion as a credible explanation. It is pure political manipulation and prompts one to ask, exactly how low will you stoop?

The real test would be for you and I to show up at a sale yards somewhere and both repeat what we have said in this trail. And we'll soon see who is drinking the free beer and who is wearing the Tar and Feathers.

Let’s look at the facts, Perseus. I am a departmental officer who has spent a great deal of time in the real world talking to people at the grass-roots level.
I expressed my views totally untinted by the department that I work for or the government it serves. That’s the great advantage to having a nom de plume and hence an almost uninhibited freedom of speech in a world where this is otherwise highly compromised. (See my posting this forum in response to Philip Ruddock’s article of 15/11/05).
In this instance, what I have said is more or less what my department would be happy to hear. But when it comes to overall sustainability, my views are anything but in line with my employer or the government.
So when I say that the many landholders are environmentalists at heart and freely admit it, and the overwhelming majority of landholders can see exactly why tree-clearing restrictions have been implemented and agree in principle, you’d better believe it.
In response to the voting figures you quoted: Just because people vote National doesn’t mean they can’t see environmental reality, and one of the most blatant realities is that the enormous clearing rates could not be allowed to continue. People on the land still vote National largely because it is traditional and also largely because they don’t understand or trust or care too much about what any particular party is offering.
That’s not to belittle rural people – it is the same across our society. It would take some enormous kick in the guts by the Nationals to change this voting pattern. As for the so-called green vote, you would be naïve in the extreme to think that the tiny primary vote for the Greens or Democrats equates to peoples’ environmental concerns. It is much more complex.
I didn’t say that the majority of farmers support the government’s approach. They don’t like any increased restrictions (who does?), but broadly speaking, they can see merit in it, and they ain’t gonna amass in huge protests agin it, as per the impending IR legislation.

Farmers don't mass in large numbers because it would generally take three days off work to do so. A day down to the city, a day getting around the city and a day back. Your IR rentacrowd, on the other hand, flexes off for an extended lunch, does the demo and is back in office without having lost an hours pay. To measure the intensity of concern by street numbers is pure urban-centric ignorance.

I, too, once regarded myself as an ecologist until made aware of what is being done by people who own neither land nor trees in the name of ecology. I was also on a Regional Veg Management Committee and saw first hand the systematic manipulation of both information flow and deliberation process. All were able to recognise a real problem when it was identified but no real farmers representative (there was a number of fakes chosen by DNRM) was prepared to hand over a blank cheque for a disproportionate response.

And the record shows that the proportionate responses developed under the Regional Veg Planning Process were junked in favour of a total clearing ban.

It all gets back to proportionate responses to actual situations. Any departure from that is injustice. Injustice diminishes the whole community and the community will pay, very dearly, for this for as long as the injustice remains unremedied.

Most people understand that clever farmers work with nature. But the departmental brown shirts don't understand that working with nature offers both ecologically beneficial and adverse opportunities. Nothing can get rid of an unwanted forest like nature can. And the great irony of it all is that the best way to get rid of a forest is to do what the greens want us to do. That is, don't touch it.

Farmers have discovered that the bond of trust, the social contract that underpinned their amply demonstrated ecological good works, has been trashed. You and your kind have taken us down the road to ecological Bosnia and you will get the environment you deserve. Repent at leisure.

I dunno Perseus, you seem to make some half-sensible comments, and then you destroy your credibility with complete claptrap like; “You and your kind have taken us down the road to ecological Bosnia and you will get the environment you deserve.” My mind boggles!

Ok so there are issues with the whole tree-clearing regulatory process. Well gee whiz, what would you expect? For something as big and as complex as this to flow along perfectly smoothly?

After the ousting of the Goss Govt in 1995, due to an autocratic attempt to construct a major motorway, which alienated voters in four electorates, Beatty was very careful to see that no such top-down actions happened under his watch. Right from the start of the formulation of tree-clearing regulation, he made it clear that there would be a significant bottom-up factor included in the process, directly empowering landholders in decision-making. Hence the Regional Vegetation Management panels were set up.

Secondly, the whole show was based on good science, of which regional ecosystems were a big part. This was an excellent method of determining what vegetation types / habitats were in particular need of conservation. Along with consideration of rare or threatened species, soil erodibility, slope, salinity, corridors, riparian buffer zones and a few other criteria, a very good system was developed for determining what could and couldn’t be cleared.

Thirdly, the rules for determining remnant vegetation and Of Concern and Endangered regional ecosystems are skewed strongly in favour of the landholder and productivity, as I explained in a previous posting.

In conclusion, this is a good process! Flawed, yes, but still damn good all-told.

OK so you have picked this process to bits and condemned it outright. So how about telling us exactly how you would have gone about the regulation of tree-clearing, or would you have allowed open slather clearing to have continued until it exhausted itself?

Perseus,

You have clutched at all kinds of straws in order to bolster your case.

What you seem ot be saying is that the whole economic basis of much of our agriculture is unsound and I would agree.

If the income we derive from agricultural exports is insufficient to support the proper care of the land from which those exports are produced, then we should not be exporting. In the long term this can only make us poor if our already arid and largely infertile land is further degraded.

One way or another we have to find a way to support Australia's current population without irreparably harming our land, without the use of non-renewable resources such as fossil fuel based fertilisers, and without relying on cheap temporary labor, which would indeed need to be extremely cheap, if the costs of annual air fares to and from Australia, in a world which is running out of oil, are taken into account.

Ludwig, it was a credible process right up to the point when the whole process was junked by Beattie with the imposition of a blanket ban. This then excluded clearing even in catchments with 95% woody vegetation. It precluded a potentially valuable system of vegetation credits and trade-offs and it provided a pretext to avoid the obligation to compensate those who were compelled to deliver all of the communitys ill-informed whimsy. What compensation was provided was nothing more than a rebadging of the DNRM budget for the VegNazis. Hardly a balanced approach nor a proportionate response. But it did, at least, strip away any residual ambiguity about the predatory motives of QldInc. You see, no-one believes a word you say any more.

So, you're a luddite are you, Daggett? Or are you just constructing a suitable rationalisation in your own mind for the State sponsored depopulation of inland Queensland. It is pretty standard operating procedure of tyrants. Stack all the cards against the target minority and then lament their incapacity to adapt to changing circumstances.

You leave me breathless, and surprised, Perseus.

You say it was a credible process. Well that seems like the perfect contradiction to me.

In your last posting you ripped into the Regional Vegetation Management Committee process. But this was an integral part of the “credible process”. I could pull out 20 other examples from your postings on this thread since you first ripped into me on 6/11.

I’m sorry but I just don’t know where you are coming from.

And again I have to say that your use of extremist language (VegNazis) undoes your credibility entirely.

I reckon it is time to honour your statement of 11/11; “…and I have nothing more to say to you.”

Perseus,

Assigning labels of 'Luddite', 'vegnazi' etc. to your detractors, and other forms of verbal abuse, is no substitute for arguing your case, which you have failed to do.

My simple point is that every society has to live within the means of the resource base available to it. When societies fail to do so, they collapse as Jared Diamond has amply demonstrated. The situation we face today is not fundamentally different to the situation faced by the civilisations of Easter Island, the ancient Sumerians, the Mayans, Angkor Wat, Norse Greenland etc. If our society collapses, then the collapse will affect almost every corner of the globe and the consequences will be almost too awful to bear thinking about.

The main difference, today, is that we have been able to extend our civilisation way beyond the limitations reached by previous civilisations, because we have discovered a lot of captured fossil energy in the form of coal, petroleum and natural gas.

This form of energy in such convenient cannot be renewed, except over tens, or, perhaps, hundreds of millions of years. To have burnt up almost half of this priceless gift from nature in around 150 years, a blink of the eyelid in term of overall human history, is a staggering act of stupidity on the part of a supposedly intelligent species.

If we are to avoid the fate of those societies which Jared Diamond has described, then we must act with a sense of utmost urgency to find a way to live within the means we have at our disposal. If we are to continue to use non-renewable fossil fuels, then the purpose to which they must be put must be to make our environment sustainable, so that when they do inevitably run out, our land can still produce food and other necessities.

(tobecontinued)

(continuedfromabove)

Your harebrained scheme of importing cheap temporary workers on a temporary basis can be no solution. At best, we will be relying on the labour of second class global citizens to fix up our environmental mess. At worst it will significantly add to the burden on Australia's fragile ecology.

You complain of Australian domestic wage rates, but what of the exorbitant incomes earned by whole layers of society who contribute little or no tangible wealth to our society, but whose profligate lifestyles add far more greatly to the strain on our environment than those of workers on close to the minimum wage rates : property speculators, real estate agents, lawyers, investors, bankers, financiers, advertisers, company CEO's, insurers etc, etc.?

If we didn't have their lifestyles to support, then perhaps there would not be as nearly as great a need for our eco-system to be degraded in order to export agricultural products.

In the long term, we will have no choice but to produce and consume food locally. If any trade is still possible after we run out of cheap oil, then it will only be in the relatively small surpluses that each society produces.

An excellent article about this can be found in the book "The Final Energy Crisis" of 2005 in a Chapter by Edward Goldsmith entitled "Farming and Food Production under Regimes of Climate Change".

I totally agree Daggett.

As you say, the bottom line “is that every society has to live within the means of the resource base available to it.”

This is the essence of sustainability.

I entered this debate with, “Ms Marohasy’s comments on land-clearing are truly flabbergasting”.

Well, I have just heard her basically rehash the article that started this thread of debate on Okhams Razor. She said that she completely rejects sustainability science!

Omygoodenss! Not only am I flabbergasted, but completely stonkered, breathless, and totally dismayed.

I,I, I, I j just don’t know what to say!

Ludwig -
how can you be flabbergastered by this article or its Ockham's Razor counterpart, when they are put together in the manner of such intelligent design?
Have faith, man!

Colinsett

Jennifer’s talk was put together reasonably well. A hundred things to refute, but still put together in a reasonably convincing manner… until she got to the point where she said; “But I completely reject the concept of ‘sustainability science’…”.

Does she mean she dismisses the science of sustainability, or is she just playing with words and only referring to the exact concept of sustainability science as elucidated by Ian Lowe? Does it matter? Her message is clear – everything is just fine thankyou very much and anyone who says otherwise is a crackpot.

I have faith man, in Lowe, Flannery, Diamond and their ilk (but not Brown)

A system of guest worker visas is succesfully employed by Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Canada and the USA. Indeed, the entire US Cane harvest is done by Cuban, yes, Cuban guest workers. None of these economies are in trouble.

All the talk on so called sustainability has been consistently demonstrated to be nothing more than the acceptable face of a squalid bit of old fashioned dispossession. All you are doing is precluding practical solutions so farms can then be labelled unviable or unsustainable.

Jennifer Marohasy objects to the same attributes of "sustainability science" as I do. That is, Lowe's notion that a sloppy assemblage of speculative modelling, laced with highly pregnant assumptions, can be rightly described as science.

Perseus wrote : "All you are doing is precluding practical solutions ..."

I have already proposed two possible solutions to which you have not responded :

1. Pay farmers to care for their land where it is not sustainable for them to continue to farm.

2. A 'New Deal' style program to employ Australians in projects to repair our land. This was a success in the U.S. in the 1930's so it is conceivable that such a program could succeed today.

In the longer term, the whole economic basis of our society must change. When we run out of cheap oil, it won't even be possible to transport food over long distances as we do today, let alone export it overseas, and we certainly won't be able to fly tens of thousands of guest workers in and out every year.

We will have no choice but to simply live very close to where food and other essentials can be produced. This means that those Australians now crowded into high rise monstrosities, if they wish to avoid starvation when they are unable to get food from their local supermarkets, will have to be prepared to move out into rural areas, beforehand.

Whether there will be enough land for 20,000,000 or more Australians can't be known, but if we are to have any hope of being able to feed everyone, we will need to apply the Permaculture techniques as advocated by David Holmgren and Ian Mollison, or something similar, in order to make it possible for our land to produce food without fossil fuel based fertilisers.

Any government with foresight, and with the best interests of all Australians at heart, would begin, as a matter of urgency, taking the steps necessary to turn our society in this direction.

Daggett, your proposed solutions, to pay farmers for environmental works, and some sort of new deal, may have had some traction were it not for the fact that the government that employs you has just reneged on the question of compensation for farmers impacted by the clearing ban. There was $100 million on the table seven years ago to cover the cost of preserving the 10% endangered ecosystems. Logic would then suggest that a move to preserve the 30% of concern ecosystems would need at least another $200 million in 1998 dollars. But spiv central went for the total ban, left the lousy $100m on the table and tried to blame the feds for not delivering the rest. Some of that money was then handed out to departmental agencies etc, funding themselves, but claiming that it was a form of compensation to the farmers who will not see a red cent of it.

There is also the missing carbon credits for the foregone clearing activity. These amount to $600 million each year but have been pocketed by Beattie to enable another power station to be built to service the people who vote for him in the SE Corner.

And lets not forget the $900 million in annual costs and lost production imposed on the rural sector because of the veg leg. You must remember that, surely? You know, the report by Bill Burrows, that the government suppressed, that the government intimidated the author over?

So your government is already $1.5 billion a year in arrears. That is 15% of total agricultural production in the State, and we don't get a cent in tax credit for the sacrifice. The credibility of this government and the administration is so low that no-one will believe a word it says until the hard cash is in our own bank account.

While I disagree with Jennifer Marahosey's pro-GM sentiment, I agree with her critical comments regarding Jared Diamond.
Mr Diamond has obviously not visited much of the agricultural area of Australia.
I live in the heart of the salt lake district in Western Australia and these salt lakes have always been here as part of an inland river system. When settlers first moved to this area, they complained of the eerie silence as there were very few animals.
The lack of fresh water and animals for food was probably why aborigines considered this area taboo.
Early surveyors considered this area barren wasteland.
With farming came dams and with water came animals, we now have an abundence of wildlife.
Crop yields have increased dramatically and our farming systems are advanced to prevent soil erosion.
Australian farmers produce "sun dried" grain rather than mechanically or chemically dried grain. Australian farmers mainly rely on freerange stock rather than intensive livestock farming.
Australian farmers are one of the least subsidised farmers in the world which indicates the efficiency.
Most farmers in this district spend money on conservation issues.
While we can not afford rational high cost techniques such as GM crops, we have a sustainable future.

Perseus,

I have no idea how you were able to jump to the conclusion that I work for the Queensland Government.

I would have thought that a lot of what I wrote would have shown that I am strongly critical of many Queensland Government polices. In any case, I don't see why you think that the practical solutions I argue for should hinge on what the Queensland Government chooses to do and not to do today.

Compensation to farmers is only one aspect of this problem, most of which you have chosen to ignore.

Nevertheless, I think that the costs of environmental repair should be fairly borne by the whole community, which should also include farmers, themselves. It is also important that the compensation payable to farmers should not be so great that there are insufficient funds left for other goverenment services.

I think many of the problems we face are simply that we pay too little for our food, whilst too much is spent on other items which would not be necessary if our Governments had done their jobs properly. Instead, they have chosen to serve the selfish interests of privileged sectors of our community at everyone else's expense.

The most significant of these sectors have been property speculators and developers whom we can thank for having caused our cities to have been built so that almost every single adult needs his/her own reliable private motor vehicle in order to be able to get around.

Other expenses which we now have to meet, but were, somehow, less necessary a generation ago, include hyper-inflated housing costs, charges for superannuation fund managers, bank charges, accountants' fees to cope with the absurdly complex government taxes, charges and regulations, insurance, litigation, medical expenses and physical security of our property.

Consequenlty, there is not enough money left over for many of us to be able to pay for our food sufficiently to allow our farmers to properly look after their land.

NonGMFarmer, the news just seems too good to be true. How do you respond to http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s743305.htm ?

NonGMFarmer,
1. It is extraordinary that our pioneers developed land that was considered a wasteland, let alone marginal. This says a lot about the mentality at the time – just do it, if there is any chance at all of it paying off. Don’t even think of failure. Don’t even think of delayed-action negative factors that could be set in train. Don’t even think of the natural environment.

2. These areas were thought of poorly by both Europeans and Aborigines, but they have (?had) amazing ecosystems, with all sorts of species adapted to these saline environments, moreso here than anywhere else in Australia because of the extent of these areas and their enormously long and stable geomorphological history. The building of dams, thus facilitating more animals and birds was just the same as introducing feral animals to other natural ecosystems.

3. Of course practices have improved, and yields have risen in some areas and presumably on average overall. But practices were so bad that they had to improve. And in WA, where the advance of salinity and other problems became very high-profile along with the advent of the landcare movement, the planting of trees and various other things became widespread practices. And improved crop strains have been progressively introduced, which by the way is genetic engineering in the broad sense. But this does not detract from the fact that a couple of monsters have been set in motion; salinity and climate change.

4. You say that most farmers in your district spend money on conservation issues. This is good, but is this money really being spent on minimising salinity and other threats to productivity, with gains for conservation as a spin-off?

5. And finally, WA wheatbelt (and just about all Australian) farmers only have a ‘sustainable’ future for as long as oil remains relatively cheap….. and that ain’t gonna be for long.

I think there is far too much government funding towards "environmental" issues wasted on building up mountains of paperwork and employing a flocadia of acadamia rather than the on- the-ground-treatment that works.
Daggett, Narembeen which does have isolated problems but here the salt was there first and the inland river drainage system is there to manage it. We have found that often new problems can be traced to the road system blocking the natural drainage and drainage forming new pathways that lead to salt affected areas.
Salt reclamation or prevention is not a quick fix solution, it is an integrated approach of observation, drainage, ensuring clearing is not too radical, fencing off areas that are looking salt prone, planting deep rooted lucerne on the heavy claypans that are looking vulnerable to allow subsoil drainage plus a multitude of others.
Perhaps because of the early claim that this area is a barren wasteland led to the lateness of land clearing that helped us. Farmers have the technology and knowledge to correct problems now and farm far smarter.
Sorry Ludwig, I fail to see how our existing humm of wildlife and natural (not feral) ecosystems are more of a detriment the environment than the barren wasteland of pre-settler days.
The "genetically modified" label is as misleading as the claims around it as GM plants are far more radically than conventional plant breeding techniques.
With rising costs and lower commodity prices, farm profits are declining and Australian farmers aren't subsidised like our opposition so we must be more efficient. If we flick off the industry parasites, we may have a better chance of being sustainable. Farmers look forward to the time when we do not have to buy oil, we grow the crop to produce our own energy on farm.
Believe it or not Ludwig, farmers genuinely care about our land. We are not corporate "plunder global resources" minded, we are planning for our land to be sustainable for future generations. A barren salt land is not sustainable and we do everything to prevent it.

NonGMFarmer

Increased birds and animals were bad for the saline communities that evolved without these species or at least anything like the new abundance of them. My point was, that we should always be considering ecological values as well as productivity values. I particularly made this point as you mentioned that most farmers in your district spend money on conservation issues.

I suspected that you don’t place any value at all in this sort of ecological but non productivity-oriented impact. This is why I asked; “is this money really being spent on minimising salinity and other threats to productivity, with gains for conservation as a spin-off?” Clearly it is.

I have no doubt that most farmers genuinely care about the land and that they are striving for sustainable productivity. But conservation issues, in terms of protecting endangered species and ecosystems and other things not productivity-related are still beyond the mindset of most farmers. This is most unfortunate, given the very high biodiversity and number of endangered species in the wheatbelt.

This is only one point of several that I could pick up on. I do so because it is the one that seems most alien to you. In fact, I reckon you will speed-read this posting with your head cocked sideways thinking; ‘ what is this looper on about?’ such is the (very common) one-eyed view of the world in which productivity is everything. After reading your one-line response on this particular issue, which was really contorted (“I fail to see how…….existing natural ecosystems….. are more of a detriment to the environment than the barren wasteland of pre-settler days”), it seems my meaning has completely evaded you.

It wasn’t a barren wasteland. That is a terrible view of a well-vegetation ecologically healthy non-humanised landscape. You can’t hope to achieve genuine sustainability if you have no regard for the natural environment. But then in talking about sustainability, you only mean sustainable productivity.

What do you mean, “if we could flick off the industry parasites” ?

NonGMFarmer and Ludwig,

Where I stand in this debate is with people like David Holmgren and the sustainable agricultural practices, otherwise known as 'Permaculture', which he advocates.

I am not, in principle, opposed to altering our natural environment in order to make it more fertile and more productive, provided that the additional productivity is sustainable and not based on the use of increasingly scarce fossil fuel based fertilisers and pesticides.

All too often past attempts to make the land more fertile have only had the opposite effect, in the longer term, as Ludwig has shown. I am not completely sure that what NonGMFarmer is doing is altogether wrong, but we have to tread extremely carefully if past mistakes are not to be repeated.

In the long term, almost all agricultural produce will have to be produced and consumed locally, simply because rising petroleum costs will make it impossible to move agricultural produce enormous distances on the scale that we do today.

The obverse side of this coin is that people who consume this produce will, themselves, have to live close to where it is produced, and many more will have to participate in its production, which will have to be more labour intensive, when petroleum becomes scarce.

Some city residents may be able to remain within current urban areas if there is sufficient land to sustain agriculture, such as on the remaining quarter acre block housing estates. However, many of those now 'consolidated' (i.e. crowded) into apartment blocks will have to move elsewhere if they want to be able to eat.

Also, the chemical cycle, which has been broken by modern civilisation, particularly due to the establishment of large scale sewerage systems, must be re-established. Nutrients taken from the soil can no longer be exported vast distances, often to end up in land fill mixed up with toxic chemicals and metals, or to be flushed out to sea. They will have to be returned to the soil to maintain its fertility over hundreds of generations and not just decades at most.

I commend Ted Trainer's excellent talk on Ockham's Razor this morning at:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1515951.htm

... which was in reponse to Jennifer Morahasy's talk of the previous week at:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1509193.htm

I would be most interested to see Jennifer Marohasy's response to Ted Trainer's talk, particularly to these points:

"Some resources are already alarmingly scarce, including water, land, fish and especially petroleum. Some geologists think oil supply will peak within a decade. If all the world’s people today were to consume resources at the per capita rate we in rich countries do, annual supply would have to be more than six times as great as at present, and if the 9 billion we will have on earth soon were to do so, it would have to be about ten times as great. ..."

"If we in Australia average 3% growth to 2070 and by then the 9 billion people expected on earth have all risen to the living standards we would have then, total world economic output each year would be 60 times as great as it is now. Yet the present level is grossly unsustainable.

"Many respond here by saying that Yes, the problems are very serious but No, we don’t have to think about moving from consumer-capitalist society because more effort and better technology could solve the problems. It only takes a few seconds to show that this tech-fix position is wrong. The overshoot is far too big.

"Technical-fix optimists like Amory Lovins claim we could cut the resource and ecological costs per unit of economic output to half or one quarter. But if global output rose to 60 times what it is now, even a Factor Four reduction by 2070 would leave global resource and environmental costs 15 times as great as they are now, and they are unsustainable now."

I also commend Ted Trainer's "Simpler Way" web-site at:

http://socialwork.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/

Re: Ted Trainer on Okham’s Razor. Hell’s bells what an awful article. Talk about depressing. What an enormous contrast with Jennifer Marohasy’s ‘everything is just fine’ message.

I find it really interesting that he didn’t mention population size or growth rate as one of the fundamental causes of our problems. “The fundamental cause of the big global problems threatening us now is simply over-consumption”. But he then went on to talk about scenarios with projected global population growth and the fact that even really big reductions in resource consumption on a per-capita basis are just going to be completely overwhelmed by the ever-increasing number of ‘capitas’.

I agree with his criticism of techno-fix people like Amory and Hunter Lovins, who just completely ignore the other side of the equation – continuously increasing population. Just about the whole environment movement in Australia is similarly one-sided in the quest for sustainability. This enormous blind spot with population issues persists, right into the end-days of our civilisation.

While Trainer seems to have a blind-spot or an abject aversion to the population label, he does at least seem to give the issue due recognition. A strange thing that!

Anyway, I think he is exactly right with his extremely grim message. Similarly, Diamond is close to the mark. And Marohasy is just terribly terribly wrong.

I'm not sure how the planet can be very sustainable with our current populations if we had not touched the environment. Think about where your food, your furniture etc came from.
As mentioned, we have done many projects like fencing off remnant vegetation - this costs us alot of money (land out of production, fencing, wages etc) and returns us none. It is a tribute to the environment.
Like everyone else on the planet, we need to make a living and most farmers have huge debts that don't allow us to sit back and watch the native vegetation grow on all of the land we or our forefathers paid a fortune for.

NonGMFarmer

Picking up on some of your other comments:

You write; “I think there is far too much government funding towards 'environmental' issues wasted on building up mountains of paperwork and employing a flocadia of acadamia rather than the on-the-ground-treatment that works.” Is there something wrong with employing the services of academics, who have achieved their positions by becoming very knowledgeable in their fields? Where would we be without their input? On-the-ground-treatment that works needs a sound basis in its methodology. A combination of academics, farmers and others will achieve the best results, not farmers alone. If farmers did it in isolation, some would do it well, others wouldn’t – it would be all over the place. But with the bureaucracy backing a united approach, so that all farmers are encouraged to have the same level of input, relative to the problems in their area, something can hopefully be achieved that wouldn’t otherwise. Thank goodness governments are doing something about land-degradation issues. Efficiencies can be improved, but at least it is happening. You should be very thankful for it.

“Narembeen which does have isolated problems but here the salt was there first and the inland river drainage system is there to manage it”. The salt is there in the first place in all these situations. It only gets taken to new places when it is mobilised into our rivers. The remnants of this inland drainage system ‘manage’ the salt by accumulating it in the now very broad shallow depressions that were once mighty rivers. But they don’t take it out of the soil in areas adjacent to the saltpans.

“We have found that often new problems can be traced to the road system blocking the natural drainage and drainage forming new pathways that lead to salt affected areas”. The problem is that the salt has been mobilised in the first place, due to massive overclearing. Roads blocking drainage lines, leading to noticeable accumulations of salt on the surface, are very much a secondary factor.

O no, the word count prevents further comment…. And I have so much more to say!

Further comments in response to NonGMFarmer;

You wrote; “Salt reclamation or prevention is not a quick fix solution, it is an integrated approach of observation, drainage, ensuring clearing is not too radical, fencing off areas that are looking salt prone, planting deep rooted lucerne on the heavy claypans that are looking vulnerable to allow subsoil drainage plus a multitude of others”. Yes, basically. But where did this come from – farmers’ stark realisation, greenies, bureaucrats or scientists? Certainly not from farmers alone. And there certainly isn’t any quick-fix solution. In fact, given the enormity of clearing in the WA wheatbelt (90% cleared), all remedial factors put together are minuscule. They are likely to do not much more than slow down the rate of salination a little. As I said early, a monster has been released and it is basically unstoppable, short of a truly monster-sized response like replanting 50% or more of the original vegetation or its equivalent and thus foregoing 50% of current productivity.

“Perhaps because of the early claim that this area is a barren wasteland led to the lateness of land clearing that helped us.” Yes, probably right. Although it may mean that the salinity monster has only bared its teeth and is yet to bite, whereas it is well-advanced elsewhere. With the remedial or preventative practices now being undertaken, it may simply hang around and plague the area for longer, still being present after it has been expunged elsewhere.

“With rising costs and lower commodity prices, farm profits are declining and Australian farmers aren't subsidised like our opposition so we must be more efficient”. Yes, but if you need to practice this high level of efficiency to get by now, then where will you be when salinity worsens (or when fuel prices increase?). High efficiency sounds good, but what it really means is that there is precious little room to move. Rather perversely perhaps, if farmers were practicing lower efficiency, they would have much more room to move in terms planting trees, fencing off suspect saline areas, etc. So, high efficiency doesn’t sound so good afterall

NonGMFarmer wrote: "Like everyone else on the planet, we need to make a living and most farmers have huge debts that don't allow us to sit back and watch the native vegetation grow on all of the land we or our forefathers paid a fortune for."

This confirms what Jared Diamond had to say about land prices having ben set unrealistically high in the chapter about Australia (can't give the page as I have lent my copy of "Collapse" to someone else.)

What you are effectively saying is that we must put our childrens' future at risk in order to pay for the past windfall profits of property speculators and for the ongoing and inflated profits of banks.

Whilst I can sympathise with your predicament, I think the situation is clearly unacceptable, and it is time that we, as a society, took action to prevent property speculators and the finance sector from causing further harm to our environment.