This article should be required reading for those preaching the reduction of carbon emissions. You know - the people who use high energy PowerPoint when they would be more friendly to their audience and the environment if they scrapped the computers and bright lights and simply stood out the front a talked to us.

I for one will not give up the use of any so called labour saving devices. Each and every one is an advance and improvement on its predecessor. Just as digital TV and large plasma TV screens are an advance on the older models.

I have no intention of messing around with solar backyard cooking on a cold rainy winter day. Especially, given that the alternative is plentiful clean and green nuclear electricity. What is more the electric grid and its generators (nuclear, coal etc) are all computer controlled.

By the same token it is the duty of the water corporations to provide me with as much water as I can reasonably afford, (I don not care if its origins is dams, underground aquifers, or desalination plants).

The veracity of the Greenhouse Global warming paradigm is predicated by Valerie Yule. As many readers will know this paradigm is under informed attack, as can be confirmed by surfing the internet. It is my strong belief that the so so-called anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is false. Thus, the sooner it is confined to the dust bin of rejected historical theories the better. I have every confidence that the current stock market turmoil and its economic consequence will hasten the rejection process

I completely agree with anti-green, well said by the way, however would ask that all the proponents of the AGW belief, please stop using any form of device or article that can in any way produce carbon "pollution", (as they know it) it looks hypocritical.

I would like to encourage you all live up to your religion's goals and I am tired of all the preaching done by folks who jet around the world, hire huge venues to berate the rest of us, it's your choice, stop bothering us - also stop frightening the children.

Valerie, my mother and grandmother would have been shocked by this, they saw release from boiling the copper (fuelled by wood) and using a mangle to wash clothes, a task that took all day, as a move forward for women - you want to go back to that, you're on your own. Or do you want to pick some middle position with say a twin tub, rather than say a front load, and what type of dryer, that still allows you to feel good but give you some spare time for other pursuits. It sounds like you haven't got the full religion yet?

1. I would like to make clear that I am arguing against BOTH extremes – the unending drudgery of the past, and now the wasteful use of power and resources at times when they are not needed.
Let us use the best of modern technology when it is needed.

For example, I have a small, cheap, movable twin-tub washing machine, but when there is a big household or illness, I use my automatic. I dry laundry outside but when it is wet, I use a clothes-horse inside.
You only try solar cooking when the sun is out.

I am a grandmother who washed with a copper and a mangle, and I blacked a wood-stove, and all that. Gratefully, such extremes of drudgery are gone. But the other extreme, of excessive waste, cannot be sustained.
(And I do find some my own grandmother’s kitchen tools that I still use better than you can import today. Why could we not have such good stuff again?)

2. Regardless of who or what or whether as regards increasing unpredictable droughts, floods, winds, coral bleaching, lost glaciers, cleared jungles, resource shortages, failing societies, economic melt-downs, and other signs of disasters, there should not be ad hominem accusations or misinterpretations of what others actually say. Make connections about these problems. None are single issues. People need not feel preached at, because they have a right to have the information and ideas about what could be done, and make up their own minds. Any life-style can be made a religion, whether consuming or greening. There is common sense, to moderate extremes.
All solutions have their consequences – including what happens to nuclear waste, and what happens when our groundwater is gone, as it is going.

Valerie Yule
An engineer's view -
Aussies mug enough to hand over an extra $10 on power bills have fallen for confidence tricks.
We all should be dedicated towards wasting energy.
Could become a valuable and rewarding hobby if officially supported.

Human/mental energy to each their own.
Milkos once looked reasonably fit - or am I posting too low for an article about 'low technology'?

A massive difference between technology, gadgetry and novelty as there is between complication and successful design.
Clean, sublime, apparently simple, design and manufacturing methodology is what we should be striving for.

I can say that since it is my field and I'm damned good at it.

A personal view is that big industry in Australia is being pushed away from doing what is vitally needed for Aussies by the financiers. (Fat lot of good they've proven themselves lately.)

When SMEs, small innovative and niche businesses are concerned - they're just too big a risk, according to those recently sacked number crunchers, to have even bridge funding for a pre-paid, approved, project.

Numerous projects can be undertaken through, even, handshake networks. The Welsh and Irish, for instance, have done amazing work.

Are policies/initiatives in place supporting that here? On paper, yes. In reality, no.

But to continue y'r theme. Always had a Citicar. It had two wheels and was commonly called a motorcycle.
Don't have one now mainly because of the bad attitude of berserkers in those bullbar equipped, unmanoeuverable garbage cans they call 4WDs or SUVs.

Also have a push mower bought brand new a few years back. It doesn't work.
The petrol powered job does. But I can't afford the fuel for it (my excuse)
I cannot abide sloth and therefore have kept that Briggs and Stratton roaring since about 1974.
But I only use it about twice a year and to hell with what the bloody neighbours think.

I could continue but it ain't worth it while greed and the need to be seen still out-consuming one's neighbours continues to be the big hobby in Oz.

Dear - whoever automatically organises the few words I'm allowed on these pages.
In trying to edit to your ration - I've stuffed up big time -
I copy the orig set here -

"But yes, we all should be as dedicated as possible towards using as little energy as is practicable. Could become a valuable and rewarding hobby if officially condoned".

Still isn't what is needed to be said - but since me and mine are so used to rationing anyway - I suppose it doesn't matter.

Many of us could do with a little less "technology". For example, driving to the gym before walking on a treadmill is typical these days. (I've done it myself).

Having said that - I don't think that "low tech" is very marketable as a term. Those words have a very negative connotation to me. For example, I wouldn't want Australians to be digging up our coal and uranium by hand - only to sell it to advanced countries. That'd be foolish. And the same applies to food really. And bridge building... and medicine and so on.

I think that what we need is to use advanced technology in a careful way.

So how about "considered and balanced use of technology". Or better yet, balanced consumption. We buy to much crap basically.

The value of the Forum is shown in how comments can contribute to what articles need to say.

A Non-Farmer got to the point of this article, which is about Australians manufacturing quality products for future needs.

And yes, Non Farmer, it is essential that products perform well. When the magazine Good Weekend ran a series in which readers tested new products, it was shocking how many products had even basic design faults. I got a power mower because my old hand-mower was not much good; now I have a Flymo (once made in Australia but no more) hand-mower that is better than the power mower. My Whirlpool twin-tub has a shockingly poor inlet hose, but clothes don’t tangle; my old Hoover was perfect except it could tangle clothes and a part became unavailable - or it would still be going, 25 years on.

Yes, White Wombat, ‘low technology’ does sound derogatory, just as ‘deep orthography’ makes English spelling sound impressive, and ‘shallow orthography’ makes Spanish spelling sound silly. A better but still snappy word is needed. ‘Balanced technology’ describes the whole approach well - use what is needed.

This thread sees simple solutions to simple problems.

Unfortunately, it ignores the big complicater or Elephant in the room

Simple manufacturing is no different to simple anything, one person has a resource which makes widgets, another person has a desire for widgets.

The complicater, the government decide the manufacture of widgets will be "regulated". The unions decide the security of "traditional" widget workers is of paramount national importance and decide to organize against the profitable widget manufacturer.

The costs of disruption and regulation push up the cost of the finished widget.

Plans the widget company had to expand their production facility to supply all of Asia with widgets are hamstrung with government planning permission issues and local government land improvement taxes and the unions, who want to maintain worker parity of output, regardless new automated machines would be used (which would see the additional demand produced with the existing staffing levels).

In the mean time. The Aussie widget companies main rival, All Nippon Widgets have opened up a new facility in Thailand where they can make widgets, free of Aussie bureaucratic regulations, for 60% the Aussie current price.

The Aussie manufacturer, instead of expanding production, closes shop and all manufacturing is lost.

The moral of the story, if you want locally manufactured widgets -
then governments, their bureaucrats, councils and employee organizations have to acknowledge the benefits they derive from local widget manufacture and work proactively to the long term with the capitalist widget business owner, instead of reacting to a given political mantra and the expediency of the moment.

Manufacturing is not the simple thing it seems. When dealing with even modest capital commitments, the viability has to be justified at every step.

The folk who take the risk deserve reward, everyone else, employees, governments and their bureaucrats are merely the "beneficial bystanders" who profit from the energy and effort of those who deployed innovation and visions to overcome those risks

Once the con of global warming has been exposed, [& it won't be that long now], & the perpetrators who have known the facts, are on trial for treason, we can look at this question of waste.

The first correction should be to assemble all these usless writers, & researchers, & give them a real job.

First, give them a push mower, & an allocation of 4 Km of road verge to maintain. For those given country roads, we could let them work in pairs, so they had someone to bull sh4t to. It would be cruel to take that from them.

Then, with the other million of them, give them a machete, & a hoe & a square Km of mational park, [they like those], to clear of noxious weeds.

If they ever get on top of this, there is the same job to be done on our range lands.

Of course, they should be payed what they are worth for their work. Do you think 50 bob a day, & keep would be too much? I would prefer to err on the generous side, but that might be going a bit too far. What do you think?

Dear Ozedias, Col Rouge, 'The Elephant in the room', and HasBeen,
Let's put the pushmower aside. My old man had one and gladly parked it in the corner when Pop, (Grandfather) circa 1960, bought the town's first Victa as a laboursaving device. (Notice the LabOUR bit was spelt just so).

It is so incredibly difficult to get the message across to Australians that if they do not exercise their own intellect enough towards discriminating quality from crapola - then in the final circumstance they will literally be enduring crapola for the perceivable future.

In other terms - since Australians have for the last decades done nothing much more than sat on their arses, and accepted that, collectively, they are little more than ciphers, pawns, 'consumers' (and here we touch upon another 'Opinion' thread about the ABC, etc.) essentially being told 'what to buy' and 'how to buy' by little ladies with good legs thrashing about, on camera, holding clipboards - then in that case they/we have all fallen for the trap.

So - are there worthy pastimes?
Hell Yes.

Kev mentioned the other day - horseriding and Trapshooting.
This means that our PM is into both dangerous and socially unacceptable activities.

Unbelievable!

There can be little argument that green/low tech creates more jobs, with less hazardous waste than megacorp "solutions". I'm horrified at the current bailouts going on all over the industrialised West (and autocratic East) as it will only perpetuate the present unsustainable fantasy of never ending growth & expansion, the perfect description of cancer.
My car is 30 years old and cost $1,000 seven years ago. I can take it apart & put it back together which I cannot do with one of the electronically controlled toys now infesting our roads.
There is a major disconnect with the uses of electricity - it is insane to use it for heat (thermodynamic loss is 1/3 at each stage of conversion, from coal to electricity to heat) whereas it is unequalled for radio/TV or even, at a pinch, motive power.
Storage of energy is only a problem if one thinks of batteries. The 19thC technolgy of pumping water into high storage to use as hydro power later is far superior and has no nasty by-products, in fact can be used for other purposes in the meantime. Low tech = more employment. Simple and anathema to the BCA.