Are we better off in Australia?

alokin · Intermediate Crude Joined: Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 787

I always think we're a bit better off in Australia than in other countries like the US or Europe for a post-PO living.
Why? Most people have a garden and are able to grow lots of stuff. The society is less competitive than elsewhere. And we're far away from big politics.
The backdraw are the vast distances, non-walkable cities and a president who plays the chow-chow of Mr Bush.

Concerned · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Sep 23, 2004 Posts: 1531

Lighthouse · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 1458

solarpoweredlasers · Tar Sands Joined: Oct 24, 2007 Posts: 35

solarpoweredlasers · Tar Sands Joined: Oct 24, 2007 Posts: 35

I've recently invested in CNM - a wave energy/desalination technology. It's not a silver bullet, but I have a lot of hope that it will go some way (along with things like whisson's windmills) to solving part of our water problem... at least as it stands for basic human needs. I'm not talking about filling swimming pools and propping up rice irrigation and cotton growing in the desert... or even neccessarily saving cities like Perth. But coupled with rationing, repricing water to what it SHOULD actually cost, removing wasteful practices and industries.. I'm not as worried as I once was.

Lighthouse · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 1458

solarpoweredlasers · Tar Sands Joined: Oct 24, 2007 Posts: 35

Lighthouse · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 1458

alokin · Intermediate Crude Joined: Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 787

I am not born here, and we don't live here for many years.
Yes the water is a problem, here we have got drought or it rains
that much our tanks are overflowing (6000 l with 65 sqm of roof).

In Europe you have to heat in winter (maybe with climate change less) but here you may but you may not have air conditioning (we don't).
You can use the sun to heat water.

You backyard can not deliver you bread and only little meat but it makes heaps of difference if you grow as much as you can and have you eggs (and maybe a chicken soup).

Kfish · Tar Sands Joined: Mar 31, 2006 Posts: 92

I think Australia's a fairly good place to be (almost as good as NZ, but I'm not moving there - too damn cold).

The low population density is a double-edged sword: on one hand, the zombie hordes probably won't eventuate, and everyone has space for a garden. On the other hand, we do have much, much greater transport requirements that are currently driving inflation upwards, particularly in basic groceries.

A lot of Australia gets almost no rainfall, and its soils are famously poor: Jared Diamond had a whole chapter on it in his book Collapse, he described it as a first-world nation with third-world environmental issues. Every capital city in Australia except one is now on water restrictions due to drought.

Given that transport costs are likely to keep going up, home production of a lot of things is going to become very important. If you want to garden, Australia's best soils are located in the Great Dividing Range and the Flinders Ranges (both sites of ancient volcanic activity which boosts soil fertility).

The Great Dividing Range tends to create a 'rain shadow' effect on the land to the west. The clouds coming from the sea to the north and east have a high moisture content; warm air has a higher moisture capacity than cold air; as the clouds move up over the ranges, they become colder and thus less able to contain water which then drops on the eastern side of the range.

Also, further north towards the tropics (possibly Rockhampton and further - the top 1/4 of the range) average rainfalls tend to be higher than near the south-east corner. Ironically, these regions are the ones with the fewest people because the climate is notoriously hot. At least they don't have heating costs up there!
_________________
Build your soil
Build your skills
Build your community

s0cks

NZ isn't that cold. You could quite happily live in the Northern half of the north island with very little heating if you had a properly insulated house - and no heating from October through to May. Its far warmer than most countries.

I'm glad its not a desert like Aussie Razz

Plus we get plenty of rain. That's why its so greeeeeen :D

I like the quote of Australia being a first-world country with third-world environmental issues. Very fitting.

alokin · Intermediate Crude Joined: Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 787

ah and there is one thing which will really change in Australia:
as Australia has very lilttle manufacturing and industry we will be very short of goods (like the settlers maybe). With soaring oil prices it will be much more expensive importing products from China and elsewhere.
Even food. Look exactly in the supermarket: why are Italian tomato tins cheaper than Australian?( I look for food miles). There is so much imported stuff.

There are things which really nobody needs. But tools, spare parts, screws, paint, medicine, light bulbs, fabric, machines, paper,......there will be plenty of things missing or prohibitive expensive.

yeahbut · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 30, 2007 Posts: 292

I'm very surprised to hear Australians referring to their "low" population. Maybe you lot should pay a bit more attention to your brilliant countryman Tim Flannery. He's done a lot of thinking on the subject and has arrived at a very different conclusion-that Australia is a very marginal country indeed as far as human habitation goes, and that the current population is probably too high. For a lot of different reasons-lack of geological activity over the millenia, lack of glaciation etc, Australia's soil is on the whole extremely poor . Climatically it is almost uniquely vulnerable to cyclical shifts in the weather, and indeed might be rendered totally unsuitable for agriculture and horticulture for hundreds of years at a time with the smallest of shifts in the oceanic weather patterns(particularly ironic then that Australia refused to sign on for Kyoto) . Flannery considers this to be one of the main reasons Aborigines had very little in the way of intensive horticulture-after all their cousins in Papua New Guinea have one of the oldest horticultural traditions in the world(at least 8,000 yrs)-Aborigines probably tried horticultural practices repeatedly. Flannery believes that over the course of their incredibly long residence, Aborigine's horticultural enterprises had to be abandoned when the rains didn't come, because of the fine line between viable and non-viable climate that their country balances on. There have already been plenty of examples in the european settler era of previously workable farms being walked off as the weather changed, and in the modern era I believe there are now a few quite large towns looking at the same future. Here's hoping the Aborigines didn't have the population about right,eh cobbers? Could give a whole new meaning to 'aussie battler from struggle street', eh bro?

alokin · Intermediate Crude Joined: Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 787

you're right, but lots of farms got lost because of unsuitable farming practice (tilling and intense irrigation and land clearing).
When the first settlers arrived, poor ones, no internet, they simply used English farming on Australian soils. Much of this practice survived until now.

yeahbut · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 30, 2007 Posts: 292

So are you saying that farming practices are now sustainable in Aussie? I doubt it. I've heard it said that really in a lot of places the soil is so fragile the only stock should be wallabies and kangaroos...but if they really are doing it right can you get them to come across the ditch and have a word over here? NZ is currently embarked on the dumbest change in direction farming-wise in a long time-the conversion of huge amounts of forestry and sheep farm land to dairying-the dirtiest, most energy and water intensive land use there is...honestly sometimes I think humans are about the dumbest animals in the entire natural kingdom...