What happened today

What happened today

My essay ‘What we have done?’ is intended to acquaint the curious with what human activities have done to our habitat, Earth and how it is that this extraordinary malfeasance has occurred.


It will help appreciably to set the scene by thinking about what happened today. Think the following through carefully so that you will look realistically at what is going on in the foundations[1] of the world. The essay will provide you with understanding of how it is that society is looking so unrealistically at a vision.

I see that it rained over night. But there are no signs of the drought ending. We will have to learn to use less water and use it much more wisely. There are ads on TV that encourage us to watch every drop. That is good advice but we can rely on getting more from rain. But the fuel for our cars is irreplaceable.

The fridge is starting to show its age but I will not replace it until I have to. It seems a waste to not get the most out of the materials that went into it. They will end their lives in landfill. A replacement would just use more of exhaustible materials that could be put to better use.

I wonder when they will again be rarely found in homes. The old ways of looking after food, especially on hot days, will have to be relearned. So will gardening without fertilizers from the super market.

As I flushed the toilet, I reflected on the irony that I was using fresh water to send materials containing nutrients down to the Bass Strait at Gunnamatta where they will contribute to the degradation of the marine ecosystem. Most of those nutrients began life in natural gas taken from fields in the same Bass Strait. The nutrients have gone almost full circle just to satisfy my appetite. That is really a faustian bargain.

There was an article in the Age lauding new apartments in Southbank. I wonder how long they will last. It may be twenty years before they are demolished to make way for something else. That is the way of ‘progress’. What a waste of irreplaceable resources. Sufficient resources may not then be available and those apartments will gradually age and then crumble. At least the Mayans built their temples more substantially so they still stand in areas recaptured by the jungle. The Mayans themselves are long gone. They were victims of their own greed. They did not have available the natural resources to sustain their idea of life style. I have to laugh ironically. Have we learnt nothing?

There is some talk of replacing the West Gate Bridge as it is nearing the end of its useful life. My children have naturally replaced me but the bridge can only be replaced by using more irreplaceable natural resources. Who will decide that these resources will be used on a new bridge rather than for something else, like replacement housing. These resources can only be used once. Recycling is a misnomer as it is a process that uses other resources to extend the life of these ‘recycled’ pieces. It would be more realistic to use the term ‘life extending’.

The drive to work was slow again. No doubt it will get better as fuel prices continue to rise but what about all those people who will be hard put to afford to get to work. There was a traffic jam on the Freeway. I wondered how many of the drivers pondered on the waste of something nature took million of years to produce. More likely they just fumed – like their cars.

The government has a plan, Melbourne 2030, which sees the population increasing by one million in the next twenty-four years. It is based on the premise, as ever, that this expansion of the city can be built on money! I would like to see these politicians and business people eating dollar notes rather than scrumptious food. I would like to see them drinking dollars rather than whiskey. They might not be so obese then! They might even get their heads out of the clouds.

There was the usual collection of junk mail in the letterbox. They try to tempt me to buy more stuff – so that I can make my contribution to the declining availability of the materials used to in their manufacture. I despair at the logging of the old growth forests in Tassie to provide the paper for this junk mail. Not only are these magnificent specimens wasted for a dubious purpose but also their contribution to the ecology is lost. It is known that they have a big impact on the fertility of the soil under their canopy. I wonder how many plants and animals are affected by this destruction of ecological balance.

I enjoyed those chips – from Belgium! That waste of fuel for their transport cannot continue. It would be much wiser to get them from Tassie. That will come soon. I am glad that some realistic people are returning to vegetable gardening and fostering localization.

I paid the electricity bill. It was up again even though we have been much more careful in its use. But we should not complain as it makes life a lot easier in the home and at work. It’s a pity the brown coal that gives us the electricity has contributed so much to the irreversible climate change and to muddled thinking! The arguments about what to do about climate change continued today. The business people are trying to work out how they can make a dollar out of the call to lower emissions[2]. They are responding to the government’s desire to be seen to be doing the right thing, even though reducing emissions[3] here will have no effect on climate change[4]. The coalmines at Yallourn are expected to last for some time yet[5]. But they are a day older today: time to do something sound with respect to energy supply[6] is running out.

Much has been made of the Bass Strait oil fields. They have provided us with most of our oil for a few decades. Now they are dying and not slowly. I could well outlive them! So now we have become more dependent on oil from the Middle East. It makes it hard for everyone that the Saudi Arabian giant, Gwahar is also dying. Mexico’s Cantarell is going the same way rapidly. It is no wonder that many countries are using every means[7] to ensure they get more than their fair share of what is left. China seems to have taken over from the US but India is no longer lagging. Some use military power while others use money to prolong their access to this diminishing resource. Many in producing countries object by activism to the filching of their natural resources. They are dubbed ‘terrorists’ by the leading filchers!

I wonder how many tonnes of coal were loaded in Newcastle today for export to China and Japan? Our governments are crowing about the economic boom because of this run down of our natural resources dowry. We are getting money to enable us to consume more[8]. What of the future? These resources are being depleted daily. As is the soil fertility. Bores are drawing millions of litres of scarce water from the Great Artesian Basin today to add to the depletion of resources[9].

It looks as though we will have a much greater need for air-conditioning and heating in the future as a consequence of climate change. It is a pity that the electricity will be harder to come by[10]. I am glad we live in a benign climate for now.

I do not know how those who live in Scandinavia, Russia, Canada will survive the cold as the energy supplies decline drastically. I suppose some will relearn the techniques that kept their forbears alive before the cheap energy era.

It will probably be just as hard for those who live in the tropics. They will have to relearn how to cope without air conditioning. They have past experience to fall back on but their houses do not now follow the pattern of the past. Few in Melbourne have that sort of knowledge and it could get very hot here[11].

Doubtless there will be growing conflict between rural and urban communities for food, water and transport. Many in the country will increasingly come to regard cities as parasites. They will tend to ignore that fact that their unsuitable farming practices have undermined the low fertility of the land, enabled salination and that they use a lot of precious water for irrigation.

I went for my daily walk in the nearby nature reserve. I was able to enjoy the rejuvenation of the bush in the spring sunshine. The chirping of the birds added audibly. It was refreshing to reflect upon the continuing wonders of nature. It was depressing to reflect upon the transience of civilization. I accept my mortality but society denies that it is built on crumbling foundations. They crumbled, unnoticed, just a bit more today.

The sun will come up again tomorrow but I have one day less to live. I wonder how many thousands of youngsters died today of hunger. Probably there were many more than those who died of obesity. There are now 85 million barrels less of oil to power global society. There must be thousands, no millions, of ‘things’ that came the end of their lives today and were thrown out. Natural processes will ensure that I and most animals and plants will be replaced. But most of those ‘things’ can only be replaced by using more of nature’s irreplaceable bounty. There is so much that is irreversible. We have to live with that. Money cannot change that fact of life. There is now one less day for materialistic society. Our civilization is unsustainable because we have used up or degraded a large proportion of nature’s bounty in the ‘blinking of an eye’ in evolution’s time scale.

It is sobering to think about what happened today and happens every day in modern civilization. The essay will provide you with understanding of how this has come about. But you have to think through the points made. You will have to work at changing the mindset you have inherited. The reward will be enlightenment and the motivation to do something about easing the decline.


[1] This is to emphasize that we will be looking at biophysical operations only. For example, the flow of electric current in this computer as I hit the keys but not the meaning of what I am typing.
[2] There is a proposal for a $5 billion program to produce diesel fuel from Latrobe Valley brown coal using geosequestration of the carbon dioxide in old Bass Strait oil and gas fields. The consequential reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is doing the right thing, according to the government, but the reality is that it will have negligible effect on the climate change that has already been instigated by the global burning of fossil fuels.
[3] 'Agriculture's Role in Greenhouse Gas Mitigation' examines the opportunities for farmers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reviews the potential for bio-fuels to contribute to greenhouse gas reduction efforts. The report notes that climate mitigation could potentially become a source of new income and cost reductions for farmers. This assertion is based on the false premise that these measures can contribute to controlling climate change.

[4] The Age had an article on how businesses in Australia are responding to climate change. The expressed views varied appreciably, as was to be expected, according to the nature of the business and where it operates. Some of the companies are responding to increased risks while others are adopting a precautionary plan of action. Many see opportunities as well as costs. However, they are all under the delusion that a reduction of their emissions will affect climate change.
[5] The irony is that they are likely to last longer than Melbourne, the city they serve.
[6] That is not to infer that it is the only problem we should be addressing.
[7] Including the ‘democratization’ of Afghanistan and Iraq
[8] This circular economic argument would make me laugh if it did not have such serious implications. Our governments, Federal and State, are encouraging the export of our limited natural resources to earn money so we can buy more stuff made from other natural resources. Aren’t they clever! They encourage the community to consume these irreplaceable resources by these foul means in the name of economic growth. And this rubbish is swallowed!
[9] That is just one example. The problem is even worse in some areas of India and the US with the water table dropping so far that the bores can no longer yield water.
[10] you really have to laugh at our idiocy. We burn brown coal to provide electricity for our air conditioners that we use because of global warming because of the emissions given off from the brown coal. Talk about going round in circles getting nowhere, at a price!
[11] At least we are more acclimatized to hot weather than the Europeans. Some may wonder whether this is a natural response to over population.