Looking back from 2050

‘A vision of Australia in a climate changed world’

By Chris Sanderson
 

By 2010, most thinking people in Australia believed the climate scientists’ prognosis that the world was heating (due to increasing levels of man-made atmospheric CO2 emissions, caused largely by burning fossil fuels) and were urging their government to take action on Climate Change to reduce the resulting consequences.

The global evidence continued to mount over the following years as glaciers melted, arctic sea-ice continued to shrink, droughts spread, melting tundra released more methane, coral died, dengue fever and malaria spread further south with the mosquitoes, bush fires, floods and storms became more frequent and extreme; seas warmed and their levels rose.

Nevertheless most people, unless directly affected by one of these events, did not react with the sense of urgency to reduce emissions that the science required in order to avoid tipping points that, once crossed, would result in irreversible climate change.

And ‘thinking people’ still remained a voting minority in Australia as the fossil fuel industry’s ‘Greenhouse Mafia’ continued its propaganda campaign in the main stream media. Assisted by the media’s ‘fairness’ convention, individual, populist and non-scientific, slick-talking deniers were given equal time to express their ‘opinions’ and cast doubt on the science, in order to ‘balance’ the official IPCC advice to the public and governments from the thousands of peer reviewed climate scientists around the globe. Unfortunately, due to advertiser pressure, the media would not agree to change their policy to make it ‘accurate balance’.

Despite warnings from the ABC (4 Corners ‘The Greenhouse Mafia’) and writers such as Guy Pearse (‘High & Dry’), Tony Kevin (‘Crunch Time’), Naomi Oreskes (‘Merchants of Doubt) and Clive Hamilton (‘Scorcher’), the fossil fuel industry continued its sabotage of climate change action.

Using its iron grip on the Climate Change policies of both main political parties at the State and Federal levels, and aided and abetted by compliant politicians and bureaucrats, this ‘Greenhouse Mafia’ continued to delay any effective action to reduce Australia’s emissions that would negatively affect their financial interests.

Their paid false prophets found willing targets to confuse amongst those, who were grateful for any excuse to avoid having to face the overwhelming scientific truths surrounding Global Warming and its origins.

Focused on holding on to power at the next election rather than having to make unpopular decisions, State and Federal Governments continued to fail to provide the required leadership on the converging crisis of Climate Change and Peak Oil.

Instead political parties continued to follow the polls and pander to consumer ‘focus group’ opinions rather than listen to the climate scientists’ now deafening warnings.

In 2015, while trying to regain democracy and empower strong political leadership on these issues, a desperate attempt by climate action groups to mount a referendum on Climate Change was drowned out by governments and a heavy advertising campaign mounted by the vested interests.

Australia had become a country run by a coalition of miners, their financiers and government, a type of regime that in 1930, Mussolini defined as Fascism.

However internationally, there was a growing realization that, even with the planet at stake, big multinational corporate business could never be trusted to subordinate their financial interests to anyone, ever - including the rest of humanity and the planet - on which their very existence depends.

People began to remember that strong, independent and democratic government is the only way to guarantee that a sustainable balance can be achieved between the environment, the economy and social justice.

What had happened to the mantra: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”? Some say it was lost when we took our eye off the ball in the pursuit of ‘stuff’.

In the US, Obama successfully introduced a public health system and finally won control of Wall St, Congressional public budget overspend and its USD 3 trillion deficit.

To every one’s surprise and despite the US entering a ‘double dip’ recession, Obama was returned for a second term with just enough support from both Democrats and Republicans to allow him at last to tackle Climate Change.

Shortly afterwards, a deal was signed between the US, China and the EU to lead the world on Climate Change mitigation by capping each countries’ atmospheric CO2 emissions with a carbon tax, and working towards a fair, universally agreed, ultimate global cap of 2 tonnes of CO2 emissions per capita, per annum - the rate required by science to keep global warming from increasing by more than 4ºC. (By then it was clear that the original target of 2 ºC was unattainable and various geo-engineering schemes were being promoted to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere).

Countries were still recovering slowly from the fallout of a renewed Global Financial Crisis in the USA and Europe that started in 2011. As a result, China’s economy was still plagued by weak demand for their manufactured goods, which reduced exports of Australian minerals.

Meanwhile the Australian government continued to publicly put its faith and funding into Carbon Capture & Sequestration (CCS) whilst the CSIRO and other scientists privately admitted that it was unlikely ever to result in ‘Clean Coal’.

Our government also continued to cut funding to develop renewable energy solutions whilst spinning otherwise, and Green groups continued to fight all attempts to explore the use of 4th generation (IFR) nuclear power generation technology in Australia.

Starting in 2023 in other countries, these new, safe, factory manufactured and inexpensive IFR systems were being put into service along with other renewable energy solutions, to ensure continuity of affordable base load electricity supply as the rest of the world started serious migration from burning fossil fuels.

For their fuel, IFR’s could use waste from older generation nuclear plants as well as depleted uranium munitions, thus providing the solution to the world’s nuclear waste storage problem.

In Australia it became clear to more and more Climate Change and Peak Oil conscious families that we were headed for trouble as well as an energy crunch.

Writings by such authors as Richard Heinberg, Ian Lowe, Bill McKibben, Clive Hamilton, James Lovelock, Lester Brown. and many others, suggested that right wing political and economic theory promoting the global economy was based on the availability of cheap energy and predicted that a return to small, self sufficient, mutually supportive communities was the best way to adapt to a new era of expensive energy and mineral resources in ever dwindling supply.

These writers suggest there are many reasons why this should be so. But above all it finally became accepted that everlasting growth on a finite planet was no longer sustainable.

Tim Jackson in his book ‘Prosperity Without Growth – Economics for a Finite Planet’ was probably the first to apply mathematical discipline to the new economic theory of ‘painless downshifting’.

And as social research had predicted, people found that, once a reasonable level of income was reached, the pursuit of ‘stuff’ no longer contributed significantly to further ‘happiness’.
In 2014, as if on cue, the old era drew to a close when, for the first time during a recession, the global oil demand curve crossed the global supply curve. Oil rose to USD350/barrel and remained in this territory, with the expected consequences for private transport of people, goods and services (Where was the electrified public transport to replace them?) as well as the myriad of industrial, consumer, food and medical products derived from oil.

A few years later, as the rest of the world followed the US, China and the EU towards reducing their emissions using the common per capita target, Australia continued to drag the chain, preferring to use its cheap and abundant coal to fire its electricity generation capacity.

In fact it had little alternative by then since its government, by starving its own wind and solar industries of support, had encouraged them to flee to countries with bigger markets and more receptive governments.

Also by then, Australia could scarcely afford to import these technologies (and many others) from abroad because the AUD had plummeted in value as Australia’s mineral exports continued to decline. So did its agricultural exports - due to increased drought, and its tourism industry - due to the now unaffordable price of air travel and the death of coral along the Great Barrier Reef caused by ocean warming.

Eventually the major world powers applied sanctions as a recalcitrant Australia continued to fail to reduce its per capita emissions. These resulted in the country having to convert its electricity generation to renewables much faster than would otherwise have been necessary, causing supply interruptions and ever rising electricity prices at a time when the country was being hit by rising temperatures. The collapse of the central economy and increased death rate amongst elderly people were but two of the painful consequences for most Australians.

But in some places in Australia, ‘thinking people’ had been quietly observing and preparing for the inevitable for some time.

During the 1970’s, in the spirit of Woodstock, some farsighted housing planners and local governments, had persuaded the NSW State government to recognise that there were a significant number of people (some called them ‘hippies’) wanting to reject the beginning of what was to become the ‘Global Economy’ and reclaim the idea of community life that seemed to be fading from the never ending growth of city suburbs.

Running a small community means individuals become accustomed to working closely with each other, dealing with inter-personal differences and aiming for the greater good, rather than individual benefit.

These ‘hippies’ chose to build their dwellings and live together in rural areas in varying states of consciousness.

By the year 2000 in the Northern Rivers region of NSW, around 160 Intentional Communities (IC’s) had been established. By 2020 people in other states had established similar IC’s, many of them had originally been organic farms that groups of people had had developed with their original owners into communities aiming for self sufficiency in energy, water and food.

Teams from different communities started to work together to install the new decentralised and less expensive solar and wind farms, which provided the oil replacement energy to allow food production to migrate from distant ‘corporate farms’ to these local communities.

As happened during Cuba’s oil crunch when their Russian support evaporated with its empire, many community-minded city people returned to the land. Farming skills were highly prized and on-line education helped spread the knowledge that they needed.

Use of internet systems (such as Food-Connect), facilitated the local distribution of food efficiently, all but eliminating the 20% waste of all food that used to be distributed in the global market system.

For items required that could not be made locally, by combining their purchase needs, communities were able to place bulk orders, negotiate discounts and minimise transport costs.

As the economic consequences of climate change and peak oil started to be felt, the migration from the cities became a flood. The centre of gravity for government gradually moved away from centralised Federal and State towards decentralised Local Government.

Communities, through their long standing relationship with councils, were able to work closely together to cope with the consequences for the local town planning function.

By establishing a skills data base of their members, communities were able to pull teams of people together to deal with emergencies and trading opportunities for the region.

Unlike many suburban housing estates, already many community dwellings had been built with passive solar design consciously minimizing energy consumption for cooling and heating; had big water storage in place; efficient waste water treatment systems and compost to recycle kitchen waste.

With carefully planned land use, community dwellings were clustered to minimise infrastructure costs and better utilise fertile areas for agriculture.

Once-cleared land was revegetated with staggering results. Massive increases in restored Big Scrub vegetation had taken place over the years creating increased bio-diversity as well as increased and improved habitat for native flora and fauna.

Through their Association, communities had built up relationships with other social networks (such SES, CWA, police, etc), established over previous decades that prove useful to the wider community in times of climate extreme events.

Gradually over the years, these IC’s became resilient to the effects of Climate Change. Linked by a common vision, facilitated by internet communications and shared EV transport they were able to act like nodes in networks to link residents into a mutually supportive overarching community that was best able to handle the challenges of Climate Change adaption – without which life would have been considerably harsher.

By 2050 Australia had rejoined the World Community ready for living in a different era and with a very different economic system and democracy restored.