Greg's Indigenous Plants & Landscapes

Environmentally friendly landscapes.

Melbourne region

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Drought & Water Forum

The Victorian state government is pursuing population and economic growth at time of global warming induced drought and dwindling water supplies. Is it just me or does this seem fool hardy in the extreme?

Among their desperate solutions to cater for their goal of 'growth' are:

To pipe water away from productive rural communities, e.g. the Goulburn Valley, to utterly unproductive urban communities. And when I say productive I mean in the sense of producing a fundamental necessity of life - food. Urban communities may be highly productive in generating money but at the end of the day our society will not survive long if we have lots of money but no food.
To build desalination plants. I thought we were supposed to be reducing our greenhouse house gas emissions not adding to them massively. This solution will, quite simply, contribute to the global warming that is in turn causing our water shortages in the first place. Not to mention leading Victoria down a path where the population will become increasingly dependant on an energy intensive water source in an increasingly energy constrained world. They must be barking mad!
To force or encourage us to use less water. Well that's all well and fine but there is a limit to how little water we can all use. And population growth will simply take up the reductions in our own consumption. So we end up with more people living a more miserable life style. How are we better off?

I reckon governments need to focus on the demand side of the equation and re-think their 'growth at any cost' ideologies.

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