Here’s hoping Australia starts tackling its environmental problems soonest, or Ric won’t have a tree to lean on. Cut the sheep-raising, and the tree-felling, and some of the wine production, and the Continent might give you some breathing space in return. Australia- its too dry for agriculture. Nice t-shirt though.
Umm.. maybe this post should have been on Greenmonk.
Picture courtesy of Ric’s Flickr Pics.
Ric says:
June 19, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Winemaking isn’t great for water use, but we are working on it. “Agriculture” is a broad expression – we probably shouldn’t be growing rice and cotton in the Murray-Darling Basin (up in the Ord region perhaps), and we shouldn’t be building paper pulp mills in premium wine-growing districts (Limestone Coast in South Aus). Water is still not priced at its value, so we don’t value it enough. We are also still looking at the supply-side (desalination, recycling) and not looking hard enough at the demand-side.
Ric says:
June 19, 2007 at 1:51 pm
BTW – no linklove on the photo?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhayman/527577094/
jgovernor says:
June 19, 2007 at 2:22 pm
ric-corrected.
Ric says:
June 19, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Thank you James – you’re a sweet man!
Sean says:
June 20, 2007 at 11:42 pm
why aren’t market mechanisms allowed to work wrt water markets? I hope Australia can perhaps lead the world in this (given how crucial it is to their economy and future.) more thoughts here
jgovernor says:
June 23, 2007 at 11:49 am
Great question Sean. I am not familiar enough with the Australian situation to know the market well enough. In the UK its clear that private companies are rewarded for poor stewardship of resources, so i am not sure what market solution you have in mind.
rainforest activism says:
August 12, 2007 at 12:22 am
yer, its crazy what they are doing out in Tasmania at the moment. checkout the Tasmania rainforest slide show here http://www.myspace.com/noalternativecollective
links for 2007-06-20 | aqualung’s small pieces says:
May 18, 2015 at 11:36 am
[…] Redmonk in the rainforest Don’t worry about the wine – somebody wants to put a pulp mill in the Coonawarra! And maybe we should should stop rice and cotton before grapes … nice haircut too. Rainfall in Aus is like the future – unevenly distributed – this place gets 9.5 METRES pa (tags: water conservation greening drought redmonk aqualung via:jamesgovernor) […]