Helping Mother Earth

We grow fat with our technology and despoil
And neglect our mother earth
Who has sustained us since our birth
With natures fruits now left to spoil
As we pollute the air and soil
And laugh at warnings with great mirth
Until we finally face her wrath
And die or be condemned to toil

For despite our arrogance and pride
Each of is natures child
There is nowhere we can hide
We need the earth and nature wild
To be always at our side
And never get our mother riled

We are in a lot of trouble. Climate change, invasive species and habitat loss are wreaking havoc on our ecosystems and threatening the wonderful web of life on our precious planet. And yet it seems that the more comfortable we get the less we think about the consequences of our high population and high technology lifestyle on our fragile planet. It is not in our interest to think about it never lone actually trying to do something about it. We are daily beset by visions of massive floods, raging fires, intense cyclones and endless droughts exacerbated by climate change but for most of us it is not our problem. In the words of the great Moody Blues rock band “someone dropped a bomb today but it wasn’t on anyone I knew.”

The silence of the major parties on environmental issues in Australia’s current federal election campaign is deafening. The exception to this is the Murray Darling River system and only then because the situation has reached crisis point. Irrigators and their communities are competing with the need for environmental flows to sustain stressed ecosystems and the water supply of Adelaide. The lack of water has triggered a water war and both sides of politics are focused on treating the symptoms. They assume it will rain soon and all will be well. Neither side seems to recognise that the situation is a long term consequence of climate change and it's only going to get worse. Neither party has any interest in tackling climate change and the leader of opposition is a climate change denier.

But if the people in the Murray Darling catchment are doing it tough spare a thought for the 2,000 people living on the Carteret Islands, northeast of Bougainville, where their ancestors have lived for 3,000 years. Their islands are disappearing under the waves and they are having to evacuate. The rate of sea level rise in the area is increasing and has been about 8 mm in the past 7 years. I witnessed the same thing happening at my old home town of Madang on the north coast of New Guinea when I visited there last year.

It is not easy to address issues such as climate change but denying it is happening is not going to get us anywhere. The time is fast approaching when we are going to have to unite as a world society and make some unpalatable choices.

I would greatly appreciate any comments you may have on these articles and would be very happy to write on any environmental topic that is close to your heart. Next week I will tell you about the marvelous Handfish that is being threatened by the warming waters around Tasmania and the invasive Japanese Seastar.