What a bloody disgrace this government is becoming on environmental issues, one broken promise after another, one more committee appointed for the sole purpose of delaying another decision and in my view an easy decision. Save the lower lakes of the Murray River wher eit meets the ocean.
What right do any of us humans have to make a decision to flood these lower lakes and destroy a ecosystem that has existed for thousands if not millions of years, what right do we have to destry all the flora and fauna that have developed and adapted to live in this environment. NONE!!!!!!! this government needs to have a look at its self and its water buy back scheme. The we need to look at the type of farming we do in this country.
I am only going to touch on this in this post and will re-visit this topic later.
Let's look at the farming conducted in this country and the irrigation techniques
1. Rice Farms - What a joke, why would we farm rice, a flood irrigation crop, on the driest continent on earth. Let's look at where rice is grown, on the monsoon belt, why.....rain and lots of it. Get rid of the rice farmers, they contribute next to nothing to this country and do a lot of damage.
2. Cotton - another very very thirsty crop as well as a crop that requires ahuge amount of insectisides and pesticides to grow it. Again.....shut it down, we do not need it. The damage sheep do is bad enough, we do not need both wool and cotton
3. Irrigation Channels - why not pipe them, we hear talk about it but it never happens. I remeber Richard Pratt once challenged all the state and federal government to match him dollar for dollar to pipe the irrigation channels. No government agreed. Around 70% of all water in these channels is lost to evaporation. If we could reduce this lose, the water could stay in the rivers. Wouldn't this be an investment in our future, is this not consider vital infrastructure just like a dam or road or bridge.
As I said I have a lot to say on this topic and will come back to it later. The government needs to have a hard looka t itself and start making the tough decisions. Does the value of Rice and Cotton out weigh the value of the murray river and particularly its lower lakes???? I don' think so
What do you think?
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Bring on the big end of town........
What a refreshing article.......congratrulations to the Australian Financial Review (Weekend Edition 16th - 17th August 2008) and to their journalist Ben Woodhead.
This is an article on a new initiative by Macquarie Bank to buy large tracks of rain forest all over the world as an investment in carbon credits. This new area is Macquarie's climate change practice and is heade by a guy called Oliver Yates. Why are they doing this? as quoted by Yates ' This is the biggest growth market you're going to see" Damn right it is, well done Oliver Yates and Macquarie Bank. A lot of people put a lot of shit on Macquarie Bank for paying large bonus's and being a greedy money making machine, well let me say, if institutions like Macquarie did not do this then they would not be able to take such a massive punt like this nor would they attract talented people like Oliver Yates. I say get off their back and encourage this type of investment. As Yate's says " If organisations aren't moving now to stake a claim in this market [Carbon Credits] are already falling behind their peers".
I know that there are a large number of Ethical or Green Funds that we can all invest in and these funds do a fantastic job in investing in Solar, Wind, Hydro, Geo-thermal which is fantastic and it should be encouraged. The difference with this Macquarie Bank initiative is that it is saving native and virgin rain forest. Why is this a good thing?
Well....if we cn save these native forests then we are saving the biodiversity in these forest, we can give the local people jobs in conservation and allows us to continue to find medical cures. Further more it will mean that the planting of tree farms and other mono cultures can slow up. All in all it is a win for everyone.
While this is a very limited summary of this article, I would encourage all people interested in this scheme to contact Macquarie Bank.
Hopefully....as more of our large institution start to realise the benefits of these types of investments we will see more and more of these types of initiatives and you never know maybe one day one of these organisations will buy up all of the native forests in Australia, well what is left of them, and preserve them forever.
WHat do people think of these types of initiatives and should it be allowed to happen?
This is an article on a new initiative by Macquarie Bank to buy large tracks of rain forest all over the world as an investment in carbon credits. This new area is Macquarie's climate change practice and is heade by a guy called Oliver Yates. Why are they doing this? as quoted by Yates ' This is the biggest growth market you're going to see" Damn right it is, well done Oliver Yates and Macquarie Bank. A lot of people put a lot of shit on Macquarie Bank for paying large bonus's and being a greedy money making machine, well let me say, if institutions like Macquarie did not do this then they would not be able to take such a massive punt like this nor would they attract talented people like Oliver Yates. I say get off their back and encourage this type of investment. As Yate's says " If organisations aren't moving now to stake a claim in this market [Carbon Credits] are already falling behind their peers".
I know that there are a large number of Ethical or Green Funds that we can all invest in and these funds do a fantastic job in investing in Solar, Wind, Hydro, Geo-thermal which is fantastic and it should be encouraged. The difference with this Macquarie Bank initiative is that it is saving native and virgin rain forest. Why is this a good thing?
Well....if we cn save these native forests then we are saving the biodiversity in these forest, we can give the local people jobs in conservation and allows us to continue to find medical cures. Further more it will mean that the planting of tree farms and other mono cultures can slow up. All in all it is a win for everyone.
While this is a very limited summary of this article, I would encourage all people interested in this scheme to contact Macquarie Bank.
Hopefully....as more of our large institution start to realise the benefits of these types of investments we will see more and more of these types of initiatives and you never know maybe one day one of these organisations will buy up all of the native forests in Australia, well what is left of them, and preserve them forever.
WHat do people think of these types of initiatives and should it be allowed to happen?
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