The real scary thing is letting Craig Knowles get all that power. Look at what went on in Liverpool.

Oh well it will be good for the labour parties finances with all those developer donations.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/States-largest-projects-to-bypass-green-laws/2005/05/12/1115843315642.html?oneclick=true

As I’ve written in a letter to the Herald, big projects are precisely the ones which shouldn’t be exempt from exhaustive and transparent environmental assessment and approvals processes. This is because:

1. The adverse environmental, economic and social impacts of a mistakenly approved project will be greater, the larger the project is.

2. Large projects are likely to be more complex, both intrinsically and in their interaction with the surrounding environment and human society. There is therefore more scope for “weak links”, i.e. small and mundane but potentially crucial aspects of their design, operation and economics which, if not properly assessed, evaluated and potential weaknesses addressed, could lead to the project failing or causing adverse impacts. Consequently there is a greater need for exhaustive assessment with the maximum amount of information and “social intelligence” brought to bear through ample provisions for public participation in the approvals process.

3. Proposals for large projects (and Colin’s Canal is a case in point) are most likely to attract the support of powerful bureaucratic, political and corporate interests, and the barracking of an intellectually lazy media, for self-interested and/or megalomaniacal reasons which have little to do with whether the project is a prudent, feasible and cost-effective solution to whatever problem it’s intended to solve. Indeed, such proposals often originate as “solutions in search of a problem” in the bowels of some reverse-adapted bureaucratic-technocratic empire such as the Tasmanian Hydro-Electric Commission or the Queensland Main Roads Department. For this reason they must be subject to the most rigorous and transparent assessment and approvals process to cut through the boosting and the barracking.

By weakening the initial assessment requirements and the provisions for public participation, the NSW Government is increasing the likelihood of erroneous (if not corrupt) approval of ill-conceived big projects. By eliminating the “stop the clock” provisions, the NSW Government will make it impossible to reverse or correct mistakes once they’ve been detected.

Renewable energy can only work if we cut our demand by about 50%. Crops for methanol goes back on the water, fertiliser, oil, salinity merry-go-round.

Please read the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment at
http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/Products.Synthesis.aspx

This link is for the above re the water cycle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cycle

Extract Wikipedia:

“An ecosystem may be of very different size. It may be a whole forest, as well as a small pond. Different ecosystems are often separated by geographical barriers, like deserts, mountains or oceans, or are isolated otherwise, like lakes or rivers. As these borders are never rigid, ecosystems tend to blend into each other. As a result, the whole earth can be seen as a single ecosystem, or a lake can be divided into several ecosystems, depending on the used scale.” In other words the earth is an ecosystem containing smaller ecosystems.

The last time I looked most people were still living on earth and as such are part of the ecosystem. An ecosystem is a dynamic and complex whole, interacting as an ecological unit. Man is merely interacting. Unlike other life forms man has the option of how he interacts. He can live naked under a tree and hope he has everything that he needs at hand or he can build a house and reap the benefits of his technologies and developments (I choose the latter). This interaction can have negative or positive out comes. Like everything in this world it is not perfect but I don’t think things are as bad some environmentalists make out.

It is mans “nature” to use his intellect to structure his ecosystem to his advantage- this is what differentiates us from other life forms. We are at present the dominant life form on this planet. If it is true? as you and other environmentalists say and we are living beyond our means, then this would not be structuring things to our advantage. The consequence of this might be to bring forward the time of our extinction, but by how much or if at all is anybody’s guess. This is because a large proportion of environmentalists don’t quantify anything they just make broad qualifications of doom.

Where are the shortages of water or energy?

To run out of water we would have to stop the Water cycle (a difficult task). Water recycles itself in the Water cycle so I can not see it running out in the near term. It just changes its state in the cycle.

There are many different sources of energy that are available for us to use- hydro, solar, crops for methanol and geothermal to name a few. They are not widely used as it is not economical at present, but allot of them are renewable so I can not see them running out in the near future. When required we could use them.

Whether you move water across a continent, dam a local river or get it from the ocean, we still have to make a proper assessment of our actions and how they might impact on our ecosystem and economy.

“An ecosystem may be of very different size. It may be a whole forest, as well as a small pond. Different ecosystems are often separated by geographical barriers, like deserts, mountains or oceans, or are isolated otherwise, like lakes or rivers. As these borders are never rigid, ecosystems tend to blend into each other. As a result, the whole earth can be seen as a single ecosystem, or a lake can be divided into several ecosystems, depending on the used scale.” In other words the earth is an ecosystem containing smaller ecosystems.

The last time I looked most people were still living on earth and as such are part of the ecosystem. An ecosystem is a dynamic and complex whole, interacting as an ecological unit. Man is merely interacting. Unlike other life forms man has the option of how he interacts. He can live naked under a tree and hope he has everything that he needs at hand or he can build a house and reap the benefits of his technologies and developments (I choose the latter). This interaction can have negative or positive out comes. Like everything in this world it is not perfect but I don’t think things are as bad some environmentalists make out.

It is mans “nature” to use his intellect to structure his ecosystem to his advantage- this is what differentiates us from other life forms. We are at present the dominant life form on this planet. If it is true? as you and other environmentalists say and we are living beyond our means, then this would not be structuring things to our advantage. The consequence of this might be to bring forward the time of our extinction, but by how much or if at all is anybody’s guess. This is because a large proportion of environmentalists don’t quantify anything they just make broad qualifications of doom.

Where are the shortages of water or energy?

To run out of water we would have to stop the Water cycle (a difficult task). Water recycles itself in the Water cycle so I can not see it running out in the near term. It just changes its state in the cycle.

There are many different sources of energy that are available for us to use- hydro, solar, crops for methanol and geothermal to name a few. They are not widely used as it is not economical at present, but allot of them are renewable so I can not see them running out in the near future. When required we could use them.

Whether you move water across a continent, dam a local river or get it from the ocean, we still have to make a proper assessment of our actions and how they might impact on our ecosystem and economy.

This is the same argument as energy use. Do we cut our resource use and live within our means or do we build grandiose projects so that we can continue to waste as much as we like?

If I were in financial trouble would you advise me to spend heaps, don’t economise, got to restuarants and live high on the hog even if my income could not cover it? As an economist or accountant I don’t think that this would be the advise you would give me. In fact people who do this, like John Eliot recently, are considered fools.

However when it comes to the same argument with water or energy substitued for money suddenly spending water or energy in the same fashion is OK. This is where economics externalising environmental costs and considering resources as infinite really bites.

Why is money more important than water or energy? Money and wealth do not exist other than in the mind of humans. If money ceased to exist nothing on Earth other than humans would even notice. If water ceased to exist I think that humans and animals and plants and in fact everything would notice. The same goes for the environment that we destroy to make our energy.

There is an old saying, you do not appreciate anything properly until you lose it. Disrupting ecosystems and dredging huge canals across the land just so we can keep a few lawns green and farm without considering water because it is too expensive to change to me is the height of folly. We need to use what we have, where we have it better before we consider stealing it from other regions.

Build a long low earth dam across the southern pert of the gulf country, starting with bulldozers and finishing with earth dredged up behind it and moved to it by barge as it fills. When the level is high enough, cut a small canal through to the basin south of there, and gradually move the flow slantwise with distribution canals. Provide feeder canals from northwest and northeast as dam construction progresses. During construction, divert some of the water energy to help with construction and offset costs – much of the dam top work can be assisted that way, and some power could be sent to places like Weipa (or make the aluminium processing come to the dam).