Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.
John Quiggin 
The situation of Australia’s first circular micro-economy, may prove vital to attaining carbon reduction goals set for 2050. The general idea is to boost recycling to sustainability levels. The circular economy models embodies ( among other tactics) the reclamation of valuable materials from waste, the repurposing of some farms to replace chemical fertilisation with natural fertilisation and the dramatic reduction of carbon emitting transport vehicles.
Bega valley will be the first region to fully support a circular economy model as its most basic level. Success in the Bega shire,due to this initiative, will provide proof of the effectiveness of a circular micro-economy. If it works to reduce the carbon emission in and around the Bega valley by 2035, then this can be used as a template for other parts of Australia.
To reach the mandated carbon reduction targets set for Australia, initiatives like those taken in the Bega valley must be encouraged by all levels of government and all Australian based businesses.
Circularity is to be used in the wind turbine industry, which is handy as the epoxies used in manufacture, particularly those offshore plants, is petroleum sourced.
https://www.vestas.com/en/media/company-news/2023/vestas-unveils-circularity-solution-to-end-landfill-for-c3710818
Corporations, companies and governments have so far messed up the EV transition. What have they collectively done wrong?
I could go on but it’s a total mess. The usual suspects, corporations, companies and governments, are in cahoots and are pushing EVs for profit and production not for sustainability and recycling. At this rate, EVs will do more damage than good to our attempts to save the planet.
Fwiw, the situation here seems a little better – however, please do keep up with the prayers and meditations, if possible.
Hope is alive … 🕊
Sorry if this is a duplicate! I think I did the last one wrong.
I am just writing to say that the situation here is looking a bit better, and please keep the prayers and meditations coming, if possible, whatever you can spare.
Hope is alive … 🕊 (this is a very tiny peace dove … idk how to make it bigger)
During the early years of the pandemic, studies were already revealing COVID-19 could attack all organs including the brain because it is ultimately a vascular disease. It has a quick route to the brain via the olfactory nerves. On this blog, I predicted that traffic fatalities would rise in an endless ubiquitous covid world where people were “brain fogged” and chronically fatigued from Covid-19. I was pilloried by one covid-minimising contributor who used to frequent this site. Now, it seems I was right, yet again I might add.
“From May 2020 through December 2022, 114,528 people were killed in traffic
crashes on U.S. roads, an estimated 16,771 (17%) more than would have been expected if the pandemic had not occurred and pre-pandemic trends continued. Findings reveal that a disparate share of the increase in traffic fatalities was experienced by disadvantaged populations.” – AAA FTS Foundation for Road Safety.
Click to access 202407-AAAFTS-Impact-of-COVID.pdf
There are no prizes for being right under neoliberalism. Every scientist and every economist who warned us against letting Covid-19 spread unchecked was ignored, as to the content of the warnings, and then in many cases attacked by neoliberal shills and media “attack dogs”: attacks which sometimes had deleterious personal and/or career effects.
On the other hand, many a scientist, economist, media person and influencer who told the covid minimisation lies and advocated unchecked spread was rewarded by prestige, promotions, dollars and clicks. Neoliberalism and the mainstream and social media ecology under it incentivise falsehood. The more lies people tell under this system, the more their careers advance and the more their incomes and prestige rise. The entire neoliberal system is comprised of perverse incentives.
Australia’s housing situation is beyond a crisis. It’s a disaster about to become a catastrophe.
From the ABC News website:
“Kevin Bell, a former Victorian Supreme Court justice, says it’s worse than a crisis; it’s a socio-economic and human rights disaster.
“The situation we confront has been oft-called a crisis,” he says. “Maybe that was a fair enough description a generation ago. But now it is obviously not just a blip in an otherwise well-functioning system. It is chronic. It has become the system.
“That is why we need a stronger word to describe what is unfolding. I have chosen the word ‘disaster’, but if it continues much longer, it will be a catastrophe.”
In a new book, ‘Housing: The Great Australian Right’ Bell says the values underpinning our modern housing system, where property is viewed as a commodity and instrument of private gain (where speculative investment is encouraged), rather than a home and human right, is a “national disgrace”.
“The economic value of housing as an investment has been allowed to dominate the social value of housing as a home,” he writes. “That is a skewed way of looking at a fundamental human need that is embodied in a fundamental human right. Yet it has come to define the entire housing system. That is the root cause of our dilemma. That way of looking at housing has to change.””
https://newsouthbooks.com.au/books/housing-the-great-australian-right/
If you live in South East Queensland, you may have just received, in your letterbox, the “Fire ants in Australia Handbook”. This is a very interesting and indeed hope-bearing little document. It is rare for me to feel hope any more so every little bit from any source is welcome.
First it introduces the villain, the fire ant. This resilient native ant of South America is bad news for Australia, This is an exotic pest which breeds prolifically, colonises quickly, swarms at the slightest challenge or disturbance and is both both noxious and toxic. It is harmful and injurious to the health and well-being of humans, to domesticated and native animals and finally to domesticated and native plants. It is very harmful to agricultural and recreational pursuits. Nothing in Australia is evolved to deal with it or co-exist with it, basically.
In this context, the handbook says:
“While other countries have given up, Australia keeps fighting through our National Fire Ant Eradication Program (NFAEP).” These are inspiring words!
Imagine if we had taken, or at least belatedly took now, the same attitude to COVID-19. It is another exotic pest. It did not evolve in Australia. Indeed, there is extensive, though still circumstantial, evidence that it was made and evolutionarily forced in a lab. Then a lab leak occurred. Naturally evolved or lab made, it is still very pathogenic and fitted with a uniquely effective spike “key” to human ACE2 receptors.
Imagine if our government had said of COVID-19:
“While other countries have given up, Australia keeps fighting through our National Center for Disease Control (NCDC).”
Of fire ant impacts, the handbook says:
“Each year fire ant damage could cost $536 to households for health and lifestyle impacts, $381 to agriculture, $250 million to infrastructure and $84 million to environment.”
Again, imagine if they had listed the likely real costs of unrestricted spread of COVID-19 in Australia under the appropriate headings, some of which would duplicate those above.
I wonder if anyone has honestly calculated the entire cost of the COVID-19 burden to Australia in 2023? The appropriate death and morbidity data is now available or at least available in extractable form, even if morbidity, as is likely, is undercounted. There are of course plenty of bought and suborned officials and even doctors and academics whom one could not trust to carry out this exercise honestly, these days. But there also remain a number of eminent and trustworthy people.
I agree with you, Ike, to a certain extent about Covid. I was disappointed at the way many people behaved – how they didn’t want to wear a mask to protect other people and how it was made into a political issue. I am a little less trusting now than I was before – even of the government. (That is, I think they are not strict enough. Still, I think the people involved do their best, once something gets to a certain level. Like, once this bird flu starts killing lots of people, maybe there will be wide scale mandatory monitoring.) (Otoh, I maybe tend a bit towards the pessimistic. Maybe it won’t be too bad.) I have this weird thing now where I cut all the brown spots off my potatoes – what is that about? (ha, don’t answer) (I mean the ones inside it – even just discoloration! When I do this, I think to myself, hmmm what is going on??? Should I seek help for this? … )
On the other hand, I also think it could have been worse. This is not to minimize the number of deaths – not at all. Yet, iirc, as far as germs go, it wasn’t all that persistent – you could defeat it with regular soap and water. (Well, my nurse friend told me that – I don’t know for certain myself. I’m not a scientist.) Which is a good thing – bc you could not get quaternary cleansers, for love or money. (I don’t even really know what those are. Which is fine, bc they were not available.)
To me, that was pure luck. And in that sense, it may function as a sort of warning. I think we should all try to talk about it more with each other – so, we will be in a better place the next time.
N, about the potatoes with brown spots.
https://foodandfizz.com/brown-spots-on-potatoes/
It takes this article a long time to get to the point. In short, cut out the spots. They may be harmless but also may not be. Check the rest of the potato is sound, does not smell bad etc. “When in doubt cut if out”, I always say.
I reckon potato quality has declined like all food quality in Australia. The environment is so messed up and plant (and animal diseases) are spreading.
“The persistent threat of emerging plant disease pandemics to global food security”
Abstract
Plant disease outbreaks are increasing and threaten food security for the vulnerable in many areas of the world. Now a global human pandemic is threatening the health of millions on our planet. A stable, nutritious food supply will be needed to lift people out of poverty and improve health outcomes. Plant diseases, both endemic and recently emerging, are spreading and exacerbated by climate change, transmission with global food trade networks, pathogen spillover, and evolution of new pathogen lineages. In order to tackle these grand challenges, a new set of tools that include disease surveillance and improved detection technologies including pathogen sensors and predictive modeling and data analytics are needed to prevent future outbreaks. Herein, we describe an integrated research agenda that could help mitigate future plant disease pandemics.”
As usual, we are doing far too little about all these existential threats the human race faces. Instead, we continue to waste resources on absurd levels of self-indulgent over-consumption, travel and entertainments: luxuries in a world of multiple existential dangers and huge unmet global and national needs (even in USA and Australia) due to poverty, disease, homelessness, unemployment and other issues.
I have to admit, I have not been proactive about learning to compost. (I don’t even think it’s that hard. There’s just such(!) a long list of chores already … ) It’s the least I can do, considering how bad I am at keeping up with the produce eating schedule. (I love frozen!)
Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out.
Matt at Crude Oil Peak blog yesterday (Aug 9) posted his diesel fuel update headlined Australia’s Diesel import vulnerabilities update May 2024.
Australian diesel consumption increased 3.5% pa between Jul 2010 and May 2024. Over the same period, diesel fuel imports have increased 19% pa.
As always, there are some interesting graphs including:
I’d suggest most Australians are ‘energy blind’ to the increasingly precarious situation of Australia’s liquid fuel security.
And here’s a thought-provoking comment:
“So if we can somehow change the upstream and downstream rules or guidelines for this equation to equate to something more of a wide boundary of profitability that recognizes an earth centered, not only a human centered culture, and recognizes that all of us and our descendants are pretty much screwed unless we change the behaviors writ large and respond to events in a more cohesive earth friendly way in, in coming decades.” – Nate Hagens
See/hear the YouTube video titled Goldilocks Technology – A Preliminary Checklist | Frankly 69, duration 0:20:37, recorded 5 Aug 2024.