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.
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.
BTW – no linklove on the photo?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhayman/527577094/
ric-corrected.
Thank you James – you’re a sweet man!
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
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.
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