I thought about starting this list when I read the unexplained clanger by a fashion editor in a spread on handbags in the The Weekend Australian Magazine last year: ‘do your bit for the environment by not buying leather handbags’ (Are petrochemicals really better for the environment? How about ‘do your bit for the environment [the world’s forests] by no longer buying newspapers and magazines?). But it was Ruth Ostrow’s article in the Weekend Australian Magazine on April 4-5 2009 that really got my full attention. Ruth often offers a lot of wise relationship advice. But clearly Ruth must have been home sick on the day the biology class learnt about the ‘web of life’. This article starts with an unhappy but everyday occurrence, the death of a baby bird, and turns into an unabashed plug for Voiceless – the mob that want to ban circuses and rodeos. The Voiceless website has a dramatic counter on the home page which purports to show ‘the number of farm animals killed in Australia by the meat, dairy and egg industry, since you opened this page’. Perhaps Voiceless could consider a similar counter that shows the number of native animals that have been displaced due to the ongoing clearing of acres of rainforest, removed to allow the growing of coffee, tea, soya beans and other crops consumed by vegetarians; causing untold environmental damage, and threatening rare species with extinction (bearing in mind that grazing livestock can co-exist on native pastures with native animals, amongst scattered trees, whereas cropping necessitates large-scale tree removal and the introduction of foreign plants on which most local wildlife cannot survive). And perhaps Ruth could ponder what would happen to the planet if animals (and people) continued to be born but never died? And the fact that sooner or later we all turn into compost essential for the existence of future life? All death is sad but the cycle of life is a fundamental fact of life Ruth, you need to get out into the real world and spend a bit of time producing everything you eat, and think about the how everything on the planet is interconnected.
Too often people in the media spotlight make unexplained statements about farmers damaging the environment, and unexplained exhortations for people to eat less meat ‘because its good for the environment’. In particular, I pick on those who are fond of obsessing about a single problem in isolation. Such as the ban-plastic-bags lobby, who are ignoring other problems, such as where the paper-pulp trees will be found for the replacement bags made of paper.
Debbie Hodgson, author of a recently published book ‘Sustainable Baby’, was quoted in the Townsville Bulletin on 19 August 2009 as listing a number of common sense suggestions, such as using cloth nappies and drying clothes on a clothesline (rather obvious stuff that not everyone needs to buy a book to figure out, but then common sense isn’t common). On Debbie Hodgson’s blog page she discusses with excitement the fact that the ‘good to eat’ Wakame, Japanese seaweed, is growing in Tasmania. Wakame is a noxious weed and the NSW DPI website requests that anyone who spots this noxious weed, which smothers native species of seaweed, collects a sample and reports the exact location immediately. Is it responsible to be rejoicing in the establishment of such an environmentally damaging aquatic weed? Then the clanger down the list of her recommendations: ‘Reconsider your grocery list and try and cut down on meat’. Why? In what way will ‘cutting down on meat’ help the environment? Debbie doesn’t explain why in the media release; it’s simply stated as a ‘sustainable baby tip’. How about cutting down on seafood – particularly prawns, the catching of which cause massive wastage of other species; to help reduce the pressure on our over-fished sea life? Or how about cutting down on books written by middle-class one-eyed bandwagon-jumpers, thus saving thousands of trees from the pulp mill?
Tim Flannery deserves a spot on the list too. My favourite scene in Two Men in a Tinnie (ABC television) is the one in which he’s putting up the Murray River in his tinnie whilst bemoaning the state of the river (episode four even has them winding the tinnie up to full speed; good one Tim; ten stars for idiocy). Tim and his offsider were in a boat, there must have been at least one boat with a film crew, a chopper hired for aerial shots, and a support crew driving along the river. Tim, I grew up beside the Murray, and I can tell you the very worst thing for the Murray River is motorised boats. Boats, other than people-powered ones, reduce the water quality and the racket disturbs all wildlife – in the water and nearby (and peace-loving residents). All motorised boats – including jet skiis – should be banned from the Murray River. Including your boat flotilla, Tim. Unless you think it’s one rule for you and one for everyone else, or that you are the only one with a legitimate reason for wanting to putt up the Murray? Next time, travel the length of the Murray River in a canoe – floating from top to bottom, if you’re not up to paddling.