Trading Sustainability For Mere Trinkets
Newcastle Herald
Saturday June 1, 2002
WHILE the picture of economic activity around Muswellbrook might appear to be healthy to an economist and to local politicians (The Great Divide, NH, 25/5) to someone concerned about the environment, the picture could not look much worse.
Trading human and ecosystem health for a swimming pool and high average incomes is an issue that needs wide public attention and scrutiny.
Yet the approval process rubber stamping environmental impacts that have massive local, regional and global impacts has not permitted sufficient critical attention on the central issue at stake here, that of genuine sustainability.
The Upper Hunter now has a concentration of mines that is having an enormous and direct impact on the quality of life for all those who live within the region.
With more than 520 square kilometres of open-cut mining activity in the Hunter Region (mainly in the Upper Hunter) and with Muswellbrook now surrounded by mega-mines, the scene is set for the ongoing destruction of the rural and natural landscape.
The obvious impacts such as dust, noise and visual blight are bad enough, however, the loss of the very character of the town and the immediate region must be put into the equation.
Indeed, the scale of mining now poses new threats to the Hunter River and incalculable risks to the integrity of ground water flows that are vital to the health of the river and our own agricultural systems.
The Healthy Rivers Commission (2001) has identified the Hunter River and its valley as having `suffered a degree of environmental damage that many believe to be at, or beyond, tolerable limits'.
The idea that the horse and wine industries will continue to easily co-exist with such an assault is in the realm of fantasyland, as is the idea that tourists will flock to the region to enjoy witnessing its death by a thousand open cuts.
Potentially sustainable industries cannot co-exist with a giant that literally undermines their own viability.
The Upper Hunter needs to rethink its future and it needs to start creating a sustainable future.
The foundations of a sustainable community, renewable energy systems and sustainable agriculture must be laid right now.
Mining, power generation and coal export industries are also having large effects on places far removed from the mine sites, power stations, rail lines and ports.
For example, climate change linked to fossil fuel use has global impacts and the recent report linking global warming to the bleaching and death of our Great Barrier Reef system connects our black coal to white coral.
To trade-off coal for a world heritage coral reef makes the stakes much higher than simply trading a swimming pool for a mine.
More than $1billion of the $1.8billion earmarked for new investment for the Muswellbrook Shire is dedicated to `King Coal'. However, the coal industry in its totality, as manifest by the mining, transport and burning of fossil fuels, is inherently non-sustainable.
It poses immediate risks to human and ecosystem health and is a major player in the global race to non-sustainability.
Furthermore, the idea that profits from `clean coal' will help the transition to more sustainable industry is a dangerous illusion because it diverts attention and resources away from genuinely clean and renewable energy that must be developed and delivered right now!
The claim by local politicians that they will not see an end to the economic boom generated by coal in their lifetimes is about as narrow a perspective on the future as one can find.
Twenty to 50 years, the lifetime of existing and all future mines in the Upper Hunter, might seem like a long time to some, but future generations will not thank these politicians for their myopia. The myopia of Muswellbrook seems to be catching on in other areas as Cessnock Shire Council trades its largest remaining patch of native vegetation on the valley floor for NSW's biggest industrial estate.
Moreover, we must not forget that the Lower Hunter seems about to embrace mega-development that poses a substantial risk to the integrity of its estuary and wetlands.
In addition, the impact on human quality of life is likely to be in industrial quantities as bridges between communities are cut to service the needs of economies of scale.
It is beyond comprehension that in an era where development is obliged to be sustainable, the health of the estuary, the integrity of the RAMSAR listed wetlands and equity for the current generation of people in the Hunter could be compromised.
There is a clash between political reality and the reality of limits to the insults that ecosystems and humans can take. Politics can win in the short term, but ecological reality will win in the long term.
The idea that both can win is, unfortunately, an impossibility.
It appears that the Hunter Region is still under intense political and economic pressure to become the smokestack of NSW.
While, according to the State of the Environment Report, the air over the Sydney metropolitan area might be improving, the air over Muswellbrook and the planet is about to become much worse.
To trade clean air, a healthy river, a healthy ecosystem and a community with a history, for a swimming pool and a fist full of dollars is indeed a big issue.
The colonising of Australia was accompanied in some areas by offering trinkets for land to people who were not in a good position to assess the merits of the deal. It seems once again that we are about to give up our heritage for trinkets.
I trust that our democracy is robust enough to allow a full and open discussion of the efforts being made by one generation to impoverish the lives of those in future generations.
It is to be hoped that citizens in the future might at least look back and find some evidence that this madness was resisted. Dr Glenn Albrecht is a senior lecturer in Environmental Studies at Newcastle University's School of Environmental Studies. Philippa Murray is on leave.
© 2002 Newcastle Herald
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