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In The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a town tries to buy a cheap solution to a terrible problem, and their children pay the price. In light of Garnaut's latest, coservative climate change recommendations, it seems we may need a Class 5 tropical cyclone slamming into Brisbane to jolt us into decisive action.
One of the most devastating effects of European settlement upon Aboriginal people was caused by fencing. Fences have also disrupted normal behaviour of kangaroos, which have come to be regarded as enemies by landowners.
The Murray is a harnessed beast. Its flow is regulated by locks and weirs. The engineering feats to which we are wedded seem not so much a testimony to our power as to our continued foreignness. From Eureka Street, June 1991.
Disastrous consequences for the environment and humanity are a distinct possibility, if rational activity is not placed in the context of moral values.
The onset of blue-green algae caused the Murray's smell to change from rank to fetid. Halting the damage to the Murray-Darling basin is essential to our financial survival, yet it may be that it is impossible to stop the damage without also causing critical economic damage. — Eureka Street, March 1993
Jack Waterford writes that Australia is likely to have a new government by December 2007.
Federal Water Resources Minister Malcolm Turnbull must expect to spend big in winning the trust of the recalcitrant Victorian irrigators. WIthout their hearts and minds, the Federal Government's $10.5 billion Murray-Darling rescue strategy is doomed to failure.
Symbolic gestures, whether at personal or at national level, are effective, even though they will have a barely measurable effect on water supply or global warming. Our world becomes different, and our sense of what has priority in it also changes.
Australia is not infinite; there is a limit to our productive capacity and we may well have already exceeded it. One of the unmentionable and politically incorrect questions is how many people the continent can sustain while retaining some respect for the integrity of the landscape.
Throwing money at water is not the only way to fix our current problems. Reflecting on some of the meandering and non-linear qualities of water, and seeking to emulate them, may be a starting point for more receptive and sensitive ways of being in the world.
Farmers and water