rationality vs political expediency – australia’s problem with water

You might recall this post from a couple of years back about water use in Australia – basically, the point was that as a matter of measurable, objective fact urban water use is utterly dwarfed by agricultural use, and if we are serious about changing our water consumption in this country the only realistic option is to alter our agricultural use.

I noticed some very sensible remarks in relation to this article at Larvatus Prodeo from a guy calling himself “hannah’s dad” who actually lives on the Murray and is seeing the destruction of the lower river system first hand.  In particular, this seems to be the indisputable truth:

There is only one perspective that will solve the problem, it has been recommended by studies and reports but essentially ignored.

Too hard politically.

That is to treat the entire river as a catchment and drainage basin as nature has organized it.

Firstly, allocate TO THE RIVER the amount of water it requires to be healthy. Which is probably double or treble or even more the current ‘environmental’ flows. [As an aside the river level has dropped more than a metre in my region in the last month or so and the ferry landings are going to need rebuilding so the ferries can operate.]

Secondly, allocate the necessary amount needed for URBAN purposes, after all this is people we are talking about and they need bugger all when you look at the numbers. 2 million or so people use a fraction of the water used for irrigation.

Finally, irrigation can have what is left over.

And if that is not enough to sustain present levels of irrigation, and it won’t be, then something will have to be done about that won’t it?
But the point is that there is simply not enough water for all at the moment and its NOT going to get any better in the future, probably worse.

Stupidly, these ideas would be regarded as extremist, ‘un-Australian’ and just not worth discussing in the national discourse on this topic.  So strong is the desire to serve political expediency that actual rationality is being completely excluded from the discussion.

As well as talking a lot of sense, some of what he has to say is just incredibly depressing.  Like this:

We had a bat detector at our place for a week some years ago back in the good ol’ days when we had water.
Its a recording device which measures the ultra sound calls of bats and then identifies them by those calls.
We had 9 different species of bat flying around for each night of that week, I had no idea there were that many species.
One was Myotis macropus [or adversus], Large-footed Bat, so called because it flies over the smooth lagoon waters trailing its feet in the water and catching tiny fish with the aid of its sonar. It weighs 8 grams for Pete’s sake.
It’s tiny.
There is no lagoon anymore.

It’s one thing to be slightly paralyzed by a problem as massive as global warming – but it’s something else entirely that we have an obvious problem, an obvious solution, and instead of solving the problem just sitting back and helplessly watching an entire ecosystem die right before our eyes.