18.12.2010
The market researchers/analysts tell me that you wont win a "counter-intuitive" argument. Because people have been conditioned by repetitive claims of a particular point of view, to forthrightly state the opposite is likely to be dismissed out of hand. So they advise coming at the issue in a more subtle or different way. Sorry,but I am just not built that way! I like to think that I seek after truth and get emotionally upset when I see claims that I regard as untruthful. I do understand that there are deep philosophical arguments about what is truth, but let's keep it simple.
The debate about our inland rivers is a good example. It seems to me that the (conditioned) starting point for most commentators is that it is taken as a given that "our rivers are unhealthy and that this is due to taking too much water out of them". The MDB Plan certainly starts from that accepted position. I think that both the lack of health and the excessive extraction claims, are untrue. (And this is where your counter-intuition is triggered and I've lost you!) But, please read on.
It is a fact that the Murray Darling Basin has never been more sustainably productive. Yes, it has always been subject to huge variability, and there is no better example than the last ten years of record low rain (and run-off) and now massive floods. We must stop claiming that the natural results of dryness amount to river “ill health” and blaming that on extractions, when low availability has meant very low allocations/extractions (if any). Our forebears did a much better job than they are being given credit for.
A significant exception is the acid sulphate soils of the Lower Lakes. Not allowing salt water in, as happened naturally in dry times, has been a gross error and the evaporation losses of fresh water are indefensible. Certainly we can manage the system better, but let’s concentrate on making the cake bigger and stop all of this self flagellation and accept the dominance of Nature. Examine the numbers!
The MDB Plan keeps talking about the upper limit for extractions of 13,700GL. It never mentions that total extractions in 2008/9 (the most recent years for which figures are available) were only 3,500GL. In other words, the allocations governed by the water sharing plans for each major river, would seem to be working well and this self-correcting mechanism is doing just what it was designed to do. Focusing on reducing water licenses/entitlements and ignoring allocations really makes no sense. Likewise the oft repeated statement that "our rivers are over-allocated" most commonly reveals a lack of understanding of just how the system works.
6 comments:
We can perhaps win over time if we keep repeating and showing small piece of evidence which contradict the current paradigm. Jennifer Marohasy
A great piece, David.
Something else no-one mentions, when equating irrigators with vandals, is how the formerly semi-arid mallee country of western NSW has been transformed to one of the world's truly great foodbowls. The variety, quality and sheer productivity of the MDB is little short of miraculous.
A mother of seven, left often alone in a newly found antipodean wilderness, was able to initiate a million pound wool industry within a few years. What would Elizabeth Macarthur think of comfortable, highly paid "specialists" who spend millions in order to downgrade an agricultural triumph? What would she think of water wasted, particularly as a lethal black sludge contributed to the "life" of rivers?
I know what I think.
You have the ability to keep hitting nails on their heads. A great piece with a lot of common sense which has been absent from the water debate.
Albert Enzerink
Well done David,
It appears to me that our politicians, our bureaucrats and sadly too many of our academics are all waxing philosophically about a Murray Darling Basin that does not exist.As you rightly point out, it has always been a place of excesses. Added to this, we now have them arrogantly believing they can "assist" the environment with our meagre storages. What a joke! All we should be doing is working out the best ways to mitigate and protect ourselves from "drought and flooding rains". I think our environment has very little respect for the current computer models and the MDBP that assumes it can "save the river". It really is quite ludicrous and will waste an incredible amount of taxpayers' money. They can't "save" something that doesn't need saving! What they should be "saving" is the water and the money they are wasting at the moment!
The Green Utopia of a "healthy river" is just that: a non-attainable non-existent model river non-applicable to the Murray Darling Basin.
Good work David,
How refreshing to see some common sense and some real focus on how best to get on the right gtrack.
Well done!
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