Val Yule

If the reason for a carbon tax is primarily to change behaviour, what is the behaviour that households can change to reduce their carbon tax payments?

Curiously, the same behaviour will reduce waste of resources as well as cut emissions. We will have a User’s economy, not a Consumers’ economy.

But everyone’s job cannot be kept. Many are wasteful. New jobs are waiting in plenty, if only they are funded. And we certainly do not need more population to do the wasteful jobs. More population means the need for more resources to keep them alive. It means that farmland will be sacrificed for towns.

An individual’s behaviour seems puny. All one person can do is save money by not spending on wasting resources and costing unnecessary carbon emissions. And setting an example that more individuals can follow. And can at last reach the Movers and Shakers who make the great difference. Jobs will be lost; jobs will be made.

How can you cut your budget by half or even a quarter?

Cut use of petrol. Replace using the big family car for all one-person journeys with a minicar or public transport for commuting, walking, and cycling. (Minicars? Australian-made?) Only use a power-mower for vast expanses and civic ‘English’ lawns. Households save petrol, fertiliser, and water by mowing ‘Australian’ lawns with a good hand-mower, not a power mower. (Resurrect the good Australian hand-mower – present ones on sale are hopeless.) Australian lawns that die down in summer and don’t worry about flatweeds, Nature strips are ‘no-mow’ tough plants, rather than lawns.

Cut use of power. Reduce use of air-conditioning and central heating by sensible building practices, curtains, blinds and passages, and by heating or cooling only the rooms you are in, and dressing for the weather.

Use electric household appliances only when necessary. Half the time the big appliances are not necessary; exercise with manual appliances is just as good.

Throw less out into landfill or energy-intensive recycling. You save money when you buy for quality that lasts and refuse to buy goods that quickly obsolesce or fall to bits. All those ads that cry ‘Cheap!’ are misleading.

Cut your bills by knowing what is in your frig, and have recipes to use food that is not used.

Only buy furniture that can be repaired. Rubber latex mattresses are recommended rather than inner-springs, except for the obese who would wear them out; twenty year’s use, and then the rubber can be re-used.

Cut the loss of resources and carbon emissions in buying clothes you will not love, or cannot stand washing. Love your clothes and renovate them with accessories rather than throwing them out. Children can learn to love and be proud of the clothes they get handed down in the family as well as their new gear. Sewing and mending while listening to the radio or conversation are arts worth learning.

Hot water bills can be cut. Shampoo your hair weekly rather than daily; it will enjoy that, it is better for it, and it cuts your electricity and water bills. It’s amazing how much is saved if a kettle is filled only one cup more than you need. Go further , and get solar panels.

Gardens can stop using fertilisers and water unnecessarily; tanks, compost and worm farms are cost savers.

Many of these practices mean less carbon tax for the economy, not just yourselves.

If you think this is being told what to do - you can easily work out how to save carbon emissions and wasting resources yourselves. All those stand-by lights - -

It may seem a drop in the scheme of things, when the MacMansion building opposite you is contributing to the GDP by pulling down a beautiful single story home and employing about a dozen men for a year building the 90-square monster over almost an entire block.

But what good does this really do to the country, in the long run? You and your other neighbours can cut the value of such Conspicuous Consumption when you turn the goal of householders to Conspicuous Saving.

And what of the jobs that will go if you do not spend as much on waste? Think of all the jobs that are needed when the cry is ‘We need more population to do all the jobs’! If all the jobs that need to be done were being done, there would be no unemployment, and much less waste.

Remember the lesson of the great Newfoundland cod fisheries. Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous gives a description of fish so plentiful that the waters seethed with them. In 1977 Canada tried to stop the reduction of the cod stocks by declaring 320 kilometers off Newfoundland off limits to foreign factory ships. The local industry flourished, bringing prosperity to Newfoundland. In the 1980s marine biologists warned that the future was threatened by the heavy fishing and recommended an annual target of 125,000 tonnes of cod. But the community outcry about the economic and social damage made the government set the target at 235,000 tonnes. Stocks fell below a sustainable level and in June 1992 one of the richest natural resources was closed down. 30,000 jobs were lost and Newfoundland fell into rapid economic decline.

Millions of people depend on Murray River health

The lesson for the health of the Murray River is clear. (See Peter Goodwin’s letter in the AGE, October 2010)
Millions of us depend upon this river. We cannot repeat the mistake of Newfoundland when scientists warn us of consequences of letting it die.

We are doing some silly things.

Is water wasted that is not directly used now by the people? Is it wasted if it keeps the river alive for our future use, if it floods the plains where the red gums grow, or keeps alive the swamps, which the migrating birds, and other wildlife depend upon? This is a question, which must be answered by us all now, for the sake of the future.

Four States of Australia squabble over what water there is – Queensland, where much of the water originates, New South Wales and Victoria which have the problem of whether to keep the trees of the flood plains alive, and South Australia, where the river used to flow into the sea, and is now struggling to keep the lakes and estuary alive, as well as the capital of Adelaide.

Water waste by irrigators and country towns is now greatly reduced by more enlightened practices, but some areas are more progressive than others. It is still not worked out which crops are best suited to different areas, especially with water-hungry cotton and rice. Other crops such as dried fruit would prosper more if they could compete with Middle Eastern imports, which have low labor costs but a high real cost in freight, which adds to carbon emissions and fuel loss.

There are some crops necessary for feeding our population, which it would be wiser to grow to some extent at least, in our fertile Murray River Basin, than rely entirely on imports. Water is a scarce commodity the most of the world, and we use the water overseas for our imported food too.

Private ownership of water is disastrous for this country

A great waste of the Murray River is the private ownership of water. This means that government must pay private interests for water to use in the public interest. Originally far-seeing legislators in Victoria decreed that all water belonged to the state, which gave irrigators and others the rights to use it. Unfortunately this right has become a right to own it. Not only irrigators but financial interests have now got a source of income that costs the Murray River and the State dearly. A title system for the use of water similar to land ownership would be disastrous for this dry country.

Farmers and States trading rights to use water on an annual basis is one thing. To have titles to private ownership of water is reckless.

Water ownership would inevitably accumulate into the hands of a few. There would be no legal way to prevent foreign ownership. Greedy people have their eyes on water ownership globally, as with growing population pressures it becomes the most valuable commodity on earth. The pressure on governments from these private interests may be great, and must be resisted.

Governments selling our life-blood away are treasonous

There is such a thing as treason, and selling away our life-blood is one of them. Although distribution can be allowed through private companies, and private interests assist in infrastructure, the living water itself must remain inalienably in public ownership, and subject to public control. Free trade agreements must never have a legal chance to include water.

North South Pipeline is a really stupid waste

The stupidest waste of the Murray River is the North-South Pipeline of Victoria, built by the Victorian government to keep the Melbourne electorates happy, takes water down south for Melbourne, which otherwise would flow down the Goulburn River to the Murray River and associated irrigators.

Australian Aboriginals did it much better than we do

The aboriginal inhabitants for 40,000 years lived sustainably on the banks of the river, and harvested its wildlife without extinction, keeping their population within the bounds of existing technology, droughts and floods.