Infrastructure requires concrete and steel. Concrete and steel are carbon nightmares. Consequently, infrastructure needs to be built for the long term, measured in centuries not years. It also needs to be built using renewable energy as much as possible and minimising transport. That requires development of these technologies as part of developing the north and west. A Green government will guard environmental values and reduce global energy consumption by developing a sustainable steel industry close to the iron mines and producing less carbon intensive steel while building the Australian economy.
Population growth is the greatest threat to the environment. The only positive solution is the education and empowerment of women to reduce birth rates below death rates. The alternative is starvation, pestilence and plague. Australia has to do its part to help balance global poverty and suffering by welcoming climate. political and population refugees. One effective means to achieve this is to build new, robust, zero waste and zero emission cities in the north and west, built by Australia’s under employed and those newcomers seeking refuge.
Economic expansion naturally follows innovation, population growth and resource development. While Greens vigorously oppose growth for its own sake, the building of Green cities in Australia’s north and west resolves the huge geopolitical and socioeconomic imbalance of an empty continent on the doorstep of overcrowded South East Asia, establishes a centre of innovation for global low energy development and establishes a new benchmark for Australian economic standards. We move from being an extractive economy (a quarry) to a centre of innovation.
Ecological management of the vast areas of Australia outside the Brisbane line is required to address the millennia of firestick farming and centuries of mechanical deforestation. Funded by the economic expansion of the north and west, Australia’s vast spaces and varied landscape can become a permanent ark for thousands of species that are heading rapidly for expansion.
As a wealthy democracy, Australia has a unique opportunity to provide leadership in all these areas. The Greens are the political party best positioned to deliver this. A modern political party, free of the taint of corporate bribes and with a networked grass roots, The Greens can show real leadership.
Naturally, taking positive action will challenge some holy cows, but the proposal outlined above is in complete keeping with Green principles and is the fundamental requirement for a stable and robust future.
I look forward to walking with you on that jouirney
This is part of a longer article Green gold | Redneck Rage | Rusted on Reds | Clear directions | Sidebar – Red herrings | Greenslanders? Not!