Antinuclear

Australia’s role in the pollution of the planet – theme for September 2014

Australia is seen as the “lucky country” – wealthy, healthy, progressive – happily remote from the troubles, and the pollution of other countries. But, as Barry Jones once wrote – Sleepers Awake!

Australia is well and truly up there with the major world polluters. Indeed, we boast the greatest greenhouse emissions per person, of any country in the world.  We’re letting the coal industry trash the  Great Barrier Reef. We’re killing our one and only major river system – the Murray Darling.  We’re champion deforesters. Australia’s thin arable topsoil is being blown and washed away.  Radioactive pollution has been with us since the inception of the dirty uranium industry, and the colonialist scandal of Britain’s atomic bomb testing, –  and fools are recommending that we get more of it!

This website has focused on the nuclear industry. But really, that should not be separated from all the other criminal offences against the planet – carried out because of an exploitative and crazy culture of endless growth and endless consumption.

We’d better hope that it is not too late to change. At a “local level” Australians can learn from traditional Aboriginal land management, as described by Bill Gammage in his book The Biggest Estate”

At a global level, we’d better take part in the world-wide movement towards clean energy, and towards a conserver, rather than a consumer, society.

August 31, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina themes