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Who the Hell Approved That?

“I used to like the city better, thirty forty years ago’ South Brisbane circa 1973, before the Cultural Centre, Expo 88 and proliferating apartments.

The Cheeseparer family from Victoria, fed up with the overpopulated rat race, spent the school holidays cruising the south east Queensland coast, looking for a more ambient place to live than the far-flung commuter suburbs of greater Melbourne.

Margolia and Basil Jnr are sick of Melbourne’s unpredictable weather, the traffic, the pollution, the high cost of living and the four-hour daily commutes (including dropping the kids off at school and picking them up from daycare). They also want to be closer to the Cheeseparer oldies, Basil and Sybil (previously cited in this forum), who have retired to a 77^th floor apartment on the Gold Coast (which has a spacious guest room with four bunks and a sofa bed in the lounge).

So they set off on a road trip, boring the four Cheeseparer kids witless with their obsessive pursuit of a green change.

Somewhere between the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane, Dylan, 11, and a bit of a smartarse, looked out the window at a new estate. He provided the family with a pithy description: “a sea of roofs with nary a tree to be seen, tucked not so discreetly behind an acoustic fence running along the motorway”.

“Who the hell approved that?” he added.

“You can’t say hell – it’s a bad word,” said April, 6.

Margolia said: “Lots of religious people believe there is a place called Hell, so it is a place name, not a curse.

“But I was using it as a curse,” said Dylan.

“I know, let’s play a game”, Dylan continued. “First one to say something clever and cynical about any new housing estates we see gets a point. Winner gets more Face Time”.

“This is dumb,” came the voice of Max Cheeseparer, 15, banished to the Prado’s luggage compartment with Edie the Golden Retriever for saying negative things like “this is dumb”.

“Good tsunami will see that lot out,” muttered Eric, 13, not only bored but observant, as the Cheeseparer’s Prado cruised past a new coastal estate separated from the highway by a levy.

“Paper bag”, Dylan retorted.

“Yep, looks like someone drained a Teatree swamp,” said Basil Jnr.

“Not fair,” said April. “Adults cannot play.”

Well actually, adults should be playing this game when house hunting in the sprawling conurbation between Noosa and Coolangatta which makes up the greater metropolis of Bris Vegas. In the proliferating new estates, so often set next to freeways, generic housing design prevails, each home dominated by a two car garage and sited on allotments as small as 400sqm , depending which local government is setting the rules. The theory behind smaller lots is that it makes housing more affordable.

Who the Hell Approved That allocates points for the inventiveness of commentary, e.g. “Nice green buffer, mate” when clearly the trees have gone to Japan to make paper. A bonus point is awarded to the first to invoke The Castle’s famous quote: “Tell them they’re dreaming”. The latter usually applies upon seeing billboards announcing “house and land packages from $659,000”.

Be assured this is a game you can play anywhere in Australia and not just in the big cities of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. One of the things you notice when following the grey nomad trail is just how few country towns have been left untouched by the cookie cutter form of new housing development built on the outskirts Many of these houses are sold off the plan with rental guarantees; bought by out-of-town investors. In the mania of the moment, no-one looks ahead 24 months and wonders “now what?”

There is a vast difference in vision between those steeped in the concept of sustainability and protecting the environment and the State government’s mantra ‘Jobs and Growth’.

The 2017 SEQ Plan forecasts an additional two million people by 2025 (bringing the region’s population to 5.5 million). Queensland’s target annual population growth (fertility+interstate migration), hoped for 3% per annum.

The State still boasts an average 2.2% over 10 years, although in recent years the population growth numbers have fallen below 2%. Perhaps the interstate migrants, in their desire to flee the rate race, have realised it is just as ratty across the border.

Residential real estate analyst Michael Matusik commented on figures released by the government which estimate that the Gold Coast, Ipswich and Logan are expected to accommodate 73% of the new housing development across south east Queensland. The Sunshine Coast and Brisbane City Council areas are forecast to hold an additional 10% each. The three municipalities are expected to generate an additional 298,000 dwellings.

Matusik noted that 82% of the new housing on the Gold Coast and 57% in Ipswich will be higher density (apartments), which is ‘‘much higher than current market demand’’.

The growth mantra has spoiled the character and amenity of countless suburbs in Brisbane. I lived there for 17 years, leaving for a smaller town in 2005 with no desire to return. I certainly have no capacity to buy there again, with a median price of $680,000.

The rot started with local governments deciding to relax planning rules so people with a house on a quarter acre allotment (once common), could sub-divide the block and put a second house on it (with an easement for access). This approach has degenerated into what is generically called ‘infill’, which in some inner city Brisbane suburbs mean allotments as small as 300sqm. These tiny house allotments are sought after, given that they represent a foothold in an otherwise unaffordable location (anywhere you have ‘city glimpses’).

In the 2017 report, Shaping SEQ, Deputy Premier Jackie Trad enshrines the vision that requires a population growth target.

“It is not difficult to see why the population of South East Queensland is expected to grow by almost 2 million people over the next 25 years. We have an enviable lifestyle, great schools and universities, and a strong, diverse economy expected to create almost one million jobs over the next 25 years. Our future is bright”.

This is not the only reason we moved to a country town two hours’ drive from Brisbane, but it was one of the motivators.

A reader who had been following our downsizing exercise with great interest wrote to relate her own experience in growth-mad Brisbane. Her aim was to sell the big family home in an outlying suburb and move closer to the city. But now she is spooked by falling sales volumes.

My friend also observes that prices are ‘predatory’ for inner Brisbane, with buyers made to feel ashamed if they are not up for the $750k starting point. So this empty nester, realising how little housing is designed for the over-50s downsizer market, has withdrawn from what she suspects is a static market, waiting for something to happen.

Meanwhile, the tree-changers are continuing the elusive search for a small town that has the infrastructure, ambience, affordability and the potential to commute to jobs in the city as needed. In theory, the brave new world of tele-commuting should make this lifestyle viable for people whose work revolves around consulting, writing, giving people advice and preparing documents.

A housing policy designed to facilitate and enhance this increasing desire to escape the rat race could in turn re-populate and rejuvenate small towns which might otherwise die. How about it, Anna?

Rising sea levels and apocalyptic fiction

I’d always thought my song about the mountain dwellers ending up on waterfront row because of rising sea levels was not to be taken too seriously. It was an apocalyptic view of what might happen if it didn’t stop raining and, moreover, not a terribly original idea as it turned out. But the risk of flash flooding from above-average rainfall is only half the problem for people living down there, at sea level.

A loyal reader, visiting the coast from cooler climes down south was discussing his theories about rising sea levels and coastal tourist locations like Noosa, given news of the Arctic region’s third winter heat wave in a row. His attention had been drawn to Greenland, where temperatures have remained above freezing at a time of year when it should be at least 30 below. Clearly such weather extremes in the fragile ecosystem of the Arctic region must accelerate the process of rising sea levels?

As The Independent reports, this is happening even though large parts of the Arctic Circle are trapped in perpetual darkness.

New global projections forecast a sea level rise of 2m by 2100, compared to a 0.74m rise in a 2013 study. So far, the forecasts that oceans would rise on average by 3mm a year has provoked a scornful debate between believers and climate sceptics. Yes, the science is not wholly believed. There are people in high places who have made naïve and disturbing statement such as “coal is good for humanity”, at a time when most scientists agree that CO2 emissions, produced largely from human activity, must be reduced.

The spectre of melting polar ice bringing an apocalyptic end to civilisation as we know it has been a favourite theme of science fiction writers for a long time. Now there is even a fiction sub-genre known as ‘cli-fi’ which has spawned many cataclysmic climate scenarios.

The spookiest forecast, before cli-fi was a thing, was The Drowned World, J.G Ballard’s second novel, published in 1962. Ballard’s main character is a scientist in charge of a floating research station, drifting above a submerged London, beset on all sides by encroaching tropical jungle. A 50^th anniversary edition (with an introduction by Martin Amis) has been released and it is available as an ebook. I’ve not read it, though, relying on Peter Briggs’ review for the synopsis.

Ballard eerily conjured up a world where polar ice caps have melted and solar storms have left us in an irradiated world. Europe is a series of lagoons, devoid of human life, although the tropical bugs love it!

The most recent book in the cli-fi genre which I have read is The Ice by Laline Paull. Her 2017 mystery novel begins with wealthy tourists aboard the Vanir, traversing previously frozen Arctic oceans. The mission is to find a (now rare) polar bear, but instead they find the thawed body of an explorer who went missing years ago in mysterious circumstances.

Fiction aside, the alarming temperature rises in the frozen north have had a bizarre impact on Europe, the US and Canada in 2018, which at this time of year ought to be seeing the first thaws of spring. A day temperature of 1 degree celsius in Greenland might not seem too warm to us Aussies, but typically the days are often up to 30 degrees colder. And this is not confined to Greenland. The most northern US city (Utqiaguik, Alaska), has also been enjoying a balmy 1 degree celsius − again that’s 22 degrees above average.

Meanwhile,The Independent observed that a relatively high pressure system over Russia and the Nordic north and a relatively low pressure system across the UK resulted in freezing Artic air being drawn towards the UK and causing exceptionally cold weather there.

The chorus of Waterfront Row ponders: “Little did I think when I moved to the mountains, I’d end up on Waterfront Row, renting out my shed to all those who fled the torrents and the foment down below.”

Imagine my chagrin upon writing and recording this song to be told (by a country music fan), that the song was similar (in theme) to Graeme Connors’ A Beach House in the Blue Mountains. I had not heard of the song but googled it (as you do).

We’re not the only ones taking ‘cli-fi’ into the realms of songwriting. Sunshine Coast songwriter Noel Gardner made up this cheery tune about the low-lying island nation of Tuvalu. He takes the role of the climate sceptic to satirise the controversy about Tuvalu and rising sea levels.

Some years back, the tiny Pacific island nation was said to be so prone to inundation its citizens might have to become New Zealanders. As it happens, some 2,400 Tuvaluans have already moved to NZ or neighbouring islands, according to a not-for-profit group that monitors world poverty.

They may have moved too soon, if, as the article below says, Pacific atolls like Tuvalu actually grow and float, becoming impervious to rising tides.

Now, a study confirms what we’ve already known – atolls, and in particular Tuvalu are growing, and increasing land area, writes Anthony Briggs. “So much for climate alarmism”.

Nevertheless, the highest elevation on Tuvalu is 15 feet and it is perpetually exposed to rising sea levels, cyclones and tsunamis.

An article in The Conversation says previous studies examining the risk of coastal inundation in the Pacific region have been conducted in areas where the rate of sea level rise is ‘average’ – 3mm to 5mm per year. A team of authors, led by The University of Queensland Senior Research Fellow Simon Albert unearthed outlying examples.

At least five reef islands in the remote Solomon Islands, where sea level rises are in the order of 7mm-10mm a year, have been lost completely to rising sea levels and coastal erosion. A further six islands have been severely eroded. These islands range in size from one to five hectares and supported dense tropical vegetation that was at least 300 years old.

Last year, new projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US revealed that global sea levels could rise by 2 metres by 2100 if emissions remain at their current levels. As the ABC reported, this is substantially higher than the 74cm increase proposed in a 2013 Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Under these new projections, Sydney’s Circular Quay, Brisbane Airport, Melbourne’s Docklands and North Fremantle would be among locations at risk. So too Stradbroke Island, the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, while in South Australia the seaside suburb of Glenelg would also be in trouble.

Scarier predictions have been made, with scientists taking into account the prospect of Antarctica melting, as well as the Arctic, doubling predictions of a 2m rise by 2100.

Should we care? By 2100, the youngest person I know will be 89, so maybe she will care. Her children and grandchildren definitely will.

And what does this mean for Australia, where the majority of the population live along narrow bands of coastal land on the east and west coasts?

You can scare yourself (or reassure yourself) by checking out this interactive website which allows you to see the predicted results of sea level rises wherever you happen to live.

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Renewable energy vs climate sceptics

Have you ever noticed, after giving your dog a bath, how it will head straight for the nearest patch of renewable energy? Ours has a favourite sunny spot next to the dining room table where he will happily bask, while our solar-powered camping lamp, calculator and torches are recharging on the window sill.

Free sunshine – what’s not to like? As it happens, we have been preparing our little caravan for a weekend music festival in the bush. The 160 watt portable solar panel slides snugly under the bed. At $159, this has proved to be a worthy investment for our outback and bush music weekend adventures. It means you can keep topping up the caravan’s battery (if the sun is shining) and go to bed early if it’s not.

We are not expecting rain. No-one is expecting rain.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed the winter just past was the hottest since records began in 1910. It was also the 9^th driest winter on record. The average maximum temperature was almost 2 degrees above the long-term average.

Meanwhile, Texas is suffering unprecedented flooding courtesy of Hurricane Harvey, the reporting of which has somewhat overshadowed devastating monsoon flooding in South East Asia. So far, in the latter disaster area, 1,200 people have been killed and almost two million children were unable to get to school.

As we ironically say in the privacy of our own home – “Just as well there’s no such thing as climate change, then!”

Now all, some of, or only a small part of these extreme weather events could be ascribed to global warming/climate change, which, 97% of scientists agree, is mostly caused by human activity.

Despite this consensus on behalf of an apparently overwhelming majority of scientists, sceptics disagree. I happened to read that former Prime Minister Tony Abbott is set to deliver a speech, “Daring to Doubt,” at an annual climate sceptics group meeting in London on October 9.

You might remember Tony Abbott – his reign as PM at one year and 361 days (cumulative terms), was longer than that of Harold Holt and Billy McMahon, but not by much. Abbott the Climate Change Sceptic is infamous in some quarters as the man who canned the government-funded Climate Commission as part of a Budget cost-cutting exercise.

The Climate Commission bounced back as the privately-funded Climate Council. A new report by the Climate Council concludes that the individual States are going their own way, with mixed results.

South Australia is a clear leader in the renewable energy field, the stakes raised by the government’s decision to replace ageing coal-fired power stations with a 150 megawatt solar thermal power plant.

FOMM foreshadowed this in 2014, when the SA government was trying to negotiate the future of the coal mine which fed its Port Augusta power stations. Now, after five years of lobbying and debate, the SA government is aiming to invest $650 million in renewable energy.

It hardly seems worth mentioning that 1,900 kilometres away, the Queensland Government, in a contrarian move, remains committed to the country’s largest Greenfield export coal mine. The Carmichael mine, which includes a dedicated railway line to take coal north to Abbott Point, is deeply unpopular among environmental groups because of the potential damage it could cause to the Great Barrier Reef, both by the number of ships traversing the narrow channels, and through coral bleaching as a result of human-induced temperature increases.

On the other hand, Queenslanders’ love affair with domestic solar panels is demonstrated by the fact that 32% of households are covered in 2017. Lobby group Solar Citizens (almost 100,000 members), welcomed last week’s decision by the Queensland Government to increase the regional feed-in tariff (FiT) program. This will allow solar systems up to 30kW to receive 10.1c per kWh – six times more than what was previously agreed.

Solar Citizens has an ambitious target of one million solar roofs by 2020.

“Queenslanders know a sensible idea when they see it – with 520,000 solar homes, our State has the highest rooftop solar uptake in the country,” a spokeswoman said.

However, critics of domestic solar energy say the flaw is that those who can afford to become self-sufficient do so, and those who cannot end up paying disproportionately more for energy.)

This week, the Climate Council presented its annual ‘state of the States’ renewable energy report. CEO Amanda McKenzie said the State survey showed a major step up from last year. All States and Territories (apart from WA), have strong renewable energy or net zero emissions targets. South Australia is building the world’s largest lithium ion battery storage facility, and over 30 large scale wind and solar projects are under construction across Australia in 2017.

“The good news is that many States are surging ahead and doing the heavy lifting for the (Federal) government.”

Last week, the Victorian government flagged new legislation which would increase its renewable energy target to 40% by 2025. There is also an intermediate plan to lift Victoria’s clean energy target to 25% by 2020.

So yes, it does seem as if individual States (and Councils) are setting their own renewable energy policies, in the absence of clear leadership at a national level.

Noosa Mayor Tony Wellington did not miss an opportunity to talk up his region’s commitment to solar panels. Noosa Shire, which de-merged from the larger Sunshine Coast Regional Council (SCRC), claims 9,000 households in Noosa Shire have solar installations, which is better than the State average. Cr Wellington told the Sunshine Coast Daily Noosa’s goal was to be ‘carbon neutral’ by 2050.

Not to be overshadowed, the SCRC opened a 15 megawatt solar farm in July. The SCRC was the first local government in Australia to offset 100% of its electricity consumption with energy from a renewable source.

But what can humble citizens do, as pro-coal lobbyists clash swords with the solar and wind farm warriors? The go-it-alone mentality arises from a failure on the part of our Federal Government to stimulate investment in the renewable sector. Australia has already promised, under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% on 2005 levels by 2030. But Tony Abbott’s call as PM to reduce the renewable energy target (and now he advocates scrapping it altogether), was unhelpful.

Whatever way you judge it, a former PM addressing the Global Warming Policy Foundation is not a good look. The last Australian PM to do so was John Howard in 2013 (when he claimed global warming had stalled and was sceptical about the possibilities of an international agreement on climate change).

There have already been reports in the UK media which seized on old quotes by Mr Abbott referring to climate science as ‘bullshit’ and recycling his coal is ‘good for humanity’ comment.

As readers will know, we spent a week out at Carnarvon Gorge in July, a time of year when it is common for the temperature to dip below zero at night. We packed accordingly, then spent four nights kicking off the doona and keeping each other awake as the mercury stayed above 15.

It should be cool at night for the Neurum Creek Folk Festival, but I packed my shortie pyjamas, just in case there is such a thing as climate change.