The Sustainability Commissioner, Dr McPhail, in tabling the Victorian State of the Environment Report, (The Age editorial, Friday Dec 5th) reveals an environment in ‘dangerous decline’, and ‘laments the failure to join the dots between issues … such as climate change and water supply’.
Similarly, ‘Planning Minister Justin McFadden dared lament the environmentally unsustainable trend to McMansions. The report observes that “community support for government leadership is needed”’.
There are plenty of others, in which the solution of one aggravates the problem in another, without adequate consideration of other associated matters.
Examples include:
1. The expansion of bio-fuel production, requiring agricultural land, when a growing world population will need ever more food.
2. Then there is the electric car which will help with the oil crisis. But have governments really got the will to develop the renewable energy needed to supply the extra electricity required, or will we simply burn more coal.
3. Last year a prize for the best and brightest Christmas lights, promoted by Melbourne commercial interests, ignoring the need to cut emissions from coal powered electricity, has passed by, virtually free of comment.
So much for government 'joining the dots'.
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