The Value of Nature by Paul Dixon

I just received a copy of The Australian Greens Magazine as I have recently become a member, and I was reading through it and in this issue, Paul Dixon shares his very personal story of economic structures failing him, and his return to nature as a result.

I would like to share this with you, and as I usually do not like to write a blog that quotes a story word for word (exceptions of The Story of a Carbon Atom), I wanted to share this particular one as I felt it was quite a powerful read.


"In October 2012 I published a small collection of environmental poetry which represented a distillation of more than 35 years experience in nature.  It had been written more than a year earlier at a time when I became homeless and unwell from my overall predicament.  Even though I had continued working as a lawyer from the swag, the only thing I had to leave to my children of any real value was a connection to nature hopefully to be described forever in writing.

Some personal financial arrangements and my socio-economic background meant I had nowhere else to turn.  With certain lessons in mind I had taken from nature over the years and which I wished to pass on to my children, the book penned hastily in the light of my campfires in local State forests and National Parks where I was sleeping.  It did however confirm just how distant my heart and mind had become from my own people.

I was soon forced into bankruptcy and a disgraceful ending to my eight or so years of work without a holiday for clients from a lower socio-economic background on behalf of Legal Aid NSW.  The NSW Law Society allowed me to continue practicing as a lawyer, however by that stage my relatively public demise and reconnection with nature on a more substantial level through the book made practicing as a lawyer unpalatable.  The book was released for sale more or less unedited and I now act occasionally for disabled or mentally ill persons and make a meagre living selling my landscape photos.

Retreating to nature was a bit of history repeating itself for me.  I grew up often needing nature as a place to hide, to become unseen and a part of it served my small interest as a little and frightened child.  I was allowed more dignity in nature from very early on and was extremely grateful for it, and I wanted to know everything about nature.  I studied science at university and approached indigenous peoples and artists, and I found being an Anglo Saxon Australian (educated or not) was not the best place to come from in understanding our place in nature.  I was always more interested in spending my time exploring local bushland than going overseas or drinking sessions.  It was therefore sad but not difficult for me to eventually be forced to work as a lawyer during the day and sleep in the bush at night as ridiculous as that may sound.

I place much weight on going deep into nature continually throughout my life, and my not carrying the burden my siblings now do and that which many others do because of their socio-economic childhood. As a criminal and mental health lawyer I got to know the fine details of people's lives many of which I shared, but I was their lawyer not an inmate, fellow patient or support person.  I could see why they became drug or alcohol dependent and develop mental health difficulties.  The repeated theme for me was they had no haven to retreat to when they were often exposed to depravity as children and adults, nothing.

The book is therefore an expression of an individual who has relied upon nature as a sanctuary as a matter of necessity, and the observations I have made as part of that process.  Essentially I have seen many undesirable traits in people with extremely serious consequences such as death, and many desirable traits in nature which get very little airtime.  I just wanted my children to know these things, and not have a watchmaker's view of nature but an open one based on them being part of it and after all from it.

I think it is obvious I was under a great deal of stress when I wrote the book, in that some of the poems are not as well composed as others although the messages are still there.  But I also know that when I read some now I was clearly in nature when I wrote them.  It is clear to me the poems are from nature not me, I was just the reporter when I wrote them and I am so glad that if I never go on to leave anything else to my children which is a distinct possibility, I did this for them.  I will never regard nature as being there for me or others, but that does not equate to nature not having significant and possible life changing meaning to me or others which I wish my children and now others to contemplate through my poems".


Paul Dixon now lives in rural NWS with his two young children and is glad to be living a quieter life alongside forests once again.  He studied science and Law at the University of Newcastle. Paul's book, Of Nature and Latent Art is available as an e-book on Amazon for $2.99 or he can be contacted directly at pauldixon@comcen.com.au

From Europe with Love

I have just been given rather a few old vinyl records from a dear friend of mine who no longer needed, nor wanted them.  I knew that many of them were quite old, way before my time and that there was many I was not familiar with.  Of course, I could not say no and hurt my friend as she thought she was doing me a favour – and indeed, she was.  I have just acquired a very old vintage original HMV record player and much in need of vinyl’s to play – so I was happy to take them off her and give them a good home, regardless of the style of music.

I got home and had a look through them and as I suspected, many of them I did not know.  My friend is from Germany; she is an elderly lady whom I have a deep respect for.  She has lived through the war and always has many stories to share, I still cannot seem to call her by her first name, it is always “Mrs.… “   as you would do with say a schoolmistress.  Many are classics from the 50’s and 60's, some classical pieces and some are from Europe.  It was the songs from Europe that most interested me, as I myself am English and some of my favourite places in the world are in Europe, mainly France and Italy. 

There is a special ‘flavour’ about continental songs, just like the food and wines from that continent to which most Australians aspire for at least one holiday of a lifetime.  Like their surroundings, the songs of Europe are distinguished by something vaguely exotic.

In melodies and words they match up with the widespread idea of sophisticated French and Italian men and women – debonair and hotly romantic.  Whether the image is true or false, of course, doesn’t really matter when you’re listening to the popular music from these countries; for whatever reason, the love songs of France and Italy have a special place in our affections.

Volare, an early vintage, La Novia, Romantica, Al Di La and so on.

These songs have become just as much a part of our lives as the songs in our own language.  Why have they proved popular?  Perhaps because they all speak an international language, that of a good melody and the timeless poetry of love.

"Et maintenant……….Ecoutez bien……c’est magnifique……la musique d’Europe……..con amore!!"

Expanding Cities

Humanity is becoming a predominantly urban species.  Cities occupy just 2 per cent of Earth's land surface, but they now house over half the world's population.  Perhaps most alarming of all, they use three-quaters of resources we take from Earth.

The growth of the world's largest cities in particular has been pretty staggering.  The first megacity - with a population of ten million people - was New York, which reached that figure around 1940.  

New York Skyline evolution 

Today there are twenty-two megacities, half of them in Asia, including three in India and two in China. The largest, Tokyo in Japan, has over thirty-five million inhabitants.  Most urban growth from migration.  China, which has ninety cities with populations of more than a million people, has a 'floating population' of more than 100 million people who have moved to cities in recent years.  Its cities expect to welcome another 400 million people from the countryside within the next thirty years.  Perth, WA is set to double its population by 2050.

Cities have become economic powerhouses, providing jobs in manufacturing, transport and wholesaling, as well as service including universities, hospitals, government services, banking, media and culture.  But, despite their attractions, cities can be centres of squalor too.  More than a quarter of all urban inhabitants live in unplanned, overcrowded and often illegal squatter settlements, with no running water.  Cities can also become victims of their size.  Congestion, worsening air pollution, and crime can cause megacities to stop growing, as people and businesses flee to the suburbs surrounding new cities.

The result of this out-migration has been a new geographical phenomenon as the 'polycentric megacity zone' - an urban landscape composed of a number of different centres.  These new zones include Yangtze delta region around Shanghai, southeast England around London, and the Japanese urban corridor between Tokyo and Osaka.

The good news on human population growth is that for the first time since the mid 1900s, the rate of increase in human population is actually decreasing in areas.  The Earth peaked in the late 1980s and has started to generally decrease since then, this is a milestone in human population growth and encouraging.  The role of education has been paramount to the population problem.  As people (particularly women), become more educated, the population growth rate tends to decrease.  As the rate of literacy increases, population growth is reduced.  

Given the variety of cultures, values, and norms in the world today, it appears that our greatest hope for population control is, in fact, education.

Of interest:

http://megacities.nl/?tag=hall

http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/?p=1590

Megacity on the map - source viewsoftheworld.net

What might a resilient world be like?

At the moment, we are very far away from the understanding needed to ensure a resilient world.  A resilience approach opposes the preoccupation with increased production/yeilds/returns.  A resilience approach is about weighing up options, keeping options open and creating new options when old ones close.  
This, in todays world, is more important than ever.

As the remorseless process of globalisation brings us together, joining our cultures, our markets, our biota, we are becoming increasingly connected and homogenized.  The difference that once separated and defined us are getting smaller, our diversity is indeed declining.  Technological advances and cutting out genuine waste can make an important contribution, but optimisation, is a large part of the problem.  There is no such thing as an optimal state in a dynamic system.  The systems in which we live are always shifting, always changing and in doing so they maintain their resilience (to the best they can) - their ability to withstand shocks.  When we aim to increase the efficiency of returns from some part of the system by trying to control it, we usually do so at the cost of the systems resilience.


A system with little resilience is vulnerable to being shifted over the threshold into a new regime of function and state.  This very rarely provides the goods and services we want.
A resilient framework is all about creating space.  Pathways that foster experimentation and innovation that maintain the kinds of diversity that build resilience and enhance the social networks operating in a region.  These pathways have the greatest chance for achieving long-term well-being.


So, what might a resilient world be like?  What would it value?

According to Dr Brian Walker for the CSIRO, 

"Diversity:
A resilient world would promote and sustain diversity in all forms

Social Capital:
A resilient world would promote trust, well developed social networks and leadership (adaptability)

Innovation:
A resilient world would place an emphasis on learning, experimentation, locally developed rules and embrace change

Ecological Variability:
A resilient world would embrace and work with ecological variability (rather than attempting to reduce it)

Modularity:
A resilient world would consist of modular components - everything is not necessarily connected to everything else.  Over-connected systems are susceptible to shock - a resilient system opposes such a trend and would maintain or create a degree of modularity.

Tight Feedbacks:
A resilient world would possess tight feedbacks (not too tight).  This allows us to detect thresholds before we cross them.

Overlap in Governance:
A resilient world would have institutions that include redundancy in their governance structures and a mix of common and private property with overlapping access rights.

Ecosystem Service:
A resilient world would include all the unpriced ecosystem services in development proposal and assessments."


Resilience thinking is a working progress.  To be successful it needs to emerge through people working with their local systems.  The list above is by far complete, you may like to add your own ideas to it.



In this lecture, part of the 2008 Deakin lecture series, Brian Walker considers and discusses how resilience theory applies to hot debates about tradition versus innovation. 

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/resilience-rules/3164690

Water-Droplet Phenomena

When light passes through small water droplets, such as those found in clouds and fog, optical wonders may emerge that, in the past, were ascribed spiritual significance.  Well, they do look like a creation from the hand of god... however I personally feel the scientific understanding and explanation is by far 'cooler'.

The leading cause of an unclear sky, a bit like today, is the collection of billions of small water droplets that produce clouds.  We all know this right? So, lets hear some facts that you may not know:
Cloud droplets generally have diameters in the range of between 0.01 and 0.02 millimetres, with the largest reaching 0.15 millimetres (not to be exact).  Typically, it takes a million cloud droplets to form the smallest rain-drop - a drizzle droplet - with a diameter of 1.2 millimetres. 

Such small droplets have a size comparable to, or maybe slightly larger than, the wavelengths of visible light and they can therefore interact with the light waves through a process known as 'diffraction'.
Diffraction occurs when a light wave's path bends around an object or objects of a similar size to its wavelength.  

As a wave, light can interact with other light waves, forming combination patterns.  The most important interactions are constructive and  destructive interference.  In constructive interference, the two waves add to produce an enhanced condition characterised by increased brightness of bands of spots.  In contrast, destructive interference degrades the overall light quality, resulting in dark bands of spots.

The interaction of light with small water droplets through diffraction produces two distinct types of natural wonders, which characterise coronas and glories.  Other optical wonders include our well known rainbows, crystal orbs, haloes, sundogs, arcs, tangents, circles, light pillars and others.

Each of these are a truly amazing visual experiences with far greater complexity and detail that I cannot even go in to explaining without having days and lots of reference texts, however I wanted to make a point of sharing with you how a single water droplet and light can make some of the most breathtaking visual experiences we will ever witness...

Truly awesome stuff ;)

http://www.elightspot.com/lights-and-matter-a-guide-to-optics.aspx

International Women's Day 2013

International Women's Day 2013

Shhhh! She is travelling between worlds right now. You can see her holding the tension of not knowing ~ she is simply breathing into her unanswered questions. Sometimes she drinks her coffee with quaking hands, not knowing where her relationship or her bank account is going.
But this time, she is holding on to the tension of not knowing, and is not willing to hit the panic button. She is unlearning thousands of years of conditioning. She is not being split between the opposing forces of fight and flight. She is neither naïve nor ignorant. She is a frontier woman, paving new roads & making new choices. She is willing to making a new transcendent possibility emerge.

You may see her now ~ standing at thresholds, or at crossroads ~ breathing into her body ~ intently listening for inner signals. She's learning new navigation skills as she arrives at a most magical moment of her life.

Sukhvinder Sircar

Issues in Environmental Politics

With the coming election just 4 days away, it is time to seriously think about who you want to stand to make true progress.  I have recently joined the Green's and I am extremely privileged in doing so.More than 1.6 million Australians voted for the Greens in 2010 and more support is growing! 
The Greens provide a real alternative to the tired, cynical politics of Labor and the Liberal party. Unlike the two old parties, the Greens have a proud history of standing up for what is right, not just what is easy or what polls well.  

Over the course of the last four decades, the Greens have become the third force in Australian politics. While promoting meaningful and smart solutions to ensure future generations of Australians have clean air, clean water and clean soil – the Greens are also working in many other areas to champion integrity, decency and fairness.  More than 1.6 million Australians voted for the Greens in 2010 and more support is growing! The Greens provide a real alternative to the tired, cynical politics of Labor and the Liberal party. Unlike the two old parties, the Greens have a proud history of standing up for what is right, not just what is easy or what polls well.  Over the course of the last four decades, the Greens have become the third force in Australian politics. While promoting meaningful and smart solutions to ensure future generations of Australians have clean air, clean water and clean soil – the Greens are also working in many other areas to champion integrity, decency and fairness.

In the 1970's and early 1980's the damming of Lake Pedder and the Gordon below Franklin were at the centre of Environmental politics in Australia.  The management of Australia's native forests, and particular woodchipping, has been a site of struggle for over 35 years.  In the late 1990's, Uranium mining in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory was a focus on environmental focus, and now we see this today with franking in the Kimberly's.  

The issues of environmental politics encompass land use dilemmas, coastal management and development, land degradation (including salinity), degradation of river systems (including eutrophication and salinity), biodiversity, atmospheric issues (including green house gas emissions and ozone depletion).  Involved in each of these issues is a number of interested groups, or constituencies.  

The obvious global warming / climate change, two inter related issues has been at the forefront of recent politics as we will have seen and heard many times on the news and in media.  Suggested 'solutions' to climate change have included the resurges of proposals for nuclear power as a principle source of energy for human societies; a prioritisation of renewable energy; and 'clean' coal (more accurately described as carbon capture and geo-sequenstration or CCG).  These are all technical 'solutions' and see global warming/climate change as a problem to be 'solved'.

However, reality is more complex - there are issues of equality, issues of ethics, issues of national interest verses common good, issues around governments, markets, societies, and individuals in combating issues such as climate change and many others.  Do environmental priorities trump social or ethical priorities - does national interest trump the common good of the planet and it's human and non-human citizens; can market mechanisms affect change at the rate necessary to prevent 'runaway' global warming or is a more regulatory approach necessary?  

The challenge for politics at both international and national level is to negotiate policies/outcomes which balance these objectives, which do consider the differing priorities to be 'incommensurable'.

I urge you to take a look at the Greens Policies and which cover what was outlined above before you make your final decision on the 9th.  Be the change you want and vote for the people who truly want the same.

http://greens.org.au/policies