When it's gone, it's gone!
Laugh Kookaburra laugh was a song that I knew and thought to be the essence of Australia when I first visited almost forty years ago. A happy, confident joy filled country, on the up. When we as a family first heard a kookaburra ‘laughing’ in the wild, sitting in a gum tree, it was magical. Just the very fact that we were surrounded by gum trees with a look and a smell that signifies a place with a unique evolutionary time stamp, was special. Things look, sound and smell very different in Australia. Forty years ago I didn’t appreciate that travelling to see a new country and family who had emigrated to a new life would impact that country very badly later on. Millions of Brits and increasingly other nations travel to Australia in their millions each year to experience the unique environment, culture, landscape, weather and the Aussies.
Of course, even more millions travel by plane each year and have an impact too. They want to see their dispersed loved ones and experience other unique environments, cultures, landscapes, weather and hopefully feel welcomed in new places.
The words of the song are
Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree Merry, merry king of the bush is he Laugh kookaburra, laugh Kookaburra, gay your life must be Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree Eating all the gumdrops he can see Stop, kookaburra, stop Kookaburra, leave some there for me Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree Counting all the monkeys he can see Stop, kookaburra, stop Kookaburra, that's not the monkey - that's me
For the singer the song is cheerful and light hearted, self mocking, a bit of fun.
On that same first trip to Australia we drove north from Sydney up to Brisbane. I found it interesting to drive through Newcastle, a coal mining area. That parallel with UK stuck with me, not in a deep way, more as a piece of coincidental trivia. Coal mining occurs in every state in Australia. Almost all coal mining in Australia is open cut and quite a bit is brown coal, lignite, very polluting when burned. Much of Australia’s coal has been used in electricity production and the rest has been exported to Asia.
Australia has an abundance of minerals. Mining includes coal, cobalt, copper, diamond, gold, iron, lead, nickel, silver, slate, talc, tin, tungsten, uranium, zinc, alumina/bauxite. The country’s economy, its place in the world economy is usually thought of as a primary producer. In fact the value of primary products (minerals and some food stuffs) is just a bit more than the value of manufactured goods. Australia’s major export markets are China, Japan and South Korea.
Australia’s exports of coal and minerals to China have been a major enabler of China’s economic growth. The rest of the world has chosen to buy goods from China. So we (as part of the rest of the world) have contributed to Australia’s highly polluting and environmentally damaging coal and mineral extraction.
Coal burning in China powers its industry. Imported minerals support its manufacturing. Until recently the US and European economies have relied upon cheap Chinese imports and off shore manufacturing as we have failed to invest in our own manufacturing. We have not concerned ourselves too much with the economic externalities of pollution, merely focusing on how cheaply we can get things from China. Perhaps we are rethinking that?
Externalities are the ignored parts of an economy, the unintended consequences, the off balance sheet costs, the ignored damage.
At last the impacts of externalities are there for all to see as Australia burns. The fires are 10,000 miles away so our houses aren’t burning down; our fire fighters are not the ones fighting a losing battle in seven states. We can feel shocked and fearful for the Aussies, some of whom are our family and friends. My wife and I have more than 70 family members and friends in five States. We can make cash donations to help fire fighters and damaged communities. And in a few months time forget about it all.
Business as usual will mean externalities continue to have a profound impact and Australia, the driest inhabited continent on earth will burn again.
Currently there are various estimates of the wildlife lost to the fires. We don’t know. We do know it is a large number. We also know that many species are unique to Australia, animals and plants. We also know that some of those species have small populations confined to certain locales, some of which are burning. The scale and intensity and the speed of the fires makes it unlikely that those birds, mammals and reptiles will have escaped the inferno. Normally we have thought about evolutionary pressures in species occurring at a pace which makes adaptation or migration possible. Not so in this case. We may find that there have been extinctions. We may find that Australia suddenly has a longer list of endangered species when an assessment is eventually made.
What will be the impact on water catchments if and when rain falls? Remember, Australia is already the driest habitable continent on Earth. That was already the case before this fire season. What if the extent of tree and plant loss is so great that after this fire season these losses exacerbate the impact of climate change on Australia?
I have had the privilege of visiting Australia a number of times since that first experience forty years ago. My wife and I have visited every state and territory. We were in awe on our first visit, both of the nature and of the scale and of the achievement in building the country in not much more than two centuries. That history has certainly not been all glorious and we know that there have been great injustices.
Now we are witness to great destruction. Some of the impacts are traceable back to the Australian economic model, but all are traceable back to the world economic model and our part in it.
What fools we are when we ignore externalities. What fools we are when we measure and justify our actions purely on cost consideration. Who was it who said a cynic knows the price of everything but the value of nothing? (It was Oscar Wilde).
What is the value of a rare species of Australian mammal or the quality of water in a river catchment devoid of trees and blanketed in ash? Now is a good time to ponder that sort of question.
It’s a good time too to think of similar question closer to home in the UK. What about here on The Park? Diminishing habitats, reducing biodiversity, giving little attention to plants at the edge of their range which we are privileged to have in our custody – same lack of thought about the future, focusing on a narrow view of value?
Meanwhile back to Australia, I hope once again to visit and to sing with hope, Laugh kookaburra laugh.
