I grew up in South-East Queensland, in the general area whose water needs would have been serviced by the dam, and I did not pee indoors during winter for my entire childhood. Tank water – you weren’t about to waste it on flushing. Water was a treat - when we visited city relatives with town water, we’d clamour for a luxurious “big bath”.  I remember staring in hypnotised horror at a visitor who put the kitchen tap on all full-blast, instead of the usual trickle.

Admittedly,  having to confront menacing cane toads in the dark as I struggled with my undies after a pee was a childhood trauma that may have played a role in driving me south of the border for university, where I remain to this day and where I have picked up wasteful city attitudes to water. I turn the tap on full-blast, I shower for longer than is strictly necessary for good hygiene, and I pee indoors (which must come as a relief to the citizens of Canberra). Give people more or less unlimited access to water, and we’ll use too much of it. The population of South-East Queensland is booming – and it’s booming with people who (like most Australians) do not have frugal attitudes to water.  As the Australian Water Association says, that needs to change.

The most widely highlighted environmental impact from this is the threat to the survival of the orang-utan. It seems appealing to people’s concern about orang-utan extinction connects with people more than appealing to concern about the impacts on human beings.

The logging, much of it illegal, threatens the survival of the culture, traditions and food sources of the Penan, an indigenous tribal group who live in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. The Penan have been fighting a losing battle for some time, but they had a win recently.

Malaysian blogger and Member of Parliament, Jeff Ooi, has written that the advertising regulator in the United Kingdom has banned an advertisement placed by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council. The ban occurred due to a finding that the advertisement’s claims that Malaysian palm oil was ‘sustainable’ and contributed to ‘the alleviation of poverty, especially amongst rural populations’ were misleading and unverified. A small win perhaps, but one which should draw more attention to the serious impacts of forest clearing and the unsustainable nature of much of the palm oil industry.

Ooi is trying to pursue the issue of the impact on the Penan people in the Malaysian Parliament. But I suspect they will continue to be fighting an uphill battle unless greater consumer power is brought to bear against the expanding use of palm oil.  So far, I haven’t noticed a great deal of coverage of this issue in the Australian media.

Of course, continuing deforestation will make meeting greenhouse emission targets a great deal harder, so we all have a direct interest in this.

PS: This report suggests similar problems are occurring in Uganda, with the involvement of a Malaysian palm oil company.

According to the operator of the oil rig which been leaking 400 barrels of oil into the Timor Sea every day for the last ten weeks, the rig is now “engulfed in a massive blaze and is at risk of total collapse”.

The chief financial officer of PTTEP, the operator of the rig, said “The fire is out of control.”

Indeed, things are now so bad, Prime Minister Rudd is reduced to having to ask himself his own questions:

“Do I think this is acceptable? No, I don’t,” Rudd told Fairfax Radio Network. “Are we angry with this company? Yes we are. Are we trying to do everything we can to get this under control? You betcha.”

Shifting from an uncontrolled oil spill to an out of control fire isn’t much to show from more than ten weeks of ‘doing everything we can’. Still, at least we  have confirmation that it’s unacceptable.

This article on New Scientist’s site – “Is Swine Flu a bioterrorist virus?” – is another example.  Having used the headline to pique your interest, the writer waves away the implausible notion of this strain of flu being the result of bioterrorism within the first sentence, and gets on with explaining the science behind the evolution of new virus strains in the straight forward layperson’s style which New Scientist is often quite good at.

And then I read the reader’s comments following the article …………………..

Even allowing (hoping) for the possibility that half the comments are jokes, I can’t even begin to describe the batshit crazy weirdness of so many of them. You’ll just have to go to the site and read them for yourself.  But if these are from people who read science blogs, I don’t want to begin thinking what sort of things people who inhabit other parts of the internet might believe is behind the swine flu outbreak.

It does make you wonder if a side-effect of this particular virus is to make people believe some seriously weird stuff.  Either that or it’s a side effect (or mainfestation) of some of the hysteria surrounding it.

ELSEWHERE:

• Wonkette unveils the real cuprit – Bob Dylan!
• And FirstDog reveals the horror of where it will all end. (unless he’s just trying to throw everyone off his trial – maybe it’s really dog flu, not swine flu)

The most consistent criticism of the government’s CPRS has focused on the free permits for polluting industries and the inadequate emission reduction targets.  To me, this reinforces the core problem with the political debate on climate change, which is that it is somehow trying to pretend that we can seriously reduce emissions without very much change to our own lifestyles and the structure of our economy.  Sure, cleaner energy production and other technological changes will be crucial, but the simple fact is we will also need to significantly change the way we live.  That is something most people don’t want to hear, and if there is one thing politicians tend to be very good at, it’s avoiding telling people things they don’t want to hear.

This was demonstrated again recently with some publicity regarding some research commissioned by the Australian Farm Institute.  Agriculture is currently exempt from the government’s CPRS, but the report raised concerns that once farmers are required to buy emissions trading permits, there will be a big impact on the viability of beef, sheep and dairy products.

Given the very high greenhouse emissions from livestock farming, one would have thought it was self-evident that products produced from livestock would get more expensive once a price was put on these emissions.  It’s sort of the whole point of carbon pricing – to make high emission activities more expensive so people will choose lower emission options.  But such a notion was greeted with horror in media reports and the suggestion that this outcome must be avoided.

Federal Agriculture Minister, Tony Burke, is on record saying that “any push to reduce (livestock) emissions needs to happen without reducing production.”  This is rather like saying ‘any change needs to be done in a way which ensures no changes occur’.

The same seems to be applying to the way the federal government is approaching the setting up of their CPRS.  Put a price carbon, but then compensate the industries that are affected so they can keep operating as close to business as usual for as long as possible.

We might be able to afford such luxuries if such a scheme had been set up when concerns about climate change were first raised in federal parliament twenty years ago. But we are now close to approaching the point of no return on climate change, and we can no longer kid ourselves that we can avoid it without significantly changing our own lifestyles and economy or trying to just shift the burden to people from poorer countries.

While at least one of the Senate Committee inquiries will no doubt find plenty to criticise about the federal government’s climate policy, I wonder how much focus it will put on the need to convince the public we will all need to wear the costs of significant change.

After The Australian newspaper ran a determined, prolonged fear campaign for a full month recycling all the usual rubbish about ‘toilet to tap’, the Queensland government backed down on its long-held insistence on proceeding with full recycling.  Instantly, the same newspaper starts writing about “spectacular backflips”, even while saying it might not be good policy, but it’s “smart politics”, even while still running quotes pushing the totally false fearmongering line that the plan involved “putting sewage in drinking water”.

I can’t see how it’s smart politics in the long run to give in to fear campaigns rather than stand up to them, but the government can make it’s own political judgements. There’s no doubt it’s terribly policy though, and will just make it that much harder for full recycling of water to be taken up more widely, which is what is needed to improve water efficiency.

The fact that the terrible Traveston Dam is being ‘delayed’ at the same time – a welcome, science-based move that could and should signal an end to the whole expensive, destructive project – means there is even less reason to hold back on full recycling.  However, there will now be uncertainty over both projects – leaving long-term water policy in a state of limbo, as well as the long-suffering residents in the vicinity of the Traveston site.

ELSEWHERE: More on this topic at Larvatus Prodeo

No drinking water can be said to be zero risk. But there are already many areas in Australia which source their drinking water downstream from sewage treatment works, none of which treat the water to anything like the standard that is being done in Brisbane.

Just to show I’m not just engaging in gratuitous bashing of The Australian, this opinion piece on their website by Paul Greenfield outlines the basic facts very well.  The Queensland government should be expanding the use of recycling to further strengthen the water capacity of south-east Queensland and scrapping the Traveston Dam instead. It’s cheaper, uses less energy and is just as safe.

In May this year, he again set out from Brisbane in his kayak. This time on a month long trip to draw attention to the major environmental destruction that would be caused to the Mary River if the Queensland government’s planned Traveston dam were to go ahead.  Apart from obviously being incredibly fit, Steve also has lost of experience as a civil engineer in the water industry, so he has plenty of knowledge of how to provide water and about healthy water systems.  He detailed some observations about the Brisbane and Mary Rivers and the world heritage listed Great Sandy Straits which the Mary flows into.

The Queensland government is clearly determined to press ahead with this dam, despite the huge financial and environmental cost and the many cheaper and less destructive options available.  That leaves the final chance for a more sensible approach firmly and squarely in the lap of the federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett.

So this Saturday morning around 12 noon, Steve Posselt is once again setting forth in his kayak from a boat ramp at West End, on the Brisbane River.  This time he’s planning to paddle all the way down to Sydney to deliver a bag of mail and message directly to Mr Garrett’s own sea-side electorate.

Under the federal Environmental Protection & Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, Mr Garrett has the final say on whether the dam goes ahead, and if so under what conditions. His legal powers only extend to matters listed in the EPBC Act as matter of national environmental significance, not to every aspect of water policy. But these matters include threatened species, world heritage values, significant wetlands and listed migratory birds – all of which will be significantly and unavoidably impacted by the dam.

When it came into law in 2000, the EPBC Act provided much greater powers to the federal Environment Minister than had ever previously been the case. However, the Coalition government rarely used the full powers contained in the Act.  Since coming to power, there have been some signs of Peter Garrett being more willing to use those powers, including halting a tourist development across Trinity Inlet from Cairns, and preventing clearing of key habitat of the endangered cassowary for a development at Mission Beach.  As a Queenslander, I have to say I was pleased to see greater attention finally being paid to the serious damage that risked being done to the world heritage values of both the Great Barrier Reef and the Wet Tropics.

The scope of the impacts caused by the Traveston Dam on the Mary River will be far greater, but there is no doubt that politically it would be a much more contentious move for the federal Minister to block the dam, especially with the state Labor government now appearing to be wavering in the opinion polls. The Beattie and Bligh governments have spent years (and plenty of taxpayer dollars) furiously insisting the dam is absolutely essential for the future water security of south-east Queensland.  This is not true of course, but it would be a major political embarrassment for the dam to now be blocked by a federal Labor Minister.

The environmental evidence about the major damage the dam will cause is clear cut, and lower impact alternatives – from a financial, greenhouse, biodiversity and water supply perspective – are clearly available.  But although there’s more than sufficient evidence available to justify the federal Minister using his legal powers to stop the dam, it will need significant political will for him to do so.

That’s why the tireless efforts of people like Steve Posselt and so many other people in the Mary River region and wider south-east Queensland who have campaigned against this dam for so long are so important.  The stronger and more widespread the public opposition is to this unnecessary and destructive dam, the more it can strengthen the hand of the federal Environment Minister to use his legal powers for the purpose they were designed for.