Future? Tense!

In his book, After The Future, Tim Flannery, describe how Australia came to have its current environment and climate. He also looks at some of the implications of this long-term mismanagement. He discusses its results in particular relation to extinction of animal species in Australia, and what it portends for the future of our environment and the extinction of ever more species.

According to Flannery, when the first settlers landed in Australia, more than 40,000 years ago, the land was swarming with many giant species of animals: kangaroos, wombats, snakes, birds, turtles, and so on. The palaeontological record shows that these new settlers rapidly hunted those giant animals to extinction, causing drastic changes to the vegetation, nutrient cycling, the intensity and occurrence of bushfires, and ultimately, the climate of our land. In his previous book, The Future Eaters, Flannery discusses this practice, and its results, in much more detail, and much more convincingly and coherently, than I can here in this short essay. Although both of Flannery’s books are a little out-of-date, they are must-reads for anyone who cares about Australia’s environmental issues and how many of them came to be.

When the first European settlers landed in Australia, some 200 or so years ago, they continued this ravishing of the land, causing the extinction of many more species by hunting, elimination of troublesome species and the introduction of European animals and farming practices. With the growth of Australia as an industrialised country, and also by our supplying the needs of other industrialised countries with coal, iron ore and other natural resources, this horrendous damage to the environment, animal life, and climate has continued.

Since Australia has been separated from the mainlands of Asia and Africa for some 40 million years, the animals and plants here have not only evolved new forms of the animals and plants found in those areas, but have also evolved many completely new species which occur nowhere else in the world. When this distinctive, indeed unique, ecology and animal life becomes extinct, it ceases to exist anywhere in the world. There is no pool of those animals or plants elsewhere from where the species can be reintroduced. Once they are lost to Australia, they are lost to the world.

Of course, Australia is just one small country in a very big world. We can try to clean up our own backyard, but we are dependent on other countries cleaning up theirs as well, or all will come to nothing. Unfortunately, the issue of environmental rehabilitation has become very political. Some countries won’t do their part for political or ideological reasons, although some of them are beginning to realise that we all do have a big problem that must override politics. Unfortunately, too, there are countries who can’t afford to change their ways. These are countries whose whole economy is based on out-dated, obsolete, polluting, fossil-fuel-using industries that they cannot afford to modernise, and cannot afford to abandon. This is where international co-operation must come into play, with richer countries, like Australia, helping their poorer neighbours in need. Note, also that Australia is providing some of those countries with the coal to power their environmentally-damaging industries. We shall have to give up some monetary gains if we are to be consistent in our environmental policies and practices. Which is another prickly political issue.

It is important to remember, too, that the ecology and environment we are trying to save today is not Australia’s original ecology and environment. It is the result of more than 30,000 years of human abuse of Nature.

So what do we do? Do we try to turn the clock back, and if so, by a mere 200 odd years, or more than 40,000? Neither seems all that feasible, so perhaps we should just make the effort to see it doesn’t get any worse. That might not be very satisfying, but it would be much better than letting things get worse. Whatever we do, wherever we aim, we all have to do something, or our children and their children will end up in a world where life will become far less pleasant, and probably much more deadly and desperate. We have to choose the world we want them to have, and do something towards getting it, now.

References:

Flannery, T. (2002). The Future Eaters: An Ecological History Of The Australasian Lands And People. Grove Press, Australia.

Flannery, T. (2012). After The Future: Australia’s New Extinction Crisis. Quarterly Essay 48, Black Inc., Collingwood, Victoria, Australia.