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May 08 Pages in PDF
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My Great Ideas
Kevin Rudd’s 2020 summit was a huge success. It invited us all to be creative and make a contribution. Even the coalition’s environment spokesman, Greg Hunt has a plan for a solar Australia. There’s something that would never have happened under Howard. Here are four of my great ideas. The first one, I believe is an urgent must. 1: Re-grow Australia’s rainforests We should start with what was once Australia’s largest, the Big Scrub. It covered 18,000 square kilometres, and stretched from the Border Ranges in Queensland to the Nightcap Ranges in New South Wales, from Tweed Heads to Byron Bay and back to Nimbin and Casino. The Big Scrub was the most biologically diverse place on the continent and had trees so old they were growing before Jesus. It was a fantastic resource that was squandered for short-term gain within about 40 years. While a million super feet of red cedar was shipped through the port of Lismore every week in the 1870s from the Big Scrub, its death knell was the soldier settlement scheme after WWI. Returned soldiers were given small holdings free of cost as long as they removed all the trees, except one, within five years. Otherwise they had to hand it back. The dairy industry thrived at first because the pastures were so rich, but as time went by they rapidly declined due to leaching. By the 1950s dairy farming was in serious decline. These days, much of the land is choked by two weeds, lantana and the camphor laurel tree; no other plant can grow under a camphor laurel. Why we need to re-grow our forests There are two very important reasons for re-growing our rainforests. One is as a carbon sink. If we are to meet our Kyoto commitments, we need a seriously big project to sequester enough carbon to balance our carbon output, which is enormous. Rainforests are the low hanging fruit of carbon capture. The other reason for re-growing rainforests is to regain some of the biodiversity that has been lost. The land around the Mount Warning caldera is crying out to be rainforest. If you help it to grow you’d be amazed at what seeds might have been lying dormant for years. The scheme should operate in the opposite direction of the soldier settlement scheme. You tell the landowners that if they don’t return their property to rainforest, it will be seized. You then pay them a living income to maintain it in that state. Once the forest has reached maturity it could then be selectively logged on a sustainable rotation. 2: Return to sail power My vision for the future of sail is that by making use of the trade winds, a fleet of remote controlled cargo tubs rigged for sail and with solar-powered propellers, would be herded across the ocean by a mother ship. The mother ship would be able to deploy three or four fast speedboats, or shepherd boats, to protect and maintain the fleet. Emergency fuel and manual controls would mean the fleet could be kept moving through doldrums and storms. Using my tubs, enormous amounts of goods could be transported cheaply and unloaded in shallow harbours. No need to dredge the bay, my tubs could be unloaded on a beach. 3: Internet recording booths If you want to speak face-to-face with someone else, you can do it through the internet. Why not have internet payphones, or video recording booths, where you can update your face book or record your film clip or speak face to face with people around the world. The booth could have a digital video camera, a blue screen so that you can put in your own background, a microphone and optional Karaoke or sound tracks. You place the booths in arcades, music stores and internet cafes. Internet recording booths may not save the world, but they would conceivably make otherwise unattainable technology available to the poor and even the homeless. 4: Carbon capture through compost If you construct a compost heap from the ground up, the ideal formula is three parts straw, two parts manure and one part sawdust. The sawdust, which is high in carbon, is added to balance the nitrogen in the manure. The perfect balance is one nitrogen atom to 25 carbon atoms. Is there some way that carbon waste can be attached to nitrogen by composting? I’ll handball that one to the scientists.
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