A sense of place

A great many people round the world today live in countries that are not those they grew up in. This may be from choice — they emigrated from their country of origin, looking for a better life — or because they left, intending to go back, but never did, or because they were forced out by war or persecution. That may have been political, racial or even religious — the last less common than it used to be, but it still happens.

It’s a conventional cliché to picture expatriates getting together and reminiscing about (what was) home. I remember when I was a young man in the country then called Rhodesia, I and my fellow-Rhodesians used to get quite irritated with the English immigrants who poured into the country after WWII. They constantly referred to England as home while, as far as we — the native white Africans – were concerned, these people had come to Rhodesia to make a life and a home, so they should refer to their adopted country as ‘home’, and get on with adapting to whatever was different in the way of life there. This matter of integration into adopted countries is one of the major issues arising in relation to immigration programs. In Australia there have been long and heated arguments about multiculturalism, which is the policy that says immigrants are welcome to preserve and indeed maintain the cultural practices of their native countries, provided always they do not violate Australian laws and customs. This tends to result in ghettos; enclaves of foreign cultures within, but separate from, the mainstream. The other approach — far more sensible in my view (I haven’t moved far in my opinions in this area since I was young!) — is to aim at assimilation: integration of immigrants into the mainstream culture and society. This, in due course, should lead to a more coherent and unified society

But, whatever system pertains, most people who have emigrated (I suspect) hold in their hearts (as the saying goes — it’s actually nothing to do with hearts but all to do with heads) some image, some concept, albeit usually idealised, of the country and society in which they grew up. In most cases there is a strong element of nostalgia about this. I am not immune to it. I am Australian; this country has been good to me and my family and we are well integrated into its society. But at the root of my being, in my blood (another widely-accepted saying with doubtful physiological justification) I am an African. My roots are in the country where I, and my parents, were born; where I grew up. Intellectually I am well aware that that country no longer exists: it has been destroyed, socially, by the Mugabe regime that has governed it almost since the hand-over to black government in 1980 (there was a short-lived interim regime before he took over). Mismanagement and corruption have also gone a long way to destroying it physically. The countryside is denuded of trees around the towns; farms  that were well-kept and well-run have fallen into decay and ruin. Population pressure and poor farming practices are degrading the land. Except in remote areas, such as along the Zambezi, the wildlife has gone — although it must be acknowledged that this was largely the situation under white government. So I harbour no delusions about returning: that is not an option; there is no place for the likes of me in Zimbabwe. All I can do is visit Africa occasionally and sometimes, when something about Australia is particularly frustrating and irritating (such frustration and irritation are usually generated by politicians and the media) indulge in dreams of what might have been.

Diana and I left Rhodesia in 1964, just before Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain, which led, a few years later, to bloody civil war with the African freedom fighters. The Rhodesians called them terrorists, but in the end international pressures and sanctions, as well as unsustainable losses, forced them to negotiate, leading to black government. We weren’t part of what was called ‘the chicken run’: those who left Rhodesia because of the political situation, but if we had stayed I would have had to fight in that war and could well have been one of its casualties. We left because I was pursuing a career — I wanted to be a scientist and to achieve that had to go where there was more opportunity. So we left Rhodesia and went to South Africa. A few years later, taking an unlikely opportunity, we went to Scotland. I wanted to find out if I could compete with people with PhDs from Oxford and Stanford; I wanted to publish papers in international journals and attend meetings where clever people presented the latest results from their research at the cutting edge of the field. So in Scotland and, later, England, I began to work my way into the sub-culture of the area of science I worked in and found that I could compete compete with those people with PhDs from Oxford and Stanford. I could publish papers in international journals and present my own research at high-powered meetings. I became a recognised member of the sub-culture. Time passed and dreams of returning to Africa faded and died. Eventually I was offered a senior job in Australia’s premier scientific organization. So we moved again.

The job in Australia represented the peak of what I could aspire to, a position from which I could influence science as well as work at it. Taking it up required a very steep learning curve, since I had become a manager and director of research and also needed to deal with the politics involved in forestry — the field of research that my division (as the unit was called) was concerned with. And we settled comfortably into Australia. My children thrived and grew into wonderful people with families of their own.

Through all this my wife, Diana, supported me loyally, ran our home and was the major partner in raising the children, so the way they have turned out owes much to her. For seventeen of the twenty-one years we spent in Canberra she also ran a large group of young people — more than a thousand passed through her hands over those years — organizing, supervising and taking part in activities that included challenging hikes, camping, hunting, teaching life-saving in winter-cold rivers and, through it all, endless counseling and discussions that prepared her charges for later life. It took a great deal of her time — weekend after weekend, trips into the bush that lasted ten days, often several times a year. It was my turn to provide support, both personal and financial. For that work she was awarded the Medal of he Order of Australia.

Now we are retired and have to admit to getting old. I am sad that there’s nothing I can do for Africa. The experience and knowledge — perhaps even a modicum of wisdom — that I have accumulated over fifty years could be useful there, but no-one would be interested. The teeming populations of Zimbabwe and South Africa, and all of sub-Saharan Africa, will continue to increase, pushing the cities and sprawling shanty towns ever further into the country; the bush and farmlands will be progressively degraded, either in the name of progress and mismanaged development or because of the continual pressure of poor people moving into any area where they can clear land and scratch a living. African politics seem unlikely to improve: corruption and nepotism will continue to flourish, driven by greed and selfishness and the lust for power.

Perhaps I am unduly pessimistic but I don’t think so. I regret that the world my grandchildren will inherit will be uglier and poorer than the one we have known, rent by tensions and wars generated by competition for water and resources and the increasing pressures of the poor and desperate on those places that remain good to live in. I regret that my grandchildren will never see the Africa that I like to remember. Perhaps they will be expatriates too, leaving Australia or Bermuda, where some of them are now growing up, to wander and settle in other countries, either on purpose or, like us, because of circumstances. In that case, as has always happened, dreams of the homeland and society where they grew up will probably haunt them too. But perhaps — who knows — my pessimism will turn out to be misplaced and humans will exercise the wisdom that undoubtedly exists in our societies to solve the world’s problems. That wisdom is currently smothered by materialism and stupid ideologies, but it needs to be released so that we might conserve and live in harmony with the natural world of which we are an integral part, not just in Africa, but everywhere.

On our problems and their (hypothetical) solution

2. Things that need attention – and how we might go about it

One of the obvious areas of concern for the world is the use, particularly by developed countries, of fossil fuels. We need to massively reduce the amount of fossil fuel we burn. Fossil fuels provide most of the energy used throughout the world. The energy is far too cheap since no country puts a price on the adverse consequences of burning coal and oil. These include the air pollution emitted by cars and power plants, congestion from overloaded streets and highways caused by our obsessive love affair with motor transport in all its forms; oil spills, the health costs of coal mining and the damage to water supplies and landscapes caused by effluent from coal mines. The dangers of climate change caused and exacerbated by ‘greenhouse gases' such as the carbon dioxide that comes from burning fossil fuels, are becoming increasingly apparent.

All these effects should be costed. Imposing appropriate costs, probably best in the form of taxes, would radically alter patterns of resource use and pollution, but such taxes are ferociously resisted almost everywhere, and the political will and mandate to impose them on self-interested and willfully blind business communities do not exist in any of the major world economies. (The new carbon tax in Australia is a move in the right direction, although it’s seriously flawed in the level of refunds to polluters — for purely political reasons — which will greatly reduce its effectiveness.) Nevertheless, it is inarguable (assuming the arguments are objective and focussed on empirical information rather than ideological assertion) that the innovations associated with energy substitution, changes in transport systems, substituting other materials for plastics, and so on, would not only reduce pollution and conserve oil for high priority uses but would also generate new industries and jobs.

Mass production based on robotics, computer controlled machine tools and assembly lines turn out avalanches of cheap goods, ranging from cars to clothes. These production methods had their origin in the Industrial Revolution of the mid-nineteenth century, and the American innovations in assembly line production of the early twentieth. As computer power, and the sophistication of machine tools have increased, the number of people employed, relative to the output of factories, has almost certainly fallen steeply (although I have no data to support this). Suggesting that we should ‘wind the clock back’ and revert to far greater use of manual labour — preferably skilled, with enough variation in the jobs done by individuals to make those jobs reasonably interesting and fulfilling — might sound like impractical utopianism, but it is conceptually possible. Converting concept into reality is another matter.

Plastics have a multitude of uses in modern societies, but many of them are trivial and wasteful. Packaging, and the waste to which packaging is a major contributor, uses absurd amounts of resources and energy. Most items purchased from a modern shop or supermarket are encased in at least two, and frequently up to four layers of packaging, most of which are plastic in some form. Rationalisation of this unnecessary use of materials is urgently needed.

Modern, large-scale but intensive, agriculture is responsible for world-wide soil degradation as well as being an enormous direct consumer of energy, and of artificial fertilizers herbicides, insecticides. The practices are defended on the grounds that they are essential to provide the food needed by burgeoning human populations. In fact agriculture practiced this way is essentially big business, and little of the food produced reaches the hungry masses in Africa and Asia. For example, huge amounts of corn in the United States go to feeding animals in feedlots and to ethanol production. Soy bean production in Brazil underlying large-scale destruction of the Amazon forests, is aimed at the American market. There is also an alarming trend for countries such as China (particularly) and the UK to buy up land in poor countries — mainly in Africa — and use it for large-scale food production. The products are exported out of the poor country, which may itself be short of food.

The soil loss and degradation associated with most large-scale agriculture will, in the near future become a matter of immense concern and importance as crop yields fall. The suggestion that large-scale agriculture should be abandoned in favour of small-scale, much more labour intensive systems, geared to conserve the soil as well as produce food and fibre, will no doubt be scornfully dismissed by many. They will argue that large-scale agriculture is essential to produce the food the world needs, which is a very dubious argument since most large-scale agriculture is carried on by agri-business companies and not much of the food produced by those, in the US and Australia and Canada, actually gets to the billions of underfed — or, indeed, starving — people in poor countries. They are expected to pay for it, and of course they can’t. A big re-think is needed in this area.

Factory farming — the cruel practice of raising chickens, pigs and cattle in intensely crowded conditions, where they are fed with (usually purpose-grown) grains, frequently laced with antibiotics — is said to be essential to provide the eggs and meat that society needs. There are other solutions, not least the perfectly feasible possibility of reducing the amounts of eggs and (particularly) meat in modern diets in developed countries. Furthermore, factory farming produces large quantities of manure which, because of the location of the production units in small areas, and the costs of transport and distribution, are not returned to the land.

Overfishing and the destruction of the once bountiful ocean fish stocks are already having massive impacts round the world. Large ships that can cross the world deploy nets kilometers long, clearing the oceans of life, dominate the fishing industries. United Nations statistics indicate that 80% of the world’s fisheries have either collapsed, or are on the brink of collapse. Collapse is indicated by population reductions to levels where they can no longer replace themselves and, unless fishing is stopped completely, the target fish species will become extinct. In some cases it is too late; they will become extinct anyway. In developed countries the lives of communities that have, for generations, been based on fishing, are no longer the same. Small trawlers, operating in areas where the catches are steadily falling, cannot compete with the industrial-scale ships. In many South-east Asian countries, and coastal areas of China, millions of people have depended on fishing for hundreds of years. Their livelihood has disappeared with the collapse of fish stocks, not only from over-fishing but also as a result of pollution from the land that has destroyed fish spawning areas. (This has some unexpected results: for example, many of the fishermen in southern Indonesia have resorted to using their boats to transport people trying to enter Australia illegally — people smuggling.)

And so we could go on. The question is: HOW are we going to change things? How can these developments be reversed in the face of ever-increasing human numbers and demands? The answer, I think, is already clear. Action has to come from the younger generation; the people born in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s have to lead and implement action. The problems will be solved — unless solutions are imposed by disasters — by leadership from that generation and by groups of young people developing solutions to problems that they want to focus on, whether those be concerned with energy and transport, the use of plastics, agriculture, fisheries, local pollution or whatever. Campaigns will have to be political and at every level: local, regional, national and international. Eventually, the economic and political dinosaurs who dominate the scene in the developed countries will have to be swept away and replaced by more enlightened groups who understand that wealth and survival in a pleasant world do not consist of rampant and unbridled materialism, which destroy in the name of progress, the natural systems of our world, and the world of every other creature. (It all sounds a bit like early communism and the workers’ campaigns, but we should remember that those were remarkably successful; the fact that state communism was a flawed system does not alter that fact.)

A principle that should be followed in every case is that the problem solving and campaign procedures should be evolutionary. Evolution in biological systems is a process of producing optimum solutions to the problems of survival of living organisms — whether they be plants or animals. The individuals or groups best adapted to particular conditions, and therefore best equipped to survive, are more likely to do so than less well-adapted individuals. If the traits that confer an advantage are genetically transmissible, they are likely to be passed on to succeeding generations. An essential part of the process is selection in response to pressure, whether that is engendered by environmental factors, predation, competition or whatever. So, by analogy, in trying to produce solutions to the problems created by humans, it is not sensible to focus single-mindedly on particular actions that appear, at first sight or to some group or individual, to be the most likely to solve a particular problem. Obviously the solutions proposed must be feasible and economically sensible — which doesn’t mean they have to create financial wealth, but does mean they have to recognise that people need an income to live. Initial decisions have to be taken about what actions should be implemented. In parallel with their implementation, there should always be evaluation of the results and there should be flexibility to change if the results are not as good as they could be or the approach adopted is clearly not working well. In other words, select out the sub-optimal solutions. To do this there has to be a mechanism of evaluating the results, and a willingness to constantly think of better solutions. That way, the procedure evolves with time towards the best that can be done, and can be changed if conditions change. There is no room for stubborn ideology.

In all this, we have to remember that changes in developed countries will affect the billions of people alive today who are not in any position to worry about resource use and environmental matters. For most of the teeming poor of Africa, India, South America and Asia the problem is  getting hold of enough food and fuel to survive and live half-decent lives, with a reasonable modicum of dignity and some hope of improvement. So, while the rich world has to think about reducing its extravagant consumption, ways must be found for the poor and underprivileged to raise their standards of living to levels commensurate with that reasonable modicum of dignity and comfort. But the history of virtually any part of the world shows us that humans are basically selfish, short-sighted and more inclined to aggressive defence of what they have than to large-scale altruism. There is not much chance that the rich nations will unselfishly cut their energy and resource use while making serious contributions — by which I mean a lot more than the nominal contributions to aid made by most of them — to the development of poor countries. We will hold stubbornly to our course, with predictably ugly results, mainly in Asia and Africa but increasingly in the developed western world (which includes China). The human race is unlikely to become extinct, but it is very likely that the combined effects of climate change, massive human populations and the resulting degradation of the earth will mean that those parts of the world where life can be enjoyed in pleasant environments, without enormous stresses, will be progressively reduced.  A cheerful outlook!

On our problems and their (hypothetical) solution

1. The overall situation

I have the word ‘hypothetical’ in the title of these pieces because I doubt the problems of the world will be solved before the ecological and human disasters already happening in Africa and India and parts of China become more widespread. Part of the trouble is that the problems are not universally acknowledged. Denial cannot  lead to solutions. The will to solve them is lacking at both the political and social levels. How widespread and serious the problems become before serious efforts are made to address them is an open question. Despite this, it seems worthwhile to think about how they could be solved. Maybe some of the ideas will be useful to someone.

Large numbers of people, especially among the educated classes — those the conservative (‘right wing’) press calls the chattering classes — are well aware of the problems that humans have generated for themselves and this planet. We know that the way we live now is unsustainable: we’re using renewable resources faster than they can be replaced – destroying fish stocks and forests and using up non-renewables, ­like oil and phosphates for fertilizer, without putting enough effort into solving the problem of what we will substitute for them when they’re all used up. We also know about the consequences of unbridled resource use, in terms of pollution and land degradation and, among the nastier results of human behaviour, the gross pollution of the world by plastic — thrown away to degrade the land and float in the oceans as millions of tons of long-lived garbage, killing huge numbers of sea birds and turtles and dolphins that ingest it.

Most of those who know about all this are worried by it, and there are indications that their numbers are growing, but they’re still small compared to the number of those who don’t understand the consequences of human behaviour or, in many cases, don’t want to know. Many people also realise that unbridled materialism —the accumulation of possessions and indulgence in the luxurious lifestyles that the well-to-do in developed countries take for granted — is not necessarily conducive to happy and contented lives. To a large degree it’s those luxurious lifestyles that are responsible for the pollution and ecosystem degradation; to maintain them demands inputs of energy and resources at greater rates than the world can sustain. Consumerism and luxurious living are the hallmarks of success in our societies; the idea that people should forego buying anything they want has been anathema until recently. A ‘quotation of the day’ in the New York Times, recently, provided a neat summary of the situation: "It was nothing to buy whatever we wanted. Now we just think about what we really need.” Clearly it’s time that everyone thought about what they really need.

None of that will be news to most people. The problem is: how to break the pattern and change the model. Humans being what they are, there’s no point in proposing solutions that would be unacceptable to all but the most idealistic individuals. Nevertheless, the solution — insofar as there is one — must lie in reducing our standards of living, and altering the way the economies of the developed world function. And that has to be achieved without reducing the opportunities for everyone to find what is called ‘gainful employment’; work that pays them enough to keep themselves and their families in reasonable comfort in terms of housing, food and clothing. What constitutes ‘reasonable comfort’, and how much more than that we can expect will certainly be matters for argument, but it’s probably realistic to assume that those whose jobs in themselves offer satisfaction are likely to be content with less in the way of material possessions than those whose work is nothing more than a means to an end. Unfortunately, for most people work is, in varying degrees, tedious, tiring drudgery or, at best, an acceptable way of passing the time with the benefit of providing an income. Ideally, it should be fulfilling and rewarding, providing a sense of accomplishment, of something worthwhile achieved on a timescale satisfying to the individual.

Politicians tend to be sensitive to joblessness and, when the numbers of people without jobs get too high — as is currently the case in the United States, where the jobless rate is around 9% (exactly how that is calculated is not clear to the general public) — there is much pontificating about the need to create jobs, although how this is to be done usually remains opaque. The usual approach is to try to generate more (conventional) economic growth, more consumption. The same old, same old story. But, besides the fact that ever-increasing consumption is unsustainable, the advocates of economic growth tend to ignore the fact that, in the United States and much of Europe in recent years, it has been funded by excessive borrowing, and the resulting debt and has got those countries into serious difficulties. So we need to think again. The aim must be to create millions of satisfying jobs that that lead to more contented and equitable societies and are consistent with reduced consumption of energy and resources. This alone will need a considerable re-think about economics.

I don’t accept the bland (and, in my view, stupid and shortsighted) assurances of various economists, right-wing commentators and red-necked conservatives that all will be well if we can maintain economic growth and consumer spending. The idea that economic growth can continue indefinitely, which is the assumption underlying the way most modern societies are run, is completely unrealistic. Economic growth reflects the capacity of the economy to produce goods and services. It therefore reflects the consumption of energy and materials, as well as human inputs as services. It is modern consumption of raw materials and energy that cannot be sustained.

In seeking solutions for the world’s problems it is sometimes tempting to entertain the idea that we might free ourselves entirely from the tyranny of economics, but that isn’t a useful approach: economics (which should not be confused with economic growth) is a system of assigning values to goods, services and labour; human interactions have been governed by economic systems for millennia. But it’s not an inviolate set of rules; the values assigned to particular goods or activities change with time and from place to place. We have to bring about changes in our economic systems that are based around the re-ordering of values. For example, we will have to change the — generally very low — values we assign to environmental services. We will also have to re-value upwards (i.e. make much more expensive) goods  that use a great deal of energy in their manufacture, including plastics made from oil.

This will require political action as well as changes in consumer demand, neither of which will come easily. Nevertheless, it seems worth thinking about the sort of changes and action that are required. It’s also worth thinking about the procedures we would need to follow to make progress; I have some comment on that later in this piece. At the moment there’s no indication, in any developed society, that the political will to restructure society exists; most politicians are concerned primarily — if not entirely — with their own influence, prosperity and political survival. These are seen to depend on pandering to their electorates and being seen to be acting in the (perceived) best short-term and selfish economic interests of those electorates. Leadership and vision are conspicuously lacking in virtually all the developed world —at least in the democratic countries, where focus groups and opinion polls substitute for political leadership. In the United States the whole political process is distorted by the financial power of special interest lobbyists.

Following on from that, it is also essential that international banking and finance systems, with their arcane and complex packaged securities, bonds and derivatives and structured debt packages, be brought under control to halt the distortion of markets that they cause. The behaviour of these institutions has undoubtedly contributed to the extent of current problems, since they represent and enhance the delusion that money and materialism are the ultimate arbiters of value.

Friends

We have led rather peripatetic lives, have lived for periods of years in five different countries and for shorter periods in several others. So we have been to a great many interesting places and met lots of interesting people. Which may sound exciting, and it has been – it certainly hasn’t been boring – but there is a downside: we have left good friends all over the world, many of whom we hardly ever see, and some of whom we will undoubtedly never see again. I’ve written about friends before (blog of Nov. 2010); this piece has a different slant on the subject.

 Brian, here with our daughter Sue, goes back to university days

 

 

 

 

Diana and I met when we were students at a South African university, and some of the best friends we ever made are from that era, 50 years ago. We were conventional people of our time and married and had kids when we were quite young: among the most durable of our friends were those we made when the kids were little, which in our case was in South Africa, and then in Scotland. At that time of life groups of young mothers, dealing with small children and their activities, meet regularly. The progress and problems of kids are matters of consuming mutual interest and there’s a very good chance that strong friendships will develop. These lead to socializing that includes husbands; in some cases couples find themselves compatible, leading to family friendship. In our case there were also, of course, professional friends, although from a family point of view these were more likely to stay in the category of acquaintances than become family friends. We're still in touch with some of the friends from that time, although it was all more than 40 years ago, but since we moved on contact has generally been reduced to Christmas cards (now heading for history as the Christmas letter circulated by e-mail takes over) and the occasional e-mail.

We moved from Scotland to England and were there for ten years, covering the main period of the kids’ schooling. The patterns of social contacts changed as everyone got older, but we still made some good friends. Then we went to Australia and had to start again: new schools for the kids, a new social milieu, new activities and professional friends. We were many years in Canberra, long enough to put down quite strong roots – we felt we belonged and there was time for friends to become ‘old friends’. We hadn’t intended to move when it was retirement time, but we did. There were good reasons for it, but that’s another story and the move had all the usual consequences: try to keep in touch with the friends you left behind; make new friends, adapt to a new social environment.

Looking back on all this it’s inevitable that I think about what constitutes good friends; what’s the difference between them and the countless acquaintances who have come and gone over the years. A great deal has been written about what friendship means, and its importance. Without getting too involved in psychology and philosophising, I would say that the basic criteria of real friendship are interest in the other person, enjoying their company, being prepared to accept inconvenience  - or even make significant sacrifices - for them, if necessary. The list could obviously be expanded, discussed and elaborated. At its best friendship is a kind of love, and has many faces. 

Where we live now, we're in an era of acquaintances, of friendly people but few real friends, a time of polite social interaction at dinner parties where conversation is often banal and we start watching the time half way through the evening, wondering when we can politely leave; of community activities and gatherings of various sorts where we go through the motions, share food and a few drinks and go home. Friends at the golf club really don’t matter in any basic, visceral sense – they’re just acquaintances. We meet some good, generous and public spirited people who would not hesitate to help anyone who needed it, but whether we really connect with them in a way that matters emotionally is another matter. That gets harder as the years go by.

Sune, from Sweden, and Dick, from Oregon; our friends across 30 years

I suppose it’s a very different story for people who stay in one place virtually all their lives, part of a stable community, socializing in adulthood with people they have known since they were all children together. This must be conducive to comfortable relationships; where there is a long shared history there is no need to explain allusions to people and events of the past. (There is a darker side to this, of course, and that’s the persistence of old feuds, and possibly hatreds. There are advantages in being able to leave unpleasant people and events behind!) An interesting question is: is the situation of old-established, relaxed and comfortable companionship, with its lack of novelty, long history of shared experience and possible underlying tensions, much better than our situation?

Probably. Those who have lived all (or most) of their lives in one place have a much better sense of place and of belonging. They know the community they belong to; in fact they probably seldom if ever think about it. Life goes along in its accustomed rhythms, with the well-known faces around. Strangers can be ignored – in old and conservative communities strangers may be treated with suspicion: they don’t fit in. One of the disadvantages of the peripatetic lifestyle is the feeling of rootlessness, of not really belonging anywhere. We have met hundreds – possibly thousands – of interesting people over the years, in various places, and have made many good and interesting friends but (as I said earlier), we’ve left most of them behind. If we travel to see them, or they come here, their company is as good as ever, but the opportunities are limited. We have also met many people who are amiable and pleasant, whose company we have enjoyed, but who have never come to mean a great deal to us. 

Diana with Auro, who came from Brazil, a friend of 20 years

Bu the question that keeps coming up, for those who have lived in various places, is: “where do we belong?” The answer depends on more than friends, although they are very important. Do we ‘belong’ where we live now, or is this another temporary stop? Few of our important friends live here – or near here. I think it’s fairly general, in fact fundamental to most people, that their sense of where they belong is anchored in the place they grew up, in childhood friends and neighbours who knew them, and so on. In our case going back to where we originally came from, to live the rest of our lives there, is not an option. The communities we grew up with are gone, those we knew are dead or scattered across the world. The countries we grew up in – Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa – have changed beyond recognition. 

There's no point in whingeing about it, or feeling sorry for ourselves. A reality check is provided by thinking about the way refugees feel: we had options, none of which were bad, but, according to the UNHCR, there are currently about 16 million people in the world who are classed as refugees, fleeing violence, war and oppression, not to mention another 25 million so-called displaced persons. For most of them all the options were unpleasant. Every one of them would like to live in a safe and stable place, never mind where they grew up. For millions of children the growing up place is a squalid, crowded, camp. The implications are obvious and I could get seriously side-tracked here, but will leave it at that, just adding that the world’s exploding global human population is a significant factor among those causing all that misery.

And those who matter most - family.

Our wandering lifestyle has brought us great rewards and the friends we made were immensely valuable and remain valued. In periods when I feel down, I might wish that some things have been different, but they weren't. We made our choices and can only be grateful for the good things, and the good friends, we've had  - and still have, scattered across the world – and the good things that we have now.

Jottings about trees

Autumn in a Mount Wilson (NSW, Australia) garden: you can see (L to R) cyprus, birch, Japanese maple, eucalypts, deodar, cherry laurel

Most people take trees for granted: they’re those large plants with big hard stems and leafy tops. Even those who live in cities and virtually never see a tree except in parks, know that different types (species) vary enormously in size and structure. Also, everyone knows – vaguely, in some cases – that there are different forest types, although  most would be a bit pushed to name some, or to describe the basic characteristics of, for example, coniferous, tropical or temperate deciduous forests.  None of which is particularly important; lots of people have a very strong aesthetic appreciation of the beauty of trees and forests, and probably recognise, at least instinctively, that they are very important in the world, even if that recognition is confined to the knowledge that wood comes from trees and that paper is made from wood. And the modern world uses a great deal of paper.

Eucalyptus plantation in Brazil. A forest farming operation; the world uses a lot of paper.

Trees in African savannah

Trees and forests feature quite largely in poetry and literature. As kids we were probably absorbed by Grimm’s fairytales, which tend to feature dark forests (they were written in northern Europe where many of the forests are coniferous and dark). And of course dark forests feature in Nordic myths and legends, not to mention Robin Hood and Lord of the Rings. Then there was Enid Blyton’s “The Faraway Tree” and, in modern adult literature, Eucalyptus, by Murray Bail. Last Christmas my family gave me a book of beautiful photographs of, and comments on, Australia’s remarkable trees (Richard Allen and Kimball Baker): they range from the gnarled and twisted acacias surviving improbably in arid semi-deserts to towering, majestic karri in Western Australia and (the misnamed) Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) in Victoria and Tasmania. You could probably find references to trees in Shakespeare’s plays, but I have to confess that I’m not familiar enough with those to be able to say where, at least not ‘off the cuff’.

Big trees, when you think about it, are amazing. That whole massive structure consists of microscopic cells, of a range of specialist types doing different jobs: cells in leaves doing photosynthesis – breaking down CO₂ to produce the carbohydrates that underpin all (or nearly all) life on earth; nutrient absorbing cells in the roots; cells that transport nutrients and water up the trunk and structural cells that determine the shape and strength of the tree.

Across the road from my office I can see tall, straight eucalyptus trees in my neighbour’s garden. They’re about 30 m high, with slim white trunks. The branches and foliage are mostly in the top half – in fact mostly in the top 10 m, so when the wind is strong the force (drag) on all that material stuck up in the air is enormous. (I once spent several interesting weeks in a wind tunnel measuring the forces on trees and their foliage elements.) But, regardless of the technicalities, the practical result, for my tall neighbours, is that their tops swing through arcs that I estimate must be at least 5 m. It can be quite alarming: as gusts ease the tops swing back, to be driven out again by the next gust. And the trunks don’t break. It’s only in recent times that humans have been able to make materials (using carbon fibre technology) that would stand that amount of flexing.

Not that trees never break; they do, of course, and they also get uprooted in high winds. Breakage or uprooting happens when the frequency of the gusts matches the way the trees flex (their natural elasticity) so that the trunks swing more and more with each gust and eventually reach their limit. (This doesn’t just apply to trees; it can happen to tall man-made structures. An astonishing example was the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge in Washington State in 1940. The so-called structural frequency and elasticity of the bridge were freakishly matched by the gust frequency of a strong wind and the structure was spectacularly destroyed.

A unique hotel in Ecuadorian rainforest

It’s a sad fact that forests, particularly tropical forests, are being destroyed around the world – particularly in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Pacific islands and the Amazon Basin – at an alarming rate. The destruction is driven by human greed and short-sightedness (why are we not surprised!?) to provide hardwoods, land for palm oil plantations and soya bean production and ever more space for the encroachment of peasant farmers. This has huge implications for biodiversity, hydrology – affecting river flows and, when the clearance is on a large scale, local climates – and for the carbon balance of the world as a whole. Forests absorb enormous quantities of CO₂ and store massive amounts of carbon. When they are destroyed most of that carbon is released into the atmosphere, contributing to the increase in atmospheric CO₂ being driven by the combustion of fossil fuels.

So it’s worth getting political about trees and forests and trying to persuade politicians that they are important in the great scheme of things which, as far as I am concerned, means the health and beauty of the planet.

Okavango

Okavango

The Okavango Delta is formed by a river coming down from the Highlands of Angola, which disappears into the deserts of north-east of Botswana, creating an inland delta. There are a few other such deltas in the world, but the Okavango seems to be one of the most remarkable and best-known examples. Flows vary seasonally and the water is crystal clear, filtered by the huge areas of reeds, papyrus, sedges and grass, and waterlilies (water hyacinth), through which wind multiple channels, many made by hippos. The area, along its borders and on the numerous bush-covered island, is home to a wonderful range of African wildlife.

Impala rams watching a lion. Once they have spotted the predators they're pretty safe

Male cheetah

Not all the wildlife are large: Diana and chameleon

Botswana itself is widely regarded as the most successful African state, although it’s a very small country with only about 1.4 million inhabitants. However, it has a functioning democracy and a government which appears to govern for the good of the country and not just for the good of the members of the government, as is the case in most African states. The towns are extremely scruffy and untidy, with rubbish all over the place – their priorities are different from those of most westerners – but the country is moderately wealthy with important diamond mines, a major beef cattle industry and a thriving tourist industry. I don’t know much about tax structures and agreements between governments and extractive industries, but it’s clear that, unlike the oil industry in various countries, the diamond mines in Botswana pay enough to the country to benefit everyone and not just the companies doing the mining. Tourism is what’s called “low-volume”, which really means that Botswana is generally too expensive for student backpackers and young people on limited budgets, since it involves guided safari-type tours with small groups who may camp out – in reasonable comfort, but it is camping in the African bush - or who may lodge in safari camps.

Diana and I went to southern Botswana, to the Kalahari, a few years ago, and a few weeks ago we went to the Okavango, where we spent four days in two separate camps, one of which is fly-in access only. From the first camp, Khawai River, reached in about four hours across fairly rough roads from the town of Maun, we went on a number of game drives (the name tells you something!) in safari vehicles which bumped or crawled slowly along bush tracks in the area east of the Moremi Reserve. I must admit that we sometimes wondered about those tracks: the main, established ones are clearly identifiable, but although we were told that the guides – who were also the drivers – were not supposed to go into the bush they frequently did so, and when they did the vehicles created the beginnings of a new track. As a result the area, which is very wet at the moment, is criss-crossed by networks of minor tracks. This, over time, constitutes a lot of damage, but since the vehicles and guides responsible come from a number of companies, and the area is remote, it is very difficult to prevent.

Elephant at 10 metres

Safari vehicles  - generally long-wheel-base 4WD vehicles, open-backed with a couple of rows of tiered seats – are not comfortable, but they’re not too bad and ours were never crowded; a maximum of six people to a the vehicle that could carry nine. The guides were very experienced; experts at finding animals about which they generally knew a great deal. In a few days we saw hundreds of elephants, probably thousands of impala, a leopard (rare sight in daytime), lion, serval, cheetah, a couple brown hyenas, a hippo wandering around in broad daylight as well as a number of hippos in the rivers, zebra (with young), giraffe (also with young), kudu and various birds. Impala have black markings on their hindquarters that look a bit like the big M symbol of the Macdonalds fast food chain. Our guide observed that this was probably appropriate as the poor impala are on the menu of all the predators – lion,  leopard, cheetah, hyena (which can sometimes catch them at night). Fast food in every sense! We sometimes saw animals very close-up so the game drives were extremely satisfying and sometimes quite exciting.

Xaxaba Transit lounge

We flew in a small aircraft from Khawai River to Eagle Island. From there we went on several boat trips in flat-bottomed boats with outboard motors; again driven by guides who knew a great deal about the Delta and its fauna. Although the birdlife is not hugely prolific–you don’t see great flocks of birds–we saw fish eagles, Jacana, or lily trotters, otherwise known as Jesus birds because they appear to walk on water, and various sorts of duck and kingfisher. There were frequent sightings of hippo, usually submerged with just the eyes and nostrils sticking out of the water, sometimes half the head but occasionally, in  the evening, heaving themselves out of the water. At one point we had to pass quite close to a group of hippo in the main channel. Our guide, John, was wary of them as he knew that they may resent the boat and that they could be dangerous. He gunned the motor past the hippos and was proved to be correct when one of them set off after us, showing an astonishing turn of speed for such a huge animal. Hippos apparently do not swim so the hippo chasing the boat was presumably running in the water although he was lifted slightly out of it in doing so. You certainly would not have wanted to be in a canoe at that point.

Intruder in camp - or maybe we're the intruders

There was also some excitement in the very comfortable camp, where there was a large marula tree, a species that produces fruit highly attractive to elephants, especially when they (the fruit – not the elephant) are slightly fermented. A large bull elephant came to feed on the marulas on the couple of nights when we were there: on the second morning he was right next to the path between the huts. One of our group needed to walk past him to fetch something so  - as advised - he asked John to come with him to help him get past the elephant. We went along to see what happened. The elephant, apparently unhappy at the presence of a significant group of people, carried out a mock charge towards us. John had previously explained that, when you get very close to elephants, you can tell by their behavior and “ the look in their eyes” whether they're likely to be seriously dangerous or not. Well he proved his point, and his courage, but standing his ground, clapping his hands and shouting. You really needed to know it was a mock charge! For the inexperienced it looked serious enough to warrant a swift departure from the area, but the elephant wasn’t really serious – he pulled up a couple of metres from John, flapped his ears and waved his trunk and turned away.

A highlight of our stay at Eagle Island was a helicopter ride over the Delta; exhilarating as the doors were off the chopper and we sat on the edges of the back seats with our feet on the skids. The trip provided wonderful oversights of the ecological structure of islands and swamp, as well as views of animals from the air, including a herd of buffalo which we had not seen from the ground. We also saw hippos submerged in the channels that they make through the vegetation.

Aerial view of a large island, with buffalo

Overall it was a great way to spend a few days in a relatively unspoiled part of Africa. If you had to live anywhere in Africa, Botswana would be the place – although you can bet there would be unforeseen problems. For visitors, the travel to get there is slightly tedious and Johannesburg, which you have to go through, is not nowadays an attractive city. It's tense and dangerous and the residential areas look more like prison camps than suburbs, although residents would undoubtedly take exception to this description. However the new Gautrain, which runs from the airport into town is smooth and quiet and very efficient. The airport itself, greatly upgraded for the football world cup last year, is also modern and efficient. It’s just the government that seems to be running down.

Where do we go from here: 5

Political leadership

I have held forth, in the previous three posts, about the problems facing human societies in terms of conflict, our economic systems, human populations and food supplies, condensing into a few paragraphs discussion of issues that fill books and newspapers and magazine articles and blogs and endless media hours. Virtually every point I have made could be (and no doubt is) elaborated, developed and argued in all those media, but hopefully my condensed version will provide the basis for some constructive thoughts. But, whatever the arguments, the solution to all the problems considered must lie in political action, in decisions made by governments with the capacity to influence – or determine - the way societies function and the resources of countries are used.

Politics is the business of politicians who, in democracies, are elected by the people. There are all sorts of other political systems, some of which are not particularly salubrious, but let’s confine our attention to democracies and the role of democratically elected leaders. These people are vital to the success of their societies, by which I mean success in terms of the well-being of the whole population, and in terms of the natural environment. If that is destroyed, or even significantly degraded, the society can’t be considered successful and amount of economic effort and activity will serve to maintain living standards.

Most people in western countries are convinced that our systems of democratic government are as good as it gets – the apogee of political evolution.  But a vanishingly small number of our elected politicians are real leaders; for the most part they are public relations puppets, driven by polls that indicate to them what their constituencies want, regardless of the fact that most of the people who make up those constituencies are themselves driven by self-interest and the standard delusions about economics. A majority of people want ‘the good life’ – the houses and cars and consumer goods and holidays and entertainment – without wanting to consider the real costs. So society gets ever more ‘precious’, with endless whingeing about minor inconveniences, about price rises or the unavailability of things that there’s no good reason we should have, with controversies about trivia and the expenditure of huge amounts of effort and emotion arguing about things like the behaviour celebrities or matters that shouldn’t be in the public domain at all – like whether homosexual couples should be allowed to marry. And the brand of ugly adversarial politics that we currently have in western countries doesn’t help.

So we probably get the political leaders we deserve. It would be wonderful if, at least occasionally, we got people standing for election who have clear and definite (and constructive) vision and who are prepared to pursue that vision regardless of the opinion polls and focus group findings and the pressure and bribes of lobbyists funded by powerful interest groups. Of course the way the political game is played now, people of vision and high principle probably wouldn’t get elected or, if they did, in a system like Australia’s where politics and parliament are dominated by political parties, the party machines would make sure they were kept under control, so they wouldn’t get much done. There is also the  problem that, quite frequently, people with vision and ‘fire in the belly’ are nutcases – think of the great leaders of the 20^th century, like Hitler or Mao Tse Tung or Stalin (hardly democratic leaders!). Even Churchill had some pretty peculiar ideas. In Australia Whitlam had ‘fire in the belly’ – and didn’t last long, but Bob Hawke, though a politician to his bootstraps, was undoubtedly a leader with convictions, and he did last. In Canada Pierre Trudeau, who led that country from 1968 to 1984 (with a brief interlude when he was out of power) was, by all reports, a man of vision and principle. But looking across the political landscape of the world right now, I don’t see anyone, in any country, who inspires much genuine respect and admiration. Obama looked hopeful – I think he is a person of high principles – but he hasn’t managed to struggle free of the constraints imposed by a completely negative, indeed destructive, Republican party that exploits the prejudices and ignorance of large chunks of the American electorate, and by the financial crisis brought on by the greed of the Wall Street traders etc. etc. The world is awash with words about it all.  All we can do is live in hope, but I’m not holding my breath.

I set out, when I started to write these things, to try to imagine how the world’s problems might be fixed, but I have ended with the conclusion, basically, that it’s not going to happen. Life in the rich, developed countries will go on apparently much as before for some time to come. Money and power and technology will (probably) insulate the populations of those countries from a great deal of unpleasantness for years to come. There will wars and rumours of wars and gradually accumulating environmental problems (I haven’t even mentioned climate change) and some nasty famines in faraway places. Well-meaning, and in many cases extraordinarily admirable, people will work hard to alleviate the problems, and in some cases and some places they will make progress, but overall we will not change our ways. Humanity is in trouble: the world we leave to our grandchildren is going to be a lot less pleasant than the one we live in now, unless they have so much money that they can totally insulate themselves from it all. All that isn’t very cheerful, but maybe my prognostications will be as wide of the mark as those of Nostradamus. Good luck; enjoy your life.

Where do we go from here: 4

People and food

No danger of starving here: Christmas in Australia

 
































My third major point (in the first of these posts) was concern about the rapidly-growing human population of the world and whether it was going to be able to feed itself. There are a couple of points in relation to this that need to be kept in mind: one is that most of the population growth is happening in poor countries that are already over-crowded; the other is that most people in the western countries eat too much. The major food problem in these is obesity. In general, they produce ample food for themselves, with enough for export. The difficulties at the moment arise from the logistics of distribution, and the economics of paying for and transporting large amounts of food from areas of plenty to areas of shortage. Right now, for the world as a whole, if food could be distributed rapidly and effectively from the high producing areas to those in need, there would be enough for everyone, not to eat as the privileged do, but to eat adequately, at least pro tem. But it’s unlikely that this will remain the case as populations continue to soar. In the not-too-distant future there is not going to be enough food to feed everyone.

There are blinkered technofreaks who maintain that, since Malthus warned in the late 18^th century of the problems that would be caused by ever-increasing human populations, technical solutions have always been found that have resulted in enough food being produced. This has been true up to now, but there are now new factors in the equation which mean that the argument is not going to hold for the future. One of these – which I wont go on about but which is very important for millions of people – is the world-wide crash in the populations of ocean fish, hunted to near extinction in many areas. But most food still comes from the land, and not only is virtually all the land suitable for arable agriculture already in use but, as I noted earlier, much of that land has been degraded: soil fertility is falling as a result of unsustainable farming practices, and soil erosion is taking a terrible toll. Maintaining high crop yields in modern, extensive agricultural systems involves the use of huge amounts of oil for the manufacture of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers as well as directly for tractor power. We could make great progress if we were prepared to accept much more labour-intensive production systems, and eat a great deal less meat – producing livestock is a highly  inefficient way of converting plant material into food for humans. But as countries like China and India develop, their people are demanding better diets with increasing amounts of meat, so significantly changing market demand for food. And, of course, those countries have burgeoning human populations.

There are solutions – or partial solutions – which, if they can’t entirely solve the problems could improve matters enormously, particularly for the poor of the world. These involve technology, which includes better fertilization, the recycling of plant nutrients, more efficient use of water and animal manures, huge reductions in waste of food and the losses that affect peasant farmers so badly, pest control and plant breeding. Soil erosion and degradation are major problems across Africa, much of Asia and South America; these must be addressed. (There are also serious soil erosion problems in the United States.) The big problem in relation to the poorer, high population countries where the food problem is frequently severe and likely to get worse, is getting the knowledge and technology to the people who need them – a matter of education and resources. And who will pay for the resources needed? In the western countries, where there is no sign of food shortages, there could be huge environmental benefits from waste reduction. Heavy subsidies that encourage the conversion of maize into biofuels cause major distortions in production patterns and food prices and should be abandoned. It would also be good to see moves away from the horrible high-intensity systems of producing chickens and eggs, beef and pork. These are driven more by economics than fundamental necessity.

Is all this going to happen? Well, I don’t think so. Globally, food shortages are going to get worse and will contribute to the increasing pressures on the people of high population countries to emigrate to those where they can expect a better standard of living. There are already serious problems in this respect – every time there’s some sort of crisis they get worse – and they are not going to go away. They may not lead directly to war, but they will lead to ever-stronger calls for restrictive border policies, over-riding humanitarian considerations. The only way to avoid that would seem to be for the rich countries to put ever-increasing effort and resources into improving life in the poor ones in all the obvious areas like education, sanitation and hygiene, food production and (sustainable) transport systems. Whether they will do that is doubtful. Developed countries say they aim to allocate 0.7% of their Gross Domestic Product to aid to underdeveloped countries, but very few do so. There is a strong human tendency to postpone action on inconvenient matters as long as possible, particularly if there is significant uncertainty about the problem facing us and if we ourselves are somewhat insulated against the consequences of the postponement. The rich countries, in general can insulate themselves against food shortages, tighten border controls against the indigent masses and maintain reasonable standards of living. But in the poor, high population countries life will get progressively worse and there will be increasing starvation over the next 25 years. And in the process the natural environment will be destroyed.