Landscape under siege

While driving back from Mount Arapiles in the Wimmera Plains some years ago, I remember enjoying the spectacle of rock sentinels growing steadily on the south-east skyline, heralding my approach to Gariwerd - The Grampians. In the flat and relatively featureless farmland, this complex of dark blue-green forested bluffs and ridges dominates the skyline and invites the curious to enter and explore. They are a monumental and majestic sight, a vast timeless remnant of the way this country looked for millennia before Whitefella arrived. They had become a familiar and welcoming sight after decades of walking among their secluded folds and camping in their peaceful embrace.

But suddenly, all was not well. A new and unwelcome sight had me mourning for a vision lost, at least for the duration of my lifetime. There was a vivid orange scar on the slopes of the Mt Difficult Range, a large silver telecommunications mast impaled in the middle of the raw wound. A heavy sadness stole into my heart. It seemed an inappropriate and careless disregard for this precious remnant of wilderness, a slap in the face to those of us who care for the silent grandeur of iconic landscapes, an ugly reminder of the relentless march of so-called progress. 

Industrial graffiti and cultural vandalism;
view from an ancient rock shelter
where Gunditjmara ancestors
contemplated their country
at Cape Duquesne

Some time later, I was escaping the confines of that great Australian ugliness, the urban sprawl we call Melbourne, on route to walk among the wildflowers of Gariwerd. As was my habit for thirty years, I motored west peering eagerly ahead for the first sight of the Mount William Range's serrated buttresses. But another unpleasant surprise confronted me. There was a new and imposing man-made barrier to superintend the panorama, the Challicum Hills wind farm. The ranges in the background were still there, but now my senses had to negotiate this intruding fence of fans and towers. It was both frustrating and disorienting.

Visiting the PacificHydro website is revealing. The Challicum Hills page is headed by a photograph of the landscape I describe. It boldly illustrates the installation set against the backdrop of Gariwerd as though these steel and composite structures somehow belong or enhance the landscape. “Am I alone,” I worry, “in thinking that this is a travesty, a crime against our heritage and country?” Like so many aspects of our media assaulted lives, it is simply more marketing hype, weasel words and superficial images that dress up the imposition of commercial imperative and present it as benign grand achievement. I nearly gag when I scan the copy and read claims of “tourism opportunities” generated by this industrial eyesore, and the lip service given to supporting local environmental groups. Frankly, I find it sly and manipulative at best, dishonest and delusional at worst.

Like the Martian tripods in War of the Worlds
wind generators loom over volunteers
working to conserve the area's
natural features

I moved to rural south-west Victoria four years ago. Every few days I get my supplies from Koroit, which nestles on the rim of Tower Hill caldera. A regular delight has been pausing on the heights to scan the district, particularly the panorama to the north where the distant peaks of my beloved Gariwerd can be discerned on a clear day 80kms away. Familiarising myself with these ancient landmarks helps me get my bearings, reassess my place in the world, reinforce my humility, and promotes a feeling of wellbeing and belonging. Alas, in recent months, the construction of the Macarthur and Hawkesdale wind farms has imposed a unwelcome screen across this referential aspect; a veritable blockade of machines.

Recently, I took a friend hiking along a section of the Great South West Walk. Bristling out of the rolling limestone hills of Capes Nelson, Bridgewater and Duquesne, ranks of wind generators now crowd close to the edges of cliffs and dominate the otherwise spectacular coastal views. As we negotiated the trail, a fresh south-westerly was blowing onshore. Despite this, we could still hear the moan of generators and the throb of blades for much of our walk. We paused at The Springs campsite and wondered how anyone could sleep there with its monotonous score of mechanical sounds. We pondered the juxtaposition of high-tech industrial installation and sensitive cultural precincts, like the Gunditjmara stone tool fabricating site. The overlooking towers and rotating blades were certainly a constant distraction in our attempts to quietly observe and enjoy native birds among the remnant coastal flora. On our return, all blades were feathered and stationary, the generators inert as the wind speed had increased. We could not understand why these structures were built in such an exposed position, when clearly they are unable to handle the wild conditions that characterise these promontories. I found the whole day deeply disturbing. The landscape is ruined and I doubt I will take anyone there again.

Wilderness or industrial landscape?
The distinction is blurred
as the human stain
congeals

Clearly, renewable energy is a good thing. But why do we have to make such a mess wherever we go and whatever we do? There are alternatives to the careless way we currently erect long lines of wind generators in single file across our landscapes, often in places of great cultural and environmental significance. But ultimately, with evidence building that our way of life is fundamentally flawed, we need to review our crude concept of economic growth and its reliance on ever-higher levels of consumption. The proliferation of wind generators is only a symptom of a wider malaise, a greedy society hell-bent on maintaining unsustainable lifestyles at any cost, while steadily eroding our quality of life.

Productivity; Oh really?

This short missive (rant) is a response to the New Your Times article 'Let's Be Less Productive' and resultant Facebook shenanigans . . .

We must not confine our thinking to conventional capitalist arguments at the you-and-me level. Micro economics is like looking at the back of a cart to determine what is pulling it. Western Capitalism is like the SMS Titanic; its practitioners have fallen for their own rhetoric and are blithely overconfident as a largely hidden natural phenomenon threatens disaster.

The whole point of 'Let's Be Less Productive' is to critique the paradigm that accepts increasing productivity as a good thing. The more we earn, the more we produce, the more we consume, the more frenetic, wasteful and meaningless a human life becomes. I think we need to question the economic theories that underlie our beliefs and practices, because in these times, evidence is accumulating exponentially that there are fatal flaws in the human endeavour. To flourish, even survive, we need to think outside the constructs set by a system that is failing us.

Capitalism as we know it is not sustainable because it is a crude and inefficient arbiter of limited resources, which include human productivity. It is utterly dependent upon winners and losers. It has only worked in our lifetimes because the First World has been able to rip the heart out of the Third World. It has only worked because we accept our own domestic Third World; the underclass of poor, disadvantaged and disenfranchised.

The capitalist economic model is based on input costs reduced to dollar values offset against revenue from product. Responsibility for decisions about allocation of wealth and resources is deferred to the dynamics of supply and demand as articulated in the market place. Vital factors are completely ignored or poorly accounted for; what it means to have or lose a job, environmental impacts, the true costs of waste, the value of wilderness, security, satisfaction, anxiety, instability, social capital (a few examples from a huge list). In fact, it relies on so many assumptions and waivers that it cannot reliably predict the outcomes of real-world interactions.

This is why the market is not free and never was. It is manipulated, sometimes with benign intentions, but more often to serve the needs of vested interests.

Despite these inherent flaws in the most basic mechanisms of capitalism, it is still widely accepted as a given, the only way forward for a democratic society.

There is more to concern us. Capitalist management ethos openly discourages leadership decisions based on humane ethics and higher motivations like; friendship, loyalty, support, mentoring and guardianship. It encourages egocentric short-term thinking – the so called individualism; what's in it for me? It creates forums for unprincipled and ruthless practices, like that weird construct called the financial market. Weird? Just ponder the reasons given for share and currency fluctuations; then try to make sense of the futures market. Capitalist witchcraft? You betcha!

Now quality. Capitalism emphasises the socio-economic (class) distinction associated with quality goods primarily as a marketing device, over and above any inherent advantages like longevity, reliability and aesthetic value. Materially affluent people are able to pay high retail prices for exclusive (quality) products to display their superior status as winners in the system. Meanwhile, many (the patronisingly labeled battlers) are only able to afford lower quality products with inbuilt redundancy that facilitates high turnover. In our consumer society, quality is all about branding lifestyle. It is NOT about quality of life.

We need to rethink what constitutes quality, value and wealth, and how to more equitably manage and distribute limited resources in a sustainable way, not just in terms of our species, but the whole biosphere.

Productivity accepted as an unquestioned principle is a dangerous cul-de-sac.