 How farming is eating the world.
George Monbiot is a well known columnist at The Guardian with a strong interest in environmental issues. In Regenesis, he looks at the impact of farming globally. The conclusions he comes to are pretty stark, to say the least. In fact, many will be shocked where Monbiot writes that farming is “the most destructive force to have ever been unleashed by humans.” That’s a pretty big call, and one would expect it to be backed up with compelling evidence. The first half of Regenesis paints an almost apocalyptic image of a world despoiled by farming. The biggest culprit is animal farming, which produces enormous amounts of excrement. And not just any excrement, but poo that is full of antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals that have been pumped into animals to make them grow faster and bigger. Living as most of us do in cities, we aren’t directly exposed to this environmental degradation. Another madness of the global food system is the volume of animal feed grown (soy beans, primarily) that humans could eat. Under ten percent of soy grown actually goes into soy drinks and protein like tofu. The rest is fed to cattle, shipped from countries such as Brazil, the United States and Argentina. This massive soy production causes environmental damage of its own, with millions of acres of forest and grasslands cleared. What is the solution? A plant based diet. Globally. The amount of carbon drawn down from the atmosphere by this change in diet “would be equivalent to all the world’s fossil fuel emissions from the previous sixteen years.” Obviously this has little to no chance of happenening. What to do? The second half of Regenesis sees Monbiot talking to specialist farmers and scientists about alternatives. One avenue is what is known as no-till farming, where the soil is not turned over (tilling soil causes much damage). But the biggest discovery is what is known as microbial farming, using “hydrogen-oxygenating bacterium”. It produces a flour high in protein and can be produced in tanks, reducing the need for large swathes of farmland. Monbiot describes the joys of eating a pancake made with this bacteria, which reminded him of the ones he used to eat made with egg: “I would have found it harder still to accept that the main ingredient was the dessiccated bodies of bacteria. It tasted rich and mellow and filling: just like the pancakes I used to eat.” Regenesis is well researched and thoughtfully written. Monbiot shows great intellectual honesty in contemplating the problems ahead for the global food production. He worries that there could be ticking environmental time bombs that have not been anticipated in our increasingly complex food system. Anyone with a serious interest in environment, sustainability, food security, climate and fairness for poorer nations must read this book. Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet, by George Mobiot. Published by Allen Lane. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba  A major road project takes a belly flop.
Here's an extraordinary story of infrastructure planning gone awry, costing the taxpayer a billion dollars. The idea of an East-West road link had been kicked around policy circles for years and was finally taken up by Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu in 2011, just after his 2010 election win. Baillieu was seen as a weak, ineffectual premier, and his enthusiasm for the road project was lukewarm. Seeing his support as premier crumbling, he jumped ship before being pushed. His successor, Denis Napthine, wanted to appear a man of action and with a strong sense of mission. He took up the East West Link with gusto. So far, so good for the new Liberal Premier. Trouble was soon brewing, however. Locals who would be affected took umbrage – and then took up arms, or at least protest placards. There were court challenges and activists physically disrupting machinery, stopping works commencing. The Murdoch press portrayed the protesters as Luddites and greenie agitators. The Herald Sun covered the protests intensely, inadvertently helping the protesters' cause by keeping it relentlessly in the public eye. Enter the Labor party. With many an inner city seat at risk of succumbing to the Greens, the party moved in support of the protesters, even though there was much in principal support of the East-West Link within Labor. Finally, weeks out from an election, Daniel Andrews vowed to rip up any contracts that had been signed. Denis Napthine, despite this, committed the state to the project. Melbourne University academic James C. Murphy's main interest in the East-West Link story – or fiasco, as it is often gleefully referred to in this book – is to examine where power is located when it comes to decision making for major infrastructure projects. As he notes, public infrastructure is intensely political, as it involves public space and directly affects people's lives. His conclusion is that the East-West Link got up and running due to the influence and co-ordination of roads bureaucrat Ken Mathers. Mathers had three decades experience in roads bureaucracy, was well connected and skillfully orchestrated industry groups and other various boosters in favour of the project. Baillieu and Napthine appear as hollow men, holding power but not having any actual policy convictions. That the project was defeated appears to be almost random. The various protest groups that arose were not co-ordinated, more scattershot. But their vehemence and commitment won the day. The Making and the Unmaking of the East-West Link mixes theories of political science with a real life test case. Who holds power? How are major projects decided? Are community protests effective? Do faceless bureaucrats exert too much influence? These are some of the questions Murphy tries to answer, often with a sly sense of humour. The truth is governments can waste extraordinary amounts of money and we should probably pay more attention than we do. The Making and Unmaking of the East-West Link, by James C. Murphy. Published by Melbourne University Press. $34.99 Review by Chris Saliba |
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