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The Benefits Of Development | Not Here Please

Photo courtesy: www.abc.net.au

I try not to read the “news” on Sundays because it is my day for catching up on all the things that I did not accomplish during the week before. Today however, I decided to take a peek at the news from “down under” . . . you know, the place of the rugged, spiritual Crocodile Dundee and a beer so lifeless that it has been reduced to a two letter acronym (“VB”). I wanted to see what the benefits of development may have been in the defining moments of the island’s 40,000 years of history – other than the arrival of Captain Cook.

Not only did I read that Abbott has affirmed the significance of the arrival of Captain Cook, bringing the benefits of development to Australia (albeit not the the “Australians” who had been there for 40,000 years), as being a moment of superior historic importance, over 40-millennia of cultural refinement, but he has also apparently allowed the most supremely arrogant/ignorant/stupid (you choose) plan for the development/destruction (you choose) of yet another wilderness area to be promulgated.

I refer to the proposed development of Lake Argyle in the remote Kimberly region of Northern Australia, and a plan that, if it bears fruit, will transform a magnificent wilderness into a metropolis. Why? to satisfy the greed of developers and the needs of a population that is so numb to the harmonics of the natural World that it does not know when to use a condom nor to count the days.

The most significant stumbling block to realizing the benefits of development in Lake Argyle is reported to be the climate (there is only one passing mention of the 20,000 crocodiles in the lake and the rivers that feed it). The climate is reported to be “hot” – not surprising considering the latitude. No matter, the Indonesians and the Chinese will fill the space if the price is right . . . and as only a dozen people currently live in the vicinity at the moment the price is bound to be right.

Why would attempting to reap the benefits of development be considered arrogant or ignorant or stupid?

It would be arrogant to assume that it will be easy to create benefits of development in an area that is hot, when the forecast for the next 1000 years is for the climate to get hotter every year. The only possible explanation for taking a position that assumes development benefits will come in any event, is that the proponents of the scheme are either insanely greedy and or they are climate skeptics on a scale beyond current comprehension. Plus, they must either, assume they will have or, in fact have sufficient control over the “truth”, as dispensed by the “media” in the public domain, to be able to lie through their teeth (and all orifices) to potential investors.

It would be ignorant because an action designed to deliver benefits of development to an area that requires none, and is in fact absolutely accomplished in delivering what it has been delivering for eons, without any add-ons, illustrates the total lack of comprehension of the imperative need to preserve the biodiversity of every wilderness for our children and our grandchildren.

It would be stupid because the time and money and resource that will need to be invested to bring the benefits of development to people, who do not actually want to be in an area so hot or hostile, combined with the destruction of the biosphere within the area, would dramatically inhibit (or destroy) the continued development of an eco-system that will provide an insight for future generations into the natural systems of survival that Mother Nature has been evolving for millions of years. In other words, the benefits of development will be the eradication of acquired knowledge about how to survive through to the next epoch. Ever heard the expression “shooting yourself in the foot”? Here is an example of shooting everyone around you in the foot as well.

What more can I say . . .

If you want to live in world filled with the benefits of development that has no real life and no future for your children or grand children, past the profit you can make off the land you buy and sell, then go for it.

If you want your children and grandchildren to live in a world that has real life and real potential for the development of solutions for long term survival then think before you procreate and think again before you buy and sell in places where nature made more beauty than Man can possibly emulate with concrete, steel and polished lumber.

Go back to the image at the top of this item and choose which half of the vision of Lake Argyle appeals to you: the upper left is how lake Argyle is today; the lower right is how the developers see the benefits for the future. Once you have chosen you will know who you really are: the developer or the destroyer. And may your God help you if you are destroyer, for your children and your grandchildren will not.

 

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