Jennifer Marohasy

When I see people holding ’stop climate change’ placards, I wish for a new environmental movement. One that understands and accepts planet earth. An environment movement that understand, whether or not we do something about carbon dioxide emissions, there will be climate change. There has always been climate change on planet earth.
Interestingly, a [...]

Cattle can destroy a landscape. The Victorian Premier last week banned grazing in the Alpine National Park on the basis that:
Cattle:
* trample streambanks, springs and soaks
* damage and destroy fragile alpine mossbeds
* create bare ground, disturb soil and cause erosion
* pollute water
* are a significant threat to a number of rare and threatened plants [...]

The front page of The Australian on Wednesday (May 25th) included the headline: “Thirstiest crop: 21,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of rice.”
The figure was based on a “new CSIRO study, which found that of 135 industries analyzed, rice was one of the nation’s most costly – financially, socially and environmentally.”
The Rice Growers’ Association [...]

“There is much to be said for a policy of abolishing all drought relief assistance. Drought is a normal, natural, cyclic factor of our environment and if you can not understand and cope with that, maybe you should not be farming” concludes Warwick Hughes in his latest drought assessment(30 kbs).
And some of the farmers [...]

Furiously preparing a powerpoint presentation for tomorrow from a hotel in Dubbo, I have stumbled across the following information:
Australia is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs)per capita in the world, using figures from the US Energy Information Administration website.
The four highest figures for 1990 appear to be: Australia, 27.7 tons CO2 equivalent; United States, [...]

I leave today for Brewarrina, 100kms east of Bourke. I will be speaking at a NSW Farmer’s Forum on the issues I raised in my column in The Land of 3rd February.
I wrote:
The latest round of restrictions on tree clearing in NSW and Queensland were driven in part by the Federal Government’s global warming [...]

Adelaide City Council is making 40 bikes available for city workers, tourists and presumably others – free for the first two hours.
As an avid bike rider, I say what a great idea.
I have my own bike for getting about Brisbane, and have often wondered about ‘packing it’ for my visits to Melbourne.

Neil Hewitt posted the following comment after my post of 19th May titled Just Released on Parks and Weeds:
“My suggestion … is that public administration of protected area estate be removed of its exclusionary influences to fair trade, by requiring that conservation management is completely self-funded from the natural and cultural resources of the reserve [...]

A recent report by the Australian Institute titled “The Attitudes of Young People to the Environment” concluded that:
“Despite the increase in both scientific and political attention paid to environmental problems and a heightened emphasis on the environment in school curricula, young Australians are among the least likely to see themselves as environmentalists … They are, [...]

Ian Beale from Mungallala, SW Queensland, emailed me this picture with the headline:
Save the poor bustard – stop tree thickening.
He also wrote,
Our area has the widespread problem of thickening of woody species, but we have an increasing number of these birds in areas where timber has been controlled. One of our older district residents [...]