In article ,
"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote:
Frankly, you don't either. Talk to a Sudanese refugee some time.
It's all a matter of degree.
Well of course it's a matter of degree! However, I dare say I have a
much better idea about drought than some Sydney dweller who only has
to turn on a tap to get water.
And we aren't talking about Sudan. We are talking about Australia.
Sydney people should try living under the regimes in say Goulburn or
Byrock where the residents recently went for 4 and a half days without
water. They don't kick up a fuss because their water is taken from
hundreds of miles away to feed their gawping needs.
I don't see why Sydney people wouldn't be able to put up with that, if
necessary. Of course we have 4 million people here, and some of them are
dills -- we've had people like the OP protesting to the newspapers about not
watering their lawns, but they get bucketed (no pun intended!). And of course
our decision-makers are often dills (don't get me started on Sartor or
desalination!) so they're the ones who start talking about pinching the water
from Tallowa etc.
My letter on a related subject was published today. I am now awaiting the
backlash from the anti-germ brigade. (Near the bottom of the page...)
http://www.smh.com.au/letters/index....e#contentSwap2
Again, not in my experience. They lack the sort of curiosity and
solution orientation of country people. They have everything
handed to them on a platter and so don't have to come up with
innovative or real life solutions or have to spend time thinking
about things that country people do.
Sydney is not Cranbrook. Nor does it consist entirely of the North Shore.
Truth be told, there are probably too many people in Sydney who don't 'think
about things' because they are trying to keep their heads above (metaphorical)
water of some kind. I work in TAFE and I see these people.
Contry people being well-known for the speed with which they embrace
change...
:-))) Nice job of stereotyping.
Yours too ;-)
Farmers were talking about Global warming and climate change
long before the bulk of the population. Only the real lunatic city
fringe were talking about those things when I knew of dead
boring and very conservative farmers who'd noticed the impact on
their land.
When?
I bought my copy of Blueprint for a Green Planet in 1987, the year I
did my HSC (in a middle-class suburb), and it has a page on the
greenhouse effect.
Really 1987! Bit slow off the mark.
I was 17, you geriatric! Couldn't afford to buy books before I turned 16 and
became eligible for Austudy.
Those stereotypically slow to accept change country people you think
so little of, first noticed such issues as salinity about a century
ago and they noticed dryland salinity in the mid 1920s. And farmers
in the WA SW first noticed and started commenting on the start of the
change to rainfall patterns in the 1970s. My own family also started
to talk of the decline in rainfall on their farm in NSW about the same
time and they live in a high rainfall area on the same farm which was
first settled by my GGGfather in 1862.
The question is: what did they DO about it? For example, farmers were still
*clearing* the WA wheat area in the 1920s. The plantings/earthworks I saw
were, I would estimate, ten years old. Bit of a gap there.
--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)
"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue