Australian drought ‘worst in 1,000 years’

While our individual water situation in North-east Scotland is bad, the water situation in Australia is going from worse to incomprehensible.

Government officials told a national water summit that “analyses of the current prolonged drought now pointed to the driest period in 1,000 years“.

A spokeswoman for the Murray-Darling Basin Commission said: “We don’t have the records to substantiate a one-in-100-year drought any more - it’s beyond that.

Reducing car use still further

Earlier, I wrote about how I’d like to cut back from being a two-car family to being a one-car, one-trike family.

I also mentioned that having only one car could lead to problems on the days we needed to collect carcases from the abbatoirs for deliver to the butchers or when we needed to collect the meat from the butcher.

I initially thought the solution would be for me to drive the Other Half to work in Old Meldrum, then do all the meat-related trips and then collect her from work at the end of the day.

Not quite what was planned

I’m going on a trip to see Father Christmas. It’s going to be fun!

What to do next?

No, I’m not talking about what to do for the day ahead on the croft but asking what we can do to further cut our consumption of resources, reduce our amount of waste and cut our emissions.

The Other Half and I make a conscious effort to minimise and reduce our electricity useage, to not make unnecessary journeys, to reject buying consumer goods, to reduce, reuse and recycle what we do buy, to grow our own fruit and vegetables to reduce food miles and so on.

But where we start to falter is in taking the next step, where on our small scale you can see the problems in cutting back on a larger scale while still bringing other people along with you.