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.
But Australian Prime Minister and global warming sceptic John Howard would only say, “All I know it is a very bad drought. It is the worst in living memory.”
Well, it would be if it was a 1-in-1,000 year drought.
Meanwhile, Australian politicians are trying to push through more big coal mines and pushing clean coal (even though the technology to “bury” their carbon emissions is well behind schedule), jumping on the nuclear bandwagon, supporting the clear felling of old-growth forests for woodchips, and generally selling off any resource they can get their hands on.
Strangely, they are also demanding new coastal flood defences to protect cities from the effects of global warming and ignoring the fact that Australia has a huge solar resource, good wind and geothermal potential, and much of the technology to develop those.
It’s funny how so many politicians the world over have the same stench about them.
It is unbelievable that so many men in power have so little brain power. Every house in the United States, at least the southern US and the SW US should have Solar Photovoltaic Panals on their roofs. How can we get the message to the people of the world that this is the perfect solution to the worlds power problem?
“All I know it is a very bad drought. It is the worst in living memory.” It is just very easy to say “we are in danger”, but it seems difficult to say: ” let us stop what causes us harm”. It is a shame that politicians neither try to prevent such problems nor try to find their solutions.
[...] in Europe - drought in some areas, floods in others - have reduced yields there, while in Australia the worst drought in 1,000 years has brought about a situation people thought would never happen - some crops may need to be [...]