Dry Times Blueprint for a Red Land.

Abstract

RESOURCE depletion, pollution, climate change, species extinctions, etc. have opened most people’s eyes to the fact that the future of humanity is irrefutably linked with the life support systems of our environment. Yet, particularly in urban Australian society, cheap clean water from ever-declining aquifers still flows freely from our taps; easily recyclable goods are collected weekly in oversized wheely-bins and dumped out of sight as landfill; our energy consumption from the burning of fossil fuels is enormous, even though Australia is blessed with practically unlimited supply of solar and wind energy. Anyone who has ever spent time travelling through outback Australia will know that our ingrained urban habits, interestingly, quickly change in the face of scarcity and uncertainty. A good example is how careful we become of not wasting a single drop of water. Suddenly it is possible to survive without electrical lighting, and other modcoms. So, we are obviously capable of changing our ways, and what Mark Stafford and Julian Cribb postulate, is that by listening to the knowledge of the desert we may have a roadmap to survival in the 21st century.