https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ae_gjZ8b06Yeupa_ma3MzmDS4ph5lXKG/edit?usp=drivesdk&ouid=117899732130834555024&rtpof=true&sd=true

I would like to emphasise some other points which in my view can provide possibilities and direction for positive action.

1. Water doesn’t disappear- It changes location and changes phases.

E.g. We currently have rising sea levels and a warming atmosphere which holds more water vapour. This further warms the atmosphere which holds more moisture. A warmer atmosphere makes cloud formation more difficult and water vapour increases. As a generalisation precipitation events become less frequent and more severe. A positive feedback loop. Groundwater is being depleted rapidly through pumping. Again more water from the land going into the ocean and the atmosphere.

Hopefully one day the national strategic emphasis will be on how we steward our landscapes so that the water from the ocean and in the atmosphere can participate more in the small water cycle.

Importantly each individual or collective has the capability to innovate or improve their own context. Permaculture emphasises and teaches this very well.

2. There is hope. All is not lost in a degenerative spiral of ecological dysfunction.

Living systems are dynamic. There is no static point in the past where they peaked. We can enable Nature to create topsoil or rapidly restore healthy water cycles.

Sometimes I hear permaculturalists or Regen Ag advocates say that a previous abundant ecosystem and incredible fertility from the past can’t exist again. When in fact if we steward our land for more life and diversity it is not only logical but inevitable that abundance, fertility, diversity and ecological function beyond what has existed can be expressed.

Many people around the world face extreme water challenges today and increasingly so in Australia.

This has the motivation for a startup company my co-founders and I have formed. PSKL – Water For All Pty Ltd. We focus on rapid infiltration and pumping of extreme runoff or snow melt in some innovative ways. The can help reduce drought, fire, flood and a changing climate. Strategies are focused on increasing the biotic pump effect and bioprecipitation. There are many interconnected benefits.

Example strategies: Desert to Rainforest https://drive.google.com/file/d/14MXQPJyW8FSJ6F1rmFyMPV5J7RF787tt/view?usp=sharing

x100 Infiltration TIME- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CwG_JtZ4yCqA1oKzsrmJN9yMzelMrZ2l/view?usp=sharing

Snow Melt – https://drive.google.com/file/d/12TZ3pdhhH7gN9HJJ0-pBXejVjLI4kigY/view?usp=sharing

Happy to hear your anyones feedback or questions

Thanks David for your incredible body of work and inspiration. 🙂

Steve
PSKL – Water For All Pty Ltd

I think you are beginning to sound like a troll. You have made your point and are cluttering up the comments section with what appears to be a personal agenda. Oh and it’s boring too.

I agree that the distributed and controlled burning of wood through high quality combustion home stoves solves in a large way the issue of greater physical harms (asthmatic or more severe) from uncontrolled forest fires. So far the government has not found a solution except large scale back-burning. I am sorry for people with breathing issues though.

I agree that all these uses you mentioned are more efficient and have the potential to actually maximise power, it’s just that I see the large scale irrigated districts incentivised to continue to irrigate with vast amounts of water in a Jevons paradox style, using centre pivot and lateral irrigators for enormous cereal grain production plus almonds and nuts all for the export market (both of which are expanding as we speak, particularly summer irrigated crops like maize and even soybeans are being proposed for the dreaded midwestern combo) which is a more efficient use of water but may lead to increasing inputs and if expanded only a small change in overall water use for agriculture. A lot will depend how much longer fossil fuels and electricity stay cheap enough to make it profitable.

Being from the area and living deep amongst these irrigation schemes I’ve seen some changes over the last decade or so that match up both with parts of your vision and follow a systemic response along the lines of Odum’s work. To me the dairy farms were the natural outcome of what amounted to unlimited water availability for irrigation on the best soils, as it produced a high value product with great transformity. But in a similar way to other systems with huge throughput of energy (in this case in the form of water), it created a low diversity and wasteful environment.

Since the millennium drought and tightening of water availability through the creation of the water market there has been a large decrease in the number of dairy farms and the energy throughput of large scale flood irrigation, but an increase in diversity of farm operations. There are far more nut plantings and mixed enterprises. In many ways these old dairy farms are the prefect sites for more rebellious independent minded types to try out new ideas on good soil with the help of much more modest irrigation than the past.

From a certain deep time perspective the dairy years may have been a regional ‘pulse’ of high energy inputs that increased soil fertility and overall biological productivity of the area by seeding it with high value naturalising legumes such sub clover, lucerne and vetch. More diverse land uses can build upon this base that use water more efficiently.

(I’ve often thought about this regarding Australian agriculture as a whole, with the fossil fuel powered fertilising of the last century pulsing our geologically old soils, particularly with phosphorus and calcium that was lacking. Maybe Gaia found a way to use us?)

Thanks for your question and future scenario. I agree your scenario is one that could play out in the longer term. However leaving aside the Swiftian satire aspect of my piece, conserving water to align with what might be available in the relatively near future can be a pathway to maximum power. Reallocating water from less useful to more beneficial uses (eg from sugar to rice or cotton to hemp) can also maximize power. Winding back cow dairy production and consumption in favour of goat dairy and tree crops could improve population health and consequently systemic power. Beyond these rather conventional options, it is even possible that reallocating water back to “environmental flows” could increase biological productivity, that could in turn generate future resource wealth, even if those resources are so diverse and distributed as to be only suitable for harvesting via localised non monetary economies. So in these ways, I doubt the “enlightened collective self interest” that I am trying to illustrate contradicts the idea that the Murray Darling Basin could become a power centre with influence across the Australian continent long after the non renewable resource are depleted. Whether that influence is benign and beneficial or exploitative and oppressive might be in the chances and trajectories of history beyond any of our speculations.

Those states who hold onto their large scale irrigated agriculture the longest will be at a massive advantage. The irrigation schemes do offer some protection against drought, and if the rest of the landscape is parched being able to irrigate will make these places seem like oasis. The Murray Darling Basin and its schemes (especially the snowy hydro ) therefore looms as a hotly contested region in decline scenarios. In the longer term future where international trade breaks down the basin could establish itself as one of the dominant regions on the Australian continent due to the legacy irrigation infrastructure, and harden into a centralised society seen in other irrigation cultures like Egypt and the China of the northern plain. This region would therefore be able to militarily dominate other regions that are less centralised. Cynical vision for sure, but history seems to point that way.

Asthmatic here with wood fired heating with neighbours with wood fired heating semi rural
I have more trouble in spring with the wattle blooms than wood smoke
To tell the absolute truth in spring I regularly end up on steroids to bring my asthma under control.
I never have this problem in winter.
This is my experience