Karin Geiselhart's blog

Travel broadens the mind is one of those phrases that is trite but true. In my case, perhaps unfortunately, it just intensifies my dismay at the disgraceful activities being undertaken in Canberra with my tax money in the name of 'development'.

As horrifying as it is to watch the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico unfold, it would be a mistake to think it is 'over there' somehow and won't have effects on us in Canberra. I'm not wise enough to predict their precise details, but I can see that patterns are emerging in relation to oil and its availability that will surely impact on our way of life in the very near future.

It also seems that our governments are not planning for this adequately, which is why we need to push very hard to make them sit up and take notice.

This oil spill, which may be the biggest environmental catastrophe so far for the US, is just one of the pieces that relate to oil. Taken together, they paint a picture that can help inform our decisions about our future.

To begin with, impacts on fishing industries in the Gulf of Mexico will probably further drive up the cost of fish globally, and further speed up the demise of fisheries. the book The End of the Line, by Charles Clover, is an eyeopener on overfishing. We've passed 'peak fish' long ago.

Well, that is a bit hyperbolic, but in principle, she would fully approve of what SC is doing. This article was brought to my attention through the climate action Canberra mailing list, which is just one of many useful communication vehicles dealing with this issue in the ACT. YOu can read it yourself, and it isn't technical:

A Multi-Scale Approach to Coping with Climate Change and Other Collective Action Problems, by Elinor Ostrom. 

http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/565

She goes through a clear analysis of why waiting for collective action, like waiting for Godot, is unlikely to provide the best outcomes. Her approach is grounded in complex adaptive systems analysis, which provides mathematical underpinnings for a lot of common sense. Everyday phrases like 'the straw that broke the camel's back' and 'a stitch in time saves nine', are metaphors for real physical processes.

Gardening can be a rewarding and peaceful activity. It offers an endless and pleasurable learning curve (unlike cleaning, for a different domestic comparison).

Even mundane activities like weeding and fertilising contribute to the whole, and are therefore part of the meditation of gardening.

But what happens when the time needed to get it even partly right outweighs the time available to tend to those fruit trees and veggies?

A few months ago, visiting an almost unbelievably productive garden in O'Connor, it struck me that harvesting and cooking or preserving all that wonderful vegetation would be nearly a full time task.

The photo I have attached illustrates my dilemma, which is probably echoed by each devoted gardener at some point or another. (you will have to click on it to see.)

I can grow decent carrots. The crop would have been better if I'd thinned them as seedlings, but that step got missed. Now I am harvesting them, and last week made a fine Indian carrot soup from my successful effort.

But of course, it could be a woman, too. The point is that my yard generates green waste, and that taking it to the tip where it can be left for free still requires a car, a trailer, time and petrol.

If Canberra is to become a greener city, with new clean green activities displacing our wasteful practices, wouldn't a Mobile Mulcher be a good new service niche?

A smidgeon of research on this issue (that means I called one tree service that offers mulching services) revealed that even at economy rates, getting someone to our house to mulch existing green waste would cost a minimum of $200 for an hour's work. That is a lot of mulching, I guess, but far more than the value/cost of me of a trip to the tip, since I already own a car and trailer.

But what about people who do not have such accoutrements, and isn't one good goal to have fewer unncecssary cars, trailers and car trips?

G'day SEE-Changers! Having lived in Canberra, on and off, for the past 30 years, I've seen a lot of change. Some of it has seen Canberra reaching its potential as the national capital and a planned city-state, a bit aloof from other metropolitan areas. Part of it has been watching a slow decline in the natural environment, as growth and drought outpaced sensible decision making.