Sustainability lost…….

Two weeks ago, I left my cocoon in Geevo and flew to Queensland for the first time in over two years…  and no, I will not be driving back in another ute!  Glenda was supposed to join me in Tasmania around now, but, as they say, life puts paid to the best laid plans, and her mother now aged 94 had a fall, breaking her wrist and fracturing her pelvis, never a good idea at such a ripe old age.

My flight was delayed for over an hour, and I didn’t arrive in Brisbane until past 11PM, then Virgin put my luggage on the wrong carousel, while my son was waiting outside to take me to his new place he shares with his partner and one other in a new apartment near the river. I’d heard all about this apartment, especially the bit about going from student poverty to working man riches…. but the view is so stunning, I had to pinch myself to make sure it wasn’t all a dream! I never thought I’d think of our son as “how the other half lives”!

He might as well enjoy it while he can I guess, they have to live somewhere, and it’s sited unbelievably close to public transport.

I brought the cold weather with me it appeared, my first morning there was the coldest Queensland had experienced in a very long time; mornings were actually several degrees less cold in Geeveston, though of course it never warmed up to 20 degrees at the Fanny Farm.

The hustle and bustle of “the big smoke” always shocks me after the quiet life in Southern Tasmania, even though I lived in Brisbane for decades, and I of all people should not be shocked after writing reams about the unsustainability of our civilisation…. but it nevertheless brings it all home to me.

What was also brought home to me is the unsustainability of keeping old people alive, using world best practice technology of course….. This is, like population, a very ticklish issue that nobody talks about. I’m almost thirty years younger than my mother in law, and I have already come to grips with the fact my days are numbered, even if they are not quite as numbered as hers, but the amount of resources, money, and energy spent on keeping her alive for what may not be more than three months is staggering…….

How anyone measures what is or is not appropriate to keep a very old person comfortable is anyone’s guess. Can anyone even pass judgement? We do what we do, as my old friend Bruce once said to me, because we can. It’s how I flew up at short notice. Speaking of noticing, airfares have gone up 50% since last time I did this….

The flurry of activity since Betty’s return from hospital is amazing. A new ramp that probably cost $3000 has been built so her wheelchair can accommodate the single step difference between the house floor and the ground outside. We’ve had physios, occupational therapists and a social worker call to assess the situation. Tomorrow, ‘a builder’ is coming to install a hook for Betty’s shower, presumably so she can be showered sitting down….. and I have no idea who’s paying for all this.

A couple of days ago, she suddenly became quite ill, an ambulance was called, and I had to follow it all the way to Nambour Hospital (and of course return), a 100km trip. Luckily, she was transferred to Noosa which is just ten minutes away, but all the same, the amount of driving I am currently undertaking as the nominated driver is amazing. It’s a good thing Glenda’s little car runs on the smell of fumes because this amount of driving is easily four times as much as I am used to!

Trained as I am by my INTJ personality to only see the amount of energy and resources needed to achieve these results, I feel like I have actually flown to a different planet. Then there’s the traffic…..  and it’s not just me, friends I have since spoken to agree that congestion around Noosa is definitely on the up, and every second car is a SUV…. This place used to be a sleepy village, but no more.

I also feel like I have lost control of what I eat. I haven’t managed to find a decent loaf of bread yet. Everything I buy is cheaper than what I’m used to, but it’s all wrapped in plastic…. and I hate it. I’ve even put on two kilos since largely going off my high protein diet to fit in with everybody else and eating cake and biscuits with visitors celebrating the old lady’s 94th birthday……

But I had to do this, my poor wife is carrying quite a burden, and she needed the moral support, and by doing things around the place to keep the show running, she has more time to spend nursing her mother……

Since leaving Geevo, the weather has been doing its Tasmanian winter thing, lots of rain, mud everywhere, unlike here which is just like a Tasmanian summer; it’s unlikely I would have been able to do much around the farm anyway. Plus it stops me working on the house before my concrete reaches maximum strength… and building roofs in the rain is problematic at best.

While here, I watched some stupid TV show about “Extreme Homes” that featured Far North Queensland houses, all so far over the top I was stunned….  but one in particular stood out.  Here I am, feeling guilty about the 80 m³ of concrete I have now poured into Mon Abri, and this place comes up boasting, wait for it, 15,000 m³ of concrete……. I’m actually really really hoping it’s misreporting, and that maybe it was tonnes (each m³ of concrete weighs 2.5 tonnes). This monster house has apparently no timber whatever in it and is capable of withstanding category 5 cyclones. With 18kW (!) of PVs on its roof, the program classified it as zero energy house……. never mind the fact that this much concrete would emit nearly 20,000 tonnes of CO₂ or 2000 years worth of emissions from your average Australian.

When stupidity like this is spread on TV to people who will certainly believe it, what chance have we got? This will make more and more people, probably, aspire to building some similar monument to unsustainability…..

Meanwhile, the Earth is burning, or where it’s not burning, it’s flooding, like Japan which just finished dealing with floods and landslides and is now facing a severe typhoon….

This diagram of how the climate statistics are changing just came up in my news feed. It pays to understand standard distribution curves I guess, but it’s a good explanation of what we’ll be facing in the future.

I may stay in Queensland for another two weeks, but any longer will make me go mad. At least in Tassie I can sort of pretend I won’t be affected, and stick my head back in the sand. Everybody else is doing it….