this time ~ this space

Drought-stricken Australia faces the world’s most extreme climate change challenge as millions of city dwellers try to cope with water shortages. The drought, which has lasted a decade in parts of the country, has slowed Australia’s overall economic growth by an estimated 0.75 per cent as crops have fallen 62 per cent.

Two of Australia’s largest cities, Brisbane and Adelaide which are home to a combined total of almost three million people will run out of water by the year’s end unless the so-called “Big Dry” ends. Water restrictions have been imposed across the vast island continent and as the Murray-Darling River System which supports half the nation’s sheep flock, a quarter of the cattle and three-quarters of irrigated land is dying of thirst. The government says there will will no irrigation permits. The world’s largest living organism, the Great Barrier Reef has been badly damaged by bleaching linked to rising ocean temperatures.

Prime Minister John Howard, a conservative now in his 11th year in office, has moved from being a climate skeptic to what he calls a “climate realist,” who knows that he must offer programs to reduce global-warming greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, but wants to do it without economic pain or imposed targets, like Kyoto’s. He is proposing emissions trading and nuclear power.

The Labor Party leader, Kevin Rudd, proposes a hard target — a 60 percent reduction in Australian CO2 emissions from 2000 levels by 2050 — and subsidies for Aussies to retrofit their homes with energysaving systems. The whole issue has come from the bottom up, and it has come on so quickly that neither party can be sure it has its finger on the public pulse.

Today Thomas Friedman a columnist for the New York Times reports from Sydney:

Almost everywhere you travel these days, people are talking about their weather — and how it has changed. Nowhere have I found this more true, though, than in Australia, where “the big dry,” a six-year record drought, has parched the Aussie breadbasket so severely that on April 19, Prime Minister John Howard actually asked the whole country to pray for rain. “I told people you have to pray for rain,” Howard remarked to me, adding, “I said it without a hint of irony.” Source

Sustainable Dreaming: The Way of the Pipe is a journey across Australia that connects ancient Indigenous knowledge, and emerging sustainable practices, to help heal Australia’s current water crisis.

Cherokee Elder, James Medicine Tree is the caretaker of the United Nations Turtle Pipe and 200-year old Black Thunderbird Pipe. He travels the continent to bring balance to the drought-stricken land, and changing weather patterns, by connecting with the ‘Great Spirit’ through traditional Native American pipe ceremonies. He also connects with Australian Indigenous Elders, to learn from their knowledge of the land, and their ‘water dreamings’.

Each destination reveals it’s own water crises and possible solutions. A ‘sustainable dreaming’ is created through a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of land, people, and spirit.

Please click though to watch this documentary video at this website.

A hat-tip to fireraven for sharing the video link.

References: Aussie cities facing ‘Big Dry’ water shortages; Great Barrier Reef Coral Bleaching Response Plan; Autralia’s Darling River dying of thirst