Dragon's Den: View from Down Under

Hello from Down Under, where I’m speaking about my book at the Sydney Writers’ Festival and jet-laggedly watching the sun rise over Sydney Harbour.

There’s a great assortment of environmental thinkers at this year’s Festival. My co-author Bruce Lourie and I are doing a panel later today with Bill McKibben who is here to talk about his new book “Eaarth” (an unusual title that he suggested to the crowd last night should be pronounced with an Arnold Schwarzenegger-style Austrian drawl). I had dinner with Tim Flannery last night, who chaired a great session on climate change politics post-Copenhagen. Raj Patel is also here, whose book “The Value of Nothing” is a trenchant critique of the unsustainability of our current economic model.

What’s really struck me being here in Australia – and I knew this already but it’s different seeing it close up – is the eery similarity between the environmental debate in Canada and Australia. As in Canada, the Australian federal government is paralyzed by the issue at the moment and whatever progress is occurring is happening at a State (or in Canada’s case, provincial) and municipal level.

As in Canada, where the companies running Alberta’s tar sands get whatever they want from the federal government, the coal lobby in Australia remains retrograde and extremely powerful.

And in the morning newspaper’s, there are even striking similarities between the kneejerk backlash to wind energy in both countries. In Ontario, the province’s Medical Officer of Health’s definitive ruling that there are no demonstrated links between wind turbines and health concerns has failed to satisfy the more strident wind energy opponents. And near Melbourne, a particular case study illustrates the danger of an ad hoc approach to siting new wind developments (which, thankfully, we’ve moved beyond in favour of a single, objective, provincial regulation in Ontario).

What does all this underline? That the environmental challenges we face, and the solutions we need, are truly global in nature. What’s true in the Great White North, is true Down Under. We have to find our way together.