Essential services
THE PLATFORM - RESHAPING OUR WORLD ………….. POSSIBILITIES Our response for the South Coast, NSW Australia
Though we are the furthest corner of the known world we can lead a global movement for survival with dignity, for our children and our grandchildren. We have enough skills down here to build a movement for the future. We can establish a process so that, as things get more perilous, we seamlessly into a survival strategy.
We can create an Ark in the South. Coming down here has given me this hope. We can do it! Here is a list some of the issues that we need to face, none of which are beyond our abilities.
When most of world river valleys are flooded, we need to help SCPA and others expand the food for our community, including those in the towns and refugees. How long does it take to create a self-sustaining garden? To build great soil? To train the gardeners? How can we adapt to a world without supermarkets? Who can mend shoes, clothes? Will there still be TV and mobiles?
As seas rise the ports will be less and less functional. Trade will decline and imports slow down. Whence petrol and oil and plastics, spare parts, tyres? How do we connect when there may be total rationing. How move food, and the sick and dying? We will need to rebuild roads, schools. We need to think of tractors, chain saws and the basic equipment for growing food and its storage.
Its too late to stop climate change. Trying has become dispiriting, while restructuring society can bring enormous hope and positivity. One of our wisdom roles will be to find how to defuse the rage and grief we will feel at the losses and channel it into ways that benefit the community. We will need healers and sages, the wise and the strong to bring positivity out of the coming mess.
4. Maintenance & Solar
We are a building and repairing community and depend on energy and manufacture. Though we have our own 5Mw Brown Mountain Power Station we are dependent on outside sources for goods, both consumable and equipment. We need to list our skills, and can we support some older skills such as shoe mending, horse training, food preservation, and so on?
How would existing services react, or even cope? Can we ensure that the most important would still be available? Where are the doctors, dentists, nurses, the medicines, bandages, equipment? How protect against bushfires? Government will retreat to the cities.
The amount of heat already stored in the oceans seems sufficient to raise sea levels by many metres with loss of roads, bridges, schools. What happens to insurance, fire protection? How repay mortgages? A billion refugees worldwide, and a million Australian refugees would go where? How do we house and feed them, and half now live in cities.
As tensions mount people will move to avoid rising sea, to access fresh water and seek food, with conflicts and wars that are already included in military planning. Communication systems will be restricted and the internet cut off. We need alternative ways to connect within the community.
Authority will shrivel as in the past, and will concentrate on what it can control, being the bigger cities. The countryside will be increasingly isolated, and left to its own devices. How do we assure security and freedom in this community, and not fall under some local warlord? Who pays for new infrastructure, and how do we pay for what we need to do in the meantime? As money is based on trust, will paper notes be worth anything? What of our investments and pensions? What happens when rents and mortgages cannot be paid, when insurance dries up? Is there a possibility that banks will fail, and then what of insurance, mortgages, investments and wages? We need to know.