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- Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uniwa!DIALix!tillage!gil
- From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
- Newsgroups: sci.environment
- Subject: Alliance for a Paving Moratorium (Alert)
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <725695995snx@tillage.DIALix.oz.au>
- References: <1992Dec30.004219.13111@pbhye.PacBell.COM>
- Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 06:13:15 GMT
- Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents
- Lines: 75
-
-
- In article <1992Dec30.004219.13111@pbhye.PacBell.COM> mjvande@PacBell.COM writes:
-
- > I did better than that. I spent a week in Perth in April. What you
- > don't seem to realize is that before people can DO something they
- > consider "radical", they first have to CONCEIVE of it, which is where
- > I come in. Nobody else is willing to broach even the IDEAS, so I do.
- > Once they hear it often enough, it will move from "radical" to
- > "common sense". It is already happening. When I started talking about
- > stopping highway construction 6 years ago, nobody would listen or
- > seriously consider it. Now it is common sense, among a large segment
- > of the world (well, large compared to before).
-
- Help us! Not another Messiah arriving with *the answer to everything*,
- deeming everyone else mindless because they hadn't thought of it yet.
-
- Let me point out that our various programs here are well-developed,
- since we have been working on them ourselves for many years. In the
- meantime, I never heard of Mike Vandeman until now. Just one more
- pretentious nobody with a PhD jumping on the band wagon . . .
-
- > Many people don't agree with you, & I often get thanks for having the
- > courage to say what I do.
-
- I should hope they disagree with me, else we would have nothing at all
- to discuss, yes? Sure, I often get praise, but I also get rocks thrown
- at me while the wad probably don't even know I exist, or give a shit
- about anything I might have to say anyway.
-
- > Rebuilding Perth & other cities to not be auto-dependent is a big
- > problem, addressed by Richard Register (Ecocity Berkeley) & others.
- > But I think that it will happen naturally, & peope will FIND the
- > solutions, once they HAVE TO (congestion becomes intolerable). Thus,
- > we have to allow congestion to increase.
-
- Nothing happening naturally at all. Alongside the *active* development
- of Perth has been a massive impoverishment of the rural community due
- to the state of world commodity markets, resulting in rapidly increased
- urbanisation during the past ten years we had desperately to address,
- else suffer the consequences.
-
- It is financed from a currently expanded mining sector exporting vast
- quantities of bulk iron ore in the interim, but the long term prognosis
- is certainly not healthy unless we return to a viable and sustainable
- rural sector and get people back onto the land so it can be made far
- more productive than it is, and somehow manage to attract a level of
- value added on-processing of our resource base to underwrite future
- economic development.
-
- While you were here, you didn't happen to visit Salmon Gums, or Bruce
- Rock, or Morawa, or anywhere else did you? Or have a look at programs
- we also have in place to address juvenile crime, drug abuse, racial
- and ethnic tension, land degradation and catchment pollution? Or pay
- attention to the fact that Perth is very much the focus of a vast
- hinterland very much dependent on the automobile?
-
- Or perhaps you merely wish to diminish the fact that we are here quite
- capable of looking after ourselves, by proposing some vague *natural
- process* to Perth's redevelopment, while you promote yourself over there
- in the US as the only one with any foresight or intelligence whatsoever
- since (quote) "Nobody else is willing to broach even the IDEAS, so I do."
- ^^^^^^
- We are light years ahead of you, pal, while the overwhelming evidence
- both here and abroad suggests that you are in fact just another deadshit.
-
- > Thanks. Do you have an address for him?
-
- You might try writing to c/- the Post Office, Nimbin N.S.W. 2480. All
- the *Rainbow People* up there will know where he is right now.
-
- Old Peter Pedal would be a good bloke for you to be getting in touch
- with, I expect. He was a messiah too, in his day . . .
-
- Gil
-
-