Moving water at Sydney Uni

The dilemma I often struggle with relates to nature conservation. I will use the Murray Darling as an example. I know I have written about this before, but during my last trip to south west NSW it again occurred to me that there is a tricky problem.

I was reading John Collee’s article in the newspaper: Prognosis for a planet. I agree, there has been very little action and lots of talk about climate change and time is running out fast.

The article’s main argument is that we are misinterpreting the speed with which the earth’s systems are changing. In particular we are underestimating the speed because we think in terms of linear processes; while the climate change process is exponential (i.e. rising much faster). John Collee argues that many health problems also develop exponentially and many natural processes in the human body and development occur exponentially.

Where is all the excitement in research? Where will the major questions about the human future be solved? You guessed it: In Agriculture!

Agriculture is often seen as the backwater, a dull topic with little excitement. Faculties of Agriculture are almost non-existent in Australia and those that still exist have difficulty attracting new students. This is very surprising and, as Paul Myers eloquently argued, to the detriment of us all.