The Rift Valley

*



A fountain's pulsing sobs--like this my blood
Measures its flowing, so it sometimes seems.
I hear a gentle murmur as it streams;
Where the wound lies I've never understood.

Like water meadows, boulevards are flooded.
Cobblestones, crisscrossed by scarlet rills,
Are islands; creatures come and drink their fill.
Nothing in nature now remains unblooded.

I used to hope that wine could bring me ease,
Could lull asleep my deeply gnawing mind.
I was a fool: the senses clear with wine.

I looked to Love to cure my old disease.
Love led me to a thicket of IVs
Where bristling needles thirsted for each vein.


The Fountain of Blood
by Charles Baudelaire
Translated by Rachel Hadas



Clairvoyance. Mistakes. The Holy Grail. We came skittering out of the ark into some strange form of altered consciousness, and all was lost, lost, as we struggled to the surface. These things were not meant to be. Kaleidoscopes of colour nurtured our well being. Suffocating, surfacing, surrounded by bubbles, rising through layers of fear. This was his daily, walking consciousness. Disturbed. Disoriented. Facing the truth and skittering into the shadows. Surrounded by safety and lost, lost, as hostile entities circled and shadows surfaced into the light. Some things were so embarrassing he barely wanted to record them, or had kept them hidden for years. Dramatic self destruction, that was acceptable. Other things were not.

We're coming for you, the Archangel said, and in all the convolutions and turmoil that had become his life, in the down time between jobs, exiting in disgrace, his glorious career in shatters, he found himself gazing out the window between Addis Ababa and Eritrea, increasingly sick as the hours passed. He didn't realise he would get this sick. He should have known. They had been using the same substances for so long, they had such excellent sources, their finances had been so substantial, the $50,000 pay out from the Herald, that he had acquired a solid habit yet again. Yet he knew better by now. It wasn't as if he had never faced a detox.

It wasn't as if he hadn't been told. Jails institutions and death. It's down down down. In a profession that celebrated eccentricity it was possible to get away with a great deal. A new beginning was an opportunity to fool a whole new group of people, to be dishonest not just to himself but to everyone around him. Guilt trailed his every waking moment. And now, as the blanket lifted and he was faced with the real world, so did his body reject everything about him. The plane was crowded. The Africans all around him were jolly, happy, healthy, concerned. He couldn't say what was really wrong.

Everything was moving. Everything was cloaked with discontent. Someone gave him liquids, and he lay with his arm out and the tubes running into his arm. Parts of Africa had the same feeling as Australia, an incredibly ancient land, visited by strangers from a future century, barely noticing the humans that flew so high above. And as waves of nausea hit him, he looked out on the ancient land. He couldn't explain to anyone what was really wrong. The charity that was paying for his trip were not getting good value for money. The minute they hit Asmara he retreated to his hotel room. All the things he was going to do amounted to nought.

The blinds were drawn and the hours passed more slowly than ever before. He could feel the city outside, different to any other he had been to, filled with handsome very black Eritreans, high up in the mountains. Days passed in this dreary state. He got up only to stalk the markets, desperately hoping for some form of relief. None came. After the long war, tourists did not come here. This was not India, or Goa. They were not used to the corrupt ways of Westerners. All thought of work slid out the window, as he stood strategically in markets, or sought out the seediest looking parts of the city. He didn't care if he was robbed or bashed, not any more.

Back home were his young children; and he had ended in this mess. He couldn't believe it of himself, much less anyone else. He couldn't believe he had made all the same mistakes again. He couldn't believe the shivering wreck he had become. But slowly the days passed, and he began to rally. The first day out he was still fragile, fobbing off the myth that he had suffered a bout of stomach trouble or even food poisoning, he didn't know exactly. He shrugged off their misplaced sympathy, and began to show an interest in this extraordinary place.

He watched as the charity went about its business, curing blindness, holding clinics where hundreds came, dealing with government authorities, doing good where none had been before, leaving behind trained experts, helping the poorest of the poor, children with their whole lives in front of them. All was not lost, and each day he grew in strength. He clung to the city's most upmarket hotels, the air conditioning cool on his clammy skin. He came forward and re-entered into the conversational realm. He visited the offices of the city's only English language newspaper, and fantasised about working there, doing good in a third world country. At least there was none of what had destroyed him here; and picturesque Italian churches clung to cliffs above the astonishing beauty of the Rift Valley.



THE BIGGER STORY:

Herald and Weekly Times:

OME of the nation’s most senior agricultural economists warn of severe economic consequences for the farm sector if Australia introduces a carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) ahead of our trade competitors like the US and Brazil.

The concerns echo those from farm leaders who fear Australian farmers will be disadvantaged by a scheme which will effectively impose an export tax on farm businesses with higher electricity, fuel and fertiliser costs – which won’t affect farmers in other countries because they aren’t covered by similar schemes.

The Australian Food and Grocery Council has also weighed into the debate, this week urging the Federal Government to implement a scheme which would ensure the competitiveness of Australia’s food and grocery manufacturing sector.

It said any ETS which did not include international emitters represented a threat to the $70 billion packaged food and grocery industry.

At a forum in Canberra last week, both the current and former head of the Australian Bureau of Resource Economics (ABARE) expressed concern for the potential cost to Australian agriculture and exporters under an emissions trading scheme.

Former ABARE chief, Dr Brian Fisher, said there was “absolutely nothing to be gained by going first here”.

“We are a very, very small country. We constitute about 1.3 odd per cent of emissions on the planet.”

Introducing a scheme ahead of other nations was not prosecuting Australia’s national interest, it was prosecuting somebody else’s and “we are going to be damned if we do”.

Dr Fisher, who now heads up a private economic consultancy company, said the government should focus its domestic climate change policy on adaptation because it will be “years” before there is an international agreement on emissions trading between the 190 countries involved in the ongoing negotiations.

Current ABARE chief, Phillip Glyde, said whether or not agriculture was shielded or not from being part of a scheme, the impacts on the sector through the use of emission intensive inputs would be significant.

He said in the cropping sector, 39 per cent of the input costs to cropping came from emission-intensive inputs, while in livestock those costs were about 17 per cent.

“There’s only one solution to all of this, particularly while the rest of the world doesn’t introduce an ETS or have emissions trading schemes excluding agriculture – it is to continue down the path of productivity improvements,” Mr Glyde said.

National Farmers Federation chief executive, Ben Fargher, stressed the importance of an emissions trading policy that did not disproportionately impact on a food producing sector like Australian agriculture.

“We need to make sure the medicine doesn’t end up being worse than the disease itself,” Mr Fargher said.

“As reinforced by Professor Garnaut, any domestic policy response must be formulated in the context of a global solution.

“It would be a perverse outcome if our emissions-efficient agricultural sector was put at a competitive disadvantage with overseas countries whose emissions profiles might well be higher than ours.”
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ABC:

FARMERS will be "crucified" if Australia cuts its greenhouse emissions ahead of other major economies.

This is the view of former federal research chief and greenhouse negotiator, Dr Brian Fisher.

Dr Fisher the Federal Government's emissions trading scheme would slug farmers and other exporters with carbon costs they couldn't pass on to overseas customers.

He said a new global agreement on cutting emissions was still "decades" away and Australia would have no influence on other countries by "going first".

"If we choose a target ahead of other countries, we'll crucify our trade-exposed, emission sectors, we'll roast them all on a spit," Dr Fisher said.

"There's absolutely nothing to be gained by going first. We are climate-takers, not climate-makers. We'll have no influence by leading with our own policies."

"Why would we do that? You can just imagine the 'secret smiles' of our competitors, who will no doubt be looking after their own national interest."

Speaking at a National Australia Bank-National Farmers' Federation forum last week, Dr Fisher said Australia should accept that climate change will continue and focus instead on helping farmers cope.

"We're stuck with climate change and we should make sure farmers have the maximum flexibility to adapt, rather than having 'Big Brother' dictate to them."

But a spokeswoman for Federal Climate Change Minister Senator Penny Wong said Australia would be severely affected by climate change if it didn't "act now".

Emissions trading schemes were already operating or about to start in many parts of the world and the Government was "firmly committed" to helping shape a global solution on climate change.

"Australia is heavily engaged in the next phase of international negotiations. If we are going to get the global action we need, we will have to act at home."

A senior economist at Concept Economics, Dr Fisher was a former head of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and a negotiator on the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, due to end in 2012.

Meanwhile, the NFF has also called on the Government for early support to help farmers cut their emissions ahead of a decision in 2013 on whether agriculture will go into an emissions trading scheme in 2015.

In the event that farmers are included, the NFF wants them, rather than processors and suppliers, to be directly responsible for cutting their own emissions.

And it wants farmers to be given at least 90 per cent of their emissions permits free of charge to help minimise the extra cost burden.

The Australian: September 19, 2008

Today's widespread polar bear concern is shot through with myth and misinformation. One of the nine scientific errors found in Al Gore's horror film An Inconvenient Truth, following a case brought in the British High Court last year, concerned his claims about polar bears. Gore claimed a scientific study had discovered that polar bears were drowning because they had to swim long distances to find ice. Yet the only scientific study Gore's team could provide as evidence was one showing that four polar bears had recently been found drowned because of a storm. According to Bjorn Lomborg, the sceptical environmentalist, the international tale about polar bears suffering at the hands of ruthless mankind springs from this single sighting of four dead bears the day after an abrupt windstorm.

It may be true that as a result of hunting and human intervention around the North Pole, polar bears will suffer. But the politics of the polar bear is not a scientific, fact-driven phenomenon: it is a morality tale. It is an anthropomorphic story every bit as daft as Bambi in which the polar bear has become a symbolic victim of man's wanton destruction of the planet. The polar bear has become the poster boy of the green lobby. It featured heavily in An Inconvenient Truth. Leonardo DiCaprio posed with one on the front cover of a special green issue of Vanity Fair. The bear he posed with - Knut from Berlin Zoo - is having his life story turned into a blockbuster movie, with Suri Cruise (daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes) reportedly lined up to provide his voice. Leaflets inviting people to join green movements now come with photos of stranded (or allegedly stranded) polar bears. So do adverts for low-energy light bulbs.

It was not scientific fact that elevated the polar bear to this privileged status of Bambi-style victimhood; it was the human self-loathing of the environmentalist moment. We are expected to believe that our most simple everyday activities, from what light bulbs we use to how many cups of tea we drink, are directly and terribly affecting polar bears thousands of kilometres away. So now you find serious green commentators saying things such as: The idea that turning on your kettle helps to drown polar bears has never really sunk in with many people. Yes, there's a reason for that: because when I turn on my kettle it has absolutely no effect whatsoever on any polar bear anywhere in the world. And that is a fact.

On the basis of some twisted or at least questionable facts, and conveniently cropped, heart-rending photos, the polar bear has come to represent human guilt and self-doubt. In the past, we Catholics were told not to misbehave because God would be displeased. It was said that if we wasted our food, then a little black baby would die. Today we are told that if we don't watch our energy use, trim our carbon footprint, follow Gore and make regular donations to various green groups, then polar bears will die. The great white bear of the north has taken the place of God in the clouds as the barometer of human behaviour and morality.

The political promotion of this animal represents the denigration of human desire, the subordination of the human will to the animalistic fearmongering of environmentalism.

In a more profound sense, then, the politics of the polar bear represents the disavowal of human interests, which come to be seen as grubby, greedy and destructive. The intervention of the polar bear even into the US election is striking. That many Democratic Party supporters and radical activists are claiming to act on behalf of the polar bear, even dressing up as bears for anti-Palin protests, shows the extent to which environmentalism threatens to empty politics of its human, self-interested, democratic component. Some people are not representing themselves in the election but are speaking for the cute (eh?), voiceless polar bear. Polar Bears for Obama does not spring from the typically dumb Disneyfication of US politics but from the misanthropic, people-less politics of being green.

Brendan O'Neill is editor of online magazine Spiked.