From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Alliance for a Paving Moratorium (Alert)
Distribution: world
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 06:13:15 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


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