From: mjvande@pbhye.PacBell.COM (Mike Vandeman)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Alliance for a Paving Moratorium (Alert)
Date: 30 Dec 92 16:10:28 GMT
Reply-To: mjvande@PacBell.COM (Mike Vandeman)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA

> > 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 . . .
 
I see. Your real beef is that an outsider can see through you, & may even
know more about your problems than you. So you have to ignore what they
say....

> > 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.
 
To say nothing of the deforestation promoted by the Australian government,
in preference to cattle & sheep.

>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.
 
Only your aborigines, as far as I can see, ever practiced sustainable
living practices. Is that what you want to go back to? Or the deforestation
agriculture brought from England?

>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?
 
As a matter of fact, I spent a day with Keith Bradby (sp?), seeing the
problems your agriculture has wrought, such as fertilizer runoff &
salinization. You CHOSE to be auto-dependent. Other people choose not to
be.

>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.
 
How long did it take Peter & friends to replace highway plans (to destroy
Fremantle's center) with light rail? Which side were you on???

> > 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 . . .

Thanks. He probably doesn't squander his energy fighting off influxes
of (horrors) new ideas.