Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
with population, environment and human well-being. It is clear that
the existing, traditional structures and tertiary-educational training
constrain effective inter-disciplinary approaches. Nascent moves in
Australian universities to create more interdisciplinary courses and
research endeavours need to be reinforced - and supported by
funding incentives.
ii
Education
: The oncoming generation of children must better
understand the ecological framework within which the human
species lives. The essence of 'sustainability' is that we must learn to
live on the natural world's terms, not on our own presumptuously
detached (and ultimately destructive) terms. That will require some
profound change in the science curriculum of school education in
Australia, as elsewhere.
iii
Politics
: We must move beyond our current 'adolescent' phase of
human behaviour (Cocks 2003). Today's competitive, narrowly self-
interested, nation-states are a modern analogue of ancestral warring
tribes of hunter-gatherers. Awkwardly, this competitiveness,
selfishness and 'short-termism' is deeply programmed into the
human species, as the product of the long evolutionary struggle for
survival. We must, therefore, deploy our self-awareness and our
capacity for cultural sophistication, particularly our unique (though
largely latent) ability to anticipate and shape the distant future, in
order to override these more primitive, shortsighted, living-in-the-
moment attitudes.
Increasingly, enlightened political leadership will attract votes from
those who want a safer world for their grandchildren. But this process needs
to start happening this decade. For the moment, Australian policy-making is
largely in thrall to the immediacies of economic growth, consumer satisfac-
tions, and the external threats of 'terror' - the latter tending to have us follow
reflexively, the lead of our strong ally, the United States. Policy-making in
relation to longer-term sustainability issues has largely been sidelined, and
there has been little readiness to make an overt commitment to international
efforts such as the Kyoto Protocol for reducing greenhouse gas reductions.
Underlying these three strategies must be a new awareness that 'sustaina-
bility' is ultimately about optimising human social and biological experi-
ences. That may require changes in social and political organisation, and in
