text: The 2019 OECD Environmental Performance Review for Australia, launched recently and reported in The Guardian if hardly anywhere else, makes horrible reading. “Australia is home to a 10th of global species and is seen by many as synonymous with pristine coastal areas and an outback brimming with nature. However the country is increasingly exposed to rising sea levels, floods, heat waves, bushfires and drought”… wildlife is in a poor state and its condition is worsening… Australia’s Strategy for Nature 2018-2030 appears “unlikely to catalyse progress”. With the exception of the Reef 2050 Plan funding for conservation and research is falling. “Australia has no national long term vision on sustainable development…is one of the most carbon-intensive economies in the OECD, has no long term strategy for lowering emissions…and emissions are projected to increase by 2030.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/30/australias-record-on-emissions-and-sustainability-condemned-by-oecd-review
  There have been intimations of catastrophe in recent weeks. Flames have lapped at sacred places that will be lost for ever if they burn: the ancient, irreplaceable ecosystems of the Tasmanian wilderness and rainforest in Queensland. The terrestrial heat waves across the country in January, like the floods of north Queensland in February, have no precedent.
  There have been reminders that it is not only the Great Barrier Reef that is gravely threatened by marine heatwaves. Other World Heritage sites, like the unique Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia, are also at risk severe damage. At Shark Bay the world’s most extensive remaining area of microbial bats and stromatalites — the earliest ecosystem in the geological history of the earth itself — is at the highest rating of vulnerability. It has been around for three billion years but why should we care if it’s lost now?
  What’s the point of worrying about the report that 40% of the world’s insects are declining and a third endangered? https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-killing-off-earths-little-creatures-109719. Why should it matter much that a very high proportion of Australia’s vertebrate wildlife species is now in steep decline? How can it really be helped if the arrangements to provide a tiny few irrigators with water in periods of low flow are destroying the Darling River and all else that depends upon it? https://wentworthgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/MDB-flows-summary.pdf