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australia is a continent nation that has been out of ecological equilibrium for at least 200 years. for the previous 100,000 years the human population was wide

australia is a continent nation that has been out of ecological equilibrium for at least 200 years. for the previous 100,000 years the human population was wide spread and used aggressive mass burning of the land to hunt and gather resources. the types of plants and animals that developed in this forced selection event are hardy, drought resistant, fast growing and vastly underutilized by the settler-colonial civilization that developed. the introduced species: cats, dogs, horses, cows/water buffalo, camels, toads, rabbits, deer, goats, pigs, foxes, are causing mass extinction of native fauna species which are either prey or cannot compete in their environmental niches. honey bees thrive in australian conditions since they are bred for efficient pollination and can work almost year round with mild australian winters. ironically the flammable flora is spreading faster than it can be control burned, causing catastrophic wildfires across the habitable coastal and inland regions which get progressively worse every year. the solution is clearly to promote harvesting of introduced species at scale, while also creating an export market around unique australian products from flora and fauna - because of the lack of natural predators and the general disinterest in controlling their population as a food resource - kangaroos, a native species, are breeding completely out of control and rapidly exhausting their natural environments, and the giant inland deserts grow bigger every year. you add to this powder keg a general lack of understanding between a remote and rural population which must deal with in-climate conditions mentioned above and a well meaning but uninformed city population which fails to grasp the situation and wants to promote a laisse faire attitude towards sound ecological management and you get political wedges which always tiptoe around the major issue. the idea that australia will create some sort of tech hub to compete with india, china, south korea, japan, singapore, hong kong etc is ridiculous. look at a world map and corresponding population density.

schappim 7y ago
>> look at a world map and corresponding population density. What is the basis for the assertion that population density is required for a competitive tech hub?
- cerealbad 7y ago
  training sets, big data, network effects, a larger education pool to draw from (genetic outlier-geniuses), the rapid development in asia of world class urban city hubs over the past century, the construction cost of developing a small area versus a wide area [vertical development], the history of europe since the 15th century, the history of china and it's development since the 3rd century, the history of rapid urbanization of city states and the civilizations which emerged from them to conquer vasts amount of sparse-networked human territory, the desire of human beings to live together, the evolution of social hominids and their complex use of tools, rituals and in-group preferences. it also helps to take geography into account, rivers, especially equatorial rivers seem to be a good predictor for millennial success of the humans who settle there. if you look at australia it is river poor, largely isolated from favorable trade winds and sits below the equatorial zone of predictive success.
catmanjan 7y ago
I wouldn't say there is a disinterest in kangaroos as food, it is a difficult thing to scale though - 8ft+ fences, on farm slaughtering/butchering because you can't really transport them alive Maybe if we started selectively breeding them they would be farmable in a few hundred years?
- Creationer 7y ago
  More that the hyper-efficient food supply chains of modern supermarkets demand rigourous reliability, which industrialised growing and slaughtering of cows, pigs and chickens can provide, but hunting kangaroos cannot. I also suspect that when considering transportation costs, chicken farming is probably more energy efficient than industrialised kangaroo farming. If Australia had a more developed hunting community, it would provide a good protein source for rural/regional communities though - like deer and boar do in the USA. Why not introduce Kangaroos into the wild in the USA or other landmasses, if they are ecologically efficient?
  - jazzabeanie 7y ago
    That's a dangerous game. Australia played it many times and paid the price. I don't think that they'd be so ecologically efficient in a different habitat. A change in Australian culture to eat more kangaroo might help a lot.
Creationer 7y ago
Out of equilibrium since humans arrived. Fire-burning techniques by Australia Aboriginals destroyed huge areas of forest and ejected a large amount of CO2 into the atmosphere: https://theconversation.com/how-aboriginal-burning-changed-australias-climate-4454 https://theconversation.com/how-aboriginal-burning-changed-a... They also hunted to extinction multiple species of Megafauna: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_megafauna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_megafauna

schappim 7y ago

>> look at a world map and corresponding population density. What is the basis for the assertion that population density is required for a competitive tech hub?

cerealbad 7y ago
training sets, big data, network effects, a larger education pool to draw from (genetic outlier-geniuses), the rapid development in asia of world class urban city hubs over the past century, the construction cost of developing a small area versus a wide area [vertical development], the history of europe since the 15th century, the history of china and it's development since the 3rd century, the history of rapid urbanization of city states and the civilizations which emerged from them to conquer vasts amount of sparse-networked human territory, the desire of human beings to live together, the evolution of social hominids and their complex use of tools, rituals and in-group preferences. it also helps to take geography into account, rivers, especially equatorial rivers seem to be a good predictor for millennial success of the humans who settle there. if you look at australia it is river poor, largely isolated from favorable trade winds and sits below the equatorial zone of predictive success.

catmanjan 7y ago

I wouldn't say there is a disinterest in kangaroos as food, it is a difficult thing to scale though - 8ft+ fences, on farm slaughtering/butchering because you can't really transport them alive Maybe if we started selectively breeding them they would be farmable in a few hundred years?

Creationer 7y ago
More that the hyper-efficient food supply chains of modern supermarkets demand rigourous reliability, which industrialised growing and slaughtering of cows, pigs and chickens can provide, but hunting kangaroos cannot. I also suspect that when considering transportation costs, chicken farming is probably more energy efficient than industrialised kangaroo farming. If Australia had a more developed hunting community, it would provide a good protein source for rural/regional communities though - like deer and boar do in the USA. Why not introduce Kangaroos into the wild in the USA or other landmasses, if they are ecologically efficient?
- jazzabeanie 7y ago
  That's a dangerous game. Australia played it many times and paid the price. I don't think that they'd be so ecologically efficient in a different habitat. A change in Australian culture to eat more kangaroo might help a lot.

Creationer 7y ago

Out of equilibrium since humans arrived. Fire-burning techniques by Australia Aboriginals destroyed huge areas of forest and ejected a large amount of CO2 into the atmosphere: https://theconversation.com/how-aboriginal-burning-changed-australias-climate-4454 https://theconversation.com/how-aboriginal-burning-changed-a... They also hunted to extinction multiple species of Megafauna: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_megafauna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_megafauna