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> they would all starve to death in the dark, surrounded by vast fields of food and energy. What does this mean? That Australia is self-sufficient in food and
by dyauspitr 7mo ago
> they would all starve to death in the dark, surrounded by vast fields of food and energy.
What does this mean? That Australia is self-sufficient in food and energy but exports all of it or does it mean Australia is incapable of processing the raw materials into finished goods?
- marcus_holmes 7mo agoyeah, basically. We export iron ore and import cars. If the global trade system shut down we'd be sat on a huge pile of ore with absolutely no way of turning it into anything useful. It's similar with food: our Wheatbelt produces vast amounts of wheat. Which is great but kinda useless without global trade; we can't turn all that wheat into actual food ourselves.
- stinkbeetle 7mo agoAustralia does not have the ability to manufacture enough fuel or fertilizer to feed or harvest or transport its crops and livestock or dig minerals and fossil fuels out of the ground. Is also incapable of making any of the machinery to do any of those things either. All of it has to come on boats. Australia ships thermal and coking coal and iron ore and bauxite and uranium and lithium to China, Japan, Korea, and buys cars and steel and batteries and machinery back from them. It's not high-tech, smart, forward looking. It extremely extremely lucky (cursed by its luck, really) to have the natural non-renewable resources that it does, and it is hell-bent on squandering them all as fast as possible and having nothing to show for it by the end of it.