Year of the Built Environment
The Australian Federal Government has named 2004, as it has named other years, for the particular area of improvement it wants to highlight. 2002 was the “Year of the Outback,” and 2003 was “Year of the Child.” 2001 was the Centenary of Federation, so there wasn’t any activist sponsorship, probably because in 2000 the effort for making Australia a republic failed. I thought this year was supposed to highlight Volunteerism, to judge by the fifty-cent piece in ciculation (or as of yesterday, the Monkey), but the so-called “built environment” seems a worthy enough effort, given the present and increasingly problematic global warming situation. It seems too little too late to tout the latest business efforts towards energy-efficient buildings, especially when we’ve had a hundred years or more of greed working to the opposite end, but every step is one in the right direction, even if I may yet end up with waterfront property in my lifetime, but without any effort of my own to that condition, especially since the Ross ice shelf is collapsing and the North Polar icecap is thinning already. We probably should have bought our property at the top of Surry Hills, but there’s lots of room for more Harbour in front of the Opera House. Meanwhile, the greening of office buildings and new efforts in developing more environmentally friendly homes, especially given the nature of the country’s nature – extended periods of drought, increasing problems with soil salinity, etc. (not to mention the problem of foreign fauna, such as the Indian mynah, mucking with the locals) – could prove to be another front on which Australia advances the cause of the planet. Advance Australia fair, indeed.