I have just got back from Forster, on the New South Wales mid north coast. Everyone there was raving about a visit from a southern right whale that passed close to the beach and within a few metres of a crowd gathered at a vantage point.
Whales are increasing in number and this year 7,000 humpbacks migrated along the east coast of Australia. This is perhaps a sign that we are getting better at protecting our natural heritage.
I am an optimist and often marvel at how salt levels have halved in the Murray River over the last 20 years, the increase in area reserved as national park, improved air quality in our cities -- all this despite increasing population pressure. Perth was running out of water and now they are going to build a wind powered desalination plant. It is possible to run cars on electricity, ethanol and perhaps one day hydrogen. Is there no limit to our ingenuity?
I am someone who tends to see the glass half full.
In contrast, Professor Ian Lowe, President of the Australian Conservation Foundation, has written a book, A big fix: radical solutions for Australia's environmental crisis that predicts civilisation as we know it will not survive the next 100 years.
Lowe, who is also an emeritus professor of science at Griffith University, suggests the situation is so desperate that we should abandon science in favor of what he calls "sustainability science".
"Sustainability science differs fundamentally from most science as we know it. The traditional scientific method is based on sequential phases of inquiry: conceptualising the problem, collecting data, developing theories, then applying the results ... Sustainability science will have to employ new methods, such as semi-quantitative modelling of qualitative data, or inverse approaches that work backwards from undesirable consequences to identify better ways to progress", the Professor writes.
I thank science on a daily basis for my hot shower in the morning and the nutritious three meals that usually follow.
Indeed, the quality of life we enjoy as Australians is a result of technological breakthroughs that have been made possible because of science.
But according to A Big Fix, none of this is sustainable.
The Professor suggests that instead of our present market-based approach to economics we should move to a form of central planning where environmental scientists tell us how much of various commodities we can use sustainably.
Lowe is suggesting that environmental scientists take on the role of "philosopher king" and use "sustainability science" to tell us how to run our lives and our economies.
I guess it is possible to justify just about anything if you apply the "Chicken Little Principle". That is imagine the worst, that the sky is falling, then there is no time to go through the normal rigour of the scientific method, because by that time the sky will have fallen. The same logic, applied to milk souring in the middle ages, led to little old ladies being drowned in duck ponds.
It is also the approach increasingly taken by the doomsayers to talk up the threat of global warming. According to the Professor, global warming is the most serious environment problem and likely to destroy the Great Barrier Reef.
But hang-on, most of the coral species found on the Reef are also found in areas with much warmer water. There has been a small, but statistically significant, increase in the growth rate of corals at the GBR because of the small but significant increase in temperatures over the last 100 years.
Furthermore, as long as sea levels keep rising, corals can keep growing up. It is the next ice age that will leave the Reef high and dry.
Lowe tends to sees the glass half empty. It is preciously because people have a tendency to impose their views that the Chicken Little approach is so dangerous.
Science is a method of inquiry and a way of finding the truth. A hypothesis is advanced, but to be proven it needs to be predictive, so predictions based on the hypothesis are devised. There is no way the steps can be taken out of sequence. An adjective like "sustainability" can only qualify the noun, it can't negate it.
If we are to fix remaining environmental problems and secure energy and water supplies into the future we must approach issues anchored in reality. There is no place for "semi-quantitative modeling of qualitative data". Quantitative is a digital concept, it doesn't come in shades.
If we open our eyes and count our blessing there is much to celebrate including the 7,000 hump back whales that have passing us by this year. The professor may enjoy writing about the end of civilisation, but I want to keep on living it.
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