Paul Sheehan, Michael Mobbs, stewing in our oven, dying the tar

(Above and below: the streets of Newtown, an inner western suburb of Sydney in the nineteen fifties. Notice the absence of greenery, an absence that grows more pronounced the further back you go with photos. They knew how to run a decent city in the old days, what with avoiding the need to rake leaves, pick up stray fruit or mow lawns).

I get confused very easily, and now I'm totally confused.

Was it only in April I was reading Paul Sheehan on Ian Plimer in Beware the climate of conformity?

It was the perfect get out of jail card in relation to global warming and I immediately installed paving in the back yard - I hate grass and my relationship to lawnmowers is even more perverse than my partners.

After all, it was all the fault of the sun, and the hypothesis that human activity could create global warming was extraordinary, contrary to validated knowledge in so many scientific areas that it made my head spin (from solar physics, astronomy, history, and archaeology through to geology).

And this news came from no isolated gadfly - not some Tim Blair monomaniac obsessive regurgitating any tidbit he can find about global warming denialism. No, this was from a prize winning scientist, Ian Plimer, backed by the likes of the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus.

What's all this nonsense about rainwater tanks, I thought to myself, and installing solar energy panels so I can be ripped off by major coal polluters at vast expense, and cashing in the free insulation of my home at taxpayers' expense. When I can just run my truck sized air conditioner ...

I immediately resumed my campaign with council to have the gum tree out the front chopped down - talk about inappropriate species in a closely packed suburb - and enjoyed to the full the lifting of water restrictions.

Now comes the guilt, and from the very same Paul Sheehan, with We are stewing in our own oven.

It seems Sydney isn't green and we are somehow affecting our local environment, which fortunately doesn't necessarily mean we're affecting our global environment.

You, reader, live in a primitive city. In a hundred years from now, the society we are building will look back and marvel at how little we really understood about the world we have constructed for ourselves.

We are stewing in our own juices.

Oh no, say it ain't so, I got it all wrong. It's not a global issue - we're in a micro size city warming panic, and Sheehan trotted off to a seminar to hear the bad news:

What the observatory has recorded is a rise in the average temperature at the centre of Sydney from 20.5 degrees to 22 degrees. This is a 7.3 per cent increase over 149 years. As Sydney grows, Sydney heats.

At last Wednesday's seminar we learnt why - 27 per cent of the surface of the metropolitan area is covered by bitumen, the black tar which soaks and retains heat and thus changes the city's climate.

Sheesh. I never get it right. Here was I thinking the planet might be showing the signs of human habitation, but it was just the city:

In purely parochial terms, the heating of our biggest cities is even bigger than the global warming debate. Because the rise in temperature is mostly and demonstrably caused by outdated thinking ...

... Nearly all the rainwater run-off on this 27 per cent of the city is lost to productive use, flowing into Sydney Harbour because it is designed that way. The city's rooftops also gather heat. Roads and pavements maximise the waste of arable land. Tree-planting is stunted for legal reasons. Topsoil is "scalped" by roadworks. The increasing use of air-conditioners is creating more energy. More heat begets more heat.

Well at least more carbon doesn't beget more heat.

But wait, the news gets worse. It seems that heat stress during summer is killing us off like flies, and faster than a Victorian bushfire.

The solution, according to Michael Mobbs, who organized the seminar, is to change the bitumen mix, use dyes on the tar, widen and plant things on pavements, plant fruit trees and vegie gardens on roadside public spaces, and generally go green.

Planners have started listening to Mobbs because, having transformed his own home into a dwelling with self-contained power, water and sewerage systems, he is busy converting his street, Myrtle Street, Chippendale, into the sort of micro-environment that, if replicated across the city, would cool it, slash energy consumption, and massively increase carbon sequestration.

Carbon sequestration? WTF? Why should I care about carbon capture and storage when just a few months ago Sheehan was telling me that global warming is a myth?

But Sheehan is enraptured. He's suddenly gone ga ga gaia:

All this is so simple yet so innovative. Councils and planners have been trying to do their best with what they have inside a system they have inherited. What has been lacking is a sense of the whole, of the potential for policy symbiosis, a greater realisation of what Sydney looks like on Google Earth rather than on planners' maps. Google Earth shows a city that acts as a heat trap and an energy sink, especially in the sprawling, spreading western suburbs, away from the cooling salvation of the coast.

But it seems Mobbs hasn't received approval for his Myrtle Street innovations from Sydney City Council, working as it does under the morass of laws and regulations that sits like an oppressive weight on innovation in society.

Which is not quite the same as the oppressive weight of contradictory commentariat columnists when it comes to innovation.

Anyhoo, it seems that Mobbs is acting like a revolutionary without approval, and I guess other greenies can now take this is as a Paul Sheehan approved license to rampage through the city converting it into a garden paradise.

But while we're off attending our gardens and the little patch of soil outside our dwellings - in my case dominated by a life quenching, resources draining giant gum - what's the most bemusing thing about Sheehan's column?

Seeing as how roads are the root cause of the evil?

Not one word about public transport in the entire column. Plenty of talk about making pedestrian spaces unpassable through a jungle of foliage and growth, plenty of talk about dying tar nice colors. But nary a mention of changing our ways in relation to the cars that create the tar, or discovering a state government willing to do anything to create some kind of efficiency revolution in the way this state uses public transport.

Heavy rail to the west? Nup. Light rail to the inner west? Nup. Buses to clog up the roads like the cars they're supposed to replace with as many fumes as poorly maintained engines can muster? Sure thing. An ill thought out metro scheme, grotesquely expensive and devised on the back of a postage stamp and not likely to solve anything, except demonstrate how under capacity can be engineered on a giant scale? Sure thing. Build bigger and better freeways, or preferably motorways so you can clip the sheep coming and going? Sure thing. Spend oodles to improve travel time on Victoria road by up to  four minutes 22 seconds? Sure thing. 

Do Sheehan and Mobbs think that the back streets of Chippendale will produce a revolution that will overcome Parramatta road? Or Victoria Road? Or the ever growing network of motorways and freeways? Or even the rat run that sees thousands of cars run past my front door every day? I wouldn't eat the fruit I found on any tree in that street, just as I wouldn't drink any water captured from my roof, no matter the filtration. The avgas that drops from the sky - a black grime that befouls everything it lands on - would see to that.

But dang it, now I'm faced with a choice just when I thought it was settled. Do I just go on my way with the Paul Sheehan and Ian Plimer of April, thinking that global warming is a giant scientific hoax and a fraudulent myth, or do I go all green, and dig up the pavement and the pavers in a desperate bid to cut the temperature in Sydney?

Choices, choices, but consistency and coherence from a columnist in search of a column? That'd be asking for too much ...

(By the way, if you're interested in Sydney, the City of Sydney now has a nifty online facility dedicated to the history of the town, with image galleries, civic histories and associated archives. You can find an entry point here, for what has grown over recent years to be a substantial resource).

Take it away Verdelle Smith, you one hit wonder:

Each day I'd wake up and look at the sky
think of the meadows where I used to lie
then I'd remember all of that's gone
you're in the city, you better push on
get what you came for, before it's too late
get what you came for, the meadows can wait.

Many years later, tired at last
I headed for home to look for my past
I looked for the meadows, there wasn't a trace
six lanes of highway had taken their place
where were the lilacs and all that they meant
nothing but acres of tar and cement.
Yet I can see it there so clearly now
where has it gone?
Yes I can see it there so clearly now
where has it gone?

Where are the meadows? (tar and cement)
where are the lilacs? (tar and cement)
and where is the tall grass? (tar and cement)
the laughter of children? (tar and cement)
nothing but acres (tar and cement)
acres and acres .....

(Below: Wilson street, Newtown, 1954).