Broken Hill: the Line of Lode – after years of underground mining, tailings have created an enormous hill through the centre of town.
courtesy of Broken Hill City Council
observe a broad regional trend of growing national populations and rapidly expanding cities whose appetite for Australia’s raw materials shows no sign of slowing. The fantastic growth of cities across Asia, particularly in China and India, is highlighted by their ferocious appetite for steel and electricity. Steel, the bedrock of modern cities is used to construct anything from buildings to bridges and requires enormous quantities of iron ore and metallurgical coal to produce it. Electricity on the other hand, powers homes, offices and transport systems the world over and soaring demand is being met by a suite of mostly non- renewable sources that includes thermal coal. On the back of this demand, Australia has become the largest exporter in the world of both iron ore and coal. According to the Australian Government, a combined total of more than eight-hundred mega tons or eight-hundred million tons of these two materials were extracted from the ground for export in 2012, an increase of 10% on the previous year. In financial terms, the value of the these two exports to the Australian economy is greater than $US 100 billion. Furthermore, the Australian Government expects Australia’s Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) exports to increase 23% this year. And as new LNG projects come online, Australia’s exports will overtake those of Qatar, the world’s leading LNG exporter around 2020. 2 Continuing this trend is a recent major oil discovery in the Arckaringa Basin, close to Coober Pedy in South Australia. Similar to Canada’s vast oil sand reserves in terms of its unconventional status, the field is believed to contain up to 233 billion barrels of oil, worth a staggering $20 trillion with the potential to rival the reserves of Saudi Arabia. Despite repeated warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the catastrophic effects of climate change to the well-being of all nations, the overwhelming majority of Australia’s gigantic and growing energy exports are derived from non-renewable sources that further exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions, the primary reason global temperatures are rising. 3
Australia is a vast island continent straddling three time zones on the edge of South-East Asia. It covers a geographic area similar in scale to that of Western Europe, yet is home to only 22 million people. Climatically diverse, it is as much characterised by its harsh dry outback landscapes as it is by its wet tropical north or little known snowy alpine regions in the south. These diverse natural landscapes are home to an abundantly unique range of animal and plant species and endowed with staggering quantities of mineral resources such as coal, iron ore and gas. This land is also home to an indigenous aboriginal people, whose rich culture and customs date back some 50,000 years. The overwhelming majority of inhabitants of this sparsely populated island-continent live in cities that cling to a narrow coastal strip in the south-east stretching from Adelaide to Brisbane. Consequently, it is also one of the most urbanised countries in the world. These urban population centres located in the most fertile and environmentally comfortable ranges, have brought many environmental, economic and social advantages. However distance is still tyrannically defining in any understanding of them. This coastal urban reality contrasts strongly with the omni-present, iconic colonial idyll of Australia that still occupies the minds of many, of the resilient drovers (read cattlemen), living and working in the remote, sunburnt Australian interior. An updated version would depict a geologist, electronic device in hand, ready to board an early morning east coast flight to his workplace, a mine in the far north-west of the country. Pertinent to Australia’s ongoing economic security is the rapid economic growth taking place across Asia that is itself, fueling a radical wave of urbanisation unknown in the Australian cities to the south. In Australia, there are no more than five cities with a population greater than 1 million. According to the UN, there are in excess of 90 cities in China with an equivalent or greater population and some with populations approaching that of the country itself. 1 Looking beyond China’s borders, we can
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