text - entropy triptychs - © Lloyd Godman

Is this a “normal event” or Climate Chang e?
Without question, the success of the humanity and the contemporary global society is dependant on the perfect placement of the earth from the sun, a delicate balance of atmospheric gases that surrounds the planet and a complex series of bio dynamic forces on the planet like forests, oceans ice caps etc. This creates a perfect climate that allows life to thrive - something I call an “immaculate exposure”. I have made art work based on this concept in 1996. These factors control the light entering the planet and drive the earth’s weather, like a plant room that acclimatizes our buildings -  we depend upon it.
We can all change the climate, even in a minute way, . Place your hand on the pavement exposed to the sun on a really hot day say 45 degrees, then place your hand under a well mulched tree in the shade, the temperature and humidity is quite different. So if we plant trees around our property we alter the climate in our immediate environment, and in doing this it is possible to create a micro climate. Consider that the area where our house sits was originally tress with a complex diversity of upper forest canopy, middle and lower that interwove a complex bio diversity of life. When we build a house we alter the climate.

Like the roads that provide access to where we live, perhaps the roof of our house is black tiles. These tiles absorb light which is then radiated as heat, not light, back into the air . On the trip to the workshop at Wilson’s Prom, we drove down through a new housing complex in Pakenham ( the road was closed through fire and smoke on our return). A sign pointing to the housing complex reads “Orchard Road”, and the most striking feature of the complex is the immense area of glistening black roofs. Originally this was once a forest, which absorbed CO2 gases, then as the name suggests, it may have been an orchard and now a large housing estate. So in each case the microclimate of the area has altered considerably. From a forest that absorbed carbon, shaded the ground to a huge area that radiated immense summer heat into the atmosphere. It is ironic when each of these roof structures could support both a garden, solar thermal and photovoltaic panels. This warming is called the "urban heat Island effect".

The red brick area in this false colour image from NASSA has been burnt out - the large areas on the right are the St Andrews kinglake Marysville fires and - St Andrews on the left - most of this extensive area burnt in and afternoon. The smaller area on the lower right is the Morwell fire. Smoke can also be seen at Wilsons Prom.

Within the sanctuary of each of these dwellings, residents consume food that has been grown far away on areas that was also once vast virgin forest. World wide the deforestation of the planet for agriculture and other resources began in the Mediterranean about 8,500 years ago and progressively moved through Europe, forest after forest was systematically leveled. Then through various phases of colonization, and globalization, areas like Australia, New Zealand, Africa, North and South America, Asia etc. were also deforested. With commercial mono-cropping this still continues at an alarming rate.  For instance despite the best efforts of the Brazilian Government to reduce the cutting of rain forest, the deforestation of Brazil last year continued at a rate 4% greater that the previous year. All this alters that climate and I have not even mentioned CO2 emissions.

All forests help moderate the climate on the planet, they create more rain than actually falls in the area, in some cases more than 50%, they keep the climate warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Do trees grow because it rains, or does it rain because there are trees? The answer is both.  When we remove a forest, we create disorder in the system - entropy: it can take up to 80 years for the climate to destabilize at a new level. Much agriculture relies upon the surrounding forests as an essential infrastructure. The more of this forest we remove to produce more food, the more marginal the agriculture becomes. We see this in the wheat belt where there has been a huge change in the past few decades.

As I mentioned earlier our existence on the planet is blessed by an “immaculate exposure”. With all the heat and lack of rain in Melbourne before the fire the "immaculate exposure" was obviously becoming out of balance. Trees were dying, the bush cover had become thin and even grape vines were dropping their leaves ruining the crop, plums and apples actually cooking on the trees. With such consistently high temperatures – these plants are being pushed beyond their biological limits - the exposure is simply too great. At our property, the ground crunched loudly under our feet with dead dry leaves. Before we left we raked and cleaned the gutters only to find there were even more leaves when we returned from Wilson’s Prom.

While climate change might provide areas where food can be grown more successfully there are even greater areas where agricultural systems are on the brink of collapse. Along side the effects of climate change on agriculture is the erosion of arable land. Globally the greatest source of this erosion of arable land is housing estates, like the one in Pakenham and also roads that service these areas. Because more money can be made from property development than agriculture, here agriculture is pushed into more and more marginal land. So the micro-climate of each area is changed, and collectively across the planet the change becomes immense. A system of order falls into disorder.

How much virgin forest that existed 10.000 years ago on the planet has been cleared for agriculture? How much of this arable land has subsequently been converted to property development? What effects have both act ivies had on the climate of the planet ? What becomes obvious is that infinite clearing clearing for agriculture and housing development before the natural resources run out is not sustainable. Bio-purity, the process where the climate and environment are maintained, is falling into disorder an the process of entropy prevails while an new unknown and unimaginable balance is found.

entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system. I use this in reference to the eminent collapse of the biospheric systems that sustain much life on the planet. A very good analogy is the present financial crisis where it has become more than evident how integrated the global financial system is, and how reliant it was on a few key elements. One aspect falls over and a chain reaction of disorder continues until a new balance or order is established. For reasons of sustainability, the majority of cities were established near arable land, and often near a port. As the population increased the demand for housing also increased pushing agriculture ever further outward into more marginalized land. Inevitably this will create disorder and the collapse of a much larger ecosystem.

Enter CO2. Combined with an alarming increase in CO2 gases from fossil fuel consumption the stability of the system is grossly undermined.

Pyrogenic shift

Luke Chamber Wilderness Society.