The Boomer Legacy ◊ Environment

Environment

Nature's Endless Bounty

We lived in an infinite world.

“Non-renewable” resources would, if given enough time, renew. Fresh water was limitlessly abundant; forests and coral reefs eventually grew back; ocean algae continuously bloomed and sank into the abyss to replenish our oil.

The climate has always changed and there were countless warm periods in the past. Even dinosaurs flourished for over a hundred million of years in a world devoid of frost or snow or ice.

So we had nothing to worry about. We could do whatever we liked with a completely clear conscience. For the good Earth will abide forever.

Sample #4052 — Captive audience (Dec 2014)

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Shoulder season: Work commenced to identify and implement the next wave of positive reforms

Backyard firewood at Blackheath NSW (Aug 2019, 409kb)

Permissive Occupancy: We, the legatees of adverse possession, swore to lobby and plead and flatter and appeal and threaten and randomly proclaim significant heritage values in order to enjoy our rightful seaside retreats deep inside a public national park

RNP shack at Little Garie, NSW (Jul 2019, 345kb)

Build a better rookery: It was amazing how well creatures could adapt to being fed on the sixteenth floor

Rainbow lorikeets at the kitchen window, Harbourside Apartments (Jan 2019, 175kb)

Say no to ecocide: The IPCC reports that global average temperatures are projected to rise +2 degrees by 2050 Yeah well, that's debatable. The polar and Greenland ice-caps are melting at unprecedented rates Only millionaires can afford to go there, they'll just have to holiday somewhere else. Cities are becoming heat-islands, with inland suburbs predicted to have summertime temperatures in the high 40s Easily solved — people should get better-paying jobs so they can move closer to the coast. There will be hundreds of millions of climate refugees The entire point of establishing a rules-based international order was to enable the free movement of capital and people. More people will die of heat-stroke And fewer will succumb to frostbite, pneumonia or hypothermia. There will be more category-5 storms Which will lead to more foreign aid, reconstruction jobs and growing GDP. Most of our arable land will be destroyed by decade-long megadroughts But vast tracks of Alaskan & Siberian wasteland will be unlocked for development and agriculture. If the Himalayan glaciers melt, then Pakistan, India and China could go to war over water We'll all be dead long before then, so why worry? So no response at all to catastrophic global heating? On the contrary, we will continue to act responsibly on climate change and take a balanced and tactile approach to avoid damaging the economy. But aren't you concerned about creating a world without snow or ice or even winters? Nah, how good is more days at the beach!

Blackheath Oval snowman, Blue Mountains (Aug 2019, 498kb)

Under the waning gibbous moon: The goal was to squeeze as much as possible out of the status quo before everything collapsed

Recreating Quartermass and the Pit at Parramatta (Nov 2017, 705kb)

Weird scribbles of the bush: City dwellers still had a lot of trouble adjusting to the alien chaos of the Bush

Scribbly gum moth trails, Illawarra Escarpment track (Oct 2020, 380kb)

Inside the tiger: We chased every rabbit down every hole

Coal Loader tunnel, Waverton (Jul 2017, 375kb)

It was fun while it lasted: 82 256 493 barrels a day — the greatest achievement of our generation was to make the deserts bloom

Nike Savvas installation at the Art Gallery of NSW (Apr 2014, 638kb)

Crosswalk puzzle: Waiting for the white man with the upraised orange palm

Pedestrian crossing at 37th and 5th, NYC (Oct 2017, 341kb)

The curated home: Redesign your nest with hygge cosiness

Sutherland Crescent, Darling point (Jan 2017, 256kb)

Ready-made solutions: Our “developers” were given a blank cheque to do whatever they felt was necessary

Sandbridge pedestrian crossing, Melbourne (Apr 2019, 314kb)

The men in the high castle: The benefits of forty years of neo-liberalism were there for all to see

BP Site bund wall, Waverton (Jul 2017, 477kb)

Neo-Monogorod: To encourage immediate relaxation, new apartment developments promoted a sense of calm and well-being among their residents

Melbourne Docklands (Apr 2019, 369kb)

Snafu City: We ruled as distant and unresponsive leaders; where distrust, stagnation, corruption and lack of social cohesion were systematically ignored

Apartment towers surrounding Chatswood railway station (Feb 2016, 382kb)

Golden sunlit uplands: Import alien species to remind you of home, then watch helplessly as they invade the environment

The invasive plant species Common Gorse spreads along the Taieri Gorge, NZ (Dec 2017, 870kb)

Memories of the future: The last thing we wanted to do was extirpate all the large vertebrates (WWF, 2018)

Deceased sulfur-crested cockatoo, Warrimoo (Dec 2017, 241kb)

Day-tripping: The greater our impact on nature, the more we wanted to see it

The Waterrun, Royal National Park NSW (Aug 2019, 332kb)

Reinforced bulwark: We found the oceans an ideal place to dump all our stuff

Concrete erosion blocks, South Wollongong beach (Sep 2014, 445kb)

Views rooted in ecology: We peered through the bay-windows of our tastefully renovated duplexes, yet could not see the yachts for the trees

Vandalised Moreton Bay fig tree roots on Wunulla Road in Point Piper (Sep 2012, 513kb)

A two-speed world: We rebuilt the landscape to better reflect our social order

The remains of Lawrence Hargrave Drive beside the Sea Cliff bridge, near Coalcliff (Dec 2016, 663kb)

A domain of wreaths: Ideally, we should live as free people. Sensibly, we must live under guard (Daily Telegraph, 2018)

Papered-over window display in Henry Str Lewisham (Sep 2015, 191kb)

User funnelling: To paraphrase Lewis Mumford: the apotheosis of cities was to channel people from one checkout to the next

The M4 Western Distributor at Darling Harbour in Sydney (Jul 2012, 179kb)

My variegated village: Machines of extraction between funds and their intended recipients

UTS construction site, Broadway (Jul 2018, 426kb)

Through an augmented sky: All the atmospheric particulates guaranteed a golden hour for everyone

Sunrise over Bourke Street, Melbourne (Apr 2019, 100kb)

Scenes from Planet B: Almost fifty years to the day, and we were still only a warm bubble in the cold dark void

North Era camp-site before dawn, Royal National Park NSW (Jul 2019, 278kb)

Room to grow: Get in on the ground floor for the next big thing

Domain car parking station (Jul 2018, 204kb)

After Nature: An all-new Pliocene with mass-produced gastropods in a concrete sea

The front yard of an abandoned spare-parts dealer at Tempe in Sydney (Sep 2012, 275kb)

The fatal shore: A remote and hostile continent where convicts were sent to be forgotten

The boulder-strewn shoreline on the way to Figure 8 Pool, Royal National Park (Oct 2019, 374kb)

Intelligent design: Architects don't merely design – they create environments, inside and out, and spaces that function well, to mediate the dialogue between the boundaries of architecture and design, exterior and interior realms, structure and detail

The remains of the Jonley Australia plastics factory in Meadowbank (Jan 2014, 510kb)

The wound that would not heal: O₂ + (UV) → 2 O•
O₂ + O• → O₃
O₃ + (UV) → O₂ + O•
CCl₂F₂ + (UV) → CClF₂• + Cl•
Cl• + O₃ → ClO• + O₂
ClO• + O• → O₂ + Cl•
2 ClO• + (UV) → O₂ + 2 Cl•

Sunburst above the Wollongong Sewage Works (Feb 2011, 190kb)

Re-imagine urban life: We used traffic and cranes to measure our success

Construction cranes at Australian Technology Park (Mar 2018, 413kb)

Sprawl was good: Sprawl was right, sprawl worked. Sprawl clarified, cut through, and captured the essence of the evolutionary spirit

Diamond Bay cliffs at Dover Heights, in Sydney (Feb 2014, 478kb)

Hedge city: O beautiful for spacious skies, to park our excess wealth

Central Park apartments, Broadway (Jul 2018, 389kb)

It's all about being a true global city: All the construction was evidence of our economic vitality and enthusiastic internationalism

Parammatta Square construction site (Jul 2018, 211kb)

Wildfulness everywhere: Sometimes the bush was so wild that even the track markers got exhausted

Illawarra Escarpment Track, above Coalcliff NSW (Oct 2020, 593kb)

Late for the sky: We enthusiastically ate the air, promise crammed

The final blast-furnace at BlueScope Steel, in Port Kembla (Sep 2014, 187kb)

Outwardness within: The world was only as small as you made it

Sightseeing at The Balconies, Royal National Park NSW (Aug 2019, 429kb)

111 false dawns: We may have yearned for escape during the lockdown, but many realised the alternative was far worse

Sunrise over the Bourke Street Mall, Melbourne (Apr 2019, 155kb)

Epic ruin porn: Jack and Jackie died a long time ago, Camelot decayed into an abandoned car-yard

Leo Cushieri Quality Used Cars in Blacktown (Dec 2012, 250kb)

From the shore to the plateau: Our every step toward each other just seemed to get more impossible

Garie North Head, Royal National Park (Jul 2019, 461kb)

Made by We: The four seasons of positive climate reform

Blue mountains seasons (Dec 2019, 441kb)

Infinity pool: Unlimited growth was questioned many times, but it never let us down

Figure 8 Pool, Royal National Park (Oct 2019, 342kb)

Potential Harbour Views: Deceased Estate — First Time Offered in 37 Years. Lifestyle studio apartments with iconic Oprah House, Bridge and Harbour views. Ready to enjoy your renovating touches…

Real-estate hoarding blurb, Waruda Street Kirribilli (Nov 2020, 322kb)

Stack trace: International trade agreements led to enormous economic benefits

The concrete base of the demolished Port Kembla copper stack (Sep 2014, 391kb)

Hidden externalities: We built a vivid matrix of inclusive spaces to facilitate universal social cohesion

Centre Place lane-way, Melbourne (Apr 2019, 504kb)

Liens Den: The potential for redevelopment was endless

View from beneath the Western Distributor, at Darling Harbour (Jul 2017, 95kb)

Unfortunate but it couldn't be helped: We built our prosperity upon the wealth of future generations

Olympian Rock walkway after a deliberately lit bushfire in Leura (Oct 2011, 362kb)

Untapped potential: Development opportunities as far as the eye could see

Florabella Pass walking track, Blue Mountains (May 2019, 685kb)

Dam the Franklin: An early example of environmental activism, to prevent the construction of dams in one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of the planet

Protesting the building of dams on the Franklin River in Tasmania (Feb 1983, 386kb)

Black bird: … singing in the dead of night

Freshly harvested pine logs awaiting export, Dunedin NZ (Dec 2017, 410kb)

Build a better fish: We loaded up the hydrosphere with enough heavy-metals to make our marine-life indestructible

Storm-water grating at McCauley Lane in Alexandria (Mar 2018, 422kb)

A machine to make the land pay: (Gilbert, 1905)

Flinders Road Industry lookout, Port Kembla BlueScope steelworks (Sep 2013, 280kb)

Cars with grunt: We stood by our tradies and saved their utes (SMH, 2019)

Penrith Station car park (Oct 2019, 356kb)

Buckley's chance: Going nowhere is better than going backwards […] We can't continue to think each generation will be better off than the previous one (Melbourne University professor Mark Wooden, Aug 2019)

Coastal track upgrading works at the Royal National Park, NSW (Jul 2019, 624kb)

500 ppm or bust: Nine-month summers, super El Niños, millennium-droughts, gigafloods, category-five hurricanes, mega-fires, bushfire survival plans, methane fumaroles, low-pH rain, cubic-kilometres of eutrophication and rivers awash with millions of dead fish. 500-year events every five years. Every decade and season among the hottest on record. The sixth mass extinction. Aim low for ≤2°C and completely miss

Truck exhaust pipes at Woolloomooloo, in Sydney's east (Oct 2012, 166kb)

Out with the old: Sawtooth factories made way for luxury apartments

Zetland redevelopment (Nov 2018, 331kb)

Outlier Nation: Founded on penal servitude, maintained by the dispossessed, for the benefit of the super-rich

Sugar cane digester spheres in Waterfront Park, at Jacksons Landing (Jan 2013, 410kb)

Controlled flight into terrain: The charred tree-trunks, the ferns and weeds, the track which dragged on for hours

Forest Trail, Illawarra Escarpment near Wollongong (Oct 2020, 778kb)

Less is more: A rectangular lattice to corral our inoffensive, committee-managed and risk-adverse lives

Housing demolition on Gray Street, at Kogarah (Apr 2011, 243kb)

Multinational style: Curtain walls of glass and steel as far as money could stretch

6th Avenue office buildings, NYC (Oct 2017, 522kb)

Troglodyte world: Going underground to dodge the consequences

Underground escalators at Macquarie University railway station, Sydney (Feb 2016, 404kb)

Life in the roaring forties: Just one summer in western Sydney:
2017-12-14 +43.5°C, 2017-12-19 +44.1°C, 2017-12-20 +43.6°C, 2017-12-24 +42.1°C, 2017-12-29 +40.4°C, 2018-01-06 +42.3°C, 2018-01-07 +47.3°C, 2018-01-08 +42.5°C, 2018-01-19 +40.5°C, 2018-01-20 +40.2°C, 2018-01-21 +40.3°C, 2018-01-22 +43.2°C, 2018-02-14 +40.0°C, 2018-02-24 +40.0°C (Aust BOM, 2018)

117°F in the shade, the hottest Sydney temperature since 1939 (ABC News, 2018). A year later a new record: 2019-01-04 +48.9°C (Aust BOM, 2019) (Jan 2018, 144kb)

This tun of treasure: We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives (Criswell, 1959)

The Green Square Waste garbage facility (since demolished) at O'Riordan Street (Daily Telegraph, 2014) (Aug 2014, 410kb)

From lives to livelihoods: Consumption for symbolic, signalling and cultural reasons

New apartments from old flour mills, Lewisham (Sep 2015, 280kb)

Volunteer sacrifice: According to former fire chiefs, relying on large numbers of volunteers to fight bushfires was not necessarily a sign of inadequate funding, but possibly the best way to fight bushfires (SBS, 2019)

Waterfall Bushfire Volunteers Memorial, commemorating the death of five volunteers in Nov 1980 (Sep 2020, 736kb)

Rising above: We had endless views to match our ambitions

Eureka sky-deck, Melbourne (Apr 2019, 306kb)

Where even the windows wept: We created villages filled with community and a common sense of purpose

Factory windows at Chester Lane, Zetland (Sep 2014, 380kb)

Markers of social progress: We erected signs to reinforce things we already knew

Abandoned used-car dealership sign, Church Str Parramatta (Jul 2017, 198kb)

Multilevel regression with post-stratification: We created cityscapes to uplift the spirit

ANZ plaza, Castlereagh Street Sydney (Jan 2019, 317kb)

What mean these stones?: We were at the beginning of a mass extinction, and all we could talk about was money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth (Thundberg, 2019)

Iron slag at the Blast Furnace Park in Lithgow (Aug 2012, 340kb)

Situation normal: Everything was fine until it wasn't

Lawsons Auctions car-park, Moore Street Annandale (Sep 2015, 391kb)

Charting success: A million schemes for the world we were going to make

Parramatta Square construction site (Jan 2018, 181kb)

Known unknowns: I direct council to amend its draft planning-scheme to remove any assumption about a theoretical projected sea level rise due to climate change (Seeney, 2014)

Hornby Lighthouse gun emplacement, South Head Sydney (Dec 2014, 233kb)

Captive audience: Cruise liners, nursing homes, daycare centres and schools proved to be ideal ways to disseminate contagious disease (Sepkowitz, 2014)

Cruise liner berthed at Sydney Overseas Passenger Terminal (Dec 2014, 277kb)

We are the memories we created: How and why will people remember us?

Tree growing in the old Fosters brewery wall (since demolished), at Broadway in Sydney (Apr 2014, 572kb)

Bright shining billions: The Great Architect stood with his hands on his hips and proclaimed “You too shall have a bone-yard”

The Westfield World Trade Center atrium, NYC (Oct 2017, 250kb)

Rocks & Crops: Diggers and drillers drew heartfelt inspiration from the island paradise of Naru

The Port Kembla coal terminal (PKCT) (Sep 2014, 336kb)

The big smoke: The bushfire smoke pushed Sydney's air quality index rating to 2,552. That's 11 times higher than the level considered hazardous. And it's well below air quality index readings in cities in China, India, and other places known as hotbeds of air pollution. (Gizmodo, 2019)