2015-02-13
Baart Groot
I remember most of my childhood clearly. Seemingly more clearly than many other people at the age of 36.
I remember playing in the fields of South Eastern South Australia where I grew up. I remember gazing at the cold grey waters of the Southern Ocean as I stood on a beach in winter. I remember cracking ice on our chicken's water bucket on a cold frosty morning.
I remember summers that were warm and balmy and winters where it rained all day, soaking the earth as we sat inside watching through breath fogged windows.
But the seasons don't seem to act that way anymore. People scoff when I tell them I used to see ice coating the water buckets in winter and they roll their eyes as I question the hot summer rains that fall in December and January. Is it because they don't remember? Or because they don't want to?
As I grow older I watch the weather each year and think about the changes I see occurring, slowly but surely, every year a little more extreme, every year a little more violent in the ebb and change of the seasons. I tap my water tank in summer and wonder why it is full. At the moment I am thankful since the water for my little garden is welcome.
But I know that two decades ago that water wouldn't have been there and I also know that last winter my water tank was almost empty, despite the gusting wind and grey clouds above Adelaide.
Some would ignore it and point to the importance of the economy over the environment, to the importance of money and capital gain. I would say what good is money without sustenance? Can you slake your thirst with oil or your hunger with depleted uranium? Without our environment our money and wealth means less than nothing.
I am 36 years old. I am not a scientist, nor am I an economist although I am growing to understand both of these things, out of a growing fear that without an increased understanding I will be forced to stand by idly as others without compassion, reason or wisdom destroy all that which could provide for me and my loved ones.
And the children I one day hope to have.
I am not a powerful man, I am not rich, I am not blessed with genius intelligence or striking good looks, nor was I born to parents who knew no financial struggles. What I have, what I am, are things that I have learned, sought, worked for and earned. I have but a little but I am proud of it. I would like to pass those things to my children one day, so that they may somehow prosper.
I see that the rights I have enjoyed and the freedoms I was born to are being taken. I see the prices rise and the options dwindle. I remember the hard times of layoffs and redundancies that my parents endured, I remember their fear and sadness. I remember how a chosen few became wealthy beyond imagining during that time, but it wasn't the workers.
It happened again not so long ago. I was shielded from the worst because my education provided me with options, and it allowed me a choice and a future. My parents never had those options and they worked hard to provide them for me. I can see that for those born today, for those born without wealth and privilege the options may be fewer and hard work and industry will not suffice in order to succeed.
Our society is no longer evolving, it is degrading. Stagnating, rotting. Like the seasons, our civilization is in flux and without help it will deteriorate into ruin. A ruin picked clean by insatiable rapacious vultures, stripping every last saleable piece of land, selling every last drop of water and hoarding what they do not destroy.
Without an evolution of our very society including its values, ethics and systems I dread the idea that children born to me, children who are not blessed with power and riches, would have no chance to prosper as I have, no chance to increase their station through hard work, discipline and especially education. That thought, that sour and rasping belief that gnaws in the back of my mind has driven me to rise from my comfortable little corner of society where I am safe and comfortable, because if the world will not be a fair and just place for my children to grow up, then I should not doom them to potential misery.
I will not allow my children to be little more than indentured servants to selfish vested interests.
I have two choices, forget that I ever wanted children so I do not grow old watching their chances of happiness diminish into ashes, or I could make the change. I could make a difference.
My lone voice can be laughed at and derided, my ideas can be ridiculed, my hope and dreams can be trampled on by the hateful, the selfish and the willfully oblivious, but they cannot take my vote, not yet.
My vote is for the future, for equality, for fairness, for the right to learn, grow and thrive, my vote is for Australia's future and the future of all Australians.
My vote is for The Greens.
My vote is for my children.