The City of Greater Shepparton this
week agreed to further advance a proposal to build a $35 million Shepparton Art
Museum (SAM) overlooking the city’s Victoria Park Lake.
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| An artist's impression of the new Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) the city's Victoria Park Lake. |
A personal formal objection to the
idea revolved around realities of the quickly unfolding circumstances of
climate change demanding that personally and publicly we avoid spending heavily
on anything, especially new buildings that are rich in embedded energy.
Rather than create a new building, and
incur for the people of Greater Shepparton significant debt, we should be
creatively and innovatively using what exists.
My Editor at the Shepparton News,
Joanne Breen, has asked that I avoid discussing climate change in my
fortnightly columns, but the idea of committing the city to a multi-storey and
expensive building is contrary to what will be needed if we are to endure the
rigours of a disrupted climate.
Chief Executive Officer of the
McPherson Media Group, the owner of The
News, Damian Trezise, once said that if I
was to again mention “peak oil”, he would “pull” my column.
This, again, is simply too important
not to mention as much of the enthusiasm for the idea is about bringing
tourists to the area, something that will become increasingly difficult as the
impacts of peak oil really begins to bite.
A column from several weeks ago had lamented
the idea of a new SAM and figured that would be the last I would have to say
about the matter, but sitting through Tuesday night’s council meeting where the
idea was given the go ahead, with only one dissenting voter, I was dismayed by
the fact that in comments from all seven councillors, there was not a mention of
any sort about resource depletion and what steps should be taken by the council,
on behalf of ratepayers to prepare the city for the evolving different
circumstance of the 21st Century.
Watching on, it felt as if the decision
to proceed with project was being made in a context that equated with what
existed in the 1960s.
Subsequently, I sat down at my laptop
and wrote the following and it will appear, I hope, in Monday’s News.
“W
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e can’t stop now” was
a recent utterance about Shepparton’s then proposed new art museum and
interestingly an idiom that echoes around the world about how we live and
consume.
The briefest of searches will illustrate, without any
serious contradiction, that we are on the wrong path and it is imperative that
we “stop now”.
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| "SAM" on the banks of Victoria Park Lake in Shepparton. |
A new art museum for Shepparton is a wonderful idea, but in
locking the city monetarily into particular pathway, it also locks us out from
tackling ideas and projects; ideas and projects essential for a city braced to
confront the challenges of the 21st Century.
Rather than single major projects such as the art museum
that appeal to our better-selves, we should be looking at and investing in what
might be termed the “fine grain” of our community.
True, the proposed art museum, as it is envisaged, will have
multiply applications, but in a broad sense it will have relatively narrow uses
and the overall cost to the community will preclude the creation and
development of alternative community assets the future will demand.
It is undeniable that the world has already passed what is
colloquially known as “peak oil" and so the collapse of this energy
resource marks the end of private transport and so the need for all levels of
government to invest immediately and heavily in public transit systems.
Beyond that, those same authorities, and in this case the
City of Greater Shepparton, need to legislate and act to create communities
that can be easily and conveniently traversed by human powered transport, on
foot or by bicycle.
Even though a walk through any of Shepparton’s supermarkets
suggest otherwise, finding food will become increasingly challenging and so our
council should be planning and creating community gardens throughout
Shepparton, Mooroopna and all other centres within the municipality.
The push to improve Melbourne/Shepparton rail services
warrants applause, but the real urgency is to refresh, rebuild and recreate the
wonderful rail network of earlier this century that laced Victoria together,
including the Goulburn Valley.
If Shepparton is to prosper in the coming decades it needs
to find another way and not depend on exhausted energy-rich ideas of the 20th
Century for a conflation of 21st Century difficulties, among them climate
change, makes what once worked, redundant.
That “other way” is not about building stand-alone art
museums, rather building a resilience that takes its cues from a simpler life
that demands less of earth’s finite resources, encourages us to share those
same resources, and reduce our demands on the carbon-rich energy that further
disrupts earth’s climate system.
“We can’t stop now” philosophy is clearly wrong, we can
stop, and we must stop as the security of future generations rests with us
understanding the need to change direction.
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