Can We Cool the Country?
The Bureau of Meteorology will tell you that almost all extreme heat events start in one large corner of the country.
The assumption is it's too big and too hot to change.
Only that's not true. For thousands of years (not so long ago) it was much wetter, and much, much greener.
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And it can be again. If we act now.
The Heat Engine of Australia
​Oven-dry air often builds up over a huge area that covers the Pilbara, Great Sandy Desert and the Kimberley.
That air moves west to east across the country, baking the landscape. From North Queensland to Tasmania, we've all felt it's impact.
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Let's talk about how to fix it. If we don't, it'll only cause bigger droughts and bushfires in the hot summers ahead.
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This story is mostly about simple land-care and rainwater harvesting practices that have proven to work in Australia, and in similar arid conditions around the world.
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It also considers how we might test man-made solutions, if humanity needs to buy ourselves time as temperatures continue to rise.
The Greenhouse Period
The interglacial warm period we are living in began almost 12,000 years ago, when the ice sheets melted, the seas rose, and atmospheric CO2 and temperature spiked... and a 'greenhouse period' began.
Great forests grew, where there had only been ice, Life on Earth flourished, so that even the Sahara Desert became covered in grassland, lakes and trees.
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In Australia, the Great Sandy Desert was also covered in woodland, and towering forests grew across the Kimberley. The Fitzroy River flowed year-round into an estuary filled with mangrove trees 25 meters tall.
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After 5 or 6000 years of growth, much of that CO2 had been absorbed from the atmosphere by the growing forests. The world gradually became cooler and drier, while human civilizations arose and prospered.
Now, man-made greenhouse gas emissions have pushed CO2 levels higher than they were 10,000 years ago (and still climbing). A new 'greenhouse period' has begun. The conditions are right to make the 'heat engine' region wetter, greener and cooler, if we take simple steps to help nature, not hinder it.
'Cool the Country', episodes 1-4
Climate Docu-Series
Host Laura Wells and doco-maker Ad Long talk to world-leading experts about the Heat Engine of Australia. Together, they look at Big Ideas and proven science that could make the country cooler and wetter AGAIN... just as it was for thousands of years, a surprisingly short time ago.
Cool The Country
About
Ad Long—that’s me—is the writer, director and producer of Cool the Country.
I’m not a scientist, and I’m by no means an expert on any of the history, engineering, land-care and science that drives this story. I’m passionate about the environment, though, and always have been. And I happened to notice (sometime in the summer of 2021/22) that weather reporters were pointing to the top of Western Australia and calling it the “Heat Engine of Australia”.
Have you ever heard that term used before? I hadn’t, and I wondered why no-one was even talking about ways to cool it. Virtually all extreme heat events in Australia, and the bushfires and droughts that follow, start with heat that builds in the west and travels east across the country.
My first thought was that this remote, sparsely populated region might be a good testing ground for a man-made solution. The sort of Big Ideas that have been discussed now and then for a couple of decades or more. It turns out those “solutions” haven’t developed very far.
My daughter pointed me towards Peter Andrews (after shaking her head and telling me, “You know humans will only make things worse if they try to engineer a solution”). With her brother, she’d done a weekend Natural Sequence Farming course with Andrews, and both had spent time with him
since.
Peter believes there’s no reason the system he’s been practising (and teaching) for decades won’t work on a larger scale in WA. In February 2023, I contacted Dr Rajendra Singh and his team in Rajasthan and flew to visit a couple of weeks later. What they’ve been doing there for almost 40
years has brought dry catchment rivers back to life in conditions almost identical to the Heat Engine
region.
That was enough to convince me to try to tell this story, and to interview more people who were willing to share their wisdom. The wonderfully helpful Dwayne Norris from the Independent Council for Ecosystem Restoration introduced me to his colleagues in the Czech Republic. There, in South Bohemia, the equally generous and helpful Jan Pokorny showed me a copy of After the Greening by
Mary E. White, the great Australian paleobotanist.
I got my own copy, and in it I found a map of Australia’s forests 9000 years ago, during the long “Greenhouse Period” after the ice sheets melted, CO2 spiked, the seas rose and temperature climbed.
Here was proof that the Heat Engine didn’t have to be hot and dry. For thousands of years, not so long ago, it had been green and wet.
The most interesting ideas, I find, are the ones that surprise you. That run counter to what we think is true, and has always been true. I have felt that surprise a number of times researching and filming this story, and I hope that you will enjoy those same surprises while watching the videos.
