The Murray-Darling basin

Over the last few years, we have had some good science, some negotiation and consultation, some criminality (theft and corruption), and some protests - including a recent project against a Commonwealth Minister, with protestors claiming there is another action that can be taken, and the Minister ignoring anything to do with the climate crisis and saying problems are the result of drought, not the plan.

Now, we can continue trying to go down the path of trying to resolve competing claims, investigate and take appropriate action against any actual criminality, assess evidence for yet more counter responses to climate change-based plans, or we can accept the truth - which is that we are out of time: climate change has overtaken us and our methods.

As I see it, we now have two choices:

• accept that we are going to have climate change refugees from the food bowl, where production will have to be drastically cut back to whatever is viable;
  OR 
• accept that we are going to have to get more water into the basin - not the moronic idea of trying to divert water from north Queensland, which (a) is vulnerable to the effects of climate change on rainfall in that area, and (b) robs water from valid needs of that area, but using some form of desalination (possibly enhanced evaporation, rather than membrane-based approaches) to get more water into the catchment.

Whichever way we go, we're facing financial, social and personal, and economic pain. That is the price for dithering over climate change, which has now become the climate crisis.