Speaking yesterday at the AustralAsian Oil and Gas Conference in Perth, Butler said Australia’s burgeoning oil and gas sector could continue to grow by adopting sustainable environmental management practices.
In his presentation, Butler outlined a plan on how to manage the “apparently incompatibles.”
He said such management would need to recognise and preserve both those segments of the natural environment that are irreplaceable keys to wildlife survival and representative areas of all habitats and plant associations, even if they are not recognised as significant.
It would also have to systemically rehabilitate developed areas once projects had been completed, and not allow new developments until rehabilitation had been undertaken over similarly sized areas.
Finally, it would have to exclude unnecessary impacts of the development and its workforce on the environment, and minimise or mitigate those impacts that cannot be avoided.
Butler said like many other aspects of humanity, environmental care was “riddled” with subjective value judgments. While opinion, politics and moral judgments all influenced decision-making, science was the only “repeatable and valid” element, he said.
“Conservation or sustainable development hands on to tomorrow’s world a richer, better, cleaner and safer global community than the one we inherited,” he said.
“A better environment must include jobs, houses, health and welfare, and does not entirely depend on preservation of forests and wildlife.
“It depends as much on the preservation of the development and economic structure, which allows our community the time, inclination and education to enjoy those things we seek to have.”
Butler said it was essential to recognise that human environmental impacts transcended national boundaries and affected global communities and future generations.
He said the unpredictable shape of the future depended very much on tomorrow’s discoveries.
“The Australian petroleum industry will continue to seek cost-effective, sustainable answers to yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s problems,” Butler said.
“Today’s humans - all seven billion of them - are healthier, better fed and better educated, with more leisure time than their ancestors, despite some shortfall in distribution of the world’s wealth.
“Tomorrow’s humans will have the advantage of your results from challenges and opportunities today. Theirs will be an even better world.”
Best known for his ABC TV series, In the Wild, Butler has also been an environmental consultant to Chevron on Barrow Island, off Western Australia.
He was Australian of the Year in 1979.
