It seems to me we’re now living in two quite different worlds.

I’ve recently been at the South East Australia Transport Strategy meeting, which this time was hosted by Palerang Council. The purpose of SEATS is to allow for a common transport strategy for the communities in the south-east, both in New South Wales and Victoria.

It was during a briefing on development plans for our ports – Port Kembla, Port of Hastings and others – that the two worlds notion was brought home to me. There are plans afoot to massively expand our ability to export coal and import consumables. One of the speakers predicted a doubling of our transport sector by 2030 with a tripling by 2050.

For two days I was in the world that thinks with its economic brain. Here, it is a world economic crisis that seriously challenges our future viability and thankfully, to its way of thinking, the worst seems to be over. The front-page stories of this world are found in the business section of the newspaper. Without exception, more is better and success is measured by the anticipated expansion, preferably exponentially, of just about everything.

In our part of this economic world there is great excitement about Canberra airport and its ability to become Australia’s 24-hour freight hub. ‘Overnight Express’ is the new buzz service and it’s taken for granted that speed is of the essence. Continuous air traffic over North Canberra and parts of Queanbeyan is a small price to pay for the joy of having a new widget delivered to your door tomorrow rather than a few days later.

Our fellow delegates from Gippsland have their own worries. They live atop a massive brown coal deposit where speculators circle hungrily. While not actually mentioning it directly, there are those mindful of peak oil, who see great potential in the region for future liquid fuel supplies to make sense of all the swanky roads we are spending a motza constructing.

Stop! Don’t think about it – relax. In the economic world all you need do is zip down to Never-Never land and buy some more stuff. As the TV so relentlessly shouts – buy it now and the repayments don’t start until so far into the future it’ll be in the next global financial meltdown.

But then there’s the other one – the environmental world. The world where climate change is a grave threat to our children’s future. Here, our government is proposing to cut carbon emission levels 20% by 2020 or thereabouts, (it’s all fairly rubbery). The front section of the newspaper entertains us endlessly with the shenanigans of the Senate where the doomsdayers slug it out with the naysayers.

Rising sea levels, depleted fresh water supplies, more bush fires; the list of bad times heading our way goes on. Scientific opinion world-wide is nearly unanimous in its warning of the need to act decisively before it’s too late.

These two worlds, economic and environmental are side-by-side defining our reality and yet they are obviously incompatible. If we keep heading the way we’re going as a society, we’ll need some sort of global psychological counselling. Our politicians are getting away with ‘monkey see – monkey not worry about’.

We might not have all the answers but we do need to ask some questions.