carvin marvin wrote:
Was checking out the Nimbin skatepark recently, residents formed a committee and applied for and got a $270,000 grant from the Government to build it, it is regarded as one of the best skateparks in Australia and now there is a whole stoked skate culture being created, skaters even travel down from the Gold Coast on weekends to use it.
Yep but here is a big "but" for everyone on this score. Two "buts" in one actually.
The Australian coastline is not a block of land owned by the council and dedicated to a skatepark. It does not belong to surfers. It isn't ours to do what we like with or to suit ourselves. We can't consider artificial coastal structures in isolation from the entire rest of the Australian population nor from the common permanent public ownership of the coast. We also can't pretend other people are stakeless in this or that surfers haven't fought tooth and nail over the years to protect parts of the coast from the very sort of invasive processes being suggested here.
We can't ignore the fact that the coast is in the process of significant natural change as a result of global warming and associated sea level rises and storm action, which means almost any change we consider today will be rendered meaningless or worse in 50 to 100 years' time. Which may seem like a long time, until you recall that many surfers here and elsewhere (and many other Australians for that matter) are continually lambasting Governments around the nation for not taking a similarly long view.
We can't ignore the fact that many of us have spent a lot of time and energy (not me included much yet btw) getting the national Surfing Reserves system up and running, the basis of which is protection and rehabilitation of natural environments around surfing locations, not deliberate artificial alterations of same to please ourselves.
If we are to take ourselves seriously as an environmentally concerned subset of Australian citizens, then there are far bigger issues here to be taken into account than our own greed for more waves, especially on a coastline which is outrageously blessed with same and outside a comparative few spots, largely astonishingly uncrowded.
If you're seriously concerned with helping direct the future of surfing, there are many great ways of doing that without going down this highly dubious and ultimately I suspect massively time-wasting road.