Demographic Fluidity and Moral Ecology: Queenstown (Tasmania) and a Lesson in Precarious Process

It is argued that communities embodying the conditions identified by Karl Jacoby as constituting a moral ecology are threatened by processes of gentrification, and these are now gathering pace throughout the western world. These communities may evince an environmental sensibility, but such a sensibility will not be the moral ecology of which Jacoby writes, the latter requiring the development, through time, of mores of sustainability forged through a long and intimate engagement by a community with its ambient environment. The paper examines changing environmental attitudes within the Tasmanian mining town of Queenstown as a lens through which his argument can be demonstrated.