Tensions Julie, created by the cold hard facts, that all economies are supported by just two pillars, energy and capital!
When the price of energy goes too high, we can almost guarantee a resultant recession.
Sure, there are affordable alternatives, which like algae, will need a decade or two, before we build up enough production to replace fossil fuel?
Then, only after we actually get started!
That start up delayed by those, with a vested interest in the current status quo?
Arguably, we owe that almost exclusively to eco-fascists, who've somehow convinced the world/Australia, to lock away valuable resources, like that which probably lies under the protected Great Barrier Reef?
Estimated by some industry experts, to possibly rival or even eclipse the entire known Middle Eastern reserves?
There was a time when mystery oil slicks, led prospectors to likely low cost, high production sites!
Now we just blame endless phantom shipping!?
Before we started drilling in Bass Straight, eco-fascists were out there, screaming all manner of dire warnings, about threats to the marine environment!
Which was going to be drilled out of house and home!
And believe it or not Julie, some incredibly naive or extremely gullible politicians, listened to their BS?
Who would've thought?
Nonetheless, drilling went ahead; and today the platforms are brand new homes, for all manner of marine life, and exactly the opposite, to the "GREEN" predicted outcome.
Almost half the "reef" has succumbed to bleaching and crown of thorns, and dead reef, could hardly be further damaged by exploration or drilling!
If the predicted reserves are there, we/they can stop obsessing about what may lay under the Antarctic marine environment!
Moreover, traditional Australian sweet light crude leaves the ground virtually ready to use, needing only minimal chill filtering to remove sand and the soluble wax content, that makes all that black smoke; or clogs the injectors, on cold and frosty mornings!
Meaning, our traditional sweet light crude, even after filtering, produces 75% less total carbon, than fully imported highly refined foreign supplies!
Our own NG, even less!
Rhrosty.

and in the meantime we add another 75 million people (births over deaths) to the planet each year.

Each one of these additional 75 million people (and this is probably a conservative estimate) becomes a consumer, never mind we are over-fishing our oceans and fresh water lakes and rivers, we increase destruction of non-renewable old growth forest and rainforests, pollute more of the atmosphere, groundwater and increase our reliance on food that is, in the majority in the first world, industrialised to the point where we use 7 units of energy for every unit of food energy produced.

I had the great fortune to visit Antarctica in 1997, a harsh and unforgiving place, one that in my opinion, should be left to the penguins, seals, whales and other fauna that habits this great wilderness, that and a few scientists only.

We really are the bacteria in a perti-dish!

Geoff come on mate.

I agree with you completely that we don't need any more mouths to feed, here or any where else. Great.

Then you go & spout that garbage about non renewable forests for gods sake. What planet are you living on mate. Haven't you heard, trees grow?

Come over here for a bit & I'll show you hundreds of aging graziers fighting a loosing battle to keep their grasslands open from encroaching timber growth.

We have thousands of acres gone back to scrub, a usless growth unsuitable for man or beast. Recent analyzing of satellite imagery is showing that today Oz has about twice as much timber as when captain Cook found the place. Once open woodlands are now timber thickets.

Even some country that was naturally treeless plain is disappearing under woody weeds, with no graziers, or aboriginals to burn out the junk.

Please settle for a good story. Resist the temptation to embroider & elaborate on the theme. It just makes the story unbelievable.

Thanks Hasbeen,

I acknowledge everything you have to say about forests, over here in the West however, we still, when the opportunity arises, have a penchant for logging our old growth forests, the very few that remain, the ones that retain natural native habitats and genuine beneficial ecological function.

I also acknowledge that there are huge swathes of land on the East coast that are timber thickets are not much good and land use could certainly be better managed.

I witness the folloy of trying to grow wheat and raise sheep on land here in the West that should never have been touched and yet, marginal as it is, somehow farmers manage to eke out a living (no mention of government subsidies etc though!).

Agroforestry is a growing industry in the West and I have no problem with it, just don't do it on land that is natural and untouched, seems sensible to me.

I think, returning to the theme of the message, that we should all, everyone, particularly in the western world, try that little bit harder to consume less, exploit efficiencies where applicable and do our own individual things to extend homo-industrius that little bit longer, I have my own selfish reasons for this as well.

I am also acutely aware that we can't all (7 billion and counting) have a first world standard of living, its either 'they lose' or we learn to adapt, or a bit of both, otherwise, and I beleive inevitable that we will all one day be living like those in the late 1880's.

Not a pleasant thought if you ask me.