September 7 election - well, I certainly got that wrong, I thought he would hang on until the death-knock and go in late October. I suppose we all should grateful.

So maybe it would be uncharitable to suspect some nefarious reason for going early ? At least we can now commemorate Yom Kippur AND vote. Oy.

Joe

"in Australia
and Western countries they do have the power over their
own fertility and access to jobs and financial assistance if
abandoned by their husbands."
Antiseptic--<Who thinks they own who?>

Antiseptic, I am shocked! by your reply. Not really!
As a man you probably like to think that you have some control over
your fertility, for instance, you probably have no wish to father 10children and take responsibility for them financially or physically especially physically, so why then should women not have the same option in determining how many children they wish to have.

As to financial assistance, would you like to have no money at all of your own(that’s none, not a cent anywhere in your name) and then be homeless on the street if your wife or partner decided to abuse you and kick you out. I don’t think you would like that,or as a man expect to be in that position so why should women be expected to.

Women’s Liberation espouses the radical idea that women are human
beings and entitled to the same rights and privileges that men think
they’re entitled to as human beings, but women are not.

It's not much to ask that women oppressed world wide, be given
control over their own fertility and some financial independence of
their own. Until this happens many world problems will just
continue unabated.

Poirot you say:-
<Considering the per capita per hectare footprint of countries like the US and Australia is something like eight times that of a developing country, you'd better start examining "all" the reasons for the threatened extinction of species - more often than not stemming from rampant industrialization and consumerism.>

I think the threat to animal species is the spread of the human
species by the billions into territory that once belonged
to animals like the tiger, elephants you name it. Human beings
don't stand on each others heads physically as they spread,
except in skyscrapers maybe. They build houses or huts
or any kind of shelter on previous animal habitat.

7billion humans can spread an extremely long way across the
rivers and viable land, plus these humans have to be fed, so
they need equally as much land for growing crops or cattle.

It is the over-populated countries that are providing these human
destroyers of animal habitat much faster than people in the developed
world. They are also providing global companies with a
consumer base that would have longer ago ceased in developed
countries.

Hi CHERFUL,

If women are able to be educated, wherever this has happened, the birth-rate has declined significantly. As well, of course, if birth control methods are readily available, birth rates decline.

I did some work on Aboriginal family size and birth-rates in relation to one community, from the 1860s through to the 1960s: two factors seemed to leap out from the data - many women did not have any children, and those who did tended to have large families - ten and twelve kids was not at all uncommon right up to the 1950s, even into the 1960s; one family I knew had eighteen children. Pretty much all put into care, by the way.

But from the late sixties, probably due to the availability of birth-control measures like the pill, the number of children that women had dropped to two or three. it became quite unusual for a woman to have more than four or five kids. My wife was eldest of ten Aboriginal kids, but between them they have had nineteen kids, not quite replacement. And as the next generation of women seize much better educational opportunities, they will be able to exercise far more choice over their fecundity than ever before: stable or negative population growth is certainly on the cards in such situations.

Case in point: in Afghanistan, women tend to have five or six or more children. If birth-control measures were available AND if women can access education, then the birth-rate there will plummet, towards stable population. And reactionaries like the Taliban know it.

Cheers,

Joe

Cherful,

You are right to an extent....however, cutting down Brazilian forests for grazing land to hold cattle for beef (the increased intake of which defines a country's level of industrialisation)

Palm oil plantations etc impinging on land where people have subsisted for eons is another modern phenomenon.

There are too many to list (and I don't have time at the moment)..suffice to say industrialisation does have a diabolical impact on species survival as well as merely over-population.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/liberia/10104422/Liberia-and-the-vanishing-rainforest.html

Yes, you're right, Poirot - we need sophisticated forms of sustainable industrialisation, for the entire world's population, not just for ourselves.

Cheers,

Joe