Meg, I am happy to hear that you sort your rubbish and have taught the little old lady down the road to do the same. But may I suggest that the global sustainability issue goes well beyond those things.

World population, mostly in the third world, keeps increasing by
80 million or so a year. More and more of the worlds rainforests, ie the oxygen producing lungs, are being chopped down to feed the ever increasing masses. Global warming, fished out oceans, multi species extinction, future energy supplies, are all real issues that we cannot ignore. If 6.5 billion are not living sustainably, what will
10 billion do to our planet? Your faith ignores all these things and they are mega issues. Wether Meg sorts her rubbish is only a major issue for Meg, it doesent address global problems.

My initiatives are quite practical and workable. ie. that all women on the planet have the same access to family planning methods that women in the West have. ie. that people live sustainably and only produce as many children as they can manage to feed, clothe and educate. ie. that women are not forced by religious dogma to have far more children then they want or can provide for. All common sense and practical.

Which evidence have I fabricated and for what don't I have evidence?

Martin, your religion is not liberal at all. If you don't agree with your popes view, you are clearly not a good Catholic and chances are that you will burn forever! At least thats what they tell you to control you.

You present your God as not such a smart fellow, when most Christians
present their version of God as an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being, who knows everything and can do anything. In that case he was clearly aware of the hunger, misery and starving babies that his world would create. It doesent seem to bother him,
for according to your old testatment, he ordered the murder of thousands of innocent babies.

Scout - re your post Sat 25 Mar - "...surplus embryos..."
The question should be "WHY were they created in the first place?" Two reasons - greed and expediency. Recently speaking to a woman 39 who had a 2 yr old and 13 "spare embryos" 'in the freezer' - at 39 she had no intention of having numerous pregnancies and when asked what she was going to do with her young child's brothers and sisters, she said, "yes, I know that is what they are but I prefer not to think about it that way". Prefer not to think about it that way?? Yet fully acknowledging that is what those tiny ones were.
Sooo many similarities to the way people think about abortion.

Yabby - "There are none so blind as those who will not see".

A vexed question as to where life begins. Brings out a lot of emotion and not a little judgement.

Te

I did not ask you for your opinion on IVF. Like Meg1 you are unable to answer a simple question.

1. Frozen embryos remain the property of the couple involved.
2. They may be stored from 5 to 12 years depending upon which state in Australia they are.
3. Many embryos are unneeded after successful preganancies are achieved.
4. Many couples do not like to offer their embryos to other couples for a variety of reasons, for example - the idea that their offspring have siblings elsewhere. Refer to article In The Age for further info rmation on this reluctance:

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/02/1044122262548.html

Further information about the creation and storage of embryos may be accessed at:

http://www.hunterivf.com.au/factsheetdis.asp?sheetid=14

The result is that there are many surplus embryos. The question remains what should happen to them?

Is there anyone who can respond in a polite and reasonable manner to this question?

There doesn't have to be a single answer (in life there rarely is a single solution).

Yabby, as usual you have ignored the issue and any likelihood of reasonable debate with you.

Firstly, what individuals like you or I do with, or for one another and our environment on a local scale, is what makes any real difference in the world in the long term, not what you ram down anyone else’s throats or how many accusations you make against others. Making accusations against others doesn't ring true when your own actions condemn you as guilty of exactly what you falsly accuse in others.

You have spent a lot of time accusing the Catholic Church and others of forcing dogma on the world, without any evidence, yet your own actions prove your guilt on the very same charge.

… ‘live simply so that others may simply live’ is the most effective advice for a sustainable planet.

Secondly, when you insist that women are currently “…forced to have far more children then they want or can provide for”…you are both fabricating your own fantasies and not providing evidence for any of it.

Are you suggesting that women are all mindless creatures or that they are all raped…how are they ‘forced’…Yabby, your obsessions need some sort of treatment before they get you in serious trouble.

RE: environmental issues being addressed…

There is no point disallowing Australian fishermen from fishing as sustainably as they have done in the past and then turning a blind eye while Indonesian and other fishing vessels strip our northern oceans. Nor is there much point Australians eating the polluted imported rubbish that passes for Pacific Dory in our fish shops…fish that is fed on sewerage and household effluent, caged under houses on the Mekong River. (Pacific? Dory)

Each other issue you raised is as easily discredited…

If you want to solve an issue that relates to Africa or Indonesia, you can’t solve it by belting the Greeks or Irish over the heads to do it. You also can’t solve overfishing in Indonesia or elsewhere by disenfranchising our fishermen in Australia who have fished our coastline prudently.

(tbc)

(Cont...)

Unless you face the real issues by educating the people involved where they are, you will always suffer failure - environmentally and otherwise.

The environmental movement continues to be plagued by a blame-game mentality and gross exaggerations of practically everything that occurs either naturally or unnaturally on the face of the earth.

All of the issues you have raised have more to do with corrupt governments and the greed of transnational corporations and their grossly over-paid executives than any so-called over-population of the world.

Your beliefs may ignore these things, but my faith does not. It provides guidelines for these and many more issues of life, which is why I support them.

There is no need for concern on future fuel if we use renewable fuels, what are you doing to lobby governments for the use of bio-fuels in this country? Waste bio-mass should be used, not discarded…

I guess it depends on your commitment for the long term and your willingness to look with an open mind, doesn’t it?

Scout, you seem unable to comprehend any of what you write, let alone what others post.

‘1. Frozen embryos remain the property of the couple involved.’

That’s pretty clear, you and I (unless some of those embryos are yours), have NO SAY in what happens to those tiny lives.

As such, your question is not a hypothetical one…it is an irrelevant one.