aime, there's no prize for giving up, it's the only game in town.

i think the way to resist extinction is clear, and not hard. but it needs people who are willing to take part in making their world better. ozzies mostly want it done for them. it won't be. it'll be made better for someone else, the doers, not the whingers.

Demos

I believe Aimes is correct when he expresses concerns about the expansion of fundamenalist religions and its ignorant participants who have little regard as to the consequences of breeding out of control.

You suggest that we Australians are a lazy lot and perhaps many are. However, there are also many who are "doers" in the environmental sense. My associates and I have written many formal appeals (to no avail), objecting to governmental decisions where those imprudent decisions lead to the continual desecration of our eco systems.

Governments respond to appellants by feeding them a tonne of inane sophistry. FOI's and publicly available industry emission's reports are proof of my allegations. A fair and reasonable balance between industry and the environment does not enter their equations!

Governments continue to ignore their Environmental Protection Agency's advice in their pursuits to rape the land in the name of the economy.

When you choose to vote the eco-vandals out, the next lot of vandals move into our halls of parliament.

Demos, you need to consider that it is not only ordinary people who are ignoring the long-term consequences of their excessive lifestyles.

Governments, aligned with pollutant industries, are the main culprits. Our governments - ill-informed, short term administrators, are incapable of differentiating a VOC from a sock!

So what are you recommending to assist those who care and who want to make a difference?

Please, do tell.

Got to look hard for the natural world these days, especially in Mandurah here, where the pecious Tuart forests have been replaced by civilisation.

Thought how majestic it was years ago to view the local town ten miles away, after clearing out tall timber on our wheat farm, the days when man felt so important to win the race against such torrid and tempestic nature.

Better housing, air-conditioning and refrigeration in recent years, has helped us win the battle, with us kind of fitting in, but wondering if nature might beat us in the finish.

With predicted global warming, however, wonder what our great grandkids will need to do to win the continuing feud with nature. Sort of makes one give a worry now about following the old bush term to let the young'ns learn the hard way - yet it could be a waste of time, for the smart-arse little buggers won't listen anyway.

Bushbred, I too am very concerned for the children of the future, but have no idea how excessive capitalism might be slowed or halted. I suspect that nature will put the brakes on in due course. My only hope is that it won't lead to the demise of much of our future generations.

I moved out of Ballarat some 15 or 16 years ago with the intention of "down sizing" before the term had been coined. Out through a small community I went and even further to a place where I thought it would take a lifetime before the rat-race caught up with me again, but in just those few short years, the roads out this way are fast becoming joined by McMansions all the way back to Ballarat. Houses encroach like a cancer slowly destroying the cells of native bush, streams and wildlife. Idiots come out here without realising the consequences of travelling on country roads and cursing the kangaroos who hop into their paths. The roads are littered with their remains, the stench over-powering in summer.

And yes, I could be considered simply one of those who chose to come here first, as someone who beat the rush, but I also came with the intention of "living lightly" as opposed to those who demand the best of everything and bring it all with them......the gas guzzling vehicles, the over sized homes, the myriad of petrol driven machines, trail bikes, bush bombs, chainsaws, air conditioners......I'm sure you get the picture.

Want to do about it......don't know! It's Government policy that pushes people out of expensive cities and dumps them in the bush. People with dreams of living the same as they did before the "tree change" and destroying anything in their path that may threaten their own little path of Eden.

Ah, Dickie, no offense taken, but that Aime ( Pronounced Amy). It get's mistaken for all manner of things :-)

Michael Fendley is a modern day luddite. He and his sandal wearing friends, would have us all living in a pre industrial society subsistence farming if they had they’re way.

It is human nature to respond only to threats we can see for ourselves. In the western world we have dealt with air quality/pollution when it became difficult to breathe. We conserve water when it is scarce. We stopped using CFC’s when it was clear they were doing harm. We vaccinated against disease when it became available. Many other unsustainable practices have been discontinued. No one yet knows what the consequences of global warming will be, if, in fact, it is really anthropogenic in nature. We only have a score of chicken little’s wailing ‘ the sky is falling, the sky is falling’ eg Al Gore.

When it comes to the dangers of overpopulation, there is no real evidence that we are anywhere near that point. Some mad proponents of this view see overpopulation in Australia, one of the most lightly populated countries on earth.

It seems to me that consumption, sustainable or not, has become a cardinal sin for many of the followers of the religion of the Environment. This faith based religion takes as its core belief the idea that all progress destroys the environment. The corollary of which is that capitalists are evil. Hence the anti-globalisation protesters, who are really anti-capitalist luddites in disguise

PaulL,

Australia looks big on the map, but only 6% of it is arable (compared to 33% in France), and only then if you include 27 million hectares of cultivated grassland (See the CIA World Fact Book). The average quality of the arable land is quite marginal by European or American standards, especially when you consider reliability of water. All of the government's own State of the Environment reports since 1990 show every environmental indicator getting worse, except for urban air quality.

So far as the world is concerned, you might visit one or more of the environmental footprint sites, like Redefining Progress. If you plot environmental footprint (a way of expressing total consumption in notional hectares of land) against rank on the UN Human Development Index (a measure of human well-being), you will find a fairly linear relationship between well-being and consumption up to a European standard of living. Giving everyone that standard of living would take about three Earths. We would all be poor if all the resources were divided equally.

Stopping population growth is not like just banning CFCs. A population that has been growing rapidly has a pyramid-shaped age structure, with most of the deaths among the relatively tiny elderly generation and most of the births among the huge young adult generation. This means that it can take up to 70 years from the time fertility rates fall down to or below replacement level to stop population growth, even if there is no net immigration. Here in Australia 2 babies are born and 1 net migrant arrives for every death (see ABS figures). In the US fertility rates fell to replacement level in the early 1970s when there were 200 million people. Without net immigration it would be 245 million now, and the actual figure is 300 million. (See www.numbersusa.com)