Indeed Bazz... but is it for agriculture or drinking? what kind of percentage are we talking?

I'm certainly not opposed to recycled water per se... but it looks like I'm going to be drinking it in high percentages sometime in the next few years, and I'd like to be properly informed.
As it is, I've seen a lot of spin and not much substance.

I am pleased that we all agree on the basics of sustainability.

I don’t think there needs to be anything paradoxical about it Mr.OMG. We just need to get it into our collective thick heads that continuous growth must be dealt with.

It is all quite simple. The paradigm shift away from continuous expansionism and onto genuine sustainability is just waiting for the right person or political party to initiate it.

I was hoping that Kevin Rudd would be that person. I wrote numerous posts on this forum on different threads imploring him and Labor to make this fundamental change, on the basis that the time is right for it, as is obvious to all with the water crisis and various other issues. Support from community would be there if the campaign is handled properly, and it would be their best chance of really being seen to be different from the incumbents instead of just a shadow of them. And it would be their best chance of securing power at the next election.

But alas, Rudd shows no signs of embracing the all-important demand / supply balance, nor anything else substantial within a sustainability paradigm.

Bugsy, I have started seven threads on this forum, one of which was sustainability/population-oriented. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=162. I don’t see any point in starting another one.

The best approach, which I take on vigorously, is to remind people on all manner of threads that we’ve got to think about the relevant topic of the thread within a genuine sustainability framework. I find that this is needed, as many people seem to be quite happy to think within really narrow parameters and lose sight of (or never gain sight of) the big picture.

We’ll have to disagree that “population growth control is a can of worms”. I think it is all very simple.

Alright, so you are full of thoughts on why sustainability might be a hard thing to deal with, but you still don’t seem to even be considering the consequences of not dealing with it. You are concerned about peoples’ rights being reduced by efforts to direct our society towards stability, but you completely fail to consider the reduced rights and increased inequality being imposed on us all now by way of resource stress….and which is going to get much worse if we let it. And again, this can’t be more obvious than with the water crisis.

In short, you still seem totally resigned to the continuous strong movement away from the balance between demand and supply of our vital resources, and completely unwilling to even start to address anything that might slow this momentum let alone bring it to a halt.

So it begs the question; why are you in the slightest bit interested in water recycling?

Professor Don Bursill who developed Australia's drinking water guidelines says he would not drink recycled sewage water and would not back its use.

He claims there are too many risks attached to the practice and there is no assurance that the water would remain safe.

Chlorine based organic chemicals like to hang around sewage plants. Dioxin comes to mind - a seriously health damaging and DNA altering persistent compound which invades the entire food chain.

Testing for dioxins can cost thousands of dollars and one would need an assurance that operators have the technology to filter this chemical and other chlorine based compounds from the end product.

Since public drinking water agencies use chlorine as a disinfectant, I suspect this would only exacerbate the catalytic effect of other organic chemicals.

For citizens to advise that we should trust the regulators is foolhardy indeed since aren't the regulators and their masters partly responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place?

Which reminds me of the quote attributed to the philosopher Karl Popper: "Those who promise us paradise on Earth never produced anything but hell."

Ludwig, you can expand any resource problem into population/sustainability. But that just means that any discussion on how to deal with increasing available resources ends up being a discussion about limiting population. Energy- population , food availability- population, water- population. You can see where this gets us. Any time someone asks a sensible, limited and specific question, you can come to the rescue to tell us its not a debate about water availability or technology, its a debate about population size!

Can you direct me to the posting where you plan for the effect that limiting our population will have without foreign cooperation in stabilising global population size? The birth rates in western countries are already decreasing due to education and high living standards, how will we be treated by the international community when we refuse to take refugees and immigrants of countries that are total warzones, most likely due to resource depletion? No, it's all very simple isn't it?

Globally, I would suggest that population stabilisation is more likely to occur when a higher standard of living is enjoyed by people with less children. That is, better education and greater wealth in developing countries will help to reduce the birth rate as the number of children is still seen as being a greater wealth producing/survival asset amongst the poorest communities.

Bugsy, thanks for continuing the discussion on population / sustainability. As your questions are now taking our debate right away from the subject of water, let’s take it to the ‘Population and sustainability’ thread. Please see my response there: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=315#7672