Houellebecq:

Don't take the limits of your own vision for the limits of the world.
btw: I do not enjoy interacting with you and would prefer not to do so in the future. How I post is my choice - yours is not to read it if you find it too difficult.

Species have become extinct for all sorts of reasons that is true. However in the last 200 years the impact of human activity has grown.

Yes you could argue man himself is a natural cause, but given human populations are growing, it is not unreasonable to use our naturally given brain capacity to ensure the survival of our own species.

Humans are not above and beyond the environment, humans are part of the environment. We can also be resilient and innovative, we are able to exploit and use the environment to our greater benefit but we have also demonstrated we can do it to our detriment, particularly if it is in someonelse's backyard.

Pro-environment is about people, it is not just about a singular cause for a tree frog as important as that one particular species might be in an ecological sense.

From a 'survival of the fittest' perspective, indiscriminate plundering and pillaging of the environment may mean the 'fittest' may turn out to be the weakest and their arrogance, the cause of their own demise. It is a possibility, but there are many who are pushing for environmental protection, if we didn't do you think those with only business interests could always be depended upon for responsible decisions when their charter clearly puts shareholder interests above all other?

"Greenie" is just a term someone made up, forget the rhetoric and just look at the big picture.

Dear Pelly,

Well put! Because they have the most developed technologies for altering the natural environment, the highly advanced industrialised societies have caused the greatest destruction of planetary ecosystems in the past. Today they are taking the lead - however hesitantly - in efforts to protect the threatened and endangered species. The United States, was the first country with the vision to establish a system of national parks, wilderness areas, and wildlife refuges, and these areas are admired the world over for their awesome grandeur and the flora and fauna they protect.

Even so, less than 2 percent of the land in the continental United States has been designated as wilderness areas, to be kept forever wild, and each day there is less and less other "undeveloped" land that might still be protected.

Humans are very much a part of their environment. Recently, an awarenss of an "ecological crisis" has led social and natural scientists from several disciplines to focus on the complex interrelationship among industrialisation, technology, population growth, and the global environment. The technology of large-scale industrialisation poses major problems.

First, it generates pollution of the natural environment, threatening or destroying life in a chain reaction that can run from the tiniest micro-organism to human beings. Second, it depletes natural resources such as wood, oil, minerals, many of which are in short supply and cannot be replaced. The question arises is whether a world population that will continue to increase and thus produce twice as many people to consume and pollute perhaps more than they do at present - can be supported by the environment.

Moreover as we know there is constant pressure on not only these land in the US but our own here in Australia by economic interests. The planet has a finite amount of resources and it can tolerate only a limited amount of pollution. If world population continues to grow rapidly, if industrialisation spreads around the world and if pollution and resource depletion continues at an increasing rate - and all these things are happening - where is human society headed?

That is the crux of the matter Lexi. Where does it end?

There is a need IMO for greater pressure to be exerted from the environmental protection side. Evidence suggests that those with a pro-mining or pro-logging agenda are winning most of the battles. This is not a good thing in the long term.

Minister Burke has just announced a review into the mining proposals in the Tarkine.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Tarkine-oil-plan-needs-assessing-Burke-F38JF?opendocument&src=rss

International Conservation bodies are also supporting the request for National Heritage listing of the Tarkine. I am hoping the new review will be positive for the forest and not just more window dressing.

The irony is, if Labor (or Liberal) placed greater importance on environmental policy, there would be no need to fear the Greens, but so far the Greens are the only party with a forward thinking agenda regarding sustainable environments. The two major parties always come out with the same rhetoric - "we will do a study", "assess the impacts", blah blah, but rarely do these studies come out in favour of protection and if you read the reports there are many contestible arguments and conclusions.

Pericles,

Anyone who believes in open borders in a world facing severe resource constraints has to be confused. You are effectively arguing that the world's most dysfunctional cultures, the ones with their collective fingers pressed most firmly on the self-destruct button, should be able to take all the others with them, completely trashing the environment worldwide as they do it.

It is quite true that people sometimes make specious environmental objections when they really want to stop a development for some other reason. But how often do they get away with it? The Australian government is hardly dominated by environmental fanatics. It ranks near the bottom of the developed world in international comparisons of environmental management.

http://epi.yale.edu/

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/environment.aspx#context

Extinction rates in Australia have been particularly high

http://www.csiro.au/multimedia/Australian-Mammal-Extinction-Crisis.html

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=six-australian-birds-declared-extin-2011-01-06

Houellebeq,

Even if you only care about people, how do people know what might be valuable in the future? 32 genera of mammals disappeared from the New World suspiciously soon after the arrival of humans, mostly big and tasty ones, including elephants, camels, horses, and several species of bison. It is quite possible that some of these could have been domesticated, as close relatives were in the Old World. This was certainly true in the case of the horse, as it was the same species as our modern horses. It has even been argued that the American equivalent of brumbies should be protected as a reintroduced native species. I am reminded of the wife of the Egyptian peasant who discovered the Nag Hammadi manuscripts. A number of these were lost, even though they would have been worth large sums of money, because she couldn't think of anything smarter to do with them than use them to start fires.

Just who do you greenies think you are?

What gives you some special right to tell others how they should live their lives.

Just when did you buy my property?

If you haven't bought it, would you mind getting your beady eyes off it?

You may think you are god, & have some special right to dictate to everyone else. I reject your special right, to dictate to me.

I have not seen many of you accepting the responsibility for the deaths your stupid policies, resulting from your pressure tactics, caused in the Victorian fires. When you have all done that publicly, come back & talk. Until then you are just smug self satisfied vultures.

As someone else suggested, you go off & buy what you want to control, & get the hell out of every one else's lives.