Thanks NathanJ and Foxy,

For painting the real picture of the state of the planet. Predictably the Forums Usual Suspects will be in denial of the reality. Unfortunately they live in a fools paradise where for them personally things are okay, bugger koalas, bugger rainforests, bugger you Jack, I'm doing all right, so where's the problem, is the pathetic attitude.

Our Planet is in strife because of greed which of course equals stupidity !

Nathan,

You walk into a shop and buy an item for $47. To pay for it you plunk down a $100 note. The shop-keeper gives you $53 change. Did you just spend $100 or $47?

We cut down 10 million ha of forest in some year. At the same time we reforest 5.3 million ha of forest in that year. Did the amount of forest decline by 10million or 4.7million?

Obviously, if you want to maximise the scare, you use the 10million figure and hope the audience doesn't notice the slight-of-hand. And generally the audience doesn't. The very article on this you linked tells you about the different numbers and still you fall for the headline.

80% of koala habitat is decimated. (decimated means reduced by 10% so does that mean its been reduced by 8%?). Yet somehow koalas thrive and their numbers are at least as high as the were in 1788. There is great angst that koalas are disappearing from the Eden region. Yet before whites arrived there were no koalas in the Eden region. Still at least some people are making a living out of the fear-campaign.

This might sound crass, but so what if all the wild-koalas disappeared?

Australia has water problems. Australia has always had water problems. Australia will always have water problems. If we use 100000 litres per capita pa there's little point in spending money to ensure there's 120000 litres per person. As the population grows the capacity grows, Always was thus. But the doomsayers assume that we'll never be able to improve despite the fact that we've always improved. The same concerned were rife in the 1940's and the 1960s yet somehow we survived.

Humans have the intelligence , the tools, and the
natural resources to survive or provide for a
good sustainable life as long as there are not
so many humans that they exceed the globe's carrying
capacity. All the evidence suggests that we must turn
around population growth and aim for a much smaller population
than we have today.

This doom mongering has been around for as long as we have records. The Bible would be half the size if you took out all the bits predicting doom and gloom.

Malthus was sure we were going to run out of food. Yet we grow more food per capita per year than ever before. (In 1961 world-wide we grew around 2200 kilocalories or food per person per day. Today that figure is around 3000 kcal. This while world population more than doubled). Erhlich 'knew' there'd be famine in the USA in the 1980s. Didn't happen.

We are always 'about' to run out of this or that. But we've never ever run out of any resource. Never. Peak oil has been predicted for every decade since 1920s.

We are always on the brink of catastrophe and when it doesn't come a new catastrophe is predicted. The end is always nigh but never quite happens.

Yet there is a massive audience for this type of fiction. In the days of yore when there were genuine things to be worried about (cholera, TB, child-birth) people didn't need to have made-up crises to get their Armageddon fix. But now, as we live in a golden age for humans, made-up scares find a ready audience.

Remember when polar bears were on the brink? Didn't happen. Apply that lesson to all the other scares and enjoy the golden age rather than fret.

mhaze,

The first thing you feel a need to do is compare this matter to money, why?

<<We cut down 10 million ha of forest in some year. At the same time we reforest 5.3 million ha of forest in that year. Did the amount of forest decline by 10million or 4.7million?>>

A plantation is not a forest. A forest is an ecosystem. Your description would be akin to calling a pine plantation an ecosystem. The reality is, it is not, nor is it the same.

"Forest restoration is a complex undertaking that can never fully bring back the original forest. That’s why it’s far better to conserve existing healthy forests."

http://www.worldwildlife.org/stories?threat_id=deforestation-and-forest-degradation

So we are losing these vitally important ecosystems through deforesting and they cannot be replaced. Once cut down they are lost forever.

<<80% of koala habitat is decimated.>>

Decimated means decimated and in terms of Koalas it is important they are preserved and the habitats they reside in.

"Sadly, being iconic and symbolic is not enough to save the koala from the threat of extinction. In the 1920’s, hundreds of thousands of koalas were shot for the fur trade and now koalas are contending with the consequences of ongoing excessive tree-clearing for agricultural and urban development in Queensland and New South Wales."

http://www.wwf.org.au/what-we-do/species/koala

In terms of water this is a serious issue and will not go away.

"Many of the water systems that keep ecosystems thriving and feed a growing human population have become stressed. Rivers, lakes and aquifers are drying up or becoming too polluted to use. More than half the world’s wetlands have disappeared."

http://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/water-scarcity

Finally mhaze, sadly in your society and under your control we will having nothing much more that "survival of the fittest".