Opinion
To Whom it must concern
Richard Davis
NOTWITHSTANDING it is a forlorn hope to get politicians and bureaucrats who have been marinated in the aphrodesiac of a culture of power and self interest to listen let alone understand and take action, I am compelled to try as it is not only our children and grandchildren, but also our generation who are confronted with the very survival of civilisation as we know it, history clearly shows all civilisations and species which overreach themselves, collapse.
If Governments fail to treat seriously the following points and well founded critiques in the links, then you should go home and tell your children and/or grandchildren you don’t give a bugger about the world they are going to have to try and exist in so long as you and our generation can continue with the mirage of unrelenting “growth economics”, “sustainable development”(by definition an oxymoron) and “profligate consumption”, all underpinned by the exploitation of finite resources we treat as though we are the last generation to inhabit this planet.
We are way past PEAK PLANET in every respect. Humanity has overrun, overexploited and pauperised the natural world and its resources beyond sustainability and beyond replacement.
Shame on you, Generation Excess
The link below is an exceptional critique of finite energy and a must read.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46451
THE POPULATION TIME BOMB.
In my life time world population has trebled, the present population has only been possible as a consequence of highly industrialised chemically based food production courtesy of cheap energy, and cheap fertilisers.
Highly productive food production is all over as depleted water, over clearing, salinity, climate change and seasonal variability, unreliable rainfall patterns, drought, soil degradation and rapidly escalating input costs of fertilisers, chemicals and fuel together with globalisation and inequitable free trade agreements, confront farmers and food production with major challenges.
Water: UK Guardian: Massive scale of the UK’s water consumption is revealed
Climate:- Climate Wars: Gwynne Dyer interview (audio) Phillip Adams, LateNightLive, ABC (Australia) 26-8-08: Here
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iurNRV6EfFYyVJTs8qHrgjte_3cA
see “Climate” www.water-sos.org
Soil Degradation:-
National Geographic on Our Good Earth: The future rests on the soil beneath our feet: Here
Financial Times: Rich States Look Beyond Their Borders for Fertile Soil: Here
Fertilisers:- Peak phosphorus: Quoted reserves vs. production history: Here
Oil underpins everything we do. Everything in the modern world is dependent on oil, renewables, the lot. Oil and other hydrocarbons provide us with fuel, fertiliser, pesticides, lubricants, plastic, paint, synthetic fabrics, asphalt, pharmaceuticals etc. Oil and other hydrocarbons underpin all our construction, manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, mining, and electricity. When oil goes, our entire industrial society will go with it.
Without fossil fuels modern methods of food production will disappear.
The Delusion Revolution: We’re on the Road to Extinction and in Denial: Here
GROWTH ECONOMICS is hardwired to implode.
Exponential money in a finite world
Infinite growth in the relentless pursuit of profit is a malignant system striving to outpace the problems it is creating. We have been manipulated and moulded into becoming a society of lemmings on steroids hurtling towards the precipice of oblivion. In 1970 the Club of Rome warned us there are limits to growth. The global economic system is spiraling out of control, completely unsustainable, increasingly rapacious, nothing short of insanity and the primary threat to the entire planet.
“In a lecture to the Royal Academy of Engineering in May 2008, Professor Rod Smith of The Imperial College explained that a growth rate of 3% means economic activity doubles in 23 years. At 10% it takes just seven years (as in China). With a series of equations he shows that “each successive doubling period consumes as much resource as all the previous doubling periods combined”. In other words, if our economy grows at 3% between now and 2040, we will consume in that period economic resources equivalent to all those we have consumed since humans first stood on two legs. Then, between 2040 and 2063, we must double our total consumption again.”
The world economy has been manipulated to facilitate the manic fundamentalist dogma of “the globalised free market, the economy and never ending growth in the relentless pursuit of profits and so called progress” all underwritten by a criminal and negligently regulated financial system of creative financing, orchestrated toxic debt and a mentality which sees the landscape through nothing more than the eyes of profit and speculation. It is the proponents of such a system whose only connection with the biosphere is to dominate it and manipulate it for profit, who are incapable of recognising the economy and the environment are in collision, the system is fundamentally flawed, is already failing and is destroying the capacity of ecosystems to sustain all life, we are living in direct conflict with the natural world.
The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and Transnational Corporations have orchestrated the acquisition, control, and monopolisation of much of the worlds resources with the corresponding manipulation of production, off-shoring that production and subsequently influencing employment, distribution and retailing while demanding ever increasing efficiencies as they channel the wealth of poorer countries and communities to the rich and powerful institutions.
When will our so called “leaders” wake up and recognise that we are committing mass suicide through our monumentally stupid loyalty to a socioeconomic paradigm which is devoid of the understanding that our very survival is dependent on living within the landscape and not dominating it, of living off the interest without mining the capital.
Managed Investment Schemes.
To make matters worse we have lost control over the place where we live as successive Governments have instigated unconsionable legislation to deliberately orchestrate the social engineering of small farmers and rural communities through the introduction of “Managed Investment Schemes”. These schemes have enabled corporate predators to gain control of large tracts of “Prime Agricultural Land” (to say nothing of our native forests) much of which is being converted to plantations (see “MIS Assault” www.water-sos.org). These schemes not only compete unfairly with genuine farmers, but the hapless investor who invests in the trees has no guaranteed returns while the company ends up owning the land for nothing, this represents a pernicious assault on our children’s heritage as it puts at direct risked the acquisition of these companies and associated land by “Sovereign Wealth Funds”, we are well on the way to becoming tenants in our own country.
Governments are complicit in bequeathing our children and grandchildren a depleted mine-site, insurmountable debt and a profoundly pauperised landscape, a landscape in which the very survival of an ever increasing number of species fundamental to maintaining ecological stability hangs in the balance.
Honeybee deaths reaching crisis point: Here
Seeing Climate Change Through the Trees: Here
GMOs
In 1972 Henry Kissinger said, “control oil and you control nations, control food and you control the people”. The most insidious aspect of this statement is highlighted in the introduction of GMO’s into the landscape, as Prince Charles has recently articulated, “multinational companies were conducting a giant experiment which could cause the world’s worst environmental disaster”.
It is an unconscionable act of treachery by Governments, Regulation Authorities and self-serving farmers whose only connection to the land they farm is the dollar signs, to support a handful of Corporations to patent, monopolise and control the seed for the world’s food and in doing so, dictate the terms of production and charge what they like for that seed and associated chemicals. Once GMO’s are in the landscape they are there forever. Those Corporations and everyone in the approval process should be held responsible and liable for the consequences of their actions. All life forms evolve, has anyone the slightest idea of what the consequences of the evolution of GMO’s may be and how it will effect the relative balance of the natural world.
Scoop: Ban on GE Trees Gains Momentum: Here
Marvelous how science can put a man on the moon and yet we haven’t got a clue how to live sustainably on this planet without stuffing it up. Science is wedded to the ideal that innovation and technology will be the panacea to the problems we continue to create, they are incapable of understanding and addressing the cause, us, too many of us and out of control, a species seduced by ever increasing consumption and unsustainable lifestyles in a fundamentally flawed economic system. They are ignorant to the fact that what we do to the earth we do to ourselves, both eater and eaten are in exile from biological reality as irreversible ecological decline continues unabated. They are incapable of understanding that the health, interconnectedness and relative stability of the natural world, a world which functions both competitively and co-operatively, is fundamental to the very survival of all life.(see “The Science of Forestry” www.water-sos.org ).
http://www.monthlyreview.org/080701foster-clark-york.php
The Rudd Government has stated they intend to attract ONE MILLION more migrants to this country during their 3 years of incumbency. One million more people when five of our major Capitals and many rural communities are already water stressed, the Murray Darling system is terminal and they still want to increase our population putting even more pressure on the already stretched vital services of, water, health, education, transport, roads and other infrastructure, how clever is that? and what about future years? how many more immigrants will there be? when will we be fully developed? and what the hell are we going to do then???
The world population is increasing by approx 78 million per year, that number is compounding exponentially, on one hand we are being told world population will increase by about another 3 billion people within the next twenty five to thirty years and on the other we are being told various conflicting percentages by which atmospheric carbon must be reduced by 2050. Is there anyone out there who knows what their doing??
Scientists indicate the tipping point for carbon in the atmosphere is 350 ppm, they say the present level is 387 ppm and well on the way to levels which will have catastrophic affects to global climate stability. Face reality, carbon capture/sequestration and trading is a croc load of wombat droppings, a flawed exercise in giving the financial sector a free kick while pursuing business as usual in the rest of the economy.
Without dramatic measures being taken to curb the growth of the human population, then everything else is a waste of time.
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Humanity must change the way our societies function, we must move from a “growth economy” to a care and maintenance economy and in numbers the biosphere can sustain.
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The reality is society has to choose between “the economy”, business as usual and having a planet left for our children to live on.
Scientists: Save the planet-have fewer kids: Here
Global Warming: The Population Connection: Here
Index Research:- The road to extinction: Here
Richard Davis was born in Armidale NSW in 1940. He has been a stockman, overseer and manager, intererstate truckie, a “newland” farmer, agricultural contractor and transport operator, roadhouse operator. Moved to Tasmania in 1973. Was a “peasant farmer” at Ellendale for over 30 years. Ag contractor in the early years, commercial crayfisherman, sawmiller of special timbers salvaged from Lake Gordon and Tassie’s “Scientifically Managed Forests”. Furniture maker and boatbuilder, replica “Norfolk”. Has also been involved in a number of other businesses and operations. Now lives near Mt Field National Park on a bush block half of which is a bloody plantation I inherited.