Go Veg! Planetary facts about global warming and poverty

The Steve Irwin in Melbourne, the year before.

(grayling native fish)

The water allocated for environmental flows down the Thomson to the Gippsland Lakes will now be held back in the Thomson Dam, for Melbourne's use. Scientific reports show the fish could be wiped out from the Thomson under a worst-case scenario as a result of the extraction, but Mr Holding has expressed confidence it can be sustained with strategically managed releases of water down the river. Canberra has the power to halt the action if the impact on the fish is deemed severe enough.

Many Gippsland locals felt their water was being stolen by a city that should have stricter restrictions. David Ellard from Friends of Gippsland Lakes says the reduced water flow will result in more algal blooms and will keep tourists away.

Commercial fishermen in the Gippsland Lakes - into which the Thomson flows - were also unimpressed.


Mr Holding said until major projects such as the desalination plant and the Sugarloaf pipeline came online, the government had no choice but to source water from other places.

According to Holding, "Melbourne households have reduced their water use by 12.3 billion litres since the Target 155 campaign was introduced in November last year and most people are doing the right thing". Why should households reduce their water usage to third-world standards while the number of consumers continues to be socially engineered for the advantage of businesses?



The desalination plant should be operational from the end of 2011 and is expected to create about 1000 jobs. There is growing concern Melbourne's dams could run dry before the $3.5 billion Wonthaggi desalination plant begins pumping water in late 2011.

Official figures show Melbourne had the greatest population growth of any capital city last financial year, adding nearly 75,000 in the last financial year.
(Thomson river when full)
World leading reproduction expert Professor Roger Short, of the University of Melbourne, says Australia’s population growth is out of control. “Nature is already under stress from human activities. The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005 concluded that two-thirds of ecosystems on which humans depend are currently being degraded or used unsustainably.”

Monash University demographer Dr Bob Birrell said the city's startling growth reflected record high migration.

Our Brumby government is making commercial policies to favour businesses and land developers that are not in the long-term interests of the citizen of Victoria.

The costs of water and climate change, and the all the implications of housing stress and infrastructure shortages of an unsustainable population size, will be passed onto the people of Victoria.

Jamie Oliver's "Bringing home the Bacon"

Decent people consume ham and bacon, and even pet lovers will eat pork! Pigs are intelligent and sensitive animals, but piglets live short and painful lives as 95% of pig meat production is in intensive sheds in Australia. Out if sight, out of mind! Sows are trapped in steel crates, prohibiting movement, for up to 16 weeks and then have little interaction with their offspring. Piglets are weaned early and have little maternal bonding. Codes of Practice protect producers from cruelty charges.
If Jamie Oliver is really concerned for the horrific cruelty of the way pigs are "farmed" then why not recommend alternatives?
Intensive pig farming is responsible for the outbreak of swine flu do to heat, crowding and the monoculture for viruses to attack.
Are consumers so addicted to taste that they can just ignore the implications? Stomachs seem to be more powerful than minds and hearts.
Jamie Oliver, the solution is - don't bring home the bacon!

According to Wildlife Victoria, in 193 parishes in Eastern Victoria (east of the Hume Highway, which is the main distribution of wombats in Victoria) Common Wombats have been declared unprotected wildlife.

In these parishes, a farmer can kill wombats without the need to obtain a permit. There are no records kept of the number of wombats killed or their population figures.
Wombats are smart. They have a large brain and they know how to use it. They are able to run able run to about 40 km/hr.

Common wombats are classified by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) red list as a species of least concern. However, wombats are protected by law in Australia, except in Victoria where they are viewed as vermin!
We lost over one million native animals in Black Saturday's inferno, and there are no "over abundant" species!

The Common Wombat can breed every two years and produce a single joey, which leaves the backwards facing pouch after nine to eleven months (weighing between 3.5 and 6.5 kilograms). The joey is weaned at around 12 to 15 months of age and is usually independent at 18 months of age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Wombat

The threats to wombats include destruction of habitat to urban sprawl, logging, competition with feral animals, poisons and road accidents.

The Colonial mentality of the assets of land-holders being above the value of indigenous inhabitants or the environment needs to be challenged. We can't allow farmers the "right" to kill any native animals that enter their property.

The idea that "common" wildlife are "pests" and need to be "culled" needs to be changed!

Kangaroos have been deemed an "environmental threat" in Canberra!

Due to some shonky and unproven "science", the "Bush Capital" of Canberra has deemed that kangaroos are an "environmental threat"!

Canberra's tourism taskforce chairman David Marshall says that a boycott of Canberra could be "potentially dangerous" in an economic downturn. However, animal activists have very few avenues left as they do not have a lot of money, and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal didn't have the power over Defence or the city's administrators. Where can they turn?

Many businesses maybe currently struggling, but while there are dubious "experts" in control of major decisions, such as the mass slaughter of native kangaroos in the "Bush Capital" where tourists would expect to see them, they should expect repercussions!

Expert marksmen with rifles, decapitations of hairless joeys, and lethal injections for older joeys, cannot be so easily sanitised and justified! The public didn't buy the "starving" kangaroo excuse, and now these native animals are being treated as an "environmental threats" as if they were cane-toads or rabbits!

People and livestock add to economic growth, and wildlife only get a few tourists. So, they deny kangaroos even the little grass they eat! Native grasslands are being threatened by weeds, feral animals and human impacts. Kangaroos are a convenient scapegoat. Why don't the "experts" address the real threats?

Marvellous Melbourne's obesity problem.

Pro growth-ism is all tied into the notion that infinite population growth is required for infinite economic growth. You simply need more and more people to sell more and more things to!

Our population growth is fuelled mainly by an excessive immigration rate, and so is our "natural" birth rate.

However, the pro-growth lobby has bundled any discussion regarding limiting immigration and an optimal population figure for Australia as not "politically correct" or racist! It is not about the quality of our immigrants, their race or culture, but about sustainability - a word we hear so much about but one that is totally ignored!

Other European countries are capable of having small population growth, limited immigration but large GDPs. We need to invest in our own population, our own young people and not burden them with prohibitive HECS charges while we supposedly have "skills shortages". Our universities and other educational institutions are now part of an export industry, and as a back-door for points towards residency in Australia.

It used to be "populate or perish" but now we are being threatened by "populate and perish" because most people are ignorant about the mathematical concept of exponential growth, and that our resources are finite!

Our "unsinkable" Titanic is planet Earthship!

RMS Titanic (also SS Titanic) was the second of a trio of superliners intended to dominate the transatlantic travel business. Owned by the White Star Line and built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, the Titanic was the largest passenger steamship in the world at the time of its launching.

During Titanic's maiden voyage, it struck an iceberg at 11:40 PM (ship's time) on Sunday evening April 14, 1912, and sank two hours and forty minutes later at 2:20 AM Monday morning.

The sinking resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people, ranking
it as one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history and by far the
most famous.

It was supposedly "unsinkable" due to the use of the most advanced technology of the time.

During the sinking of the ill-fated HMS Titanic, many people didn't want to board the life-boats because they felt safer in their cabins! That's why many were launched almost empty, and then when the inevitable became obvious, there weren't enough life boats so most of the passengers drowned.

http://www.titanic-nautical.com/RMS-Titanic-W.php

The Titanic's record of disaster is so much like climate change! Our "unsinkable" Titanic is planet Earthship. We can't change human culture or mindset until the end is visible, when it will be too late for most of humanity, and the non-human creatures we will take with us.

Anthropocentric attitudes, that the World was made for human existence and couldn't be destroyed by human impact and numbers, will also cause resistance to change.
Addressing climate change will be a hard battle, and the existing mindset and culture attached to Capitalistic ideals will form a firm barrier of scepticism.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/06/17/milne-the-climate-nightmare-is-upon-us/

Even Greens' deputy leader Christine Milne doesn't mention exponential population growth and that any efforts to cut carbon emissions are negated by more people.
More people will make the Titanic sink faster, and ultimately mean more fatalities.