[green-activist] challenge

- by Boris Branwhite

not only is australia overpopulated if you take ecologically sustainable lifestyles as a yardstick -- but the whole planet is choking itself to death with unprecedented demands on its limited resources, bought upon it by the consumer and life/living demands of its burgeoning population -- i believe i have posted the following in one of the greens discussions previously -- but the message is the same -- we are treating this planet in a similar manner to how flies treat a dead rabbit --

i grew up on a river and fished a lot. i learnt how to burley a waterhole with a dead rabbit to bring in the murray cod.
i would shoot or trap a feral rabbit, and hang it by its hind legs on a branch over the water hole.
two days later, there were so many maggots on it that they started dropping off into the water, attracting the cod.
the flies that left those eggs and maggots, thought they had a good world to procreate in -- but their vision was restricted to looking at the immediate future and they failed to consider a permanent food source for their young -

as further evidence of the overpopulation of australia, and that population's effect on this delicate environment, may i present more data on water consumption relating to agriculture --

Are you aware of the UN report titled "Livestock's Long Shadow" where the many detrimental effects of livestock grazing on the environment are enumerated over 404 pages?

One of the effects, besides methane and nitrous oxide, which are hundreds of times more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere and in fact are the true cause of visible global warming in our lifetime, is the sheer amount of water required to raise animals for meat or dairy products.

It takes 100,000 litres of water to make 1 kilo of beef.

It takes 990 litres of water to make 1 litre of milk.

These figures are from the CSIRO's estimates so you can check that out.

Since almost every person in Australia could be consuming 1/2 kilo of beef and 1/2 litre of milk a day that means 50,470 litres of water per day = 17 million litres water per person per year.

Multiplied by the number of people in Australia (20 million) i.e. 370,000,000,000,000 i.e. 37 trillion litres of water used in Australia per year for livestock's water use.

Water use for animal products is 100 times water use for wheat
production and thousands of times more than for production of vegetables.

Added to that, the problems with land clearing, soil erosion, habitat destruction, damage to wildlife, water and air pollution from livestock, and a larger problem emerges -- all driven by population extremes worldwide

"every drop of rain that falls ends up in the mouths of whales - it is up to humans to control what substances enter that raindrop during its journey to the ocean"

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Re: [Green-Activist] challange
Date: Today 11:57:03
From: "Boris Branwhite" orchidman @ bigpond.com
To: "maillist for Green Activists" green-activist @ lists.altnews.com.au