Environmental Questions

ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS

The population growth curve of a bacterial culture is very distinctive. There is an initial lag phase during which the population growth is hardly noticeable. Then the numbers increase more and more rapidly until the population is increasing exponentially...the growth curve resembles a "J." When this is compared to the growth curve of the world human population, the resemblance is eerie. For the first thousands of years of human history the global human population remained very low. Then in the past two centuries the curve begins to rise and steepen until the curve is going almost straight up. Do more people place more demands upon the environment?

The People's Treasure

"They're privatising things we own together.
They're flogging off the people's common ground.

And though we're still connected by the weather
They say that sharing things is now unsound.

They're lonelifying all the public spaces.
They're rationalising swags and billabongs.

They're awfulising nature's lovely places,
Dismantling the dreaming and the songs.

Their macho fear of flabby soft sensations
Makes them pine for all things hard and lean.

They talk of foreign market penetrations
And throbbing private sectors. It's obscene.

They're basically unloving types of creatures
With demons lurking underneath their beds.

You'll notice that a necktie always features
To keep their hearts quite separate from their heads.

So if they steal away the people's treasure.
And bring the jolly swagman to his knees.

They can't remove the simple common pleasure
Of loathing public bastards such as these."

Michael Leunig,
Australian Poet

EXTINCTION

Global Warming

Overpopulation

Energy and Mankind