Australia is experiencing ecological collapse on a continental scale. The same environmental catastrophes are playing themselves out around the world. But in Australia we see the western culture's cavalier attitude towards the environment juxtaposed upon an arid region with relatively few lush, fertile areas. In Australia's land one can seen the future, and it is not pretty. Ancient forests continue to be felled to make paper, soils are made barren by salt deposition, the Great Barrier reef is silted, and water and energy are wasted despite their scarcity. In Australia we are witnessing the effects of deforestation, climate change and water mismanagement earlier and more clearly. Horrendously wasteful over-use of land, water and the atmosphere's waste holding capacity are laying waste to a continent.

As the magnitude of the crisis unfolds, slowly the country's politicians are realizing the seriousness of the situation. But tinkering around the edges of environmental policy will not sustain Australia. Radical plans to conserve Australia (and the world's) water, forests and atmosphere are our only hope. This will include an end to industrial logging in most natural forests, abandoning marginal farmland, and making water and air use more efficient - or barring this - stopping activities that impact them.

More fundamentally, the lies of perpetual economic growth and petroleum dependent societies must be shattered. Less ambitious programs of environmental conservation are window-dressing. Below you will find a startling overview of Australia's ecological condition, and two modest efforts to address the situation - barring development adjacent to the Daintree rainforest and a new water management system. Perhaps the Australian public and body politic are waking up?

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Papua New Guinea's rainforests are going to hell. The government finances itself based upon clandestine sanctioning of illegal logging. The Malaysian timber mafia runs the country. The World Bank nears its third decade of failed sustainable forestry reforms. Local environmental groups posture and talk with little impact. Local peoples still view meager benefits from the razing of their forests as their best option for advancement. And after 15 years of service to PNG's rainforests, this activist sees little hope. The world's third largest rainforests have become a cesspool of ecological devastation, corruption, violence, and wasted development potential. Efforts to transition the timber industry to community based eco-forestry have faltered. The forces of death, greed and despair have won. PNG's rainforests are toast and its peoples doomed to poverty for the rest of time. Trangu, sari tumas.

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Humanity's misuse of land is dangerously shortsighted. Nearly everywhere land is becoming dust as overuse turns once verdant landscapes into deserts. Lands the size of Rhode Island are becoming desert wasteland every year, sending millions of ecological refugees fleeing to greener countries - but few remain with land to spare. Nearly as much American land is covered by concrete as is under wilderness designation. In the continental United States an area the size of Ohio (~43,000 square miles) is covered by impervious surfaces - buildings, roads, parking lots - while natural protected lands cover just a bit larger area (~75,000 square miles). And we know the way this is trending. Paved lands are biological wastelands that impact climate, water and land productivity. If determined by the needs for continental ecological sustainability, protected wildlands would cover a much greater area.

Contemporary society has misjudged risk - the third article below points out that as we fight terror the Planet is crumbling. "While we remain virtually hypnotized by terrorism, humanity is quietly destroying the biosphere in which we live, ourselves and our future along with it." Every day many more victims die from air and water pollution, to say nothing of poverty, than died on 9/11. Issues of environmental sustainability are deeply rooted in social inequities and injustices. It is made clear that the Earth is approaching a breaking point in our lifetime. Solutions are straightforward -- stabilize population, reduce consumption and share wealth. Some $40 billion a year -- about what consumers spend on cosmetics -- would provide everyone on Earth with clean water, sanitation, health care, adequate nutrition and education. In a globalized world, there is no refuge from those faced with dire need.

The state of the World's land - and by extension its atmosphere, water and oceans - is perilously grave. The rich want more while the poor work to meet basic human needs - in both cases leading to further overuse of land. Where is the outrage as entire swathes of the Earth's land are made uninhabitable? Where are the massive citizen movements and governmental programs to address catastrophic land losses? Is there anybody out there that cares? Land is the bedrock of human existence. A mass back to the land movement that seeks to extract land from the global growth machine while nurturing its restoration and stewardship may be our last best hope. More on this later...

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Let the protesting begin...

MSNBC - Greenpeace action suggests new forest war

Promising an "unprecedented" summer for forest protests against Bush administration policies, Greenpeace on Tuesday fired a first salvo by blocking an Oregon logging road with a three-ton container and three activists chained to it.

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There are two certainties that the the world is not facing up to, and by so doing, threaten the Earth and humanity's future. Oil will run out relatively soon - and endless economic growth is an impossibility. The world's bubble economy based upon these illusions will burst. Our best hope is to address this now in order to have the most room to maneuver in implementing solutions, which do exist, with lack of political will being the biggest impediment.

BBC NEWS | Business | Is the world's oil running out fast?

If you think oil prices are high at $40 a barrel then wait till they are four times that much.

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The Bush administration has announced final plans for one of the largest commercial timber sales in modern history in the Klamath-Siskiyou region of southern Oregon, one of America's wildest, most pristine places. The site of the 2002 Biscuit wildfire is to be mercilessly "salvage" logged. Some 74,000 logging trucks worth of timber are to be removed - mostly from old-growth, roadless and previously unlogged ancient forests - an amount equal of one quarter of the entire annual U.S. national forest timber harvest. The sale would occur at significant cost to tax-payers.

This crass timber industry pay-off is being justified as a means to ensure forest health and reduce the threat of forest fires. It will achieve neither. Salvage logging is known to increase erosion, impair streams and other wildlife habitat, further damage forests made more fragile by fires, and can actually increase fire risk due to the buildup of hazardous fuel and slash left by logging operations.

A fire-adapted forest that burns naturally (most are on varying periodicities) and is left to recover is not a disaster - it is how many forests regenerate. Trees downed by forest fires provide habitat for wildlife and nutrients needed for their renewal and to help keep forests healthy. Rarely are whole forests destroyed - as clumps of live trees and surrounding intact forests provide materials to seed a new, healthier forest.

There exists no environmental justification to heavily log burned trees in the Klamath-Siskiyou region - one of Western America's most important intact ancient forest landscapes. The region is ecologically unique and home to remarkable biological diversity. As one of America's last large ancient forest wildlands and many important watersheds, it deserves national park status, not destructive first time industrial logging under false pretenses.

Will you buy the lie that heavily logging ancient forests protects them? Indeed, in most cases it is first time industrial logging and not forest fires that irreparably diminish large and natural forests. Your vigilance provides the last best hope that the Klamath-Siskiyou and the world's other forest cathedrals - evolutionary and ecological treasure troves - will remain able to continue giving us life.

Even ancient forests deserve a fresh start.

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