A report has just been issued by the United Nations Environment Programme.About 400 experts on natural resourc have contributed to this report .The executive director of Unep summarised that ,in short, over the past 20 years ,while the financial wealth of our planet has risen by about 30%, the 'natural' capital , e.g.water, land , the air and atmosphere,biodiversity and marine resources ''continue their ,seemingly , inexorable decline ''.
Mr.Steiner (thats his name ) in short says that environmentally we are already 'living beyond our means.Two statistics ,from the many included in the report: (1) ''fresh water stocks in West Asia have declined from 1700 cubic meters per person per year,in the 1980's to 907 meters today .By the middle of this century this is likely to fall still further to 420 cubic meters per person per year ''. (2) ''Biologists have now classified 30% of amphibians , 23% of mammals and 12 % of birds as threatened ''.
The three major environmental problems are (according to the report ), a growing human population , climate change and the mass extinction of plants and animals.According to Unep's Global Environmental Outlook , we as humans are now living way beyond our means.....
Speaking of living beyond our means there's a story from Zimbabwe featuring a woman ,with the unlikely name of Nomatter Tagarira , who apparently conned Robert Mugabe's government out of Z$ 5 bn (thats five billion Zimbabwan dollars , about € 2.42 million ,or if you prefer an Irish Government Minister's ''walking around 'money), anyway to get back to the other banana republic, , this woman apparently convinced the people in power that she could supply enough diesel fuel for the next hundred years simply by striking a rock with her staff (I presume they mean a wand ).
Apparently she had discovered an underground tank of fuel , hidden since the country's civil war in the 1970's....she was described as a 'spirit medium'....she is now ''awaiting trial''.
It took the government a year to realise that they had been conned.....she should have come to Ireland ...she would be still in business....
This week our 'clowns in power' have given us ...yet more gangster murders....yet more cut backs and cock-ups in the HSE , more lies from Ministers and senior civil servants , even good oul' Gaybo is getting in on the act ,with the sudden change in the Provisional Licence laws.
He (Gaybo ) has been made a fool of by 'cunning ' Bertie to take the attention off the grotesquely greedy increases he (Bertie ) , his ministers and so-called 'top'civil servants have given themselves....everyones a 'winna' except the poor fools who pay taxes (please don't tell me politicians and civil servants also pay tax , gross or net these people are feeding out of the public trough....).
Who elected these people....and why ?
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A wideranging piece...nicely done...agreed that Ahern is a crook and Gaybo the sort of simperer who probably had the butcher Mugabe on his show at some point, chatting about how great the weather in Zimbabwe is this time of year
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