Perhaps I read too Much ........................

General

I guess this week was as dark a week as last week really except that the week ended with the days slightly longer than shorter. We did however get to feel a true winter, with cold winds and rain and our first real frost hitting us. North and south of Wellington, across the country snow fell - to the delight of the children or child at hearts but few others... I am not a snow fan ..Love seeing it from afar....Hate living in it......

We're Screwed

I've been listening and reading items on gloal warming and the ever increasing prices for food and the worsening famine around Ethiopia and Sudan ....To see rice fields now being planted with "Bio-Fuel" crops and increased pressure on 3rd world farmers to clear more jungle to survive is sadening and desperate for the world. I read about the logging of the jungle in eastern africa. Bad enough in it's own right, but that they use the rivers to transport the logs ...Many logs are lost to the river. These tree length logs then wash up on the beaches of easten africa and become impassable obstacles for the breeding turtles trying to lay eggs in the sand above the tide line ....They can't do it and so either return to the sea or lay their eggs where they have no chance of hatching. Turtles across the planet face similar pressures and problems ... Humans living beside the beaches such as in the mediterranean ensure the turtles can never again land there .......

Ever thought how good it would have been for your Children, Grandchildren or Great Grandchildren to have been able to see these great turtles, and even for them to have had the opportunity to see them in their own environment ?? It's not going to happen ..................

Isn't there something desperately wrong with us (the world) when we put the need to feed ourselves below everything else .....

The increased pressure on remaining food farmland to produce more and more then leads us to genetic engineering.. The reality is - can we (the world) really survive without it ? I read now that they are developing corn and wheat crops that are resistant to weed killers. Weed killers such as "round-up". It's called Roundup for a very good reason - it's used to kill every plant it comes in contact with .....So there goes the corn fields with poppies etc growing amongst them that I remember when living in England ... I bet that doesn't happen anymore now ... It (weedkiller) also in the UK for example kills plants such as 'fat hen'. So what ? It is the most common plant that feeds the native birds ....Pheasants, sparrows, partriges, my beloved Skylarks, field/wood mice and so on ....Fewer mice, sparrows and we lose more of the birds of prey such as the Kestral.....

Does it matter though that we lose these creatures ?? It does to me...But I'm not starving ... But this food won't get to relieve the famine will it when we are looking to grow more and more Bio fuels for ourselves ....

Of course in the US this genetically modified weed-killer resistant crops won't have quite the same species destruction...why? Because they have a sufficient land mass to reserve huge parkland for the wildlife to exist and squeeze into. So no - not the extinction of species (though it's still happening from other things )... Sure the farmland will be 'Green Concrete' as the paper described it - barren of all other wildlife except for the intended crops growing there...........Most of which will be grown for Bio Fuels anyway.

New Zealand will have the same issues as the UK if it allows GE crops in. We already grow crops for bio fuels...How long before GE cops are here ? Not long ....Not long at all .....