Archives: Letters to the Editor

The problem with much of the coverage of the manifold wars, invasions, coups and interferences of the dying US empire is that they focus on the specifics of actions and intentions of the US and its proxies in undertaking these criminal actions, but can often ignore the broader context in which these occur.

In examining the present successes and failures of the geo-political actors and the tactics they are undertaking they fail to examine the economic context in which they are occurring. The discussion around Israel’s military intentions must on the other hand take account of it’s and it’s sponsors ability to continue to finance and supply those specific military actions.

Even a brief observation here reveals the impossibility of those actions being sustained. The vast bulk of Israeli military expenditures are funded by the US. In the current circumstances that is exaggerated by the catastrophic state of the Israeli economy.

The US dollar is tanking under the weight of nearly $40 trillion of US debt, which the US cannot any longer finance as the world’s central banks move rapidly to gold and away from the dollar. US Treasuries are struggling to find buyers. The end is nigh!!

Australian politicians are avid proponents of the ideas that were created by the US and UK prior to and during the First World War. At the time they needed to convince the UK and US populations of the need for them to send their sons to be slaughtered in the trenches of France in support of a Feudal kingdom warring against other such kingdoms.

Their chosen weapon was fear, as they had learned that it was the best motivator of ignorant hatred. Vivid stories were concocted about the intrinsic evil of the German people. It worked to convince essentially peace-loving people to send their sons to die in defense of Feudal privilege.

Current politicians, bouyed by generous funding from the Military-Industrial complex, rather than thinking originally, fall back on the same basic fears to achieve a population willing to obey anyone who assures them of their safety from the confected foe.

It just goes to show that political leadership in democracies doesn’t change over the centuries, as they simply repeat the past disasters they are intellectually unable to think past. Santayana was right.Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to endlessly repeat it!!!

This very fine article by David Spratt deserves widespread readership, not least by Richard Marles, Penny Wong and all those who have a hand in determining foreign policy. We need to replace “It’s the economy stupid” with “It’s the climate, stupid”. The latest report suggesting the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could collapse before 2100 should be the absolute focus. Iceland is rightly worried to be concerned. It will cease to be habitable. As George Monbiot writes in the Guardian this week: “…the net impact in northern Europe would be periods of extreme cold – including events in which temperatures in London fall to -19C, in Edinburgh to -30C and in Oslo to -48C.” The implications for food production are huge, and in turn, mass migration. It’s not just Europe, but monsoons will be affected, causing havoc to billions in Asia and Africa.
And even without AMOC, we have the super El Nino to worry about that may start to have an impact in Australia as early as next month. It too will affect food production, along with higher diesel and fertiliser prices.
Any energy policies that do not include a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels must be deemed immoral.

I suppose it is just too much for Australians to expect that this spineless government will tell the lunatic Orange Donald to take a walk on this one.

As a Labor government with a supposed commitment to the iconic Australian “fair go” it has squirmed and stretched its morals on so many occasions to suit the infantile psychopath in the White House that it is now becoming habitual. This was an ordinary person who had served his then country for twelve years in uniform and when he moved on to civilian life and moved to Australia he had the responsibility to feed his family using the skills that his then country had required of him. When he did that pilot training in South Africa there was nothing illegal in both South Africa and Australia about it.

But the US infantile paranoia about China, and the servile cowardliness of the Australian government in licking US boots, has now led to this decent human being being used by both governments to expiate their collective guilt.

Its time to end this farce and allow him to go back to his family!!

The NDIS is just another victim in a long line of victims of neoliberalism – another idea exported from the USA where profit is the only thing.

Yes there has been some exploiting the system some rorting but the main beneficiaries have not been the patients and poor as with all these systems the most disadvantaged and less well off are getting peanuts and beer while those at the top are on champagne and caviar those who need a walking frame are waiting approvable for a very profitable top of the range wheel chair.

Its not just the NDIS .

The medical system when did you last go to your GP without coming away with a referal and a prescription and there is no ramping at private hospitals .

Yes our Local Private school has fees and it also has enough tennis courts to hold the Australian open ,test quality cricket pitches and the pick of the teachers while public school teachers are retiring or on TRT

Every start up mining project, railway, large business & power project most owned by multinationals with a hand in the taxpayers pocket along with Defence obsolete before delivery never used in anger.

Everyone today it seems is a psychologist spouting pop diagnosis for a startling number of conditions with no face to face engagement with the patient.

The language of pop diagnosis is also I feel very damaging for those in the general community who are battling similar conditions giving social license for others to run quasi medical commentaries on others.

In the case of Trump it would make an hilarious sit/com if it wasn’t so damn serious. Americans should be perhaps examining a broader more uncomfortable truth of how they came to deliver this unique disaster on themselves and the world and how all the checks and balances built into their much vaunted constitution have failed them at every step. Considering Trump’s every move was outlined in Project 25 he was STILL voted in as President.

I’m no psychologist but after this crisis which will surely pass as all 87 year olds do I prescribe a period of deep introspection for all Americans about how they can rebuild their Constitutional, socio-political life and world engagement after a prolonged and unprecedented disruption.

Thanks for another engaging Pearls and Irritations.

My friend George Browning ignores some of the big picture realpolitik in his piece, including that the extreme Islamist Iranian regime is an existential threat to Israel, the region and beyond through its terrorist proxies and its nuclear ambitions, Trump’s clear military success so far and its potential to reshape the Middle East for the better. Kos Samaras makes some interesting points about pivoting the Libs’ immigration policy attack to the clear negative impacts of mass migration, but perhaps misses a point that when people blame “The Government “ in surveys rather than “immigration”

Per se they are often referring to negligent immigration policies of “The Government’, and he also fails to recognise that there is both a moral imperative, as well as an electoral one, to address the serious breakdown of social cohesion since Labor was elected before and after the Bondi Massacre.

Bruce Chapman is ‘on the money” on the error of the Libs’ Job Ready Graduate Scheme but fails to mention Labor promised to reform it in the 2022 election campaign, but four years later has failed to do so – further adding to a litany of broken promises by Albanese.

Thanks to Eugene Doyle for bringing to readers’ attention the fact that the UAE is a powerhouse of self-interested destruction on the world stage. Most readers were probably unaware that the glittering towers of Dubai are funded by arms sales and exploitation. I was stunned recently to learn that the UAE is by far the largest purchaser of Australian arms exports. (Yes, that is not an error: the largest – by far).

Ignoring the concerns raised by many NGOs, Austrade recently stated that “the UAE’s extensive and ongoing defence procurement program represents real opportunities for Australian suppliers”. Worsening the ignominy, Australia last year signed a bilateral free trade agreement with the UAE. Presumably this will ensure that Australian jet-setters can enjoy high-end Australian food and wine in blissful ignorance while enjoying a pleasant stopover there.

Jocelyn Chey states the sad fact that not all Australians would pass a test based on the Australian Values Statement as once again we hear Angus Taylor pontificating on…“Australian values protecting the Australian way of life and making Australia Great!”

Not only do I agree with Jocelyn Chey but I would suggest that most of our politicians would not pass the Australian Values test. I would like to take this opportunity to provide readers with a brief outline of the “Australian Values” published by the Department of Home Affairs.
Respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual
Freedom of religion and secularism
Freedom of speech and association
Equality of opportunity
Commitment to the rule of law and parliamentary democracy
Egalitarianism and Mateship

I would suggest that members of Australian Political parties, the Labor Party and Liberal Party and minor parties, now gaining traction, would not pass the Australian values test especially regarding views on immigration, race and religion, and attitudes and behaviours towards those seeking asylum from violence and persecution. And we must not forget the Australian women and children living in camps in Syria seeking repatriated from life-threatening detention. So Yes “Give us all a fair go, Angus!”

Mr Armstrong,

I have learned to pay attention to South Korea because a relative of mine is a long term member of “Army”, the enormous fan base of BTS, whose comeback concert you covered on 16 April.

At the time you wrote that the Korea Times reported only 46,000 attended the concert and suggested that was a reason for a drop in the share price of the parent company. These claims, repeated not just by your good self, but my many media outlets around the world outraged “Army” fans who knew that the true figure was much larger. There is much speculation about why political and business forces within Korea are hell-bent on damaging, Hybe – BTS’s parent company.

Isn’t it interesting that today the same media outlet, The Korea Times shamelessly published an article “Korea sees record foreign arrivals in first quarter” in which the estimated attendance at that concert at over 100,000?

This reader values Pearls and Irritations because it avoids blindly repeating the ‘news’ as handed down by the mainstream media. You should not assume that Asian mastheads are any more reliable than our own.

Three books about Labor since 2022 and the 2025 Federal Election have missed the point about voters wanting fighters – not managers.
Landslide – the 2025 Australian Federal Election, Ed by Marian Sawer, Jill Sheppard and John Warhurst, ANU Press
Promise and performance – Albanese’s First Term, Ed by Scott Prasser, Connor Court Publishing
The First Albanese Government – Governing in an Age of Disruption and division 2022-2025, Ed John Hawkins, Michelle Grattan and John Halligan, UNSW Press
The books agree on the Labor pursuit of stability, safety and competence and the Liberal incompetence and arrogance.
Two other books, however, recognise the failure of the major parties to embrace and articulate convincing reform agendas.
The Hollow State – Power Without urpose in Australian Politics – Peter Van Onselen,Wilkinson Publishing Ltd
Dead Centre – How Political Pragmatism is Killing Us, Richard Denniss, Australian Institute Press
But, then, is not the purpose of the major parties – obtain and retain political power i.e. that is their purpose.

Who would be Chris Bowen, especially now as the hounding from the further-emboldened fossil fuel hawkers and climate-change ignorers intensifies?

“We must dig, and we must drill” says Angus Taylor. Pauline Hanson wants more oil and gas production. The Murdochs and Rineharts of this world are all on board. Fossil fuel profits are soaring.

In 2019, such was the antipathy to our energy transition that the Coalition promoted the highly dubious hydrogen car and shamelessly denigrated EVs. Now those same nay-sayers simply double down in confected outrage that Labor is not doing enough to build oil security.

From 2012 governments oversaw refinery closures in the face of the ‘oligopolisation’ of oil – Australia was simply unable compete. But what was done to secure other energy sources?

In 2010 NRMA president Wendy Machin warned of our “she’ll be right mate” attitude to fuel dependence; part of the solution was fast-tracking the rollout of EVs, supported by renewables, and upgrading public transport.

Chris Bowen is having to keep his cool at press conferences, in the face of obsessive criticism and personal attack. Though his policies are “not always perfect”, he deserves support for his commitment to renewables, batteries and the EV revolution.

It is shocking that only 0.47 per cent of Alpine Ash forests in the Central Highlands is old growth. You would think that statistic alone would be enough to preserve these forests, yet research by David Lindenmayer, Chris Taylor and Phil Zylstra shows current practices such as thinning, fire breaks and prescribed burning are making forests more flammable. Old forests are less flammable because their dense canopy keeps them moist, and they contain fewer fine fuels and more decomposed material, reducing ignition and spread.

Climate change is making conditions more favourable for severe thunderstorms and “dry lightning,” increasing bushfire ignition risk. The obvious strategy is to stop making forests more flammable and instead invest in new technologies. The FireSat constellation being developed by the Earth Fire Alliance will detect 5m-by-5m fires and refresh data every 20 minutes. Canada’s FireSwarm Solutions is developing ultra-heavy lift drone fleets capable of carrying 400 kg of retardant. Such systems use GPS, AI and infrared sensors to monitor and fight fires even at night.
SA, Tas, NSW and Qld are listed as early adopters of FireSat. With devastating fires in 2009, 2019, 2020 and 2026, Victoria should be too.

FireSat https://www.earthfirealliance.org/#our-solution and https://time.com/collections/best-inventions-2025/7318230/firesat/
FireSwarm https://www.fireswarmsolutions.com/

Drew Hutton’s article on how the Greens could significantly improve their vote is insightful, sympathetic and in my view spot-on. As a relatively longstanding member of the NSW Greens, a veteran of decades of dissent and an exile from the Labor Party, I have also been concerned with what I consider an arrogance, intolerance and narrow mindedness on the part of some Greens – these very same attributes that are sometimes levelled at their adversaries. There are numerous voters in the broader electorate that have a range of opinions that mix what might be considered Left and Right wing views on issues. That they may not themselves delineate their views in this dichotomy is irrelevant. They can be decent and caring human beings nevertheless and this should be seen as a starting point for communicating with them, understanding their reasoning and providing progressive counter-arguments where appropriate. We should never strive for a more tolerant society by being less tolerant ourselves. This doesnt always require acceptance of bigotry or even compromise.

This article along with many others in P&I and others from informed commentators have demonstrated far more clearly than is necessary that the peace and stability of the whole world are under monumental challenge by the insanity and psychopathy of two individuals and their equally deranged and erratic satraps. Thankfully for human and planetary survival, such a conjunction of unhinged parties in two militarily powerful nations working together to retain a primacy at the expense of humanity, is rare.

But that current conjunction, unlike any other in human history, is occurring in the context of a world where stupidity and mental unbalance threaten the survival of an inhabitable planet. Trump’s demented imaginings and Netanyahu’s desperate attempts to evade the consequences of his criminality, leave humanity in a perilous situation. They have wrapped, as with so many others who have sought world domination, their lusts for untrammeled power, in the garb of religion.

It is no accident that both have arisen from a western, and I hesitate to say “civilisation”, as that civilisation enters its terminal decline. Much of the planet will benefit from that extinction, providing always that these two human excrescences have not destroyed the planet beforehand!!

Jeffrey has again proven himself, if that were ever necessary, to be an analyst par excellence of the psychopathy of power. The forensic way in which he goes about the task reflects an outstanding intellect and a vast experience in power unhinged from any rationality and humanity.

This article should be required reading for anyone who presumes to advising the powerful. He reminds me so powerfully of the Auriga in ancient Rome who advised the Emperor or military leader frequently of the drug of power. “Momento Mori” was what he whispered into the ear of the powerful. Remember you are mortal. Jeffrey performs that role today!!

In response to David Spratt’s legitimate scepticism about Australia’s climate policy, there is really only one point to make. The world will not spend very long at 3°C of warming because by then it will be heading rapidly for 4 or 6 or higher. Many components of the climate system will have tipped and be reinforcing warming. The runaway will be far beyond humans to control. A policy for 3 degrees is a policy for apocalypse.

“I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition” MacBeth(1.7.25–27). “The world’s most moral army” has deliberately slaughtered more children in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and other countries in the Middle East than any other army in human memory, with the possible exception of the US. It’s morality extending to holding competitions to see how many kids each soldier can snipe in the head or in the groin. These are facts confirmed by official investigations by the UN. Yet the governments of the morally “superior” west have simply consigned this obscene criminality to Orwell’s “memory hole’. As Hannah Arendt observed, evil in that western moral void is banal, except when it can be attributed to our enemies, when it is used to justify overturning of governments which are alleged to have done what we ourselves are guilty of, mostly without the inconvenience of any evidence. But as Thucydides wrote in the 5th century BCE in his History of the Peloponnesian War, “the Strong do as they will, while the weak suffer what they must”. That has pretty much been the practice of the west ever since!!

If ever there was a clear indicator of the rise and fall of empires in the current world this is it. The F35 program in the US is estimated to have a lifetime cost of $1.5 trillion, being the by far most expensive military project ever undertaken in the world, and has taken the US 33 years to develop to it’s current state, which is still unfinished. Its stealth technology made it the primary US weapon for attacking many countries over the last two decades.

Meanwhile China has been spending its trillions on developing a vast STEM trained workforce of tens of millions. The end result of these developments is that Chinese highly qualified amateurs are identifying the remaining problems with that advanced technology and are developing low cost ways of overcoming it.

This, along with the development of drone and missile technologies that are minimal cost ways of defeating the massively expensive products of the US military-industrial complex, has created a vast cost differential that renders much of that advanced US weaponry unaffordable in a significant conflict. The US no longer possesses the power to dominate the world! For that the world is grateful!!!!

In the late 1980’s, faced with clear scientific prediction of the environmental risks of accumulating carbon pollution, major oil companies embarked on their sustained campaign of denial and misinformation. This campaign has brought us to the brink of irreversible environmental disaster.

David Spratt reports that the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change recommends that we prepare to adapt to 3-4oC of global heating by 2100; Australia’s Climate Adaptation Plan cites 2-3oC. In accepting unliveable frameworks they are surrendering in the battle against those who profit from fossil fuels; but surrender won’t bring safety.

The world is on a warming trajectory. Experts have identified temperature waypoints along that trajectory at which various stages of environmental degradation can be expected, but that trajectory has no endpoint. Talk of ‘adapting’ to three degrees of warming will, without effective challenge to those who bring about our growing carbon pollution, surely be succeeded by ‘adaptation’ to four degrees of warming, then five. The speed of change is accelerating; we can expect these waypoints to pass with increasing frequency.

The longer governments fail to stop the growing pollution, the bigger the problem will become. Taxing export gas must be a worthwhile first step.

There is no doubt some billionaires are investing in survival bunkers. Perhaps they’ve read Tim Winton’s 2024 dystopian novel Juice, where descendants of fossil fuel executives are hunted. Given the relentless rise of greenhouse gases, their persistence in the atmosphere, and the sustained increase in global average temperatures, it’s hardly surprising attention is turning to adaptation. As far back as 2010, James Lovelock, who developed the Gaia theory, argued humans may be too short-sighted to prevent severe climate impacts this century.

So why is David Spratt so surprised by the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change outlining adaptation planning for 2.8–3.3°C of warming by 2100? Spratt contends such framing risks weakening mitigation efforts and undermining the Paris Agreement. Yet as the world spends trillions on war and allows well-funded AI-driven disinformation to flourish, only supreme optimists believe holding warming below 2°C remains likely.

Regrettably, climate adaptation is becoming an existential necessity. Even relocating to Tasmania may not suffice. For a local perspective, see Friends of the Earth’s Australian Climate Adaptation Map. It connects climate science to on-the-ground action and helps people see how adaptation can be done where they live.

References
Billionaires https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly17834524o
Lovelock https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock-climate-change
FOE https://climateadapt.australianmap.net/

Iran has just furnished Australia with the strongest possible reason for severing military ties with the US, and never again fighting in their murderous wars or buying their obsolete gear.
According to US Col. Douglas Macgregor, and others, the F-35 fighters flown by Israel and their weapon systems have been disabled by Iranian electronic warfare systems that deceive or jam the GPS systems used to navigate and control them. See https://youtu.be/tWZD6h-QRDI
This renders the state-of-the-art $200bn warplane bought by Australia (and 18 other countries) redundant. Along with any other kit steered by GPS, like nuclear submarines, for example. Added to this, Americans themselves can disable our F-35 fleet at the flick of a switch.
This leaves Australia stranded with obsolete technology unable to defend itself against anyone without US permission. Just another ‘Gulf State’ pawn in America’s endless powergame, endorsed by our sycophantic politicians.
If Albo had any cojones, he would write a letter of thanks to the Iranian Government for letting us know where we stand. But he won’t. In true Trumpian style he and the defence department will double down and pretend it isn’t happening.

John Warhurst’s otherwise excellent article mistakes the date of the Bondi Beach shooting: it was 14 December. Also, as recent articles elsewhere have shown, neither Sir Isaac Isaacs nor Sir Zelman Cowan was a Zionist.

I usually enjoy John Warhurst’s writing but this is a lame piece of fence sitting. “Let’s not upset anyone.”

Calling what is happening in Palestine a “war” doesn’t reflect what I see on my phone or what both the ICJ and Chris Sidoti, former member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, describe as genocide. As one swallow does not a summer make, one attack (7 Oct. 2023) does not make a war. That attack, actually an outbreak from the prison known as Gaza, triggered an intensifying of the slow motion genocide that has been ongoing since the first European Jewish colonisers turned on the Palestinians who welcomed them a century ago. War requires two combatants. By what stretch of imagination does Warhurst see the inhabitants of rubble fighting back in any way that could remotely be called war?

Failure to acknowledge the justice owed to Palestinians and context of 2023 only pushes us further from peace. Removal of all Palestinians from their homeland was intrinsic to the establishment of Israel from its beginnings in the 19th century. Just what is the polite way to show contempt for those condoning genocide, Jews and non-Jews alike?

Catriona Jackson’s editorial gives a reasonable summation of the state of the world. Surely then we are entitled to ask the Prime Minister – yet again! – what justifies his, Australia’s, continued alliance with, dependence upon, the US – including playing “in the dark” host to US military bases on Australian soil, and our ongoing complicity in Israel’s genocide via arms trade and particularly the supply of parts for F-35 bombers?

We might also ask Penny “non-lethal” Wong how she sleeps at night. On 14 Aug. 2025 Guardian Australia reported: “More than 700 of the fighter jet’s “critical pieces” are manufactured in Victoria alone, according to the state government.” If a plane can’t fly without even one of those parts then the part is absolutely lethal. Where have Wong’s conscience and morality gone?

Not to mention being the first of the very few nations to unquestioningly support the aggressive attack on Iran, further dragging Australia down into that gutter Ms Jackson describes.

Pass the sick bag!

Matt Pollard and Tim Buckley make an excellent case for the 25 per cent gas export tax. When the current system allows Japanese gas company INPEX to export more Australian gas than is used in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia combined, while paying no royalties and no Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, it is clearly not working for us.
(To make the situation worse, INPEX didn’t pay any corporate tax between 2015 and 2025 – in spite of exporting $21 billion worth of gas exports.)
The current system is literally giving our global warming resources away. This is irresponsible beyond words. It must be fixed – immediately if possible. A 25 per cent gas export tax sounds like a good start.

Reference:
INPEX https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/australians-are-fed-up-with-our-governments-giving-our-gas-resources-away-for-free/

John Warhurst clearly knows the Australian Catholic community better than the local Jewish Community. En passag he refers to Sir Isaac Isaac’s and the Myer family as part of the “ high profile business and civic leaders “.Isaacs was not merely an outspoken ANTI-Zionist, but a staunch supporter of of the British Empire.

The Myer family is NOT Jewish. Sydney Myer converted in 1920 and future generations were and are Anglican. No mention of probably Australia ‘s greatest Jew, Sir John Monash. Perhaps , because he was the first President of the Zionist Federation of Australia! A few current politicians, but what of Federal ministers, Moss Cass, Joe Berinson, Sam Cohen and Barry Cohen, to name a few.

There has always been extraordinary diversity in this community from left to right, from the Communist Party to supporters of right wing parties.
Whilst the majority of Australian Jews may well support the right of Israel to exist and prosper, I believe an equal majority ( and especially the younger generation) are appalled at the actions of Netanyahu and his government, both internationally and domestically.

I usually respect John Warhurst, but his article on the Jewish community made me both angry and distressed. Like many other Jews I do not recognise myself in this account, which somehow assumes that the mainstream Jewish organisations represent all of us. There are many Australian Jews who would disagree with almost everything in John’s description, in particular the assumption that we all see Israel as our “homeland”: yes, Israel would recognise me as a citizen, but for me–and for many others–Israel is a foreign country and we were deeply offended when PM Albanese referred to President Herzog as “our” head of state. John acknowledges the Jewish Council, one of a number of Australian Jewish organizations which have a very different sense of what being an Australian Jew means, but by positioning it against the “official” Jewish lobby he seems to suggest that not supporting Israel is to somehow be less Jewish.

Which country in the Middle East has invaded and attacked other countries?

It is a country based on apartheid and the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians since 1948.

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978. 1982, 2006, 2024 and most recently 2026.

Israel invaded Syria in 2024.

In addition, Israel undertook military attacks on Gaza in 2008-2009, 2012 , 2014 and since 2023.

Israel is a terrorist state.

Julian Cribb rightly argues that “having too many people destroys the living environment that supports them” and that there “are far more and greedier consumers than the Earth can carry.” Overpopulation is indeed pushing the Earth past breaking point.

We knew all this over 50 years ago when the global population was 3.6 billion, less than half what it is today. Yet the combined forces of misplaced feminism and the Catholic Church at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994 essentially turned back the clock. At first glance it seemed a reasonable argument that human rights should take precedence over concern with numbers, but in effect it led to another form of human rights abuse. Women were often not able to control the size of their families through lack of family planning or because of cultural preferences for large families, and the population/resources imbalance worsened. Now climate change – made worse by overpopulation – is threatening food security and there is no guarantee we will be able to feed everyone in coming years. Add to that the biodiversity crisis, the main cause of which is loss of habitat, again a direct result of human overpopulation.