Clarence
Valley Environment Centre
Winter 2000 Newsletter
Jim's Snippets
One quarter of the world's people 'live' on one dollar or less per day. That's one and a half billion people - an increase of 200 million since 1995. (World Health Organization).
Did you know some 25% of pharmaceutical drugs are derived from rainforest plants, almost all of which are tropical?
Ah globalisation... it is estimated that worldwide over 90% of children at 18months 'respond' to the golden arches symbol of McDonalds on sighting it. Even more recognise the 'Coke' symbol at 18months of age.
In Alexandria (Egypt) 2290 years ago, Ptolemy I of the Greek dynasty who ruled Egypt after the Pharoahs established the original Grand Library which also became a museum and the worl's first university.
Revered scholars like Euclid and Archimedes were drawn to it. It was destroyed 1600 years ago. A modern version of it is being built near the original site and will open soon. However, some of the great scholars and free thinkers of the original library which had the largest collection of knowledge in the world at that time would feel inhibited now. This year Egyptian censors banned 14 newspapers and newsletters including one of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights.
Old English saying: One gets nothing for nothing and darn little for a penny.
Or: There's no such thing as a free lunch as a US president once said.
News item, early May, 2000:
"In the USA, for an internet user to order, say, a book over the Internet, approximately half a kilo of coal is needed to generate the electricity required by the system for that process."
In 1999 an extra six million tonnes of coal was needed to operate the Internet in the USA alone for that year. China is expected to outstrip the USA by the year 2005 in the use of the Internet.
Coal burning is one of the world's major environmental pollutants and a contributor to global warming. Incidental to this is the moot point:
is there now less paper being sonsumed, because of increased use of electronics for spreading information and for keeping records?
One would like to believe it was so.
More trees, more forests (to process the carbon dioxide released by burning coal) left standing instead of being used for paper-making?
Ah! One wishes it was so.
Clarence Environment Centre
17 Skinner Street
South Grafton NSW 2460 Australia
Website Build & Maintenance by
Clarence Environment Centre
Ph/Fax: (02) 6643 1863
Email: cesjc@nor.com.au