Bad news from down under:
THE forecast size of the NSW grain crop has been cut by a further 40 per cent due to dry, hot and windy weather this month and last month.
. . .
It means the 2007-08 harvest is likely to be even smaller than the disastrous drought-ravaged 2006-07 harvest and the worst in more than a decade.
Could the outlook be even more worse? Yes.
In the past year the price of wheat has more than doubled, to reach new highs, and this week the UN published a report that said the planet’s water, land, air, plants, animals and fish stocks were all in “inexorable decline”.
It warned that the world’s population of 6.75 billion “has reached a stage where the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available” and climate change “may threaten humanity’s very survival”.
The report cited is the United Nations Environmental Programme’s Global Environment Outlook: environment for development (GEO-4). The threat to survival phrase may be a bit over the top, but there’s little doubt in my mind that changes are coming which will impact to our way of life . . . and some of them won’t be pleasant.