Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for October 9, 2005

Neelum River Blocked by Falling Villages

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I was upset to read that 20 people, including 4 Australians, were killed in the Bali bombings of last week. I just can’t get my mind around the idea of 18,000 people dead from yesterday’s earthquake in Pakistan.

According to the Associated Press of Pakistan:

The earthquake that jolted parts of northern Pakistan, ranks fourth amongst the ten, over 7.0 magnitude earthquakes that hit the world in 2005 and is the severest in country’s history.

The worst earthquake that hit the country was on May 30, 1935, which almost destroyed Quetta in south- west of Pakistan, killing over 50,000 people.

He said the earthquake was very shallow and at a depth of around 10 kms and is prone to cause widespread damage in the area.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center, the quake originated 95 kms North North East of capital Islamabad at 8:50:38 a.m.

The Indian and Eurasian plates pass through Northern Pakistan.

Islamabad and Peshawar lie in the major damage zone.

According to ABC Online:

“Village after village has been wiped out,” said an official in Muzaffarabad, the main town in Pakistani Kashmir. “The Neelum River has been blocked because whole villages have fallen into the water.”

The scale of the disaster has shocked the international community and brought pledges of aid and expressions of sympathy but the time has already run out for many in the region.

Near the shattered town of Balakot in Northwest Frontier Province, the scene was one of total devastation with many villages lying in ruins.

Landslides blocked the steep mountain roads and powerful aftershocks sowed terror among survivors, dislodging huge boulders from further up the hillsides. Rain, hail and freezing temperatures added to the misery.

The Neelum River has been a point of dispute between India and Pakistan with India completing a 22 km long tunnel earlier this year in violation of the Indus Water Treaty of 1960 and taking water from down stream Pakistan.

Marie Claire Says No to GM

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Marie Claire is a popular magazine read by many educated and socially conscious young women in Australia. My daughter Caroline has just drawn my attention to page 170 of the November 2005 issue where readers are told to ‘Say No to Genetically Modified Food’. There is a link to the Greenpeace true food site.

Interestingly the paragraph in the magazine begins “Genetically engineered (GE) foods might mean your vegetables last a bit longer, but there is growing concern about the long-term environmental and health effects of this technology.”

But hang on, there are no GM/GE vegetables for sale in Australia!

Perhaps the most available GM derived product in Australia is vegetable oil from GM cotton seed. Australian cotton farmers that grew GM varieties last season, used on average 88 percent less pesticide than farmers who grew conventional varities.

Exactly how and why is GM bad for the environment? I can only see benefits in the technology?

Those who oppose GM technology, including on the basis that corporate farms are bad, may like this site … http://www.themeatrix.com/ .

The video is compelling and check out the expression on the pig’s face when he decides to join the crusade.

Camel’s Poo Too

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Just back from another day at the beach: this time Mooloolaba which is an hour and a bit north of Brisbane. The sky was a perfect blue and a terrific breeze chopped the tops off some of the waves.

There are no camels at Mooloolaba. But I see today a story at ABC Online about camels at Broome’s cable beach and how they will soon be fitted with ‘poo bags’.

I guess the bags can be emptied where the poo can be mulched – rather than washed out to sea? I don’t know about the ocean off the north west, but parts of Australia’s east coast are nutrient poor. I wonder what the decision to mandate ‘poo bags’ was based on?

I will be in Darwin later this week at a conference on ‘population’. In preparation I have been reading a paper by Ron Brunton titled ‘The End of the Overpopulation Crisis’. He quotes from Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book ‘The population bomb’:

I have understood the population explosion intellectually for a long time. I came to understand it emotionally one stinking hot night in Delhi a few years ago … The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing and screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people. AS we moved slowly through the mob, hand horn squawking, the dust, noise, heat and cooking fires gave the scence a hellish aspect.

Brunton remarked “Clearly, Ehrlich felt some revulsion at the culturally unfamiliar use of personal and public space by a people who were physically different from himself.”

I reckon Ehrlich would also be intolerant of camel’s pooing on the beach.