Humanity is on the high road to famine, war and mega deaths

It says: "US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at COP28 was blunt: 'A growing population means the global demand for food is likely to increase by an estimated 50 per cent by the year 2050. An escalating climate crisis means that crop yields could drop by as much as 30 per cent over that same period. So do the math.'"

I went to COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009 and they were saying that back then. You can take it as a call to mitigate climate change or you can take it as a call to limit population growth. Or you can do both. By all means throw money at agricultural research to find ways to maintain production in a warming climate but, if sea-levels rise more, then we lose many of the food-producing deltas to salination then inundation.

People are already moving away from the coast in Bangladesh and the Mekong Delta because of salt intrusion ruining their crops. It's happening on Pacific atolls.

People don't quietly lie down and die when they are hungry. They move or fight. Often there's nowhere to move that is not occupied. So they fight over limited resources, including land.

It's up to all of us to help avoid these scenarios.

At COP28 the world finally committed to "transition away" from fossil fuels.

As the climate envoy from the Marshall Islands and other devastated Island states noted, however, this language is not nearly adequate to drive the urgent emissions reductions required to hold warming below 1.5 degrees.

Once again, to achieve consensus, creative ambiguity was included in the final COP text. Disappointingly, like previous summits, COP28 demonstrated that it is petrostates with vested interests in fossil fuel profits holding the rest of the world back from a healthier, clean energy future.

The narrative must change. Humanity has great capacity to innovate and find solutions but the window to achieve the Paris climate summit goal is closing. Strong leadership and collective will are vital to truly close the door on the fossil fuel era.

The COP28 climate talks changed little of substance.

The basic premise that extra atmospheric carbon dioxide will heat the world and that renewable energy is the solution is still widely ignored by half the world where already high coal and gas consumption keeps rising.

Talk of reducing fossil fuel use is in a world that gets 80 per cent or more of its energy from fossil fuels and where demand is steadily increasing is either virtue signalling, ignorance, hypocrisy or all three.

Half the world, us included, continues to spend trillions of dollars on expensive and unreliable things like wind and solar, despite the obvious limits and impracticality of these systems.

In short, the whole scene is a mess, shot through with contradictions and no hard evidence that the supposed problem, or the solution, has been correctly identified.

A thorough, balanced, impartial review of climate and energy assumptions by expert scientists and engineers, with a ban on all politicians and activists, is obviously urgently needed.

We are going to finish another year.

We will welcome the new year and celebrate its entry into our lives.

It's also good time for us to take stock of the current year. Was it peaceful? Have we made any progress towards achieving peace?

Have we alleviated the poverty of millions of people who are desperate for a reasonable standard of living?

Have we discussed and achieved a reduction of the arms race and invested that money towards the development of third-world countries?

I hope that in 2024 we will make some progress on these fronts.

I am not sure where one would get the idea that "It has become the collective wisdom that all forested land in Australia must be locked up" (Steve Thomas, Letters, December 15).

As a long-time member of the Greens NSW, including a stint as a local government councillor, I can say with confidence that it's not the position of the Greens NSW.

I certainly take issue with the logging of native old-growth forest when it represents tiny remnants of the habitat of native flora and fauna, as is happening in nearby Tallaganda forest.

Having fought the bushfires of 2019-20, which consumed huge swathes of Tallaganda, as well as most of the trees on my own large rural property, I am well aware of the many pressures on forest habitat.

There's an old Irish joke (which I can tell, because I'm Irish): A tourist stops in rural Ireland to ask a farmer for directions to Cork. The farmer responds "Oh, if I was going to Cork, I wouldn't start from here".

And so it is with forestry, and action on climate change too.

We should have started the change 30 years ago. Starting from now is really sub-optimal, and may require a lot of uncomfortable compromises.

Greater gliders can't be brought back once they are gone, but we can build with materials other than old growth timber, at least until we build a truly sustainable forestry sector.

Yuri Shukost (Letters, December 14) takes issue with my suggestion that we need to reduce the size of the grazing herd to protect the environment and mitigate climate change.

This needs to happen on a global scale.

There is a plethora of reports, Including from the UN, that show that to reach net zero meat production has to be cut significantly and globally.

This is because of animal-related emissions and the large scale land clearing for grazing that is still taking place.

The latter is also destroying our biodiversity safety net.

Rich countries continue to consume animal protein at enormous rates and poorer countries want to emulate them.

Global warming and biodiversity loss will be the main cause of future famines. Also, meat production is not only inefficient it is also cruel.

Protein can now be produced by non-animal based methods including precision fermentation

I dispute Kenneth Griffiths' assertion (Letters, December 14) that invading territory, killing people and taking their land is what white people do.

Neither Israel nor Australia are European. Has he not heard of Genghis Khan, Imperial Japan, Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Rwanda, Somalia, Tibet, West Irian et al?

Having recently relocated to Canberra I was looking forward to seeing first hand how a progressive Labor government which had been in power for several terms was addressing the issues of climate change and the environment. I must say, on one significant front I have been somewhat underwhelmed.

Despite my best efforts, after only a few weeks it became apparent our family had no choice but to purchase a second car in order for me to travel for my work.

Since then I've been told repeatedly by long term ACT residents that "Canberra is a car city".

I would suggest that until the Barr government makes genuine inroads into reducing Canberra's car dependency that its talk about being an environmentally conscious government is just that; a whole lot of talk.

Woolworths say "we're helping you save money at Christmas".

How patronising. How about it and the other one simply start behaving like good corporate citizens, stop the price gouging and lower the prices across the board for good.

The shareholders may not be happy but customers will.

Who is more important?

Mike Dallwitz (Letters, December 15) reminds us that "white Europeans" are not the only living beings that invade, dispossess and kill.

He neglects to mention though that white Europeans are supposed to be the most civilised and cultured.

At least that's what we white Australians have always been taught.