[ross hamilton hill]

The biggest energy users are the USA and Western Europe, not only in terms of overall use but use compared to land area. Also Japan. So if pollution and over use of resources is one of the world's biggest problems then the culprits are there to see. But I still think over-population is by far the biggest danger, we have over-bred and over-crowded the planet and are victims of our own success as a species. It's no one's fault. It's like Lenin said , 'two steps forward,one step back' we will have huge problems and it's hard to see it not being disastrous in some ways. A drought in California is just one of dozens of ways the world is feeling the pinch. Sydney was almost out of water a few years back, we built a huge desalination plant in expectation of there beng no water for a city of 3 million then the rains came and it's never been used.

And John a quarter of all Muslims live in Indonesia, a moderate democracy where females form half of the public service and participate fully in all aspects of life, including getting a good education. Islam is not by definition an extreme religion as anyone who has read the Koran knows. It is extreme in some countries because those countries are in a different stage of their development from the West, it is easy to forget what Western countries were like in the 17th or 18th centuries, you can't expect all countries to progress at the same rate.