AUSTRALIA is heading for extinction. The world's driest habitable continent, already groaning under the weight of its existing population, is exhausting its soils and may well go the way of Easter Islandwhere civilisation descended into anarchy and eventually collapsed.
That is the prognosis of several prominent scientists speaking at the ANZAAS meeting in Canberra last week. According to Barney Foran, of the Division of Wildlife and Ecology of the CSIRO, Australia's national research organisation, the current population of 18.3 million is already close to consuming all the continent's life-sustaining resources.
The "ecological footprint" of modern Australiansthe amount of good arable land needed to provide food, water, forest products and energyis 4.1 hectares per person. But Australia is losing its soils at an alarming rate as a result of intensive agriculture.
"Australia is very, very short of good soils. We're an old weathered continent," said Foran. Once the ecological footprint ...
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