eulogy

Mary Drost OAM, daughter of Henry and Alma McMahon, a woman unafraid to speak truth to power, died in her sleep in hospital on 4 January 2024.

Most of us will remember the second pandemic year of 2021 more with regret or anger than fondness.  For the nature lovers among us, its closing days delivered a triple whammy, for they also proved to be the closing hours in the lives of three venerable conservation champions of international renown whom we had long revered.  By sheer coincidence, Thomas Lovejoy, E. O.

A few years ago I was introduced to Dr. Al Bartlett's "Arithmetic, population and energy" lecture recorded at the University of Colorado , (Boulder) U.S.A. To me, the message was so clear, engaging and logical that no-one could fail to understand it and hopefully none would fail to see the significance.

– He was saying that what may look to be ample reserves , for example, 500 years of coal still in the ground will not last anywhere near that as the demand for that resource increases with exponential population growth.

He was talking to a lecture theatre of students and I thought, "That's good. They cannot fail to understand the significance of exponential growth combined with the use of a finite resource and the implications. I read that Prof. Bartlett has given this lecture 1,600 times since 1969 http://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy.html to average audiences of 80 people. That is 128,000 who have heard his lecture live. One of the You Tube videos of this talk has had 37,720 views. Someone in that large audience over those 4 decades must have realised from them that humanity is in real trouble over finite energy resources and an ever growing population!

Today I heard that Al Bartlett has died. There will be no more lectures to students in Universities, but we can still hear the important and clear message from Prof. Bartlett by going to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9znsuCphHUU. Believe me, you will not be bored, you should be spellbound.