Caring equally for people, animals and the planet 

It was heart-warming and insightful to read the letter from Dr Desmond Bellamy (“Plea to make future meals animal-free”, CN February 19).

How extraordinary that someone finally mentioned the problem that the majority do not recognise as such, the inclination to shrug off other living beings’ sufferings.

Many EU countries are ahead of Australia in regard to animal protection legislation – Austria and Switzerland, for example, recognise animals as sentient beings rather than objects.

Austrian law is the first to explicitly state that animals are not things, while Swiss law recognises the “dignity of creatures”, requiring protection against unjustified pain, suffering, or neglect.

In 2023, Denmark, a country with one of the largest per-capita meat consumption quantities in the EU and the world, launched the world’s first national Action Plan for Plant-Based Foods, supported by a €170 million ($A275 million) fund to boost the production and consumption of plant-based foods.

This includes investments in research, farming and training for chefs, in order to shift towards sustainable diets, aiming to lower agricultural climate emissions.

Why is our Australia not fair and our amazing Australians not advancing as much as they should be? Why is our beautiful country behind? With so many of us who care deeply not only for our own interests and work not only for our own ends?

If we are, as a community and country, not capable of accepting that the world in which we care equally for people, animals and planet is our only future, both existentially and ethically, then let us calculate cold facts and high likelihoods.

We either continue to do what we are doing and have increasingly and predictably worse disasters (due to climate change and pandemics) or we wake up, accept and rise to better understanding, choices and actions.

Bruna Krstulovic, Barton

Defining a ‘stable population’ is the test

I have no major issue with Colin Lyons’ contention (“Rapid population growth comes at a cost” letters, CN March 12) that our current level of immigration is excessive and that this is costing us economically.

However, I do not agree with him that South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are examples of countries with stable populations.

According to the Britannica website, a country has to have a total fertility rate (TFR) – the average number of children a woman is expected to have during her childbearing years – of 2.1, which is the replacement rate for a population to stay stable in the long run.

When TFR is below 2.1 for extended periods, populations tend to age and decrease.

None of those countries has a TFR anywhere near replacement rate. South Korea’s TFR is 0.8, Taiwan has a TFR 0f 0.78, just pipping South Korea for the lowest TFR in the world; and Japan has a TFR of 1.15.

South Korea’s population is being held up by foreign workers coming to the country. Taiwan has recently recorded 26 consecutive months of population decline. Japan’s population has been declining consistently since 2005.

In 2015 Japan’s population was estimated to be 127 million. By 2020 it had declined to 126.15 million and by 2024 it had declined to 123.8 million.

Chris Rule, Conder

Most solar is on rooftops, not ‘free land’

Steel-making aside, Nick Standish (letters, CN March 19) incorrectly calculates the amount of “free land” required to support the renewables that are going to wean us off fossil fuels.

Using Victoria as an example, the second smallest state, further clouds the issue.

Creating a continuous power source of 1513MW is not that difficult, and yes it could be done solely in Victoria. Wind and solar rated at 5000MW nominal augmented by batteries could provide a continuous power source of 1513MW. 

And regarding the figure of 5000MW, Victoria ALREADY has installed roughly 6000MW of solar ALONE, and most of it is not on “free land”, it’s on rooftops.

We do actually have huge tracts of “free land” in Australia, and only a small percentage of this would be required to produce 10 times the power required for steel making.

Fiona Colin, Malvern East

Nick’s logic on renewables is puzzling

Nick Standish sure loves his calculations, but his logic is puzzling (“Nick answers his critics on numbers”, letters, CN March 19).

Why should “all the free land in Victoria” be used to generate power for Australia’s steel industry? Our two steelworks are in Port Kembla, NSW, and Whyalla, SA. Using the ACT as a unit would have been clearer for readers.

Setting that aside, how did Nick arrive at 2.5 MWh per tonne of “dirty or green” steel? If he meant green steel made using green hydrogen, that is different – but Port Kembla and Whyalla use traditional coal-fired blast furnaces. Their electricity use is much lower. Port Kembla, for example, consumes about one TWh per year to produce roughly three million tonnes of steel, around 300 kWh per tonne (0.3 MWh) – about one-eighth of Nick’s figure, a substantial difference.

Regarding total land use for renewables infrastructure to electrify the whole economy (not just steel), the Net Zero Australia study by the University of Melbourne, ANU, University of Queensland, and Princeton University estimates and “envelope” of roughly 110,000 km², but this figure exaggerates the impact because, as readers know, much land (typically more than 85 per cent) remains usable for grazing under solar panels and both cropping and grazing under wind turbines.

An ANU study estimated the total land area “lost” to agriculture would be only 1200 km² or about half of the ACT.

Ray Peck, Hawthorn, Victoria

Albanese is right to support the war

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rarely gets it right, but through his connections with Islamist supporters he knows that Iran is bent on converting the world to its brand of Islam by any means.

We need only to observe Iran lashing out with missiles and bombs at other Middle Eastern Islamic states that don’t support Iran’s cultic aims, and its financing of cultic terrorism in Australia and other Western countries.

Iran has worked towards nuclear bombs for decades. Once it has them, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (a UN body) estimates it has enough enriched uranium for a dozen or so, it will use them against its two Great Satans, Israel and the US.

That will result in Iran’s destruction, which in turn will result in an East/West war like the world has never seen.

So, yes, Michael Moore (“Why would Albanese support an illegal war?”, CN March 12), Mr Albanese is right to support the war.

Although, like most of Mr Albanese’s support of the Western enlightenment it is a milquetoast (timid, meek, or submissive) support, it is right.

And optimistically you can sleep peacefully in your bed when Iran’s nuclear arsenal is totally dismantled, and that poor country can enjoy civilised life.

Anthony Hordern, Jamison