OK, so humanity and the environment.

Do you prefer "sustainable" energy or feeding the third world? Do you prefer primary rain forest and orangutang habitat maintenance and bio-diversity or increasing output to satisfy both of the above? Do you want "clean" energy or do you want to power the world?
Do you want to clean up the rivers by reducing or prohibiting pesticides and fertilizers, or grow enough food for the 80 million or so additional humans on this planet every year (not counting the huge amount of people who do not get enough already and starve more or less slowly)? Do you want to reduce wastage (which is huge) or plastic packaging and the cold chain? Do you want I-pad's and new techno-gimmics regularly (most people do apparently- see recent uptake of X-Box or I-phone 5S), new annual fashion, and brand names and super-duper cars, or a more reasonable use of the world's resources, in particular brain power? Organic (bio) food anyone (great stuff if you can afford it)?

I could go on for ever with all the issues hundreds of NGO's busy themselves with. The problem is one of conflict. Everyone seems to have his favorite battle (mine is sharks), but focusing on one single issue (pesticides, food, energy, biodiversity, etc...) is completely unproductive.

A recent and simple example I saw on Facebook was: This year, for Christmas, let's buy from small local businesses. I subscribe completely. BUT: let's imagine we all do that, and the large retail companies will miss the biggest sale of the year. What will they do? Close shops, Retrench people? I know it's not the environment, but what I'm trying to say is that every action leads to a re-action (Archimedes principle). Nothing is an easy fix, whenever you pull on a string, both sides of the string move.

Elaborating on the first paragraph:

- Vegetable oil can be used for food or biodiesel. Not both at the same time (given a certain production level - driven by cultivated land, pesticide and fertilizer use)! When German Mercedes users switch to biodiesel,  they increase the price of vegetable oil to a level where the poor Indian consumers can't feed their children any more. The law of offer and demand.
- Food production (including veg. oil) is a factor of land and yield. Increased food production means either more land or higher yields. More land means converting more nature into productive areas (rain forest amongst others). Yields are driven by type of seeds (GMO, anyone?), fertilizer and pesticide use and irrigation. Increasing yields means better seeds (GMO, here we go again), more pesticide and/or fertilizer use and/or increased use of aquifers (or building dams, with other consequences), One CANNOT increase food production without one or the other.
- Some advocate the reduction of meat consumption in favor of a vegetarian diet. OK, but the flaw in the reasoning is first that many people like meat (including me), and that if meat stops being a major food ingredient, we will lose a lot of natural fertilizer, and probably find that cows, chicken, pigs, lambs, etc... end up on the endangered species list as well. Species seem to only survive when they make economic sense in our world.
- Organic food is a great idea, but how many people can afford it? It WILL cost more to produce good food, will use the same amount of land, and procure lower yields. This means higher prices, so in a way, people who buy Organics are actually making life more difficult for those who can't afford it. Provocative? I am listening...
- "Clean" energy is a flawed concept. It does not exist. Fossil energy (coal, oil, gas, nuclear) is not clean. Wind and solar power are not clean either. First they require large amounts of fossil fuel to build and maintain, they require massive amounts of storage, usually in the form of batteries, i.e. heavy metals, and need large amounts of space (want a HUGE wind generator in your backyard, anyone?). To equate the output of an average size nuclear reactor (there are usually more than one  in one location) - 660MW-  it takes about 86 of the largest type of wind generators (Enercon E-126 - 7.6MW capacity - not output, that's only about 4MW- 198m high). The largest solar plant in the world (in the Mojave desert in California) produces 75MW, so you need 9 of those, each one using 1600 acres ( 650 ha).That's 14500 acres, folks!  I'm not advocating nuclear power, I'm just pointing to a conflict...
- Wastage comes from a number of factors, primarily loss in the supply chain and excess purchase in "rich" countries. Reducing wastage means improving packaging (multilayer plastics are an option, but of course they use fossil fuel), generalizing the cold chain (in the third world, a huge proportion of food is lost because products go bad before they reach the table), and that means more ozone depleting gases and a hell of a lot of energy required to power the system. As for the excess purchase in the rich world, I'm not sure how to stop it, and if one could, how to ship it to the part of the world that needs it?
- Resource optimization is another conundrum: Lots of "misfits" advocate very loudly their disgust with modern civilization, yet listen to music on their I-pod while using all the modern amenities of a developed world. I am yet to find a "green" person who is ready to let go of light, heating, music, movies, and so on. It is true that too much emphasis is put on non-essentials, too much brain energy used for little benefit. But that's what the majority of people demand, and are prepared to pay for.If only all this superb brain power was used to research better solar energy or low emission plants... Trouble is there is more money in I-phone 6, and don't blame the corporation making it, blame yourself if you buy it!

More than 5 minutes. I know this is provocative. I have another very provocative point to make. Stay tuned (it concerns the oil industry and industrial risk).

Comments, as usual, are welcome.