Alex Greenwood, 23, a self-proclaimed ‘hippy’ and neo-Malthusian was found dead late last night at his home in Campbelltown.

“He was very passionate; willing to go that extra mile for causes that he believed in” says Amanda Hurst, his girlfriend of three years. “While I’ll miss him terribly, I understand. I’ll keep on fighting for you, Alex.”

Excerpts from his suicide note, released today by his family read “I simply can’t take the shame of my carbon footprints [sic]. I am only 23 years old, and yet by my estimate, I have already produced 2.8 tonnes of CO2 [...] What better way to reduce my carbon impact than to not exist?”

Neo-Malthusian theory, a rather extremist evolution of Thomas Malthus’ Principle of Population, blames over-population for a number of humankind’s problems. Proponents of population stabilisation claim that population growth is the source of many ills, ranging from poverty and famine, to terrorism, and even global warming.

Population Action Australia (PAA) is one such organisation lobbying for population stabilisation laws in Australia. “I feel for his family,” says John Ashton, spokesperson and co-founder of PAA. “it is never nice to lose someone you love, but Alex believed strongly in our cause. We admire his restraint and devotion.”

“We all know that global warming is the biggest threat facing Australians today, and that population growth is the leading cause. We believe that the best way to tackle this issue is to introduce legislation limiting the sizes of families, to achieve zero, or even a negative, population growth. Look at Russia for example, their population is in decline; yet the country has never been better!”

When pressed on the issue during question time in Parliament today, Mikhail Fosta, NSW State Treasurer and staunch denier of global warming said, “Everyone knows that global warming is just bullshit. I feel for this kid’s family, I truly do, but I can’t help thinking that maybe our state is better off without someone so damn gullible.”

As for whether population control efforts should be considered, he continued, “Well, I don’t really have an opinion on whether those laws should be instituted or not, but you can bet your ass I won’t be opening the State coffers. Funding for enforcement will have to come from somewhere else.”

Greenwood’s body is due to be buried this Sunday, in line with his last request from his suicide note, “Don’t cremate me, I’ve probably caused enough pollution already.”

I am now $60 lighter, or to be more accurate, my credit card is $60 heavier.

Certainly taught me a lesson, however, as I haven’t been dropping cigarette butts on the ground since!

Me being a somewhat legal-beaver, I of course, had to look up the legislation/regulations governing said penalty notice:

(Note: gets a little gritty with details here on out; discretion is advised.)

Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 no 156 (NSW) s.145 (1) states:

(1) Offence of littering
A person who deposits litter in or on a public place or an open private place is guilty of an offence.

Maximum penalty: 20 penalty units.

My legal-lust only partially sated at this point, I was obliged to continue…

A couple of frustrated minutes later, and I found what I was searching for; in Schedule 1 of the Protection of the Environment Operations (Penalty Notices) Regulation 2004 no 601 (NSW) , in the table pertaining to the PEO Act it states:

Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997
Column 1                                                             Column 2               Column 3
Provision of the Act                                                 Officer                Penalty (individuals)
...                                                                  ...                    ...
Section 145: Deposit litter, being unlit or extinguished cigarette   1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7,      $60
(excluding litter deposited from vehicle).                           8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

Section 145: Deposit litter, being lit cigarette (excluding litter   1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7,      $200
deposited from vehicle).                                             8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

[Column 4: "Penalty (corporations)" omitted, due to it being a) empty, and b) too wide.]

At that point, I realised I caught the officer on a good day (or perhaps, was caught on a good day!) and should probably count myself lucky that it was a Friday.

NSW Government: please spend my $60 wisely.

As a sidenote, the NSW Government’s Legislation website is incredibly well done: simple, effective and easy to use; eclipsing by far the efforts of both the Australian Government’s ComLaw , and the New Zealand Government’s PAL projects. Also, I was pleasantly suprised to find that legislation is, in general, pretty damn easy to read too.

Anywho, that’s it from me for now. See you in August NZ folks.

I finally got around to getting the photos uploaded off of Bob’s camera, only to find that unfortunately it seems that I was unable to use his camera correctly (they look fine as thumbnails, but very blurry when viewed full-size):

Our fantastically-decorated Christmas tree. This has to be one of the bushiest trees I’ve ever had; fittingly, we all managed to help make sure there was an equally ‘bushy’ number of presents sitting underneath it. Also note the Crunchie bars hanging off the tree; it seems to be somewhat of a family tradition back home.

The lack of a chimney didn’t deter Santa in the slightest. We all had our initialed stockings filled to the brim by the Big Guy come morning. I guess if the spiders can find their way in, so can he.

Another norm in our family come christmas time is the champagne cocktails – champagne and peach schnapps, a sugar cube dropped in, and a slice of strawberry to top it all off.

Christmas was a lot of fun this year. We gave and received presents; gorged ourselves with ham and turkey, then a course (or two!) of pudding; drank some cocktails; and relaxed in the spa.

Big presents this year were financial support from Ma and Pa (Thank you!) to support me in my Sydney excursion, and the awesome OpenGL Library from my brother.

Hope everyone had an awesome Christmas, and will have a excellent new year.

PS. Aunty B, thank you for the card and the spider (though we already have enough of those here!)

Christmas 06

I now live in Sydney with my older brother, his gf, their friend Bob, and a couple other flatmates.

Currently looking for work also, I just applied for a C++ programming job (still have no idea what sort of programming work it is yet – and I may never find out.) Sounds very casual, with a high level of communication and teaching/learning between colleagues. So, love for it to work out, but I’m not too hopeful.

My computer is still at home in Christchurch, a new hard drive within so my younger brothers can have a fairly decent computer to play games on or whatever. My computer situation here consists of Ben’s (my brother) laptop, and a couple of my hard drives with all my data on it – currently inaccessible due to a distinct lack of desktop systems in the flat.

I managed to get quite a bit of gardening work done during the last month I was in Christchurch, lots of weeding done, bit of plant moving (create areas for each type of vege.) Pictures are here. Hopefully Dad – or Mum, Ha! (inside joke) – will find the time to buy some new plants also.

Life in Sydney is very cool so far, been here 36 hours now, and I’m really enjoying it. Interesting that as big a step this was for me to take, it hasn’t really set in yet. Haven’t yet had the feeling like “Holy shit! I’ve moved out of home, to not only a new city, but a new country!” – still feels a little surreal, maybe I won’t ever get that feeling though. Time will tell.

Update: called Dad, and he said he’s bought some plants, but the weather’s been lousy, and might affect the plants’ survivability, so he’s yet to plant them.