The average American consumes 300 times as much energy as the average Bangladeshi. Each American consumes 26,000,000 tonnes of water, 21,000 gallons of gasoline, 5 tonnes of meat and 4.5 tonnes of wheat in his or her lifetime.

The rainforests of central America have declined 38% in size in just over 30 years

Nearly one-fifth of the world's land is threatened with desertification - Rotary International

The International Labour Organisation estimates that 8.4 million children work as slave labourers, prostitutes or soldiers worldwide. Of these, 1.2 million children are kidnapped, sold or smuggled each year.

Nine million people have been enslaved by the global sex trade or forced to work in appalling conditions by powerful criminal syndicates. Estimates of the number of children in the Asian sex market are 640,000 in the four most affected countries - Jan van Dijk of the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention.

Even using the narrowest definitions that exclude bonded and forced labour and servile concubinage, there are estimated to be 2.7 million slaves in the world. Including bonded labourers, there are an estimated 27 million slaves, and including all categories of trafficked women and children there are estimated to be 100 million slaves. - The Anti-Slavery Society 2006

World capital flows: $US1.2 trillion per day - Business Review Weekly 20 June, 2002

The world derivates market has boomed from tiny beginnings in the 1980's to become a $US128 trillion market at the end of June, 2002, according to the Bank for International Settlements

According to analysts at investment bank Goldman Sachs, Japan's deposit-taking institutions hold bad loans worth about $US1.37 trillion. Japanese government debt at September 2002 was $US5.19 trillion, and rising. - Australian Financial Review 8 March 2003.

Interesting statistics

Australia

Taxation

The federal government's expenditure on welfare has risen from 20.2 per cent of the budget to a massive 42.5 per cent in 2005, amounting to a welfare bill of A$88 billion per annum. While middle-aged and elderly people are heavily taxed without relief, the Howard government doles out $27 billion on family payments - The Australian 18 August 2005.

Petrol that retails at 92 cents per litre costs the refiners 30 cents. Refining costs are 8 cents, distribution costs 7 cents, the hard-working service station owners get 3 to 5 cents while the federal government rakes off a massive 44 cents per litre.

The Tax Act was 450 pages long in 1985. It now takes up 8,500 pages.

Government

The Swedish Air Force has about one quarter the personnel of its Australian counterpart but has double the number of fighter planes. Sweden gets by with about 100 civilians in its defence department compared with 17,000 in Australia - Australian Financial Review, 6 April 2002

The commonwealth government's unfunded superannuation liabilities have blown out to nearly $90 billion and are growing at $3 billion a year. The state governments have a further $70 billion in unfunded superannuation liabilities. - from a 2004 paper by Treasurer Costello entitled Investing for the Future.

Health

A 1995 study, Quality in Australian healthcare, indicated as many as 50,000 patients were injured and 18,000 died each year due to medical and hospital errors.

A further report released in July 2002, reveals that more than half-a-million Australians were victims of medical mistakes last year and 11,000 of them died as a result - Perth Sunday Times 14 July 2002.

Australian doctors make potentially deadly mistakes in more than 4.5 million prescriptions each year. Professor Bruce Barraclough, head of the Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Health Care said more than 500,000 Australians a year required hospital treatment because of prescription errors. - Sunday Times, 28 December 2003.

Australia must have some of the unhealthiest, accident-prone and mentally impaired people in the world, according to the number of people on disability support pensions. The federal Government spends A$2.6 billion a year funding 670,000 people on disability support pensions. One third of the people have musculoskeletal or connective tissue conditions, and almost 25 per cent have psychological and psychiatric conditions. - federal Government report January 2004.

Immigration

Elderly migrants, usually sponsored by children in Australia, end up costing the taxpayers about $250,000 each in health services and social security benefits. - The Australian 13 November 2002.

Education

A massive 17 per cent of the adult Australian population was functionally illiterate, or unable to read basic medical instructions. - United Nations report July 2004.

Welfare

A total of six million Australians receive government welfare - Government report February 2006

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Australians lost $13.3 billion on gambling in 2000. Governments have become addicted to gambling, raking in $4.4 billion in gambling taxes for the year. A Productivity Reports has found that gambling addictions affect more than 1.6 million people, with 330,000 having a chronic problem

There are 300,000 American deaths a year linked to obesity. The healthcare costs of obesity is $US 123 billion ($A 204 billion) per annum,  which is five times the health costs associated with tobacco.- US Institutes of Health

Meanwhile, in the developing world, 815 million people live in hunger - Kofi Annan 11 June 2002.

Throughout Africa, over 2 million people, mostly children, die each year from malaria. Malaria deaths have skyrocketed since green groups stampeded the United Nations into banning the use of DDT, which up until then was effectively eradicating the malaria-bearing Anopheles mosquito.

The US

As at June 2003, the US domestic debt hit US 21.6 trillion.

The US defence budget is running at US$400 billion. Russia and China spend $51 billion each, France $40 billion, Britain $37 billion, Germany $33 billion and the rest of the NATO countries $85 billion. 

The huge US trade deficit is growing at $US1.8 billion per day. Consequently, other countries and their citizens now own a net of about $3 trillion of US assets - Billionaire fund manager Warren Buffet, March 2005. 

GLOBAL military spending is expected to hit $US1.06 trillion this year, topping the record set during the Cold War era.

THE ARMS CACHE

• The top 100 arms companies have seen sales increase by almost 60 per cent from $US 157 billion in 2000 to $US268 billion in 2004.

• While the US and countries in the Middle East are responsible for most of the increased military spending, expenditure has also risen substantially among some of the world's poorest countries.
  

• The Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Botswana, and Uganda all doubled their military spending between 1985 and 2000.
  

• Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan spent more on their military than on health care between 2002 and 2003.
  

• Conflict has triggered record hunger levels, with Africa particularly affected.

• Some 61 per cent of African countries affected by food crises are in the grip of civil wars.
  
  Oxfam report - September 2006