Moves to protect Bermuda's fragile environment continue to gain momentum.

The Sustainable Development Round Table ? an independent Government-appointed body looking into dangers facing the Island ? is to seek input from the community.

A questionnaire and information booklet will be distributed to every home in Bermuda, and a live debate on the issue will be aired on ZBM on Tuesday, June 21 at 8 p.m.

"We want to leave Bermuda for our children with the same options we had, if not better," Round Table members Arthur Hodgson and Tom Wadson said at the Botanical Gardens yesterday.

"We can't develop in a haphazard fashion to the level which it can harm us."

But Mr. Hodgson said Bermuda had a higher rate of young people in prison than the US ? with ten percent of its young people in prison.

And he said Bermuda also had a higher rate of recidivism, or re-offending, than the US.

"Everybody needs to think about what we dopersonally," Mr. Wadson said. "The size of cars went up and there was a 14 percent increase in auto-sales."

At the same time Bermuda has one of the highest levels of road deaths per capita in the world, he said.

"We see the need of recognising problems in a broad sense," Mr. Hodgson said.

Mr. Wadson said the humidity had increased yesterday and was about to turn on an air conditioner when he thought twice about wasting electricity.

"We are producing more garbage than New York," he said while pondering whether Bermuda could ship its waste to America in the container ships that leave Bermuda empty every week.

And as a local farmer, he continued to maintain that Bermudians should not have to rely on imported food.

"Those with money dominate the decision making process to their own detriment," Mr. Hodgson said. "We recognise the need to develop but we also recognise the need to not endanger the resources that give us life."

Speaking as a former Environment Minister, Mr. Hodgson said in the past there was a danger that the subject of Sustainable Development was "too large we can't put our arms around it".

The Round Table was an independent, bipartisan advisory body appointed by Premier Alex Scott, they said. It was set up by Government to help advise the Cabinet and Sustainable Development Project Team, which is being Coordinated by Ross Andrews. The Project Team held public meetings

"The process began earlier but has now been raised to a higher radar and hopefully politicians have bought into it and society buys into it and recognise the consequences of that in their individual lives," Mr. Hodgson said.