Evacuate 13 million?

“Japan Weighed Evacuating Tokyo in Nuclear Crisis”, NYT/The Age, 27/2. This article describes the Japanese government’s then-secret plans to evacuate Tokyo after the earthquake and tsunami if the damaged Fukushima Daiichi reactor plant went into meltdown:

Mr. Kan and other officials began discussing a worst-case outcome if workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant were evacuated. This would have allowed the plant to spiral out of control, releasing even larger amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere that would in turn force the evacuation of other nearby nuclear plants, causing further meltdowns. The report quotes the chief cabinet secretary at the time, Yukio Edano, as having warned that such a “demonic chain reaction” of plant meltdowns could result in the evacuation of Tokyo, 150 miles to the south.

Not described in the article is how the government would undertake the immense task of evacuating a huge city of 13 million (though looking at the Wikipedia page, the greater Tokyo region is an astounding 35 million). Japan is pressed for space on its islands as it is (despite gloomy alarmist reports about a declining birth rate). Perhaps other countries might take some of the evacuees, assuming they wanted to go, but nearby China is overcrowded already, and places such as Australia are mostly desert and the infrastructure in the cities are not coping with the current population. So disasters like these demonstrate that a large and growing population rapidly becomes a liability in such times.

Escape to Australia

“Greek community flies flag to help homeland”, The Age, 14/2; “Melbourne in a Greek rush as new wave of migrants arrive”, H-S, 19/2. Greece’s economy continues to implode, so guess where many citizens there are looking to escape to? Yes, the far-off paradise of Australia, where despite having our own problems with hundreds of people losing jobs every week, the Victorian Premier urges Greeks to migrate to Victoria:

THE Baillieu Government wants Greeks hit by the economic crisis to migrate to Victoria. Greek-born Multicultural Affairs Minister Nick Kotsiras yesterday put out the welcome mat for his former countrymen and women. “It’s important that we build this nation and I think that migrants add to our capacity to grow and develop and to provide jobs,” he said. “And so I encourage people from all over the world, including Greece, to apply.”

Mr Kotsiras said the Victorian Greek community’s Antipodes festival this weekend would be a chance to show solidarity with the ethnic homeland. He said it was estimated that thousands of Greek Aussies based in Greece had returned to Australia because of the country’s debt crisis.

The Baillieu Government has given the Greek community more than $3 million to build a cultural centre and to spruce up Lonsdale St’s Greek precinct.

There is a similar situation in Ireland, as noted in my 15/12/2011 entry. I guess you can’t blame people for wanting to escape bad situations, but what happens if Australia is beset by a similar crisis? There would be nowhere else to go. I doubt I would want to leave, even if I had the means (which I don’t).

The whole “nation-building” ethos is so anachronistic (along with colonialism and slavery); I can’t believe some still espouse it. An alternate slogan I would like to see adopted for Australia: “Small, smart and sustainable”.

My published letter – 22/2

Got a letter published at long last, though only in my local paper (various ones sent to the major papers were not published – maybe they are tired of me!). It was in response to a letter in the previous week’s paper, commenting on “ ‘Jungle’ fear on units in Bentleigh”, about yet another unwanted housing overdevelopment of a local site. The letter was slightly edited – wonder why the [bracketed] phrase was removed?

I am a longtime Bentleigh resident, and am dismayed to see the ugly new developments now blighting almost every street. Houses and pleasant gardens are demolished every week to make way for massive monstrosities, and my suburb, like many others, seems to have become a permanent construction zone [with uncaring developers apparently given free rein by council and planning laws]. The ongoing destruction is highly stressful and is destroying what made the suburb livable.

The Glen Eira Council have also been holding Community Plan Consultations where residents can voice their concerns over local issues until 29 February. I posted in the online forum (as “Suzanne”). I don’t know how effective it will be, or if this is only a token gesture to give the appearance of responding to community concerns. A lot of this is over ongoing overdevelopment (no thanks to Melbourne’s unwanted population growth, which is outside of Council control) and inappropriate development. The council just seems to “rubber-stamp” new developments without caring what impact these have. I hate to think what my suburb and others will look like in another decade – its once-pleasant amenity is relentlessly being destroyed.

Humans vs. kangaroos

Last night an ABC documentary, Kangaroo Mob, was screened, about the increasing competition for living space between kangaroos and humans in Canberra. Predictably the kangaroos are on the losing end, their habitat being eroded by the expansion of housing estates over grassland. The comments about supposed kangaroo overpopulation in the narrative could equally be applied to humans! I kept envisioning some aliens coming to Earth and deciding to “hold an annual cull to ‘manage’ the problem by keeping [human] numbers at ‘sustainable levels’ ”! To quote from a PDF from the documentary site.) We certainly would not like it if that were done to us. I previously mentioned the hypocrisy around animal culls in my 7/7/2010 entry.

I was infuriated at a news item on ABC TV last night (I don’t have a link) about how property developers are lobbying the Bailleu government to remove environmental controls and release more land around Melbourne for development. They are loathesome parasites who care only about making profit, no matter at what cost to the environment. An article in The Age today, “Native grasslands suffer ‘death by a thousand cuts’  ”, describes the threat to the remaining volcanic plains grasslands around Melbourne which are a valuable ecosystem but are viewed by many as open space to be built over.

Letter in The Age, 20/2:

OUR number plates should now read “Victoria – a property developer’s paradise”.

– Margaret Ludowyk, Brunswick

Tower travesty

“Mega Melbourne plan for skyscrapers in suburbs”, H-S (also at The Age). The latest idiotic proposal from so-called Planning Minister Matthew Guy and others is, in response to Melbourne’s unwanted and unnecessary growth, to massively expand the central business district and encourage the construction high-rise towers (developers must be rubbing their hands in glee). Of course this will destroy what character the city has left and turn it into yet another ugly megalopolis like so many other cities. Melbourne was nicer before the building of concrete-glass-steel skyscrapers, when its main buildings were the comparatively modest brick or stone structures of only a few storeys.

Letters in response to the planning criticism in my previous entry, H-S, 17/2:

Planners need to listen

ANDREW MacLeod, of the Committee for Melbourne, thinks Barry Humphries shouldn’t comment on planning because he’s not qualified in the area (“Stars should butt out”, February 16).

Mr MacLeod has no qualifications in planning either. Nor do most members of his committee.

Regardless, qualified planners have made many mistakes: think of the inner-city “slum clearance” programs of the 1960s or the old Gas and Fuel buildings.

Planners tend to make worse mistakes when they stop listening to the community. As well as being more democratic, genuine public participation produces better planning because it forces planners to justify their proposals.

This reduces the likelihood that they will make mistakes.

Melbourne needs more people like Geoffrey Rush, Barry Humphries and Mary Drost, and more planners who are prepared to share power with the public.

– Dr Paul Mees, senior lecturer in urban planning, RMIT

Possums, Barry should be heard

BARRY Humphries is a celebrity because of his keen observation and ability to show people and places in a humorous light.

He is eminently qualified to have a view on planning matters in his suburb of origin. Humphries is not just a dilettante, as implied by Andrew MacLeod. Furthermore, civic-minded residents such as Mary Drost are an essential force in mitigating adverse changes in established suburbs.

Andrew Macleod seems to have forgotten the concept of democracy and actually contradicts himself in saying that Mrs Drost is selfish to attempt to preserve gardens for people other than herself!

– Jill Quirk, East Malvern

Land grab

“Farm sale just like winning Lotto”, H-S. This is a dismaying trend around Melbourne and other cities, of farmers selling off valuable arable land to developers. They obviously don’t care about what will happen to their land or the environment (some of the land was initially put aside for native grassland); they are only greedily focused on short-term gain. We will all suffer for this in the future, and indeed are doing so now as the city relentlessly continues its cancerous population and urban growth.

“Celebrity heritage protesters should butt out of planning issues, says lobbyist”, H-S. The Committee for Melbourne chief executive criticized celebrities for supporting anti-development groups. The CFM is essentially a front for developers and business, neither who have interest in preserving the amenity of neighborhoods. A comment I sent in:

Developers are doing a lot more to “ruin the future of Melbourne for the future population” with their ugly high-density apartment towers! Residents should have every right to defend the livability of their suburbs, and if celebrities can aid them, so much the better.

“Brace yourself, highways to hell coming”, 5/2. Population growth and inadequate public transport are seeing freeways frequently gridlocked with increasing traffic. All the Government can think to do is scar the landscape with more roads, not tackle the problem at its source.

Collected articles

I have a backlog of various articles from the last 4 months that I meant to comment on, so much linkage follows!

Cheating the system

“China warns parents against Hong Kong ‘birth tours’ ”, H-S, 8/2 (also at The Age). Here is evidence that some people will go to great lengths to avoid birthrate control restrictions – in this case, Chinese women going to Hong Kong to have more children. It shows that some can be irrational when it comes to reproduction and they therefore can’t be trusted to do the right thing. The punishments are monetary fines, but in a future dystopia, or fictional one, these punishments could be a lot harsher (I’ll leave those to the imagination). If you look under my fiction tag you can see previous entries with examples of these dystopias.

Collected letters

Yet another round up of letters, mostly from The Age, on population and urban planning issues: