Please go away

This is my reaction to yet another series of articles in today’s The Age that almost celebrate Melbourne’s extensive and excessive population growth.

“It’s my kind of town, say 666,000 new Melburnians”. That’s how many people have been added in the last decade. No wonder transport and infrastructure are near collapse. This growth has been deliberately encouraged by politicians and businessmen in the name of profit. Melbourne used to be a fairly pleasant place to live – at least, in comparison to many other cities – but this livability is being increasingly eroded. I am angry and fed up with the situation, but I am not in a position to move, and there is nowhere else to go in any case.

“Melbourne struggling as population booms to more than five million by 2025 and 6.5 million by 2050”, H-S, 25/3. A similar article from last week (the Google search page links get around the annoying recently-introduced paywall for now). Here are the alarming statistics:

A grim future

“Here’s a view of the world at 2050 – if you dare to look”, The Age, 21/3. This opinion piece presents a dismal view of the world midway through this century, with environmental devastation and extensive biodiversity loss due to human activity and overpopulation. It is not dissimilar to the hellish Earth presented in the Avatar movie. The Environmental Outlook to 2050 is available online, though annoyingly it is subscriber-0nly.

The report asks whether the planet’s resource base could support ever-increasing demands for energy, food, water and other natural resources, and at the same time absorb our waste streams.

The huge amounts of various waste products produced by 7 billion people does not get much attention in population arguments, but most of this waste is toxic and not recycled, so it ends up polluting the environment we depend upon – the land, air and oceans.

The purpose of reports such as this is to motivate rather than depress. The report’s implicit assumption is there are policies we could pursue to make population growth and rising living standards compatible with environmental sustainability.

We’re not yet at the point where the sources of official orthodoxy are ready concede there are limits to economic growth. But this report comes mighty close.

I very much doubt that the current rate of population growth can be sustained without even more damage to the environment – the outlooks are mutually incompatible. Implementing restrictions on such growth would be met with much resistance in the present day, but if things get really desperate as described in the article, I wonder if this opposition would change.

There is a tendency amongst many to mock and dismiss such opinions as alarmist, and assert that humans will find a technological fix (cramming us all into megacities seems to be a favored option). Indeed the very first reader’s comment below the article is breezily dismissive:

No i don’t worry about it because like most humans you are exaggerating. The worst thing never happens just like the best thing never happens … it will sort itself out. You will look back on this and feel somewhat foolish.

A saying I like is, “A pessimist is an informed optimist”. In other words, it is a realistic viewpoint.

A 22/3 letter in response:

The population threat

ROSS Gittins wrote about the release of various reports regarding climate change and the response to it based on these reports. These reports are designed to inspire people into action. Issues such as carbon emissions, economic growth, energy needs, alternative sources of energy, emerging or developing countries and so on. However, every time a report is mentioned or discussed in the media, the glaring omission is population growth.

Population growth is a hot topic that is difficult to discuss and even harder to deal with. Surely the time has come to raise this as a matter of urgency. While the world may be able to deal with increased growth, should it?

The world has enough problems with 7 billion people; what would it be like with 8, 9 or 10 billion people?

– David Love, North Balwyn

Government-sanctioned vandalism

Two dismaying articles from The Age demonstrating an assult on the environment and residents’ rights by the Victorian Liberal government under Ted Baillieu.

“Baillieu reviews green laws”, 12/2. Native habitat is once again under threat due to the Liberal government’s seeking to remove excessive “red tape” (regulations). This despite that biodiversity is already much reduced:

Victorian National Parks Association executive director Matt Ruchel said numerous government and scientific reports over the last decades had shown Victoria as the most cleared and ecologically stressed state in Australia, with high numbers of threatened species.

“Planning reform blocks appeals”, 15/3. The overcrowding and destruction of once-pleasant established suburbs looks set to continue, and residents will not be notified, and have no right to appeal inappropriate housing developments near them. The anger and despair I feel at this is almost too much to be borne. And I am powerless to do anything about it. Planning Minister Matthew Guy is proving just as much an urban vandal as his predecessor, Justin Madden.

And, of course, a main factor behind each issue is Victoria’s continuing and relentless population growth, which is neither inevitable nor desirable (except to businesses such as the building industry which profit from it).

Some collected letters in response to both issues:

A future timebomb

“Sir Bob Geldof calls for women to have fewer children”, The National (UAE), 16/3. The musician and activist made these remarks during a visit to the United Arab Emirates, but the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, rejected this suggestion:

“It’s not entirely clear to me that the way to succeed is to stop having children,” said Sheikh Nahyan, also at the forum. “They are the future.”

He said it would be better to focus on food production and consumption, as well as energy, water, pollution, deforestation, biodiversity, urbanisation and disease.

Sheikh Nahyan also quoted the UN as saying “we should not ask whether we are too many, but what can we do to make the world better”.

A foolish and short-sighted response. The Middle East generally has a large and growing population of young people, many of whom are impoverished, and even some of those educated have little in the way of job opportunities. This has been one unpublicized motivation behind the “Arab Spring” – venting anger and frustration at their situation.

Like China, Middle Eastern countries are facing a “perfect storm” of rising populations and dwindling resources, and are scouring the world to alleviate this, mainly by buying up farmland in countries such as Australia and Africa, something which understandably meets with resentment from many citizens there. Something has to give.

But Geldof called on the UAE to accept the harsh reality now and avoid disastrous consequences later.

“They either find a cultural way to make this acceptable or they’re going to have an anthropogenic critical event,” he said.

Global consumption is also expected to increase by 1,600 per cent in the next 90 years.

“I think the tipping point has been reached,” Geldof said. “There can’t be more people on the Earth than we can feed.”

They can’t say that they haven’t been warned.

Speaking of celebrities, “Cherryl Barassi on hoons, suicide pills and ratbags in sport”, H-S, 3/3. The wife of a well-known former Australian footballer had a few incisive things to say, including opinions on population growth. In the print article this was also included in a sidebar:

“Overpopulation and rabid consumerism are destroying our one and only beautiful little planet. Even the one-percenters who run the show can’t be happy in this climate of greed and denial. We are the ka-ching dynasty.

“How about we cancel public funding of the IVF program, and any other breeding incentives, and make it easier to adopt around the world?

“I’m tired of hearing about rights, the right to have 12 children, 12 cars and 12 televisions in one household. I’d like to hear more about responsibility.”

Oh no, please don’t

“Urgent calls to alter one-child policy”, The Age, 3/3. There is a push to gradually abolish this policy, the main reason being to encourage economic growth (i.e. produce future consumers – “Relaxing the one-child policy is ‘urgent’ to help shift the economy towards greater consumption”) – never mind the impact on China’s already-degraded environment, or the additional increase to its huge population. Another symptom of this current civilization’s growth addiction. If there is a population decline – mainly a decrease in births – there seems to be a panicked reaction to try to rectify this.

“Shanghai Gets Supersized”, Smithsonian, November 2011. A general overview of the city of 23 million – approximately Australia’s population – squeezed into an area of a little over 6 km². A dystopian, polluted nightmare, but this is the future that technological types seem to find desirable. My reaction to such places is: Nuke it from Orbit.

“Big Australia looms as migration surges”, AN/PublicPopForum, 7/3. This unwanted increase when there are weekly reports of hundreds of job losses and rising unemployment. The asylum seekers are an extra burden on welfare. As noted in “ Australia a ‘soft touch’ for asylum”, the situation with illegal boat arrivals has reached absurdity, but a lot of idealistic fools would let them all in unchallenged.