“Murky agenda behind this green debate”, The Age, 27/1. A negative opinion piece by Brigid Delaney in response to the Saturday article featuring the book Overloading Australia. She expresses the usual counterarguments (and misses the point of the book).
Yet, if we want models of innovative and successful cities, we need look no further than New York and London, metropolises with high immigrant populations. It's clear that if you stagnate population growth and diversity, you run the risk of slowing not only economic growth, but also the development of our inner lives: the new voices that join the dialogue citizens have with one another.
Economic growth cannot be contined indefinitely without harming the environment and using up resources. At some point it must end.
The “diversity” argument is one I am increasingly finding tedious (usually delivered in lecturing tones by earnest Lefties. I am a Lefty in some things, but sometimes want to punch certain others of that inclination in the nose!). Too much “diversity” and excessive encouragement of multiculturalism ultimately leads to social fragmentation. By all means welcome (a controlled intake of) migrants but support their integration. Also, New York and London are (like many other large cities) horribly crowded and stressful places to live, as noted in the article “London’s a rat hole”, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 August 2006:
His scathing assessment was being submitted to the main opposition Conservative Party’s policy group focusing on quality of life. “Putting 10 million aggressive hominids into close proximity and inviting them to engage in serial acts of competitive individualism…for jobs, schools or parking spaces, could not be considered a reasonable idea,” Bayley said. “You put rats in claustrophobic circumstances and they become homosexual, murderous and cannibalistic in no time at all. Instead humans find ingenious solutions, underground car parks, coffee shops, Chinese takeaways, one-man buses, cycle lanes, tall buildings.”
She then brings up the usual accusation of those who oppose excessive immigration as being “racist”, and, for good measure, mentions neo-Nazis. Which is getting rather off-topic as the point of the book is, that Australia has a fragile environment (mostly desert) that cannot support a large population, and even now it is overpopulated; capital cities are on water restrictions, and the south-east of the continent has been in drought since 1998. Continuing to bring in huge numbers of people – wherever they are from – will make things increasingly unpleasant.
The logical conclusion of the argument put in Overloading Australia is a reduction in personal responsibility: let the Government fix it, continue, even accelerate, our wasteful ways, and screw everyone else. How utterly depressing that argument is.
This was obviously a response to a comment in the original article:
Predicting Australian cities will suffer more congestion, pollution, loss of biodiversity and diminished services, the authors argue there is no point conserving water “until we get restraint in population”.
The “not conserving water” comment came out of exasperation with the current government’s water restriction policies. If the government won’t slow population growth, why should the people already here bother with observing restrictions? A rebellion, of sorts.
