“Obsessed Brumby jackboots-up ‘development’ in Victoria”, Can Do Better. Am angry and frustrated to learn that Victorian Premier John Brumby is using rising unemployment as an excuse to fast-track various building projects, never mind what negative impact these have on local communities (i.e. inappropriate developments). Overdevelopment (namely high-rise apartments) is making the suburbs and city increasingly unliveable and unpleasant, but residents’ rights are overridden. The current Labor government is given large donations by various developers, an obvious sign of corruption. One feels helpless and powerless – letters can be written to the newspapers and so on, but that changes nothing. What can be done? Challenging the decisions in court costs money. Perhaps some form of civil disobedience, but I don’t know what.
“Melbourne is wrecked, and full”, Andrew Bolt, 30/1. Andrew Bolt is a Herald-Sun columnist whom I don’t often agree with (he denies climate change, for one thing), but he makes a good case here! Though building more dams is pointless if we don’t get adequate rainfall to fill them.
Imagine Melbourne growing 50 per cent bigger in your children’s lifetime, if not your own. That’s 50 per cent more people, cars, houses, gardens, air-conditioners and train travellers. Everywhere where’s there’s two, imagine three by 2050. Forget the social stresses of simply getting on with so many more immigrants, or of trying even to find a little elbow room. Consider this more basic problem: how on earth are we going to give all our new neighbours power, water, roads, land and trains when we don’t have enough for the people here already?
“Population: The elephant in the room”, BBC News, 2/2. Opinion piece by John Feeney on the topic few environmentalists want to confront, for fear of being seen as politically-incorrect. This generated a huge number of comments (now closed). It’s obvious that a lot of people are still in denial about the negative effects of growth, and seem to take the idea of population reduction/restrictions as a personal insult.
