“Australia faces famine, expert warns”, ABC News, 29/10. The idea of Australians facing famine seems unthinkable, but this could be a real prospect in the future as the “perfect storm” of population growth, water shortages, land degradation and climate change converge.
Treasury head Ken Henry this week said that Australia’s population growth is the biggest challenge to Commonwealth and state governments since Federation.
Professor Cribb agrees it will cause problems, and says governments must not forget future famine goes hand in hand with population growth.
“They have grossly underestimated the potential for population growth in Australia,” he said.
“If you get a major collapse in food supply in an area like the north China plains or the Indo-Gangetic plains, there will be hundreds of millions of refugees cut lose so we could easily see 20 or 30 million refugees arrive in Australia over a couple of years.
[…]
He says a range of issues have sparked current food production problems.
“Apart from the obvious things going on in the world food markets, there’s a colossal shortage of water emerging because cities worldwide are pinching the farmers’ water,” he said.
“There’s land degradation that’s proceeded unabated for about 30 or 40 years now. We’re losing land at the rate of 1 per cent of the world’s farmland every year.
“We’re running into energy shortages, we’re running into shortages of fertilisers, and on top of that you’ve got climate change. All of these things are making the agricultural environment much less certain.”
The main problem with increasing the food supply is that the population invariably expands to consume it. This was one consequence of the “Green Revolution” after World War 2. Perhaps one (rather draconian) solution is to demand that people either be sterilized or limit their children to two, in return for access to food.
“Rudd touts plan for better cities”, The Age, 28/10. PM Rudd regards population growth as a good thing and a “challenge” (yet another word I have come to detest), and is prepared to hold the states hostage to his demands.
“Perils of a bigger footprint”, The Age, 29/10. Australia cannot afford to avoid the population debate any longer.
A selection of letters from The Age and SMH. Incidentally, the newspaper sites are even more irritating to use and are badly-formatted; not all letters are put online. The papers themselves (like nearly all publications now) are almost worthless in terms of information.
Free at what price?
Chris Berg seems to suggest that Australia should allow global free movement of people just as we allow free global trade – for economic growth. Yet free trade has resulted in many Australian industries going offshore and our exposure to world financial losses. Free people movement in Europe is a cause of serious social problems as governments attempt to accommodate a flood of uninvited immigrants. Economic growth is a goal for Australia, but not the only goal. Regulation recognises that.
– Janine Truter, The Basin
We must put the serious questions ahead of profits
Peter Munro’s comprehensive examination of Australia and Melbourne’s population growth (“The big squeezy”, The Sunday Age, 25/10) was commendable in terms of getting comment from both sides of the debate.
Some opinions carry more weight, however, than others. When Treasury secretary Ken Henry asks if Australia’s natural endowments, including water, are capable of sustaining a population of 35 million, it’s a serious question. When Bob Birrell warns that a cost will be the loss of access to established detached houses for all but the affluent, we have to ask: is this a cost worth paying? When Ian Lowe says that adding another 4 million to 5 million people by 2020 could raise Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by up to 25 per cent, we have to wonder how we reconcile that with Australia’s commitment to reduce emissions by up to 25 per cent by 2020.
On the other hand, when economists and business people clap their hands because of population-fuelled increased profits, it smacks of self-interest topped with profound environmental ignorance. Ian Lowe deserves the last say: “There is no prospect of solving our serious environmental problems…if we are committed to having the most rapid population increase of any developed country.”
Without an environment, there is no economy.
– Jenny Goldie, Michelago, NSW
Do it for the children
In 1965, leading urban economist Max Neutze tentatively suggested that the optimum population size of a major Australian city was about half a million. Melbourne now has 4 million and is heading for 7 million by 2049.
In 2006 I invited the audience at a meeting on population growth to vote on what they thought Australia’s optimum population to be. Responses ranged from 5 million to 20 million, with an average of 10 million to 15 million. We now have 22 million and are headed for 35 million.
In a recent ABC interview, Kevin Rudd welcomed this growth, but gave only national security as justification. No mention of economic or environmental effects. If national security is the motive, does his Government have a plan to achieve this, such as for the geographical distribution of the population? Would 7 million for Melbourne and Sydney be part of that plan? Does it have a realistic assessment of the economic and environmental sacrifices such growth would entail?
Our political leaders need to pull their fingers out and face up to their social responsibilities, and get business lobbyists out of their pockets. Our children and grandchildren deserve better.
– Robert Braby, Eltham
The prognosis is grim
It seems that the growth fetishists are among us again, this time advocating unsustainable population growth for Australia, Victoria and Melbourne.
In Listening to Grasshoppers, Arundhati Roy skewers their argument with forensic accuracy: “The higher the rate of this kind of growth, the worse the prognosis. Any oncologist will tell you that.”
– Jim Spithill, Chadstone
35m-person question
The Age is right to consider Ken Henry justified in questioning how this nation intends to support a growing human population (Editorial, 26/10). What appears to be missing in the cant about how this nation will cope with 35 million people is whether Australians want, need and must have such high population growth. The high immigration-fuelled population growth, comprising 63 per cent of net annual population growth, is calibrated by the Rudd Government and can therefore be revised downwards, giving Australia a different set of future projections. It is not enough for the Government, and special interest groups, to simply tell Australians that they must have 35 million or more citizens by 2050.
So far the bipartisanship of the major parties has kept the issue of high immigration-fuelled population growth and population policy out of the electoral arena. This is not only an affront to democracy, it takes no account of the precautionary principle concerning the impact of 35 million people on the built and natural environment.
– Arthur Bassett, Blackburn South
SMH, 24/10:
If human numbers boom, resistance will be futile
With our unprecedented and growing human population we have brought the natural environment to the brink of collapse. We search for life on other planets while we decimate complex species here. We are wealthier now than ever, but less happy and less optimistic.
Massive efforts are dedicated to “protect” nations from growing hordes of desperate people fleeing homelands ravaged by the wars and famines that inevitably result from the combination of limited resources and the growing number of humans.
We offer foreign aid to help improve survival rates (a good thing) but provide almost nothing in the way of family planning and access to contraception. Consequently, the populations of many poor countries are so numerous now, they will be forever dependent on aid. We do this while paying Australian women to produce babies.
If we insist on perpetuating the obsession for population growth, let’s open all our borders. Let people live wherever they like. It makes no sense that some can live on good land while others cannot.
If we are going to lay waste to the environment, let’s do it together to the short-term benefit and long-term detriment of everyone equally. Let’s end the protracted misery we have brought on all the other life struggling to share this planet with us.
– Larry Tofler, Tea Gardens
Keep talking, Dr. Henry (“Treasury chief and PM differ on growth”, October 23). Kevin Rudd’s response of welcoming population expansion is of deep concern. Can he really be oblivious to the limits on water and food in our arid homeland, let alone the difficulties of providing adequate education, transport and housing? We can only hope his intelligence will overcome his shallow political response.
– Andrew Scott, Pymble
Let’s be consistent. Kevin Rudd espouses the benefits of population growth, yet talks about the effects of global warming and environmental devastation. As the world’s population grows, land suitable for food production declines and demand increases, with hunger an obvious consequence.
It’s time Australia took a lead on issues other than global warming. Perhaps population growth fails to provide the international forum and media coverage politicians seek, but it is fundamental to so many problems. Reducing or eliminating it should be high on our agenda.
– Arthur Gates, Armidale
So the Association of Consulting Engineers has joined business and property interests and megalomaniac politicians in spreading the myth that Sydney’s population must reach 10 million by 2050 and there is nothing we can do about it (“Abolish councils, make drivers pay”, October 23). On the same day farmers tell us we must all live in high-rise apartments (“Food for thought: suburbs save farms”).
And what happens after 2050? More of the same, only more so, presumably. Animal liberationists must be chortling into their beer. Having forced chooks to live in great conglomerates inches from their neighbours, we are hell bent on visiting the same fate on ourselves.
– Norman Carter, Roseville
Profit or peril?
It seems mystifying that the property supplements in the Herald and elsewhere continue to celebrate the “good news” that Sydney property prices and rental returns are still very high and will keep rising in the foreseeable future. The reason the boom will continue, we are assured, is that increasing population, largely through immigration, will outstrip the supply of housing.
Yes, it is good news for speculators, developers and landlords. But it is bad news for most people entering the property market to get a roof over their heads. Home owners are told it is good news for them, too, but if your inner-city terrace is now worth $1 million, how does it profit you if all other houses cost the same?
One wonders if the happy smiles of the people pictured will be shared by their children when they enter an even more unaffordable market and in an even more crowded city.
– John Mahony, Avalon Beach
