Australia as a relief valve

“When leaving home is the only way out”, The Age, 15/12. Economic migrants deserve no sympathy in my view. They should stay at home and fix their own problems!

Emigration has long been the Irish escape at times of greatest hardship. More than 2 million people fled the country during the Great Famine of the 1840s; half a million in the 1950s; and 200,000 during a downturn in the late 1980s. The Irish diaspora – of emigrants and their descendants – now vastly outnumbers the Irish at home and is estimated at more than 70 million people.

Critics say this history has taught Ireland’s policymakers to rely, like Aesop’s lazy donkey, on a lightening of the load through emigration whenever times get tough. A study of 90 young unemployed people by the Youth Council of Ireland this year found that 70 per cent thought they would emigrate and many believed the government was relying on it.

“It’s a handy way for them to export the problem and to cut the costs [of welfare payments],” says one. Another says: “I am sure it is built into the economic projections for the next five years because there doesn’t seem to be any meaningful policies being developed to help young unemployed people.” Youth unemployment is running at 24 per cent.

It’s a similar situation with the financial crisis in Greece – “Call for visa reforms to attract Greeks”, 25/6/2011: a lot of people there are wanting to emigrate to Australia in hopes of securing jobs here. But why should they get special treatment, or expect to come here at all? Australia has its own problems with unemployment; having a huge number of migrants come only exacerbates the problem and breeds resentment. Countries should be made to suck it up and take responsibility for their own situations rather than expect to send their “surplus” citizens elsewhere. (Incidentally there was an article addressing the issue of surplus workers, “The Age of the Superfluous Worker”, NYT, 24/11 – no, it’s not a nice term but the brutally unpleasant truth is that quite a lot of people, myself included, could be regarded as expendable; another symptom of an overpopulated world.) Ireland’s situation also demonstrates the fallacy of a growth-based economy, in this case one based on an overinflated property market (as is the same situation in Victoria).

“Taxpayers wear burden of 60,000 illegal immigrants”, Herald-Sun, 21/11. It’s no wonder the welfare system is overburdened if this alarming report is anything to go by; the main culprits being visa overstayers. I would be extremely harsh with such parasites: if caught, they would be fingerprinted, DNA recorded, then expelled from the country and banned from returning. This is where I diverge from the more liberal types, who seem to want to throw the borders open to all. I get so exasperated with their views on this issue; they are idealistic fools. (An example in other places is at MetaFilter, a long-running U.S.-based community weblog; the clueless majority there are in favor of leniency towards illegal immigrants coming into their country despite the huge costs in terms of jobs and welfare.)

Most illegal immigrants arrive on tourist or temporary work visas. Documents released to the Herald Sun under Freedom of Information show three-in-four illegals came here on visitor visas. One-in-seven arrived as students and one-in-15 disappeared after winning temporary residency. Monash University migration expert Dr Bob Birrell said they were the extreme of an even larger group, mostly students, who gained bridging visas as they sought to extend their stay beyond their original visas’ expiry. Dr Birrell said many of the 332,000 overseas students had expected to gain permanent residency once they finished their courses, only to discover that rule changes in 2010 meant this was more difficult, or impossible. Those with bridging visas were allowed to work and were “ferocious competitors” with local youths for low-skilled jobs, particularly in a tightening market.

Can you blame citizens for being resentful of immigration when it means increasing competition for resources? I am not anti-immigration, but the current too-high rate (200 000+ per year – “Migrant arrivals numbers to rise”, H-S, 15/11) should be drastically reduced. The international student program should also be curbed (it is often used as a “back door” to immigration). If the universities, who rely on their fees, don’t like it – too bad.

Who are the real vandals?

“Mornington vandals cause $500k damage”, The Age (also ABC News, H-S). Vandals attacked and damaged road construction equipment for the controversial Peninsula Link in Frankston. This is the same freeway that was brutally bulldozed through the Westerfield heritage woodlands last year (see 10/7/2010, 24/10/2010 entries), despite a protest campaign. If this is a “targeted” attack, rather than random vandalism, then I support it! Harass and delay construction as much as possible; inconvenience the evil bastards in the construction industry and government who care nothing for the environment and who disregarded protests. They are evil by any definition. I do think of the Na’vi in Avatar who tried to fight the invading humans who were desecrating their land.

High-rise hell

Some letters from the last few weeks:

6/11:

Ever-thinner slices

THE latest United Nations human development index (“Not quite Norway, but still a great place to call home”, theage.com.au, 3/11) shows it is clear that a nation’s population has little relationship to its ultimate economic strength. Countries that are better off per capita than Australia are smaller - Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Norway.

High immigration is the key driver to a “big Australia” but is this likely to make Australians better off? No. According to the Productivity Commission’s annual report for 2010-11, two benefits often attributed to immigration, despite mixed or poor evidence to support them, are that immigration is an important driver of per capita economic growth and that it can alleviate the problem of population ageing.

Among the 187 nations surveyed, Norway, Australia and the Netherlands topped the annual index while Congo, Niger and Burundi - with the highest population growth - came last. A rapidly increasing population mostly serves the interests of a few rich businesses, and produces more taxpayers for the government. For the rest of the public, it means our capital and social capital is cut into ever-thinner slices.

– Arthur Bassett, Blackburn South

16/11:

We always pay

THE controversial north-east road link connecting the ring road and the Eastern Freeway remains a threat.

It’s all about perpetual growth, and removing obstacles. “Big Victoria” requires monolithic concrete infrastructure and transport access for the (mainly) imported goods to all the mega-stores and shopping centres. It also requires ignoring peak oil and common sense. Corporate Victoria has the power to hijack our government’s agenda.

The link would destroy parklands, wetlands, heritage artists’ sanctuaries, Yarra River walking tracks, havens for wildlife, picnic areas, and sporting facilities.

Without government funding, this tunnel/freeway would involve tolling and private operators. The costs - including the loss of Melbourne’s intrinsic values - are always passed on to average Victorians.

– Chris Hooley, Viewbank

26/11 – these are in response to a 25/11 letter, reproduced below them:

Still happy to fight

I’M SORRY the people of Toronto either had no success in protecting the sunlight on their balconies or were too dispirited to even try (Letters, 25/11). The people of Melbourne still have a bit of spunk left to speak out about unwanted high-rise and other developments that are seen as disadvantageous to them. Canada, like Australia, suffers from high population growth and developers flourish and dictate terms in such an environment.

– Jill Quirk, president, Sustainable Population Australia (Victorian branch), East Malvern

At mercy of speculators

WHAT’S good for Toronto is not necessarily good for Melbourne. Most Melburnians don’t appreciate high-rise human “termite mounds” (as one Southbank resident called this blot on the landscape) overlooking and overshadowing our Yarra River and surrounding residential neighbourhoods (“Southbank skyscrapers ire”, The Age, 24/11).

These apartments are probably not even for sale in Australia. With another big Southbank development, apartments were sold off the plan overseas. It seems we poor suckers are at the mercy of developers and property speculators.

– Lewis Prichard, Hawthorn

Rankings have message

MELBOURNE the most liveable city in the world? Too right. So, to all the planners, developers and councillors, why would you want to change it? And just where did those cities jam-packed with apartments, crawling traffic and block buildings abutting each other with no garden in between rank? All the way down there.

– David Cathie, Mordialloc

The letter from Toronto:

Get over it

TO A Toronto resident, the controversy about a skyscraper in Southbank seems almost quaint (“Southbank skyscrapers ire”, The Age, 24/11). The location for this building is the centre of a major metropolis, right? If the tower is well designed, everyone should just relax and get used to the fact that big cities have big buildings. And Freshwater Place residents have to get over themselves. Do they expect the city to stop growing just to spare them the hardship of less sunlight on their balconies? Perhaps they should have opted for property in Poowong instead. Ironically, an article about a proposed 240-metre residential tower in downtown Toronto also appeared in the Toronto Star: “Toronto’s skyline heads for the clouds”. The article quotes the architect as saying, “I think 100 storeys is completely do-able in Toronto; that’s sort of the next generation of height.” The residents of Freshwater Place should check out the accompanying photo and prepare themselves for their future.

– Michael Harris, Toronto, Canada

“In city's middle-ring burbs, many towers rise”, 26/11. The dismaying sight of high-rise towers is now beginning to blight many suburbs, no thanks to the dysfunctional planning laws. People who oppose them are derided by architects and developers as “NIMBYs”, but the towers are an ugly eyesore and have a dehumanizing effect on the landscape over which they loom arrogantly. They block out sunlight and the sky, and give one a feeling of claustrophobia. They are touted as being enviromentally-efficient, but virtually all current structures require vast amounts of power and water imported from elsewhere, and certainly could not be self-sufficient. They are primarily built for investors and to make money, not to help the environment.

A quote regarding such structures from a science fiction novel:

She glanced down between her boots through the transparent deck of the ship as it passed over the center of Jejeno. The city was both a tribute to isenj engineering skills and an indictment of their stupidity. The forest of asymmetric towers – bronze, brown, copper, tan – and narrow streets created endless canyons. Shapakti said that it was an echo of isenj origins as termite-like animals living in giant mounds, but Esganikan had seen almost identical soaring buildings in the images of Earth. It was how greedy species built: it showed space was at a premium because they had filled it and out-priced it – yes, she understood Earth’s economy now, she understood it very well – and they didn’t care about the intrusion on the landscape. It was a statement of their contempt for all other life.

– Karen Traviss, Ally

Collected letters

From the Herald-Sun, 2/11:

SEVEN billion people now three billion when I was a boy – scary statistic not to be applauded.

– Jocko, Frankston

SEVEN billion people and the leaders at CHOGM talk about anything but the gross overpopulation of our planet. Who will be the first leader to state a plain birth-control policy in an attempt to reduce world poverty. Birth control and cessation of IVF will be a start.

– Tim Stafford, Mt Eliza

3/11:

YOU hit the nail on the head, Tim (Text Talk, November 2). It seems no pollie wants to take on the real world problem: too many people.

– Andrew, Maribyrnong

Battery hens in suburban pens

THE push from planners and developers to increase the density of our residential arrangements results in reduced area of gardens, reduced light through windows, reduced tree canopy and increased traffic. What is in this transformation for us? The question should be asked – just as the battery hen would surely like to ask – what is in it for her if her small cage size is further reduced? The push to cram us in is all about accommodating people who do not live here at the expense of those who do.

– Jill Quirk, East Malvern

Lifestyle lost in a mega-Melbourne

WE don’t want Melbourne’s population to be eight million. We don’t want to turn it into Manhattan. We like a house and garden and we like space. The idea of cramming eight million in here comes from the Committee for Melbourne, speaking for Big Business who wants more profit from selling more to more people, not caring if our lifestyle is wrecked because we are overcrowded and are short of infrastructure. It is time for governments to take action by slowing migration to a manageable level.

– Mary Drost, Camberwell

“Population growth sees myths reborn”, The Age, 1/11. Opinion piece by Paul Ehrlich.

The day of 7 billion

Today is that inauspicious day. Though it is a rough estimate at best (Cosmic Log: “7 billion people? How do they know?”) – I would think there are thousands more not counted for various reasons.

“Our number’s up, and that could be a procreation-led disaster”, The Age. Opinion piece saying that there needs to be marketing campaigns to persuade women to have fewer children. (Best comment: “Paradoxically our species is advanced enough to foretell our own demise, yet stupid enough to do nothing to prevent it.”)

Time magazine has a special section, The World at 7 Billion, devoted to population issues.

The graph below, from an article at ABC news, shows how the population has increased alarmingly since 1850 when the Industrial Revolution was underway, and jumped even more since 1950, with shorter periods of time between each extra billion. Worldometers has a page of data about population growth.

• 1804: 1 billion
• 1927: 2 billion
• 1960: 3 billion
• 1975: 4 billion
• 1987: 5 billion
• 1999: 6 billion
• 2011: 7 billion
• 2027: 8 billion (estimated)

An unnecessary expense

“IVF cuts result in 1500 fewer babies”, The Age. In this week of 7 billion, I look at that as a positive outcome – 1500 humans not born and adding to an already overstressed environment. Government funding for IVF treatments should be stopped altogether in my view; it is an indulgence that society does not need. Some comments from the article that agree:

• We have a global population problem, local population stresses, future issues of food and security, and you want me to pay my hard earned taxes to create more babies for people who, sadly can’t have babies without assistance? I’m sorry, but no. Yes, it’s sad that you can’t achieve your God-given human right to experience pregnancy and birth, but really, IVF is a rich Western luxury. In the scheme of things, with a finite health budget, I’d much prefer money to be spent on other things. It would be much better to push for better adoption laws. People can still have babies, but you don’t need to actually carry them in your tummy to have the loving bond, the happy family, and the maternal instinct that goes with nurturing a child. (Sorry but | Melbourne – October 26, 2011, 7:59AM)
• Marvelous sense of entitlement some people have. I want a child so other people should pay for it to happen. (Quantum of Solace | Melbourne – October 26, 2011, 9:01AM)
• Tax dollars should only be used to fund medical treatment where there is a clear clinical need to improve the person’s health. IVF does not fall into this category. It is sad that some couples cannot conceive naturally, but this should not lead to an expectation that the government should fund peoples wish for a family lifestyle. (MA | Melbourne – October 26, 2011, 9:20AM)
• Fiona: I don’t have “a child of my own” and I’m not in unbearable pain and I don’t feel like I am in an inescapable hell. These are your own extreme responses to what is a relatively common natural phenomenon. The world is full of people who have successfully adjusted to the less than optimal hand nature has dealt them. You can too. Not getting what you want is hardly a reason to plunge yourself into pain and hell. People who are unable to see, hear, walk or talk have a much more legitimate claim to being miserable yet I don’t imagine many talk about their lives as painful or hellish. It is only Western women with a sense of entitlement to have their every desire met who agonise like this over infertility, at the same time as they turn their cold, selfish hearts away from the millions of children languishing in orphanages around the world due to a lack of parents. Maybe nature actually knows what it’s doing! (M T Pockets – October 26, 2011, 9:23AM)

“7 billion reasons to rethink how we use the planet”, 17/10.

This has meant - in contrast to the many dire predictions that over-population would result in disaster - that population growth has also coincided with far greater longevity, and a much more comfortable and materially richer life than pre-industrial man could ever have dreamt of. A key reason that massive population growth has not led to disaster has been the extraordinary growth in agricultural productivity. However, while continuing dynamism in agriculture is likely, there are some indications that these benefits are starting to slow.

It’s industrialized food production that has enabled the human population to increase so alarmingly. But it is a precarious situation – if some virus were to wipe out the world’s main cereal food crops (rice, wheat, maize) it would be disastrous. There are reserves held in many countries, but these would only last a few months.

“Africa Blossoms: A Continent On the Verge of an Agricultural Revolution”, Time magazine, 31/10. This article dismayed me as it promotes the expansion of agriculture in Africa as a positive trend – but agriculture is already putting great pressure on animal populations and the few peoples living as hunter-gatherers. Commercial farming is a disaster for these groups, as is the buy-up of land by foreign countries and corporations (a practice that should be banned – and in Australia also).

Collected letters, 24/10:

Look after our own

ASYLUM-seeker families are expected to be fast-tracked into residential housing. Also, many could be released from detention on bridging visas and sent to regional towns with labour shortages (“Off the boat and into the bush”, 16/10). However, Australia already has a chronic housing shortage, including a severe shortage of emergency and other housing for our vulnerable and most disadvantaged citizens (“$46m help for the homeless”, The Age, 6/10). Charity begins at home; our citizens must take precedence over those not yet in our society. “Asylum” under the UN Refugee Convention was never meant to be interpreted to give a right to permanent settlement and should be decoupled from other migrant streams. Once asylum seekers and their families are embedded in regional towns, the reality is that they are likely to be fast-tracked to permanent residency rather than remain on bridging visas. This policy will only add to the pull factors that are already a problem.

– ARTHUR BASSETT, Blackburn South

Deluded environmentalism

“Be Afraid. Experts Discuss Hallowe’en Population Doomsday” (PPF/Huffington Post, 1/10) contains various opinions on how the world will cope with continuing population growth. Of note is the opinion of an environmental reporter, Fred Pearce:

“The issue for me is about consumption, for which there are worrying statistics. We are not overpopulated in an absolute sense, we’ve got the technology for 10 billion, probably 15 billion people, to live on this planet and live good lives. What we haven’t done is developed our technology.” When asked of the issue that needed most redress, he said: “We really need to kick the carbon habit and stop making our energy from burning things. Climate change is also really important. You can wreck one rainforest then move, drain one area of resources and move onto another but climate change is global.”

That is the fallacy a lot of environmentalists believe: that population growth can be coped with if everyone learns to live sustainably and “magical” technological fixes are applied (what these are I am not sure). Well, in reality that is unlikely to happen; a lot of people, including those in developing countries, want high living standards, which is fair enough, and would resent having to downgrade their lifestyle. His opinion does not address the sheer amount of waste that 15 billion people would produce, and it’s unlikely all waste would be recycled. With a lower population, everyone could enjoy high living standards, though the wasteful consumerism that drives current society is behaviour that should be changed. I certainly consider myself an environmentalist, but do not share that optimistic faith in technological fixes.

Collected letters:

4/10:

City can’t cope

JASON Dowling’s article “ Storm of protest as sewage released into waterways” (The Age, 3/10) is a testament to the fact that Melbourne’s population has grown far too rapidly and has outstripped the capacity of our sewerage infrastructure to cope.

Compounding the problem is that open spaces that absorb rainfall into the ground are diminishing as they are built over or paved over to accommodate ever-high population.

The government should show concern but instead it encourages more and more development, which is incrementally to our detriment. Citizens and government need to wake up while we can still do something about ensuring a sustainable future.

– Jill Quirk, Sustainable Population Australia (Victorian branch), East Malvern

6/10:

Price of growth

THE cost of traffic congestion financially, socially (more time commuting means less family time, more tiredness, illness and injury), and environmentally (pollution, loss of open space, habitat and biodiversity) is actually a cost of population growth. We always hear how we must have population growth to stimulate the economy, but we almost never hear about the costs. Traffic congestion is just one of many detrimental effects of high growth rates that are inevitably unsustainable.

– Jennie Epstein, Little River

The month of 7 billion

Sometime this month the population reaches an estimated 7 billion, the most people the Earth has ever had – and it continues to increase, at great detriment to the environment we all depend upon. I cannot feel optimistic about the future – i.e. that humans will manage to radically change their attitude and society. Things will likely continue on the same self-destructive path until the environment is devastated, and the world will look like the nightmarish hellholes depicted in Avatar and Terra Nova. I would like to be proven wrong, but given intractable human nature, I think I will be disappointed. (A post at the Dark Mountain blog echoes what I am feeling: despair.)

National Geographic online has a special section on the topic.

In unwelcome news, Australia’s population has reached 22.5 million, just over half that due to excessive immigration, the rest to high birth rates.

There was a report on A Current Affair a family with 15 children; I didn’t watch it on TV but have been unable to view the video due to some technical issue (not viewable on any of my browsers), so I don’t know if they are all biological or if some are adopted. If they are all biological the family is irresponsible in the extreme. Unfortunately Government child support encourages such extravagance.

There is a large families section in a parenting forum on The Age. The concept that educating and empowering women will result in smaller families seems to have bypassed the women there. A few of the posts seem defensive – well, they bring it on themselves by their excessive breeding! The women have no excuse but selfishness. They obviously don’t care for the environment – no matter how frugally they might live, every extra child born negates that. [Looking at some of the posts in that forum, is pregnancy and giving birth addictive for some women, bizarre as that concept may seem?]

Collected letters

Another truckload of letters!

Future nightmare

A brief but alarming article hidden in the depths of the 19/8 Herald-Sun:

People tipped to top 10bn

The world population will reach seven billion later this year, with increases in the number of people in Africa offsetting a drop in the birth rate elsewhere, according to a new French study.

Looking much further ahead, the National Institute for Demographic Studies predicts a continuing rise in the overall population figures until the total stabilises somewhere between nine and 10 billion worldwide by the end of the century.

The growth in the global population has been soaring since the 19^th century.

“It has increased seven fold over the last 200 years, topping seven billion in 2011, and is expected to reach nine or 10 billion by the end of the 21^st century,” the report said.

Seven countries now account for half the world’s population. China tops the list with more than 1.33 billion people, with another 1.17 billion in India. The other five countries, in order, are the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Nigeria.

Things are bad enough now with 7 billion!

Letters in response to a 16/8 H-S article, where some lobby group (Committee for Melbourne) had the gall to suggest anti-development protest groups were responsible for unaffordable housing:

Power to the protesters

The Committee for Melbourne, with its campaign to squash more and more people into our city (“Priced out of home”, August 15), should be renamed the Committee Against Melbourne.

The UK, approximately the same size as Victoria, has 10 times our population, but more than 85 per cent of them live outside London.

We have four million people (70 per cent of our population) in our capital city, and the de velopment industry wants to squeeze in another four million, when it should be developing provincial cities.

More power to the protesters who fight to preserve our suburban gardens.

– Chris Curtis, Hurstbridge

How to make suburbs worse

So the Committee for Melbourne is bothered about subdivisions being blocked in “nice areas”.

Does it not occur to committee chief executive Andrew MacLeod that if all current residents in a particular suburb cashed in their backyards to developers, the suburb would no longer be “nice?”

The “liveability” of Melbourne is being jeopardised by the same thing that threatens reliability and quality of our food, water and energy – over population.

– Chris Hooley, Viewbank

Ugly inappropriate developments continue unabated in my suburb, and it is despairing to see. An opinion piece at CanDoBetter.net expresses the same sentiments over developments devouring what open land around Melbourne remains like a horde of locusts.

Paving over Victoria

The continuing development and destruction of Victoria’s green spaces leaves me (and many others) in a frustrated rage. The current Government continues this policy, wanting to put up for development the Green Wedges around Melbourne – corridors established over 3 decades ago to provide some environmental breathing space. Unfortunately the deliberate encouraging of population growth (approximately 90 000 people a year) has these areas under threat. The Planning Minister, Matthew Guy, is proving as developer-friendly as his predecessor, Justin Madden, was. Some recent articles from The Age:

• “Review threatens to destroy ‘Melbourne’s lungs’ ”, 30/7
• “Open spaces to shrink as Melbourne grows”, 8/8 – public parks are also under threat.

Some letters:

A broken society

The madness of last week’s London riots appears to be mostly contained, but the many issues that provoked it are unlikely to be resolved soon (if ever). Some of the rioting was simple criminal opportunism, but a lot of it was a venting of frustration from people who have few prospects and no say in their society. Is overpopulation one of the contributing factors? I would argue, yes – in my 18/7/2009 entry I said that crowding thousands of people together leads to more stress and thus violence, as humans are not evolutionarily adapted to live this way. This was the opinion given in the article “London’s a rat hole” (21/1/2009 entry).

It is hardly surprising that many rioters seem to live in the ugly, inhuman, modernist housing projects that afflict London like the plague.

– David Thomson, St Kilda, 16/8

A counter-argument might be that countries such as Japan are even more overcrowded and their populations do not riot, but their pathologies merely are expressed in different ways. Their culture insists on extreme self-control, necessary for living so closely, but the suicide rate has long been one of the highest in the world, and the hikikomori phenomenon amongst mostly young people – extreme withdrawal for years on end – is well-known. Anger is turned inward rather than outward.

Many of the rioters are unemployed, and there are little in the way of jobs for them. It is simply impossible to provide meaningful jobs for everyone in a growing population, especially as many businesses and industries are “downsizing” to become more efficient, and outsourcing a lot of work to cheap (slave) labor in developing countries. Such frustrations were also a factor in the “Arab spring” uprisings earlier this year (which are still ongoing), and the Israeli housing protests over the rising cost of living (Israel is very overcrowded). Too many people competing for dwindling resources, living space and jobs.

An article in Business Week from earlier this year, “The Youth Unemployment Bomb”, looks at the social consequences of having a large, unemployed and educated youth population, and the inevitable disorder this creates. The article, though, somewhat unhelpfully suggests that the solution is to create entrepreneurs – start one’s own company. But not all people have the aptitude for that (I don’t), and there are only so many products and services that can be created; the market is arguably saturated with “stuff”. The article does not address the basic issue: that there is simply a massive overpopulation of young people (who will one day become old).

So that’s the situation in this year of 7 billion – how much worse will things get if and when the population reaches 8, then 9 billion?

Terra Nova

There is a TV series of interest coming out late September called Terra Nova. Refugees from the year 2149, seeking to escape their ruined world, find a way to time travel back to prehistoric Earth and begin anew. The Earth in this future is overcrowded and overdeveloped, with most other species extinct – a scenario similar to the Avatar movie (and Stephen Lang, the actor who was “Colonel Quaritch”, is in Terra Nova also). The government of then is enforcing population control, which causes protests from silly irrational people, and one of the main families in the series who time travels has an illegal 3^rd child.

Unfortunately, this seems to be again presenting population control in a negative light – as dystopian future novels or movies tend to do (see my 16/7/2009 entry), presumably so as to give their characters something to rebel against. If they had practiced population control earlier, though, perhaps the situation would not have become so dire! Despite this annoyance, I’ll probably watch the series.

Food security

“Great Tully sugar sell-off proves bittersweet”, The Australian, 6/7. The topic of food security has been getting some media attention in Australia recently, due to people realizing that foreign companies are purchasing vast tracts of farmland here. This means that food grown here by them will be sent overseas. Add this to the foolish government policy of letting developers build over arable land and Australia may well have to import food for its citizens in the future.

His concern is that Australia is selling off its food-producing capacity, piece-by-piece, without thinking through the implications of what foreign ownership means. “We seem to be selling off the farm so we can go offshore ourselves,” he told The Australian. “We’ve got large superannuation funds and other funds available for investment in this country, but the people running them overlook the significant assets in this country because they think they can always get a better deal offshore. I see that as a real shame, that people overseas can see the value in our businesses and enterprises here, but we can’t seem to.”

Perhaps if the food supply situation became dire, the Government could seize the land back in the name of national security? Other countries should take responsibility for containing their own growth, not expect to keep grabbing resources from others.

“A Future of Price Spikes”, Time magazine, 14/7, looks at the concern of rising food prices and says that technology has enabled Thomas Malthus’s predictions (the planet’s population grows exponentially, while food production increases arithmetically) to be staved off – for now. But rising populations and decimation of the environment are pushing technology to its limits, and the world has only about 3 month’s wheat storage in reserve should some sort of blight wipe out the world’s wheat crops (illustrating the danger of reliance upon a limited variety of food products). The article asserts that “what we need is a new green revolution” – better technology such as genetically engineering foods, hardier seeds, fairer food distribution. But the world’s population will continue to rise and environmental destruction will hamper the attempts to increase food supplies.

Little media attention was given to recent reports about human activity in the oceans – mainly overfishing and dumping waste – threatening to wipe out marine species, but the sea is another major provider of food so this is an obvious area of concern.

Famine crisis

A famine has been declared in the Horn of Africa region, due to drought (possibly climate change-related). Around 12 million people are affected. Such a disaster shows what a liability high populations become when the food supply is threatened. Imagine this happening in a developed country – say, if the food supply was cut off for some reason – and the chaos that would ensue. As I have asserted before, the only way to avoid such emergencies is to keep population growth restricted even in times of plenty when the natural instinct is to reproduce profligately (as happens in the natural world – Nature’s “boom and bust” cycle). Then if a drought comes there will be enough food to go around. Therefore the long-term aid to the affected countries should include educating women, access to family planning and medical care so their children survive to adulthood. From one of the LA Times articles linked to below:

Women who have no schooling give birth to an average of 4.5 children; with just a year or more of schooling, the number drops to 3. As education increases, the number of births drops. Girls in Africa who receive some education will have fewer children and have them later in life. Their children will be healthier, and more educated as well.

There’s a series of articles about overpopulation in the 21/7 LA Times:

• Defusing the population bomb
• The world’s biggest problem? Too many people
• Overpopulation debate comes to one conclusion
• Decrease the birthrate, save the world?

Most commentators are in agreement that overpopulation is a real concern – a root cause of many of the other world’s problems – but gets little attention due to the topic being taboo. One though, Alex B. Berezow, disagrees and brings out the tired example of the problem being due to distribution not numbers. But a lot of land is unsuitable for habitation, or would require environmentally-destructive methods to make it suitable. Another has an opinion piece that bigger families are better. Maybe, if you want home-grown workers! Children in such families tend to get lost in the crowd as they recieve proportionally less attention with the more siblings they have (as some article commentators noted). I doubt there are any “good reasons” for women in developed countries to have large families; it’s just selfishness on their part.

I have read Dick Smith’s Population Crisis (reviewed at CanDoBetter) and found it an informative summary of the overpopulation issue. It is written from a layperson’s viewpoint, so is more accessible than an academic text. Possibly the only disagreement I have is his assertion that coercive methods of population control are not necessary as women “when given the choice, make sensible decisions about the size of their family”. From observation, quite a lot don’t – many Australian women seem to be having large families (three or more children).

In a book review or opinion piece (it’s not clear which) in the Australian, the reviewer dismissively remarks:

To the best of my knowledge this is the first time in history that an important scientific question is dominating national and international politics. It has occurred before but not in such a way as to permeate global awareness. For example, the fear of an all-out nuclear war, so strong in the 50s and 60s, possessed a strong scientific ingredient but the debate was generally viewed more as a military and political than a science matter. Likewise, periodic fears about overpopulation, and especially the Club of Rome’s warning in the early 70s that the world’s fast-multiplying population might soon be short of food and minerals, carried a scientific component, part of which was ultimately seen as slipshod. These fears engrossed only a small section of the population in Western nations, then they faded.

Er…no! Those fears concerning overpopulation are more acute and relevant than ever, and certainly haven’t faded.

Needless destruction

“Auditor hits $2b road project”, The Age, 2/6. The controversial Frankston bypass road project (see 24/10/2010 entry) was condemned by the state Auditor-General as unnecessary.

The promised economic benefits of the multibillion-dollar freeway may have been overstated and its potential negative impacts ignored, according to a report by the state Auditor-General, Des Pearson. In a landmark finding, the report criticises Victorian road authorities for failing to take account of “induced demand” - the idea that bigger and better roads encourage more traffic - when deciding whether to build new freeways. […]

Environment group the Pines Protectors fought to stop the road. Spokeswoman Gillian Collins said she was shocked by the frankness of the audit report. She said it showed the Linking Melbourne Authority had misled people about the need for the road and the cost of the public sector building it.

So the Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve was destroyed no thanks to an uncaring Government that can’t see beyond its myopic focus on economic growth.

Letters in response, 3/6:

Stop at two!

A dismaying article from last week’s local newspaper, Moorabbin Leader, not published on their site:

Is three the new two?

Going for number three? It seems more Aussie parents are opting for a third child

Many families are answering former Treasurer Peter Costello’s call to have one for mum, one for dad and one for the country. According to demographer Dr Rebecca Kippen from Melbourne University’s School of Population Health, having three children may be back in fashion.

“Our fertility rates have been dropping consistently for decades, but in the past few years we have seen that decline stop,” Dr Kippen said. “The average is between 2.2 and 2.5 children,” she said. And Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the overall percentage of mothers giving birth to their third child increased from 12.2 per cent in 2007 to 14.1 per cent in 2009.

Dr Kippen said reasons for the “mini fertility boom” were an issue of great debate among demographers. “Has the baby bonus made a difference? Or is it because women who delayed having children in their 20s are now having them close together all at once in their 30s?”

For Mentone mum-of-three Stacey Ferguson, the image of a bustling household has always appealed. “My husband Justin and I are both from families with two children. Growing up we were both envious of friends with bigger families, it just seemed like a lot more fun and exciting,” Stacey said.

The couple got what they wanted and today have their hands full looking after Lachlan, 6, Kye, 3 and Tameika, 18 months. “After having two boys we were definitely keen to try for another,” Stacey said. “We would have been more than happy with three boys but trying for a girl was certainly a motivating factor.”

Stacey said jumping from two to three children meant a new car was needed, an education savings account was opened and it was harder to find one- on-one time with the kids. “We’re outnumbered now.” she laughs. “And of course we’re back to sleepless nights and nappies — but it’s all worth it.

“I love hearing the sound of laughter through the house as the three of them play together.”

Dr Kippen, co-author of the study “Taking Stock: Parents’ reasons for and against having a third child”, said parents considered the pros and cons when deciding whether to have a third child. Pros include trying for a different gender, wanting to replicate their own large family dynamic, or wanting a bigger family than they grew up in. Cons include the extra financial pressure, the need for a bigger house or car or the prospect of kids outnumbering parents.

Blackburn mother of two Giselle Jesse can certainly relate and is debating whether to go for number three. Giselle and husband Shaun are parents to Ethan, 4, and William, 2, and are “tempted” by the idea of a bigger family. “We never intended to have three children and trying for a girl is not really an issue because I’m quite a tomboy and relate well to the boys,” Giselle said. “But Shaun and I both had large age gaps between us and our siblings and we would have loved having playmates close to us in age.” Giselle said having three children would add an extra dynamic to the family unit and reduce the chance of favoritism. But she’s also concerned about being able to give each child enough attention and the extra financial pressure on the family. “And of course the idea of getting up in the night to feed a newborn isn’t thrilling — but I’m not getting that much sleep now so maybe one more won’t make much difference.”

Please reconsider? The world is already 0verpopulated, large families are unnecessary in Australia as most children will survive to adulthood, and they are environmentally irresponsible. Transporting them and other activities can be a logistical nightmare. Children in large families tend to get “lost in the crowd” as they get less individual attention. I was one of two children in my family, and found that quite satisfactory! My maternal grandmother came from a family of 13, and that was a major reason she had only 2 children (Mum and my uncle) – she saw the toll a large family took on her mother.

Letter sent in (not yet published):

With the world already overpopulated, the apparent trend for Australian women to have 3 or more children is dismaying. There seems to be no consideration of the environmental impact of each extra child in the parents’ decision. One more does make a difference!

Collected letters

Breed for your country

“Trucking magnate Lindsay Fox urges Australians to have more children”, H-S, 25/5. Stupid remark from a greedy businessman whose company stands to profit from population growth. He has 6 children, so his environmental credentials are nil.

Herald-Sun, 25/5:

In 1900, when my grandmother was a young girl, the world’s population was about 1.5 billion. In 1950, when I was born, the world’s population was 2.55 billion. By 1985 when my children were born, it was 4.85 billion. Today, it is almost 7 billion. In just over four generations, the world’s population has increased almost fivefold, yet it took many millennia for the Earth to reach the first billion inhabitants. This is the crux of the carbon pollution problem. More people equates to more pollution, yet we still have leaders who say we must increase our population. These same leaders want a target on emissions, but not a target on population size. Population increases, coupled with a huge rise in consumerism in the developed world and aspirational consumerism in the developing world, have caused the rise in carbon dioxide emissions.

– Jacques Reed, Langwarrin

27/5, in response to the article linked above:

Lindsay Fox and his wife had six children by the time he was 30, and he says he would endorse that for everyone else. That made me wonder what would happen if the 5.5 million Australians aged between 20 and 39 decided to do as he recommends, and if their children did so too. Six children per couple means each next generation is three times as large. Then 30 years later, that next generation triples itself again. So in just 120 years there would be four triplings – that’s 81 times as many Australians of parental age, or about 445 million of them! And, since there would be more children than parents, the total population of Australia would be well over one billion…and ready to multiply itself roughly another 81 times in the next 120 years. It should be great for the trucking business, though I suspect they’d all be living on air.

– Mark O’Connor, Lyneham, ACT

“U.N. Forecasts 10.1 Billion People by Century’s End”, NYT, 3/5 (shorter article at The Age). A very alarming projection from the United Nations – 3 billion extra people! A nightmarish prospect. Educating women and giving them access to family planning is the main way to combat this, but as the article notes, it is a slow process.

“The idiocy of endless growth”, The Age, 30/5. An opinion piece from businessman Dick Smith (who has a book out on population, Dick Smith’s Population Crisis, which I have yet to see on bookshelves here).

This is why I am so disappointed that Australia has missed the chance to deal realistically with the challenges of an ever-growing population. Earlier this month, the federal government released its population strategy, and it is long on rhetoric and short on action. It mentions the word “sustainable” dozens of times – three times just in its title – yet never defines what this overused word means.

The report ducks entirely the question of just where we should be aiming in terms of our numbers in coming decades. This renders virtually meaningless any attempts we may make to plan for the future. How, for instance, can we expect to reach the government’s target of a 60 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by mid-century if we have no idea how many people we will have making those emissions?

The strategy makes grand statements about encouraging people to settle in regional areas, completely ignoring the reality that nearly all new migrants choose to settle in our major cities. Little wonder that federal Labor backbencher Kelvin Thomson described the report as a missed opportunity to map out a direction for Australia’s future.

To me, the report represents a wider malaise, which is the failure of leaders here and abroad to deal with the really big inconvenient truth: the impossibility of endlessly expanding our economy and population in a finite world. No politician or business leader dares mention that there are natural limits to growth, and that the evidence suggests we are already hitting against many of them.

Instead, they hide behind the near meaningless calls for sustainability, all the while accelerating us towards a precipice.

An article disagreeing: “Big population isn't a problem if we plan for it”, 31/5. Well, from observation, few if any governments manage to adequately plan for growth – it is usually a disorganized attempt to catch up, and they never quite manage to. Planners from decades ago seem to have been more competent than the sorry excuses for planners today. Melbourne was initially a well-planned city but subsequent generations are progressively destroying this.

We want freedom of movement between the states. We want the freedom to choose our family sizes. We need skilled migration at least until the superannuation changes are implemented in full in 2025, and we need to take our fair share of humanitarian arrivals. Our population will grow. We need to get over it and make some effective plans for the future of the city.

Disagree with most – if you want to retain livability, you can’t expect to keep growing in the ways quoted.

Baby bribery

“Dump baby bonus, says Anglican Church’s key advisory group”, Herald-Sun, 28/4 (ABC article also). This proposal by (surprisingly) a religious organization drew much controversy. Unfortunately the wasteful bonus looks here to stay, with both major political parties (Labor and Liberal) saying they would not abolish it – despite the considerable savings to be made if they did (278,000 baby bonus payments paid out last year at $5294 each equals nearly $1.5 billion!). They would not then have to cut medical research funding as the upcoming Budget threatens – a shortsighted policy if there ever was. I suppose they are more afraid of losing votes. Sadly, issues involving reproduction seem to bring out the worst irrationality in humans.

“Big Melbourne isn’t to be feared, you might find it’ll grow on you”, The Age, 23/4. An utterly deluded piece of drivel! He shares the bizarre conviction that bigger is better, despite the misery this policy inflicts on those living in the affected city. He does admit, almost as an aside:

Admittedly, the advent of 605,000 extra Melburnians since 2001 creates problems: worsening traffic, crowded trains and insufficient housing supply has driven prices to ludicrous heights. But for all the whingeing, the positives of the Big Melbourne far outweigh the negatives.

Oh no they don’t, mate!

“China’s crop supply dries up, spurring global prices”, 19/4. As China’s population increases, it is losing farmland – a lot of this due to urban growth. Perhaps one ultimate solution would be genetically-modified and processed algae for consumption (as I have read in a sci-fi novel or two, and was mentioned in the Avatar movie).

The factories sprawling from Jinan city, 350 kilometers (220 miles) south of Beijing, put Zhao on the front line of a clash between a policy of food self-sufficiency and industrial growth that made China the world’s second-biggest economy. Industrialisation is winning, signaling prices for crops like wheat and corn will rise as China is increasingly unable to feed itself and vies for supplies on global markets.

On a slightly different note, the parasitical organizations otherwise known as hedge funds can only see this as an opportunity for profit:

“China’s increased demand for agricultural commodities will mean an increase in prices for the entire world market,” said David Stroud, chief executive officer of New York-based hedge fund TS Capital Partners. “China can outlast any other bidders for the commodities it desires.” Investors should bet on crops in shortest supply in China, with wheat and corn now offering the best opportunities, he said.

In other words, they seek to profit from others’ misery.

“World’s future is a crowded place”, SMH, 30/4. An overview of the world’s increasing population and the issues involved. Though they seem overly optimistic; 9 billion is still a huge burden on the environment. Countermeasures such as educating women and giving them access to family planning are one way to combat growth, but it is too slow (over decades) and does not always work – as the many “educated” women in Australia having 3+ children demonstrate. Food shortages will be an issue. The well-worn example of the world’s population fitting into a given area is stated yet again, but this is utterly irrelevant to reality.

The world’s current population could stand, shoulder to shoulder, inside the borders of greater Sydney. That means there is enough land for all: how much they consume is the problem. Graeme Hugo warns that population reduction is not a silver bullet: “You need good environmental policy as well as good population policy.”

Much of that land is desert or otherwise unlivable, and reducing consumption can only go so far. Population reduction is ultimately the only sustainable solution.

Collected letters:

Victoria: open borders

“Interstate raiders buying up Melbourne properties”, 2/4. More unwelcome competition for housing – but Premier Ted Bailleu reveals his true colors in this remark:

Despite pressure on housing affordability from rapid population growth, Premier Ted Baillieu said he was not about to close Victoria’s borders. He said he would never “put up the stop sign” to curb population growth, but warned Victorians will have to “endure” the problems of a growth rate that saw Melbourne increase by more than 1500 people a week last financial year. “You’d like to think, in government, that you could invest for the future. We’ll be investing to catch [up] because the previous Labor government allowed Victoria to fall behind,” he said.

Well, Melbourne is ruined. No hope from him, then, of curbing growth – just the opposite, continuing the insane growth mania begun by Jeff Kennett’s government and continued by Labor. Melbourne’s population is closing in on Sydney’s.

I wonder if one solution might be to introduce some sort of residential permit – that if a person wishes to live in Melbourne, they would need to apply; if there were no room they would be refused. Preference would be given to Australian citizens, and then long-term residents of the city first. The State Government should, ideally, refuse to issue any more land releases to developers, and set a firm boundary to limit expansion. I doubt anyone would have the courage to take those measures, though – there would be an outcry of “We should be able to live where ever we want!” A hotel, though, can’t accommodate an infinite number of people, and neither can a city – not if it is to stay liveable rather than turn into an overcrowded slum.

Trying to get people to move to regional centers is no solution – these are often poorly serviced and, despite vague Government assurances, will remain so for a long time. Most people thus tend to want to live in well-serviced areas, which the established regions of Melbourne provide. Successive governments have done a poor job of managing growth – it is a game of catch-up, and they never quite manage to.

Dick Smith suggested that families be discouraged from having more than two children, though the Herald-Sun article linked was something of a misquote, according to this post at PublicPopForum. Some clueless fool did respond:

MacroPlan economist Brian Haratsis said Mr Smith was an alarmist. A population of 40 million was inevitable and that “the only choice is if we want a really big Australia of 40 million to 80 million”. He said population debate in Australia had been stolen by “anti-growth people with a Green sentiment”.

80 million? What has he been smoking? Much of Australia is infertile desert, so populations are mainly limited to thin strips of land along the coastline. Where is he planning to fit them all, and where will their food come from?

Collected letters

A lengthy backlog of printed letters from mostly The Age, collected from the last 3 months, on overpopulation, overdevelopment and property planning issues. Unfortunately, none of the few I sent were published.

(I just found out how to make cuts so I don’t clog up the front page with long entries!)

Urban nightmares

“The future is a high-rise world”, The Age, 22/12/2010. I have come to detest architects in general; most seem to be enraptured by the idea of cramming millions of humans into futuristic hi-tech cities, and rendering utopian artwork of such. One of the most extreme examples is that of housing up to one million people in a single tower in London (architect’s webpage) to accomodate its growing population. To me that sounds like a nightmarish way to live, crammed into a small space with that many people – “battery-hen living” is my name for it. The architect in the first article, Thom Mayne, seems to be one of those arrogant types who think city living is sophisticated and sneers at suburbs – I just want to slap him!

“What future for intelligent life in space?”, The Space Review, 7/11. This opinion piece by Stephen Ashworth asserts that colonizing space (as opposed to other planets) and exploiting its resources will enable humanity to keep expanding almost indefinitely. This comes across to me as “Space Cadet” thinking – an overly-optimistic view that going into space will magically solve humanity’s problems. Somewhat alarmingly, he notes that such expansion will supposedly allow the human population to expand hugely:

In this way, very large future human populations are conceivable. For example, John S. Lewis has reckoned that the material resources of the main asteroid belt, together with large-scale use of solar power, would allow at least 10 million billion people to support themselves (Mining the Sky, p.196). When one adds in the Jupiter trojans and the opportunities presented by the outer solar system, even larger populations become possible. Frank Drake and Dava Sobel have put the overall carrying capacity of our system at “more than a hundred billion billion human beings” (Is Anyone Out There?, p.128), while Marshall Savage suggests an even larger figure (The Millennial Project, p.303). We do not need to quibble over orders of magnitude in order to make the point that the propensity for economic and population growth characteristic of industrial civilization is well matched with the opportunities offered by its local environment, provided that the 21st century sees a shift of the focus of industrial and population growth away from Earth and onto large-scale development of the natural resources of near-Earth space.

It’s the same old infinite growth mentality that is causing so much damage to humanity and the enviroment on Earth. Realistically, I can’t see space colonies happening before mid- or late-century – if ever. And most people would want to stay on Earth, on which humans have evolved and are intensely adapted to.

China’s population reached 1.34 billion last year – attributed mainly to people living longer rather than more births. But now the furphy of the “ageing population” is being raised:

Cai Yong said allowing more births now would help the country cope with looking after its large and growing elderly population. “To have a stable society, you better start now, to think ahead of time because it takes 20 to 30 years to have another generation come down the line,” he said.

And then they will be back to square one, because the increased number of young people born will grow old, and require yet more young people born to look after them… *Sigh*

Fill ’er up

Another backlog of articles and such to list! I have neglected posting out of sheer despair; I feel so powerless and insignificant as nothing I say can do anything to change the government’s policies.

“No ‘we are full’ sign for Melbourne”, The Age, 7/3. With tedious predictability, Ted Baillieu’s Liberal Government has decided not to do anything to restrict Melbourne’s population growth as it is good for the economy. Certainly not for the residents who have to endure the erosion of living standards resulting from such growth! To say I am disgusted and disappointed is an understatement. The city I grew up in is essentially ruined. Disturbingly:

He said 84 per cent of Victoria’s economic growth over the past five years had come from population growth, compared with 71 per cent for Australia as a whole, an unsustainable situation that would require higher productivity from Victoria’s workers to reverse.

Earlier, however, Planning Minister Matthew Guy was saying, “Bigger may not be better for Melbourne”.

Victorian Labor politician Kelvin Thomson now has his own blog; he is one of the very few politicans who seem to understand that excessive population growth is not a benefit for Australia (or the world).

SPPA convener William Bourke wrote an opinion piece on the ABC News site, “Ageing Australia: a crisis or triumph?”, saying that an older population is not necessarily something to be concerned about, despite the scare-mongering by businesses and politicians.

“Planet could be ‘unrecognizable’ by 2050, experts say”, 21/2. A planet of 7 billion is bad enough, but 9 billion will be even worse, as this article predicts. Feeding all those people is the main issue. In the rest of the natural world, animal, bird and insect populations tend to increase in times of plenty – but when famine strikes, many will perish from starvation (the boom and bust cycle). The “Green Revolution” has helped humans avoid this for the most part (at least where food is evenly distributed), but it is reliant on environmentally-unfriendly means of production such as synthetic (petroleum-based) fertilizers and monoculture crops controlled by corporations. The only way to avoid this cycle – with the prospect of millions fighting for dwindling resources – is to give everyone (i.e. in all countries) access to family planning, and remove incentives for having large families in times of plenty, even if this tends to go against human instinct to reproduce.

Livable – for now

Adelaide was voted Australia’s most livable city, with Sydney getting the most negative votes. Population growth has contributed to the latter, and Melbourne is not far behind in increasing unliveability. The surveyors were the Property Council of Australia, a body which has a vested interest in promoting growth. Adelaide has a comparatively small population – a major factor in its livability – but if the PCA has its way (one representative on a TV news report was all but foaming at the prospect of the city’s growth), the city too will be ruined by inflated house prices, overdevelopment and lagging infrastructure.

“Baillieu Government releases land for two new Melbourne suburbs”, Herald-Sun, 23/1. This gets me foaming at the mouth in rage – the Liberal Government is continuing the reckless growth policy of its predecessors. More open land (and carbon sinks) around Melbourne will be smothered in housing estates, contributing to the environmental degradation of the region. It won’t result in lower house prices, not with investors and developers looking to make profits. It also further jeopardizes the city’s food security, with arable land disappearing under housing estates.

“Population 7 Billion”, National Geographic, January 2011. An overview of the world’s population numbers, but the article optimistically suggests that reducing consumption and good old “human ingenuity” will solve our problems rather than reducing growth.

But one can also draw a different conclusion—that fixating on population numbers is not the best way to confront the future. People packed into slums need help, but the problem that needs solving is poverty and lack of infrastructure, not overpopulation. Giving every woman access to family planning services is a good idea—“the one strategy that can make the biggest difference to women’s lives,” Chandra calls it. But the most aggressive population control program imaginable will not save Bangladesh from sea level rise, Rwanda from another genocide, or all of us from our enormous environmental problems.

But aggressive control certainly would help mitigate such disasters! Only a totalitarian world government could implement such a policy, though.

“No 11 - and yes, it was the milkman”, H-S, 21/1. If this isn’t a flagrant abuse of government-funded IVF, I don’t know what is! 11 children – plus 3 from a previous marriage (natural or IVF is not stated) – and she still wants more. Apparently she’s got nothing better to do than contribute to overpopulation. Educated women supposedly want smaller families – that is one of the benefits stated for family planning aid in developing countries – but Australia appears to be going backward in that regard. Whether the children are “wanted” or not is irrelevant – her having so many is selfish and irresponsible. Removing government benefits for having 3 or more children (i.e. the 3rd child onward would not receive benefits) would prove a big disincentive, as well as providing IVF funding only for a woman’s first child. No government seems to have the courage to do that, however.

The year of 7 billion

2011 marks a dismal milestone, in that the estimated population of humans will reach 7 billion, a near-unimaginable number for which the Earth’s environment is suffering. World population estimates at Wikipedia shows the huge growth in the 20th century: in 1900 there was an estimated 1.6 billion; only 101 years later that has increased nearly seven times (despite various wars and revolutions killing millions). Despite claims population growth has slowed or is in decline, the projection is still 8 billion in 2025 and 9 billion in 2050 – given current rates, those numbers will probably be reached sooner.

“Asia tells its young: love is in the air”, The Age, 15/1. Despite various Asian countries having huge populations, their governments are getting in a lather about falling fertility rates and so are trying to reverse this through various policies. Well, when you educate and empower women, that’s what is supposed to happen!

In the category of “I shouldn’t say anything, but I can’t resist” is a response to this blog entry, “Oh, restricting IVF will save us from overpopulation, pestilence, war and famine?”. (I used to enjoy his blog, but not so much anymore.) I thought the one who originally emailed him had some valid points, but he equates access to IVF as a “human right”; that Medicare funding for it is as valid as doing the same for, say, a hip replacement operation. I think this comparison is spurious at best (as I have said in previous IVF-tagged posts).

“Burke rejects population goal”, The Age, 17/12/2010. Predictably, the Federal Government is avoiding setting a population target.

“Cities getting less liveable”, The Age, 20/12/2010. Population growth has increased house prices, strained services and is generally making life miserable for citizens. But the Government won’t address this.

“China faces up to growth cost”, The Age, 30/12/2010. China’s rapid population and economic growth are destroying its environment. Something’s got to give.

“Urban sprawl aided Aussie torrent: experts”, The West, 14/1 (also here). Deliberate encouragement of population growth and the accompanying urban sprawl helped make the disasterous Queensland floods even worse than they otherwise might have been. I believe that I can safely predict that governments will do nothing to remedy this, and the next floods will be even worse.