Cancerous cities

A collection of images published at Wired.com and The Atlantic Cities shows various satellite photos of cities by NASA’s Landsat satellite system – two images of each, from decades ago and more recent. All cities have grown alarmingly, deadly grey concrete swallowing up the green and brown land. It is disturbing to look at and realize how much pressure population growth is placing upon the landscape. Growth advocates love to counter with the argument that city densities should be increased by building upward rather than sprawling outward, but not everyone wants to live crammed into small apartments like battery hens. By keeping populations low people can have it both ways – minimize city spread and live in single houses with backyards.

Collected letters

Loopholes

“Chinese couple pay to have second child”, Telegraph, 1/6. Another article proving that many selfish people will seek to circumvent whatever birth restriction policies are in place. My opinions on this were stated in my 11/2/2012 entry.

However, the [one-child] policy has never been evenly enforced. There are exemptions for ethnic minorities, for families where both parents were single children themselves, and for couples in the countryside whose first child is a girl. In addition, a growing number of rich families now choose simply to pay the fine, which is a multiple of between three and ten times the average after-tax income of the city where they live. Aspirational advertisements in Beijing, including propaganda posters from the local government, often now show families with two children, rather than one.

“China’s One-Child Policy’s Unexpected Issue: Infertility”, Forbes, 25/5. In an overpopulated country (and world) I can’t see this as a bad thing, sorry! I would like to see a ban on IVF – or at least not have it taxpayer-funded.

Huang Hefeng, director of the Zhejiang province reproductive medical center, said that factors like heavy workloads, stress, environmental pollution and unhealthy lifestyles are known to be related to a rising infertility level in China. The WHO expects infertility and sterility to be the third-most serious disease worldwide in the 21st century, after cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

African apocalypse

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan showed recently that he realized overpopulation was a timebomb when saying that his country’s citizens should limit the number of children they have. Unfortunately, most of the religious leaders there castigated him on this issue, and having large families is an embedded part of the culture.

Two articles from April also looked at the social and environmental devastation that population growth is causing in Africa (as it is everywhere).

Across sub-Saharan Africa, alarmed governments have begun to act, often reversing longstanding policies that encouraged or accepted large families. Nigeria made contraceptives free last year, and officials are promoting smaller families as a key to economic salvation, holding up the financial gains in nations like Thailand as inspiration.

Nigeria, already the world’s sixth most populous nation with 167 million people, is a crucial test case, since its success or failure at bringing down birthrates will have outsize influence on the world’s population. If this large nation rich with oil cannot control its growth, what hope is there for the many smaller, poorer countries?

“Population is key,” said Peter Ogunjuyigbe, a demographer at Obafemi Awolowo University in the small central city of Ile-Ife. “If you don’t take care of population, schools can’t cope, hospitals can’t cope, there’s not enough housing – there’s nothing you can do to have economic development.”

– “Nigeria Tested by Rapid Rise in Population”, NYT 14/4

If Africa’s population increases according to the UN’s medium prediction, the continent will have about 3.6 billion people by the end of the century – raising its current share of global population from 12 per cent to about one-third. Nevertheless, its population could reach 5.2 billion or 2.4 billion by 2100, depending on whether fertility is 0.5 children above or below the UN’s medium estimate.

The population of the Sahel – those semi-arid countries bordering the Sahara – will double or more by 2050 at exactly the time that global warming is likely to have the harshest effects. As population growth and global warming coincide, the hunger and refugee problems in the Horn of Africa, and type of resource battles seen in Darfur or South Sudan, will multiply.

Worldwide, the UN predicts 15.8 billion humans by the end of the century if average family size remains around 2.6 children per woman, but 6.2 billion if it stabilises at 1.6 children. If fertility levels drop to the replacement level of 2.1, then there will be 10 billion people. (NS)

“How to defuse sub-Saharan Africa’s population bomb”, New Scientist 26/4

Wildlife there is already under serious threat; a lot of animal species are increasingly being corralled into wildlife parks that are surrounded by farmland, unable to traverse their ancient migratory routes. It is depressing to contemplate that the continent where humans first evolved – our ancient first homeland – may ultimately be turned into a wasteland by our species because we won’t or can’t restrict our numbers.

1/7:

Birth control key

MATT Wade’s report (“Children near starvation in world’s largest refugee camp”, 17/7) on the tragedy in Africa’s Dadaab refugee camp is heart-breaking. The clue to the cause of the problem is also in Wade’s report: overpopulation. One of the refugees has nine children, another has six children below the age of eight. The drought has dramatically exacerbated an untenable situation.

The only solution to poverty in countries such as Somalia is birth control. Developed countries give hundreds of billions of dollars a year for the economic development of poor countries. Any progress they make is swallowed up by the increasing population and the end result is increasing poverty.

It is time for us to reassess our options.

– Bill Mathew, Parkville

As always, the trinity of health care, family planning and education for women is the only long-term way to break the poverty and famine cycle in developing countries. Aid should be given only if these will be implemented also, otherwise such humanitarian disasters will continue.

“The Other Arab Spring”, NYT, 7/4. This opinion piece by Thomas L. Friedman notes that the revolutions that have shaken the Middle East since 2011 can be attrituted to the high population growth in the region, especially a high and unemployable youth population.

All these tensions over land, water and food are telling us something: The Arab awakening was driven not only by political and economic stresses, but, less visibly, by environmental, population and climate stresses as well. If we focus only on the former and not the latter, we will never be able to help stabilize these societies. […]

If you ask “what are the real threats to our security today,” said Brown, “at the top of the list would be climate change, population growth, water shortages, rising food prices and the number of failing states in the world. As that list grows, how many failed states before we have a failing global civilization, and everything begins to unravel?”

Collected letters

Herald-Sun, 25/6:

Population alert

THE clowns are again reiterating climate-change nonsense, this time in Brazil. A waste of time and effort.

Who will be the ring master and both espouse and support our planet’s main problem, overpopulation? Poland has dispensed with the warming nonsense and others will follow. Nothing we do will affect the planet other than reducing population.

Please, one world leader stand up and promote population reduction. I know the Chinese are. Where in the developed world is the fortitude for the same? Your top hat awaits.

– Tim Stafford, Mt Eliza

27/6:

Tax welcomed

AS SOMEONE fortunate enough to have received a scientific education to university level, I do not feel we have a right to ignore environmental concerns in our quest for future existence on this planet.

It does concern me that various high-profile columnists espouse a mantra of continued population and economic growth, with their costs of unsustainable consumption and environmental change.

I for one do sleep more soundly at night with the thought that our government is implementing a carbon tax, no matter how ineffectual, as it is a start to recognising something that seems increasingly to be affecting us all.

Maybe it is time we all became more scientifically literate.

– Jim Royston, Heidelberg

Three weeks ago, the Victorian Bailleu government announced it would be rezoning yet more valuable farmland and green wedges around outer Melbourne for housing to accommodate the ever-growing population. Various developers, many of whom are lobbyists, will benefit, but the environment certainly won’t. A later article noted that “Urban spread poses new threat to endangered frogs”, but the government apparently does not care – for them, growth must come at any cost. I can feel only despair and anger at being so powerless to stop this destruction.

The Age, 14/6:

Boundary is a rubbery concept

DOES the state government have a mandate to open up thousands of hectares of green wedge land and farmland (“Government shifts green wedge boundary”, The Age, 13/6) for housing on the metropolitan fringe? Where is the democratic consultation and what are the long-term benefits of its plans?

What Planning Minister Matthew Guy considers “anomalies” were actually planned by the Hamer government to prevent Melbourne becoming a monolith of housing and concrete. There’s no “logic” in grabbing thousands of hectares of “logical inclusion” from green wedges, but there is pure greed for growth.

This extension of the urban boundary will be the fourth time it has been shifted since the Bracks government introduced it in 2002, so there’s no real boundary - it’s an imaginary rubbery line that expands with market forces and urban obesity.

When no one is in charge of properly regulating natural resources, cities grow in ways that are utterly unpredictable and without regard to optimising resources. Nature functions on balance, and perpetual growth is not natural. We could suffer the same fate as any other species whose habitat is destroyed by the blind pursuit of excesses.

– Vivienne Ortega, Heidelberg Heights

Try before you buy

PERHAPS there should be a scheme to allow people to try living on Melbourne’s furthest fringes for a week or so to see before they buy if they have the mental and physical stamina it takes. Try for a week driving to work on a scarcely moving freeway. Or be at the station by 7 a.m. to get a park and a spot to stand up in the train for 40 kilometres to the city.

Try booking your child into kinder or school and have a look at the sheer size of such educational facilities. (Note that size does not always equate with quality). Sit for hours in the only hospital’s emergency department. It is looking less and less appealing isn’t it? Perhaps we should encourage the Planning Minister and Premier to live such a week. It might make them less keen to jam more and more people into the city’s under-resourced fringe.

– Clancy Briggs, Berwick

Toxic consequences

IF I approached the state government with a planning proposal that would not only increase the cost of food, but also the levels of respiratory disease and other health problems, I would be quite rightly shown the door.

But this is what will transpire with the Baillieu government’s vision for greater urban sprawl and freeway development, concreting over Melbourne’s green wedges and farming belt to increase the costs of fresh produce and the levels of atmospheric toxicity.

The market will now capriciously determine all the worst possible scenarios, favouring short-term housing booms over long-term food security, freeways to the exclusion of rail infrastructure.

You’d think that with a degree in architecture, Ted Baillieu would possess some environmental sensibility that might embrace state decentralisation and a respect for the primacy of planning, but it seems not.

– John Ashton, Fitzroy North

A new model sorely needed

PLANNING Minister Matthew Guy says 37,000 lots of land will be developed over 30 years to house more than 100,000 people. This might boost the housing industry, but once the houses are built, there are no guarantees of employment near or far from the houses.

An economy largely dependent on land tax and stamp duty means perpetually being strangled by the challenges of meeting the costs of urban infrastructure, creating jobs in a declining job market, and relying on the cash flows generated by continually stretching the urban boundary. A report by National Australia Bank on Victoria’s health says the state faces challenges as the worst performing state, and that’s despite churning out more houses and land than we can currently sell. We obviously need a new economic paradigm not dependent on paving over irreplaceable open space just to create more empty houses.

– Jenny Warfe, Dromana