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:

Thou shalt not breed

“Thou shalt not breed: Anglicans”, The Age, 9/5. The Anglican Church caused a minor flurry in May when it issued a statement saying that the baby bonus was environmentally irresponsible and should be scrapped (replaced by paid parental leave).

Wading into the population debate, the General Synod of the Anglican Church has warned that current rates of population growth are unsustainable and potentially out of step with church doctrine – including the eighth commandment, “Thou shall not steal”.

In a significant intervention, the Anglican Public Affairs Commission has warned concerned Christians that remaining silent “is little different from supporting further overpopulation and ecological degradation”.

“Out of care for the whole of creation, particularly the poorest of humanity and the life forms who cannot speak for themselves…it is not responsible to stand by and remain silent,” a discussion paper by the commission warns. “Unless we take account of the needs of future life on Earth, there is a case that we break the eighth commandment – ‘Thou shall not steal’.”

Approving letters, 16/5:

They’ve got it!

Congratulations to the Anglican Church for its courageous and principled stand on population growth. Accumulated and overwhelming evidence over the past 40 years has highlighted the folly of human self-interest and arrogance as the species continues to breed unabated while totally disregarding its effect on the world’s finite capacities.

Without halting population growth, the environmental and resource problems cannot be mitigated. A stand-out example is global warming, where the effect of the projected growth in local and global population will completely negate any reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.

Sustainable development is an oxymoron in the face of population growth and it should be challenged every time it is uttered.

– Robert Boffey, Macleod

Curb the growth

The Anglican Church should be congratulated and supported wholeheartedly (on its call for a population curb in Australia).

Probably, this is the first time that a Christian church has taken such a momentous leadership direction. Most Western nations have near zero or negative population growth; but population growth is taking place in developing countries, by up to 5 per cent a year.

The biggest threat to world peace and civil society in the future will come from unsustainable population growth. People in most developing countries do not have sufficient water to drink or land to grow food, let alone materials to build shelter. In many poor countries, any economic progress they make is swallowed up by increasing population. Global warming and climate change will certainly make life more difficult in such countries. It is only a matter of time before large numbers of refugees from overpopulated countries seek to move to less populated countries. This will result in warfare, death and destruction.

It is to be hoped that all churches and political parties take the Anglicans’ lead and seek to curb population growth as a policy initiative around the world.

– Bill Mathew, Parkville

Thou shalt not mislead

The headline about the Anglican Public Affairs Commission discussion paper on population issues was misleading. Neither explicitly or implicitly does the paper argue that people should not have children. Rather, it suggests that the government incentive to have more children – the baby bonus – be removed and replaced by increased paid parental leave so as to strengthen the time parents are able to have with their babies.

The article also said that the paper came from the Anglican General Synod. In fact, it was prepared by the national Public Affairs Commission and will be considered by the General Synod at its meeting in September.

– Professor John Langmore, chairman, Anglican Public Affairs Commission

“Hoping for some gains amid the growing pains”, 12/5. This article aroused my ire as the couple profiled are displaying environmental irresponsibility by having so many children (four with another on the way).

Although Mrs Smith admitted money was sometimes tight for extra-curricular activities for the children, she said there were benefits to having a large household. “I love having a big family. There’s never a dull moment and always plenty of laughs, and a few tears,” she said. “Our aim was to start with two and then we quickly went to four and then we thought if we’re going to do it they can grow up together. When they are older they will be best mates.” Last year the budget brought some pain for the family – they were hoping this year would not be the same.

Well, if your budget is tight, stop breeding! Of course they expect Government handouts. A similar article featured a couple with five children and another on the way. What the hell is wrong with these people? We live in a society where most children can be expected to survive to adulthood, and contraception is readily available, so there is little excuse anymore to have large families. Such couples should also be classified as “environmental vandals”. They should be penalized from child #3 onwards, either actively with extra taxes, or passively by withdrawal of Government funding for extra children.

Australia is not the only nation promoting family growth; I came across this news item at the Kremlin.ru site: “Ceremony awarding the Order of Parental Glory to parents of large families”. Even if Russia’s population is declining, there is (as of 2002 census) just over 141 million – over 6 times that of Australia’s – hardly any reason to be concerned yet!

Keep migrants coming?

“Despite job fears, we must keep migration door open”, The Age, 1/3. An apologist argues that we should keep immigration levels high despite fears from some that this will increase jobs competition.

Critics of immigration conveniently forget that immigrants do more than just work – they buy houses and consume products too. Hell, they even pay taxes. Adding more people into the economic mix is a recipe for long term growth – this is as true when the economy is slowing down as it is when the economy is booming. After all, there are a lot of things to do in an economy, even during a recession.

But those extra immigrants will require taxpayer-funded health care, social security and so on, too. Growth in a country of finite resources can’t be infinite. And, yes, it is reasonable for citizens to resent the extra competition from immigrants in a time of increasing unemployment.

He does have a point that undesirable jobs (e.g. fruit-picking) tend to have high job vacancies. I don’t know what the solution for this is.

Sure, there are now a lot of people actively seeking work since the global financial crisis really hit six months ago. But there have been unemployed people since before then, and those jobs in the fruit-picking industry have long been unfilled.

Only when the finance industry’s brightest sparks begin seeking agricultural employment should we start denying farmers the labour force they need – and denying eager migrant workers the opportunity to earn. Ever since the First Fleet landed, Australia’s most pressing economic problem has been our population size. Our labour force has always been small, our consumer base small, and the size of our national market small.

Small is beautiful! Australia is mostly infertile land (desert) and cannot support a high population – it is already straining to support the 21+ million now occupying it.

Compounding this has been the fear of an inexorably ageing workforce. But the credit crunch has presented long-term opponents of immigration with an opportunity to flog their favourite dead horse. Even more erroneous is the belief held by many opponents of immigration that we should limit the entry into Australia of certain non-Western religions because our cultures are incompatible.

Probably because religious fanatics who advocate blowing others up with suicide bombers tend to make citizens rather nervous!

Anyway,we have a moral necessity to maintain a high immigration intake. Much more than foreign aid, charity, Live Aid wristbands, and even the bulk-purchase of fair trade coffee, the most effective way we can help somebody living in the third world to crawl out of poverty is allowing them to move to the first world.

An even more effective and preventative method would be to help those impoverished countries become normal functioning ones so their citizens don’t feel such a pressing need to emmigrate.

“Young mums grab bonus”, Herald-Sun, 2/3. This reports the not-very-surprising news that the baby bonus has encouraged teenage pregnancies. Obvious solution: ban the BB for under-18s! Even better: scrap it altogether. I would instead not object to, say, government-funded 6 months’ maternity or paternity leave at minimum wage, which seems a reasonable compromise to me (a year, as some want, is too excessive to fund).

Also annoying is that IVF gets a Medicare rebate!

“Medicare rebates for IVF births in the same period were $295,000, which works out at less than $20,000 for each baby,” said Professor Robert Jansen, a director of Sydney IVF.

Infertility is not a painful, life-threatening or disfiguring condition, and should not be government-funded! The money could be much better used elsewhere (e.g. funding the health care system).

“Despair and rage among Gaza’s youths”, BBC News, 27/2. Another not-very-surprising report on the overcrowding in Gaza, this focusing on the Angry Young Men who are a symptom of this, and the social unrest that results from boredom, hopelessness and unemployment among such – and who are prime recruitment material for militants. Israel should start air-dropping contraceptives (or put them in the water supply, if there is one)!

“How to survive the coming century”, New Scientist, 25/2. A worst-case scenario of how climate change might affect the environment this century, if the temperature rises by 4°C.

The good news is that the survival of humankind itself is not at stake: the species could continue if only a couple of hundred individuals remained. But maintaining the current global population of nearly 7 billion, or more, is going to require serious planning.

Well, obviously, we shouldn’t – it’s overpopulation that has got us into this mess!

So if only a fraction of the planet will be habitable, how will our vast population survive? Some, like [James] Lovelock, are less than optimistic. “Humans are in a pretty difficult position and I don’t think they are clever enough to handle what’s ahead. I think they’ll survive as a species all right, but the cull during this century is going to be huge,” he says. “The number remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less."

Others believe that the large population can be relocated to still-fertile areas of the world and crammed into megacities:

Imagine, for the purposes of this thought experiment, that we have 9 billion people to save - 2 billion more than live on the planet today. A wholescale relocation of the world’s population according to the geography of resources means abandoning huge tracts of the globe and moving people to where the water is. […] These precious lands with access to water would be valuable food-growing areas, as well as the last oases for many species, so people would be need to be housed in compact, high-rise cities. Living this closely together will bring problems of its own. Disease could easily spread through the crowded population so early warning systems will be needed to monitor any outbreaks.

That does not seem like a desirable way to live, though!

Baby extravagance

“ ‘Stop paying the well-off to breed’ ”, Herald-Sun, 14/3. The Government is to keep paying the baby bonus, unfortunately. I sent a letter to the Herald-Sun; don’t know if it will be published [it wasn’t]:

The Government’s hypocrisy in continuing the extravagant baby bonus (“Stop paying the well-off to breed”, 14/3) in the same week it considered cutting bonus payments to vulnerable carers and pensioners is dismaying. In an already-overpopulated world, paying people to reproduce is irresponsible and the scheme should be scrapped.