Embrace growth? No thanks!

“State government minister says Victoria should embrace growth”, Herald-Sun, 2/8. I read the statements by a Victorian State Government minister in this article with stunned disbelief. Despite all the problems population growth is causing Melbourne – which are acknowledged in the article – we should “welcome” it because it is supposedly economically and socially beneficial. Probably the only people benefiting from growth are parasitical property developers, as is mentioned near the end, as it means more homes being built (never mind the environmental damage from more land being built over). This is a prime example of a self-perpetuating problem: continually encouraging growth means that infrastructure and services are forever struggling to keep up, and never quite manage to. People are increasingly stressed from competing for dwindling resources, living space and jobs, which does nothing for the supposed “diversity” championed in the article – it’s more likely to lead to social disintegration.

Bad decision

“Ageing China flags truce in one-child revolution”, The Age, 13/9. Some dismaying news that China is easing its 1-child policy because of alarm over who will look after their aging population. Perhaps they should consider alternatives such as developing helper robots. Their population is still growing, however:

By 2050 India is expected to have grown to 1.75 billion people compared with China’s 1.44 billion, according to the Population Reference Bureau. China’s population is now 1.34 billion and India’s 1.19 billion.

Ideally, I would like to see a 2-child policy implemented worldwide – but that would require a dictatorial world government to reinforce.

“Nation fertile ground for IVF”, Herald-Sun. IVF treatments in Australia are on the increase. I am adamantly against government funding for this procedure (on Medicare) and this should be abolished, though there would be an outcry as people get irrational when it comes to reproduction. There is no intrinsic “right” to IVF. With the world being already overpopulated, more people should not be created artificially.

“Strict curbs on IVF treatment a must, says Susie O’Brien”, H-S, 11/5. The taxpayer-funded treatment is being abused and should be reined in.

It’s made me realise that having babies through IVF is fast being regarded as a right, not a privilege. And this makes me profoundly uneasy.

[…]

And take the case of Victorian woman Kimberley Castles, who is serving three years in a minimum security jail for welfare fraud, and who is pushing to get IVF in jail. She has only seven months left before she turns 46 and becomes ineligible for in vitro fertilisation treatment. Although I don’t think any human rights should be denied to people in jail, this is one privilege that should not be granted to Castles.

Unfortunately the IVF was granted to her – despite her already having 2 children – because denying her treatment (and justly so, in my view) was a breach of her “rights”. What bullshit! There is no intrinsic “right” to reproduce, and certainly not at taxpayers’ expense while incarcerated, as in her case. In this society there is too much emphasis on rights and not enough on responsibilities.

“Big fall in IVF attempts as cost soars”, The Age, 13/8.

But instead they had increased the proportion of the total cost met directly by people seeking the treatment, said Sandra Dill, chief executive of the patient group Access Australia Infertility Network. “There are 1000 babies that won’t be born,” she said. “It’s not as if IVF’s a hit-and-miss thing. It’s highly successful.”

1000 people who won’t exist in an overpopulated world – that is a good thing!

Arrogant architect

“A contrarian with a big idea for mankind”, The Age, 14/8 (scanned in as I could not find the article online). The architect profiled here, Austin Williams, surely is the embodiment of arrogance and hubris, and reinforces my general dislike of his profession. His attitude is still prevalent amongst business and governments.

The British architect is a firm believer in global population growth and disdainful of the green building movement. Where many see hopelessness in huge slums, he sees hope.

Architect Austin Williams is one person among 6.8 billion, The size of the world’s population alarms some people, particularly in light of the planet’s finite resources, but Williams champions growth, seeing in it increased opportunities to transform the world to our benefit.

“For me the enlightened response to population growth is to celebrate it,” the London-based architect and author says. “More people is a good thing: the more we attach value to humanity the more human we become.”

He has the mindset that human ingenuity and “cleverness” can somehow overcome any problems caused by such growth. Not always! Trying to engineer one’s way out can sometimes lead to worse problems in the future, causing inadvertent enviromental disasters (dams are one example).

With assertive rhetoric about architects moulding the world according to their own aesthetic values, ManTowNHuman reads at times like the brainchild of a bunch of arrogant architects who have taken a leaf out of Ayn Rand’s individualist novel The Fountainhead.

That is the most accurate paragraph in the whole article.

Williams and his colleagues were not merely playing agents provocateurs in attacking sustainable design. “The fact that I found so many people reciting the mantra of sustainability without even questioning its meaning alerted me to its political problems,” he says. He saw in the “mantra of sustainability” the pernicious idea that people’s presence in the natural world is problematic. “Seeing the enviromnent as sacrosanct and humanity as somehow despoiling it is anti-human, in as much as it puts nature first and puts humanity second,” he says.

Without a liveable environment, humanity will cease to exist. We are not independent of nature, no matter how some try to pretend otherwise.

Williams deplores this kind of “miserablist” take. Where many see hopelessness in the huge slums of Mumbai or Lagos, he sees hope, and evidence of humanity’s great march of progress in action.

“You go to Lagos, they are living in utter squalor. However, even within the squalor there’s a potential for them to create industy and experience the ambition to get out of squalor,” he says. Even without effective government planning or adequate infrastructure, Lagos is developing as people work to improve their lives. It’s the same in other Third World slums.

How many will manage to escape their poverty, though? Slums are miserably unhealthy places to grow up in, and romanticizing them does the inhabitants no favors.

He says we are fortunate to be able to debate desirability of growth – and the problems it creates, such as congestion and sprawl – from a position of strength.

“Cities grow. That’s what they do… [But] you have some of the world’s most liveable cities.”

Australia’s cities are liveable because of their low population density. Unfortunately, that is changing due to uncontrolled growth. And governments are almost never able to provide adequate infrastructure to cope – they are continually trying to catch up, and never quite manage to (my state of Victoria being one example).

Resolving the issues of population, cities and housing is not easy, but we have the ingenuity to do it: “I see humanity as a source of fantastic creativity and potential, a source of wonder that has made the world today.”

Ruined the world today, more like. No point arguing with him, though – he is utterly convinced of his rightness. We hope that some day he will be made to eat his words.

Crowding us in

“Two good to be true”, H-S, 14/3. Some scientific evidence demonstrating that smaller families (one or two children) are better for parents’ health!

“Overpopulation the great unmentionable in Queensland politics”, Courier Mail, 16/3. Queensland is one of the most populous states and the strain is showing (as with Victoria), yet its deluded politicians still promote growth.

One of the comments below that article:

Well, SCOTTY OF QLD, have you ever lived in China? Or that skyscraper capital of the world, Hong Kong? Have you any idea what effect it has on people’s psyche to live like crabs in a basket? To constantly fight over resources and space? To bring up children in a tiny flat situated a hundred or more feet up in the air? Nah, I thought not. Well, you might want to live like that, but I’m damned sure I don’t want to. Nor do I want this for my kids and grandkids. Instead of comparing Australia with Third World countries (and saying, god forbid! that we should ape them), why not look at examples of intelligent population and lifestyle and resources management, such as we see in the Scandinavian countries? It is not our fault if countries choose to overpopulate. Likewise, it is simply RUBBISH to say that if overpopuilated Third World countries can scrape along, Australia (which has more than 76% desert, in case you hadn’t realised!) should be able to manage a huge population too. Why do you think migrants want to come here? To escape the overcrowded, chaotic countries they are leaving behind – duh!

Various developers have been making the usual alarmist statements about housing and land shortages (of course, they stand to profit from this). In “High-rise push to halt urban sprawl”, 16/3, some are promoting high-rise towers as a solution – not a desirable one for reasons stated in the comment above. I certainly don’t want Melbourne and its suburbs to end up as nightmarishly crowded concrete canyons. “Australia faces housing affordability ‘time bomb’: developer”, 17/3 – another developer pushes for smaller and more dense housing. There is only so much land, and covering it with housing estates is not acceptable – open space is necessary for environmental and mental health reasons. Crowding people into towers is not acceptable either.

Greens leader Bob Brown is pushing for a population strategy inquiry – at last his party seems to have realized it is a simmering issue that won’t go away.

“For a new generation, Alpha will be better”, The Age, 20/3. The generation born this year has been dubbed Alpha. Their future could be difficult, and shows how misguided encouraging a high birth rate is – it means more strain on resources, and competition for jobs.

The last of the Alphas will be born in 2024. Australian National University head of demographics Peter McDonald says they may be our biggest generation yet. He says the number of births could be higher in the future because of large numbers of migrants having babies.

In 2050, when the eldest Alphas turn 40, the population is predicted to reach 35 million. Professor McDonald refers to the “echo effect” – if there is a larger population that will trigger another baby boom because there are more people to have babies. Mr McCrindle, however, predicts one in three Alpha females will not have children. Professor McDonald says the bigger generations generally face greater competition in the labour force, but with Australia’s skills shortage this is less of an issue.

“The aging population scare debunked” at PublicPopForum. Quoted below:

Pamela Kinnear’s 2001 study for the Australia Institute, “Population Aging: Crisis or Transition?” concludes:

Conclusion: Alarm over the ‘ageing crisis’ is not justified by the evidence. The transition to an older population can be facilitated by promoting the well-documented benefits that accrue in societies that have equitable access for all citizens to healthcare, education, employment and retirement income. Policies should also focus on overcoming discriminatory attitudes to older people, ensuring security of employment over the life-course, and making a commitment to gender equity in both public and private spheres. Population ageing is not a threat to Australia’s future but an opportunity to ensure decent living standards for all.

Judith Healy’s Study for the Australia Institute 2004, “The Benefits of an Aging Population”:

Far from being net receivers of help and support, older people are, in fact, net providers, at least up to the age of 75 years. They provide childcare, financial, practical and emotional assistance to family members including helping people outside the household with the tasks of daily living. Such unpaid caring and voluntary work adds up to a significant proportion of GDP, around seven per cent on some measures (Ranzijn et al. 2002; De Vaus et al. 2003). Grandparenting has become an important social role in an age when people tend to have more living parents than children. Not only does it benefit grandparents themselves who find that grandparenthood is an important aspect of their lives, but it also appears to benefit grandchildren substantially.

In addition, it is likely that older communities will be more law-abiding communities since older people are less inclined to commit crimes against property and people. The Australian Institute of Criminology (2002b) estimates that homicide rates will fall by around 16 per cent between now and 2050 and there is likely to be less crime altogether resulting in substantial savings in prison and policing costs in the future. Older people are involved in the community as active members of clubs with a large Melbourne survey reporting that one-third of men and one quarter of women aged 55-75 years belonged to a sporting club (Howe and Donath, 1997). They also attend musical concerts, theatres and art galleries more frequent ly than younger people, read more and visit libraries more often. Thus it is probable that the arts will benefit from an older Australia.

Letter from the H-S, 19/3:

I agree with Ian Thomas (50/50, March 17), the world should be practising zero (or even negative) population growth. Governments promote population expansion purely for monetary reasons, not the environment. The world cannot sustain such a large population.

– J. Meulblok, Buckley

IVF timebomb

“Infertility time bomb: IVF children have higher risk of infertility, obesity and diabetes”, Daily Mail, 23/2. There is some evidence that infertility problems can be passed on genetically for IVF-conceived children, as well as health problems caused by the procedure itself.

“There are genetic causes of infertility that you can pass on,” said Dr. Van Steirteghem. “It means that the next generation may be infertile as well and this is something all clinics should mention to the patients – that if there is a genetic origin that this genetic origin of infertility may be transmitted to the next generation.”

Fertility treatment is so common that one child in every primary school year group is thought to have been conceived in a fertility clinic. But the growth of IVF may have come at a cost to a small, but significant, minority of children. Studies have shown that test-tube babies are slightly more likely to suffer from birth defects. Because so many are twins and triplets, they are also at greater risk of low birth weight, obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure later in life. Doctors fear many IVF babies will also inherit the genetic mutations that caused their mother or father’s infertility.

So those are more problems that the public health system will pay for – which would have been unneccessary if IVF were never invented. That’s a major issue in the debate – this extra burden is preventable by banning IVF.

As usual the comments are heated (IVF brings out similar polarized opinions as abortion does). IVF in the UK and Australia is partly funded by the public health systems in both countries, which makes the issue more controversial. The point is usually raised that as various illnesses are paid for by public health care, why shouldn’t IVF be? The argument against this is that treating other illnesses don’t involve bringing another human into the world (who otherwise would not be there). IVF is unneccessary – it can’t be justified in an already-overpopulated world. At the very least, it certainly should not be taxpayer-funded.

A few comments (agreeing with my opinion):

There is a BIG difference betweem treating illness and having IVF. Yes, of course I have taken antibiotics, for ILLNESS. However, no-one has died from INFERTILITY!!! Your argument that just because people take treatment for illnesses means that IVF is necessary is ridiculous!

– linda Duncan-Adam, West Des Moines

This is what happens when humans tamper with nature – nature will always win. There are good reasons why a percentage of all mammals – including humans – are infertile. Having a child is a privilege, not a right as so any infertile couples seem to believe! Let’s hope sanity finally prevails on this issue. I resent my taxes going on NHS funded treatment for the infertile, it is an obscenity and an outrage when there are children starving in the world.

– Goldie, Sussex, 23/2/2010 4:23

Surely common sense (yet again) should prevail in this issue. Just why does nature let some couples conceive naturally and some not? Maybe because those who can conceive naturally and easily have the best genes to pass on. And maybe nature is telling those who can’t conceive naturally that there could be problems with any offspring if nature allowed them to do so. But of course, to some people, a baby is the ultimate “must have”, and so they will go to any lengths to have one.

– linda Duncan-Adam, West Des Moines

An entry on another blog annoyed me to the point of commenting – then I got castigated by some self-righteous females. Women like these seriously irritate me – they are of a leftist political view in which they think public health care should pay for everything. I am Leftist in many respects (and certainly support public health care), but my opinion diverges on this issue for previously-stated reasons. Such people are too focused on individual rights, and not on responsibilities to the society they live in.

I hate that term – “socially infertile”, as if someone who wants to become a parent so badly that they’re prepared to undergo the trauma of IVF has to justify why. It’s like the old debate on whether being gay is “genetic” or “chosen” – why on Earth does it matter? The point is that it’s not wrong, and that no-one should be discriminated against because of it. Same with those who, for whatever reason, cannot become parents without the aid of a particular medical treatment – they’re not going to apply for it unless they need it, are they? The reason is “I want to become a parent and can’t do so without this medical treatment”. It’s not a cosmetic procedure people are choosing to undergo because it sounds like fun, now, is it?

“Socially infertile” refers to lesbian couples and would-be single mothers who could otherwise concieve children naturally by mating with a man. There is no way IVF should be publically-funded for this – if they want children that badly, either adopt one – or mate in the normal fashion.

Pompous ass

If there is one blogger who seriously irritates me, it is author John C. Wright. He is a Catholic/conservative/libertarian (a former atheist who underwent a “conversion” after a heart attack), and, not surprisingly, he is anti-abortion, anti-contraception, and (the subject of this entry) does not believe Earth is overpopulated. On the contrary, the more humans the merrier! A recent Livejournal entry, “The Manifesto of the Cornucopians”, illustrates his viewpoint. He has a ponderously pompous style of writing that gives me a headache, so I can’t sum it up easily, but he denies that Earth is overpopulated, that there will ever be scarcity of resources, and that “human ingenuity” will find ways around any problems related to these.

He usually responds to any criticism with withering sarcasm, so there is little point in posting a counter-argument, but I did try anyway, in my usual incoherent fashion:

If ~7 billion people is not too many, how many is – 10 billion, 20 billion? Assuming humans never manage off-world space colonization, do we keep growing until the land is covered with continent-wide megacities, with no nature left? (Which was the nightmarish vision of Earth presented in Avatar, incidentally.)

It’s not only the sheer numbers of people that has a negative impact on the environment, it’s all the waste and pollution they produce – billions of tonnes of garbage in landfill, not to mention the oceans being used as a toxic waste dump. (See these photos of pollution in China for just one example.)

A Malthusian says that population growth (especially of Irish, Hindoos and Negroes) leads to disastrous scarcity of resources, resulting in mass famine, war, and apocalyptic megadeath.

That’s happening in parts of the world already. Not to mention the greatest mass extinction of species since the dinosaurs.

“Human genius” as touted here is dangerously close to hubris – technological “solutions” can have a nasty habit of backfiring.

I will copy any responses (which I confidently predict will all tell me how wrong and ignorant I am). If anyone else wishes to add to the discussion, feel free to –though there is little point in debating him, as he is utterly convinced he is right (as am I, admittedly).

As long as there are people with attitudes like his, there is little hope for Earth’s environment.

Too popular

“Melting pot set for population boom”, ABC News, 19/11; “South East Queensland: beautiful one day, now a building site”, The Age, 20/11. Queensland, long a popular destination for immigrants from other states, is full to bursting, and long-time residents are understandably fed-up with the influx, continuing construction projects and community tensions that ensue. But Queensland Premier Anna Bligh seems paralyzed with apathy towards the problem, saying all her government can do is try to accomodate the population surge. A government could halt such growth if it really wanted to (immigration border and quota controls, scrap the baby bonus, etc.) but none seem to.

Bligh acknowledged this week that south-east Queenslanders are beginning to think the lifestyle costs of population growth outweigh the economic benefits. “But population growth is a fact of life in Queensland. We cannot put up the barbed wire fence at the border, we can’t stop people having babies, so we have to find a way of coping,” she said.

More articles from The Age:

“Salad days under threat as sprawling city comes knocking”, 15/11. Housing development will cover much of the fertile farmlands (originally volcanic plains) surrounding Melbourne, threatening the city’s future ability to feed itself.

“How to feed the 7 million”, 17/11. Yet another opinion that regards the growth toward 7 million as inevitable, rather than something that should be prevented.

“World population growth slowing”, 18/11. Good news – but the momentum of growth means that it will continue climbing for decades yet. Also the VECCI chairman proves how addicted to continuing growth business is:

VECCI chief executive Wayne Kayler-Thomson said the average Victorian now retired at 60, and federal and state governments should aim to lift this to 65 by using sticks and carrots to make people put off their retirement, and get retired people to return to work part-time. But with Melbourne’s population expected to swell by 60 per cent in 40 years, he backed population growth, warning the alternative was to go backwards like Detroit and other cities in the US mid-west. “Can we afford to shut the gate strategically, economically or morally?” he proposed to the VECCI summit. “Sydney has also stumbled since the 2000 Olympics as it makes up its mind about the desirability of a larger population.”

If you want to keep Melbourne liveable, then we most certainly can afford to “shut the gate”!

“Perish the thought that we can handle a bigger population”, 19/11. Opinion piece by former NSW PM Bob Carr.

Tanner suggested people in high-density countries would consider strange our reservations about high immigration. The implication is that every last place on this battered planet should cheerfully sign on for the population explosion. I think other countries can understand that Australia has a narrow fertile coastal strip and the rest is arid and semi-arid. We resemble North Africa more than North America. Curious as we are, I think Australians don’t want to be packed tight, and remain attached to space, air, the natural world. And instead of more coastal suburbs they may even prefer the glimpse of waves breaking on golden sand through the branches of a eucalypt. Funny that.

The Age letters roundup: 14/11:

Waiting in vain for water projects

Lindsay Tanner (“Population fear is nonsense: Tanner”, The Age, 13/11) scoffs at fears of population increase but admits that one major barrier to sustaining a bigger population is the availability of water. But he is confident that “it could be overcome through desalination, water recycling and storm water harvesting projects”.

Victorians have been waiting in vain for water sourcing projects other than the desal plant. If it’s not a PPP (public private partnership) project with profits going to private operators, it seems the Government does not want to know about it.

In 2005, the City of Melbourne proposed a “sewer mining” project in Princes Park, which would have supplied recycled water for inner city parks, Melbourne University and the Zoo. It was to be funded jointly by the state and federal governments, with contributions from the City of Melbourne and City West Water.

Water Minister Thwaites refused to contribute Victoria’s share (from memory a miserly $13 million) and the project lapsed. The excellent proposals made by Monash University for stormwater harvesting at a 2008 parliamentary inquiry also do not appear to have been adopted.

– Julianne Bell, Protectors of Public Lands Victoria, Parkville

Counted like cattle

How can Australia be compared with Bangladesh? Lindsay Tanner is measuring the validity of a country in people per square kilometre, as if they were livestock!

Australia is deceptively large. However, it is the driest continent, with a limited “green” coastline. These areas contain fragile and unique ecosystems, and support a rich range of unique biodiversity. Australia’s spectacular coastlines, rivers, wildlife and vegetation is what we cherish.

Our carrying capacity should be assessed by independent ecologists, agriculturalists, climate change analysts, demographers and environmental scientists. Such an important issue cannot be left to ad hoc decision makers and business groups with conflicts of interests.

– Vivienne Ortega, Heidelberg Heights

Such vandalism

The famous demographer W. D. (Mick) Borrie remarked that when growth rates are high we tend to overestimate population growth, and when they are low we underestimate it. And so now, egged on by urban transport chaos and high immigration rates, forecasters are predicting that Australia will contain 35 million people, and Melbourne 7 million, within 40 years. The history of forecasting suggests this is an overestimate, massive climate-change-induced in-migration notwithstanding.

Yet some have seized on it to advocate policies regarded as a bad idea, such as the proposal to line tram and bus routes with five-storey buildings. It is doubtful whether settlers who live there will be convinced to forgo their cars, which they will then drive through our leafy suburbs, thereby ruining their amenity along with that of one of the world’s most liveable cities.

More sober and carefully managed responses to our urban amenity problems would seem wiser than misconceived, environmental vandalism on a scale that future generations might regret.

– Dr. Ray Wyatt, University of Melbourne

Captive to business

Minister Tanner shows the extent to which government is the captive of big business, property developers and construction unions. Aspiring to the population density of either Dublin or Bangladesh is nonsense. The issue is not one of population density, but human impact on the environment. Craven supplication to vested interests in business and unions is not what we expect from elected representatives. While we cannot control world population, we can at least exercise some control over our own population to minimise further environmental degradation.

– Greg Angelo, Balwyn North

Population

What point is Lindsay Tanner (The Age, 13/11) trying to make with his comparison of our population to that of Bangladesh? Is he also going to compare the standard of living, education and health care?

– Pauline Ashton, Maribyrnong

Lindsay Tanner argues that Australia is not overpopulated and points to Bangladesh as an example of how many more people could be squashed on to our island. There’s a compelling case.

– Graham Parton, Stanley

Why does Lindsay Tanner stop at Dublin when comparing potential population density? If more is better, we should be aiming for densities like Mexico City or Shanghai!

– Ross Tanner, Clifton Hill

It is hard to be optimistic about Australia’s future when the Liberals deny climate change and Labor cannot see the contradiction between increasing our population and reducing emissions.

– Don Garden, Kew

I can’t remember seeing any of Bangladesh’s cities mentioned in the most liveable list.

– Neville Garner, Blairgowrie

How convenient, shifting the blame on to immigrants for the unsustainable lifestyle of those of us already here.

– Akhdur Maruan, Brunswick

16/11:

What madness

As Labor’S Lindsay Tanner points out, Australia could indeed house more people than Bangladesh (The Age, 13/11). All you need to do is cut our rations of food, water and space.

Doubtless our precious GDP numbers will increase as fast as our unmeasured quality of life and environment deteriorates! But who will vote for this madness? Oh I forgot, all the parties support population growth so it doesn’t matter who you vote for.

– Alan Ide, Murrumbeena

While he’s at it perhaps the Prime Minister could say “sorry” to the nation’s wildlife for its shocking rate of extinction since European settlement. Nah, let’s forget the apology and do something about it.

– Jill Barclay, Murrumbeena

17/11:

Just nonsensical

Once again we see a senior Government member with his head in the sand over Australia’s population growth (“Population fear is nonsense: Tanner”, The Age, 13/11). Lindsay Tanner’s comments comparing Bangladesh with Tasmania show remarkable and worrying ignorance. Size says nothing about the population-carrying capacity of a land; Mr. Tanner is comparing one of the most arid countries on earth with one of the most fertile. This fertility has led Bangladesh, and many of its neighbours, to vast over-population that relegates many of its citizens to abject poverty.

With climate change, millions more are likely to starve to death as wells dry up and Himalayan glaciers retreat. Or, perhaps he knows this, but like most of our State and Federal Government representatives, he is also prepared to subject Australia to unsustainable population growth in the name of political self-interest.

What’s the bet that history will eventually show this stance, and the Labor and Liberal governments’ underwhelming response to climate change, to be the biggest leadership failure in Australia of all time?

– Andrew Verlei, Patterson Lakes

SMH, 14/11:

Plan now for a sensible limit to our population

I read that the Labor backbencher Kelvin Thompson has launched a 14-point plan to contain Australia’s runaway population (“Here’s looking at you kids: NSW leads a boom in babies”, November 12). At last someone in the Federal Government has recognised the stupidity of setting an ever-increasing population as an essential goal.

The economic benefits are far outweighed by factors such as the rapid depletion of water, food and building materials, and urban infrastructure such as transport that is already at breaking point.

The Federal Government’s population targets will make it impossible to reach any decent carbon reduction levels. Each immigrant from a non-industrialised country will, on arrival in Australia, become a carbon dioxide polluting unit at a tenfold increased level.

It will be hard for visionaries such as Thompson to convince Australians their wasteful lifestyle and hedonistic “quality of life” will need to be curtailed. But failure to do so will result in a rapid diminution of both.

– Mike Dibbs, Port Macquarie

Lindsay Tanner is a powerful voice in Government and to have him call for “substantial population growth” has to be taken seriously (“Tanner backs call for growth”, November 12).

He should travel to Wilcannia to see what our “inadequate” 21.5 million, with its demand for irrigated produce, has done to the once-navigable Darling River. There is a limit to population growth in Australia: water. Population planning should be based on our physical limits, not aspirational comparisons with Bangladesh.

– John Warren, Annandale

Lindsay Tanner shouldn’t send mixed messages about Australia’s population. Is he saying that Barry Jones, David Suzuki, Al Gore and Ken Henry are all laughable when they talk about the need to address population issues here? Does he really think we can continue to engineer our way out of overpopulation and climate-change problems such as water shortages?

I am happy for Tanner to reassure countries such as Bangladesh that we can take many more climate refugees. But we are going to have our own problems with poverty, pollution and starvation in the coming decades if we don’t urgently start planning for a slowing of our birthrate and a smaller intake of skilled migrants.

Europe’s slowing population and lead role to reduce emissions don’t appear to have had any dire economic impacts. We need smarter leaders to start planning now for an ethical slowdown in our population. It’s time to rewrite the economic textbooks and prepare for the likely millions who will be on our doorstep as climate-change refugees in the next 20 to 80 years.

– Ngaire McGaw, Seventeen Mile Rocks (Qld)

Peter Garrett deserves congratulations for rejecting the Traveston Dam (“Garrett decision to stop dam lauded as a triumph”, November 12). As a biologist, I appreciate having an Environment Minister willing to base decisions on the best available scientific information.

While headlines now shift to the controversy on locations of possible desalination plants, I suggest we first need to debate the human carrying capacity of the Australian continent.

As the science-literate Mr Garrett would be aware, the root cause of most, if not all, environmental degradation is the rapid growth in the population of our own species. We urgently need to determine how many people different parts of our country can sustainably support. Mr Garrett and his department should lead this debate.

– Tim Curran, Malanda (Qld)

20/11:

Growth catastrophe waiting to happen

Bob Carr draws attention to the lack of thought behind the call by Kevin Rudd and Lindsay Tanner for greater growth, more population and, consequently, more demands on our limited resources, such as water (“Perish the thought that we can handle a bigger population”, November 19). We have introduced a new category – “catastrophic” – to warn of impending bushfire danger. Do we need a similar scale to warn of the results of unplanned and self-stimulated growth? Societies have collapsed from outgrowing their resources. Let us plan an escape route now while we are still at the danger level.

– John Warren, Annandale

Fear the future

“City to top 7m people”, The Age, 23/10. More grim predictions of Australia’s population growth, with Melbourne reaching the nightmarish status of a megacity, and Australia climbing to 35 million. One politician expresses concern as to how the environment will cope with this (it is devastated already), but Prime Minister Kevin Rudd remains oblivious to such concerns.

Last night Prime Minister Kevin Rudd strongly disagreed with his Treasury chief on the merits of population growth, telling the 7.30 Report: “I actually believe in a big Australia. I make no apology for that.

“I actually think it’s good news that our population is growing,” Mr. Rudd said. “I think it is good for us, it’s good for our national security long term, it’s good in terms of what we can sustain as a nation.”

Words fail me.

“How many is too many?”, Herald-Sun, 30/9. Opinion piece by radio broadcaster Neil Mitchell, focusing on the taboo subject of restricting immigration.

It’s time to grow up. It’s time Australians were trusted to seriously debate what type of country they want and how many people they want in it.

It’s time to drop the political correctness that for years has meant anybody who questioned immigration levels was labelled racist, or a half-witted supporter of Pauline Hanson.

This is not about race. Australia does and should welcome people from anywhere provided they can add something to this one. This is about numbers, and the future.

[…]

It is predicted the population will be 35 million by 2050. Is that sensible? Will it be sustainable? Will an arid, underdeveloped country be able to cope? Or will it destroy living standards and create environmental disaster?

All this must be tackled. Long before climate change was a theory, let alone a political force, Australia was short of water. Where do find enough for 35 million people?

Roads are clogged, cities are sprawling and governments are struggling to keep up with the medical needs of the ageing population.

“House prices to rocket by 20pc, forecast leading experts”, Herald-Sun, 14/10. The media always portrays such rises in a positive tone, but this means that people who simply want a home to live in (not an investment) will find this task even harder. The property market in Australia is out of control, and it is time to stop favoring investors (and, of course, restricting population growth would also help remedy the situation). Not helping matters is that the Federal Government recently removed restrictions on overseas non-residents buying residential property here. A relevant letter, 22/10:

Negative gearing heats up market

Increasing interest rates to curb the housing market is akin to using Roundup to kill the crop and the weeds. Although rates have been at 40-year lows not all segments of the community have benefited. Many credit card holders are paying about 20 per cent interest despite official rates being less than 4 per cent, while overdraft and business loan rates remain high.

The market is overheated for three reasons: generous negative-gearing laws, across-the-board first home grants and the opening-up of residential property to overseas investors.

The solutions are to restrict negative gearing so investors only enjoy tax advantages if they build low-cost housing; closing the residential market to overseas investors; and only providing first home grants for that section of the community that earns a combined weekly income of less than $1500.

Such measures would prick the housing bubble without putting in jeopardy what is at best a paper recovery.

– Joseph Toscano, Fitzroy

The Age letters roundup.

Exasperated with the increasingly autocratic Labor Government, 6/10:

An amendment too far

The Brumby Government has finally become more arrogant than the Kennett government in its treatment of the Victorian people.

The Planning Minister has gone too far in his handling of changes in the positioning of the new ring road to appease his developer mates. The lack of open government is appalling, along with the lack of consultation with the people adversely affected by their decisions.

Living in an urban growth area, I have experienced first-hand the lack of consultation and misinformation from this Government. It took a long time before Justin Madden was prepared to meet members of Taxed Out, the lobby group opposed to the Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution (tax). I don’t think he had realised just how organised we are.

There needs to be an independent inquiry into the powers wielded by this Government. It is a law unto itself and does all it can to help big business, at the peril of anyone who gets in its way. The Brumby Government is more Liberal than Labor; it is completely out of touch with its grassroots members. John Brumby may well go down in history as the best Liberal premier that Labor ever had. Hopefully, also, the Premier who never got elected.

– Heather Holtham, Officer

Get off the grass

Only part of the land featuring in Evolve Development’s proposed precinct plan was included in a desktop flora study done by the Government’s consultant as it was not intended to be included in the new urban growth boundary. This area contained many precious grassland remnants before the recent clearings.

There are grassland reserves that are to be used as offsets for grasslands lost. Unfortunately these reserves will be set up after clearing is done, so there is no guarantee that they will work. By then the higher quality sites will have been cleared.

These grasslands support species that are critically endangered. These animals are suffering the same fate as orang-utans and pandas. However, it is happening on Melbourne’s doorstep and nobody seems to care.

– Giorgio De Nola, Caroline Springs

Population growth, 8/10 (the “elephant in the room” metaphor is increasingly overused, though):

Courage from Kelvin

To hear an MP bravely pointing out the elephant in the room is refreshing. I refer to MP Kelvin Thomson (“MP blasts planning ‘failure’ ”, The Age, 7/10) calling for a halt to the state’s population growth, as it underlies the pressures to expand Melbourne.

Debate about Melbourne’s future focuses on how to accommodate its projected population growth, by increasing housing density and/or building more suburbs. Both approaches degrade our quality of life.

Furthermore, these approaches are only temporary measures: they buy time until the new homes, roads, and other infrastructure are filled. They kept steering us away from the goal of a sustainable city. Thank goodness one MP has the courage to point this out.

A growing population is simply and clearly unsustainable. By ignoring this, this State Government is grossly negligent. Its policies of accommodating (even encouraging) population growth are akin to a doctor advising his patient, concerned that he is gaining weight, to buy larger clothes.

– Ian Penrose, North Warrandyte

9/10:

We’re all lemmings

Peter Garrett is considering the Queensland Government’s Traveston Crossing Dam proposal. Like the majority of our parliamentarians, he is a lawyer. We can only hope that, unlike most, he will listen to the scientists. The proposal, to drown thousands of hectares of our best agricultural land, is Queensland’s response to unabated urban sprawl.

NSW has become a governmental basket case; Victoria’s population growth has sprawled Melbourne over its most fertile land. Supplying water to these burgeoning populations is their governments’ worst nightmare. Queensland is following the lemmings over the cliff.

Why are we burying our best land under houses? Because no government, state or federal, has heeded the warnings of the CSIRO in its 2003 Population and Sustainability report. Instead, the lawyers who govern us are heeding the siren song of the economists who are luring the ship of state on to the rocks.

The proposed dam is symptomatic of the fact that we have reached the tipping point in population growth.

– Joy Ringrose, Castaways Beach, Qld

12/10:

Holding, we’ll cut back when you do

A study has revealed that an extra million people living in Melbourne will “end in chaos” (The Age, 10/10). It appears that Melbourne’s roads will not cope with the increase in population.

Then there was the article about water needs (“Spring rain a fillip for dam levels”) and Tim Holding’s intention to extract 10 billion litres from the Thomson River. He went on to implore that households cut back on water consumption.

I find this rather disingenuous, given that Mr Holding is a member of John Brumby’s pro-population growth Government. Water savings by Melburnians are being squandered by the State Government’s profligate approach to population growth. Any surplus saved water should be used to conserve Melbourne’s parks and gardens.

Instead, the amenity of our urban and suburban environment is diminished by the growth-at-any-cost attitude of the Brumby and Rudd governments.

Victorians do their best by saving water, reducing carbon dioxide emissions and recycling. These efforts will prove futile when measured against an increased total use of resources due to population increase.

Tim Holding’s exhortation that households cut back should be matched with an appropriate policy on population.

– Nicholas Howe, Malvern

19/10:

Only one Earth

Well, James Jenkins (Letters, 16/10), those 14 out of 25 people who wrote letters to the editor about the environment understand something you do not. Without a healthy environment, nothing else matters. If we are unable to live in an environmentally, economically and socially responsible manner, then human beings are heading for extinction.

Yes, perhaps poverty and torture are important, but worrying about them is useless if we don’t have clean water, breathable air or food. We only have one Earth – so our greatest concern should be looking after it.

– Sandra Weller, Ballarat

Garden-hater

“Deceptive green of suburban gardens”, The Age, 19/9. Opinion piece by a Robert Nelson, who thinks that suburban gardens are environmentally-unfriendly because they take up space and encourage urban sprawl. So his “solution” is, predictably, to do away with planning regulations and cram housing together as much as possible.

With fewer private gardens, less water would be used and the streets would have people in them, with shops and cafes at ground level rather than the great Australian emptiness of our suburbs, where – as Baudrillard said of Los Angeles – you feel like a delinquent if you aren’t in a car.

Australians speak fondly of preserving the established character of their neighbourhoods and jealously guard against the alien aesthetics of large edifices occupying the full block. Their defence of the leafy ambience is an understandable NIMBY reaction; but it’s also a parochial immaturity that we must grow out of.

Mate, you’ve got it wrong – gardens provide habitat for birds and animals, help cool the microclimates surrounding houses and streets, absorb CO₂ and make the urban landscape pleasanter. The solution to urban sprawl is containing population growth – then residents do not have to endure high-density living. There is nothing “immature” about opposing high-density developments.

Some letters from today’s The Age in response (also to the population growth prediction articles):

Balancing green with buildings

Robert Nelson’s piece (“Deceptive green of suburban gardens”, Comment & Debate, 18/9) is welcome. An alternative theme came to me: gardening in the leftover land between monstrous houses and their boundaries.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, the aspirational house was 12 to 14 squares (110 to 130 square metres) for the family of five. Now it is something like 22 to 40 squares for three to four people. Monash University, where Dr. Nelson teaches, once reinforced that “green dream” when the attraction of open space was a reason why people enrolled there. Now its Clayton campus struggles to “green” the leftover bits between its building ambitions. Unfortunately, the market has not embraced the inspirational approach of balancing green with buildings. How long does it take to change culture?

– Paul Thompson, landscape architect, Mooroolbark

Urban deserts only add to social stress

Robert Nelson’s proposal for saving the planet by abolishing suburban gardens is misguided. It takes no account of the environmental and social benefits of gardens, especially those with native plants. Even inner-city gardens provide habitats for native birds, lizards and insects.

They help provide cooler environments in summer, especially when houses are shaded by trees. They can be used to grow fruit and vegetables and keep poultry, thereby reducing reliance on the air-polluting transportation of food. And they encourage healthy outdoor activities that are less polluting than energy-powered indoor pastimes.

Turning our suburbs into urban deserts will only add to social stress, causing more of us to move to the countryside. Better technology, urban planning and a smaller human population are the solutions.

– Jason Foster, Mirboo North

Preserving our link to the land

Robert Nelson’s critique of the suburban garden lifestyle is shortsighted. He rightly draws our attention to the high cost of our low-density suburbs in the form of massive use of cars and the pollution they cause, but fails to consider their role in the future. In a no-growth society, the journey to work will be greatly reduced and much of it will be by public transport, foot or bike. Gardens will come into their own, not only as pleasant places to be but where we grow a substantial portion of our own food.

It is true that the creation of the suburbs had an aesthetic motive, but it involved a deep-seated reaction to high-density living based on thousands of years of living more closely with the land. Surely that relationship is worth conserving.

– Geoff Mosley, Hurstbridge

So many ways to reduce emissions

So, Robert Nelson wants to abolish the setbacks and sun-lit gardens of Melbourne, still one of the world’s most liveable cities, to make it more like London, New York and Seoul – far from the most liveable cities. Amazing. The reason he gives is that sprawl generates car travel, which produces greenhouse emissions. Yet such brutalising of Melbourne’s cherished green areas will take decades to strongly affect the world’s climate.

Dr. Nelson seems blissfully unaware of the plethora of suggestions to reduce emissions more quickly and with less damage to our city’s wonderful, hard-won features. These include appropriate public transport, transit lanes, reducing the number of children driven to school, green cars, incentives for employers who hire workers living nearby, harnessing the solar, wind and water recycling potential that exists within suburban backyards, local food, staggered working hours, telecommuting, high-standard bike paths and urban forestry.

A little more open-minded, lateral thinking and less vandalism, please.

– Ray Wyatt, Balwyn North

Curbing the sprawl

The editorial, “35 million Australians? Start preparing now” (19/9), provided an insightful overview of a looming catastrophe. Melbourne 2030 provided a sustainable alternative to the relentless urban sprawl. It had the potential to address congestion problems, facilitate public transport and encourage people to be less car-dependent, as well as enable the development of vibrant and dense communities. But it involved significant change.

Unfortunately, rather than engaging with the community, providing leadership and comprehensive back-up, it was delivered as a fait accompli. As a result, it was easy for powerful, single-interest groups and local government to scuttle the changes. In this instance, all parties must work together to find solutions. The problem is that there are no robust public forums where urban change can be debated and resolved. The Age’s intention to lead the debate is welcome.

– David Rayson, Albert Park

High-risk approach

Your editorial perpetuates the myth that an ever-increasing population is required so there will be enough workers to support retired people. However, its premise is false.

We have educated, skilled workers aged over 45 who are deemed “too old” by prejudiced employers. Proportionally, there are more older people than in previous generations, because they are living longer. Many are willing and able to work after a retirement age suitable for life expectancies a century ago.

Real wealth per head has doubled in the past 40 years and will probably continue on this trajectory. We will be able to afford a larger non-working population and still indulge in the waste of mass consumerism. Industries such as construction advocate increasing our population because it profits from building more sprawling suburbs and related infrastructure. The money would be better spent providing first-class housing, schools, hospitals and transport for the current population and investing in high-tech export industries. Taking 30 million immigrants from Asia, Africa or Europe will have no significant effect on those massively populated continents but would devastate Australia’s fragile ecology.

– Philip Shehan, Brunswick

Despairing at stupidity

I haven’t been posting due to depression and despair at the seeming pointlessness of trying to do anything to combat overpopulation – growth-addicted governments just don’t want to know, and the majority of humans think it doesn’t apply to them. I keep repeating the same opinions, but does it do any good?

“Footscray’s future as ‘St Kilda of the west’ ”, Herald-Sun, 24/8. The usual clueless enthusiasm about the growth of suburbs and how this supposedly makes them “happening places”. There is also this nightmarish prediction:

Ms. Sanderson, who heads VicUrban, the State Government’s sustainable urban development agency, told the Herald-Sun that in a few decades Melbourne could house seven million people, which would effectively make Werribee the “heart of the west”.

[…]

Cr. Clarke said that the western suburbs would feature prominently as planners looked as far ahead as the time when Melbourne might be home to 10 million people.

10 million people?! She can’t be serious? What the fuck (sorry, I have to swear, I am so incensed) is wrong with these idiots? Melbourne will be a living hell. Where will the water come from to supply such huge numbers? I despair for the future of the city I have lived in all my life. Things are bad enough now with overdevelopment and overcrowding. Melbourne is already ruined, and, when in the future I look back in anger, I will know exactly who to blame.

She also repeats the usual meaningless bullshit about “cultural diversity” and ends with:

“House prices have gone up 22 per cent in one quarter. We are so under-priced here,” Cr. Clarke said.

Nice for greedy investors, but not for those who just want a house to live in – or who pay council rates based on house values.

Equally incensing articles from The Age: “Western fringe gears up for housing boom”, 25/8; “Housing estate pushes urban sprawl limit”, 29/8. It’s a great time for greedy developers but not for the enviroment.

“We’ve got native grasses on the volcanic planes and they’ve been seriously affected by the rapid expansion to the west,” Dr. McPhail said. “We’ve also got to be very careful that we don’t take too much of those farmlands to the west of the city, simply because, as the world population goes towards 9 billion, food production is going to become increasingly important.”

“Young Britons give birth to huge population boom”, The Age, 29/8. No good news for the U.K. either with its already-huge population growing inexorably.

Roma Chappell, an ONS statistician, said: “For the first time in a decade, natural change exceeded net migration as the main driver of population change. “That’s actually quite exciting because it’s the highest fertility rate we have seen in the UK for some time. You have to go all the way back to 1973 to find a time when the fertility rate went higher.’’

“Exciting”? Lady, you should be concerned, not happy!

“Is population growth a Ponzi scheme?”, CSMonitor.com, 17/8. A thankfully more sensible article saying that an ageing but stable population is not necessarily a bad thing – it is ultimately more manageable than a growing population.

Changing the subject a little: one snarky phrase I sometimes see expressed in debates about population growth is along the lines of, “If you want to reduce the population, why don’t you start by killing yourself, then?” My response: “Only if you go first! Also, I am not reproducing and so adding to growth.”

A roundup of some collected letters since I last wrote:

11/8:

Forget terrorism. What about water?

Labor MP Kelvin Thomson has suggested that we should reduce immigration because each new migrant might be a terrorist. That’s probably a bit of a long shot, but there are some other dead certainties that are much better reasons for reducing migration.

How about that we haven’t got enough water, or that our cities are sprawling unsustainably into farmland that used to grow food, or that our native wildlife is declining because of the increasing human impact, or that our roads are already overcrowded, or that we don’t like high density suburbia, or that our greenhouse footprint continues to grow as our population increases?

The probability of a new migrant being a terrorist is remote, but the probability that they will add to all these existing problems is a sure bet.

– Graham Parton, Stanley

On idiot councils unnecessarily felling trees in the regions affected by bushfires on “Black Saturday” in February this year (there are quite a lot of tree-haters), 15/8:

Extinguishing hope

Many Kinglake and Flowerdale residents are distraught by the unnecessary removal of trees. Under the pretext of safety, trees along many roads are being cut down, including live, large, hollow-bearing trees that are essential for many native species. It will take at least 100 years to replace them.

Recently everything was felled along the Number One Creek, even the tree ferns!

Some residents are being deceived into believing that clearing blocks of all trees will reduce maximum fire risk and that they will not need to build houses to the highest safety standard. Removing trees means less water, higher temperatures, no habitat for animals, no shade, more pollution and erosion, and has devastating psychological effects.

Trees with shoots along Bald Spur Road, where many people died, offered some hope for the future. But they were all cut down. Our trauma is being compounded to satisfy someone’s intent to take revenge on trees. It seems tree-haters have more rights than people who care about nature and the future.

– Hania Lada, Kinglake

21/8:

Time for a debate on population growth

Efforts to curtail greenhouse gases will prove futile if the increasing world population is not tackled. Australia’s annual population growth rate of 2 per cent means the population will double in 35 years. Regardless of assurances by politicians and big business, we have insufficient resources to support our quality of life and twice the number of people.

Why aren’t we having a debate about population? Governments will not take a lead because they and big business understand that the easiest way to stimulate economies is to stimulate demand via population growth – cynical short-term strategies.

Governments and business appear to be prepared to allow “natural limits” to halt population growth. But this term is really a euphemism for myriad negative influences on growth – food and water shortages, disease, war, economic hardship, environmental degradation and so on.

The sooner the world takes responsible action on population growth, the lesser will be the impacts of “natural limits”.

– Nicholas Howe, Malvern

When is enough?

My son accidentally Googled Windows “20000” in his search for a software patch. Just for fun we then tried to work out what our house might be worth in 18,000 years, allowing for annual growth of a modest 1 per cent. At this rate, doubling occurs every 70 years. Initially, this seemed uninteresting, but to get to my son’s search date required a whopping 257 doublings. The calculator had packed it in by now so we settled on five doublings (350 years from now): our house in the suburbs would exceed $16 million, a loaf of bread would push $100 and there would be more than 200 billion people on the planet.

One has to wonder at what point “sustained” growth must slow or stop. So here’s a few questions. What will “economic recovery” mean, long-term? How many years can we demand more and more? Do we have even a single doubling left up our collective sleeve? What does “double-digit growth” in China imply? Is there enough to go around? How much is enough?

We’re told that “growth is good”. But it seems to my son and I, two average Joes, that infinite growth is impossible. Could we be seeing signs of “the great mathematical slowdown” today?

– Matthew Blain, Heathmont

23/8:

Less would be more

Thornton McCamish has given us a truly insightful analysis of the state of social equity in Australia (“On the slide. Whatever happened to the classless society?”, 16/8). His remedy of “building a society we all want to live in” is equally admirable, but achieving equality needs to be seen as a part of the solution to an even bigger problem – the relentless war humanity is waging on the finite global environment.

The answer lies in replacing our dysfunctional, endless growth-based economy with a steady-state economy, one in which creativity and respect for all replaces the quest for material affluence and dominance.

– Geoff Mosley, Hurstbridge

24/8:

A visionary

The late Reverend Martin Luther King jnr. said, “Unlike the plagues of the Dark Ages…the modern plague of overpopulation is solvable with means we have discovered and with resources we possess.”

We’ve heard endless talk about sustainability. Population growth and growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained. It’s dishonest to talk about saving the environment, conservation or climate change without stressing the fact that stopping population growth is a necessary condition for sustainability.

Our capitalist society worships growth. But growth at the cost of ecosystems and native species shows we humans are narcissistic and self-indulgent.

King said that alien visitors to our planet would observe that we spend “paltry sums for population planning, even though its spontaneous growth is an urgent threat to life on our planet”. He was a visionary before his time.

– Vivienne Ortega, Heidelberg Heights

29/8:

Total disconnect

On Jon Faine’s ABC talkback (27/8) Premier Brumby stated: “I have always supported population growth.” This statement highlights the total disconnect between the Brumby Government and reality.

The evidence for the impact of population growth worldwide on depletion of natural resources and climate change is overwhelming. And yet, here we have a government, that for some reason best known to themselves, believes that Victoria stands alone on this planet as being immune from the consequences of overpopulation.

Where is the leadership that will stand up to this insanity?

– Tony Jones, Healesville

Hidden resentment

In recent weeks there has been several attacks on international students from India. The letters below suggest additional reasons other than racism (which is undeniably a factor):

Hidden resentment

With regard to assaults on overseas students, dare one raise possible underlying reasons without being assailed with the usual ideology-based BRIX (bigot, racist, ignorant, xenophobe) discussion-stopper?

Is there a hidden concern that immigration is out of control? That, with an unknown population-carrying capacity, our nation is placing at risk its environmental capital, clearly limited by factors including fresh water availability, declining soil fertility and increasing salinisation?

Is there also a loss of social capital, with resentment at an influx of students seeking to use local qualifications to gain permanent residency for themselves and relatives, supporting with their fees a tertiary education system seemingly unwilling to accommodate all non-full-fee local applicants?

To what extent are such concerns, if widespread among their parents, being manifested among youth gangs by attacks on students from overseas? If so, remediation will require open discussion, not its suppression by hurling BRIX-type abuse at anyone concerned at current levels of immigration. In the longer term, debate can be less dangerous than its denial by ideology-based imputations of racism.

– John O’Connor, Cottles Bridge, 30/5

One agreed with him (below); two other letters didn’t:

Numbers just keep adding up and up

John O’Connor (Letters, 30/5) is to be congratulated for his prescience and willingness to look beyond the obvious racial bigotry and pinpoint the true causes of the assaults on overseas students and concomitant social problems. Tim Colebatch reported (The Age, 9/5) that immigration is soaring under the Rudd Government to record levels of about 300,000 a year. Perhaps 90 per cent of these new arrivals are moving into Sydney (no room) and Melbourne (no water).

Many people are concerned at these numbers and want, at least for a time, the system to slow down. Governments, state and federal, show no concern for community feeling and a pressure-cooker atmosphere now exists in the community, with racial attacks and rampant everyday violence.

This frustration will almost certainly reach its apogee here in Victoria next year when the Brumby Government seeks re-election. Should the rains fail this spring, then the high-population Brumby Government will face an electorate as mad as hell about why it has dried-out gardens and must wash in and drink muddy water.

– Tony Davidson, Glen Waverley, 1/6

And another in support:

Populate and perish – we must ask why

In response to the misrepresentations of Alex Njoo and William Maley (Letters, 1/6), two blindingly obvious points seem appropriate. Australia has been a nation of immigrants for some 60,000 years. Today, all Australian citizens must treat one another inclusively, and with due regard for our country’s sustainable future, while being wary of tendencies to divide into ethnic-based pseudo-tribes.

It emphatically does not follow that immigration at its present levels should be immune from questioning. We all need to know: what is Australia’s longer-term sustainable-population carrying capacity? What limiting factors may have already been exceeded? Should our tertiary education sector continue to act as a de facto immigration agency, additional to a large official intake?

We need a rational debate on this, the most important single issue facing us all. Refutation of population concerns is not even on Australia’s political radar. It should be.

– John O’Connor, Cottles Bridge, 2/6

International students (from India and elsewhere) are a lucrative income source for many universities, which have to substitute for decreased government funding. Personally I have little liking for universities and believe the IS program should be drastically curtailed; it is, as pointed out in the letters, another form of immigration. With resources such as water under strain (reservoirs are at their lowest-ever level and there is no prospect of good winter rains this year), why are we encouraging more and more visitors to come?

“Babies we must afford”, Herald-Sun, 1/6. Dumb opinion piece saying IVF should be supported because it creates more future taxpayers. Considering the expenses and medical complications IVF-created children can incur, it is a poor bargain!

Totally clueless

Words fail me. From today’s Herald-Sun:

Population boost

The State Government has ruled out cutting population growth as a way of dealing with the acute water shortage.

Water Minister Tim Holding said rapid population growth should continue, despite record low dam levels.

“We’ve seen strong population growth in Victoria as something that’s contributing to the strong economy that we have, the strong jobs growth that we’ve seen, the growth in the building and construction sector,” he said.

The Water Minister’s refusal to consider restricting population growth to protect dwindling water supplies is symptomatic of a government addicted to growth – no matter what the social and environmental costs. The Brumby Government appears obsessed with protecting its mates in the building industry.

Trees = rain

From New Scientist, 16/5:

Land clearances turned up the heat on Australian climate

Deforestation by European settlers may be to blame for making Australia’s drought longer, hotter and dryer than it would be otherwise.

The “big dry”, Australia’s 11-year drought, has been blamed on greenhouse gases and natural variability. To see if deforestation played a part, Clive McAlpine of the University of Queensland in Brisbane and colleagues used a climate model to simulate Australian conditions from the 1950s to 2003. They then compared the impact of today’s fragmented vegetation, obtained from satellite images, with that of 1788, prior to European settlement.

Over much of south-east Australia, where the drought has hit hardest, less that 10 per cent of the original vegetation remains. The team’s model showed that this land clearance has increased the length of droughts in the area by one to two weeks per year. In years of extreme drought, the loss of vegetation caused the number of days above 35°C to increase by six to 18 days, and the number of dry days to increase by five to 15 days (Geophysical Research Letters, in press).

“Land clearing may be having a similar impact on the drought as greenhouse gases,” says McAlpine. Reforestation could minimise future droughts, he adds.

“It’s a nice piece of work,” says Andy Pitman of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, but he adds that the modelling needs to be confirmed.

Trees and vegetation attract and retain moisture, so it is not surprising to attribute one cause of the ongoing drought in south-eastern Australia to continued land clearance. Population expansion is accelerating this, with former open grasslands being smothered under the continued assault of housing developments (“More loss than gain in encroaching urban sprawl on threatened open plains”, The Age, 31/5/2008).

“David Attenborough: Our planet is overcrowded”, New Scientist, 15/5. An interview, where David Attenborough gives his views on the problem. He is somewhat restrained in his opinions, perhaps because he does not want to alienate.

The latest venture for this veteran of wildlife documentaries is as controversial as anything he has done in his long career. He has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a think tank on population growth and environment with a scary website showing the global population as it grows. “For the past 20 years I’ve never had any doubt that the source of the Earth’s ills is overpopulation. I can’t go on saying this sort of thing and then fail to put my head above the parapet.”

There are nearly three times as many people on the planet as when Attenborough started making television programmes in the 1950s – a fact that has convinced him that if we don’t find a solution to our population problems, nature will. “Other horrible factors will come along and fix it, like mass starvation.”

Trying to pin him down about the specifics of what to do, however, proves tricky. He says it involves persuading people that their lives and the lives of their children would be better if they didn’t exceed a certain number of births per family. And that dramatic drop in birth rate rests on providing universal suffrage, education – particularly for women – and decent standards of living for all. It’s a daunting task, but the first step, he argues, is to acknowledge that population is a problem.

But isn’t the problem solving itself, as people have fewer children and population growth rates slow? Yes, he says, if you discount immigration, the UK’s population is more or less static, but it is not so elsewhere. This troubles Attenborough: sounding off about high population and fertility rates in other countries can sound patronising – or worse.

The world at the start of Attenborough’s career half a century ago was clearly a very different place. His passion about population seems to connect to a feeling that part of the joy of living rests in the natural world – a world without too many people, where seeking out wildlife means hard days canoeing rather than watching tourist boats arrive twice daily.

Two dumb letters (for obvious reasons) from the Herald-Sun this week:

Future needs population plan

The Budget speech and responses to it seem to have missed the most important issue. Australia is not producing enough children. If a society has a shrinking population, it will automatically have a shrinking economy. The most important issue for the Australian Government to grapple with is not the economy, but the shrinking population.

Where are the measures to ensure men at family-forming age (16-30) are able to earn an income that will support women at their prime age of fertility (16-30)? Women will not have babies if they cannot see reliable support into the future.

– Jeremy Hearn, Carnegie, 14/5

Jeremy Hearn (“Future needs population plan”, May 14): Babies are the solution to our problems. More babies, more workers, growing nation and more money.

– Brian Harris, Glenroy, 18/5.

Incidentally, Brian Harris has been writing anti-abortion letters to the H-S for years; he seems obsessed with the issue.

I sent in a letter, but it might be too late to get it published:

Jeremy Hearn (“Future needs population plan”, May 14) evidently hasn’t noticed that Australia’s population is already at an unsustainable level – with water supplies dwindling and infrastructure unable to cope with the increasing numbers – so the last thing we need are more babies.

Space cadet growthists

Spaceflight is one of my interests, but I get very irritated by the growthists who seem endemic in the space community (many are of a Libertarian or Conservative political outlook, which tends to encourage such a mentality). They believe the human population can (and should!) keep growing indefinitely if humanity can access resources in the Solar System (via asteroid mining, etc.). Of course, the technology to enable this is nowhere near developed (perhaps not before the end of this century, if ever), but they continue espousing their deluded fantasies. This article, “The Philosophy of Space” by Dennis Wingo is an example of such thinking.

The reason for human spaceflight beyond the pure adventure is as old as mankind, moving outward to build a better life and make money. Obtaining riches for God and country as well.

The mentality that has got humans into trouble before (the current economic crisis being one): greed and hubris.

I use the New Scientist issue as a foil as it pretty much represents the arguments today that descend from the Club of Rome study and those that advocate the contraction of our industrial civilization and perpetual life on our one small planet as the only possible future that we have. Space advocacy at its finest rejects the notions embodied in this mindset and lays down the gauntlet to posit that not only is the future bright, it is unlimited through the economic development of space, our solar system, and the incorporation of its resources into our economic system here on the Earth. Rather than belabor this through highly technical explanations, a vision of the Earth in the year 2100 is laid out for inspection to see if it is more desirable than the bullet points above for the year 2099.

The mindset he derides espouses the philosophy of not living beyond one’s means, and caring for the environment. It is a prudent and sustainable way to live. His philosophy is about greed and exploitation, whether of Earth or of the space beyond it. For the forseeable future we are confined to Earth, and it is beholden upon humanity to live responsibly.

I found this via “Dennis Wingo - Why Space? Why Now?” at NASA Watch. Most commenters agree with him; one posting as “Reality” offers an opposing view. Of course Dennis Wingo virulently attacks him two posts down (perhaps he does not want to see the truth). There are also comments at the Public Population Forum.

Good luck with that. Technology has produced more freedom, longer lifespans, and greater opportunity for humans than any other cultural construct in the history of the planet. As for Gaia, maybe she likes plastic and created humans just to make some for her. What you are attempting here is to use a “good panic” to achieve some quasi-socialist-neoluddite world that is optimum as you see it. We are approaching these problems as human beings to create the conditions for the continuation of freedom and the expansion of humanity into the cosmos.

Technology has also caused a lot of problems (I am not anti-technology, but anti-misuse of it). As for the frivolous comment about plastic, read this online chapter, “Polymers are Forever”, from The World Without Us. He then inevitably mentions the “freedom” word (it had to come out sometime). It’s the typical Libertarian mentality: do away with governments and regulations so you can do whatever the hell you want – they see space as the “next frontier” which will enable them to do that.

An extract from an entry at the Steady State Blog on the Space Cadet mentality that technology can solve anything. They don’t address the possibility of going into space to find more resources – but as I noted, the technology to enable that could be decades away.

Substitution

Objection: “As we use up resources, we will find substitutes or alternatives.”

Reality: This argument is akin to the technology argument – it rests on the notion of humans using their cleverness to solve the problems of over-consumption of resources. Although people have demonstrated some successes in finding alternatives to meet needs when resources become scarce (e.g., fiber optic instead of copper wire or particle board instead of timber), some materials and services are not so readily substitutable. What are the substitutes for clean supplies of fresh water, pollination, intact species habitat, or climate stability? Several characteristics of resource scarcity events are negative for long-term sustainability. Oftentimes substitutes are simply extracted from other areas of the planet to avoid local scarcity (e.g., oil from the Mideast nations to feed U.S. demand). Scarcity and price increases often provide an increasing incentive to liquidate natural capital (e.g., oil corporation profits when demand outstrips supply) even as alternatives are being developed. Substitutes are often not developed or manufactured sustainably. For example, in the search for a substitute for fossil fuels, renewable energy from biomass is spurring transformation of tropical forests into palm oil or sugarcane fields.

Case Study: What resources will be used as substitutes for Haiti’s forests and the ecological services they once provided? Economic growth on Haiti generated widespread deforestation, first through sugarcane planting, then through timber sales, and finally through subsistence farming and provision of fuel wood. Already impoverished, with only 1.4% of their land in forest, the citizens of Haiti face ongoing soil erosion, serious floods, and loss of biodiversity.

Technology

Objection: “Humans are clever. Our technology will allow us to manage any problems with resource use, energy, and ecological health.”

Reality: Some economists think that, because a particular production process can become more efficient (more output per unit of natural capital), there is no limit to economic growth. These economists and “technological optimists” are disregarding the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy law, which tells us that we cannot achieve 100% efficiency in the economic production process. When the entropy law is applied across all economic sectors, or in other words when the limits to efficiency have been reached, the only remaining way to grow the economy is by using more natural capital (including energy).

Case Study: Besides the limits to efficiency, there is another issue with technology. Societies have wielded it in many ways, some useful for long-term sustainability, and some harmful. When gasoline prices rose in the 1970s, automobile companies developed new technology to increase the efficiency of engines. Marked improvements in vehicle mileage occurred with a resultant drop in pollution from transportation. When gas prices dropped in the 1980s and 1990s, fuel efficiency in the United States stagnated. The technological improvements were used to provide increased horsepower to smaller cars and sufficient horsepower to big cars, trucks, and SUVs. Technology that could have continued to improve the fuel efficiency of the U.S. auto fleet was used instead to power bigger and faster vehicles, resulting in a less sustainable transportation systems and more pollution (e.g., smog and greenhouse gases). In addition, technology has widely been used to increase the liquidation of natural capital. Readily recognizable examples include technologies for logging and fishing.

He cannot be serious!

“Planning expert says Melbourne must destroy leafy eastern suburbs”, Herald-Sun, 29/4. Seems to be a week for dumb articles, as this outrageous proposal was published today: Jason Black, the president of the Planning Institute of Australia’s Victorian division, put forward a proposal that Melbourne’s eastern suburbs (which have a lot of established trees and vegetation) be forcibly acquired, demolished and replaced with high-density housing.

Mr. Black says spacious suburban blocks should be leveled and the homes replaced with three to six-storey apartment buildings. Mr. Black said at a Melbourne planning summit yesterday: “We need to realise that some of the fundamentals driving the Government’s 2030 development plan have changed and we need to rethink how we’re going to go about delivering some of the objectives and the vision.” The conference heard that metropolitan Melbourne would need an extra 850,000 new homes by 2036 if fertility and immigration levels remained the same.

[…]

But Dr. Bob Birrell, a Monash University population and urban research expert, said compulsory acquisition of middle suburban properties would not be acceptable. “I think this (redevelopment) would be a nightmare for people that live there and they would see it as expropriating them in order facilitate someone else’s growth objective and I could see why they would be so testy,” he said.

A letter I sent to the H-S (don’t know if it will be published):

Jason Black can surely not be serious in proposing to destroy the pleasant leafy suburbs that help make Melbourne liveable, and replace them with hideous cramped high-rise apartments (“Planning expert says Melbourne must destroy leafy eastern suburbs”, 29/4) – any government that tried that strategy would face a citizens’ revolution! Far better to restrict population growth so that housing demand is lessened and amenity can be preserved, though that would not please the greedy developers and construction industry.

It’s bad enough that this increasingly dictatorial government is intending to override councils’ decisions in order to fast-track planning and construction (“Brumby sidelines councils”, The Age, 16/4) – I wish enough people would get motivated to instigate a revolt and overthrow this government!

Denying reality

“Depopulate and die of boredom”, The Age, 26/4. Oooh, the sheer cluelessness of this opinion piece is unbelievable!

Why cut Australia’s population to 7 million when it already suffers from too few people. It must take a rather active imagination to look at a map of Australia and think that it is too full.

If you look at a climatic map of Australia, you can see that much of the land is desert – not exactly habitable! The areas where many people live are facing a crises as the water supplies dwindle due to climate change. (Wikipedia: Climate of Australia, for more information)

Last week Sandra Kanck, the national president of the environmental group Sustainable Population Australia, urged the country to cut down its population from 21 million souls to just 7 million. To do so, she recommended we adopt a one-child policy, completely eliminating middle-child syndrome and saving the planet in the process. China’s one-child policy appears to have gone from a massive human rights violation that is universally condemned to “Hey, now that’s an idea”.

As I have noted in previous entries, China’s population is so huge that it must take drastic measures to restrain further growth if it wants to sustain social stability. “Human rights” is not a priority (and some might argue, a luxury).

Certainly, Sustainable Population Australia is just a fringe environment group, and criticising them for their warped moral compass is like criticising the Citizens Electoral Council for their bad economics. But the idea that we desperately need to shut down breeding for a while in order to save the planet is surprisingly widespread.

Quite a lot of people support SPA, which shows the concern people feel for the environmental degradation and overcrowding caused by overpopulation.

But if you believe that population growth will eventually lead to the collapse of our civilisation and planet, then the last millennium of human history must be very confusing. Over and over, we have demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to innovate our way out of any theoretical “limit to growth”. So it takes a strange sort of intellectual hubris to imagine that the exact moment you are alive just happens to be the exact moment in human history that we cross the “too many people” line. In the 1970s, zero population growth advocates were pretty sure the end was nigh, but humanity has managed to barrel on for a few more decades. Anyway, few species have found flirting with extinction a particularly effective survival strategy.

The anthropocentric belief that “human ingenuity” and technology can solve all man-made problems is sheer hubris – and can lead to disaster. The Earth has never before had to cope with such a huge human population – and the waste products emitted by such numbers. We are already seeing the consequences now – water, food and energy (e.g. oil) shortages – and it could be said we are “flirting with extinction” now because of the doctrine of endless growth the world’s economies are in thrall to.

But we could spend all day debating the impact of population on the environment. I’m more concerned about another thing: can you imagine how excruciatingly boring Australia would be with only 7 million people?

[…]

Pretty much everything interesting and exciting about the world is the direct result of human action. Fewer people would mean fewer people doing cool stuff. How would life be without basil pesto, the British version of The Office, single malt whisky, SuperTed or Facebook? Nasty and brutish, sure, but agonisingly long.

I would not miss these at all – and Nature provides some exciting events in any case! Most so-called culture is unmitigated crap. I, for one, would be quite happy to live amongst a smaller population – less competiton for resources, more living space around oneself.

And let’s face it – whatever meaning has been imposed on the environment has been imposed by people. So when deep greens exalt nature as morally superior to humanity, it comes across as just a little bit stupid. When the chips are down, surely our loyalty lies with the human race.

Chris Berg is another “humans are wonderful” advocate. Yes, humans are clever and innovative, but these traits can be self-destructive. I don’t want to see humanity become extinct (I doubt few concerned about overpopulation do – else why would we be so concerned?); I would like to see humanity become wiser, more modest and frugal. We are a part of Nature, not separate from it! To be concerned about the environment is to take an interest in our own long-term survival.

I sent off a letter to The Age (don’t know if it will get published):

Chris Berg (“Depopulate and die of boredom”, The Age, 26/4) evidently hasn’t noticed that an Australian map shows most of the continent is dry, uninhabitable desert, with dwindling water supplies in many regions. I would happily live in an Australia (and world) with a smaller population as it means humanity and the environment would have a sustainable future – and would simply be pleasanter. The “go forth and multiply” mindset is well and truly outdated.