A broken society

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

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

– David Thomson, St Kilda, 16/8

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

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

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

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

Terra Nova

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

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

Food security

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

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

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

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

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

Famine crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Needless destruction

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

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

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

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

Letters in response, 3/6:

Stop at two!

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

Is three the new two?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Letter sent in (not yet published):

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

Collected letters

Breed for your country

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

Herald-Sun, 25/5:

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

– Jacques Reed, Langwarrin

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

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

– Mark O’Connor, Lyneham, ACT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baby bribery

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

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

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

Oh no they don’t, mate!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Collected letters:

Victoria: open borders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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