Collected letters

Loopholes

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

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

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

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

African apocalypse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1/7:

Birth control key

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

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

It is time for us to reassess our options.

– Bill Mathew, Parkville

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

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

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

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

Collected letters

Herald-Sun, 25/6:

Population alert

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

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

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

– Tim Stafford, Mt Eliza

27/6:

Tax welcomed

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

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

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

Maybe it is time we all became more scientifically literate.

– Jim Royston, Heidelberg

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

The Age, 14/6:

Boundary is a rubbery concept

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

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

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

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

– Vivienne Ortega, Heidelberg Heights

Try before you buy

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

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

– Clancy Briggs, Berwick

Toxic consequences

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

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

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

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

– John Ashton, Fitzroy North

A new model sorely needed

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

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

– Jenny Warfe, Dromana

The coming collapse?

A report (home page) was released last week by the United Nations Environment Programme on the current state of the environment and what, if anything, countries are doing to avert damage. It is not a hopeful picture. This Herald-Sun article from 8/6 provides a summary (you would think that such an important topic would make headlines, but it was hidden away back on page 43):

Earth in danger zone

Critical thresholds being exceeded

THE Earth’s environmental systems “are being pushed towards their biophysical limits”, the United Nations Environment Program says.

The agency’s 525-page report on the health of the planet paints a grim picture.

It says: “Several critical global, regional and local thresholds are close or have been exceeded. Abrupt and possibly irreversible changes to the lifesupport functions of the planet are likely to occur.”

The report, released yesterday, says changes include rising sea levels, increased frequency and severity of floods and droughts, and the collapse of fisheries.

The report, which compiles three years of work by 300 scientists, says about 20 per cent of vertebrate species are under threat of extinction, coral reefs have declined by 38 per cent since 1980, green house gas emissions could double over the next 50 years, and 90 percent of water and fish samples are contaminated by pesticides.

It says little or no progress has been made over the past five years on almost a third of the main environmental goals, including global warming. Significant progress has been made on just four of the 90 most important goals, the report says.

“This is an indictment,” UNEP executive director Achim Steiner told a news conference in Rio De Janeiro. “We live in an age of irresponsibility that is also testified and documented in this report. In 1992 (when the first of the agency’s five reports was released) we talked about the future that was likely to occur. This report 20 years later (says) … a number of the things that we talked about in the future tense in 1992 have arrived. Once the tipping point occurs, you don’t wake up the next morning and say, ‘This is terrible, can we change it?’. We are condemning people to not having the choice.”

Dr Steiner said: “Change is possible. Given what we know, we can move in another direction.”

The report was released in the run-up to the UN Rio+20 conference on June 20 and 21.

A few reactions: “We’re breaking our planet once and for all, warn scientists”, io9; “Irreversible”, MetaFilter post; “Earth could reach ecological tipping point by 2025”, Population Matters. This article links to a similar report in Nature journal (also: “Earth summit: Rio report card” there). (Annoyingly it is subscriber-access only. Surely they could make such an important report free-access?)

The reports state that Earth’s various ecologies will reach a “tipping point” before this century’s end with possibly dire consequences for the lifeforms here. If it comes to pass, many species will go extinct, forests will be decimated, the oceans will be toxic waste dumps. In effect, the grim barren Earth depicted in Avatar will become reality. The article linked back in my 31/3 entry, “Here’s a view of the world at 2050 – if you dare to look”, also is worth a re-read.

The July U.S. edition of Popular Science, featuring a “Future of the Environment” special, has a diagram showing four possible futures depending upon the choices made now, reproduced below:

Is all this doom-mongering, crying wolf? A lot of people will think so and dismiss it, as they have global warming, as there are so many more pressingly immediate issues – keeping their job, paying off mortgages and bills, all the minutiae of daily life. As individuals there seems to be little we can do, so we shrug it off and carry on as usual. Nations are locked into the same destructive path of consumption and endless economic growth, and lack the will to change. If the dire predictions come to pass (and for the sake of other lifeforms here, one hopes they do not), humanity can’t say it was not warned.

Housing vs. farmland

“The fertile fringe”, The Age, 26/5. Melbourne’s future food security was the focus of this in-depth article on the weekend. The inexorable spread of population-growth-spurred housing developments are consuming the fertile farmlands around Melbourne like fast-growing cancers. It shows an utter lack of foresight and planning from State governments, who seem only concerned with shoehorning in as many people as possible rather than trying to stabilize population growth, and the influence of greedy developers who are only concerned about making profits. Another growing threat is coal-seam gas and other mineral mining developments.

Australia initially seems to be a big continent with lots of space, but – as has to be pointed out again and again – much of it is desert with little fertile land, as this article extract notes:

We are being cautioned, however, against complacency. The Prime Minister’s own Science Engineering and Innovation Council has warned that Australia’s food capacity faces a challenges with a population forecast to rise to 40 million as fertile land is undermined by factors such as land degradation such as salination, and urbanisation.

Australia is one of the driest continents on earth. Its soils are ancient and depleted, and just 6 per cent of its total area, 45 million hectares, is arable land. Most intensive agriculture occurs on the fertile soil on a relatively thin strip of land along the coastal fringe. It is an area heavily and increasingly contested.

Australia is also among the most urbanised countries on earth, with the vast bulk of its population huddled on this coastal strip, their homes competing for space with farms, roads, factories, offices, shops, car parks, golf courses, native forests, plantation forests, native grasslands and national parks. Victoria is the most densely populated state, with more than 1500 new residents arriving weekly.

Under the same coastal band are vast seams of brown coal that have provided the fuel to power Victoria for decades and are now being eyed for additional uses, including gas. […]

In his many journeys to and from Melbourne, Vizzarri often ponders what has been lost under the housing and industrial estates he passes. “Australia is a big country,” he observes, “but all its people are concentrated on the eastern seaboard and that’s also where our best land is. I’d prefer that food going to Melbourne is produced on the outskirts; it was once upon a time.”

(If you were paranoid, you’d think it were some conspiracy to make Australia dependent upon imported food.)

You certainly can’t say that authorities and businesses have not been warned. But they seem to prefer to stick their heads in the sand and pretend we can carry on with this reckless growth and development indefinitely with no consequences.

Contrast this to the idiotic statement PM Julia Gillard made a few weeks ago that “We can be food bowl of Asia”; also “No reason why we can’t become a global food superpower”.

We know that global demand for food will escalate dramatically in the coming years, as the world population heads for 9 billion, while scarce resources of arable land and fresh water will become even more scarce. It isn’t just about sheer numbers, however, it’s about the changing nature of these populations.

In China, it’s planned that a further 350 million people will move – the largest internal migration in human history - from the countryside to the cities by 2030. This means fewer farmers and more consumers. Of the 580 million people living in south-east Asia, a quarter do not yet have access to electricity. As an Asian middle-class rises, with its associated consumer needs, the demand for food, energy and other resources is going to dramatically escalate.

As a planet and as a nation, we don’t have a choice – we simply must do much more than is being done to help feed a hungry world, and notwithstanding the obvious challenges and the doomsayers, we believe that we can.

WTF? I don’t see it as our responsibility to feed that region or any other if countries can’t or won’t contain their population growth. They should take responsibility for their own self-inflicted problems, not expect other countries to bail them out.

Letters in response, 28/5:

Rats in a cage

“Police called to more than 100 disputes every day”, Herald-Sun, 29/5 (copy URL into Google search, click on link results to get around paywall). This was the headline for yesterday, the article saying that “Overcrowding is being blamed for rising neighbourhood violence”. Well, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to come to that conclusion!

The 000 [emergency] hotline sent police to almost 42,000 neighbourhood disputes in Melbourne and Geelong postcodes - a 12 per cent jump in a year. Violence and ugly verbal feuds between neighbours are as common as family disputes, the focus of a decade-long police campaign. Police have less power to intervene in neighbour disputes. Residents have told of incidents including vicious verbal abuse and terrifying attacks with knives, fireworks and slingshots, often after complaining about noisy parties or local hoons. Freedom of Information data obtained by the Herald Sun reveals the most crowded and fastest-growing suburbs are most affected. […]

Sgt Amanda Napier, of St Kilda police, said “paper thin walls” in overcrowded suburbs drove residents to the brink. “The incidents in St Kilda I think would be attributed to the fact that there are so many flats which have paper thin walls and any sort of noise can be heard,” she said. Dandenong police Sgt Paddy Hayes said alcohol often fuelled noisy parties and fights. He said it was an issue in growth areas such as Casey, where housing density meant residents were “living on top of each other”.

Some cultures, such as that of Japan, have adapted social behaviors that enable their populations to live high density without too much conflict (though I suspect frustration comes out in other ways). Australian culture, however, likes its space, and the crowding and urban density resulting from sustained population growth is driving many mad (myself included). I will link yet again to an article from a few years ago, “London’s a rat hole”:

His scathing assessment was being submitted to the main opposition Conservative Party’s policy group focusing on quality of life. “Putting 10 million aggressive hominids into close proximity and inviting them to engage in serial acts of competitive individualism … for jobs, schools or parking spaces, could not be considered a reasonable idea,” Bayley said. “You put rats in claustrophobic circumstances and they become homosexual, murderous and cannibalistic in no time at all. Instead humans find ingenious solutions, underground car parks, coffee shops, Chinese takeaways, one-man buses, cycle lanes, tall buildings.”

H-S letter in response, 30/5:

Overcrowding so bad for society

IT is to be expected that all this overcrowding and high-density housing being forced on us is causing social problems (“Battle in the burbs”, May 29).

All you need to do is go back to the famous study of the behaviour of rats when forced to live in overcrowded conditions. The more overcrowded, the more aggressive they became. We behave much the same as the rats.

We all need a bit of space around us to keep our sanity and balance. The more packed-in they make our city, the more the police will be called on. When will any government wake up?

– Mary Drost, convener, Planning Backlash Inc

Battery-hen living

“Hong Kong’s High-Density Housing & Cramped Living Conditions”, ChinaSMACK.com, 23/5 (via Kotaku). These are a series of photos showing the incredibly cramped living conditions that are normal for that city. To my view it looks rather hellish, though I suppose someone who grew up there would regard it as normal. I guess such cramped apartments are preferable to being homeless, but it seems a very Nature-deprived way of living – humans did not evolve to live like termites. I can’t imagine such conditions as being good for their long-term health. Many regard such dense living as desirable for its supposed reduced “ecological footprint”, but the people in the buildings still need all their supplies brought in from elsewhere. I would hate to have to climb up and down hundreds of stairs, or rely on lifts, just to go outside! If a fire took hold in one of those apartments, it would be a major disaster if the residents could not access fire escapes.

A recent Daily Mail article shows the even more nightmarish-looking Kowloon Walled City in China before its (thankful) demolition, an unplanned, unregulated and claustrophobic rabbit warren housing 50,000 or so residents. I don’t envy the children growing up there! They would undoubtedly have many health problems, given China’s pollution, and be very Nature-deprived if they never went outside its walls. The io9 sci-fi site mentioned the place a few times – a few commenters there seem to have romanticized views of the place as it resembled a science fiction dystopia.

Families are squeezed together in tiny apartments, with all their possessions crowding the rooms. (I have to admit that my increasingly cluttered bedroom does not look too different! But at least I can go outside into the backyard or for a walk around the streets.)

“No room for a view”, The Age, 14/5. Melbourne CBD residents are increasingly facing a problem with overshadowing from the many tall apartments being erected, though on a much smaller scale than Hong Kong. Planning here is generally poorly-thought out, with developers given far too many concessions. Problem is that most cities have not been planned properly from their inception and have grown in a messy organic fashion over the decades or centuries – Kowloon was an extreme example of this – so new developments are shoehorned in as best city planners can.

“Population clock shows Japan faces extinction in 1000 years”, 13/5. Yet another alarmist article concerning Japan’s ageing and declining population! It seems to have become a favorite trope. Given their advances in technology (somewhat exaggerated in a satirical Onion article from 2007, “Earthquake Sets Japan Back To 2147”), perhaps they will have robot helpers by then, and people won’t stop having children altogether, so the article is just silly. A couple of letters in response, 16/5:

Falling population

ANYONE who has battled crowds on Tokyo’s trains will welcome the news that Japan’s population is declining (“Population clock shows Japan faces extinction in 1000 years”, theage.com.au, 13/5). Japan is an overcrowded country with few natural resources, and its population needs to decline.

As for disappearing altogether, it’s not going to happen. When the population gets close to what is deemed ecologically sustainable, all the government needs to do is introduce baby bonuses to boost the fertility rate. After the baby bonus was introduced here, our fertility rate went from 1.7 to 1.9.

As for ageing, look at the Okinawans. They live to a ripe old age and are largely independent as they age. Other Japanese can do the same once they are given a bit of space and fresh air – splendid side effects of a lower population.

– Jenny Goldie, Michelago, NSW

Act on East Timor

IT’S good to see the “urgent” matter of the extrapolated extinction of the Japanese race in 1000 years being raised.

But we never hear about the doubling of the population of East Timor (an infertile and seasonally dry country already food-insecure) within 25 years due to unwanted and preventable births happening now.

The Japanese may well decide to have more children – for example, when an average couple can afford a home with more than one bedroom. In the meantime, they have everything to gain from population shrinkage. The East Timorese, on the other hand …

– Jane O’Sullivan, Chelmer, Queensland

Addendum: Letter from MP Kelvin Thompson regarding Melbourne’s sorry excuse for high-rise planning, 27/5:

THE article “Chasing the sun among high-rises a heated issue” (20/5) raises very important issues about Melbourne’s headlong rush to high-rise.

The loss of sunlight is a very important point. As is the fact that high-density high-rise buildings have big carbon footprints, consume more energy, generate more pollution and detract public amenity through the large shadows they cast. The proliferation of high-rise development is threatening not only our environment, but also our social fabric.

I am a fan of the suburban backyard. I believe children who grow up in concrete jungles are subject to more bullying and are more vulnerable to traps such as crime and drugs. What do you call a kid in a backyard? A free range kid. I think free range kids have a better time of it than battery kids. The more high-rise developments that are shoved down the throats of local communities, the more our communities will be suffocated.

– KELVIN THOMSON, MP, Federal Member for Wills

Miserable Melbourne

The 7:30 Report for 27/4 featured an infuriating interview with Planning Minister Matthew Guy. Dismayingly but predictably, the only message he emphasized is finding ways to “accommodate” the increasing population, not try to reduce growth. Increasing population by immigration and birthrate is “sustainable” – yeah, right (not!) He and others in government and business are clearly trying to brainwash citizens into regarding growth as inevitable. Marvelous Melbourne is fast becoming Miserable Melbourne. An earlier article, “Make room: state population set to soar”, The Age, 24/4, gives no good news.

Collected letters

Herald-Sun: