immigration

The 'politically incorrect' issue of whether or not a society such as a Australia has the right to control its population levels through immigration controls

Book Review: Immigrants: your country needs them by Philippe Legrain

Thu, 2007-10-04 12:59 by James Sinnamon

The following review first appeared in the October 2007 newsletter (PDF 516K) of Sustainable Population Australia

Book Review: Immigrants: your country needs them by Philippe Legrain (Little Brown Book Group, UK, 2006) A$35.00 review by Mark O'Connor.

Some angst was caused in February 2007 when Philippe Legrain (with this book in tow) was featured at Perth Writers Week. The problem was not that a debate on migration was irrelevant to a literary festival but that there was no debate--and that the supposed expert (Legrain) seemed ignorant of Australian conditions.

I am struck by how little and how selectively Philippe Legrain has read in the area on which he claims to be an expert. Despite his Australian publicists' claim that he offers a lucid and enlightened account of "Australian policies, facts and statistics" the facts he states are frequently incorrect or slanted. His index is barren of references to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which perhaps explains his bizarre claims that Australia's population is 19 million, that its net migration is some 90,000 a year (see p. 9), that births are not keeping pace with deaths (p. 108, in fact they are twice deaths), that immigration was slashed from 1996 by the Howard government (see p. 53) and so on. In fact we have never had such a high-immigration government as Howard's. Only in the immediate post WWII period, when most of our migrants were war refugees, has immigration been so high.

Australia, along with Canada and the USA is one of Philippe Legrain's three best examples of countries which have sought and accepted what is by world standards a bizarrely high level of immigration. For Australia, he seems to have relied on interviews with a couple of high immigration advocates (Stepan Kerkyasharian and Abdul Rizvi). The rest of his figures on Australia could have been gained from half-an-hour's googling---some time ago. Of critics of high immigration in Australia he seems ignorant. There are no references in his index to CSIRO's Ecumene project, to People and Place, to Sustainable Population Australia or even to the numerous publications of the Bureau of Immigration Research, which at least attempted a certain objectivity.

On the UK and the USA (his main market target) he seems only a little less ill-read. When referring to critics of high immigration he concentrates on Peter Brimelow and Samuel Huntingdon, but seems unaware of such important players as Britain's Migration Watch Committee or America's Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Centre for Immigration Studies. All of these have websites that could have provided him with an encyclopedia's worth of articles and information on relevant issues of which he seems ignorant. But I get the impression that Philippe Legrain is a gentleman who likes to make up his mind and then not disturb it by looking at inconvenient facts or contrary opinions.

A crucial document is the 1994 plenary resolution of the Australian Academy of Science on Australia's population options. This specified that our population should probably have been capped at 19 million, but must in any case be capped at no more than 23 million, and that net migration must therefore be kept below 50,000 a year.

1994 was also the year of the Cairo Conference on Population, in which the nations of the world pledged (with only a few selfish exceptions) to hold their populations in check, and not to use emigration as a way of unloading their population problems upon others. Needless to say, Cairo also is missing from Legrain's index. Nor does he mention the way in which the USA's immigration-fed increase has prevented its population stabilizing and made it dependent for its life-style upon a risky pursuit of foreign oil.

Nor does he mention the issue of the vast increases in greenhouse effect caused by migration from the low GHG to the high GHG producing countries. Most telling of all, against Legrain's irresponsible vision of open borders, is the fact that the two large-population countries that have had spectacular success in reducing their population growth (Iran and China) did so precisely because they had quarreled with the West and could not lean on it to take their emigrants. By contrast, those countries like Mexico and the Philippines, where families could hope that an extra child might be the lucky or talented one that would get to the US and bring in the rest of the family, have neither solved their own problems nor ceased to drive up population in the wealthier countries. Legrain complacently notes that the Philippines relies on remittances from its emigrants for something like 40% of its economy. (And still the babies keep coming.) By contrast, Legrain asserts (p. 20) that "freer migration is one of the best ways to help poor countries." For a capitalist economist Legrain is oddly naïve about the problems of population socialism. A visit to www.garretthardinsociety.org might trouble--yet expand--his mind considerably.

Legrain seems to share the common economist's delusion that growth can go on for ever, that there are no other species or environments to be considered, and that almost the only thing we lack (to fuel an eternal bonfire of growth) is more people.

Overall, this book, despite its parade of academic references, is not a serious attempt to examine the issues. It should be read as a piece of rhetoric: a first speech for the government in a student debate "That this house believes the world should have open borders". Legrain's 'lucidity', which some foolish reviewers have praised, is largely a reluctance to explain his economic modeling. He simply asserts. He claims at one point (p. 64, cf. p 19) that studies show freer immigration could 'potentially' make us all far richer--which is code for saying he won't explain the assumptions behind the calculation. [ revised: He offers no refutation--only an ad hominem put--down but no adequate refutation --of the detailed calculations of the Harvard economics professor George Borjas, a much more eminent economist, who draws the opposite conclusions. Legrain's calculations of the economic effect of immigration in the USA seem based on the assumption that one need only make sure that the supply of capital increases in proportion with the workforce. Then more immigrant workers simply make everyone better off. The inconvenient issues of resources, space, greenhouse emissions, and environmental degradation are ignored by Legrain (and one suspects by those economic studies he cites on his side). Perhaps Legrain knows he is writing for people who want a feel-good sense of moral superiority, and don't want to be bothered with inconvenient details. ]

Yet if Legrain can get us used to using cheap immigrant servants and cooks and nurses, he will then try to make us feel guilty about "the anonymous people whose existence you barely acknowledge . . . We just never bother to ask" (pp. 26-27). It doesn't make much sense. But as I say, Legrain is a rhetorician, not a thinker.

Perhaps most irritating is Legrain's glib sense of moral superiority--backed by his publisher's predictable assertion that he is offering an original "challenging and powerful" version of the open borders case. Not so. If the facts were as Legrain claims, and if the only issues to be considered were the ones he propounds, then everyone would come to his conclusions. Intelligence and moral superiority don't enter into it. Naivety and ignorance do.#

American Unions and their about-face on Immigration

Sun, 2007-09-30 20:21 by Anonymous

The lengthy testimony of Vernon M. Briggs Jr. of Cornell University to the Subcommittee on Immigration of the U.S. House of Representatives, delivered on May 24, 2007, makes for compelling reading. In his deposition, Briggs demonstrated that for more than a century, until the late 1980s, organized labour either directly initiated or strongly supported every legislative effort to restrict immigration or "enforce its policy provisions." The National Labor Union, for example, successfully fought for the repeal of the Contract Labor Act of 1864, which allowed employees to recruit foreign laborers and pay them nothing until transportation and subsistence was repaid. The Act was seen as a method to stimulate immigration and suppress wages for Americans. The NLU also fought to repeal the Burlingame Treaty that allowed Chinese immigrants to enter the country, after they were being used as strike-breakers. The NLU was followed in this objective by the Knights of Labor who succeeded in getting the treaty amended to allow the United States to suspend the entry of unskilled Chinese immigrants, with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act (to last until 1943). The AFL carried on this tradition of attending to the needs of resident American workers. Samuel Gompers declared in 1896, that "immigration is doing a great injury to our people." The following year the Union passed a resolution calling for a literacy test that would reduce the entry of unskilled workers into the United States. A 1911 report found that mass immigration was depressing wages, increasing unemployment and poverty, and hampering unions in their organizing drives. The immigration laws of 1917, 1921 and 1924 reflected many of the AFL's concerns. Other prominent labour leaders were also supportive of the immigration legislation. A. Phillip Randolph, Briggs points out, argued that the appropriate immigration level should be "zero", because mass immigration not only impeded union organizational capability but hurt African-American workers who were just finding economic opportunities in the north. Clearly the consensus in the American labour movement was that in Gompers' words, "immigration is fundamentally a labour issue" and that a tight labour market is the American worker's best friend. But suddenly in 1993 the ALF-CIO made a shocking break with history by passing a resolution praising the role that immigrants have played in building the nation and attacking critics of illegal immigration. In 1996 they joined a coalition of business, agri-business and Christian conservatives to kill provisions of a bill to limit refugee admissions and verify Social Security numbers of new hires to discourage illegal workers. And, "in February 2000 the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO announced it was changing its historic position (and) would now support expanded immigration, lenient enforcement of immigration laws and the legislative agenda of immigrant advocacy groups." In other words, the union abruptly decided to abandon the representation of American workers to become the champion of immigrant, particularly illegal, immigrant workers. Why? Realpolitik. It was a fact of life that employers alone, not unions, had the means to hire workers, and in the wake of the biggest migratory wave in history, they were hiring illegal workers for unskilled positions. Unions were either going to surrender the service industry to employers, and thereby increase the incentive to hire more illegal workers, or they would make a bid to organize them. To do that successfully, they would have to ingratiate themselves to immigrants by embracing immigrant causes, and sacrifice historical union attitudes to immigration. In reading Brigg's assessment one is struck by the remarkable parallel between the cold calculations of the AFL-CIO post-1993 and that of the Sierra Club post-1996. Until 1996, the Sierra Club always acknowledged that population stability for the United States was a key component of a healthy environment, and that restrictive immigration was a critical part of population stability. But a $100 million ultimatum from David Gelbaum that none of his money would find its way into Sierra Club coffers if they included immigration in Club policy persuaded the ruling body that the Elephant in the Room, America's immigration-induced population explosion, was no longer there. The clinching argument, though, was that if the Sierra Club was to survive the demographic shift of the 21st century, it would be imperative to recruit Hispanics in droves. But to entice these potential members, it would be necessary to jettison an immigration plank that would seem to threaten to choke off Hispanic migration. So just as the AFL-CIO chose the immigrant agenda over the economic well-being of the American work force, the Sierra Club chose an Hispanic agenda over the well-being of the environment, which is being killed by runaway population growth fuelled in large part by illegal Hispanic immigration. Does this strategy of dropping the American bird in your hand to chase two Spanish songbirds in the bush make any sense? Briggs highlights a disturbing correlation. It turns out that the percentage of the foreign-born population in the United States is inversely proportional to the percentage of union membership. "In the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s, immigration levels fell dramatically while union membership levels soared to unprecedented levels." In 1965 the foreign-born population was 4.4% of the U.S. total, but union membership was 30.1% of the non-agricultural sector. By 2006, 12.1% of the population was foreign-born while union membership was only 12% of the non-agricultural sector. The verdict is obvious. Mass immigration is lethal to organized labour. Briggs concludes "What is bad economics for working people can never be good politics for unions." Tim Murray Director of Immigration Watch Canada Quadra Island, BC Canada Sept. 30/07

Why conservation efforts will not survive mass immigration

Mon, 2007-09-24 01:01 by tim

On Friday September 7, 2007, the venerable Canadian environmental author Farley Mowat made a boldly generous but stunningly futile gesture. He donated 200 acres of his Cape Breton land to "Nova Scotia Nature Trust". He called on others in the province to follow his example so that good land wouldn't fall into some developer's clutches and be destroyed for profit "like every other part of the western world." But while Mowat's motives are beyond dispute and his affinity for wildlife unquestioned, he continues to evidence no understanding of the root causes of biodiversity loss. In North America it is runaway population growth, fuelled largely by mass immigration and coupled with excessive consumption that is crowding out wildlife habitat, wetlands and farmland. The question to be put to the environmental movement is, can nature preserves, greenbelts and national parks permanently shield wildlife and flora from the developmental pressures issuing from this growth? Ontario commentator Brishen Hoff answers with a categorical "no". "History has proven that no lands are protected when the population surrounding them is growing. This applies to countries, national parks, islands, or whatever. Once growing populations that surround pristine areas reach a tipping point, the demand for the resources of the protected area will become so great that all safeguards, laws, or barricades will be obliterated and the resources will be exploited." That is why Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado established as his Fundamental Law of Planning that a workable, durable local plan cannot be effected in a community until the regional population is stabilized. Curiously, advocates of secure borders and more restrictive immigration have been reproached and ridiculed by soft greens and mainstream environmental NGOs for proposing the equivalent of an international "gated community" that couldn't hope, they allege, to fend off the heavy global traffic of people in the real world. Yet none of these critics will acknowledge that their little fortresses---their nature preserves, their greenbelts, their parks, their strict land-use zonings---have little hope of standing up to the pressure of the growing populations we have recently seen. Growth spilled out of the urban boundaries of Portland, Oregon---poster child of "smart growth"---into surrounding farmland. And with no let-up from immigration houses are being built on formerly sacrosanct British greenbelts, the "lungs" of Britain. And as long as economic growth is God, conservation lands are not secure either. They can and have been withdrawn by legislation and executive order. At one time an Act of Congress removed 1400 square kilometers of the original Yosemite National Park for timber and mineral production. "Wildlife habitat will continue to be lost as natural capital is relocated form the economy of nature to the human economy", until the economy shifts to a kind of steady-state model, writes Professor Brian Czech of Virginia Polytechnic Institute Oddly, there is virtually no environmental organization in Canada that makes a connection between immigration and environmental degradation of any kind. Not the Sierra Club, the David Suzuki Foundation, Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Canadian Parks and Wilderness, Ontario Nature---the list goes on. None of them speak of a connection. Quite the contrary. The problem is not whether we grow, so the mantra goes, but how we grow. If we grow "smart", we can welcome the whole world here. And the biggest Welcome Wagon in Canada is the leader of its Green Party, Elizabeth May, who argues for an immigration level even higher than that supported by her rivals. She calls this "Canada's Great Multicultural Project". May parrots those two sweet-sounding buzzwords that many environmental organizations use so frequently---"cultural diversity". But cultural diversity in Canada and the United States cannot be sustained without massive and fresh injections of newcomers to bolster existing immigrants who otherwise would assimilate. Viable multiculturalism requires unrelenting mass immigration. And mass immigration marginalizes wildlife habitat. Cultural diversity therefore comes at the cost of biological diversity. So let's dispense with the cant. The correlation is clear. Growing cities, vanishing wildlife, dial "1" for English. One final irony, who was the man who spear-headed the national fund-raising campaign this summer to raise campaign donations for Green Party leader Elizabeth May? None other than Farley Mowat, the man who wants to protect animals, birds, and plant life from human encroachment. It was Mowat who once famously compared our species to yeast in a vat, "mindlessly multiplying as we greedily devour a finite world." But apparently Canada's not finite, or at least that portion of it beyond the safe bosom of a conservation charity. To think that Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, who dueled with Elizabeth May over the immigration issue when she was president of Sierra Club Canada, named his newest ship, "The Farley Mowat" That makes two contradictions.

Topic:

Racist-baiting of immigration reformers is left-wing McCarthyism

Mon, 2007-09-17 01:36 by tim

Everyone gets in a lather when we propose an immigration moratorium for Canada. We are racist xenophobes with a fortress mentality who think that a national "gated" community will seal off CO2 emissions from China and India. Instead we should drop our fence, welcome newcomers, and thereby send out a message of friendship so as to gain global cooperation in our plan to fight global warming, and yes, over-population, which after all are GLOBAL problems that Canada can't solve alone.

Similarly, those Americans who propose building a more extensive and imposing fence along the Mexican border patrolled by more guards are called by similar ephithets. And their panaceas are ridiculed as unworkable. More border guards have been correlated with even more illegal alien intrusions. Ted Kennedy, using the tried and true vocabulary of the Quisling environmental movement, calls not for "open" borders but "smart" borders. That is, open borders that allow illegals to pour in at a more even pace. Kennedy wants to do the good decent liberal thing and crack down on the big bad employers who lure Mexicans into the United States. He has broad agreement on that. And he also wants to help the Mexican economy out with aid so that Mexicans will stay put. Good luck. But like so many, Ted Kennedy hasn't the backbone to face a Mexican and say "no". Like a 21st century Will Rogers he apparently never met an illegal alien he didn't like. This kind of hospitality is the univeral affliction of western governments, political parties, labour unions and environmental NGOs. And it is killing us.

What is interesting is that wherever migration is debated on any continent, the race card is played. Hispanic leaders complain about the overt racism of anti-immigration reformers. White liberals, socialists and greens indulge in the same psychologizing, which Sidney Hook long ago described as the classic trade-mark of the politically correct. Rather than deal with your arguments, they put you on a psychiatric couch and impugn your motives. But notice these soft-greens and socialists only target white European cultures that are under threat. They scream about Bush's Mexican border fence, but do they ever mention that Mexico has a shoot-to-kill policy regarding illegal immigrants on ITS borders with Central American countries? Or that India is completing a fence of several billion dollars to keep 150 million Bangledeshi's from overwhelming and despoiling what remains of India's wilderness? Did they ever mention, decades ago, when they were crying ad nauseum about the wicked "White Australia" policy, that Australia's regional neighbours were not allowing any immigrants into their countries no matter WHAT their skin colour? Did we ever hear of a "Yellow Japan" or a "Yellow Indonesia" policy?

It seems in the left-green universe only "people of colour" are permitted to control their borders. Some are even allowed to control the flow of people WITHIN their borders without much comment from the politically correct. Internal passports were not uncommon in the Marxist-Leninist orbit.

Our critics do not hold the moral high ground when debating these issues. Their stance smacks of nothing less than hypocrisy and inconsistency. And their attempt to intimidate and shut down discussion with name-calling is contemptible McCarthyism in fashionable left-wing clothing.

For further information, please visit Immigration Watch Canada, Migration Watch UK, Federation for American Immigration Reform, Centre for Immigration Studies, Carrying Capacity Natwork.

Topic:

Koala Preservation Society warns: Koala endangered in South East Queensland

Thu, 2007-08-02 00:00 by James Sinnamon

Deborah Tabart, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Koala Foundation has written to the Queensland Environment Minister (see below) asking the the status of Koalas in the South East Queensland bio-region be upgraded from their current listing of 'vulnerable' to 'endangered' as a result of the alarming recent increase of Koala deaths. Deborah Tabart wrote:

In Redland Shire alone a total of 362 koalas were taken into care, only 96 animals appear to have survived. A shocking 73.5% death rate. What is more disturbing from these statistics is that the deaths appear to be mainly disease related, which is clearly an indication of stress, which could well be caused by habitat loss. Although many blame cars and dogs as a primary cause of koala deaths, these statistics indicate that those deaths were minor, compared to the diseased animals. This is a disturbing trend.

The letter concluded:

Given these high death rates, it is hard to imagine that koala births in the Redland's Shire are outweighing the deaths, a sure sign of impending localised extinction.

I call on you to immediately upgrade the koala listing to Endangered and give South-East Queensland's koalas a better chance for survival.

Human population growth driving Koalas to extinction

The underlying driver which threatens the Koala with extinction has been the population growth deliberately encouraged by successive Queensland Governments. Since 1974, Queensland's total population has more than doubled from 2 million in 1974 to well over 4 million today. So, it should be little wonder that with their habitats encroached upon by residential estates, roads, industrial estates, quarries, power lines and other infrastructure that the numbers of Koalas and other Australian native wildlife has declined steeply.

Yet, in spite of this, the growing water shortages, the strains on electricity generation, traffic congestion and the overall decline in the quality of life for the human residents of Queensland, the Queensland Government persists with its reckless policy of encouragement of population growth. The latest episode in this saga are to be the planned Work, Live and Play in Queensland" expositions in Sydney from 17-19 August and in Melbourne from 5-7 August. This is to in order to fulfil the plans of the Queensland Government decreed in its 2004 South East Queensland Regional Plan to cram another 1 million into South East Queensland alone by 2026, presumably to suit the property development sector, which funds the Labor Party even more generously than the trade unions.

Unless this population growth is stopped the fight to save the Koala, as well as to preserve what quality is left in the lives of ordinary Queenslanders is doomed.

What you can do

Write to Lindy Nelson-Carr Queensland Minister for Environment and Multiculturalism to support the Australian Koala Foundation's call to have the Koala listed as 'endangered' in South East Queensland. (E-mail EandM|AT|ministerial qld gov au or see below for phone numbers or postal address.)
Become a supporter of the Australian Koala Foundation
Join the Australian Wildlife Protection Council at www.awpc.org.au/newsite/join.php
Participate in protests by the 'People Power' group against over development in Redland shire. To Contact the 'People Power' group e-mail people_power |AT| hotmail . com. (For further information visit /SaveMountCotton)
Contact the Queensland Government and demand an end to their policy of encouraging population growth
Contact the Commonwealth Government and demand an end to their policy of population
growth through:
- High immigration (currently at an unofficial, but real, record annual rate of 300,000 up from 68,000 in 1996 - see Ross Gittins' article "Backscratching at a National Level" of 12 June in the Sydney Morning Herald
- Treasurer Peter Costello's $3,000 baby bonus
Vote against politicians who fail to protect Australian wildlife or who encourage population growth
Set up an account on this site, if you do not already have one, by visiting /user/registerso that you can contribute your knowledge and ideas. (You may still post comments anonymously but you may have to await the approval of the site administrator, before they are published.)

Letter from the Australian Koala Foundation to the Queensland Minister for the Environment

1st August 2007

Hon Lindy Nelson-Carr,

PO Box 15155
City East 4163

Via fax 3227 6309

Dear Minister,

RE: UPGRADE OF KOALA LISTING TO ENDANGERED

On behalf of the Australian Koala Foundation (AKF), I am writing to ask you to instigate your Ministerial powers under the Nature Conservation Act and list the koala as Endangered throughout the South-East Queensland Bio-region.

As you know a previous Queensland Minister for the Environment, Mr Dean Wells, listed the koala as Vulnerable under the Nature Conservation Act in 2003, and the Beattie Government has subsequently instigated a Koala Conservation Plan.

Although I appreciate the fact that the Koala Conservation Plan has only been in full legislative operation since October of 2006, it is clear from the latest death statistics from both hospitals that koala numbers are plummeting.

I met with your Director General, Mr Terry Wall today and since leaving that meeting I have evaluated one set of koala hospital data for 2006 given to the AKF for the Redlands Shire.

The figures are alarming and overall a decline in koala populations is apparent. In Redland Shire alone a total of 362 koalas were taken into care, only 96 animals appear to have survived. A shocking 73.5% death rate. What is more disturbing from these statistics is that the deaths appear to be mainly disease related, which is clearly an indication of stress, which could well be caused by habitat loss. Although many blame cars and dogs as a primary cause of koala deaths, these statistics indicate that those deaths were minor, compared to the diseased animals. This is a disturbing trend.

My rough estimates for Redlands Shire 2006 data only:

	Brought into care	Euthanized or dead	Presumed to have survived	Death Rate
Cars	108	88	20	81.5%
Disease	234	158	76	67.5%
Dogs	20	20	0	100%
Total	362	266	96	73.5%

Given these high death rates, it is hard to imagine that koala births in the Redland's Shire are outweighing the deaths, a sure sign of impending localised extinction.

I call on you to immediately upgrade the koala listing to Endangered and give South-East Queensland's koalas a better chance for survival.

Yours sincerely,

Deborah Tabart
Chief Executive Officer.

The conspiracy of silence at the British, Australian and Canadian Broadcasting Commissons

Fri, 2007-07-27 02:01 by tim

Is there something endemic in state broadcasting in the Anglophone world which makes it taboo to discuss the population question and to air views that are critical of immigration? …

Since the early seventies, “a steady and insidious process among governing circles, opinion-formers, the greater bulk of the media, including the BBC, has built a powerful and near universal censorship, by consent…that the absolutely fundamental ecology question, the need for a sustainable balance between numbers and resources---is almost totally ignored. The sad corollary of this is that mass migration---since it has a major and obvious impact on the overall population situation---cannot be rationally discussed either.”

The following article was originally published on 19 July 2007 on the web-site of Immigration Watch Canada as The conspiracy of silence at the BBC, the ABC and the CBC

Is there something endemic in state broadcasting in the Anglophone world which makes it taboo to discuss the population question and to air views that are critical of immigration? If so, where is it coming from: the journalists, the presenters, the researchers, the producers or the administrators? Is state media more a captive of political correctness than the private media?

In attempting to answer some of these questions, it is useful to look at two fascinating accounts, one about the British Broadcasting Corporation (the BBC), another about the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC) and finally to summarize the disgraceful record of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

In “The Treason of the BBC” , the late Jack Parsons argued that “The BBC has been systematically excluding virtually all material on the question of basic population policy.” For example, BBC reporters allowed Beverly Hughes, a former Minister of Immigration, to “blandly repeat, unchallenged, the government’s mindless policy of continued mass immigration to meet the alleged needs of the economy.” Also, it granted a free pass to former Home Secretary Charles Clark to say that there were ‘no obvious limits’ to net migration and rapid growth. At the same time, the BBC did not question the fact that “our present government has adopted a policy (without discussion or mandate) of deliberately increasing our numbers by about one million every five years,” making Britain the fastest growing country in Europe with a population density almost twice that of China.

Parsons asks, “How can BBC claims about the carrying capacity of the prison system and its “overpopulation” be made so openly, so effortlessly, so devoid of fear and moral opprobrium, while not the slightest hint can ever be allowed to slip out vis a vis the vastly more important case of the carrying capacity and numbers of the nation as a whole?”

He accuses those who run the BBC of “colluding in a very Great Betrayal, fostering the myth that human numbers have so little consequence that there is no need to take them seriously.” “The charge I am leveling at all executive levels of the BBC as a corporate body concerns what I am convinced is coercive, institutionalized bias which for years has prevented virtually all BBC news of, and discussion about, a literally vital object, the long-term balance between human numbers, resources and the quality of life…; this was not always so, but has been the case for at least 15 years."

The signs of population myopia were apparent to Parsons in 1967 when he asked the BBC why it was so concerned about the Tory Canyon Oil-Tanker Spill disaster, but so unconcerned about the doubling of the world’s population in 30 years. Since the early seventies, “a steady and insidious process among governing circles, opinion-formers, the greater bulk of the media, including the BBC, has built a powerful and near universal censorship, by consent…that the absolutely fundamental ecology question, the need for a sustainable balance between numbers and resources---is almost totally ignored. The sad corollary of this is that mass migration---since it has a major and obvious impact on the overall population situation---cannot be rationally discussed either.”

Parsons, in a letter to a BBC Complaints Unit, asks, “Dare one hope that, one of these days, someone in the higher echelons of the BBC will screw his/her courage to the sticking point and actually issue and follow through on a set of instructions that free the BBC---and hence the nationfrom this appalling and near-totally disabling taboo.” He is given to wonder “Why does this large, wealthy, powerful, highly prestigious institution…cringe so abjectly at the very idea of free speech in the realm of discourse?” And why the taboo? “Has there been an explicit but secret directive to all producers to steer clear of the subject? Has this policy been built up by means of nods, winks and frowns on high; or does it stem from tacit acceptance by all concerned at the prevailing orthodoxy in the wider society?”

According to Parsons, four things are needed to reform the BBC. Firstly, there needs to be major change in ‘media Zeitgeist’ (thinking) that will permit an open discussion about population. Secondly, the BBC needs to “stop cowering beneath its cloak of political correctness” and, by honest analysis, foster the emergence of a mature, ecologically informed electorate. Thirdly, the BBC needs to hire reporters who are population experts. “Some BBC presenters, who have an overweening confidence in their qualifications, start laying down the law on those population topics which are allowed a mention, and in the process frequently display their ignorance…They pick up and mindlessly repeat half-baked notions about alleged labour shortages and pension problems, and swallow hook, line and sinker any free-floating opinions about how much better things will continue to become as numbers inexorably swell.”

Fourthly, it would be nice if the BBC followed its own Producer Guidelines. “Due impartiality lies at the heart of the BBC. All BBC programmes and services should be open-minded, fair and show a respect for truth. No significant strand of thought should go unreflected or unrepresented at the BBC.”

Until then, however, its Motto will remain that of the Three allegedly Wise Monkeys: See no population problem! Hear no population problem! Speak no population problem!

Mark O’Connor, poet and one-time Vice-President of Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population (AESP, re-named SPA), has made a similar assessment of the ABC. In his upcoming book, "Overloading Australia", O’Connor concedes that the ABC is critical to Australian democracy and is able to speak to the people---“and often does”. “But the ABC has in some parts of its news and current affairs sections failed to provide objectivity or fairness to portray debates or news coverage relating to population, immigration or economics." It is living the Comfortable Lie: that growth is good and sustainable, and that the mass immigration that fuels it must continue. “The fact must be faced. There is something deeply wrong in some parts of it.”

But O'Connor is unable to locate precisely where the fault lies. Whether researchers withhold information from presenters, or presenters refuse to use the research provided to them, or whether producers, strategy planners or management dictate programming, is a question outside observers can't answer. "But there certainly is a bias," he asserts.

He offers some examples of this bias. During those years when Australia had the highest per capita immigrant intake of any country in the world, the ABC refused to challenge propagandists who illogically and brazenly claimed that Australia's high immigration intake was "shamefully low" and "proof of racism". In addition, the ABC collaborated with both the government and the opposition party to promote high immigration by ignoring inconvenient facts like the one about Australia's high per capita immigrant intake and suppressing most of the debate. And while going after the jugular of the One Nation Party as if it were alone in its call for a zero net immigration policy, “among its many acts of censorship, ABC TV News suppressed the fact that the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Democrats (two other parties) had long been calling for zero net migration."

O’Connor speculates as to why the ABC behaves in this manner. “The ABC’s failure through nearly three decades to deal with population issues the most important matter facing Australia today--- may have less to do with individuals than with a pervasive institutional culture.” Nevertheless, “if there are such persons blocking the debate, then it is assuredly time they were persuaded to move on to other areas where their biases will do less harm.”

He concludes, “The ABC has a problem with its news service and current affairs programs. It may not be able to rectify past unfairness, but it needs urgently to offer guarantees that the censorship will cease, and that at least in future those who disagree with high immigration or with ‘birth-bribes’ will receive equal time on its programs.” New ‘balance and accountability’ guidelines announced by management in October of 2006 “will not address ABC News’ pro-growth, pro-natalist, pro-conventional economic views.”

Can what has so far been said of the BBC and the ABC be said of the CBC as well? In one word, yes, and more. While some regional centres have attempted to bring more balance to immigration issues, CBC Radio, especially the National centre in Toronto and the Vancouver centre, have emphatically not. In general, the CBC (like the ABC previously) has refused to engage the public on the two questions that critics keep asking: Why is the government importing more people per capita than any other country in the world? And what effect is this infux, which gives us the highest growth rate of any G8 nation, having on our economic, cultural and environmental health?

Timidity and cowardice are not the exclusive province of CBC journalists, but the fact is that only the private media outlets have on occasion exposed abuses of the immigration system and questioned the country’s high immigration intake. The CBC, on the other hand, has done what it can to promote mass immigration on the basis of its misinterpretation of its 1991 legislated mandate to promote “multiculturalism”. Somehow, CBC logic equates the stated “CBC Vision” (to reflect “the cultural diversity of our people”) with support for mass immigration. In addition, to the CBC, the promotion of a diversity of cultures displaces the promotion of a diversity of opinions.

Those very many Canadians who voice negative concerns about immigration are simply denied airtime by the people they subsidize. As Immigration Watch Canada has noted, the CBC sees no contradiction between holding out one hand to ask for public funding while clenching the other in a fist to drive into the mouth of the taxpayer who dares to challenge the CBC line on immigration. Furthermore, the CBC allows generous airtime and interviews with pro-immigration groups, so that they may in turn, as a quid pro quo, advertise for the non-commercial CBC. So to partiality and deceit, one can therefore add corruption to the list of CBC immigration vices.

So what then is the remedy? Suffice it to say that the CBC’s commitment to mass immigration and multiculturalism comes at the cost of balanced, honest journalism. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage can obviously rectify this situation by ordering the CBC executive to answer for this conflict of interest. It can further help by demanding that the CBC terminate the corporation’s corrupt arrangements with the immigration industry, its blatant pro-immigration advocacy and the employment of its employees who engage in it.

Such measures would seek not to curb journalistic freedom, but to end shameless CBC journalistic abuse---and return public broadcasting to the public. As with the BBC and ABC, our National Broadcaster should be offering a forum where indeed “no significant strand of thought should go unreflected or unrepresented”. The exclusion of topics or the shunning of voices should be foreign to its corporate culture and democratic mission.

The BBC, ABC and CBC conspiracy to silence critics of immigration and population growth has been an insult to democracy and to the public that has had to put up with it. The conspiracy has to end now.

Topic:

On housing affordability

Sun, 2007-07-22 14:08 by James Sinnamon

This was originally posted in response to an article "A bit more on housing" by Professor John Quiggin on his blog site johnquiggin.com. As I have said below, I think the article, which discusses different ways of taxing land, whilst not altoghether irrelevant, still largely misses the main point.

Thanks Professor Quiggin from supplying that quote₁ from our PM. It confirmed that renters do not count amongst John Howard's concerns and that is why they are forced to subsidise, with their taxes, the cost of private home ownership. This includes, amongst many other things, the first home owners' grant and rental assistance for welfare recipients. In both cases the money simply helps further fuel the housing hyper-inflation rather than help to make housing affordable.

I think this debate largely misses two other key factors which have been even more critical in forcing up the cost of housing in recent decades.

1. Much of the cost of housing is in fact the result of the privatisation of the housing market begun by Menzies.

The government-owned Housing Trust of South Australia never cost South Australian taxpayers a cent, yet for decades was able to provide affordable good quality housing to all sectors of South Australian society. Money that would have been unproductively invested in property speculation in the Eastern states was, instead, directed towards establishing viable manufacturing industries in South Australia.

2. That high housing costs are a consequence of high immigration

High immigration now at unofficial, but real and stratospheric 300,000 per annum deliberately brought about by the supposedly 'strong border control' Howard Government to suit the needs of property speculators, property developers and dependant industries. There is abundant evidence for this coming out of the mouths of the land speculators themselves. For example read www.realestate.com.au or read this from a 1973 submission by a property developer to the National Population Inquiry:

A large number of industries, including the building industry could not have developed to their present size without the immigration policy ... Population growth promotes expansion in building activity.
This is the mainstay of our economy, which as opposed to that of Japan, is substantially concentrate on national infrastructure rather than purely on export industries.

- cited in "The Growth Lobby and its Absence : The Relationship between the Property Development and Housing Industries and Immigration Policy in Australia and France" p114 of Sheila Newman's Master's thesis of 2002 downloadable from candobetter.org/sheila

As Queensland Deputy Premier Anna Bligh recently put it :

"The only way we could really (stop population growth) is to put a fence up at the (Queensland) border, or to cancel or freeze all new home building approvals," she said.

"That would have a very serious impact on the construction industry that a lot people rely on for jobs."

Remember, this is the 'left wing' female ex-student-activist Deputy Premier of the 'Smart' State speaking.

So we need to grow population in order to provide jobs for those already living here. And of course, tomorrow all of today's new arrivals will depend upon yet more new arrivals in order to create jobs for them. And the day after tomorrow all those newer arrivals will depend upon yet more new arrivals to create jobs for them, and so on until we are all only permitted to consume 5 litres of water a day each and are living stacked on on top of each other all the way up to the mesosphere in concrete boxes.

And, of course, as Professor Quiggin has pointed out, those who have invested in the hyper-inflated housing market expect the value of their investment to be at least maintained, if not increased. How else is this to be achieved without a constant flow of immigration?

How could anyone possibly question the economic capabilities of the various Governments which have brought about these circumstances?

---

Footnotes

1. Prime Minister John Howard said in 2004:

I haven’t met anybody yet who’s stopped me in the street and shaken their fist and said: "Howard, I’m angry with you, my house has got more valuable."

Topic:

Are nuclear fusion, fission and 'renewables' viable alternatives to fossil fuels?

Thu, 2007-07-12 14:03 by James Sinnamon

This blog entry is perhaps my hundred-and-umpteenth response on various online forums to the question of supposed alternatives to fossil fuel as an energy source for all of the demands of modern industrial society. The article was posted to a forum in response to an article Australia’s oversized footprint by Queensland Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett. The article had considerable merit but was fatally flawed by Bartlett's blindness to the question of Australia's population. Bartlett, whilst an avowed environmentalist, is in favour of high immigration (although he has yet to come out and give his explicit support to the current near-stratospheric unoffical annual rate of 300,000 now allowed by the Federal government) and population growth. He has used his profile to give practical support to community campaigns against environmentally unsustainable infrastructure projects such as the North-South Bypass Tunnel, but has failed to address one of the principle underlying causes, that is South East Queensland's relentless population growth which is officialy encouraged by both the Queensland state government and the Commonwealth government.

Andrew Bartlett's articles, as well as attracting posts from people, like myself, who are critical of his pro-population-growth stance, also attracts critical posts from extreme market fundamentalist anti-environmentalists, who object even to Bartlett's flawed and limited pro-environmental stance as well as his progressive humanitarian values. One of those contributors, 'alzo', posted the comment:

"Fission reactors should tide us over until fusion reactors become a reality. There are lots of possible energy sources."

This is my response.

Alzo, today we seem no closer to realising the dream of unlimited supplies of energy from nuclear fusion than we were thirty years ago. According to one scientist, who has worked on nuclear fusion, the nail in the coffin of nuclear fusion will prove to be the lack of sufficient supplies of the necessary hydrogen isotope tritium. For further information, see the forthcoming second edition of "The Final Energy Crisis" edited by Sheila Newman (http://candobetter.org/sheila).

Hazards of nuclear fission

In regard to nuclear fission, it is obviously a more viable source of energy that just may, if we are extremely careful, provide a bridge towards a more sustainable future whilst stocks of Uranium and Thorium last, however it has a very considerable environmental cost. If we increase the scale of nuclear power generation to the extent necessary to fill the gap power the environmental risks we currently face will be multiplied many times. The Chernobyl disaster. which could have been far worst if not for the quick thinking of those courageous workers on the spot is one illustration. On top of the hazards of nuclear fission electricity generation, even more environmental threats are posed by mining of uranium, enrichment, reprocessing and disposal of nuclear wastes. A likely consequence of the expansion of uranium mining in Central Australia is that the Eastern seaboard stands to be exposed to clouds bearing poisonous radioactive uranium and other toxic metals blown from the mine tailings dumps (see David Bradbury's film "Blowin' in the wind" for a graphic illustration of this threat). In the past, the long-term containment of tailings from mining operation has been problematic and, more often than not, fails in the longer term (as Jared Diamond has illustrated in describing past mining operations in Montana in Chapter 2 of "Collapse" pp35-41). I don't hold out any greater hope that the mining companies will do any better a job containing the mountains of tailings from the planned expanded Uranium mines.

Practical limitations of nuclear fission

Another problem with nuclear fission is that it can only be used to generate electricity. In order to operate transport or run factory machinery or mine milling equipment, the electricity has to be either somehow stored chemically, or transported directly as electricity using power lines, transformers and other expensive infrastructure. In the former case, energy is lost, in creating, for example, hydrogen from water, and the containment of hydrogen necessitates the fabrication of particularly strong and well-sealed containers. In the latter case, large quantities of non-renewable resources, particularly copper, are required, and it is expected that the world's production of copper will begin to decline next year (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=000CEA15-3272-13C8-9BFE83414B7FFE87).

Practical limitations of other 'renewables'

The other "lots of possible energy sources" are essentially derived from solar energy or geothermal energy. All require the use of equipment, the manufacture of which now requires non-renewable rare metals, petroleum-derived plastics and fossil fuel energy. The problems in building renewable energy generators, on a scale necessary to indefinitely meet global society's demands, as well as to provide the necessary additional energy to build replacement generators and infrastructure, without reliance upon fossil-fuel energy, appear to be overwhelming. It seems unlikely that this can be done on a scale anywhere near the scale we have been able to do thus far relying on our finite endowment of fossil fuels.

Applying the precautionary principle

So, I would suggest that it would be extremely imprudent to continue to consume natural resources at our current rate, let alone to increase our rate of consumption, and to go on trashing the world's ecology as we are doing now on the assumption that we can find an easy replacement to so much of that conveniently packaged solar energy captured over tens of millions of years that we have found buried under the ground. It would be far more prudent to assume that our current practices are unsustainable, and to begin now to reduce those levels of consumption.

Those who are consuming the most whilst contributing the least to society, such as property speculators and financial advisers should be amongst the first to be made to do so.

Topic:

Populate and Perish

Wed, 2007-07-11 00:00 by James Sinnamon

Citizens arrest

Tackling climate change is now a worldwide crusade - so what's stopping campaigners driving its simplest solution?

David Nicholson-Lord

Wednesday July 11, 2007

The Guardian

The simplest truths are sometimes the hardest to recognise. This month, according to the UN, world population will reach 6.7 billion, en route to a newly revised global total of 9.2 billion by 2050. The latest housing forecasts for England predict that we will need about 5m more homes in the next two decades. The economist Jeffrey Sachs devoted this spring's Reith lectures to a planet "bursting at the seams". And the most recent Social Trends analysis from the Office for National Statistics painted a picture of a Britain driven mad by overcrowding. Meanwhile, Gaia scientist James Lovelock has been warning about ecological collapse and world resources able to support only 500 million people, with many extra millions driven to take refuge in the UK.

In the midst of all these alarms is a very quiet place where the green lobby should be talking about human population growth. Today has been designated World Population Day by the UN, but you will not see any of the big environment and development groups mounting a campaign on population. Indeed, you will be lucky if they even mention the P-word. Earlier this year, Nafis Sadik, former director of the UN's population fund, berated such non-governmental organisations for being more concerned with fundraising than advocacy. Their silence on population, she observed, was "deafening".

Mainstream concern

So why isn't the green movement talking about population any more? In its early days, back in the 60s and 70s, population growth was a mainstream concern. Groups including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth (FoE), WWF and Oxfam took well-publicised positions on population issues - endorsing the Stop at Two (children) slogan, supporting zero population growth and publishing reports with titles such as Already Too Many (Oxfam). These days, Greenpeace declares that population is "not an issue for us" and describes it as "a factor [in] but not one of the drivers of" environmental problems.

FOE last year tried to answer some "common questions" on the subject, including: "Why isn't Friends of the Earth tackling population growth?" Oxfam, which as recently as 1994 published a report entitled World Population: The Biggest Problem of All, now does not list it among the dozen or so "issues we work on", and nor does it figure in the "What you can do" section of WWF's One Planet Living campaign.

The green lobby's main argument is that numbers do not matter so much - it is how we live and consume that counts. FoE even remarks that "it is unhelpful to enter into a debate about numbers. The key issue is the need for the government to implement policies that respect environmental limits, whatever the population of the UK". It is a statement that seems to treat population and environmental limits as entirely separate subjects.

There are two powerful counter-arguments to this. One is common sense: that consumption and numbers matter and that if a consumer is absent - that is, unborn - then so is his or her consumption. The second is the weight of evidence. Sir David King, the government's chief scientist, told a parliamentary inquiry last year: "It is self-evident that the massive growth in the human population through the 20th century has had more impact on biodiversity than any other single factor."

The increase in global population over the next 40 years, for example, is roughly what the entire world population was in 1950. The UK, currently around 61 million people, is on course for 71 million by 2074, by which time England's densities will have outstripped those of South Korea, which, by some measures, is currently the world's second most crowded country - second only to Bangladesh.

The Optimum Population Trust today publishes a new report, Youthquake, that warns - echoing Lovelock - that environmental degradation caused by the number of humans may force more governments to follow China's lead and introduce compulsory limits on family size.

Many suspect other motives for the green lobby's neglect of the population issue. It is a sensitive subject, bound up with issues on which the progressive left, which most environmental groups identify with, has developed a defensive intellectual reflex. These include race and immigration - the latter accounts for more than 80% of forecast UK population growth, for example - reproductive choice, human rights and gender equality. Calls for population restraint can easily be portrayed as "anti-people" - surely people are part of "the solution"? It is far easier to ignore the whole subject; let somebody else - or nobody - deal with it.

Verbal contortions

This often involves intriguing verbal contortions. The 70s organisation Population Countdown, having morphed into Population Concern, in 2003 rechristened itself as Interact Worldwide - under its former name, consultants told it, its funders, and future, would dry up.

Faced with escalating forecasts of housing need - one recent government projection says we will need 11m more households in the UK by 2050, an increase of over 40% - the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) proclaims itself in favour of "development that protects the countryside and the environment" and ignores the fact that the main cause of forecast housing growth, responsible for 59% of the total, is population increase.

So why does the CPRE not campaign on the issue that poses the greatest threat to rural England? "If we did," says Shaun Spiers, CPRE's chief executive, "it appears unlikely that our actions would have any effect on population growth, and that would lay us open to the charge of misusing our charitable funds."

How to categorise such reactions? Pragmatism? Cowardice? Sensible tactics? Or an overdose of organisational self-preservation? Whatever the reason, it is infectious - the media (and politicians) take many of their awareness cues from NGOs so the silence on population becomes society-wide. As a result, family size is seen as an exercise in individual lifestyle choice: few people consider the consequences for the planet of their fertility decisions. That means fertility rates in the UK rise, and the population keeps on growing.

· David Nicholson-Lord is an environmental writer and research associate for the Optimum Population Trust. The Youthquake report is available at optimumpopulation.org

· Email your comments to society |AT| guardian.co.uk. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication"

Mayors of South East Queensland seek help from developers to push growth plan

Mon, 2007-06-25 10:26 by admin

Sustainable Population Australia South East Queensland Branch Media Release Monday, 25 June 2007

A recent publication of the Council of Mayors South East Queensland highlights that the mayors of SEQ are seeking help from developers to push the Local Growth Management Strategies (LGMS). These are legal planning documents that force each local government area in South East Queensland to accept unsustainable growth.

The COMmunique₁ 22 June 2007 states:

“The Council of Mayors (SEQ) will seek the support of the Property Council and Urban Development Institute of Australia to lobby the State Government for a communications campaign to promote key messages regarding the intent and purpose of local growth management strategies under the South East Queensland (SEQ) Regional Plan. Although acknowledging the issue, the State Government has yet to commit to a broad based and high profile campaign.”

“Local government mayors recognize they cannot sell unsustainable growth to their constituents, so they are seeking help from those who desire it most,” said Baltais.

“What is most appalling is that they want this unholy alliance to pressure the Queensland Government to spin a story for them,” said Baltais.

“We urge the Queensland Government to resist this pressure and engage the community in planning for its future with a total review of all targets in the SEQ Regional Plan in light of recent studies and current knowledge.”

Footnotes

1. See document at www.councilofmayorsseq.qld.gov.au/.../20070622_communique.pdf (43K)

Topic:

Stop the Queensland growth treadmill!

Sun, 2007-06-24 19:22 by admin

The Queensland Government does not pursue its environmently reckless course of encouraging endless population growth with the support of Queensland's existing population, who are overwhelmingly opposed. Rather it is being done to suit the interests of property developers and land speculators and dependent industries who are able to paradoxically exploit circumstances, in which all members of society must necessarily, on average, become poorer, in order to enrich themselves.

It accedes to the wishes of this parasitic growth lobby, because it is financially dependant upon stamp duties generated from real estate transactions and because developers, rather than trade unions, have become the principle source of contributions to Labor Party coffers.

On 22 April, the Age newspaper reported that the Queensland Government had rejected a call by the group Sustainable Population Australia to cap the south-east corner's mushrooming population to help save its dwindling water supplies. Deputy Premier Anna Bligh stated:

"The only way we could really do that is to put a fence up at the (Queensland) border, or to cancel or freeze all new home building approvals," she said.

"That would have a very serious impact on the construction industry that a lot people rely on for jobs.

In other words, Bligh was stating unapologetically that the Queensland economy was not being run to meet the needs of Queensland's existing population, rather that it was necessary to keep importing more and more people in order to keep existing Queenslanders employed. Evidently, she had never paused to reflect on how those new Queenslanders would, in turn, gain employment. One could only conclude than even more people would have to be imported in order to provide further employment opportunities for the new arrivals. In turn, those newer arrivals would would require yet more even newer arrivals.

In the meantime Queensland's existing population would be made to pay ever more for its basic sevices such as water water as Goverenments would find it necessary to depend upon energy-intensive technologically complex alternatives such as desalination and sewage recycling to provide the necessary water. Communities such as that in the Mary River Valley and at Wyaralong are to be face destruction as more dams were built in order to store the necessary water.

Clearly this stituation is unsustainable in the long term. The longer it is allowed to persist, the more difficult it will be for Queenslanders to cope in future with environmental crises, both global and localised, and looming shortages of natural resources. The sooner this cycle is broken the better.

Response to Roger Bezdek Peak Oil interview on "The National Interest"

Sun, 2007-06-24 15:47 by James Sinnamon

This was posted to ABC Radio National's "National Interest" guest book on 24 June 2007. It concerned an interview with Roger Bezdek, who is warning us that we need to prepare now for the inevitable inability of the oil industry to maintain supplies of oil sufficien to meet demand after the production of oil 'peaks' in the near future. His prediction that oil production will peak in 2020, whilst at variance with that of most in the oil industry, seem s remarkably optimistic to myslef who is expecting teh total global production to peak any day now. I can only hope that he is right. Nevertheless, even if he is right, his message did not seem to convey what I consider to be the necessary degree of urgency. Message insufficiently urgent I think, whilst Roger Bezdek's message, that we need to prepare well in advance for Peak Oil is a good one, I think we need to do so with a much greater sense of urgency. I am surprised that he dismissed the suggestion you put to him that we should cease forthwith the expansion of our road, bridge and airport infrastructure. Over-consumption and planned obsolescence wastes scarce petroleum We also have to grasp the fact now that the present high levels of consumption of petroleum-based consumer items, most of which end up in landfill after a matter of months (usually needlessly due to planned obsolescence), will be paid for in only a few more years time when we will not have enough petroleum and other non-renewable natural resources left to allow us to meet far more basic needs. When that happens we will then understand the stupidity of today's accepted practice of buying a new mobile phone, computer, or iPod every one or two years, or of building supposedly 'energy-efficent' refrigerators which turn into rusted pieces of junk after a mere five years. Raising oil prices alone not the answer Raising petrol prices alone, then leaving the rest to market forces cannot solve the problem. We have to be allowed through democratic processes to intervene to stop the 'free market's' needless waste of natural resources. Furthermore, it is important that the cost of preparing for Peak Oil be fairly shared amongst all sectors of society. It shouldn't be just the poor and disadvantaged who should be made to pay the price. How can we meet Peak Oil threat if population numbers go on increasing? The other obvious point is that the more consumers of petroleum products there are, the harder it will be to meet the challenge. The Australian Government's encouragement of record immigration (which according to Ross Gittins ("Back-scratching at a national level" SMH, 13 June 07) is not the official 150,000, but in fact 300,000 ) is insane in these circumstances.

Topic:

NZ Government drops immigration numbers

Tue, 2007-06-19 00:00 by James Sinnamon

Govt out to ease impact of migrants 5:00AM Tuesday June 19, 2007 by Derek Cheng The Government is taking a cautious approach to immigration, pushing down the numbers of incoming migrants while seeking further advice on the impact of immigration on inflation. It is understood a paper is being prepared for the Cabinet which will address, among other things, the effect of immigration on the housing market. As the Reserve Bank and New Zealand First highlight the effect of immigration on inflation and the housing market, the Government has decided to drop the target of incoming migrants this year to 47,000, the bottom end of the 47,000 to 52,000 forecast. Despite this, Immigration Minister David Cunliffe is standing by his comments in May, when he said the impact of immigration on the housing market was "likely to be relatively small". He concedes that immigration does have an impact, but says the size of the impact is uncertain. He said the large influx of migrants in 2002 and 2003 and a strong surge in the housing market suggested a strong relationship between the two, but he stopped short of saying that one caused the other. However, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters dismissed Mr Cunliffe's views. "He's wrong. Immigration has had a rippling effect right through New Zealand and it has had the most profound effect on the rising price in Auckland." Mr Peters acknowledged that the influx of tens of thousands of immigrants was offset by a similar number of people leaving, but that did not alter the demand pressures from immigrants. The Reserve Bank, in its submission to the parliamentary inquiry on housing affordability, pointed to curbs on immigration and a capital gains tax as ways to dent demand in the housing market. From the New Zealand Herald

immigration

What are the Environmental and Social Consequences of Immigration?

Thu, 2005-05-05 11:58 by admin

Page under construction

immigration

Book Review: Immigrants: your country needs them by Philippe Legrain

American Unions and their about-face on Immigration

Why conservation efforts will not survive mass immigration

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Racist-baiting of immigration reformers is left-wing McCarthyism

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Koala Preservation Society warns: Koala endangered in South East Queensland

The conspiracy of silence at the British, Australian and Canadian Broadcasting Commissons

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On housing affordability

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Are nuclear fusion, fission and 'renewables' viable alternatives to fossil fuels?

Topic:

Populate and Perish

Citizens arrest

David Nicholson-Lord

Wednesday July 11, 2007

The Guardian

Mayors of South East Queensland seek help from developers to push growth plan

Topic:

Stop the Queensland growth treadmill!

Response to Roger Bezdek Peak Oil interview on "The National Interest"

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NZ Government drops immigration numbers

What are the Environmental and Social Consequences of Immigration?

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David Nicholson-Lord Wednesday July 11, 2007 The Guardian

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