God! More babies - Pell
The man I’ve heard jokingly called ‘Pel Pot’ has come out saying that ruthless commercial forces are against procreation.
“Cardinal George Pell, speaking after the Pope's arrival in Sydney for World Youth Day (WYD), said Western nations were producing too few children as the institutions of marriage and procreation came under attack.” July 14, 2008, AAP (Murdoch press)
Since my own research has revealed to me that ruthless commercial forces are pouring billions of dollars into boosting Australia’s population, via births and immigration, I was amazed to read this.
Further reading of the article made me think that Cardinal Pell is actually worried about the marriage rate and thinks a decline in this will bring down the birth rate. I don’t know what he uses as a norm for the birth rate; Australia’s is pretty high for a first world country.
I would like to know if Cardinal Pell actually has any evidence for his fears that ruthless commercial forces are out to slow down the birthrate. Because, if such ruthless commercial forces exist, I would like to know what on earth they see in promoting small populations when every major commercial force I know of will do anything to push up the number of consumers of land, resources, mortgages and disposable products, no matter what miseries result.
If I knew what was in it for big business to depress the birth rate and the rate of immigration, you can bet I would be grateful for the information.
In the mean time, I can only assume that the press are publishing Pell’s unmitigated nonsense because they are among the forces which want to keep on driving population growth upwards. And Pell’s strange pronouncements will help to keep the public confused about what is really happening and who the real community enemies are.
I cannot help wondering if Cardinal Pell is performing for friends in the big end of town as a way of cooperating in order to reduce coverage of his own embarrassing attitude to the prosecution of pedophiles within the church.
The Catholic Church has for a long time been in the business of land-speculation and encouraging high immigration and birth rates. It must have made plenty of powerful friends through these habits.
If Pell is truly worried about fewer marriages and consequent reduction in very large families, he should consider the stress placed on family life by the corporate forces which profit from international property speculation and ensure that families are mortgaged to the hilt. (Banks, developers etc.) Who, with a working brain, would consider marriage and a family in such a situation?
If Pell is actually worried about drug taking and promiscuity, then perhaps he might consider that those habits accompany social precarity and that social precarity is an outcome of the policies which drive continuous diasporas within this country. In fact, the corporations which push up population growth very successfully in this country also manufacture the the commercialised culture that vehicles binge-drinking, recreational drug-taking, and predatory sex.
I can barely resist telling Dr Pell that if he is so concerned he should not be encouraging celibacy among priests. I can only be thankful that he does.
SEITA tollway using old data on oil prices
by Sheila Newman and Richard Laverack
Why build more roads now?
Why on earth, with petroleum supplies not meeting demand and oil prices through the roof, are we still engaging in public-private partnerships with road builders???
Australia is currently set to be criss-crossed by new roads, tunnels and tollways. A case in point, which we have studied is the SEITA Eastlink tollway, which is being built by ConnectEast in a private-public partnership with the Victorian Government.
So, why is Victoria engaged in massive road construction just now? And, why are we persisting with Eastlink, all the way down the Mornington Peninsular when we could simply stop it now?
We found some strange answers to our question towards the end of a SEITA document called, "Frankston Bypass Environment Effects Statement, Strategic Transport Modelling Technical, dated 3rd March 2008, in "Clause 5.7 - Impacts of Fuel Price Changes."
"The MITM adopts current estimates of vehicle operating costs (fuel maintenance etc) on a per kilometre basis in order to assist in determining route choice behaviour. However, these estimates remain constant for forecast years (2011, 2021 and 2031) since vehicle operating costs are unknown. However, it is worth investigating the elasticity of traffic demand with respect to fuel price in order to gain insight into the effects on traffic demand if fuel prices were to change in the future.
"Table 17 shows both short and long run elasticities of demand for fuel consumption and Vehicle Kilometres Travelled (VKT) with respect to fuel price. In the long term, and elasticity value of - 0.29 for VKT with respect to fuel price would mean that a 10% increase in fuel price would result in a 2.9% decrease in VKT. However, in reality motorists adjust much more to fuel price rises in relation to fuel consumption, either through more fuel efficient vehicles or better driving techniques to conserve fuel. This situation is likely to be even more relevant for the Frankston Mornington region where limited alternative transport options exist.”
SEITA then lists its source as Goodwin Dargay and Hanley (2003), referring to "Elasticities of Road Traffic and Fuel Consumption with respect to Price and Income: a review," ESRC Transport Studies Unit, University College London.
Let's analyse those statements.
Note that, In 2002, when the 'research' into trends for that review would have been done, oil was $22 a barrel. 10% of $22 is $2.20.
If all we had to cope with now was a $2.20 increase on $22, a freeway might still make some kind of sense. Now, however, only 6 years later, oil is over $140 a barrel. This is about 6 times the 2002 price of oil and represents a rise of 536% !
What has happened here? Well, we cannot say for sure, but what usually happens is that projections are based on past trends, and, since from 1987 to 2002 prices did vary more or less only by about 10%, to assume they would go on doing so would be to base one’s projections on past trends.
But those were not the only trends in the past.
Between 1973 and 1987 prices rocketed, but SEITA and the Victorian Government are proceeding as if the 1987 to 2002 trends will last for at least another half century.
The reality is that, since 2003, prices have increased continually, and have gone well beyond any previous levels in 2008, with little sign of ever coming down to the kind of trends relied upon by the Victorian government and ConnectEast to make the tollway a profitable, worthwhile or sensible transport option.
Have a look at trends in oil prices in the graph below:
(Source is "Oil Price History and Analysis," WTRG Economics' Energy Economist Newsletter, http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm. Prices are in 2006 dollars.)
Now why would an engineering company like ConnectEast, in the business of making roads, be unaware of the rising oil prices? Oil prices severely impact on the cost of the construction materials and the fuel used by roadmaking vehicles. Building Eastlink must be costing more every day. "Well in excess of 90% of the total construction budget has been spent," already in February 2008, according to The Age, in Simon Mann, "Long and winding road nearly ready to roll", February 16, 2008.
It would be strange if all ConnectEast's engineers and other staff, and SEITA's government advisors, were not aware of oil production curves and theory.
What of the Victorian Government - ConnectEast's partner - in tollroad ventures?
The government has received submissions and press releases from various groups about petroleum depletion projections and oil prices and there has been a Senate enquiry into oil depletion.
The Australian CSIRO study by Barney Foran and Franci Poldan, Future Dilemmas: Options to 2050 for Australia's population, technology, resources and environment, published in 2002, was already flagging problematic trends. See Chapter 4, "Natural Resources and the Environment".
The VAMPIRE study from Griffith University, Queensland, drew attention to Melbourne for its oil-reliant transport vulnerability.
Apart from that, explosive oil prices and depletion fears are constantly in the news. One would therefore be entitled to expect the Victorian government by now to be aware that business as usual has gone completely off the radar.
One has only to go to Amazon com to find a hundred or so books written in the last ten years about the coming energy and fuel crisis, most restating and reaffirming projections made for peak oil production and then decline to start around about now.
If that were not enough, in the past few days, on July 11, 2008, the CSIRO came out again and warned that the cost of petrol could rise to $8 a litre in the next 10 years.
Yet SEITA and the Government still seem to be basing their traffic projections for the next 30 years on a series of totally obsolete oil price trends. On this achronistic basis they openly state that they forecast 30,000 additional vehicles to be travelling along Moorooduc Road in five years time.
What sort of reasoning is this? How can spending $700,000,000 dollars be justified in these circumstances? And how can all the suffering by people and animals who live in the path of this freeway be justified?
After allowing for a 10% increase on $22 a litre fuel price of 2002, which they think might reduce the number of kilometers motorists might travel by 2.9%, SEITA diminish this feeble concession to reality with the rationale that motorists will deal with higher prices by using more fuel efficient vehicles or better driving techniques:
“However, in reality motorists adjust much more to fuel price rises in relation to fuel consumption, either through more fuel efficient vehicles or better driving techniques to conserve fuel.”
But, over the last six months motorists have flocked to public transport. So much so that Connex has ripped the seats out of trains to make standing room only! The metropolitan public transport network is at breaking point. There is no argument about this. The state has asked the Federal government to put funds into public transport.
What will happen if the Frankston and Mornington Peninsular region doesn’t get better public transport?
Is the poor public transport situation from Frankston down through the Peninsular one that ConnectEast, with its shareholders in mind, hopes the government will preserve? This would partly protect ConnectEast's investment. SEITA write, for a project meant to serve the Peninsular for more than thirty years into the future:
“This situation is likely to be even more relevant for the Frankston Mornington region where limited alternative transport options exist.”
This notion is problematic on a few grounds – to say the least. It would mean leaving the public to wear high petrol costs with no reliable public transport option, so that, if people could not pay for petrol, they would not be able to travel to work, shops, doctors, schools, hospitals. Presumably people would, as SEITA hopes, prioritise petrol costs in order to continue to travel for vital and income earning reasons.
SEITA does not canvas, and neither has the government, openly, the logical corollary to continuing very high petroleum prices. It is this: high petrol prices will bankrupt many businesses and leave many people unemployed or underemployed. In the short term businesses will cut whatever costs they can and pass costs on to consumers. The first cost-cut will be wages. Higher costs for products, higher costs for private transport, and lower wages and more unemployment, is a recipe for a sustained, possibly permanent economic depression. Some might describe such a situation as an economic and social collapse.
Colin Hampton,Frankston Councillor/SEITA advisor pushes for tollway through Pines Flora and Fauna
It looks like this tollway project, which SEITA says was on the Melways maps 40 years ago, has just gone out of date and should be abandoned. We could save ourselves the trouble of the last 50km or so. Yet, only a week or two ago, Colin Hampton, Frankston councilor and member of SEITA advisory council, at meeting with low attendance, pushed through support for SEITA’s Option 1, which is the one that goes through ecologically sensitive territory and divides the Mornington Peninsular in two, severely curtailing the few remaining chances for viable wildlife corridors.
What's what:
SEITA stands for the Victorian Southern and Eastern Integrated Transport Authority which was formed by the Victorian Government to manage private public tollway-construction ‘partnerships’. SEITA managed the selection of the private sector bids and now oversees the State's ongoing commitment to this project. In October 2004, ConnectEast was awarded the contract to fund, design, build, own and operate EastLink for a period of 39 years. ConnectEast was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in November 2004.
Who's responsible
The members of the advisory council to SEITA was set up with John Nicol, as 'Independent Chair'; Janet Holmes à Court, Deputy Chairman; and Frank Corr, Northern Community Representative; Norman Galbraith, Central Community Representative; Geoff Griffiths, Southern Community Representative; Cr Mick Morland, Casey City Council; Mr Tim Tamlin, City of Greater Dandenong; Cr Colin Hampton, Frankston City Council; Mr Ian Bell, Knox City Council; Ms Lydia Wilson, Manningham City Council; * Cr Tony Dib, Maroondah City Council; Cr Craig Shiell, Monash City Council; Cr Tim Rogers, Mornington Peninsula Shire Council; Cr Chris Aubrey, Whitehorse City Council.
The responsible minister is John Pallas, Minister for Roads and Ports.
Your Victorian leader is John Brumby.
(See also: “What Can YOU Do To Stop Road Tunnels Destroying Royal Park and Democracy?”
“Roads to wildlife extinction,”
“Wildlife Campaigner: "SEITA preferred Frankston bypass route will severely impact wildife"”)
What Can YOU Do To Stop Road Tunnels Destroying Royal Park and Democracy?
Aerial View of Royal Park Showing proposed Road Tunnels in white, drawn by Dr Jan Scheurer.
The extension of the Eastern Freeway in tolled road tunnels through Royal Park was announced in Sir Rod Eddington’s report on “Investing in Transport - East West Link Needs Assessment” released on 2 April 2008. The State Government then called for public submissions on the Report.
The closing date is next Tuesday 5 July 2008. If you have not already done so, could you make a submission? To assist, there is a proforma letter for you to send urgently, published at the base of this article.
Click here to see a map of Royal Park before Australand, Commonwealth Games and proposed Road Tunnels.
Construction of Road Tunnels through Royal Park, as proposed in the Eddington Report, will devastate the Park and badly affect residential West Parkville.
The Road Tunnel starts at Hoddle Street; goes under the Melbourne General Cemetery; and proceeds underground until it comes to the surface to form a T junction in Royal Park, adjacent to the State Netball and Hockey Centre (SNHC). This huge junction area will be a quarry for 5 to 10 years and, although said to be constructed by "cut and cover" methods may never be "covered" due to security concerns.
The southern spur of the Tunnel heads south under Flemington Road, emerges in Holland Park in Kensington and exits at the Port of Melbourne. The northern spur carves its way through Royal Park sports grounds, wetlands and underground water storage areas and exits in the middle of CityLink.
In the last ten years we have seen massive land grabs for the SNHC, the Games Village and, recently, the Royal Children’s Hospital.
To the left is the Candobetter artist's rough interpretation of what is happening and the recent past. The white lines are the new tunnel. Highlighted in red is the approximate area of 20ha given to Australand by the State government a couple of years ago.
More accurate drawings are welcome.
Road Tunnels are the final nail in the Park’s coffin. And you might as well bury democracy in that coffin, along with a lot of other nice things.
See in the top illustration, the aerial photo with graphics drawn by Dr Jan Scheurer of RMIT. This is the only graphic representation to show exactly where the Road Tunnels with 4 lanes of traffic will go in Royal Park. (The Eddington Report’s little line drawings fail to graphically present the reality and the enormity of this project.)
The dotted lines represent tunnels with open cut-and-cover construction and the filled-in lines the underground tunnels. The fine lines represent walls or fences around exit and entry points and the one line to the south of the SNHC is a roadway needed to drive around the perimeter of the Road Tunnels junction.
Roads Minister Tim Pallas is reported to have said at a meeting with the Kensington Association on 25 June 2008 that it was “not possible to construct major infrastructure without impacts, and that some had to be tolerated for the wider good”. Are you willing to sacrifice Royal Park for Road Tunnels?
What’s Been Happening?
The Royal Park Protection Group Inc. (RPPG) has been involved in the campaign to oppose Road Tunnels together with a number of other community organisations and political groups. These are (in alphabetical order): The Coalition of Residents and Business Associations – Melbourne (CORBA); Carlton Residents’ Association; Flemington Association, Great Public Transport not a Tollway Tunnel and Freeway (a Western suburbs group); Greens (particularly MP’s Greg Barber and Colleen Hartland); Kensington Association, Mount Alexander Road Campaign Group (MARCG); and Yarra Campaign Against Tunnels (YCAT).
Significant Recent Events in the Campaign Opposing Road Tunnels:
25 May: “No Tunnels” Rally at Debney’s Park organised by RPPG and MARCG.
3 June: “No Tunnels” Rally outside Melbourne Town Hall prior to Planning Committee meeting.
18 June: Meeting of Western Suburbs groups in Footscray organised by Greens.
21 June: “Hands off Holland Park” Kensington Association Rally in JJ Holland Park, Kensington.
24 June: “No Tunnels” Rally outside the Melbourne Town Hall prior to the Council meeting.
4 July: Eastern Transport Alliance Forum at Manningham Council on Public Transport esp. rail.
5 July: “Climate Emergency Rally” City Square then march to Alexandra Gardens.
Coming Events:
Friday 11 July: The Premier is going “Live on Line” re Eddington Report. www.premier.vic.gov.au
Tuesday 15 July: D Day - Closing Date for Submissions to Eddington Review.
Tuesday 15 July: “No Tunnels” Rally outside Yarra Council Meeting 6:45 pm Fitzroy Town Hall.
Monday 4 August: Meeting Public Transport not Tunnels 7 pm 10 Hyde St. Footscray.
OTHER NEWS:
Dispute over Commuter Cycle Path through Royal Park
The long saga of the cycle path proposed for the Park next to Macarthur Road ended at the Planning Committee meeting of 8 April 2008. The Committee decided as follows: "that the Planning Committee resolve to … grant a Planning Permit for the construction of the shared path subject to conditions… to this report keeping the pathway as close as possible to Macarthur Road with a minimum of three metres separation from the road without widening the path or decreasing the number of trees." Sounded clear enough to us. But we discovered that, over the long weekend in June, a path was being carved through the Park up to 17 metres away from Macarthur Road and that 23 trees were being felled. Correspondence ensued with the CEO, Councillors and Council officers and we were told that it was all a matter of “interpretation.” Could have fooled us! It appears to us that Council staff call the shots at the Town Hall.
Dispute over Dogs-off-Leash in Royal Park
At a meeting of 8 July 2008 the Environment Committee of the City of Melbourne considered the proposed new areas for Dogs off Leash in Royal Park. Unfortunately Councillors appear to have been swayed by arguments put up by Minister Bronwyn Pike, Member for Melbourne and Patron of the Royal Park Dogs Group, and Minister Dick Wynne whose wife is a member of the Dogs Group. Thus means that an extensive area of parkland of high habitat value populated with ground nesting birds has been confirmed as a Dogs off Leash area. This threatens many species of birds documented recently in a professional birds’ survey.
Minister Bronwyn Pike is reported to have said at a meeting with the Kensington Association on 25 June 2008 that she was: “working assiduously with her Government colleagues to alert them to possible impacts of such a proposal (i.e. road tunnels) on Kensington and other parts of her constituency. It was not possible or practicable for her, as a Government Minister, to rule out any specific aspects of the Eddington proposals … Rather, she believed that she was best able to serve her constituents by working 'from within', rather than by excluding herself from the process by prematurely condemning the proposal.” (We have heard the self same words over the Games Village and the Royal Children’s Hospital)
Editor's comment: Apart from the tactics, obviously overpopulation in Melbourne is forcing indigenous animals to compete with dogs, and dogs to compete with local people, and locals to compete for parkland with developers and the new populations of consumers which they have imported, and which are the cause of these new roads.
We can all only lose.
Minister Bronwyn Pike should be protesting to stop the freeway because it will take away from dogs and humans as well as from trees and indigenous animals. It is tragic that this park, which goes back to the time of early settlement, is being sacrificed for very transient benefits to a few people. These tunnels and roads will become monuments to folly and vested interest in the face of oil depletion.
The Royal Park Protection Group is an incorporated organization and its objectives are as follows:
1. To protect, regenerate and conserve the Royal Park as a unique, indigenous, central city park for present and future generations, consistent with principles of the 1987 Royal Park Master Plan; and
2. To oppose alienation of parkland by government, commercial, sporting and other bodies to ensure public access consistent with the terms of the establishment of the Royal Park.
The group has learned close up of the erosion of democracy over the past few years. Their experience seeded the formation of the peak body, Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc (PPLV).
SUBMISSION PROFORMA
The Chief of Staff
East-West Transport Options Review
Department of Transport
GPO Box 2797
Melbourne 3001
Email address: eastwestyoursay[AT]doi.vic.gov.au
Dear Sir
I wish to make a submission to the East - West Road Transport Review.
I am totally opposed to the construction of road tunnels as proposed in the Eddington Report. Here are the points I wish to make to support my argument:
1. This proposed project involves construction of 4 lane freeway/tollway concrete road tunnels for 18 km., which will blow out Victoria’s green house emissions at the very time a “climate emergency” has been declared by the Federal Government.
2. Major parks - Royal Park and Holland Park - will be destroyed as they will be turned into major tunnel construction “staging” sites for 5 to 10 years. Open parkland and sports fields will be ripped up and community facilities removed. The Royal Park wetlands, developed with a $5 million grant from the State Government plus its water storage facility under the adjacent Ross Straw Field, will be obliterated as they are in the path of the Road Tunnel. The north of the Road Tunnel will exit on CityLink, which will be widened by two lanes over the Moonee Ponds Creek and Travancore Park.
3. Residential amenity of inner city neighbourhoods along the Road Tunnels route will be seriously compromised and heritage streetscapes threatened. Compulsory acquisition of residential properties along the route of the tunnels is inevitable.
4. The Road Tunnels are, in reality, a city by pass for trucks from the Port of Melbourne. There will be massive traffic congestion on surface roads as most traffic off the Eastern Freeway is headed for the city yet there are no outlets for commuters.
5. Vent stacks 12 storeys high will be built at the entry/exits (“portals”) of the Road Tunnels and every 3 kms. on their route. An example of these obtrusive polluting chimneys - the Burnley Tunnel vent stack – can be seen outside the Malthouse Theatre in Sturt Street, South Melbourne.
6. The $10 billion of funds designated for the Road Tunnels should be diverted into public transport, in particular rail extensions to Rowville and Doncaster and upgrading the Belgrave-Lilydale rail line.
I trust you will take account of my concerns over the proposed Road Tunnels. I would be pleased if you can acknowledge receipt of my submission.
Yours sincerely
Name:
Address:
Phone:
Email Address:
Date:
Garnaut to provide cover for privatisation of Snowy Hydro?
Update: Kelly denies Govt considering Snowy Hydro sell-off from ABC Online News 11 Jul 08 (see #update">below)
The Canberra Times has reported that the Rudd Labor Government is now planning to acquire the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Authority in order to privatise it. This is in spite of fierce public opposition which forced the previous Howard Government to abandon its own privatisation plans and Rudd's own pledge before the 2007 elections to keep it in public hands.
The Rudd Government maintains that it is "opposed to outright privatisation as such''. Instead, it plans to lease the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Corporation to private industry. However, as NSW anti-privatisation campaigner Greens MP John Kaye pointed out in a #JohnKaye">media release of 10 July, "There is no practical difference between Kevin Rudd's long term lease and John Howard's sell-off. Both would see control of the water in the scheme pass out of public hands to large multinational corporations."
John Kaye has warned that if NSW Treasurer Michael Costa succeeds in the privatisation of NSW's electricity assets, in the face of the strong opposition of 79% of the NSW public, that the Rudd Government may well feel encouraged to proceed with the sell-off of the Snowy Hydro.
According to the Canberra Times, the, by now, wholly familiar rationale for privatisation has been offered, that is, that it has to be privatised in order for the $800 million in investment said to be necessary can be raised by the private sector. No reason as to why the money couldn't, instead, simply be raised directly by the government either from general revenue or through loans was offered.
An impetus to privatisation also come unexpectedly in last week's Climate Change Review Draft Report. The report made the claim that ownership of the Snowy scheme by three governments NSW, Victoria and the Commonwealth could restrict future development and competitiveness in the national electricity market.
However, local community opponents to privatisation pointed out that Garnaut had paid no regard to the fact that the Snowy Hydro was a regulator of water. As former chief engineer with Snowy Hydro, Max Talbot, had written in a letter to the Prime Minister earlier this year after hearing that privatisation was being considered, Snowy Hydro was ''worthless as a business'' without its water licence.
''The licence is weighted towards the use of water for electricity production and trading rather than optimisation of the use of the water as an invaluable resource for irrigation, communities and the environment.
''It does not adequately regulate Snowy Hydro and contains compensation clauses that would result in the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars by governments to private owners should the licence need to be amended during its 75-year term.'
So if privatisation, in the guise of a long term lease were to proceed, the Australian community may be faced the unpalatable choice of forgoing vitally needed water or paying prohibitively for an breach of contract to the private operators of the Snowy Hydro.
Alpine Riverkeepers spokeswoman Acacia Rose was also critical of the Garnaut report's comments on privatising Snowy Hydro.
''The Snowy scheme is vital for water security and must be re-positioned for water storage and management despite the recommendations of Garnaut that focus primarily on energy generation,'' she said.
With diminishing rainfall for south-eastern Australia there will be less water available for energy generation.''
The fact that Ross Garnaut has so inappropriately used his authority to promote privatisation when privatisation has had such a disastrous track record and when it has been so emphatically opposed by the public, may be cause to question his preference for market forces, even if operating within the constraints of his carbon credits trading scheme, as the solution to global warming.
#update" id="update">Update
The ABC reported on 11 July that Federal Member for Eden-Monaro Mike Kelly has put an end to speculation that federal Labor has done a backflip on its opposition to privatise Snowy Hydro.
In response to the abovementioned Canberra Times article Mr Kelly said that his Government has not changed its opposition and he stands by his election pledge to keep the corporation in public hands.
He claimed that the Canberra Times report was misleading.
Comment: The report didn't account for the inconsistency between the Federal Government's support for the privatisation of NSW's electricity and its professed opposition to the sale of the Snowy Hydro.
#JohnKaye" id="JohnKaye">Appendix: Media Release for John Kaye, NSW Greens MLA
NSW power sell-off would renew Snowy Hydro privatisation push
10 July 08
The Iemma government's attempt to sell the state's electricity industry has become a test case for privatising the nation's largest hydro-electric and irrigation scheme, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.
Commenting on a story on page 1 of today's Canberra Times (''Snowy power may go private'
), Dr Kaye said: "Federal member for Eden-Monaro Mike Kelly has let the cat out of the bag.
"The Rudd government is carefully watching NSW Treasurer Michael Costa's push to sell off the state's retailers and generators.
"According to Mr Kelly, if Treasurer Costa is successful, the Commonwealth government will implement their secret plan to take over the Snowy and lease it out.
"It looks like a reincarnation of John Howard's privatisation plans that came to a sticky end in 2006 after massive public opposition.
"There is no practical difference between Kevin Rudd's long term lease and John Howard's sell-off. Both would see control of the water in the scheme pass out of public hands to large multinational corporations.
"The ante on the NSW sell-off has just been upped. The Iemma government's proposed sell-off is an environmental, social and economic disaster. It just got worse.
"The issue is no longer confined to the state's coal-fired power stations and retailers. It now includes Snowy.
"The state member for Eden-Monaro, Steve Whan, needs to get onto the phone to his federal colleague and reiterate the arguments he used in 2006 to oppose the sell off.
"No doubt Mr Whan will now be regretting his support of the Unsworth Inquiry recommendations to sell off the state's power industry.
"He will not be happy to see he has unwittingly become part of a renewed push to privatise Snowy.
"Mr Whan knows that this will be even more detested in his electorate than the already deeply unpopular power sell off," Dr Kaye said.
For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455
Community battles to save historic Willsmere Billabong
Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. media release, Friday 11 July 2008
Willsmere Billabong
Tomorrow, Saturday 12 July 2008, local residents and environmentalists will rally at Willsmere Billabong in Kew. This iconic Yarra riverside haven is threatened with annihilation if construction of a proposed “Westgate-style” bridge, boardwalk and commuter cycle path is allowed to proceed. Boroondara Councillor and former Mayor, Phillip Healey, has called an urgent Ward meeting on site to hear residents concerns about the Park and Billabong. (Recently a majority of Councillors gave this environmentally damaging project the go-ahead. Cr Healey, however, cast a dissenting vote.)
Tony Michael, Chairperson of Friends of Willsmere Park and Kew Billabong, explains:
“Willsmere Park has one of the last Billabongs remaining on the Yarra before the city. It is a reminder of what the rural environment was like when Europeans came to settle Victoria. Parks Victoria, whose charter is to save open space, simply sees it as a corridor through which they can build a monstrous steel and concrete bridge for commuter cyclists. It is expected that over 4,000 will daily speed right through the centre of the park, thus dividing it into two. The City of Boroondara's own Parks and Gardens department has recommended against this cycle path, saying that it is in the wrong location. There are 6 alternative routes other than through Willsmere Park and our aim is to see it relocated at one of the alternatives.”
Julianne Bell, Secretary of Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. (a coalition of 80 environment, heritage and community organisations) comments:
Plan of bike path
“The massive infrastructure required for cycle path and bridge will destroy not only the park but the billabong - an amazing oasis where wildlife such as platypus and tortoises and a myriad of rare birds have survived - until now that is. A 400 year old pre settlement River Red Gum is threatened by this project. It is ironic that the ad. by Melbourne Water about littering waterways shows a picture of a platypus saying "I worry about the health of my family" and calling on the public to "help protect our rivers and creeks". What protection does a platypus receive from the State Government? Very little, it seems. We are also very concerned that the area is subject to inundation and has a history of flooding. People have been swept off pedestrian bridges during flash floods of the Merri Creek and drowned. Alterative crossings must be explored. The safety of Boroondara residents plus many other Melburnians should not be put at risk.”
Community members are looking forward to the opportunity to meet Cr Healey and other Councillors to discuss future action. The case is to be heard in V. C. A.T. The hearing will involve Parks Victoria and four Councils including Boroondara.
Tomorrow on Saturday Media representatives are invited to meet in Willsmere Park in front of the small carpark in Willow Grove at 12:45 pm. At 1 pm we will proceed across the Park to the Billabong. The Melways Map Reference is 45 F1.
Media Contacts: Julianne Bell, Secretary, Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. 98184114. Tony Michael, Chairperson, Friends of Willsmere Park and Kew Billabong Inc. 0419 587939. Councillor Phillip Healey 04373747773. For information see www.boroondaraalive.com.
WA Government bullies coastal communities
WA Premier, Alan CarpenterIn an effort to silence residents with difficult questions, Western Australia's Cockburn Council routinely limits question time and threatens residents who defy these limits with AU$1,000 fines. The Mayor, Stephen Lee, is now on extended leave after the Crime Commission had found him guilty of misconduct for having accepted an undeclared election campaign donation of AU$43,000 from the Singapore-controlled developer Australand, which wanted to build the controversial Port Coogee Marina.
See also: Postscript: Cockburn Councillors threaten to use ratepayer funds to sue residents, Appendix: Cockburn Community advertisement of 18 Nov 08
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The Western Australian State Government has threatened to withhold funding for the restoration of jetties at both Bunbury and Busselton unless approval for waterfront developments opposed by the respective communities of Bunbury and Busselton is given.
For more information: contact Paul Llewellyn on 08 9848 1555 or 0428 317 182
Stop bullying Bunbury on waterfront: Paul Llewellyn, Greens WA
Greens media release 10 July 08
Paul Llewellyn
"The Government and its LandCorp developers are bullying the Bunbury community on the controversial waterfront development by holding them to ransom over jetty restoration", says Greens Member for the South West Region Paul Llewellyn.
"The State Government is saying it will only restore the jetty if the Bunbury Waterfront proposal goes ahead. Why should the public be pressured into selling off their precious coastal foreshore land for private development, in order to get the Jetty maintained?
"We are hearing this same tune being sung about the Busselton jetty, where LandCorp is locked in conflict with that community over their jetty restoration.
"LandCorp and the SW Development Commission put up a one-size-fits-all development proposal and proceeds to bulldoze it through planning procedures. We have seen it in Busselton and now we see it Bunbury. Their approach seeks to divide the community rather than build a united vision.
"This is a tired old formula, used by Government and LandCorp to get their way all around the State. I am working with local communities to unite in their campaigns against these cynical land sell offs," Mr Llewellyn says.
For more information: contact Paul Llewellyn on 08 9848 1555 or 0428 317 182
Your urgent help needed to save historic Yungaba
Dear Yungaba Action Group supporters and friends,
Yungaba Action Group needs your help to launch a legal fight against the development approval - no amount is too small to give!
Last week BCC posted the long-anticipated negotiated development approval on their website - it will see the guts ripped out of Yungaba, the last remaining intact 19th century immigration depot left in Australia, leaving only a shell for the public to view from outside a gated community.
Never again will future generations of Australians have the chance to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors where they first set foot on Australian soil. Instead, Yungaba will become the sole property of 10 millionaires who will live in luxury units with their own exclusive views down to the Brisbane River.
We need your help in this fight - we have been told that the sale is a done deal and that our cause is hopeless. But it is not in the Australian spirit to give up on what is right even though it seems hopeless.
We invoke the indomitable spirit of our immigrant ancestors and of the wounded ANZACS who were welcomed back to Queensland after their baptism on fire in WW1 to help us win back Yungaba for the people of Queensland. We will not give up!
We are preparing our legal challenge - we have engaged a legal firm with extensive experience in the Land and Environment Court and we have the support of a very reputable heritage expert as our expert witness - they believe that our cause is not hopeless and that we do have good grounds for appeal to save this very significant building for future generations to honour their immigrant origins.
We need your financial assistance - remember, no amount is too small to give - together we will succeed!
Please write a cheque to:
Yungaba Action Group Inc, and post to PO BOX 5564 West End Q 4101
Or deposit straight into our bank account:
Yungaba Action Group Inc, Commonwealth Bank, West End
BSB: 06 4131 Account Number: 10272133
Many thanks to those supporters who have already sent in donations - they are very much appreciated.
Yours sincerely
Delene Cuddihy
President
Yungaba Action Group (www.yungaba.org.au)
The rich get richer whilst the Australian middle-class is out-sourced
Rich get richer; middle class is out-sourced ...
Letter to the editor
Senior public servants - earning hundreds of thousands of dollars already - received an up-to 19% pay increase; those earning minimum wage got a mere 4% increase, an additional AU$21 per week swallowed by increasing petrol and food prices.
Providing a five-fold percent increase to those already earning more than five-times minimum wage exacerbates the disparity at both ends of income. It's a veritable slap-in-the-face to those struggling to make ends meet and to get ahead, to those performing some of our most unforgiving, thankless jobs.
Even 457-visa holders must be paid at least 50% more than minimum-wage Australian citizens. This award structure ensures that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer," and the middle class is increasingly populated by temporary residents, not Australians.
What's happened to Labor's advocating "wage restraint"? To the Australian "fair go"? We risk our future by "out-sourcing" our middle class, and separating our "haves" and "have nots" to ever-increasing extremes.
Judy Bamberger | +61-2-6247-6220 (phone, fax) |
Judy Bamberger | +61-2-6247-4746 (home) |
O'Connor ACT 2602 AUSTRALIA | bamberg [AT] eaglet.rain.com |
See also: article Will Rudd Government's high immigration program turn Australia into Argentina? which originated as a comment on this article.
Dead fish in Yarra should mean a stop to toxic dredging
Greens Media Release, 7 July 08
“The dredging of toxic sediments from the Yarra River should stop until an investigation is carried out into the discovery of dead fish floating in the water at Newport on Saturday”, Greens MP, Sue Pennicuik said.
“It’s more than a strange coincidence that fish are dying not far from where the grab dredge Goomai is digging up silt from the Yarra River bed and putting it in a barge to be dumped in the middle of Port Phillip Bay”, she said.
“So many people have warned the government and the Port of Melbourne that stirring up the contaminated sediments in the Yarra would poison fish and other aquatic life and potentially affect human health," Ms Pennicuik said.
“I am very disturbed that it appears to be happening already”, she said.
“The state government and Port of Melbourne have told Victorians that dredging would stop if there were problems, but dead fish in the Yarra is apparently not enough to stop the dredgers. How much worse does it have to get before dredging is stopped?”
For more information call Sue Pennicuik 0409 055 875
See also www.bluewedges.org
Brumby's water hypocrisy (or Spin running dry)
Plug the Pipe media release, 7th July 2008
Original media release at www.plugthepipe.com/MR070708.htm
An article by The Age's Peter Ker in last Wednesday's newspaper has provided some illuminating comments from Premier John Brumby during the lead up to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) confrontation with the hapless Penny Wong. In that article the Premier pledges to stand up for Victorian farmers and to resist pressure from other states to lift the 4% trading cap on water within Victoria.
He is reported as saying:
"We won't be supporting any increase in that cap. The fact is, there's just no water around - whether it's water for farmers or water for cities or water for irrigators or water for the environment, we're all short of water."
I wonder if the Premier realised what he was saying here in terms of his mindless push for billions of litres of water to be extracted from the very same farmers and the Murray River catchment each year.
It is also quite clear that this statement is an acknowledgement that the Premier's "New Water", or water derived from so called Goulburn Valley irrigation "savings" cannot be achieved because there is no water to save. To be viable, the Foodbowl "savings" plan requires 900 GL of losses from the irrigation districts per anum. This year the irrigation districts lost a record low of 380 GL voiding the saving plan and with the onset of worsening conditions, it is bound to be even less this year. After construction, the North South Pipeline may be pumping dust by the time it is ready to turn on in 2010. Other Brumby built pipeline infrastructure may achieve this much earlier.
This year, if conditions do not improve, Bendigo and Ballarat will not have any water to pump through the Goldfields Superpipe as they have the same water security as irrigators. Currently irrigators have a zero allocation and hence so does Bendigo and Ballarat. The water shortage has been so severe last season that the government granted Bendigo 10 of the 30 billion litres from the Eildon Dam's Environmental Reserve. This water is normally used to protect the rivers in the Murray Darling Basin against dangerous Blue Green Algae blooms that can occur when the river system has low flows.
The Brumby Government intends to accumulate a proportion of Eildon's environmental reserve water using a process known as "carry over" because it was acknowledged in early pipeline planning stages that the irrigation "savings" would not be available in sufficient quantities until 2012. This timeline is now unlikely to be met, however this means Bendigo, Ballarat and Melbourne will be dependent on the environmental reserve water and in competition for it.
What does all this mean for the Murray River? Just another aspect of how flawed the North South Pipeline is, that's what. The environmental reserve was created in wetter times and could possibly help in the Murray Crisis this year, but no, the Brumby Government, not content with just stealing water from irrigators, has reached a new all-time low.
How can the Murray be helped? Abandon the NS pipeline, leave Eildon's environmental reserve water to the Murray Darling Basin or Bendigo and Ballarat which are in a crisis, use the little water savings from the irrigation modernisation to help farmers and increase the flows of the Murray River.
The North South Pipeline will make the Murray River drier, Melbourne's extraction of 75 billion litres from its system is equivalent to building a new dam the size of the Tullaroop Reservoir. The water savings plans will also remove futher billions of litres of water from the Basin. The government's water plans are going to make the water crisis much worse for Bendigo, Ballarat, the Murray Darling Basin and rural communities. It is time for the Brumby government to stop its spin and start to address the water crisis in a responsible manner.
Sources:
Brumby ready for stoush over water by Peter Ker and Paul Austin, July 3, 2008, The AGE at http://www.theage.com.au/national/brumby-ready-for-stoush-over-water-20080702-30om.html?page=-1
Media contact: Eril Rathjen - 0488 329 266
See also: I will govern for all Victorians (caveat: but only if you are powerful and connected) of 26 Jun 08, Melbourne protests mass population growth and its profiteers of 7 Jul 08, Grave concerns: new state residential zones and loss of council planning powers in Melbourne of 7 Jul 08.
Grave concerns: new state residential zones and loss of council planning powers in Melbourne
Planning Activist, Christine Pruneau, of the Macedon Ranges Residents’ Association Inc, said, of the reasons for the public meeting in Melbourne yesterday, that the meeting was about the imminent New State Residential Zones and State Government removal of Council planning powers.
Ms Pruneau stated that the meeting was of interest to, "All Victorians who are concerned about what’s happening with planning in Victoria."
Although the meeting was to focus in particular on the impending new residential zones that "remove residents’ rights to object to or even know about planning applications," and removal of Councils’ planning powers by the Victorian government, Ms Pruneau said,
“This is as much about civil rights as it is about planning. It cuts to the question of whether the principles of consultation, transparency and accountability will survive in Victoria’s democracy."
"In Victoria, planning is being taken over by (handed to) development interests. Even the Department of Planning and Community Development is a member of the Property Council of Australia," she explained.
She added that, "The Department says this doesn't mean it has a conflict of interest," but, "MRRA says it does."
Just because you live in regional Victoria, does not mean that your rights and your environment are safe:
"Not only do these new residential zones wipe out residents' rights, but they’ve been written for Melbourne, and as usual, rural areas like Macedon Ranges and Bendigo will be forced to take them. It’s the same old story, same ghastly deficiencies, same ghastly outcomes. The difference is, this time residents won't be allowed to know or have a say when that ghastly (suburban) development happens," Pruneau stated.
Candobetter says that this is an Australia-wide stalking of our rights.
Ms Pruneau told of changes which had already happened in New South Wales.
"The NSW government has just changed its planning Act to remove, by law, residents’ rights in planning matters. This meeting is an opportunity to say we don’t want that to happen in Victoria."
Summing up, she said,
"There comes a point where if people don't stand up against injustice, they are condemned not only to live with it, but more and more of it."
She invited Victorians to take a stand.
For more information on the meeting and public transport, go to MRRA’s website (www.mrra.asn.au) or Planning Backlash (www.marvellousmelbourne.org), or call Christine Pruneau on 03 5427 1481.
NB Macedon Ranges Residents’ Association Inc [MRRA] is an affiliate member of Planning Backlash and of Sustainable Population Australia, Victorian Branch.
See also: Melbourne protests mass pop growth.
Desperate Costa launches counter-offensive against Garnaut
Media Release: 7 July 2008
NSW Treasurer Michael Costa's misleading attack on climate change reviewer Professor Ross Garnaut's emissions trading proposal is a last-ditch attempt to rescue the Iemma government's electricity privatisation push, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.
Commenting on an opinion piece by the Mr Costa in today's Australian ("Garnaut Report a first step that falls short"), Dr Kaye said: "The Treasurer is working hard to undermine Professor Garnaut's argument for not compensating the electricity generators for the costs of the proposed emissions trading scheme.
"Michael Costa is threatening the nation with blackouts and economic chaos if the generators are not given at least 30 percent of their permits for free.
"The only blackout will be the Treasurer's career if the loss of power station profitability undermines his attempted privatisation.
"Professor Garnaut has nailed yet another nail in the coffin of the Iemma government's power sell-off. Investors would not want to buy power stations that have to fork out billions of dollars each year for permits.
"Mr Costa wants the people of NSW to have no faith in the ability of the national electricity market to maintain capacity to meet demand.
"The Treasurer's tirade ignores the effects of rising wholesale electricity prices on encouraging other lower carbon sources to be developed and operate.
"It is ironic to watch a leading neo-liberal economic ideologue like Michael Costa argue that markets do not work.
"In desperation, the Treasurer also argues that the power stations have property right to pollute the atmosphere.
"Australian society has never accepted the right of corporations to do harm just because they have done so in the past. As Professor Garnaut pointed out, this nation reduced the profitability of tobacco companies and asbestos mines without compensation.
"It is time for Premier Iemma to reign in his Treasurer before he does yet more damage to the government's credibility," Dr Kaye said.
For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455
John Kaye
Greens member of the NSW Parliament
phone: (02) 9230 2668
fax: (02) 9230 2586
mobile: 0407 195 455
john.kaye[AT]parliament nsw gov au www.johnkaye.org.au
Melbourne protests mass population growth and its profiteers
For his political courage in speaking out against undemocratic, but mainstream media and government endorsed, growth, actor, Geoffrey Rush deserves particular historic recognition from Australians. He launched a new website: Marvellous Melbourne at https://marvellousmelbourne.org. Candobetter.net editor 12 January 2017: Unfortunately, eight years later it is no longer maintained, so we have removed the link. Candobetter.net remains one of its memorials. However the problem those optimistic protesters set out to solve has grown every year into a behemoth that threatens many of our institutions and certainly our way of life, all over Australia.
On Sunday July 6, 2008, Planning Backlash held an impressive public meeting in Mooney Valley.
Speakers included Blue Wedges activist, Jenny Warfe, and Actor Geoffrey Rush.
The meeting focused on the imminent threat of two key changes to government powers:
- New residential zones that remove residents’ rights to object to or even know about planning applications, and
- Removal of Councils’ planning powers by the Victorian government.
Jill Quirk, of Sustainable Population Australia, Victorian Branch, described the meeting as "Amazing".
Jenny Warfe evoked the ultimate pointlessness and crudeness of dredging operations in OUR Port Phillip Bay.
Geoffrey Rush launched a new website for Planning Backlash, called Marvellous Melbourne at marvellousmelbourne.org.
He spoke movingly of how utterly Melbourne will be transformed over the coming years. He also intelligently and courageously questioned the necessity for the population growth currently being imposed on Victorians, and raised the question of the optimum size for Melbourne.
For his courage, Geoffrey Rush deserves particular historic recognition from Australians. Although it is common for people at candobetter.org to challenge the grotesque premises and impacts of endless growth, a professional actor depends upon the mainstream media to a great degree. He therefore takes enormous risks in speaking out against politics which profit the mainstream media and which it heavily endorses. Indeed, it is largely because the mainstream media endorses undemocratic growth and the governments which provide it, that we have had this growth and its frightening and demoralising effects imposed upon us.
The Marvellous Melbourne site, marvellousmelbourne.org, asks:
"Is development the same as progress ? What makes the difference ? Is growth sustainable ? Is there any such thing as 'big enough'? What do we want to sustain ?"
And,
"Are elected governments just dictatorships between elections ?"
It states that,
"Planning is off the rails in Melbourne", and asks, "What is happening in the country and on the coast ?"
It concludes, "This site is for you. It is an attempt to celebrate the best of Melbourne - and to encourage you to explore what was, what is, and what could be."
Details to hand are sketchy, but other speakers were a Leongatha area resident who told of how the imposition by the Victorian government of a desalination plant has forced hitherto non-political residents to come out in organised protest to protect their environment and way of life. A woman from Kilmore, where high density living is being imposed, described how antithetical this was to the community's wishes, since Kilmore is a town which people deliberately chose to live in for a relaxed lifestyle and open space. A Stonnington councillor spoke about the massive and unwelcome changes which are looming for that area.
I believe that that other indefatigable campaigner against bad treatment of native wildlife, horrible planning decisions, and undemocratic population growth, actor Rod Quantok, was also there, but I have no actual report.
SPA(Vic) President, Jill Quirk, said, after the meeting, "The over all feeling I got from the afternoon and all the speakers was expressed pain and anxiety over losses continually suffered because of "development" and the consequent erosion of our environment as well as the loss of democracy entailed in the pace and magnitude of what is happening now in Victoria."
Let's hope that Marvellous Melbourne will extend to represent the rest of Victoria, and that similar sites will rise to represent every state in the country, since almost every settlement on this continent is at the mercy of corporatised growth and related forms of exploitation, which our corporatised governments have completely failed to protect us from. Candobetter will try to promote all such democratic initiatives.
We will try to include details of other speakers and speeches as they come in. Please post comments on this article, supplying details of speakers and speeches, if you are able.
How mass migration has devastated the social fabric of Britain
One of the biggest dilemmas for environmental realists is striking the right balance between the potential infringement of human rights required to power down to a more sustainable society on one hand, and the inevitable threat to human rights if we don't take action now. Let's call this the human rights dilemma. One solution is simply to deny the relevance of the coming environmental collapse by idealising a variant form of cornucopia, believing everything would be okay if we just wrested power from the corporate-military elite and brought about a new world order founded on the principles of liberty, fraternity and egalitarianism, extending the ideals of the French revolution to all 6.5 billion citizens alive today and making room for the 9 billion plus expected to grace our humble planet by 2050. Wouldn't it be wonderful if billions more could enjoy the North American way of life with sprawling verdant suburbs, neat bungalows with double garages and private swimming pools populated by shiny happy citizens. Sadly such a reality is just a fantasy promoted by soap operas, incessant but often subtle advertising and peer pressure, but it's the ideal to which billions of our fellow world citizens aspire. The endless, but usually fruitless, pursuit of consumertopia is, as amply documented in Oliver James' excellent book Affluenza, the cause of much distress. Many teenagers in affluent countries acquire a deep sense of inferiority because they lack the kind of consumer gadgets as their peers have or because they fail to emulate the cooldom and aesthetic perfection of media role models. Worse still the exponential rise in aggregate consumption by our species is ultimately suicidal, not just for indviduals but the vast majority of our fellow human beings. When nature begins to take its course, with its periodic natural distasters affecting ever greater numbers of people, you can bet the poorest and most vulnerable will always be the first to go.
The trendy left has long believed we can metaphorically have our cake and eat it. We can somehow let newcomers to our land join our consumer frenzy and cut carbon emissions. We can miraculously guarantee everyone affordable transport, cheap food, free healthcare and an extensive welfare state and reduce collective consumption. We can incredibly subsidise single parents and unwanted babies and simultaneously guarantee every child love, good education and a bright future. Such idealists live, pardon my French, in cloud cuckoo land. We can obviously only welcome newcomers to our land if our environment and economy can sustain their presence. Likewise we can only provide transport, food, healthcare and social benefits if we can sustainably maintain the material means required. We can only subsidise unwanted children by spending billions on social workers, childcare professionals and state benefits, diverting resources from other needy categories, e.g. a child in council care can cost a UK council as much as £90,000 a year and in all likelihood will continue to be a burden on public finances later in life. A prevailing culture of hedonism and entitlements has created a situation in the UK where over 2 million adults live on incapacity benefit not because they suffer from a severe sensory or physical impairment, but because of essentially psychological problems brought on by social marginalisation and self-destroying indulgence in drugs and booze, whether legal or illegal.
As a result the country has recently attracted over a million newcomers from Eastern Europe to do jobs in the catering, building, transport and agricultural sectors that home-grown Britons used to do. The Polish plumber phenomenon has affected not just the bustling overcrowded metropolis of London, but has spread far and wide to areas with high indigenous unemployment. Some businesses like Subway and Starbucks have actively recruited new migrants and then sent them to their outlets the length and breadth of the land. In just 4 years we have learned to expect to be served by recent economic migrants and hardly blink an eyelid when outside we see another home-bred homeless islander selling the Big Issue or another alcoholic beggar pestering us for loose change. So why does the Big Issue seller not take up plumbing and why does the beggar not get a job in Starbucks, Caffè Nero or Costa Coffee? The sad truth is that too much hard work is required to learn the tricks of the trade required by competent plumbers and most native Brits on benefits would not be much better off on the minimum wage. Worse still most customers would rather be served by polite, attractive and smiling Eastern European staff in their early twenties than emotionally insecure and often incompetent members of Britain's underclass of non-productive long-term benefit claimants. The corporate-state behemoth has effectively dumbed down the former working class, while importing a steady flow of smarter and keener migrant workers from countries where young people are still motivated to learn the hard skills any viable society needs. To cap it all, I've even witnessed migrant care workers looking after mentally ill indigenous citizens. Such is the shortage of competent maths teachers willing to endure the stress of British secondary schools that increasingly education authorities resort to importing human resources from countries where an interest in the abstract science of numbers is still cool. Meanwhile indigenous teachers are deserting the profession in their droves, intimidated not only by children unruly behaviour but by a culture of fear, litigation, lack of respect and celebrity worship. The government talks tough on combatting the perceived threats of terrorism, street crime and illegal immigration, softening public opposition to draconian surveillance state legislation, but has actually created a hypercompetitive labour market with a large reservoir of disgruntled and alienated workers, desperately seeking a piece of the action. The net result is a brain drain in countries of net emigration and growing dependence on the tentacles of corporate grandeur and an enslaving welfare state. Yet for every newcomer to the wealthy world boosting their per capita consumption, there remain billions in the poor world unable to scrape together the funds for a one-way ticket to the citadels of consumerdom, but increasingly reliant on trickle-down subsidies sent home by distant relatives.
#OpiumOfThePeople" id="OpiumOfThePeople">Opium of the People
It's hard to get closer to the heart of the corporate elite manipulating and conditioning the governing classes of the world's highest consumption economies than Rupert Murdoch. His media empire has in large part been responsible for winning popular support for neo-liberal or neo-conservative governments in the UK, Australia, the US and elsewhere. In the UK the switch from Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party to Tony's Blair's New Labour Party represented no shift in Rupert Murdoch's long term agenda. Both were tools that facilitated the implementation of globalist policies and transferred power away from local centres of power to unaccountable transnational corps and spurious supranational entities. Yet Murdoch has always known how to tailor his incessent propaganda to the target audience. In London, UK, you can pick up the Sun often bundled with free chocolate bars, bingo tickets or fuel discount vouchers, then enter Starbucks only to pick up a copy of the Times with your coffee. On the way home, you have to dodge distributors of the freebie LondonPaper, also owned by News International, and replete with celebrity gossip and other news deemed to be of a greater interest to trendy twenty-somethings who work in the city's thriving new media and advertising companies. This joins other freebies like the Metro, City A.M. and London Lite all aggressively handed out gratis by low-paid and usually migrant workers. Such papers end up littering the rapid transport system. The London Times still sets a semi-serious tone, requiring a reading age over ten, and a keen interest in world affairs. Its regular columnists include former Marxists and unlimited growth enthusiasts, Brendan O'Neill and Mick Hume, forever attacking green fascists as naive apologists for eugenics and simply writing their perceived enemies off as against progress. To this print media empire, we should of course, add Sky TV and Fox News.
It comes as little surprise alongside semi-intellectual apologists for our high-consumption lifestyle, the Murdoch press hires the services of populist automobile evangelist and TV celebrity of Top Gear fame, Jeremy Clarkson, responsbile for driving a landrover up a Scottish mountain, another 4x4 all the way to the North Pole and hiring a personal double-decker bus to take advantage of apparently empty bus-only lanes, which he thinks should be available to cars. At the Borders book store Top Gear now boasts its own section, replete with glossy picture books of shiny motors for aspriring Formula 1 champs to drool over.
It takes quite a huge leap of the imagination to conclude that the liberal media is largely responsible for environmental scare stories, but alas a growing number of left-leaning pundits such as William Engdahl and Greg Palast have gone down this route. A cult has arisen around climate change denial movies. Anthropogenic climate change is, of course, only a small piece in a much larger puzzle and, I dare say, often serves to dodge the key issue of the long-term sustainability of our growth-addicted model of development. We need merely raise the spectre of pseudo-environmentalist aristocrats such as Al Gore, Ted Turner or Prince Philip to whip up a mass frenzy of indignation against a secret plot to forcibly reduce the world's population and thus deny billions of the world's poor of the same luxuries we take for granted in the prosperous world.
It's hard to deny that environmental concerns tend to appeal much more to the better-educated professional classes than the wider working and welfare-dependent classes, including most recent economic migrants. Billions are invested annually in the never-ending promotion of consumption, entertainment and pure unadulterated mind control. The other day I asked a lady why she was reaching so eagerly for her copy of the Sun. Apparently unaware of who owned and controlled the newspaper, her reason for buying it was simple, to find out what's on the telly and read more celebrity gossip. No doubt she wrote me off as pompous twat with no affinity for the working class. Out in the provinces away from cosmopolitan metropolises, the UK has become a maize of Tesco Towns, with the masses meeting only for their weekly shopping sprees or to engage in entertainment events organised by large corporate operations. When not at work or at school, most are glued to gigantic plasma screens watching action-packed movies, surfing the commercialised Internet, engaging in violence-themed videogames or seeking new partners in dumbed-down chatrooms.
#GreenTokenism" id="GreenTokenism">Green Tokenism
The real debates on the future of our species and sustainability of our civilisation we should be holding have been significantly dumbed down on two fronts. First, the masses from Aberdeen to Zagreb or Sydney to Shanghai are lured by the never-ending promotion of the North American way of life, quite obviously unattainable for most. In this context eco-friendliness is just another desirable commodity. Second, the chattering classes are presented with simplified moral arguments about our duty to tackle a whole host of evils, ranging from climatic catastrophes, racism, despotic regimes, famine, energy security, homophobia, women's rights, child abuse, terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism. Whatever the purported problem, the solutions on offer assume the moral and cultural superiority of the enlightened global elite. Take the UK's Independent Newspaper, renowned for its championing of environmental causes. It's also one of the most unashamed proponents of immigration to an already overcrowded island. Yet for the simple minds of many sandal-wearing leftists, there is no conflict. Welcoming newcomers to our shores and buying energy-saving lightbulbs or cycling to work to reduce our environmental footprint are both part of our duty to help build a better world. Sadly in the grand scheme of things such efforts are futile. I can cycle to work or choose to tolerate overcrowded trains to reduce my carbon footprint, but the brainwashed masses, especially those who have just moved to a high consumption region, want to indulge as long they can afford it.
Some former Marxists and a handful of those who still adhere to this religion are acutely aware of the environmental paradox. Mike Davis, a Los Angeles-based activist, formerly associated with the International Socialists and author of Planet of Slums. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster and City of Quart, has finally realised that decades of unsustainable development and reliance on a globalised network of multinationals and governmental organisations, has all but destroyed the last vestiges of worker solidarity. In a recent article published in www.informationclearinghouse.info, he concludes:
In light of such studies, the current ruthless competition between energy and food markets, amplified by international speculation in commodities and agricultural land, is only a modest portent of the chaos that could soon grow exponentially from the convergence of resource depletion, intractable inequality, and climate change. The real danger is that human solidarity itself, like a West Antarctic ice shelf, will suddenly fracture and shatter into a thousand shards. (full article)
Nonetheless to alleviate the human consequences of catastrophes caused by climate change in the poor world, Mike Davis still asks us to welcome more immigrants aboard our lifeboat. It's like inviting passengers from the lower decks of the Titanic, about to drown in a purportedly unsinkable ship, to board a luxury yacht just a few hundred metres away. Some would brave the icy waters, but while the yacht may accommodate a handful of desperate Titanic passengers, it too would sink if they all reached temporary safety. One way or another our failure to act now by powering down both consumption and reproduction will see an escalation of internecine warfare and famine, while the new corporate aristocracy run for the hills, building themselves havens of tranquillity with the resources they plundered in times of plenty.
This article was originally published with the title "Breeding Hatred"
See also: Devastating demolition of the case for mass immigration by Sir Andrew Green in the Daily Mail of 31 Mar 08, The Collusion of the Left in the Neo-Liberal Agenda of Sep 06, Open Britain by 'open border' extremist Phillipe Legrain and introduction and comments on his own web site. A local copy of a posted comment is to be found here.
Neil's site: (www.outsider-insight.org.uk)
The nature of greed
Greed cannot be defined in conventional terms exclusively as a quest for more money or material possessions. It is simply a desire to have more and more. More than one needs. More than one can use. We know that billionaires don't need and can't use four yachts and a fleet of twenty antique cars but most North Americans have affluenza too. And our greed is manifested not just in our insatiable material appetites, but in our need for more activity. More hobbies, more “courses”, more “lessons”, more structured leisure events, and volunteering. All this in tandem with a double income work schedule.
Something must give. So what is deemed expendable? Small talk with friends. (Sorry, gotta go). Real talk with family. Time with pets. (North American dogs average a 20 minute nightly walk). Reading time. (remember novels?). Writing letters.(Emails mutilate the language ) Our sleep. (Canadians slept 9 ½ hours a night a century ago). Our health. (Indigenous people averaged 2 hours of work daily—the industrial revolution turned us into mindless robots.) In our contemporary society it is a sin to be seen not to be busy. I recall the words of Thoreau:
“If a man should walk in the woods for love of them of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer, but if spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.”
Above all we must be “goal-oriented”. We must have “plans”and “objectives”. The impression must be left that my life is not something to be experienced but rather like a career in the Cub Scouts where I get various performance badges to mark my “progress”. Just like the people who plaster their cars with the decals of National Parks to prove they had a good time. Well, I am an not a Japanese tourist and I feel more like just experiencing the moment rather than ruining it by recording it. I don't think life is like a carport that you have to fill up with junk —activities—so much to the point that there is no room for your car, that is, for what is essential.
In the 1950s people found time for people. Because they were satisfied with less. Satisfied and happy for the most part. When people had problems, my recollection was, hey, come over for a cup of tea, dear, and let's talk about it. Grandparents and their concerns were an integral part of the family. Mom was always home waiting for me to arrive from school with a cup of cocoa and a peanut butter sandwich, wanting to know how my day went. She could do that, because it took only one income to deliver what we wanted. A 950 square foot house, with three small bedrooms, one small bathroom, one icebox and one car for seven people. And no foreign vacations. A typical middle class lifestyle. Rich in time and quality of life.
But times have changed. 950sq feet is now a telephone booth for today's Canadians. Bathrooms are that size it seems. Some kids today have their own ensuites. I had to share my bathwater with two brothers, third in line, and one bath a week sufficed for hygiene. Many people in my boyhood were of the belief, like my parents, that Canada's wealth was not fairly shared, and that it was outrageous that there were poor among us who did not even have shelter or medical care. This situation is even worse today. But with one difference.
While folks like my parents, the socialists of the 1950s, believed that government services should assist the needy, they did not think, as apparently many people now do, that government should substitute for the care and assistance that friends, neighbours and relatives used to provide in the 1950s. The role of government in their view was to supplement what was already being done. Nothing is so debilitating as the notion that one has no individual responsibility, or community responsibility, to help people because we can just sit back and leave government to carry the ball. Or that we must await “funding” from government to proceed. In the post-carbon era we will have to return to the old Canadian pioneer ethic, get off our butts and help people ourselves. Barn-raising was not done by government employees. But by neighbours and friends who found time to help neighbours and friends. For nothing. No “funding” was available.
Presently, when an individual in obvious need of help or assistance is encountered the reflexive response is to offer the recommendation that he seek the help of some government agency or counseling service. That cup of tea that was offered in the 1950s is never proffered. There is a comfortable and convenient belief about that “these people” will be taken care of “if only” they will seek help. The fact is that if we spent 50% of our GDP on psychologists and counselors it would not take the place that stay-at-home moms, live-in-grandmas, and kindly neighbours did 5 decades ago. And given the choice between the fashionable trauma counselor of this century and my grandmother's apron, I'll take my grandmother any day of the week. The people who survived the London blitz didn't need psychologists—maybe if they had had them, they would have surrendered to Hitler. As it was, they just spent the time to help each other.
But the 50s will never return, you say. Just wait until the oil economy is done. You're going to get a crash course in Amish living and I am going back to the future… You'll have lots of time to slow down then and get re-connected with the people around you. But hey, you can do that now. You have time for me. Your day is 24 hours long just like mine. The point is, you will not make time for me because you have put too much on your plate and I am not a priority.
Now, I most probably should not be a priority. You have your family after all. But realize that is not external forces that are making you run so quickly on a treadmill. It is the force of your own greed to have it all. The bigger more expensive house, the higher paying more stressful job, the two cars, your yoga classes, the two kids, their music lessons, their soccer practices, your Mexican vacations that have to be financed by working over-time. etc. I didn't twist your arm to make those choices.
You “gotta go” because you are as “Type A” and wired into the system as is any Vancouverite, who at least doesn't have the hypocritical trappings of Island culture.
Have another expresso.
But one day, please read Leo Tolstoy's “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”
Tim Murray
June 13/06
See also: Living standards and our material prosperity of 6 Sep 2007 on Online Opinion and discussion.
Emigration as a safety valve for tyrants
An Analysis You Don't Get From the PC CBC
I once wrote that the CBC was an infallible guide as to what was not happening at home or abroad. It was like a weathervane that if it pointed in one direction, it offered me the assurance that the wind was blowing in exactly the opposite direction. Yet so many people for so many generations have been spoon fed information from Mother Corp that they have come to accept it as gospel when it is not. Pull the plug and maybe, just maybe, these people might learn to shop around , compare sources, match them with reality and feed themselves. Then bingo, a generation of smart, self-sufficient information consumers might emerge in this country.
The CBC treatment of the South African riots presented a case history of prefabricated politically correct journalism. The CBC reporter on assignment need not have bothered going to South Africa—he could have simply huddled with his former journalism professor in Ottawa at Carleton and written up a good storyline about xenophobic rioters who take out their misery upon poor foreigners who have a right to displace their jobs. The xenophobia template has served the CBC well for stories about riots in France, Germany, Cronulla and elsewhere—there is really no need for complexity or idiosyncratic national difference. The theme is the same. The rioters are an ignorant, reactionary, racist, evil bunch who are being manipulated by sinister forces. The foreign element must be accommodated without restriction.
Watching the CBC cover such events is like eating at MacDonalds. It is fast food journalism. It is news in a hurry all right, but it doesn't go down well. And it is the same old crap. Not very nutritious for the mind. Surely we are better off without the CBC. We are better off on a diet. Better just to shut our eyes rather than look at the world through their lens. Ordinary Canadians have an instinct for truth and balance that public broadcasting apparently doesn't have, as evidenced by this commentary I received from James Schipper of London, Ontario. It is about the tyranny in Zimbabwe that led to the riots in South Africa that the CBC allegedly was "covering". The CBC, however, did not take his holistic view of the problem which would have made the South African situation comprehensible. Schipper's common sense is the kind that our journalism schools filter out and the CBC doesn't hire. Schipper on emigration as a safety valve for dictators:
Zimbabwe illustrates how emigration allows countries to export problems and how emigration can delay political reforms. It should be obvious that Zimbabwe has massive problems. This has led millions of Zimbabweans to go abroad to SA, where they are competing against domestic unskilled labor, which is already superabundant and therefore plagued by high unemployment and low wages. The results have been the recent "xenophobic" attacks on foreigners. Zimbabwe simply exported its self-inflicted economic problems to SA.
Of course, this would not have been possible without the indulgence of the SA government, which has done very little to stem the massive inflow of Zimbabweans into its territory. Countries can't export their problems through emigration unless the country that is importing them allows it to happen.
What would have happened if no Zimbabweans had been permitted to settle abroad? Most likely, the economic situation in Zimbabwe would have become so desperate that there would have been a massive popular uprising and the overthrow of Mugabe's regime. In the short term, the situation might have been even worse, but the long- term prospects of Zimbabwe would have been better.
Emigration is a safety valve that helps tyrants to stay in power. When people know that they can't go abroad to escape the problems of their country, they have a very strong incentive to try to solve or mitigate those problems, while governments, knowing that the safety valve of emigration does not exist anymore, have stronger incentives to improve their performance.
As a postscript to Schipper's commentary I am moved to pose the question that many have asked before. Why then should special allowances be made to "refugees", or in the parlance of those outside Canada, "asylum seekers". I am puzzled why men like Dr. William Rees who have made a career talking about the need not to exceed our "carrying capacity" should, at the drop of a hat, be willing to accept literally tens of millions of refugees into my country because they are a different category of humanity than "immigrant". Excuse me, does the environment know this? Do refugees have no footprint Dr. Rees? James Schipper has just made the case, a case that a great many of us have long silently supported, that bulking up our countries with political refugees in the long term does neither us nor the country of emigration any good on many different levels. #comment-473317">Senator Bartlett take note.
Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
July 5, 2008
See also: CBC condemns South African rioters of 25 May 08, Will the great immigration debate take place of 21 May 08
How can GHG emissions be reduced if Australian coal exports are increased?
This was originally #comment-213744">posted to a discussion concerning the article Garnaut draft report released by John Quiggin. I posted it in response to another #comment-213713">post:
This whole we are only 1% of the problem, however ill defined is missing another point… and that point is …
We are far more than 1% of internationally traded coal.
If we so choose, we have leverage.
But do we choose the thirty pieces of silver or do we choose salvation… a habitable planet?
#comment-213713">SP, you have raised an extremely important question which has been, surprisingly, dodged by many avowed environmentalists. I wasn't even able to get clear statement from former Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett on this question. (See #comment-473317">discussion in response to Larvateus Prodeo article Will “the great immigration debate” take place? of 21 May 08.)
Any serious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must include a winding back of the rate of extraction and export of coal. We should certainly not be contemplating increases in the rate of exports and building infrastructure in order to facilitate that increase.
On 12 February 2007 last year when Greens Senator Bob Brown advocated that we plan to wind back our coal exports, he was savagely denounced by the Courier Mail and I assume the rest of the Murdoch newsmedia. The front page headline shrieked some like "This man wants to destroy 50,000 jobs!" beneath a photo of Bob Brown. Inside the story Kill coal off, says Bob was only slightly less hysterical. The effect of this, of course, was to preclude any calm discussion of this issue amongst the wider community. This is only one of almost countless illustrations of why the Murdoch Press is part of the problem and not part of the solution. They helped get us into the mess we are now in by denying the evidence of global warming for decades, the reckless encouragement of population growth both in Australia and abroad (at least, indirectly, by its support of President George W Bush who as cut funding to family planning aid to the Third World) and they certainly won't be helping to get us out of the mess.
If we are sincere about cutting GHG emissions both here and in the rest of the World we have to plan to reduce our exports of coal. Carbon dioxide sequestration is clearly useless for all practical purposes, as the technology, and a systems to police it, even if they work, cannot possibly take effect for decades after which it will be too late, so this should not be held as an excuse not to reduce our exports. We should certainly not be contemplating increases in the rate of exports and building infrastructure in order to facilitate that increase (a barrow which the Murdoch media never loses an opportunity to push these days). Some links, which may be of interest include: www.risingtide.org.au, candobetter.org/about#coalcandobetter.org/NoMoreCoalExports.
Appendix: More on the stance of the Murdoch newsmedia on the Garnaut Report
Garnaut wisdom behind the detail, the Weekend Australian editorial of 5 Jul 08. Supports Garnaut recommendations but argues that trading scheme should start in 2010 and not 2012. Remains "optimistic that given the chance, the free market will find the technological solutions required to combat climate change". Nevertheless, it believes that Australia should not act alone. Nothing said about Australia's escalating rate of the extraction and export of coal and other minerals and no reference made to the relentless campaign by The Australian to have more infrastructure built to facilitate their export. No reference is made to its support for population growth through record high immigration which is the principle driver of Australia's increases in GHG emissions. See Workers welcome editorial of 16 May 08.
Time to get climate change right Courier Mail editorial of 5 Jul 08. Also supports Garnaut Report in principle, like The Australian's editorial, but argues that the commencement date be delayed to 2012. Correctly acknowledges, in part, the problems of carbon dioxide geo-sequestration, but uses this to advocates that nuclear power be used instead. The adoption of nuclear power in Australia is a barrow that the Murdoch Press that the Murdoch media has decided to push very hard recently. Also, there is an implicit acknowledgement that Australia's coal industry is adding to the problem:
The flip side of these warnings is the possibility that a high carbon price and a steep reduction trajectory could cause dramatic dislocation in regions dependent on trade-exposed, emission-intensive industries such as coal mining and aluminium production.
Clearly nuclear power can only possibly solve the problem for coal mining by replacing coal as a source of energy, but it remains to be seen if the Courier Mail will back away from its earlier strident support of Australia's coal mining industry.
We must act now on climate change: Ross Garnaut in The Australian of 5 Jul 08, and Climate fight will cost us all In the Courier Mail of 5 Jul 08
Two massive demos in Melbourne on Sat 5th & Sun 6th - Climate & Government
JOIN BLUE WEDGES AND PLANNING BACKLASH AT TWO BIG EVENTS THIS WEEKEND!
1. Saturday 5th July
Over 60 community and environmental groups including Your Water Your Say, Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, Public Transport Users Association, Friends of the Earth, Tradewatch, Blue Wedges and may others have signed up to be part of this huge Red Alert event. We are all saying: Brumby and Rudd let’s get serious!
The Rally kicks off at 1 PM tomorrow, Saturday 5th July at the City Square (Not Fed Square) cnr. Swanson and Collins St. City.
Keynote Speaker Senator Bob Brown.
Please come to the rally. Bring your family & friends and bring along your own banner and signs to highlight the Climate Emergency message.
Wear Red, Carry Red, See Red! Help join the dots on Climate Change!
The rally will then march to Alexandra Gardens to form a human sign reading: CLIMATE EMERGENCY
A plane and blimp will take photos, so be part of history and join the huge number of people who want to tell Mr. Brumby to wake up to climate change and all its causes.
Blue Wedges says Mr. Brumby should be told that planning for even bigger ships with even more stuff for us to purchase is NOT the right way to go. Are bigger ships likely to come all the way down here when oil is $200 per barrel, or when it runs out completely? Trucking firms, airlines and motorists are already being affected by oil prices, so it is only a matter of time before shipowners start cutting back on their miles travelled. The economic analysis for the channel deepening project relies on us increasing our consumption by an alarming rate. We need to be moving 4 times the amount of trade through the Port of Melbourne by 2035…..can you do it????
That means bringing more and more container loads of stuff from the factories of China, which burn our coal, transported from us to them in oil guzzling ships. Meanwhile, our local manufacturers and exporters are feeling the squeeze. Our largest Victorian exporters, primary producers are struggling because of Climate Change…… We are stoking the fire!
And what does Mr. Brumby do? Build another coal fired power station!
If you have joined the dots and want to show your support, see you at the City Square at 1 PM tomorrow Saturday 5th July
More details at www.climaterally.blogspot.com
And -If you would like to carry a Blue Wedges placard at the rally contact Dee on 59812909 or [email protected] Then put it up on your fence!
2. PLANNING BACKLASH PUBLIC MEETING SUNDAY 6TH JULY
Image: Marvellousmelbourne website
Mr. Brumby, and his mate Planning Minister Madden, the state “developers”, are making people as mad as hell!
Join over 120 resident groups from city and country who have had enough of Mr. Brumby’s vision for Melbourne……which translates to more of everything. More high-rise, more shops, more high density housing, more trucks, more traffic congestion, more ships…… you name it he wants it!
But – the residents of town and country don’t want what Mr. Brumby wants. They say “We are as mad as hell and we are not going to take this any more. No more stripping away of our appeal rights. No to stripping away Councils’ planning powers.”
Speakers include: Geoffrey Rush, Rod Quantock (MC), David Davis (Liberal MP and Chair of Public Land Inquiry) and Greg Barber (Greens, MP)
Please join us at 2.30PM CLOCKTOWER TOWN HALL 750 MT ALEXANDER ROAD MOONEE VALLEY (Mel 28 J6). Show the Brumby government you care, but not for what they are doing!
For more details see: www.marvellousmelbourne.org
And, again of you would like a Blue Wedges banner to take along contact Dee on above contact details.
Why is the UN so complacent in the face of over-population peril?
Title was The edge of the abyss and green denial.
Earlier this year Lindsey Grant, former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of Environment warned that we face a tumultuous century, as competition grows for diminishing resources. The human race will not get through it without fundamental changes of our population size, our living arrangements, our consumption patterns, and our expectations – and probably not without mounting hunger and violence. He calls for a new mindset to deal with it.
“The name of the abyss is energy. People tend to worry about one crisis at a time,” he says. “We do so at our peril. Right now, the crisis of the moment is climate warming, but the decline of fossil energy will affect more people more seriously than climate change for most of this century. Both will generate a coming crisis in food production.
“The forces now coming together – the astonishing growth of fossil fuel use in the 20th Century, – the growth of human population, quadrupling in the same period, – climate warming and rising sea levels generated by that growth, the imminent decline of those fossil fuels, the growing shortage of fresh water to meet human needs - and as a consequence, the prospect that agriculture will be unable to produce enough food to feed us, are the most important immediate challenges to humankind. They threaten the fabric of modern societies. The threat – still largely unrecognised – transcends all the other problems that transfix our policy makers: terrorism, economic recession or the transitory issues of international politics.”
A month earlier Professor Betsy Hartmann, director of the Population and Development Program and associate professor at Hampshire College USA made a claim typical of growth and development orientated non-governmental organisations.
“The United Nations projects that world population will eventually stabilise, falling to 8.3 billion in 2175,” she says. “In developing countries, attention should focus on reducing poor people's vulnerability to environmental changes related to global warming, such as sea-level rise in Bangladesh or increased rainfall variation in Africa. A focus on population diverts us from the need to take action on these critical concerns.”
Well intended as such ideas are, we are unlikely to still have the resources and habitable living space to survive in any such numbers on the planet by 2175. People like Hartmann have obviously not heard of the growing number of countries, in the 2005 UN Population Division survey, now more concerned about the over-inflated and distorted case of supporting growing numbers of older people than too many people, encouraging immigration and higher birth rates with more tax incentives. Or the crazy population explosion in Africa and Haiti – desperately poor, wrecking what's left of the environment and exporting surplus people to USA, Canada and Europe.
Nor, it seems, has she looked at the population explosion in countries like Saudi Arabia, where wealth and urbanisation has seen no reduction in birth rates. And in the USA, where massive Mexican immigration to a more prosperous consumer life-style has seen average birth rates increase in the Mexican immigrant community over birth rates in Mexico.
It is so depressing that these well-meaning people just don't see the connection between higher population and all the problems they want to solve, even when the evidence is presented to them. It is a mind block. All they think about is trying to reduce everyone's consumption, to accommodate more people into an ever more stressed quality of life competing for diminishing resources – in the vain hope that populations will stabilise at a level that is already beyond the Earth's capacity to sustain. Growing populations just wipe out any gain from reducing consumption.
They selectively ignore hard evidence in the belief that the magic bullet of technology will somehow make all the problems conveniently go away, so everyone can have their cake and eat it. Trouble is, the cake is crumbling fast and their dream that all the world's growing numbers can be accommodated, using their other magic bullet of conscience-absolving ‘sustainable’ growth, is a delusion.
For many decades there has been a wilful blindness to recognise that overpopulation is at the root of so many of the critical problems we face today. Both the UK and US governments have completely ignored a Royal Commission and a Presidential Commission respectively, both of which warned that existing population levels were already high enough.
Many environmental organisations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are in denial or are too timid to confront reality lest they offend fundamentalist visions to go forth and multiply. They run scared of confronting the continuing high birth rates in many third world countries in case they are accused of racism. Instead, they call for our support to polish the furniture and re-arrange the deckchairs while planet earth's rapidly shrinking resources are consumed by relentless human population increase.
Living in denial suits the leaders in many poor nations. Limiting family size challenges engrained cultural habits and religious dogma. Better to hope that humanitarian aid prevents further hardship.
Geologist, author and population activist, William Stanton wrote: “Our planet, marvellous in its diversity of plant and animal life, naturally evolved over 1,000 million years, is being converted in a geological instant to a factory farm geared to feeding a single species, Homo-sapiens.”
The idea that the human goal should seek a high quality life rather than a high quantity and low quality one, to sustain the doctrine of short-term corporate greed, seems lost on our political leaders. Do we really want the maximum number of people with the minimum standard of living - or a smaller number at a comfortable standard of living?
#DemographicTransition" id="DemographicTransition">Misplaced confidence in the ‘demographic transition’ to population stability?
Population activists need to do more than parrot the UN prediction that population is conveniently set to stabilise at around 9.2 billion by 2050. Whatever realities we face trying to support a much larger global population in the lifetime of many people alive today, we also need to project the hard number-crunching consequences of continuing on our current track, which predicts a much larger population to absorb.
Stanton observes: “It's a grand recipe for complacency to be told that as nations achieve a prosperous western-style standard of living their population growth automatically falls to near zero. On this basis there is no population problem, only a need for masses of western aid. Unfortunately, this comforting theory has been found wanting time and again.” The United States is one of the most affluent nations in the world, but on its current demographic growth rate may well see its population expand from over 300 million now to 750 million by 2075.”
From 1950 to 2000 the mean population exponential growth rate was 1.77% - a doubling time of 40 years. Over 800 million go hungry every year and 2 billion suffer from malnutrition. Today, 1.8% is the average population growth rate for 4 billion people in the less developed world, excluding China. If this rate continues the population will rise from 6.7 billion to an impossible 21 billion by 2070. (Optimum Population Trust).
#ProcreativeRight" id="ProcreativeRight">Rethinking the procreative right
For most people the right to procreate is central to their belief. The world's religions, in particular, provided ample endorsement for the “go forth and multiply” message at a time when the world's population was a fraction of the resource-gobbling numbers it has now reached.
In April 2007 the Vatican Church concluded in a two-day Conference on Global-Warming-Paganism and Population Reduction that there is no evidence of man-induced climate change and that urgent priority for humanity is the development of the third world.
The 1994 Cairo conference on Population and Development concluded that “Reproductive rights embrace certain human rights that are already recognised in national laws …. These rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing, and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. “The promotion of the responsible exercise of these rights for all people should be the fundamental basis for government and community supported policies and programs in the area of reproductive health, including family planning.”
The word “responsible” is not defined. However, Carter Dillard, writing in Yale Human Rights and Development Legal Journal 2007, argues that defining some limits on procreation is not inconsistent with human rights.
“What is perceived as a justified legal and moral interest to procreate freely without regard to others, including the rights of prospective children and society as a whole, has consequences for others, and such acts are subject to law, if only in its role as a guide. If each person is endowed with rights that compete with and limit others' rights, the creation of new persons in a finite space eventually results in either limiting the rights of some in favour of the rights of others, or a general limiting of each person's overall rights, as the spheres of rights begin to overlap.”
In Reproductive Liberty and Overpopulation*, Carol Yates, Professor of Philosophy at Ithaca College in the United States argues that sustainability will require population reduction as well as changes in consumption. Reproductive liberty should not be considered a fundamental human right, she argues and a global agreement to address the risk of ecological meltdown and consequently the collapse of the human species, should include the option of coercive measures to reduce population to a sustainable level.
John Feeney, an environmental writer in Boulder, Colorado, says “A purposeful drop on the part of industrialised countries to consumption levels comparable to those of the poorest areas in the world is not only wholly unrealistic but, at today's population size, would not end our environmental woes. Our sheer numbers prevent it. We have no alternative but to return our attention to population. Already in overshoot, we must aim for population stabilisation followed by a decline in human numbers worldwide.
“We have to provide easy access to family planning options while educating parents and children through the media in the benefits of smaller families. And we should end the web of government incentives for larger families, to make population stabilisation more not less likely.” The money saved could be targeted at supporting older people.
Yet using the tax system as an incentive for reducing, not increasing birth rates is still regarded as a ‘no go area,’ an invasion of human rights, where the historic mindset of national power is boosted by growing numbers. Even now, with commodity prices soaring, ‘think tanks’ supposedly at the cutting edge of ideas, see a growing birth rate as a sign of economic well-being.
But what right is more important than trying to preserve an equitable quality of life for people instead of descending into more repressive and dangerous times, driven by the relentless pressures of ever increasing numbers? Many governments, the UK more than most, think nothing of introducing highly prescriptive and invasive regulations to control demand and behaviour – speed cameras, tax penalties and more. Why should we fear tax incentives to help save the planet and stem the decent into growing stress and chaos for our children?
The civilised choice seems obvious, yet the “growth is good” mindset of our political and business leaders, underpinned by (no longer) cheap energy, rules all.
In Estonia large baby bonuses have been offered to raise the birth rate, and have been quite widely taken up. Portugal has introduced tax incentives tied to pensions to encourage mothers to have more children and in Singapore (one of the most densely populated countries in the world) where birth rates have fallen significantly, the government has appointed a 'population czar' to encourage population growth.
In a 'scare campaign' about ageing, the Australian Government has been offering inducements of AU$5,000 for every new child born, in a country where government reports reveal constantly worsening environmental conditions. Yet the Government is encouraging more immigration each year than the natural birth rate, cheered on by the growth lobbyists. In 2005/6 the population grew by 265,800 (a natural increase of 131,200 plus net immigration of 134,600).
James Sinnamon (candobetter.org/james) Australian writer and environmental analyst describes this as “concentrated benefit" – where a minority in our community, i.e. land speculators, property developers, financiers and others collectively known as the "growth lobby", gain from population growth. "Diffuse injury" is what the rest of us pay in congestion, higher council rates, higher electricity charges, higher housing and environmental costs, hospital and education pressures for population growth. “For decades, the wider community was not fully aware of the costs they were paying because they were spread out so diffusely,” he says.” That is why the growth lobby was able to get away with it for so long.”
The UK's present population is around 60.5 million. It is more vulnerable to food imports than any other country in Europe and is increasingly dependent on energy imports. Family size and immigration levels will result in the UK population rising to 65 million over the next 10 years, 70 million in 2028, 77 million by 2051 and over 85 million by 2081 - at least 70% of this increase due to immigration. (OPT, Migration Watch UK)
All of us, politicians, business and public opinion, need to wake up fast or our children will inherit a grim future. Will they thank us for not acting in the face of such challenges?
(2,227 words)
John Kaye calls on Iemma to dump sell-off as NSW public repudiate privatisation
Costa has failed to sell privatisation to NSW voters: time to dump it
Greens Media Release: 29 June 2008
The Taverner Research poll released today shows that NSW voters have not been fooled by the Iemma government's power sell-off rhetoric, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.
Commenting on a story on pages 8 and 9 of today's Sun-Herald ('Jittery Labor MPs get ready to dump Iemma') Dr Kaye said: "A massive 79% of the poll sample rejected the government's rationale for electricity privatisation#main-fn1">1.
"Despite an intensive effort by Premier Morris Iemma and his Treasurer Michael Costa a tiny 14% believe them. Only 7% were undecided.
"The people of NSW are too smart to fall for the government's snow job.
"No amount of spin can hide the economic reality of the electricity industry. Selling off the retailers and the generators will leave the state's coffers with less value than it receives from annual dividends and tax payments.
"The Taverner Research Poll confirms the findings of two other polls taken earlier this year. Public opinion is not moving in favour of the sell-off.
"Premier Iemma and Treasurer Costa should give up. The voters have proven themselves to be too smart and the sell-off should be dumped," Dr Kaye said.
For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455
Footnotes
#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ Poll adds to string of bad news for Iemma of Monday 30 June in the Sydney Morning Herald reported:
The weekend poll found 79 per cent oppose power privatisation, even when reminded that the Government's rationale is to invest more in public infrastructure.
We really can do better than this! The Karen People and Cyclone Nargis
Knowing that I have a little connection with the Karen people, today James sent me a link to an article about David Everett, who is about to publish a book of his years fighting with the Karen National Liberation Army in Burma.
Very interestingly, the article says,
The spectacle of Burma's military rulers withholding aid from their stricken people after Cyclone Nargis devastated the Irrawaddy Delta region has strengthened his sense of righteousness... The Karen were among those worst affected by the cyclone. Everett says it was one of the reasons the military was in no hurry to provide relief. "What aid's going in is going straight to the military," he says. "They're reselling it to the people. A lot of the things journos haven't picked up on is the Irrawaddy Delta: (there are) five million Karen there. They're the majority of the population in the delta."
Yes, I had also heard this from a Karen friend a few weeks after the cyclone hit Burma in early May this year, and although we've all heard about the obstructiveness of the Burmese (sorry, 'Myanmar') government in being apparently extremely reluctant to allow aid workers into the country, it was never made explicitly clear in the mainstream media why this was.
If you do not know very much about the history of Burma since WWII, it still may not be very clear to you. In a nutshell, the military rulers of that country have not really been prepared to share power with anyone despite that fact that this is a country of great ethnic diversity, and that autonomy for each of the ethnic regions was supposed to have been guaranteed under the Union of Burma, set up following the defeat of Japan at the end of the war. Things went off the rails at 10:37 a.m. on 19th June 1947, when General Aung San was assassinated in Rangoon. Ring some bells? The result has been decades of war and suffering as the Burmese military have fought against almost all of the ethnic groups for total domination of the country.
If you have time, I very much recommend you read:
- Bertil Lintner, Burma in Revolt
- Claudio O. Delang, Suffering in Silence: The Human Rights Nightmare of the Karen People of Burma
Even if you reckon yourself to be pretty tough and thick-skinned, don't read this second book in any place where you don't want people to see you cry.
There are also some photos (Adobe Flash Player required) on the Internet taken by the husband, himself a Karen, of a friend of mine. This is also not very nice, so don't look if you do not want to see something that may be offensive to you.
Humanity really can do better than this, can't we?
Melbourne 2008: Life in a destruction zone
Word is that Melbourne is getting its 1 million more ten years early and that the Vic Government is in a panic because it has no idea how many permanent new guests have taken up its foolhardy invitations to come and stay. Who the hell is responsible?
Melbourne 2008: Living in a destruction zone
Once Melbourne number plates bore the motto, "The Garden State."
Then we got Kennett's formula, "Victoria on the Move." It sounded like some kind of unnecessary laxative, prescribed by a mad surgeon. Kennett tried to beat population up and, unfortunately for us, stopped the Victorian diaspora to Queensland. I guess he prepared the way for what Bracks did to Melbourne. Him and the editors and senior writers of the Fairfax and Murdoch press, who nagged shamelessly for population growth.
Since the Bracks Population Summit (2002) the Victorian government have ranted continuously and illogically about how we 'have' to have 1 million more Victorians. For local councils, population Projections exist in two forms:
Council data only go to 2011
ABS "Victoria in the Future" (VIF) series go to 2031.
But ...
The ABS has just discontinued VIF figures in circumstances which could mean that Victoria's actual growth has overshot both target and projections and has shot into the stratosphere. The word is that we are getting our 1 million more ten years early and that the Victorian government is in a panic because it has no idea how many permanent new guests have taken up its foolhardy invitations to come and live here.
This is almost certainly the reason for the hasty attempts to introduce draconian new "no-go", "slow-go" and "go-go" residential areas (now described as "areas of 'limited change', 'incremental change' and 'substantial change'.
“What I tell you three times is true.”
(Lewis Carrol, The Hunting of the Snark)
One of my most difficult tasks in writing about these matters is to overcome the propaganda which says that we must have economic growth and that for economic growth we must have population growth.
The Federal and State governments and the news-media repeat this all the time, despite much contrary evidence, and most people believe it because they have no other source of information.
On the one hand the State Government actively seeks to attract more and more immigrants to Melbourne.
On the other, it pretends that population growth is some irresistible force over which it has no control and for which we must all make way no matter what the demands.
Verify this by going to the Victorian Government’s immigration pages at http://www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au
Here's a sample of www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au:
and there is a special page to assist private immigration agents.
Yes, your government is really working overtime to overpopulate this country.
Alice in Victoria
Asking the public to accept massive intensification of infrastructure, huge cost increases, and loss of rights and space, and nature, on the grounds of a responsibility to reduce greenhouse emissions whilst bearing government imposed, unnecessary population growth is an Alice in Wonderland task.
Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." (Alice in Wonderland.)
But the Government is asking of the public to believe impossible things through the Melbourne 2030 program. Even the so-called independent auditors of Melbourne 2030 keep up the ridiculous charade:
Whilst recognising that almost everyone except developers hates Melbourne 2030, the ‘auditors’ of it write in their ‘independent report’:
“At the same time, local communities must be prepared to take a broad metropolitan view that recognises the necessity of urban consolidation,” they write, giving the reason as:
“(…)the urgent housing need resulting from unprecedented population increase and the need to reduce travel and greenhouse emissions to meet our responsibilities towards climate change.”
But even the Auditing Committee shows some unease, although not enough to save Melbourne or to question all the growth. They wrote:
“The recently released report of the Ministerial Working Group Making Local Policy Stronger (June 2007) and the subsequent State Government Five Point Priority Action Plan recognised community concerns in relation to existing residential zones. It proposed a way forward by enabling the identification of ‘no-go’, ‘slow-go’ and ‘go-go’ residential areas (now described as areas of ‘limited change’, ‘incremental change’ and ‘substantial change’) (...)”
“We would caution strongly, however, that the implementation of the five point action plan will not ease community tension unless local communities play a significant role in the application of new zones.”
Is conning the public going to make up for oil depletion and water scarcity?
Analyse the problem:
• Growing the population and expanding infrastructure will increase the number of car trips and the distance travelled.
• Modern high-rises are power-hungry.
• Building upwards increases the electrical power requirements for air conditioning, heating, drying clothing, moving things and people up and down in lifts and pumping water upwards.
• It is harder to cool and heat high-rises and it is harder to cool large, dense cities.
• Reducing vegetation reduces rainfall and cooling.
• Reducing access to land deprives people of access to vital resources when governments fail (as they invariably do.)
• Our Victorian government has already failed us by overshooting our water supply. It has attempted to supplement that supply by costly, power-hungry technologies, notably desalination. It has undertaken in ignorance an impossible promise to deliver these with alternative technologies.
Analyse the propaganda
We are running out of water, fuel, and affordable food; native flora and fauna are threatened, and democracy has been sacrificed to growth.
Driving these problems is Melbourne 2030 in its role as a vehicle for imposing massive population growth.
But what is driving Melbourne 2030?
Population growth via immigration is not, as we are led to believe, a kind response to the starving millions of the world.
And it is not to create a better world for the rest of us.
• Apart from a small number of refugees, the immigration program is actually all profit-driven by big business in Australia. The profit goes to a corporate and investor caste well out of the reach of the middle and the working classes.
• The number one profiteers in population growth in Australia are international property developers, which include Finance, construction, real-estate, engineering.
The 2002 Bracks Population Summit …
…was largely auspiced by Property Developers, in APop (The Australian Population Institute) and mortgage financiers. As well as Australia’s mainstream Press – Fairfax and Murdoch - which own www.realestate.com and www.domain.com.au, Mr Richard Pratt and Mr Steve Vizard, both involved in criminal activities for financial gain, were very prominent in this event.
Perhaps the two biggest peak bodies currently coordinating government lobbying on population growth to advantage the industries they represent are:
• The Property Council of Australia
• The Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering Sciences (working with the Scanlon Foundation and the Australian Multicultural Foundation.
Here are the main aims of the Property Council of Australia, from their own document, "Powerhouse 2010 Update" downloadable as a powerpoint file here
Don't you love it! Melbourne - and the rest of Australia - under permanent construction.
Ah, the excitement of choking traffic in the mornings; the challenge of breathing in that dust.
The joy of watching your favourite piece of nature paved over.
The engagement of foregoing sleep to write useless submissions to your local member and state government.
Gee, our taxes at work! 33% of my wages. And then, on top of that, there are those rising council rates, that burgeoning homelessness, those skyrocketing rents, those outrageous property prices, that choking traffic...
And, here is their latest 'branch' member - the Victorian Government.
The Problem: Organising against population growth, dispossession and life-threatening hardship as oil and water deplete.
The mainstream media and government are corporatised and represent the interests of the corporate world. We cannot rely on them for information, guidance or to organise. We need to communicate outside of them: Internet, word of mouth, books, films, meetings and markets.
Organising requires comunication between neighbours and kin and power at a local level.
Default human social structure is along kinship lines of family and clan.
• Local Communities with a history together and especially with intact or strong kinship structures have the best chance of organising to survive well.
• Current land-use planning and population programs structurally split- up communities and prevent them from organising.
We need to challenge local laws that stop us having livestock and water for growing food.
• We need to re-design our communities so that we can grow food and keep domestic animals.
• It is vital to get back and conserve full use of suburban land and water. So look out for ways to do this.
The government is public-private corporatising rural land and giving more and cheaper water to their agribusiness program. Agribusiness does not care about you and me; agribusiness quotidienly watches people starve. That is why we have to fight government attempts to retain our water for other uses. We need it.
Laws should be primarily for benefit of local communities, then integrated into region and continent
Inheritance and Land-tenure systems need reform along Roman-law lines, like Western Continental Europe.
Roman-style laws
• Preserve land within families
• Share land equally between men and women
• Minimise land fragmentation and speculation
Basically this means that our inheritance system and land-use allocation and planning system need reform towards:
• male and female equal inheritance,
• prohibition against disinheritance of children (legitmate or illegitimate), and
• leasing to substitute for land-sales
Remember:
Cheap goods are the baubles to seduce and distract today’s indigenous populations.
Today’s indigenous populations are us.
We who were born here.
Let us not be distracted by beads and baubles.
• Land with water and a stable population and society are what counts.
• Land speculation is a mug’s and a con-man’s game.
• High profits in any field are not sustainable in the long term.
• No society that encourages one class to profit at the expense of all the other citizens is sustainable.
Using the Internet to get yourself up to speed on the half-truths of the GM crop and food lobby
#TheProblem" id="TheProblem">The problem
Are GM (genetically modified, some prefer "GE", genetically engineered) crops and food safe? Reading the mainstream press is probably going to confuse you more than anything else. The reason for this is it's extremely hard to tell who's telling "the truth". However, use of the Internet (and a few books that you can purchase through the Internet) can help you to see through the half-truths and distortions frequently used by proponents of GM crops and food. People who oppose the introduction of GM crops and food can, of course, resort to the same kind of tactics, so it's really up to the individual to look at the evidence and come to his or her own conclusion. The information is freely available on the Internet, all I do is give a few guidelines below to help you find it.
As I write (late June 2008), Australia is slowly trying to make up its collective mind about whether to allow the introduction of GM crops. Victoria and New South Wales, for example, have ended their moratorium on the planting of GM crops, and WA is maintaining its moratorium, though a debate on whether to extend it or not is now raging in that state. A friend of mine sent me an article from the Farm Weekly and I would like to use this article as an example of pro-GM writing. I would like to show how the writer uses half-truths and distortions to make his points, and how more detailed knowledge about much of the material in the article, allowing the reader to see 'where the writer is coming from,' is quite easily available on the Internet. Since information is democracy's oxygen, it would be a good idea perhaps if Australians take a deep breath before they finally decide on whether they really want GM crops and food or not.
The writer, Peter Lee, uses quotations from Shakespeare to back up some of the arguments he makes in the article. That's fine. I know almost nothing about Shakespeare, but I think this shows that Peter is a well-educated person of the English-speaking world. He especially gives the Shakespearean quote #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." just before he launches into his main argument about #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"whether WA farmers should be allowed to grow GM canola." Let's have a look at Peter's argument.
#ScientificProof" id="ScientificProof">Why the lack of scientific proof?
Just after the Shakespeare quote, Peter says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"There is no scientific proof that GM foods are dangerous, yet an entire industry has been built up world-wide to frighten (well-fed!) people into believing that such foods are unnatural and unsafe."
Yes, there is no scientific proof concerning whether GM foods are safe or not because the entire biotechnology industry has quite adamantly refused to do any conclusive testing on GM foods. Several preliminary and rigorous experiments by independent researchers on the feeding of GM foods to rats (e.g. by Arpad Pusztai and Irina Ermakova) have shown that there may be severe health impacts from the consumption of GM foods, but the biotechnology industry, whilst rebutting these experimental results has not followed up on them. The researchers who have carried out these experiments have complained of being forced to desist, through a cutting off of their funding, sudden firing, or retirement (in the case of Arpad Pusztai). The relevant books, see below, which are easily available from Internet bookstores, documentaries, such as the YouTube broadcasts here and here and The Genetic Conspiracy, and websites, e.g. ISIS (www.i-sis.org.uk), whose director is Dr Mae Wan Ho, note several such examples. What is frightening people is what appears to be a refusal to carry out rigorous testing on the human health effects of GM foods.
A small sample of useful books:
- Jeffrey M. Smith, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods
- Jeffrey M. Smith, Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating
- Mae-Wan Ho, Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare?: The Brave New World of Science and Business
#OrganicVsConventional" id="OrganicVsConventional">The organic vs. conventional and the non-GM vs. GM analogy
Peter goes on to set up an analogy on possible similarities in the contrasts between organic and conventionally-grown food on the one hand and between non-GM food (essentially the same thing as conventionally-grown food) and GM food on the other. However, we need to look at what Peter says in a little detail to see whether his analogy is actually valid or not.
Peter says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"It is interesting to compare the attitude of these [anti-GM] believers with those who have a similar belief about organic foods and have convinced themselves that non-organic food is either unsafe or unpalatable, even though science is unable to support their beliefs."
Anyone as apparently ill-informed on agriculture as this really should not be writing a column as an "agripolitical analyst" in a farm-related newspaper. I can only suggest that Peter go to Wikipedia and enter the keywords "(Sir) Albert Howard". He will find information on Sir Albert Howard's 1940 book, An Agricultural Testament, and Lady Eve Balfour's The Living Soil. These contain information on comparative studies on the effects of eating organic food and conventionally-grown (using chemical fertilizers and pesticides) food on people. This is over half a century ago, when food, water, soil and air were nowhere near as polluted with chemicals as they are now. These books are available at no cost as electronic editions on the Internet#main-fn1">1. I recommend anyone who is interested in food issues read them.
Closer to home, I recently visited Caralyn Lagrange, who does wonderful organic gardening near Perth, WA. Caralyn came to organic farming through breast cancer as a viable way to get good chemical-free nutrition. Her book "Gardening and Eating for Living" is a little treasure, and you can find out more about it on her website. You see, most people seem to be able to eat conventionally grown food with no apparent problems, but some people are more sensitive to the chemicals used to produce the food. I've heard of people in Japan whose lips become numb as soon as they put chemically-grown vegetables in their mouths and thus cannot survive without very conscientiously grown organic food.
#JapaneseConsumers" id="JapaneseConsumers">With respect to the non-GM/GM canola problem, I was told by a friend who was a member of the Japanese consumer group representatives mission to WA, mentioned #VisitOfJapanese">below, that GM canola will not help Japanese children's atopy (skin allergy) problems. Only when food is cooked with non-GM canola is the atopy relieved. Because the scientific tests have not been carried out, we have no way of knowing why this is, but we may conjecture, for example, that it is the different, possibly novel, protein content in the GM canola that is the culprit. Perhaps we'll know if anyone is ever allowed to do the tests. Of course, organic canola would be even better than the conventionally-grown non-GM canola, but it is not available in the amounts necessary. If WA canola farmers want to try their hand at producing organic canola for the Japanese market, I'm sure they will be welcomed with open arms.
#Coexistence" id="Coexistence">Coexistence
Peter continues, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"But organic supporters have not tried to ban the production of non-organic food, merely wishing to ensure that they have access to sufficient quantities of the food of their choice."
Yes, that's because organic farming and conventional farming has managed to coexist, for example by taking precautions (overwhelmingly on the side of the organic farmer) against the chemicals polluting organic farming lands. The seeds used in both types of farming might be the same, and there is usually no big problem with pollution from wind-blown or insect-carried pollen.
Now let's take a look at the GM/non-GM issue. The point is that the novel genes from the GM plant will pollute the non-GM varieties. When the farmer next door plants a GM crop (canola, soybeans, maize, and so on) next to your field where you have planted a non-GM variety of the same crop, your produce will almost certainly be polluted with the GM variety genes. There are two major problems with this. Firstly, depending on who you are planning to sell the produce to, the level of GM pollution in your produce may become unacceptable to the buyer. If you are trying to export non-GM canola to a Japanese consumer group, NO level of GM contamination is acceptable. 0%. At this point you have lost your market. If you are an organic farmer, there is no way, once the GM contamination is discovered, that you can sell your produce as organic. In other words, the coexistence of GM and non-GM varieties is extremely problematical. With respect to canola, this fact has already been amply demonstrated in Canada, which has been extensively contaminated with GM canola genes such that it is effectively impossible to grow non-GM canola in Canada now.
Secondly, that's just how the GM variety seed producing companies want it. In the USA and Canada, non-GM farmers have been ruined by court cases, or the threat of them, from GM seed companies simply because of the contaminated plants that have 'fortuitously' grown on their land. A well-known case is that of Percy Schmeiser, information on whom you can find with a simple web search. The actions of the companies threaten to have the effect of driving out all non-GM growers. Coexistence just doesn't seem to be possible.
In WA, the recommended buffer zone between GM and non-GM canola crops is five meters, which is supposed to be on the non-GM farmer's side of the fence, by the way. You can find references to this on the website of the the Network of Concerned Farmers. Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) recommends 600 m. Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, where concern over the commercial planting of GM crops is higher, the recommended distance is 1200 m, but it is not certain whether this distance will completely prevent contamination (cross-pollination by wind-borne pollen and so on) or not. If you type in the search words "five-metre buffer zone canola" in Google, you will see that one entry says"GM canola pollen has been found up to 26 kilometres from its source." Try putting that buffer zone on the inside of your fence. Five meters is laughable. It also comes with a caveat that the non-GM farmer "is to accept" a 0.9% contamination of his/her crop. You can find this in the pdf file of the Australian Grains Research and Development Corporation report "Delivering Market Choice with GM Canola". Just type the title into Google to find the file. That's not coexistence, that's downright surrender. Surrender to what? What are the GM seed companies trying to achieve? It looks to me like they are trying to achieve nothing less than the total control of all the world's food crop seeds. They appear to be acting in a manner that would give them control of the world's food supply and an everlasting source of income from the sale of the seeds, which must be bought anew each year. This comes courtesy of the legalistic sleight of hand that allows patents on life. If that doesn't send a chill up your spine, nothing ever will.
#PayingMore" id="PayingMore">Paying more for your food
Peter goes on to say, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"More importantly, they are willing to pay extra for it [organic food], with various organizations dedicated to the production of organic food designing codes of practice to describe how this task should be performed."
Yes, people pay more for organic food because under the present economic arrangements organic food is more expensive to produce. Generally speaking, food produced on farms which run a chemical and mechanical system of farming are more efficient in terms of labour. Very few people are producing a lot of food, so relatively the labour costs are low. In organic farming, although cash inputs (chemicals, fuel and so on) are fewer, it is labour-intensive. Given the amounts of money required to live a decent life these days, i.e. wage levels, organic farmers have to charge relatively more for their produce in order to make a living. This accounts for a large proportion of the price differential between organic and conventionally produced food. There are more factors, as you can see here. (This website takes a little while to load, but you will also see here that prices of organic food include not only the cost of the food production itself, but also a range of other factors that are not captured in the price of conventionally-grown food).
However, consumers of organic food are willing to pay more because they feel that cheap food might actually turn out to be more expensive in terms of health effects. Paying a little more for food that is more likely to keep you in good health may eventually be saving you steep hospital bills.
Now, what will happen if the price of oil continues to rise? Chemicals are mostly produced from oil, natural gas, or coal (fossil energy resources), so the economic advantage of the cheap part of the chemical-mechanical farm that makes it so efficient (relatively cheap fuels, fertilizers and other chemicals) will be eroded. This may eventually result in people paying the same or less for organic produce.
Peter continues, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"They have a regime of production, inspection and accreditation in force that allows supporters of this type of food to shop with confidence and to obtain the type of product they desire."
All very well and good and protects consumers' right to choose what they eat.
Peter then says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"It seems an eminently practical and workable system that should provide a methodology that would allow the anti-GM supporters to to obtain their needs from growers who wish to supply such produce."
Not as planned, it won't, as we have already seen above.
#ProofOrLiability" id="ProofOrLiability">Proof or liability
Peter then says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"Growers of non-GM crops should be required to prove that their product is as claimed, just as organic producers also carry the onus of proof, a system that works for them because their consumers pay extra."
Peter is implying that consumers of organic food are paying higher prices for their food because of the inspection and accreditation systems necessary to prove that the food is really organic. However, as seen above, that's neither the main reason why organic food is more expensive, nor is it necessarily true that organic food will always be more expensive than conventionally produced food, or GM food for that matter. OK, so perhaps there should be some mechanism for proving that non-GM food is just what it says it is. Who should pay for the testing is something that can be argued over, since there is no system in place now. And maybe the non-GM farmer will end up having to pay for this and will pass the cost on to the consumer, who will have to pay a little more for the food.
Let's look a little closer at the difference between this and the contrast between organic and conventionally grown food. Suppose an organic farmer is growing a crop next door to a conventional farmer. The organic farmer will surely take precautions to see that his/her produce is not affected by the neighbouring farmer, but it might happen. The organic farmer might be extremely annoyed about this, depending on the seriousness of the pollution, and may lose income, but it is extremely rare that any irreversible permanent damage would be done. The organic farmer might try to sue the chemical farmer for damage, but I cannot find on the Internet any examples of this ever having occurred. Can you? Anyway, now we're not talking so much about proving that organic produce is organic as whose liability it is if pollution occurs and the farmer loses income because of that.
Peter seems to be confident that GM and non-GM crops can coexist, just as organic and conventional farming manage to coexist today. The Canadian experience shows that in the case of canola this is very doubtful. So, rather than this being a problem of who pays for testing to prove that a harvested crop is what it is said to be, since pollution is almost certain to occur (according to the GRDC, the non-GM farmer is supposed to accept 0.5% pollution of seed and 0.9% pollution of a non-GM crop anyway), who takes responsibility for the loss of income that results? Thus far, as in the example of Percy Schmeiser and many others in Canada and the USA, far from the company that manufactured the GM seed taking any responsibility for GM pollution, these companies are likely to threaten to sue the non-GM farmer for infringement of patent rights. Slowly, this is now beginning to turn around (Percy Schmeiser did eventually win a court case against Monsanto), but let's look at the nature of GM pollution when compared with the chemical pollution of an organic crop. (All farmers are, of course, concerned about cross-fertilization of crop varieties, but have learned to control it. See, for example, the Seed Savers' Network).
Once the transgenes (the new genes the biotechnology company has inserted into the DNA of the plant to give it the novel trait) enter the genome (the totality of DNA in the cell nucleus of the plant) of the non-GM plant, how can you get them out again? You cannot, and that means your seed is contaminated with the transgenes; permanent irreversible damage. So if you are a non-GM farmer who has been saving your own seeds for replanting, like Percy Schmeiser was, you might lose decades of work. You cannot plant those polluted seeds because you would be infringing a patent right if you did. The GM seed manufacturing companies do not seem to be seriously interested in preventing this problem, as we have seen with the five-metre canola buffer zone above. There's little doubt that after a number of years under a system like this only GM crops will be planted. That appears to be what the seed companies want.
Peter goes on to say, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"This is where the proposal could fail, because those who believe that GM is unsafe won't pay extra for non-GM food, preferring legislation to prohibit the production of the GM variety, which allows them to get their non-GM fix on the cheap."
Quite wrong; they will pay. They are already paying because the price of oil is rising. And anyway, why should they have to pay just because the biotechnology industry wants to sell its seeds? After what you have read above, is it any surprise that some people feel they need legislation to protect their farming, their food, and their way of life?
#VisitOfJapanese" id="VisitOfJapanese">Visit of the Japanese consumer group reps
Here, the argument shifts a little to mention the visit by a group of Japanese consumer group representatives. Peter says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"The Conservation Council has again sponsored a visit from an anti-GM group from Japan, a so-called consumer group that admits it only accounts for 4000t of WA canola per year and represents only a handful of Japan's 125 million people."
The Conservation Council of Western Australia did not 'sponsor' the visit of the group. They 'hosted' it. Perhaps Peter missed the substantial articles mentioning the group's visit and participation in the forum at Williams (June 13) on pages 4, 5, and 6 in the June 19 edition of Farm Weekly. The consumers' group representatives came of their own accord#main-fn2">2 to ask the government and farmers of WA to extend the moratorium so that they could continue to buy non-GM canola from WA, perhaps soon to be the only place where they can obtain it in sufficient quantities.
Why does Peter say #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"a so-called consumer group"? I cannot imagine what is meant by this. They are consumer group representatives whose organizations represent 2.9 million members. These co-ops and organic food suppliers do what they do to help consumers obtain the safe and nutritious food they want to eat instead of having to put up with being force-fed the chemically-produced and GM food that they do not want to eat. The organizations represented were: The NO! GMO Campaign (closely associated with the Consumers' Union of Japan), the Green Co-op, the Kirari Cooperative Union Association, The Association to Preserve the Earth (Daichi wo Mamoru Kai), and the well-known Seikatsu Club. Unfortunately, most of the websites are in Japanese, but you will be able to see that these organizations, as well as working to provide safe and nutritious food to their members, are also social movements which work for grassroots democracy, assistance for handicapped and other socially disadvantaged people, and carry out other socially beneficial activities. Certainly not fanatics, and certainly not fanatical organizations posing as consumer groups.
Then Peter says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"They also acknowledged that most of the canola consumed in Japan was GM canola from Canada, yet they still claimed that 70pc of Japanese oppose the use of GM food!"
Sounds like a contradiction doesn't it? Public opinion polls show that around 60% to 75% of Japanese people do not want to eat GM foods. But the reason that they are buying and using canola oil produced from Canadian GM canola is that they don't have a choice. The Japanese food labelling system is very similar to the Australian one. There's nothing on labels to show that a food product is produced from GM crops. If you want to buy non-GM, then you have to look for the labels that say "non-GM", "GM free" and so on. So a very large number of people are eating GM foods without knowing or being aware that they are doing so. The feeling is that the governments of Australia and Japan have introduced these labelling systems because they know what would happen to purchasing behaviour if foods were labelled accurately. Looks like someone doesn't want you to enjoy your right of consumer choice. GM seed companies and governments are effectively cooperating to force-feed you GM food without your knowledge. By the time we find out what the human health problems are with these foods, it will be far, far too late to anything about it. Who will benefit from that?
#MuchAdoAbout Nothing" id="MuchAdoAbout Nothing">A fanatical much ado about nothing?
Peter goes on to say, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"The really astounding thing about the current debate is that so many seemingly rational people actually take the anti-GM fanatics seriously."
Apart from the implication that the above-mentioned consumer group representatives are "fanatics", given the potential for information democracy provided by the Internet, the really astounding thing is that pro-GM analysts like this can get articles printed in the newspaper and actually expect that some poor fools will believe them!
Finally, Peter says, #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"If Shakespeare was given the last word, he would probably observe that the dispute is 'much ado about nothing'."
It is quite clearly not #ff00ff; font-style : italic;">"much ado about nothing" - it's a lot of fuss about controlling the world's food supply (and all that that implies). Perhaps more appropriately we should say, "There's no smoke without fire." If people are protesting about something, then it is just as well that we take pains to see if they have reasonable grounds for doing so. If Peter wants to refute their arguments, under our current social system, where freedom of speech is respected, he is at liberty to do so. However, if he uses terms like 'fanatics' and implicates that these people only hold their views through some form of irrational 'belief', or because their 'thinking made it so,' I would like to suggest that his readers take a long hard look at the evidence for and against before they swallow his arguments whole.
Footnotes
#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ I couldn't locate an online version of The Living Soil although Wikipedia implies that one is to be found on www.soilandhealth.org. To order printed version, visit the Soil Association.
#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. #main-fn2-txt">↑ See, also, comments posted by two of the visitors #comment-986">The media's responsibility and duty to report the truth about GM and #comment-991">Only 4000 tonnes canola per year, but ZERO contamination and a comment by another Japanese consumer #comment-994">Monsanto makes coexistence between GM and non-GM impossible.
Topic:
Friendly ultimatum to the Sierra Club of Canada
This article was originally posted to Sinking LifeBoat.
We still value your opinion.
We're working to create our vision for Sierra Club Canada five years from now.
If you haven't had a chance to complete this opinion survey, we'd like to remind you that you still can!
It will take a little of your time, but will make a great difference to our planning!
We would appreciate your reply by Friday, July 4. Please use this link to fill out your survey.
Sierra Club of Canada
Dear Sierra Club,
This is just a friendly reminder that you have until Friday, July 4th to reply to MY “survey”. This was the set of questions I sent to you to pre-empt the pre-fabricated set of twenty-one questions that you sent to me, not a single one of which mentioned over-population or over-immigration as an issue or factor to be considered in the environmental degradation of Canada. Kind of like my fitness instructor stressing cardio, strength training and flexibility without mentioning my chain smoking habit.
Please reply to my questions by my arbitrary deadline or I will continue to follow your lead and make policy decisions without your input.
Remember our slogan. “Tell us what we want to hear or take us off your list!” (but we'll never take you off of ours. And Oh, of course, send us your money to save our poster endangered animal of the month ….”
In case you have forgotten, these were the questions in my survey:
And if you think we should just keep tightening our belts to accommodate more and immigrants, cut back our per capita consumption more and more just to increase total consumption through immigration more and more, tell us, how many immigrants is too many for you? Another 10? 20? 30? 40? 50 million? How many Canadians would there be in an ecologically sound Canada as defined by Sierra Club Canada? Do you have any evidence that wildlife “sanctuaries” and reserves enjoy permanent safety from human population growth? As for Sustainable Energy options, is there a technological fix for the species lost from human population growth? Is there a technological fix for marine life eradicated from over harvesting and pollution? Is there a technological fix for soils exhausted by 10,000 years of intensive farming? Why does the Sierra Club think that climate change warrants more concern than the loss of biodiversity services? Why does the Sierra Club not seem to understand that population that is the underlying agency of both? No climate change without climate changers. Growing cities shrinking wilderness.
One should also ask: Why haven't you taken action on your leader Stephen Hazell's comments on TVO's May 5, 2008 “The Agenda” when he said we should decide what an optimum population for Canada is? What do you believe an optimum population for Canada is? Are you afraid of covering this uncharted territory because you don't know of a politically correct way to answer that question? Is Mr. Hazell afraid to follow through on his own advice?
source:
www.tvo.org/podcasts/theagenda/audio/TAWSP_Dbt_20080505_0_0_40k.mp3
ecologicalcrash.blogspot.com/2008/05/review-of-tvos-agenda-may-5-2008.html
This is my survey. I will not be confined by your prefabricated questions. The questions I need answering involve your complicity in the overpopulation of Canada, and your focus on inconsequential feel-good concepts of consumption, conservation and recycling. Remember it is our total consumption which is relevant, not our per capita consumption.
Tim Murray,
Quadra Island, BC
Home of the sanctimonious
Sierra Quadra Club
Motto “Take HIM off the island”
How green is "smart growth", really?
Dear Ben West, Chairperson of The Green Party of Vancouver,
A friend, Tim Murray, has alerted me to a quote you have made in a letter you wrote to the Mayor of Vancouver, Sam Sullivan:
"Densification is of course environmentally positive in so far as it prevents the devastation of agricultural lands or wilderness areas but this initiative if not part of an overarching smart growth land use plan would not accomplish this goal."
I have some questions for you.
How is it "environmentally positive" to concentrate people into highrise apartment complexes where it takes massive energy inputs to treat their drinking water and sewage, run their elevators, maintain their multi-story parking garages, power their artificial indoor fitness club environments, and bring them food and resources from distances that grow in proportion to their population size, giving them no hope of growing their own food to survive the new end-of-cheap-energy era?
Isn't it more environmentally friendly for people to live in the country where their water needs no chlorine or UV treatment and their sewage requires no chemical treatments and their septic tank uses less energy per person in its lifecycle than urban waste treatment facilities? Just because people own no land doesn't mean they don't require resources from land in order to survive. Wouldn't it make more sense for people to live on the same land where their food comes from, work this land with their own muscle instead of with machines, and find wood for heating and building materials from their own land instead of importing it from far-away industrial clearcuts? Of course, for this ultra low footprint lifestyle (rural, not urban) to work really well, there would have to be few enough people that each person could have enough quality and quantity of land that they could be self-sufficient without breaking their back.
In the upcoming era of depleted fossil fuels whereby the only oil, coal, wood, and natural gas remaining will take more energy to extract than what you get out of it, we simply will not have a use for so many urban bureaucrats living densely in highrise apartments. The earth's carrying capacity will be drastically reduced due to lack of energy resources. Finding a new unprecedentedly abundant source of energy with zero impact on the environment is not only impossible, but it is also undesirable as it would enable humans to further grow their population, which would displace even more other species, destroy biodiversity services, and therefore lower quality of life on earth for humans.
Would you agree that it is not just the average consumer's consumption level that is relevant, but also the number of consumers?
Whether population growth occurs in the city, in the suburbs, or in the country, is there such a thing as "Smart Growth" when it still involves population growth, which guarantees that environmental damage will increase no matter what conservation measures are imposed? (HINT: Each person must consume finite resources and produce waste just in order to survive. If the number of people keeps growing, it is only a matter of time before the total environmental damage increases even if the theoretical minimum for average per capita consumption is achieved.)
Are you one of those people who uses cliches like "You can't stop progress" or "Growth is inevitable" as a cop-out excuse for letting our environment get worse, while lying at the same time by telling people that our environment can get better alongside continued population growth so long as this growth is "managed/contained/smart/densification/steered/deflected"?
How long will Canada's protected areas be protected if our 1% annual population growth trend continues (doubling our numbers every 70 years); how many National and Provincial Parks will relax legislation to allow agriculture, roads, power corridor easements, mining, native hunting, increased camp sites and recreational development, etc to meet this growing demand? How many Parks will incidentally fall victim to air and groundwater pollution as well as poaching and alien species infestations caused by Canada's population growth?
Would it not be prudent for the Green Party of Canada to advocate lower immigration to Canada so that Canada can set a good example in an overpopulated world by reducing its population to a sustainable level to avoid mass species extinctions and human deaths due to the downside of Peak Food caused by fossil fuel depletion?
Thanks and I look forward to your reply,
Brishen Hoff
President of Biodiversity First biodiversityfirst.googlepages.com
How to make our agricultural sector sustainable
The following was posted in response to an article Working the land - or not of 24 Jun 08 by Jenny Hume on Web Diary.
This article raises the vexing question of how we are to live sustainably off the land in the longer term. If incomes to be earned from sustainable farming practices are low in comparison to those to be earned by working in the city or in mines, then we need to consider whether those economic activities are sustainable.
The government needs to control the activities of any sector where they threaten the viability of other sectors, particularly vital sectors like food production. To risk severe social disruption for short-term profit might make sense to corporations, but it is the duty of governments to mitigate corporate excesses and to direct and balance activities so that the community is buffered and major conflicts are avoided.
Clearly in the case of mining, and in that light, the current activities are not sustainable, as I argued earlier. Is it any wonder that farmers, who are ultimately attempting to turn the comparative trickle of energy obtained from the sun into wealth, cannot offer wages competitive with those on offer from industries which are, in large part, simply plundering energy accumulated over at least tens of millions of years by biological and geological processes? If other city-based economic activities were also placed under the microscope, we would invariably find that they are also ultimately based upon the unsustainable destruction of the our finite capital.
So, agriculture has been placed at an extremely unfair disadvantage compared with other economic activities. To expect it to compete with those other activities under these circumstances would guarantee the destruction of our soil and our future impoverishment. As David R. Montgomery's Dirt - the Erosion of Civilisations (2007) shows, this is far from being just a theoretical question.
If we are to establish an economy which is to be sustainable in the longer term, we are going to have to face the fact that many of us may find unpalatable, that is, whether we live on the land or in cities, we are going to have to learn to live by consuming far fewer material resources than we do now. Even if we eliminate many absurdly wasteful practices of our throw-away society, and even if we remove the enormous inequalities in income distribution, we may still find ourselves without the same access to all the convenient gadgets and comforts to which we are now accustomed. We are going to have to get used the idea that we won't all be able to travel by air to the other side of the world every year or across the continent every two months or so, or be able to buy every gizmo we desire almost at will only to throw them away a mere 12 months later.
Of course one first and necessary step will be to remove the often crippling burden placed upon on farms by the finance sector, which, in turn, drives farmers to ruin their land. As I mentioned earlier, one means towards achieving this would be to re-establish a Peoples' (i.e. Commonwealth) Bank.
On top of that, the rest of us should consider paying more for food in order to allow farmers to be able to both earn a decent income and to properly look after the land. It would also help if were to change the grossly inefficient industrialised food processing and distribution system (the US version of which is described lucidly in the US by Christopher Cook's Diet for A Dead Planet – See YouTube broadcast). Breaking the Coles Woolworths duopoly would help. Similar to the re-establishment of a Peoples' Bank, why not establish a publicly owned supermarket company that only has to meet its operating expenses and not pay inflated returns to its shareholders, company directors and CEO's? Local cooperative producers' markets could complement the aforementioned Peoples' Supermarket to allow as much food as possible to be consumed locally.
Local food distribution and consumption would reduce transport, storage and packaging costs, which can only continue to climb from now on due to the growing scarcity of petroleum, and to make easier the recycling of all nutrients. The alternative of continuing to mine nutrients from the soil and dump most of them in landfill up to hundreds of kilometres away cannot be sustainable. The fertilisers currently used to partially replace lost nutrients are either finite resources or are manufactured unsustainably using finite and limited fossil fuels. Moreover, their use, in conjunction with the use of pesticides, tends make soil sterile and lifeless as Jenny Hume is, no doubt, aware.
Some links which may be of interest include: Working the land - or not of 24 Jun 08 by Jenny Hume on Web Diary, Who owns your sewage? of 3 Jul 08 by Valerie Yule on Online Opinion, Last gasp for single desk marketing of Australian wheat of 17 Jun 08, Peak oil prices cause South Australian Farmers to call for 'fair market forces' of 10 Jun 08, Orwellian Waterworks: big-agribusiness and Victorian Gov of 27 May 08, Insight program's take on Labor Shortage of 17 Jun 08, A 10,000 year misunderstanding of 1 May 08 by Canadian soil microbiologist Peter Salonius, I will govern for all Victorians (caveat: but only if you are powerful and connected) of 26 Jun 08.
Canada and mass immigration: The creation of a global suburb and its impact on national unity
This article is reproduced here with the kind permission of its author, Dr Stephen Gallagher of McGill University. It was published earlier on the web site of Immigration Watch Canada (www.immigrationwatchcanada.org) on 4 Jun 08.
Recently, the National Post ran a contest to describe Canada “in six words or less.” The winner of this ‘motto contest’ was: ‘Canada – a home for the world’. Given the arrival of 10 million immigrants of diverse origins since the end of the Second World War, this motto is revealing of the new Canada. This is Canada perceived as a country with little underlying coherence in the sense of sustaining a primary national identity aside from being a desirable place to settle. This is Canada viewed as a home away from home for a range of peoples whose identities are rooted not in Canada but in countries and regions of origin. It foresees Canada's evolution into a global suburb; a comfortable, secure and tolerant bedroom community.
The question I am asking here is how Canada came to have such permissive and non-controversial migration policies and practices. Of course, Canada is not alone in sustaining a mass immigration policy but it stands alone in the world as a country where mass immigration is so fully accepted as a policy norm. I also want to examine some implications of mass immigration for national unity and identity in Quebec and the Rest of Canada (ROC).
To begin with, Canada is not unique in having a contemporary policy of mass immigration although in comparison with other countries of immigration its flow rate is higher. On a per capita basis in 2007, Canada is estimated to have a net migration approximately four times that of the EU, double the US and a third greater than Australia#main-fn1">1. In addition, Canada's annual flow of around 250,000 immigrants is very diverse in terms of origins and ethnicity unlike the US where the Latin American influx makes up more than half. With respect to Australia, immigrants from UK and New Zealand made up about 30% of the inflow. As a result, in other words, Canada is undergoing a social and demographic evolution that is much more rapid and profound than that in the other immigrant-welcoming countries. Toronto and Vancouver have majority populations that do not trace their primary roots to Canada prior to the Second World War. In 2006, 46% of the population of Toronto and 40% of Vancouver were born outside Canada and, according to Statistics Canada, it is very likely that in less than ten years from now, Toronto and Vancouver will both have majority ‘visible minority’ populations. Of course the US also sustains a large immigration influx, so fundamental demographic change is also occurring albeit at a slower rate. For example, according to a recent demographic study published by the Pew Centre, if present trends continue by 2050 the non-Hispanic white population will be a minority of the US population.
In Canada, the implications of social and demographic change have not been the subject of much political or public discussion and little effort has been expended considering what Canada will look like 20, 50 or 100 years in the future. Basically, a commitment to a high flow rate constitutes the sum total of Canada's ‘population policy’. The situation is so unmanaged that studies of new census reports are greeted with careful media review and even amazement as if demographic change was some uncontrollable natural process as opposed to the result of an identifiable public policy.
Regardless of its unmanaged nature, unlike the situation in other developed countries, a review of opinion polls suggests that, in general, the Canadian public appears to support mass immigration.
Also unlike the situation in other developed countries, immigration has not been a significant election concern. In Canada's most recent election (2005), the governing Liberal Party reiterated its commitment to raise Canada's immigration intake, from around .7% of the nation population, to 1% of the population. This rate would see an immigration intake of over 300,000 which would be proportional to a French or UK annual intake of 600,000 or an American annual intake of approximately 3 million. An election promise such as this would be political suicide in these countries. The Conservative Party did not challenge the Liberal party on this issue and won a minority government focusing on unrelated issues.
Why is this? I would argue that with the exception of francophone Quebec, the importance, need for, and acceptance of immigration has become an article of faith and almost a litmus test of Canadianism. In other words, immigration acceptance is part of a new Canadian creed. This creed includes the protection and promotion of openness, tolerance and diversity which is operationalized programmatically in a policy of mass immigration, multiculturalism and the defence of human rights viewed broadly.
As a result, mass immigration is celebrated in ROC without much evidence of the fundamental intellectual engagement on these questions taking place in the rest of the developed world.
So the questions I want to address is given Canada's objectively astonishing migration rates, why is it that immigration-related discussion is marked by a level of passivity which has no parallel in the developed world?
First, there is no political leadership on migration-related issues essentially because Canadian politicians have shown an unwillingness to talk about immigration costs and trade-offs. The foremost reason is straight electoral expediency. The Liberal party has in recent years strongly supported policies of mass immigration and holds the ridings in Canada's largest cities where most new Canadian communities are centred. In order to form a majority government, the Conservative party needs these ridings and must compete for these votes by delivering benefits to these communities. In addition, the slightest slip up and the Liberal party will paint the Conservatives as intolerant, racist and extremist which will hurt the Conservatives in their own areas of support outside urban areas where there are relatively few immigrants. This is because, as I said before, Canada's identity is now strongly associated with acceptable immigration-speak. Name calling attacks on the Conservative party and any who question immigration policy are clearly thought to be effective. Otherwise they would not be such a regular feature of the Canadian political landscape.
A second reason there has not been much opposition to mass immigration is that there has been relatively little questioning of Canada's immigration policies in the media or academia. On certain issues such as security and Canada's refugee system, there has been a degree of concern expressed, but in terms of connecting this to the core reality of mass immigration, there is hardly a mention. The fact is that the media in Canada broadly and consistently views immigration positively. Even the National Post, which is generally perceived to take a conservative approach to issues, responded to a Statistics Canada report that showed significant immigration-driven demographic change with an editorial entitled “Statistics Canada counts our blessings”.
As for academia, it is awash in government money but little attention is given to assessing the real social, economic and political impact of entry flows. Also, little effort is made to seek out ways to more effectively and efficiently manage the flow in order to optimize the benefits for all Canadians. Instead, academics are primarily focused on concerns related to integration, social justice and the battle against intolerance. From this perspective, nationalism with a focus on the national interest is generally viewed with suspicion and is often associated with xenophobia or racism. In fact, the current head of the Canadian Political Science Association, Keith Banting, argues that this struggle may have ‘reinvigorated’ the left which has been in somewhat of a funk given the success of neo-liberal economic policies. Overall, the preponderance of migration-related Canadian academic activity has come to assume an aggressive ‘progressive’ orientation.
Thirdly, the basic facts about the costs and trade-offs related to immigration in Canada are not commonly known, nor have governments made much effort to make such information available. In the absence of such data, debate more easily spirals from trade-offs to name calling which in turn discourages political and public discussion.
In the US and UK, there is a vast literature on the costs and benefits of immigration. When the US Senate passed Comprehensive Immigration reform in 2006, the Congressional Budget Office produced a cost estimate. In the UK, a special committee of the House of Lords has just completed an extensive public investigation of the costs and benefits of immigration.
Certainly in the past, many countries of the developed world held an elite consensus on the need to depoliticize immigration issues. Academics refer to this as an ‘antipopulist norm’. In such an environment, the dissemination of statistical and cost information was purposefully limited. But the logic of this consensus is premised on migration policy being a relatively peripheral concern which could be managed effectively, more or less, administratively. These conditions no longer hold in most of the developed world and in the Canadian context, the absence of cost data simply limits the transparency of the issue area and works to the advantage of those that resort to emotional appeals. According to James Freeman, evidence suggests that emotional appeals are generally to the advantage of those seeking to maintain a permissive migratory environment.
Canada simply does not have a high profile immigration advocacy or research organization which questions the need for a mass immigration policy.
So what does all this mean for Canada's national identity and how does it affect national unity? I would argue we are approaching a crossroads because the implications of Canada's transition into a diasporatic country are so profound and manifest that the current studied disregard coupled with on-going fundamental demographic change is not sustainable. The implications of this transformation can be broken into the reality in Quebec and the ROC. In ROC , the rooted British and ‘northern’ connected identity has been largely buried and forgotten.
But Francophone Quebec has not forgotten its roots. In Quebec, collective memories, stories and symbols are deeply rooted and the French language constitutes a formidable nexus of identity. In addition, given sovereignty fears and general economic sluggishness, Quebec has not been a relatively attractive destination for immigrants. Therefore, compared to Toronto and Vancouver, Montreal with 20% foreign born population in 2006 has better preserved its rooted character. Overall, unlike in the ROC, the national re-branding exercise of the sixties and seventies with its new Canadian creed and Charter of Rights did not replace the admittedly evolving Quebecois identity.
In Quebec the majority of rooted francophone Quebecers have recently and clearly woken up to the implications of mass immigration on their lifestyle and identity. By setting up the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, the Charest Government inadvertently gave the Quebecois majority an unmediated forum to speak their concerns which, if not pretty, has led to a substantial lifting of public consciousness on migration-related issues. Now both the Parti Quebecois and Action Democratic (ADQ) appear to be considering following in the footsteps of numerous European populist parties that have gained control of their Parliaments on a platform of control of migration which has clearly been identified as the main factor in the decline of the use of French especially on the island of Montréal. This is not surprising because there are real similarities in the demographic situations of the Quebecois, Danes, Dutch, Flemish and others. No low-birth-rate/smaller-population nationality wants to ‘go gentle into that good night’.
The ADQ has recently advocated cutting immigration numbers and both the ADQ and the PQ have argued for the need to assess immigrants based on their capacity to integrate and for the use of ‘integration contracts’ for new arrivals. For its part, the Liberal government of Jean Charest has not been slow to insinuate that the policy proposals of the opposition parties are “driven by fear and intolerance”. At the same time, Charest has not avoided expressing the same sort of concerns and has also proposed a robust range of measures to address the perceived erosion of the French language in Quebec.
In the Canadian context, all this has real implications for national unity. Immigration has already relegated ‘British North America’ to the history books and more recently rendered national bilingualism and biculturalism unrealistic.
The danger for Canada's national unity lies in the possibility that both conservative and socialist nationalists in Quebec will reach the conclusion that the French language and culture is more secure outside of Canada than in it.
Overall, at some point at current rates of immigration, Canada will cease to be anything approximating a nation and be best described as a global suburb. Canada is becoming a prosperous and secure home in a nondescript neighbourhood which makes no effort to assimilate new-comers because real identity is associated with the country and/or region of origin. Integration, on the other hand, is very much encouraged and the indicators of success relate to the incomes of new arrivals compared to earlier arrivals. Therefore, capacity in English or French, acceptance of rules and regulations and a commitment to consumption are the touch-stones of success. Perhaps by giving up all pretence to cultivating a separate and unique society, Canada is truly leading the way to the dissolution of the nations system on the road towards a global culture and citizenship. Success in this project might enhance the possibility of international peace and security.
But I have several concerns about this model of Canada, the first being that history is full of examples of societies in which even small cleavages have resulted in major problems. Given the stakes, one would think that, at the very least, prudence would be advised. Regardless, current policy sees a very diverse population equal to that of Manitoba's arriving in Canada every four years.
Secondly, although Canada is certainly a leader in promoting cosmopolitan objectives, there appear to be few if any enthusiastic followers. Certainly tension, debate and reflection on the need for migration controls and a strengthening of integration policies which cross over into assimilationism are mainstream preoccupations in Australia, UK and US. For continental European countries and Japan, the draw bridges are up when it comes to mass immigration and diasporatic communities are being strongly directed towards full integration. This should give Canadian decision-makers pause and stimulate a thorough review of the issues related to immigration, integration and citizenship.
Finally, Canadian national unity may be endangered by unmanaged immigration. There is an emerging sense among Francophone Quebecers that the French Fact in America may not be compatible with high levels of immigration. At one level, there is a concern that new-Quebecers tend to assimilate into English cultures. This may not be objectively true but regardless, should a consensus arise among rooted Quebecers that participating in the new Canada (with its new creed and demographic reality) is endangering the French language in Quebec, then national unity will indeed be threatened.
In conclusion, I believe that Canada is going to have to come to grips with the implications of mass immigration. This should be done sooner rather than later. Issues related to citizenship, integration, composition, disposition, asylum and enforcement need to be addressed. Overall, Canada needs to understand what it has become to allow for the development of a much needed population policy. Furthermore, Canada must find a way to discuss the many implications of mass immigration in a fashion that transcends the superficiality of progressive advocacy and disconnects the objective and long-term needs of the country from the cut and thrust of partisan politics.
Footnotes
#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ This is no longer be the case. On 14 May 2004 when Australia's Federal immigration minister Chris Evans announced that Australia's already record high immigration quota would be lifted to 300,000. This makes Australia's absolute rate of immigration roughly equal to Canada', but, given Austalla's smaller populaiton of 21 million, its relative rater higher.
I will govern for all Victorians (caveat: but only if you are powerful and connected)
Plug the Pipe media release
26th June 2008
Yesterday the people of country Victoria placed a full-page colour advertisement in the Herald Sun newspaper voicing opposition to the proposed North South Pipeline. When questioned in Parliament about the advertisement Premier Brumby said:
“I think the most striking thing about the advertisement today is that not a single major business organisation signed it – not a single local government association or council, not a single traders association, not a single employee association or union, not a single social service organisation and not a single economic development organisation.”
This statement is most telling and illustrates the Premier is out of touch with what mainstream Victoria is thinking and implies your voice does not matter unless you are powerful or connected.
Mike Dalmau said in response to the Premier's statement, “He just does not get it, the average Victorian just does not want or believe in the North South Pipeline. The Premier may be able to lock himself away from his backbenchers but he certainly will not be able to do that when the people speak at the next election. It is quite clear to me that the Premier's arrogance is reflected in today's poll results.”
Who was on that list? Average Victorians, a retiree, Victoria's largest family irrigation farm, one of Victoria's smallest family irrigation farms, an eminent scientist, a family trucking company, a small motorbike shop, a family milk processing company, a well respected environmental group and the list goes on. No doubt the Premier's comments will further enrage the anti-North South Pipeline sentiment in the country.
Recent and Related:
www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/03/2263099.htm More than 1,000 members of the Country Women's Association unanimously backed a motion urging the State Government not to proceed with the project at a recent conference.
www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/15/2245338.htm VFF urges Govt to rethink north-south pipeline.
www.starnewsgroup.com.au/story/58735 8 May 2008 : At its State Council, the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) councils overwhelmingly supported a motion calling on the state to re-think the North South Pipeline.
www.electedgreensvictoria.org.au/speech.php?speech=349 The Greens, Greg Barber MLC, Plug the pipe and make with the flow of water information.
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23923765-5006786,00.html Thirst for change in three states
Rick Wallace and Sean Parnell 26 June 2008 The Australian
Extract : The Victorian Government remains under pressure over public transport, and its water policies - pipelines and desalination - have come under attack from the Left and Right flanks.
Seymour, Victoria
Mike Dalmau
0417 588455
International conference in Canada calls for full debate on immigration
This story was originally published in the Canadian foreign policy weekly magazine Embassy on 11 Jun 08 as Immigration Debate Needs to Get Serious. It is being reproduced here with the kind permission of the author Michelle Collins.
Days before Bill C-50 was approved, experts warned that Canadians must start taking a realistic look at the country's immigration policies.
By Michelle Collins
MONTREAL—Canadians must wake up to reality and debate on the pros and cons of its immigration system because a serious mistake will be "set in stone for generations to come," a leading migration expert from the UK at conference last week.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the UK-based Migrationwatch, was speaking at the second annual international Fraser Institute conference on migration, days before Parliament approved controversial changes to the immigration system.
Speakers at the conference included former diplomats, professors and authors who all had harsh criticisms for the government's handling of immigration over the years, and were adamant that major reforms are needed and fewer immigrants should be admitted.
Throughout the conference, numerous experts urged the government to do more research on migration and charged that Canadians are hiding from debating the issue.
Sir Andrew, whose organization tracks migration flows, said the British government's failure over the years to fully examine and plan for the effects of its rapidly massive immigration rates dramatically changed sectors of society and is one reason 120,000 Britons choose to emigrate from the country each year.
"In Britain, immigration is probably the most important issue of our generation," Sir Andrew said. "I'm not sure if Canada's realized it or not, that it's in a rather similar position."
For years, the debate around immigration has centered on keeping Canada's door for thousands of immigrants wide open—Canada is the only country in the world#main-fn1">1 that aims to bring in almost 300,000 people each year.
But there is a growing movement now to re-frame that debate and reform the immigration system in a way that focuses on what's best for Canada and Canadians, namely identifying who will bring the most benefit to the country, how to expedite their entry and how to ensure newcomers become dedicated, loyal Canadians.
Sir Andrew said it is essential Canada's immigration system be reformed, but that the greatest challenge to doing so is a general reluctance to talk about immigration for fear of being perceived as racist. The same attitude was prevalent in Britain, he said, with negative repercussions.
"People [in Britain] now realize it's a subject that can no longer be avoided, the numbers are vastly greater," Sir Andrew said of the British experience. "Net immigration has tripled in the last 10 years, this has alerted the public and now it's impossible to avoid a debate on what needs to be done."
He said surveys show that the majority of Britons feel their whole society is being changed beyond recognition, that the public has never been consulted about this, and that their government has deceived them over a period of years.
"Eighty per cent of the population do not trust the government to be honest and open about immigration," he said.
Also bringing an international perspective for Canadians to consider was Jean- Paul Gourévitch, an international expert on immigration from the University Paris XII, who said emotional sensitivities must be removed from any policy debate about immigration.
"We tried for years to de-emotionalize the debate as much as we could," Mr. Gourévitch said, speaking in French. "Those with different views could at least come together in debate."
Mr. Gourévitch said society's attitude toward immigrants has improved vastly over the last 10 years. He said Canada's problem is rooted in a lack of information and transparency, and that the government should be collecting information and statistics.
"We went nuts to do this in France," Mr. Gourévitch said. "Try to achieve a maximum transparency in the system…try to approach the question of costs."
To gather the necessary information, he recommended Canada establish local and regional reporting bureaus to collect and monitor data on immigrants who move into their areas.
McGill University professor Stephen Gallagher echoed this and said one of the fundamental problems is the lack of proper research and cost data on immigration, and this works to the advantage of emotional appeals.
To that end, he said, Canada stands alone as a country where mass immigration is accepted as a policy norm and is celebrated as an election promise, something that would be political suicide in many other developed countries.
Former executive director of Canadian immigration services James Bissett called the frank discussion at the conference a major step forward for the "thorny issue of immigration." He said immigration is a subject that receives very little attention from the public and as a policy issue.
He said Toronto and Vancouver are on track to becoming "Asian cities," and that this will have significant impacts and should at the very least be talked about.
The conference last week was highlighted with a keynote address from Immigration Minister Diane Finley, who shared what she called "our vision of a 21st century immigration program that will put an end to the sad cliché of doctors driving taxi cabs."
IRPA Changes Praised
On Monday night, the changes she had proposed to the immigration act, which are contained in the budget implementation act, passed a vote in the House of Commons as Liberals abstained in droves.
"I'm absolutely delighted," Ms. Finley said afterward. Ms. Finley said the government will have to wait for the bill to pass in the Senate before implementation legislation can be introduced.
"This still has to get through the Senate," she said. "Once it gets through the Senate, through Royal Assent, we'll be proceeding on it very rapidly."
During the conference, Fraser Institute co-chair Martin Collacott praised Ms. Finley as the first minister to take an interest in what is best for Canada and declared that she had the institute's full support for the changes.
Also delivering high praise was University of Western professor Salmi Mansur, who said immigration is an issue no one wants to touch for fear of being labelled racist, and encouraged Ms. Finley to bring in even more changes.
"Faster, please," Mr. Mansur said. "We need more reform, we need deeper reform, and someone needs to convey that to [Ms. Finley] and the consensus in Ottawa."
But while there was a consensus for change to the immigration policy, most were at odds with Ms. Finley's assertions that this is the solution to Canada's labour challenges.
William Robson, president and CEO of C.D. Howe Institute said another policy option would be to raise the age of retirement to 75.
"Despite discouraging research findings, many Canadians think immigration can maintain growth potential in the workforce," Mr. Robson said. "If immigration is to be the solution, levels would have to be much higher."
Fraser Institute senior fellow Gordon Gibson said Canada's immigration policy is one of "benign neglect" fuelled by Canadians' guilt for having many advantages over others in the world.
Rather than helping by importing people, Mr. Gibson said Canada should increase it's foreign aid spending, which he said is only a fraction of the net cost of immigration.
"The fact that immigration is necessary for economic prosperity is just not true," he said. "Much worse, the fact that it is held out as the answer to an aging society gives the excuse to politicians of not having to address the problems of an aging society.
"If reform is needed, it must be institutional in nature so that all politicians can hide behind it," he said, suggesting that Canada establish a royal commission and an immigration policy think-tank at arms length from the government to lay out facts and options.
He said Canada should dramatically change its priorities from immigration to aid and that any study of immigration should focus on what is good
mcollins [AT] embassymag.ca
Footnotes
#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ That changed on 14 May 2004 when Australia's Federal immigration minister Chris Evans announced that Australia's already record high immigration quota would be lifted to 300,000.
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