managing population growth

In an effort to provide some relief to those readers who are paralysed by the idea of population growth as a tragedy for Australia, candobetter has invited writer Cirrus McNimbus to give us the benefit of his optimistic views on Australia and Melbourne's population growth. McNimbus is a well-known commentator for the ABC on housing and lifestyle imperatives and he is also the CEO of the international accounting firm, StormT and Cup, which is a member of the Australian Property Atheneum and Pyramid Association. Today he writes about how his three year old grandson will handle the future.

It's I'm alright Jack to you, granddad

My 3 year old grandson Jack is amazingly clever. He can download an “app” onto his dad’s Smartphone and Google the rules of a new game in one minute. His fellow kindergarten classmates all seem pretty smart too, especially with electronic devices. One of them can program his mum’s GPS to pin-point their route and destination in the wilderness of Melbourne’s latest batch of outer suburbs while his mother is securing the baby in her capsule in the back. My own grandson is cleverer than the others of course, but I have to say they all amaze me with what they can do at an age when I couldn’t even put my Derwents in the right sequence in a box of 12.

This realization allays my worries about the future and gives me great confidence that no matter what seemingly irreversible problems we create now – e.g. global warming, annihilation of local environments, extinction of species, such as the local bandicoots, Leadbeaters possum, the koala and the helmeted honey eater - as well as working our way through what’s left of eternity’s endowment of oil - our grandchildren will have the technical know-how to fix it all up after us and put all that we have broken back together again. For example the recent finding of the blood of a long extinct frozen mammoth breathes certainty to the notion that Jack’s generation will bring life and breath again to extinct animal species!

The other side of the intergenerational equity coin

I guess it’s the other side of the intergenerational equity coin! What I mean is this; I cleared up my children’s toys after them and mopped up all their spilled food and drinks from bench tops and carpets. I even once had to clean up some red cordial from the walls of the dining room! Likewise my own children have had to do the same for their children and even I have had to do it again on the occasions that I have been looking after my grand children.

Yes, pretty soon it will be our grandchildren’s turn to clean up after us and I am confident they will do a good job of it.

Bigger than a chocolate milkshake

What they will have to face may seem at first glance rather more complex than mopping up a chocolate milk shake, but they will have the expertise to attack the problems.

It may seem somewhat challenging that when they are 40 they will be dealing with a severe overpopulation problem in a Australia at the same time as abundant fossil energy disappears and the use of it has to be avoided anyway because of the climate change consequences.

Our grandchildren, who are now in kindergarten will be trying to retro-fit public transport in our neglected outer suburbs as car use becomes rarer.

The kids who rode in the supermarket trolley

These children who rode in the supermarket trolley as their mother took a seemingly endless supply of food from supermarket shelves as needed, could not have understood that their food supply relied on huge fossil fuel inputs in an era when a very conscious minority said that modern agriculture is the process of turning oil into food.

These supermarket trolley riders, as adults, will be discovering from necessity how our food is grown and how to grow it themselves. They will, however find that the best land has been covered in roads and houses with cement driveways and paling fences that enclose the occupants in a tiny pocket of mainly house with a small border of land shaded by the proximity of the next door house, if they are lucky.

It's in the jeans!

Our grandchildren will not have much latitude in their struggle to keep their families alive under these circumstances, but hell, they are made of stern stuff as were their pioneer forefathers or later migrant forefathers.

Of course they can do it!

The only thing is that they may wonder why they are bothering on this continent as they look around at the razed parched “climate changed” countryside, punctuated with faded real estate hoardings, the latter a reminder of the “glory days” of land speculation, forever extending “urban growth boundaries” and endless “inevitable” population growth.

Kids with a 'can-do' attitude

Our grandchildren, clever as they are may have moments of doubt and wonder why their seemingly kind and indulgent grandparents left them so little with which to survive. But let’s not immerse ourselves in self doubt, nor -even worse - in doubting our three year olds. Faith is needed. And optimism, of course!

They can handle it.

We just need to keep on the way we are with growth for growth’s sake. Despite the train wreck ahead, my little Jack will come the rescue!