(We) can do better

The Beginning

God himself
having that day planted a garden
walked through it at evening and knew
that Eden was not nearly complex enough.
And he said:
"Let species swarm like solutes in a colloid.
Let there be ten thousand species of plankton
and to eat them a thousand zooplankton.
Let there be ten phyla of siphoning animals,
one phylum of finned vertebrates, from
white-tipped reef shark to long-beaked coralfish,
and to each his proper niche,
and — no Raphael, I'm not quite finished yet —
you can add seals and sea-turtles & cone-shells & penguins
(if they care) and all the good seabirds your team can devise —
oh yes, and I nearly forgot it, I want a special place
for the crabs! And now for parasites to keep
the whole system in balance, let . . ."

". . . In conclusion, I want," he said
"ten thousand mixed chains of predation —
none of your simple rabbit and coyote stuff!
This ocean shall have many mouths, many palates,
many means of ingestion. I want
a hundred ways of death, three thousand regenerations —
all in technicolor naturally. And oh yes, I nearly forgot,
we can use Eden again for the small coral cay in the center.

"So now Raphael, if you please,
just draw out and marshall these species,
and we'll plant them all out in a twelve-hectare patch."

So for five and a half days God labored
and on the seventh he donned mask and snorkel
and a pair of bright yellow flippers.

And, later, the host all peered wistfully down
through the high safety fence around Heaven
and saw God with his favorites finning slowly over the coral
in the eternal shape of a grey nurse shark,
and they saw that it was very good indeed.

Mark O'Connor is an Australian poet, ecology writer and environmental activist. His website is www.australianpoet.com/poems.html

Posted by Sheila Newman on behalf of Mark O'Connor.

Tonight’s Insight program on SBS (June 17, 2008) –“Is Australia running out of workers” was very interesting about how we are now digging up and shipping out our minerals so fast, and so profitably, that other employers can’t compete with the wages paid by the mining companies. Employers are desperate for staff, but with unemployment currently low they can’t get workers at the wages, or the wages and conditions, they are able or willing to pay. (The most genuine case seemed to be the orchardist who had to leave several thousand dollars worth of mandarins unpicked because she couldn’t find pickers anywhere. Other employers seemed to be on the usual lurk of wanting the government to give them cheap workers.)

We are now so greedy that we want to ship abroad our mineral patrimony even faster than our existing workforce, with all the mechanical aids and vast machines now available, ­can manage. So the solution proposed by short-sighted business councils and some economists is to bring in ever more people to make up the shortfall in labor.

The result is of course that the extra workers will rapidly swell the population of Australia, so that the average Australian will own a steadily decreasing share of our mineral riches, which are themselves steadily decreasing. The future will be one of an unsustainable population in an impoverished continent –in a world beset by fuel shortages, climate change, and famines. And all for the short-term benefit of mining companies and those whose fortunes depend on a rising stock market.

Of course Jenny Brockie and her staff didn’t manage to see it in those terms. They took the reckless sell-off of our once-only mineral assets as a datum. Hence they also took as a given that there would not be enough workers in the country to service both the mining industry and the other more localized industries on which we depend for all sorts of supplies and services. And they also took as given that the mining industry would be able to pay rates other employers could not.

Granted all those unquestioned assumptions, they proceeded to examine quite rationally whether 457 visas (which it seems allow employers to pay about $10,000 on average less than they would have to pay Australian workers) were the best solution, or whether we should take in even more people as permanent migrants, or on the contrary run a guest worker system for Pacific migrants, or whether we needed to better train and motivate our own youth. The dishonesties and special pleading of employer organistions were fairly well exposed, and the CFMEU’s argument about it being no kindness to poor countries to take their skilled workers and doctors and nurses was respectfully examined.

But the underlying cause of the labor shortage, and the wisdom of selling off all your mineral assets as fast as possible, was not discussed.

Mark O'Connor

See also : Transcript of Insight program of 17 Jun 08 Labour Pains

The Australian Government is set to pass laws ending the single desk marketing of Australian wheat this week.

As reported by nineMSN, farmers have gathered in Canberra to protest the change. Wheat Growers Action Group chairman Peter Cannon, who helped organise the day of protests, said farmers were being dudded by the changes and wanted the public to know about it.

Wheat Export Market Alliance chairman Graham Blight also told the rally that growers' democratic rights were being ignored.

Without a single desk, "the weakest seller will determine the market", he said.

"The multinationals will come in and have a field day ... our government's given them a blank sheet".

Critics of single desk marketing have used the AWB/Iraq 'scandal' and one particularly heavy loss by Board to justify throwing out the whole single desk system. The opportunistic timing and predatory nature of their push for de-regulation is similar to the Disaster Capitalism modus operandi described by Naomi Klein in her book 'Shock Doctrine'.

The system preferred by many of these critics is - surprise, surprise - a free-market open-slather arrangement where the price of wheat can effectively be bid down to the lowest common denominator by the buyers. The buyers, in this case, would be the same sorts of multinational agri-business conglomerates that are lining up to market Australian wheat once the single desk is gone.

Not surprisingly, both Liberal (in the dubious form of Wilson Tuckey) and Labor (new Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke) fully support the changes. Both operate in the mind-space of free-market economics, where any Government 'meddling' with the purity of the market is considered heretical.

Even when it helps Australian wheat farmers.

If there are problems with the way that AWB's been run, fix the problem. Don't change a structure that's served Australian wheatgrowers well for decades.

This is is a call for help.
The University of Western Australia wants to bulldoze rare bushland in the middle of our city for future property development. The Minister for the Environment David Templeman is soon to make his decision on whether 60% of this pristine 36 hectare bushland will be destroyed to make way for offices and housing.

David Templeman's contact details are:
The Hon. David Templeman MLA
Minister for the Environment,
Climate Change, Peel
29th Floor
St. George's Terrace
PERTH 6000

email: david-templeman[at]dpc.wa.gov.au

Please open the website www.blackcockatoorescue.com.

Once in there have a look at the site and click on UWA link.
Watch the videos and then click on the link to protest, on each vision or just one.
Make your comments known to the ministers and send it off.
Remember the ministers have not made their decisions yet so be nice.
We need all your help.
click for video
WE NEED TO ACT NOW AS THE DECISION IS NEAR, VERY NEAR.

Glen Dewhurst of Black Cockatoo Conservation team

These are lovely, intelligent, sociable and long-lived animals. To lose them would be tragic - and the situation already is tragic. (Ed.)

Poet pens a plea to stop population push

By Mark Uhlmann Assembly Reporter

(Growth Concern: Mark O’Connor)

As the federal and ACT governments preach the virtues of high population growth a few individuals are prepared to put an alternative view.

One of those is Canberra poet Mark O’Connor, co-author of a book soon to be published by Enviro Books called Overloading Australia.

The Stanhope Government boasted this week of increases to interstate and international migration to Canberra, but O’Connor said, “Canberra’s going downhill rapidly."

“We have this mad pro-development Government that tries to push more and more people into it.”

He said most people wanted Canberra “kept more or less the way it is”, but could not get representation for this view in the ACT Legislative Assembly.

Canberra’s present population was more than enough and Government programs encouraging more people to come were irresponsible.

At the very least there should not be an open-ended commitment to ever more suburbs, which was the case at present, he said.
The economy was dependent on more suburbs being built. The result was a declining quality of life for those faced with higher population densities.

O’Connor said “citizen disobedience” was now appropriate. For example, that we should not conserve water.
This would “only be encouraging (Chief Minister) Jon Stanhope to push us further into a position where come the next drought we’ll have an even larger population”.

Until the Government had a plan to cap the population, it was counterproductive to conserve water.

Across the country, population growth was being demanded as a necessary part of economic growth, putting an increasing strain on the infrastructure of cities.

Australia’s annual population growth was 1.5 per cent.

“The UN Population Fund regards 1.1 per cent as too high in Asia.” O’Connor said.

The growth was about half natural increase and half immigration. Immigration was at record highs and all the pressure from government and industry was to be even more irresponsible.

There was recognition by governments that greenhouse gases had to be cut, but by some trick that had to be divorced from economic growth, and the economy just had to keep on growing. “That’s an unsustainable position, that will come unstuck before long,” O’Connor said.

There was a “selective deafness in the media” on the population issue.

The president of the Australian conservation Foundation, Ian Lowe, had tried to raise the population issue at the 2020 Summit, but had been up against a belief that population growth and economic growth were good.

O’Connor said, “Unless you win this (population) battle, in the long-run every environmental battle will be lost.”

(Reprinted with the author's permission from From The Canberra Times Saturday May 24 2008 page 15 News)

On Radio National's Breakfast Show of 16 June 2008, Canadian Maude Barlow author of "Blue Covenant - The Global Water Crisis And The Coming Battle For The Right To Water" (RRP AU$29.95), broke yet more alarming news of yet another aspect of humankind's combined problem of resources scarcity and overpopulation, that is, the rapid ongoing depletion of non-renewable underground water supplies on top of our large-scale interference with the earth's natural water cycles.

In the interview (the audio file not yet available, will be soon made available here for about 4 weeks) Barlow gave a sobering catalogue of unsustainable water practices across the globe. These included:

• Much of the US is literally running out of water, and that the Colorado
  River/Hoover Dam system is failing;
• Water tables underneath southern India are rapidly falling as bore water pumps are running literally 24x7 to supply water for agricultural, domestic and industrial use;
• The ground beneath Mexico City is sinking as water beneath it is pumped out to supply the needs of its population;
• China is diverting massive amounts of water at enormous ecological and social cost in order to supply the world with cheap plastic artifacts such as shower curtains;
• The biggest killer of children in the world today is not AIDS, war or traffic accidents, but, rather, water-borne diseases.

She strongly opposed water privatisation as a solution to the problem. Whilst being in favour of placing an appropriate monetary value on water, she said that giving control of water assets to private corporations would only lead to those corporations being able to charge exorbitant rates to the rest of us and would most likely lead to the poor missing out.

As a general rule, Maude Barlow opposes measures to divert natural flows of water such as the Victorian Government's planned North South Pipeline to diver water from the Goulburn River valley to supply Melbourne's project population growth by 1 million (see www.plugthepipe.com).

In regard to desalination which is being more widely adopted around Australia, Maude Barlow suggested that instead of relying on such energy-intensive and ecologically questionable technologies that Australia, instead urgently consider ceasing the growth of its population. Without sustainable water supplies it is folly for a country such as Australia to continue to erect ever more high-rise buildings without sustainable supplies of water to meet the needs of their occupants.

See also
Against the flow of 7 Jun 08 in the Melbourne Age;
Mother Jones interview about Maude Barlow's previous book, Blue Gold;
Maude Barlow on the Global Movement of 27 Feb 08;
About Maude Barlow in www.canadians.org;
Reviews of Blue Covenant by Readings and The New Press

"The unprecedented fuel prices we are facing at the moment is adding unimaginable hardship to many in the transport industry, add the new Registration charges, fuel excise increases and driving hours regulation which now come with unreasonable fines and demerit points and compliance regulations, it’s not hard to believe that we are heading in one direction…….Bankruptcy"
Industry spokesperson and Southern Cross Party spokesman, Mick Pattel, 4 December 2008

European truck drivers and farmers and fishermen have been demonstrating for weeks in the face of high oil prices. Now, finally, Australian truck owners are taking action. And it looks like there is a new political party supporting them, The Southern Cross Party.

At a meeting in Toowomba on Saturday, owners and drivers from three states said that they could not remain in business because of administrative costs related to increases in fuel excise and vehicle registration.

This supply interruption has been a long time coming, as perusal of Industry spokesman, Mick Pattel's blog will attest.

"If the government doesn't come to the party, deliveries of bread, fuel and milk will be affected," say spokespersons, Sheridan Steinohrt and Mick Pattel

They also complained about new rules for managing driver fatigue, anticipating problems with demerit points, and describing pettiness over log book infractions and excessive driving times. The truck owners and drivers are down on the National Transport Commission, the national governing body, which they say does not contain representatives from the industry.

Owners claim that they can no longer recruit drivers because of all the rules.

Mr Pattel was reported by the Toowoomba Chronicle to have stated that he thought the action might go on for two weeks, but he thought that the government might come to the table just before the truck owners take action.

According to Fairfax-owned paper, the North Queensland Register, on 29-5-2008, in Reg Burton, "National Truck stoppage go ahead", Mr Pattel had quoted said a spokesperson for Federal Transport Minister, Anthony Albanese, as saying that "he didn’t know why the operators were worried as all they had to do was pass the cost on to the public."

The truck owners hope that the public will understand their plight and support them. Mr Pattel said that the industry was warning the public so they can prepare for an interruption to supplies.

The Toowoomba Chronicle reported that the intuitive Bob Katter, Federal Member for Kennedy, was supportive to the industry, agreeing that they "have no alternative but to take direct action." The Chronicle reported that Vaughan Johnson, Member for Gregory, and Ray Hopper, Member for the Darling Downs, were also present at the Toowoomba Meeting.

The Chronicle, however, made no mention of the surely cogent fact that Mr Pattel is a spokesman for the Southern Cross [political] Party. The Chronicle is owned by APN News & Media Ltd. We have, unfortunately, come to expect this kind of omission from the mainstream press.

("All but seven of the 36 regional daily newspapers in Australia are owned by just four companies: News Corporation, John Fairfax Holdings, Rural Press and APM News and Media. And all but four of the 39 non-metropolitan commercial television stations in Australia are owned by just three operators: Prime Television, WIN, and Southern Cross Broadcasting. And it's clear if media ownership regulations are further relaxed, greater concentration is certain." - Dianne Jones from the University of Queensland, in a program about changes to media cross ownership rules, which featured Toowoomba, on 5 October 2006, at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2006/1754395.htm)

According to their website, the Southern Cross Party is against the traditional party structure per se; it is for independents. It aims to be a party of independents. It voices reasonable and valid concerns about lack of democracy and about corporatised government affecting the access to and use of land. It is suspicious of climate change agreements and the weakening of local democracy by the distancing of political control and the abstraction of issues.

This list of demands was passed by a meeting of truck owners in Townsville on the 24th of May 2008, the additions 16,17, were added at Toowoomba Meeting 14th June 2008. (Information from: http://southerncrossparty.com/blog/2/feed)

"Not Negotiable

1. Disbanding of the National Transport Commission immediately.

2. No electronic recording systems, or work dairies.

3. No changes in the present log book format.

4. No demerit points on log books, or driving hours regulations.

The full list, available at http://southerncrossparty.com/node/783 is

Road Transport Shutdown 2008 List of Demands
Sun, 05/11/2008 - 17:39 — Mick Pattel

This list of demands have been passed by the meeting in Townsville on the 24th of May 2008, the additions 16,17, were added at Toowoomba Meeting 14th June 2008
Not Negotiable

1. Disbanding of the National Transport Commission immediately.
2. No electronic recording systems, or work dairies.
3. No changes in the present log book format.
4. No demerit points on log books, or driving hours regulations.
5. Recoupment of demerit points for professional drivers who earn their living from their licence to be reduced to 12 months not the existing 36 months.
6. No penalty to drivers exceeding prescribed driving time when attempting to reach a vacant heavy vehicle rest area or when marginally over driving hours in compliance with defacto hours proposed under the new NTC ruling for all drivers irrespective of participation of fatigue management programs, and in any case ‘reasonable defence’ is to apply where compliance is not possible.
7. All fines for logbook breaches to be capped at an agreed fixed amount and relate to safety breaches only.
8. All fines and loss of demerit points for logbook breaches to be rescinded, fines and points to be reimbursed, all licences lost as a result of this legislation to be reinstated to previous status.
9. No increases or changes in registration charges for any truck or bus over 4 tonnes, charges to be set in concrete at current levels.
10. No increase or indexation of fuel excise.
11. No fuel based carbon charges or taxes.
12. No changes or variations to the Federal Fuel Energy Grants Scheme or to the State Bulk End User Rebates both of these are to remain in place indefinitely.
13. Authorities to endorse a driver intercept report sheet to create a reporting system to identify rude and unethical enforcement officers.
14. Main Roads Authorities in all States to construct and maintain all weather road train termination pads of adequate size.
15. A priority funded program to provide all weather heavy vehicle rest areas that are designed to provide adequate parking and amenities for the different truck trailer configurations according to truck traffic density.
16. That the log book period be changed from any 24 hour period to midnight to midnight on any calendar day.
17. That an inspection by an officer of either Queensland Transport or the Queensland Police Service of a drivers log book cannot be inspected past 14 days prior to the interception date.

5. Recoupment of demerit points for professional drivers who earn their living from their licence to be reduced to 12 months not the existing 36 months."

Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) and allied groups have launched an ad campaign to draw attention to the environmental devastation caused by continuing population growth. The ads will appear in major publications across the nation.

"Loss of open space, increased traffic congestion, never-ending sprawl—these are all consequences of a growing population. Habitat loss due to population growth is, by far, the greatest threat to wildlife," said Diana Hull, the organization's President.

"Population growth is overwhelming the gains that the United States has made in energy conservation and protection of critical wild lands. Water shortages and energy shortages result, in part, from the increased demands of an increasing population, yet we are ignoring this half of the equation. Americans do not want the increased crowding and resource depletion, but it is being forced on them by politicians," Hull continued.

The United States now has a population of more than 300 million, and projections indicate that it will soar by another 100 million in 30 years. If no action is taken, the U.S. will face a population of at least 600 million people by the end of this century. While other developed nations have stable populations, the population in the U.S. continues to grow like that of India and China.

More than 80 percent of the nation's population growth results from immigration and births to immigrants. In California, immigration accounts for virtually 100 percent of the population growth.

This national ad campaign by CAPS and its partners in America's Leadership Team for Long Range population-Immigration-Resource Planning is part of a long-term plan to raise public awareness of the
extent of the nation's current population growth, the consequences of that growth on myriad environmental and social problems, and the policies that produce the growth.

The ad which shows a bulldozer as "one of America's best selling vehicles" can be viewed
here.

CAPS home page

Toll-road operator, ConnectEast, has only one asset, a 39km motorway running from Mitcham to Frankston, at the cost of $3.5billion. In "A testing time for ConnectEast," The Australian Financial Review on 12 June 2008 reports that ConnectEast's shares are at their lowest value ever, just as it is about to open the toll-way, five months early. AFR Journalist, Chanticleer, thinks this is part of the 'thrashing' handed out to the 'debt-laden infrastructure sector in general'.

This is yet another private-public pet State Government project. The Victorian State Government's bias for new roads is looking sillier and sillier in the light of peak-oil, yet it continues to ram these costly anachronisms through against all kinds of public protests.

We reported on this toll-way in "Roads to Wildlife Extinction", where a proposed route for a bypass threatens to cut through a major flora and fauna reserve and to bisect the Mornington Peninsula, ruining plans for wildlife corridors in the area.

Transurban, is also sinking fast on the share-market. This is the company behind the unpopular tunnels in the Victorian EastWest link, which includes an 18km road tunnel linking the Tullamarine and Eastern Freeways and a 17km rail tunnel linking Footscray to Caulfield. These enormous automobile-intensive and invasive works have sparked massive protests, despite the fact that the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, just 'kicked in' $12 million to help

Rudd's contribution comes under what everyone in the government and the mainstream press is referring to as
"nation building'. This quaint term is creepily colonial and one wonders why our leaders have accepted to mouth such clunky terminology, then one remembers that they are clunky leaders.

Anthropologist John Posthill has devoted an entire book to the term, and here is an apt quote for what's going down in Australia:

"The notion of nation building is no less problematic than that of nation. This term has long been marginalized from serious Western social theory for its association with modernization theory (Smith 2004:195, cf.Deutsch and Foltz 1963, Deutsch 1966). The latter had its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s as the U.S. government recruited scores of social scientists in its efforts to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of Third World populations in rivalry with the Soviet Union and China. Modernisation became an elastic notion used by U.S. academics and policy-makers to explain the persistence of traditional ‘mind-sets’ and ease the transition to market-driven, ‘democratic’ regimes in the post-colonial world. In other words, it was used to promote a form of nation building modeled on an idealized United States (Latham and Gaddis 2000). In Vietnam, ‘the other war’, the propaganda war over hearts and minds, was fought and lost by American social scientists who failed to agree on a nation building strategy for that country (Marquis 2000). At present, the term is often used in the Anglophone media and popular scholarship with reference to America’s half-hearted attempts at ‘reconstruction’ in occupied countries such as Afghanistan or Iraq (e.g., Ignatieff 2003)."
Source: John Postill, Media and Nation Building: How the Iban Became Malaysian, Berghahn Books, 2005

At the elections of 15 March pro-developer councils were trounced in Redland City and on the Sunshine Coast, but this popular rejection of over-development means little to the State Labor Government of Anna Bligh and the property developers she serves.

On Thursday 5 June the Bligh Government announced its intention to push aside objections from the Redland and Sunshine Coast Councils in order to fast track developments in 17 South East Queensland sites purportedly to “improve housing affordability”. Of course, the obvious measure of selling land directly to the public in order to spare them the cost of extravagant developers' margins, as suggested by at least one correspondent to the Courier Mail recently, has not been taken up.

On 9 June Anna Bligh announced further measures to clear impediments to housing development in South East Queensland. The Courier Mail article Green Space Land Grab reported:

The Bligh Government is set to take the brakes off urban sprawl by making it easier for developers to build on South East Queensland's precious open green space.

Just three years after the Beattie government put protections in place to control rampant development in the region, a review of those controls is now flagging big changes.

Among them is a proposed expansion of the so-called “urban footprint” in a move that would allow new housing and commercial developments to sprawl beyond the existing boundaries.

Against previous undertakings to allow local communities plenty of chances to have their say on future planning, it was announced that discussion of the expansion of SEQ's urban footprint into surrounding green spaces would be kept secret until the release of a draft plan in December, supposedly because this knowledge is “commercially sensitive”.

The office of Urban Management, which was set up with the stated goal of keeping rampant development in check, has been abolished. (The link to www.oum.qld.gov.au returned with the Google search term "Office of Urban Management" is now redirected to www.dip.qld.gov.au/seq.)

This accelerated development is proceeding well ahead of infrastructure upgrades necessary to accommodate the extra population. Earlier on 5 June it was reported in the Bayside Bulletin story Transport projects “too far away” that Redland City Council had raised concerns over the long wait for public transport and road upgrades which could be 10 to 20 years away. On 2 June the Bayside Bulletin story Call to upgrade roads reported growing traffic congestion in the Redlands area and increasingly long travel times along the major routes to Brisbane.

On 5 June, on hearing of the new state Government mandated developments in the Redlands area, a local taxi driver in a post to the Bayside Bulletin wrote:

Our state government has learnt absolutely nothing about infrastructure being in place before known growth - pushing for SE Thornlands development 11 years before an upgrade of the Cleveland-Redland Bay Road in 2019 is absolute stupidity. Redlands voters will have much to remember, none of it good, at the next state election.

Sunshine Coast Mayor Bob Abbot said it was “madness” to turn big areas of land into housing estates when proper transport links had not been established.

The expansion of the urban footprint was made in spite of assurances only two years ago that there was already enough land within the existing urban footprint to acommodate growth.

Bligh claimed that the fast tracking of the review was prompted by the new population forecasts showing that the region was likely to be home to an extra 1.5 million people within 18 years.

The ‘new population forecasts’ undoubtedly were the direct result of Federal Immigration Minister Chris Evans' announcement on 14 May of a massive increase of the annual immigration to 300,000. Both the Queensland Government and the pro-population-growth Courier Mail have been curiously silent on the increased immigration rates. As one example, for a whole week following from Friday 16 May, when a single opinion piece in favour of Pacific Island guest workers was published, there was a news blackout in the Courier Mail as its pages were full of stories about the chaos caused by existing population growth. This was in marked contrast to the reporting in The Australian (the national newspaper) which, like the Courier Mail, is owned by US citizen Rupert Murdoch. All along The Australian has stridently pushed the pro-immigration barrow.

It's as if both the Queensland Government and the Courier Mail don't want the Queensland public to draw the link between high international immigration into Australia and the resultant inter-state immigration which Bligh insists makes her trampling over the rights of Queensland communities necessary.

See also: More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland of 14 May 08, How to end the Queensland economy's addiction to population growth? of 26 Apr 08, Courier-Mail beats up on public for complaining about cost of 'progress' of 14 Apr 08, The Australian laments outcome of Queensland local government elections of 30 Mar 08.

How do the politicians and the CBC define prosperity?

It is time we ask ourselves: Has this ”progress“ called ”Economic Growth“ (of which population growth is the main factor) really made our lives better? Politicians say it improves our lives. The CBC's host of ”The Sunday Edition“ Michael Enright said on his June 7, 2008 radio show that we need immigration-driven population growth in order to ”prosper“.

I would like to know what his definition of ”prosper“ is. Does Enright think that prospering means converting hundreds of thousands of hectares of Canadian land from biodiverse ecosystems into new roads, subdivisions, clearcuts, malls, parking lots, and open-pit mines to accommodate about 250,000 additional immigrants every year? Does that make life better for the average Canadian? Has real wealth per Canadian increased?

When I was born in 1980 there were only 24 million people in Canada. 28 years later, would a middle class person be able to afford more quality and quantity of real resources now than in 1980? I don't think so. In 1980, a middle class person could easily afford a 40 hectare hobby farm where the climate is mild such as Southern Ontario. Today, you'd have to be upper class to have that.

In 1980 the furniture that the average person bought was made from solid wood, not particle board with a glued-on veneer that peels off when wet.

The lesson: ”Economic Growth“, or increasing the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) does so by increasing the population, which explains why it results in less real wealth per person. More people means less space and resources per person. No wonder ”progress“ has made life worse for the average Canadian

.

Brishen Hoff, President of Biodiversity First
(biodiversityfirst.googlepages.com/index.htm)

See also: Living standards and our material prosperity 6 Sep 08 concerning the quality of life in Australia

In a Submission to the Select Committee of the Legislative Council on the Impact of Peak Oil on South Australia
Summary, the South Australian Farmers Federation has stated that, and I quote, "The rise in 'Peak Oil prices' has had a significant affect on the farmers and rural communities in this state."
They explain that the effects have been experienced as:
"• Higher costs of farming and using machinery
• Higher costs of farm inputs as a result of petroleum products used in their production, for instance fertilizers
• Higher freight costs
• Supermarket Duopoly forcing farm gate prices down
• Higher transport costs affecting rural families for basic social activities for sport and relaxation
• Drop in volunteer labour due to travel costs

In their executive summary they state:
"Unless something is done quickly to address this situation there is a danger of farmers leaving the land and food production dropping. Recently the UN stated that lower production in developed countries and rising demand for food could cause serious global problems due to food shortages.
It seems incongruous to the SAFF that given the world wide situation that our farmers are finding it so hard to make even a reasonable living, when market forces should be driving the price they receive for produce up, not holding it down at a level below the increase in costs.
The South Australian and Australian markets need to be reviewed as a matter of urgency to ensure that fair market forces are allowed to operate in the state so that producers can earn a fair return for their effort and ensure their future viability."

The submission-writers recommend "that the South Australian Government:

• Review the fuel excise system with a view to reducing the excise levied on fuel
• Invest in research into viable alternative fuel sources.
• Create a system that ensures the supply of fuel to the state in general and to farmers in particular at crucial harvest / sale times
• Review the current system of moving freight, looking for an innovative new approach that can benefit all industries in the state
• Undertake a program to improve the ability of rural people to travel to basic family activities such as sport and recreation as well as other necessary travel
• Ensure the elderly in rural areas are supported to reduce the cost of travel to essential appointments
• Volunteers are supported."

Full submission is available here.

(illustration by Sheila Newman)
In “Population grows at record rate", an article by Tim Colebatch, The Age, June 6, 2008, an Australian journalist has once again been given license by the Fairfax Press to frame Australia’s overpopulation problem as some kind of triumph.

In an article akin to the spin used to sell large bags of potato crisps and sugar, caffeine and phenelalanine-laden soft drinks to adolescents, Tim Colebatch sells overpopulation to Age readers.

Whilst relating the latest ABS statistics, the journalist chooses resoundingly positive terms for this undemocratic and frightening complex phenomenon:

Australia “turned the corner” into 2007 by having ‘almost 21.2 million people'.
In Victoria, the state’s population grew by a “record” 82,430 people. Tasmania “reached a milestone” and is ‘now “on track” to reach 500,000 residents’

Portraying this bizarre engineered growth as some kind of race for supremacy, Colbatch comments that Victoria “lost slightly” ‘in net migration flows to other states.’ ‘Queensland (+25,647) was the “big winner” from interstate migration, as usual, while NSW (-24,028) was again the “big loser”.’

The article concludes with some of the costs of population growth in Australia, but without portraying them as costs. In contrast to the hyped up descriptors for the growing numbers, journalist Colbatch leaves right for the end a peculiarly unemotional account of some of the suffering involved:

“The rapid population growth is driven by business recruiting ready-trained skilled workers from poorer countries rather than training Australians. In the six months to April, almost 100,000 temporary workers arrived, while the Government has just increased the quota for permanent skilled migration from 102,500 to 133,500. Critics point out that there has been no increase in housing supply, so the arrivals are intensifying the housing shortage and helping to drive up rents.”

There is no warning of how the extra people will affect the chances of Australians to weather oil, soil and water depletion.

The statistical news is actually unrelievedly awful, especially as related with ghastly flourishes like these for Victoria:

‘VICTORIA's population has “soared” to more than 5.2 million, with the Brumby Government "claiming the biggest growth in 35 years”' and ‘Treasurer John Lenders said the figures were "an endorsement of our Government's record investment in making Victoria the best place to live, work and raise a family"’.

No mention at all of the growth in groups all over Victoria and the rest of the country protesting at the loss of democracy and control over their environments. This is not reporting. This is propaganda, pure and simple.

Please circulate this article to help to counteract mainstream-media propaganda for population growth.

India: Oil prices to increase by 11%
Diezel goes up by 9%
Cooking gas goes up by 17%

The Indian Government is reported to fear that the price of oil may cost it the next election₁.

Such are the politics of petroleum. There is nothing it does not touch.

The 'rich countries' appear to have much more of a buffer than most of India, but their road transport and agriculture industries are already in trouble. It is well-known that starvation is never far away for many people in the tropical Asian countries, but less well-known is the large class of people living in precarity elsewhere, especially in the Anglophone countries.

In London around 10,000 finance workers have lost their jobs this year and it is anticipated that perhaps up to 40,000 will lose their jobs in the current months. (France2 8pm News, 21 May).

In "Job loss a sure road to skid row"₂ in the Herald Sun of Tuesday May 27, 2008, it was reported that a Citibank survey showed that, in Australia, "one in two workers would face financial ruin within four weeks of losing their jobs;… almost 20 per cent of workers would not last a week. Only one in four workers would be able to survive more than three months."

Some 'rich countries' don't know when to stop and part of their population is sliding ever so quickly into third world status. For instance, the Australian government has become a 'banana republic' massively endebted and engaged in energy-intensive infrastructure expansion programs everywhere. Under the behest of the Australian academy of Technology and Engineering Sciences, the Property Council of Australia, The Australian Population Institute, and its own state governments, all heavily peopled by big development lobbyists, Australia is trying to double its population as soon as possible, planning new megacities. For these 'programs' of infrastructure building and population increase, worker, business and family reunion immigration have been stepped up, and families receive baby bonuses for having children, just as though the days of cheap oil were just beginning, instead of in their twilight. Yet, as in the USA, evictions and personal debt are sky rocketing.

And really, what is three months security in a century of oil depletion? Who is safe? We all need more solidarity. France, so far, shows the best example.

Sheila Newman

Footnotes

1. ↑ Rhys Blakely, "India concedes in battle to keep oil price down", The Times, 6 Jun 08

2. ↑ Craig Binnie, "Job loss a sure road to skid row" in the Victorian Herald Sun(Australia) of 27 May 08

France will soon become President of the European Union.

The French Parliament is scheduled to vote on the first of a new set of environmental laws, springing from an environmental summit - La Grenelle - profoundly reviewing the state of the Environment, before mid July 2008.

During the French presidential elections, which Sarkozy won, he promised to hold an important environmental summit founded on an historic 1968 one, Les accords de la Grenelle. The 1968 Grenelle (Summit) is remembered for having led to a 25% increase in social security benefits, marking the beginning of the famous “social dialogue” in France.

On France2 Public News of Thursday June 5, Nicolas Hulot, film-maker, t.v. star, and ecological militant, head of the Nicolas Hulot Foundation for Nature and Man, was asked to comment on progress made since the recent French summit on environmental law, which his Foundation provided much of the impetus for. Hulot said that the proposed laws were, “too little and too slow,” and he commented on the amount of resistance and lobbying.

He said that he must be careful not to disrupt a good dynamic. “In France’s summit we got a sum of objectives and measures that we have never had before and we are in a position that no country has been in before ; the country has come together and is readying itself for action, so I have to be objective.” He added, however, that France still has to look at things as they are and not kid herself.

“At the moment every environmental indicator shows that the situation is accelerating, so that, whatever becomes of the summit objectives, anything we achieve will be a catch-up.”

“A number of things agreed to in the Summit have lost ground, for example carbon taxes have been delayed … And, renovation of old buildings - because new construction is only 9% of the building stock - the rest is all old - renovation of old buildings was supposed to become the standard. And green wedges; there were supposed to be connections between all the ecological zones; this was supposed to be put in place, but it hasn’t happened. These things could be brought up the list again by the members of Parliament (les deputés).”

Hulot said that he hoped that Members of Parliament would not descend into the depths they did over Genetically modified crops law, and instead will vote responsibly together by unanimously voting the Environment summit law (la loi Grenelle)… and perhaps bring some things forward, because so much has been scheduled too far ahead, to 2015, 2020 etc.

Hulot was asked by the announcer on the French News: “It’s true that the context of things has changed, the process has accelerated. Take for example, the cost of petroleum, would you accede to the demands of the occupations that are angry about this… by softening the taxes to reduce the amount they pay?”

Hulot: “Of course not, although that is easy to say if one is not specifically suffering. The point is that everyone needs to get real. We are now in food crisis, energy crisis, crisis of natural resources and primary resources, all combined with the economic crisis, bringing us to one of the greatest crises that the world has ever known. So, what do we do? Do we wait until we run into dead-ends everywhere, or do we take strong measures? France cannot all by herself be virtuous.”

She could, however, improve the situation by leading the European community.

“France could do it with La Grenelle… correcting and enriching a number of provisions. She could find legitimacy at the moment when she enters the Presidency of the European Union to lead our partners into still more structured measures…more radical…”

Asked to talk about petroleum in this context, Hulot, exclaimed, “Excuse me, but on Petrol, we still don’t have a Plan B. Petrol has still not hit bottom. We cannot take short term measures permanently. Petrol is going to become rarer and rarer and therefore more and more expensive. Therefore, for example, in a number of sectors regulation will become necessary, and probably reconversion.”

The announcer asked, “So there is no point in trying to soften the pain of high prices in petrol…?”

Using the French metaphor, ‘Reculer pour mieux sauter’, Hulot said that, “We have to step back in order to be able to advance all together. To move in a united way.”

He was then asked, “But what should we say to the occupations that are hardest hit?”

Hulot: “Well, in the first place you have to look at their problems case by case, for instance, in fishing, 3 or 4% of the sector is responsible for the greatest draw-down on oil … this can be discussed…For road transports, we need to look at the overall transport situation …We cannot only look at road transport alone. All cannot be as it was before. If people think that everything can go on as it has done, and we react constantly in crisis mode, we are going to finish up in a massive recession. We know that those who will be hit hardest are those who are already in difficulty. For example, the fishing industry, agriculturalists, and truckies..”

“Now we need a real Marshall Plan, at the level of France and Europe, to orientate massively our investments in our economies for this transition, and for solidarity (mutual cooperation).”

(re-edited 7 June for clarity.)
Source: France2 8pm television news of 5 June 2008; "Grenelle de l'Environnement: Nicolas Hulot veut que le projet de loi de programmation soit "amendé à la hausse"", AP, 05.06.2008, 12:57 and "Le Grenelle de l’environnement, mode d’emploi", http://www.biodiversite2012.org/spip.php?article228, 12 February, 2008
Journalist and Translator: Sheila Newman

I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Canada’s social democrats have not experienced an ideological epiphany in the past seven months. One might recall that New Democratic party (NDP) premier Lorne Calvert in calling an election for November 7th declared that growth was a good thing so long as its “benefits” were shared.

This revolutionary statement was made to distinguish social democrats from the growthists on the right who simply promised that growth’s benefits would “trickle down” to the less fortunate without state intervention. But between them was complete unanimity that growth should proceed. The boreal forest would continue to be clear cut no matter how timber royalties were spent, potential farmland would be sold for housing, wetlands would be cleared for development and uranium mined.

In a speech given 22 May 08 to the Shepherds of Good Hope, NDP leader Jack Layton revealed that his party had not changed its attitude to growth:

“As a country, we have a responsibility to ensure that no member of our society is denied the essentials of life. But today, we are seeing a very disturbing trend in Canada: the growing gap between the rich and everyone else. More wealth (sic) is being generated than ever before—but that does not mean that everyone is better off. In fact, the opposite is true. The reason is pretty clear―the benefits of economic growth (sic) are not being shared equally among all Canadians.”

Oh Jack. So that’s what’s wrong with economic growth? Just that its benefits are not being shared equally among all Canadians. Well they certainly weren’t shared equally in NDP British Columbia, NDP Saskatchewan and NDP Manitoba. All three provinces recorded the worst child poverty rates in the country. And homeless people were out on the street in force in the latter half of the nineties in BC too, during the NDP reign. The growing gap between top and bottom income levels also rose during their tenure. Analysts even on the left also report that the gap between social classes or at least regionally between north and south actually grew under Tony Blair’s centre-left government. Clearly there is a gap between the rhetoric of social equality and its delivery. And just as clearly, economic growth is not the mechanism of that delivery.

Seldom factored in as wealth are the 33 trillion dollars worth of biodiversity services that the planet provides free of charge to support human life. Services which are daily being destroyed by relentless economic growth.

But I thought what was wrong with economic growth was what it did while it was “growing”. Eating into natural capital and destroying real wealth in creating the “wealth” that Mr. Layton defines as such. For what is “wealth”? Is it the toys we accumulate with all this economic activity? The consumer goods, the cars, the furniture, the sparkling new housing units? What is it? Seldom factored in as wealth are the 33 trillion dollars worth of biodiversity services that the planet provides free of charge to support human life. Services which are daily being destroyed by relentless economic growth. Clean water, unpolluted air, healthy vibrant fish stocks in our lakes and streams, viable microorganisms―these constitute the real wealth of the nation that are not to be “shared” and parceled out like tax rebates to Jack Layton’s low income constituency or offered to the developers’ greed. When are we going to a measuring stick that reflects this fact and replaces GDP and the statistics politicians are using to test reality?

To seal the deal Layton was asked by veteran parliamentary reporter Mike Duffy if his plan to tax the worst corporate polluters might impede economic growth. Layton quickly reassured him, “Oh, no, look at Germany. Thegovernment forced penalties on the car manufacturers and revenue went to the development of wind turbines. There is more economic growth now than before.” Layton’s plan is in opposition to the Liberal-Green plan to introduce carbon taxes. He apparently has not heard the news that the Royal Academy of Sciences concluded that ALL economic growth must end if we are to stop short of raising global temperatures by that critical 2 degree tipping point.

Tim Murray, 1 Jun 08

See also: Growth is OK if it is shared? of 12 Oct 07.

The Australian government will do anything to save this little fellow except stopping developers from building over his habitat.

You would think that the Federal and ACT government really cared that his species is nearly extinct to read how far they are prepared to go to make other species pay for what some leaders of our species are responsible for doing.

In the wake of the Belconnen kangaroo massacre, some of us thought that the government was drawing a very long bow to expect the public to take seriously the implication that 400 odd Belconnen kangaroos were mercilessly purged from nature in order to protect the earless dragon, charming though he is. Just between friends, we still aren't convinced.

Yet, in Peter Robertson & Murray Evanshttp, "Draft National Recovery Plan for the Grassland Earless Dragon Tympanocryptis pinguicoll, "native grazers" as well as "introduced grazers" have been newly included as threats to Tympanocryptis pinquicoll. "Native grazers" is zoo-speak for kangaroos and any other indigenous wildlife that eats grasses.

In fact, the draft paper reveals an absurd situation and we need someone like Alice to tell the government it is nothing but a pack of cards. How wildlife officers and zoologists can stand working in these arcane conditions is beyond me. According to the government's own sources, in the paper,

"The main factors involved in the decline of the Grassland Earless Dragon are thought to be loss and fragmentation of habitat due to urban, industrial or agricultural development, and these processes still threaten extant populations."
"... development at the Canberra Airport does not require the approval of the Minister for the Environment (under Section 160 of the EPBC Act) and proposals both underway and in planning at that site have resulted in the loss of known habitat and threaten further areas of occupied habitat."

Yet kangaroos have to wear all the blame! We also know that the Belconnen site is to be surrounded by new developments and there are rumours that the site itself is to be developed. So, between the airport and the developments at Belconnen, what hope is there for the earless dragon? What hope is there for kangaroos?

The problem is clearly not kangaroos, but the government's obdurate, undemocratic and unsafe insistence on growing Australia's population at the behest of developers. (See "Scanlon report underpins threat to Australian democracy"). This in the face of an expected indefinite world wide depression associated with oil decline. And they are building a new airport when the future of cheap air-travel is doomed by the lack of replacements for petroleum-based jet-fuel. It's not just kangaroos and dragons who should fear our government; it's us!

Actually, this situation where humans are blaming kangaroos for their own actions reminds me of the case that biologist, Farley Mowatt made for wolves in his 1963 book, Never Cry Wolf. He went to work as a government biologist in the Arctic on a project to find out why caribou herds were diminishing. The government thought they were probably being eaten by wolves (although both species had co-existed for millenia). After living adjacent to the wolves for months, Mowat reported that the wolves lived on a diet of field mice supplemented by the occasional elderly or sick caribou. The local trappers in the area were killing all the caribou to eat and to feed to their dogs. Mowatt's book, Never Cry Wolf, is a classic and it is said that it led to the Soviet Union banning the killing of wolves.

Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of that problem

David Brower

I present myself describing the situation in another land (Italy and Switzerland) and later on trying to give news from other parts of Europe which I know a little of. In the meantime, I shall offer some opinions, and even some suggestions….

I live in Switzerland (Lausanne) but was born in Italy (Gorizia) and I possess two nationalities. (very useful).

I have founded the Assisi Nature Council, an organisation in Italy (Assisi), at the time when it was à la mode (sorry: like AGW ! ah ah!) the figure of its most beloved Saint Francis as a symbol of Christian environmental conservation.

Times have changed, demographical growth and not conservation is the main problem, as conservation can only be obtained by less people and less of everything that too many people do.

My attention to the problem of overpopulation started rather earlier on, when I collected figures and statistics and news articles and so on. I made links with many major environmental organisations in the States and Italy and here’s a limited account of some of the feedback:

• SUSP USA = they said that they only concentrated on US problem;
• Earth Island Institute (San Francisco USA)= no answer
• WWF Italy = well, we have other priorities, like consumption
• Friends of the Earth Italy = no answer
• Italia Nostra- Italy = only conservation please
• And so on.

I approached a well known TV programme in Rome, but no success.

With Academy, no support, but some hostility. A University Professor from Perugia (Italy) asked me if I was a racist — and I didn’t even mention the immigration problem!

This resumé to tell you how overpopulation is not a respectable subject.

Lately, I have joined a group, which is related to the Radical Party, a Party of libertarian leanings, which hasn’t much representation in Parliament. Better than nothing, because the group I joined, called Rientrodolce, is the only political lobby I know in Italy, whose objective is to diminish the population. By non-violent methods (dolce) of course. No China solution, then. No other political or economic force in Italy seems aware of the existence of such a problem, though exists a number of online sites that talk about it, but their material is mostly a translation from English documents. The opinion makers in the media who refer often to overpopulation are a few, very good and informed, but they are called Cassandras (actually Cassandra was telling always the truth but nobody wanted to believe her, for the obvious reasons: she was a purveyor of Bad News!)

I get along very well with my group, we discuss lots of issues related to population, like the oil and food crisis, but there’s one blind spot in their vision.

It is called immigration.

Now, I do not understand that someone can be worried about population growth and not see that, in our western countries, it is fuelled by the relentless invasion of people from less affluent countries.

These people have found the solution to their fertility by sending the surplus to us.

This way, there will be no possibility for them to limit their population, if they have the economic incentive to emigrate.

The refusal to talk about Immigration has more than one cause.

In the case of Rientrodolce group, the philosophy behind it is libertarian, plus a complex sense of guilt towards the Third World.

This sense of guilt pressures seems to be widespread in our societies, whose ethos has been influenced by excessive left-wing rhetoric. We feel obliged to repair a perceived damage that our civilisation might have done and relish the occasion to demonstrate solidarity towards the hordes of suffering humanity rejects.

Though these sentiments, if genuine, might be laudable, they are suspiciously based on a leftist ideology (our sin is to be richer than they; we have robbed their resources through capitalism, etc.) and so are the solution we propose : quasi open borders, free circulation of goods, services and humans, solidarity, hospitality, tolerance and all that utopian vocabulary, which rests on the principle that what is desirable is also possible, and that “all you need is Love ”.

For the sake of the Third World’s problems it would be certainly better to find ways to help them there, and specifically to tie up any financial help to a serious antinatalist programme, which would really decrease their fertility while at the same time bring more wealth.

But this solution doesn’t appeal to the idealists, who prefer to enslave — which is what they really do — a foreign labour force to serve the basic necessities of a relatively wealthy civilisation. This is not piety, it is exploitation.

The Italian situation has been getting steadily worse under the previous governments that have maintained a lax attitude towards the problem of immigration, while at the same time encouraging couples to have more children.

You have probably come across news of the Italian coasts being inundated by hundreds of illegal immigrants month by month, so that nobody is now sure how many are around and what the hell are they doing: drugs or prostitution, underpaid employment without insurance, small crime or a life of misery? The incredible thing is that this kind of life costs them a lot of money, that they pay to unscrupulous exploiters: because commerce of humans is a very lucrative business and it should be stopped.

But any discussion on this subject wakes up a sort of Pavlovian reaction. If you mention immigration in the wrong crowd, accusations of racism, xenophobia, or fascism are thrown immediately at you.

This is why most people who rationally, as opposed to racially, object to illegal immigration, are very careful in expressing themselves. They do not want to be part of wild testosterone-filled young hooligans who go around bashing anybody who happens to be or look a stranger, No doubt, these gangs are made up by the less intelligent members of society, youths without jobs or proper education, who would be violent even if the foreigners didn’t exist, it is a pretext to let out frustration.

Lately though, the general public is waking up to the dangers posed by immigrants who commit violent crimes. Berlusconi, so much criticised by The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, the Bibles of liberal culture, has won the last election because promised a stricter policy in immigration. This new policy has given rise to loud protests from radical left quarters, but the recognition of the force of a popular vote is stronger.

Anyway, regarding immigration, Italians (as Americans, I hear) have a schizophrenic approach. It is well known that the economy would not function without immigration. Here in Switzerland, where I was treated in a clinic, more than half of the medical personnel was from abroad.

Families employ baby sitters and home help from the Philippine, South America, Ukraine, … They are the same people who cry against immigration . It is not sufficient to berate the local workforce which doesn’t want to do certain jobs which are then taken up by foreigners, it is a matter worth of deep and open investigation.

Moreover, the immigration issue is also a responsibility of the Catholic Church.

Italy is the country in Europe mostly influenced by the Church. Though Italians obviously do not respect the ban on contraception, the Church’s influence is felt in the political arena and in the media. No days pass by that some declaration of a Bishop isn’t printed in the media or publicised on TV. At the moment the Church is worried about the “culle vuote” (empty cradles) phenomenon and it is urging the government to offer more incentives for the Italians to procreate.

Similarly, every newspaper of the land is in favour of such government policies, and perfectly in tune with the fear of “birth dearth” and consequent pensions crisis, that is sweeping the European Union (EU).

These fears, while totally in accord with the Christian doctrine (of grow and multiply: the Providence will… well, provide, it is its job), they are very foolish coming from a secular presumably rational body.

I shall shortly post some anti-Malthusian articles by Vatican-approved sites, that explain this point of view. Interesting.

Immigration is justified also by the Church in the name of the “accoglienza” (welcome) to the needy, which is the charitable Christian doctrine: in fact, the Church is doing its job.

But government policies shouldn’t be dominated by external pressures.

But in this matter, the government is listening not to the Church but to rather other influent lobbies, mainly the powerful industries.

Especially the manufactures of the North East and the construction industry. This last body is the most obnoxious polluter and destroyer of what is left of a beautiful country. It makes me cry, when travelling along the Adriatic coast I see kilometres of disgraceful secondary homes hastily arranged in front of a once pristine beach, and all this is done with the help of some poor Albanians and Romanians, who, when the bonanza is finished, as it will soon (see Spain and France’s housing crisis) be without work. And the Italians, the ones who didn’t want to take such a lowly jobs, will also remain without hope of even those lowly jobs.

Further information: with the Italian group Rientrodolce, we are trying to influence policies, pushing for a recognition of overpopulation together with the concomitant issues of energy depletion and food crisis. Unfortunately at the moment I am not allowed to explain the dangers of immigration, but you cannot have everything….

I would like to do something similar through this groups which I have just joined, to propagate the message of overpopulation and, where possible, the madness of unlimited immigration, in the public arena. We must not only talk to each other , but find a way to be visible and authoritative.

I do not know yet how, but we will come up with some ideas, OK?

See you soon

Marisa

One hundred years ago today (as I write this in late May), sulfur fumes permeated the air at Masjid-i-Suleiman. A good sign indeed for an experienced oil hand like Reynolds. At 4 am, the drill reached 360 metres under the desert sand, and struck oil. A gusher, 25 metres high, shot into the air. Arabian oil was born.

The site was so remote that it took five days before D'Arcy got word by telegram in England. "If this is true," he replied, "all our troubles are over." It was indeed true, and more rigs hit oil elsewhere in Persia, including another huge one in September.

How things have changed. Whatever happened to telegrams? Whatever happened to the oil?

The 20th Century will undoubtedly be remembered for the explosion of technology, steam, then oil, then nuclear and solar powered technology. I stress, powered technology. Most people confuse technology with energy, and unfortunately, they are not interchangable, something fast becoming obvious as we approach the 21st Century era of Peak Energy and limits to growth.

There is so much nonsense in the media today about the reasons why petrol (and diesel of course) is so expensive, it's mind boggling. Surfing the media's web blogs' tailing articles on petrol prices quickly exposes the man in the street's ignorance of the truth. Not that we can point the finger at 'people', the media (outside of publications like this one) is doing very little to educate or inform their readers or viewers.

So, when I prophesise that within as little as four or five years we may not be able to buy any fuel at all, at any price, people of course think I'm a complete nut case. I can understand this. The government is hardly showing signs of any such concerns, when they propose to build new freeways and tunnels to the airport!

Peak Oil is often misconstrued as 'running out' of oil. In fact, it's 'only' the point at which roughly half the oil has been extracted. This has been thoroughly documented in the USA which was by far the largest oil producer until after WWII. That nation peaked in 1971, and even though the largest oil field in all of North America (Prudhoe Bay) was put into service shortly thereafter, the US' oil production never recovered, inexorably decreasing to its current level, slightly less than 50% of peak. Peak Oil is no theory, the American experience proves this beyond any doubt.

So what of Australia? The news, I'm afraid, is grim indeed. Australia's oil production peaked in 2000. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) has, for reasons known only unto itself, consistently mispredicted our future oil production. This is most baffling. Just who are they trying to kid? Do they pick figures out of thin air? Senator Milne and Ian Dunlop, formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, now also challenge our resources peak body for misleading everyone, not just once, but at least five years running. This, in my opinion at least, borders on criminal negligence. One has to realise that very important decisions are made on the back of these predictions, like enlarging airport runways.

When a nation's oil production peaks, it must then rely on importing from somewhere else. The US imports oil from Canada, Mexico (now collapsing), and Venezuela, with some top up from the Saudis and Africa. We in Australia, you may be surprised to find out, import oil from Vietnam, PNG, the United Arab Emirate, Malaysia, Brunei, and, as a further surprise, New Zealand. We actually get more oil from NZ than we do from Saudi Arabia. http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3657

There is a problem with importing oil from less developed nations. They want what we have, and are developing at an accelerating pace. Since Vietnam is our biggest single supplier (currently 28% of all imports), let's analyse their situation.

Vietnam's oil production, which did not start until 1986, steadily rose to a peak of just over 400,000 barrels/day in 2004. It has been in decline ever since. Its domestic oil consumption, also rose very quickly and in unison to 275,000 barrels/day (in 2006) as that country's economy grew at a mighty 7.1% annually, a doubling of GDP (and by definition, consumption) every ten years. By now, production is probably down to 300,000 barrels/day, and consumption is up to about........ 300,000 barrels/day!

Data for the above from http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/country/country_energy_data.cfm?fips=VM

So where's our oil going to come from now? And how dare they use it all up! Vietnam's nett oil export is now in virtual freefall from 175,000 barrels to 90,000 barrels/day in a matter of just five years. At the time of writing (I do not have current figures) it might be possible that like Indonesia (which has just left OPEC - remember, OPEC is for Oil Exporting Countries!) Vietnam has become a nett oil importer, just like us. Martin Ferguson worries about a deepening trade deficit of some 25 billion dollars from importing oil, but I worry about there being none at all left to buy.

There is not the room here to analyse what is happening to the other nations we import from, but I can tell you that apart from the UAE (representing just 12.5% of our imports), the picture is similar everywhere, including Saudi Arabia. Oil exporting nations are falling like dominoes, and soon there will be none to turn to. Within five years from now, unless another Bass Straight is found, Australia will be left with a mere 10% of the oil we now take for granted, and it might in fact be less.

Now we might find another Bass Straight, but you have to understand that even if another 250,000 barrels/day of Australian oil comes on line over the next five years, we would still only have about one third of what we currently take for granted.

This is not the time to build new freeways and tunnels to airports (which may even be quasi abandoned within five years as airlines all over the world go belly up), what we need is a major effort to build new rail infrastructure, and other associated public transport. I see no other option but to start rationing fuel, and fairly soon, allowing essential services like farming, medicine, fire brigade and so on to continue operating. Time is short, we must act now. We need visionary leadership.

Suggested reading:
http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3657
http://www.futurescenarios.org/
http://www.peakoil.org.au
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/roeoz/
http://permaculturenoosa.com.au/
http://austlii.law.uts.edu.au/au/legis/cth/bill_em/lfeab2007303/memo_0.html

Mike Stasse is a Sustainable Housing and Energy Efficiency consultant and an accredited BERS energy rating technician. He lives with his wife in the Noosa hinterland at Cooran in their Award Winning eco solar house.