population

Markets are the most inefficient way of doing anything. It's free markets that got us into this mess in the first place, because when supply far far exceeds demand, commodities are so cheap they are squandered. This is exactly what happened to oil. And water. And farming land.

Now, and quite suddenly, population pressures are exposing all the cracks. We no longer have this super abundance, and the market's way of dealing with this is to increase prices, the idea being to decrease demand. Unfortunately, the high demand is no longer caused by over abundance, it's caused by [per capita] shortages, and the market does not know how to cope with this. It simply does not compute, growth is sacrosanct. Now I realise we 'need' growth merely to pay the interest on the accruing debts the market needs to create more 'stuff', it is fast becoming evident that growth must stop. It will stop. Growth simply cannot go on forever in a closed system [like Planet Earth]. It's immaterial whether we want to end growth or not, it simply will, just like a cancer dies when it kills its host.

Humans did not evolve in markets and money. Money and markets are not in our genes. Money and markets are social constructions.

No a-priori reason exists why people must work to live. Without money, markets or the requirement to work, we would not need banks, insurance companies or most of the institutions we have today.

The market economises "money", not natural resources. Ninety percent of the natural resources used in this country are wasted on the overhead because people are required to work in order to live. I reckon 10% of the population could do all the essential work that actually needs to be done.

Australians' diets require something like 3,500 food calories each day, yet in our idiotic Rube Goldberg social system we are actually consuming, when all energy is taken into consideration, something like 200,000 calories every day! [see below]. Clearly, the "market economy" is the most inefficient organization in the history of the world!

The only technical way to reduce natural resource consumption by at least 90% is to put everyone except those with critical jobs on welfare. Forgive debt. Almost everyone would stay home and practice birth control and Permaculture. See SOCIETY OF SLOTH: A Thought Experiment
By Jay Hanson, spring, 1999 at www.warsocialism.com/unnecessary.htm.

See also Mike Stasse interviewed on U-tube, John Quiggin's failure to grasp the resources shortage crisis

The Play and folklore exhibition at the Victorian State Museum is a really interesting one because it testifies to the disappearance of accessible natural places for children, without consciously linking this to overpopulation and development, currently rampant in Victoria.

Ironically it uses photographs by Jim Quirk, the father of SPA Victoria President, population activist, Jill Quirk. The photographs are of his children, whose play he minutely and lovingly documented during the 1950s in Victoria.

These pictures will seem incredibly familiar, perhaps achingly familiar, to many people who grew up during that time in Australia. Jill's father, Jim Quirk, was a bank manager who loved wildlife and, like his daughter, worried greatly about the impact of overpopulation on natural spaces and freedom. He was also an expert colour photographer.

A photograph of Jill and her sister - where, I wonder?

Here is a worthwhile quote from a part of the exhibition:

"Not only do children have less freedom than they once did, but there are also fewer natural spaces available to children to play. Robert Pyle, an American naturalist and writer, explained that a sense of place is gained through intimate contact with natural landscapes, emphasising the importance of the ‘presence of special places and the liberty to encounter them at will’. He argued that as children’s actions are limited by regulations in genuinely wild areas such as national parks, we should be protecting small pockets of unofficial countryside – such as overgrown vacant lots or abandoned buildings – where children can play and explore freely.5"

The exhibition is by museum curator, Carla Pascoe.

ABC Breakfast Show host, Ross Solly, gives Property Council of Australia 20 minutes-plus free advertising at tax-payer expense to market industry hobby-horse.

Since when did our taxes go to fund the ABC as a national real-estate agent or an arm of the PCA?

ABC Radio 666 Breakfast Show host, Ross Solly, gave Catherine Carter, the A.C.T. Executive Director of the peak lobby group for developers, financiers, builders and engineers, more than 20 minutes between 8.30 and 9am, April 28 to beat the drum for growing Canberra's population by 500,000 over the next 20 years.

Why was there no counter-argument?

These publicly privileged views come from a professional lobby-group which markets population growth on behalf of commercial property developers, yet they were put without any counter argument, as if they emanated from a disinterested scientific or analytic body, like the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

"Ms Carter says the Territory's sluggish population growth is also a threat to economic well being." "A good size for a medium size city, we think that kind of population target is one to aim for," she said.

Ms Carter opined, on behalf of the PCA, that Canberra's economic fortunes should be pinned on population growth at "1.75 per cent" or "5,200 people per annum."

For Canberra, 500,000 people over the next 20 years would average at something like an increase of 7,500 people a year, and on a divider of four, about 2,000 new dwellings a year, or 40,000 over the Council's defined period.

In fact there are many reasons, not just to question such a promotion of population growth for Canberra, but to severely filter it out of the national public medium, because Canberra's land, water, housing, schools, hospitals, roads and transport are not coping with the current population and neither are similar services all over Australia.

To advocate artificially increasing population growth anywhere, when the world faces a petroleum supply and price wall, and widespread famine related to the unwise diversion of agriculture for biofuels seems like arrogant and dangerous folly.

The percentile growth rate of 1.75% per annum is the same one promoted by the Scanlon Report (written by the populationist Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE), which is part of Australia's development lobby). [See also Scanlon Report on this site.]

The figures originally came from work the ATSE and the Scanlon Foundation contracted from Peter McDonald and Rebecca Kippen, of the Australian National University's demography department, and was paid for by the Scanlon Foundation

Rebecca Kippen

.

The rationale for this figure was to prolong and expand the population of working age as if our economy will continue forever in the mass production factory mode of last century, for the benefit of big business. If you read between the lines of the Property Council's press release, you will realise that their concern is labour for construction sites. Their agenda is to get the local, state and federal governments to grow populations through immigration and higher birth rates. Thus it is hoped to continue to stimulate the already over-stimulated demand for building materials, new houses, roads, water technology, and raise, not only interest rates, but the price of land-holdings, agricultural produce and water itself.

Among other methods, Ms Carter is pushing for the integration of "programs like the ‘Live in Canberra’ campaign and the Skilled and Business Migration Program." Growthist lobby groups seem undeterred by the fact that,according to Dr Bob Birrell of the Monash Centre for Population Research, less than one third of skilled immigrants are working in their field; most are merely cogs in the engineering of population pressure and housing demand.

Of little or no concern to big-population-lobbyists, apparently, is the increase in the cost of living which results from this aggressive promotion of land-speculation, the rising numbers of homeless and indebted, and the short-term nature of this kind of employment and industrial activity. The risk for Australians of starvation and disease from population pressure on food supply and water, present already in many parts of the world, is never mentioned.

For those of you who may resent the spending of public funds to promote commercial ventures which will rely on increasing Australia's population and who fear the resultant social and environmental stresses, you may make your complaint to the ABC

One of many reports about the ongoing and worsening rental crisis in Brisbane, is the article "Wanted: a Room to rent" on page 27 of Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper of 29 April 2008. The article reports trends where both co-tenancy and room-by-room tenancy is increasing. In the latter case, the room is directly rented by each individual tenant from the landlord. This situation is predicted to grow here in the same way that it grew in the UK between 1996 and 2000.

It is hard to fathom whether the intention of the journalist Paddy Hintz is to objectively report this indicator of worsening quality of life for many Queenslanders or to promote acceptance of it. According to the article, "Rental experts are now predicting that &emdash; for good or for bad &emdash; room-by-room renting will continue its stellar rise," as if this trend could possibly be 'good' for anyone other than slumlords, real estate agents and property speculators.

Alex Poulsen, manager of the University of Queensland accommodation services, was quoted:

“I think what is really interesting is the number of professional people in their 20s and 30s who are now sharing.

“It’s that weird 10-year period where you can’t really afford to live in your own home but you don’t want to live at home either.

“People who live in share houses are getting older, people are getting married later and women are waiting longer to have babies.“

Alex Poulsen tried to portray shared accommodation in a somewhat positive light, when he pointed out that this kind of renting can be a great way to meet people, particularly if want to build a portfolio of contacts.

Of course, this is one of many reasons why people have chosen to live in shared accommodation in the past, but it was more a choice than a necessity, and those who did so could expect to save considerably on rental costs in return for having their personal space encroached upon by strangers with whom they may not necessarily have been compatible. These days it is no longer a choice for many, because of skyrocketing rents.

For those who do grasp the nettle of living with strangers under the same roof, the choices may still be limited. Between AU$155-AU$160 per week seems to be the average for shared accommodation which is proving to be a hurdle for many young people seeking shared accommodation in Brisbane according to Don Foster, accommodation manager of the Queensland University of Technology.

The high rents which are forcing many more than previously would have had to have lived together are the direct result of increased demand for rental properties, caused by population growth that has been directly lobbied for by land speculators. Indeed, in May 2004 whilst listening to an "Australia Talks Back" (now called "Australia Talks") talkback program on ABC's Radio National, I was astonished to hear an economist working for the Real Estate Institute of Australia (or possibly the Property Council of Australia) actually state that they were looking towards an increase in immigration to revive the slump in the property market. They have since got their wish of course, with the help of the Courier Mail newspaper, itself a relentless promoter of population growth₁ and the rest of us are paying the price.

See also: "Rent gouging threatens Brisbane inner city retail community"

Footnotes:

1. See The Courier Mail beats the drum for more Queensland population growth. [back]

Stephen Hazell,
Executive Director
Sierra Club of Canada
April 28/08

Mr. Hazell,

In your latest solicitation you enumerate the number of results that Sierra Club volunteers and staff have achieved this year owing to my support. You mention postponing the Kearl tar sands mine pending environmental impact assessment (climate change). You mention stopping the Digby Neck mega-quarry in Nova Scotia that would have proved harmful to right whales. You say you convinced the federal government to develop a new water strategy. You kept global warming at the top of the agenda by advocating "strong" action at Bali and providing needed criticism and analysis of the Harper governments (non) actions following this up. And then you successfully urged the Ontario government to "Grow the Greenbelt" and protect millions of acres of "environmentally sensitive" and "agricultural land" in Southern Ontario.

It sounds like, Mr. Hazell, that you and your team have been busy. Busy like a hyperactive janitor mopping a floor but ignoring that the tap is left wide open to continuously pour water over your work.

Do you remember the IPAT equation? Probably not, I suspect you were not even born in 1970 when the Sierra Club and the whole mainstream environmental movement accepted it as conventional wisdom. "I" (Environmental Impact) equals "P" (Population level) times A (Affluence or per capita consumption) times "T" (technology). Still makes sense to me. But no longer to the politically correct, who have taken the "P" right out to render environmental degradation incomprehensible.

Let's illustrate. We will have to cut global GHG emissions 60% just to make up for the increased emissions brought about by population increases globally in the next four decades. In Australia the population increased 30% from 1990-2006 and its GHG emissions increased by exactly the same number during that same period. In the United States, the population increased 43% from 1970 to 2004 and its GHG emissions increased 43% during that same period. The correlation is clear, is it not? Yet Sierra Club "analysts" in commenting on the governments emissions targets failed to even note Canada's immigrant-driven G-8 leading runaway population growth of 1.08%. Just as they were completely silent following the release of the March 07 census report. A stunning omission for an "environmental" organization.

Environment Minister Gordon Miller said that Southern Ontario can expect to have to jam another 6 million people into its agricultural region in the next 25 years if immigration rates are not curbed. And you want to "Grow the Greenbelt". How? "Smart Growth?" (Smart growth, Smart clear-cuts, Smart extinctions etc.) Check out what is happening to British Greenbelts, once 14% of the UK, now crumbling under development pressure. If Portland Oregon went down, anything will. There is no sanctuary from relentless population and economic growth. Renewable technologies? The energy produced by the 900 wind farm at Sarnia will be erased by the energy demands of 23 days of immigration. BC Hydro claims that if every British Columbian household turned their lights off for one hour it would provide enough power for 4000 households for a year. But the population growth rate in BC is such that in just one year everyone would have turn their lights off for 6 hours a day to power those 4000 households and in four years time everyone would have to leave their lights off permanently. Recycling is also futile. A British study revealed that one new citizen via the maternity ward or the airport wipes out 80 years of responsible re-cycling. I could go on. You get the point Mr. Hazell.

No, no. The point is not to quit recycling. Or to abandon the search for more efficient technologies. Or not to make more efficient and rational land use decisions. Etc. Etc. Rather, it is to point out that without population stabilization all of those worthy goals are pointless. That is why the Sierra Club of the United States was committed to it for most of its recent history and why one third of its current membership are trying to restore that commitment, led by a group of Sierrans called SUSPS (Sierrans for US Population Stabilization).

But I doubt, if you are a typical Canadian like me, that you will be interested in rocking the boat.

So get back to your mop and whistle your happy tune. Who knows, maybe Walt Disney was right, if you wish something to be true and avoid nasty thoughts and phrases like "over-population", "immigration", "limited carrying capacity" and "over-shoot" your Al Gore fantasy just might come true. By living greener lifestyles and vesting our hopes in renewable technologies, you might wish away the fact that there are twice as many Canadians here now as when I was born and pretend that doesn't make a whit of difference to the habitat they're destroying. Just whisper the magic words, “Aba-ka-dabra, Smart Growth!”, and presto! Done!

PS. Is there a technological fix for an extinct species?

Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC.

On 22 April 2007 Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, then Deputy Premier, rejected calls for ending Queensland's population growth, claiming that it "would have a very serious impact on the construction industry that a lot people rely on for jobs."₁.

A year later, on 25 April 2008 as reported₂ in the Sunshine coast daily, town planning lawyer, Andrew Davis, similarly objected to the plans of newly elected Sunshine Coast Mayor, Bob Abbot, to cap the coast's population growth at 400,000 from the current population of 300,000₃. Davis claimed that Abbot's initial plan to reduce annual population growth from 3.5% to 2% would result in the loss of 8,500 of the region's 20,000 construction jobs. He also claimed that there would be further job losses in the transport, property and business service sector, with flow-ons to other sectors of the economy like retail, tourism, manufacturing.

Indeed, in a manner uncharacteristic for property developers' advocates, even Andrew Davis implicitly acknowledged that such a transition would be necessary when he said, “Turning off the tap of growth, without first achieving success in creating sustainable business, will cause enormous pain for everyone, whether you work in growth industries or not.”

Given that the region does not have adequate water resources, transport infrastructure, electricity generation, or health and education services to meet the needs of the existing population, many argue that it is urgently necessary to end growth now rather than to increase the number of people who will become dependent, for their employment, upon further growth. At the very least, a plan to end the region's dependence upon growth must be adopted without further delay. Sunshine Coast residents should not hold their breath waiting for Davis and the Sunshine Coast developers to devise a plan for a sustainable economy for the region.

Putting back the date for the necessary transition from a growth-addicted economy to a stable steady state economy will only make the eventual adjustment more traumatic.

At least Bob Abbot's plans for a cap are a step in the right direction. As far as it goes, he can rightly claim a popular mandate for his stance, having won the election for Mayor against pro-developer candidate Joe Natoli, with over 70% of the vote₄.

Comments posted to the web-site of the Sunshine coast Daily News, in response to the story, also confirm the overwhelming popular support enjoyed by Abbot. (See Appendix 1 below).

Saturday's Sunshine Coast Daily in the story Coast told to grow up and diversify₅ of 26 April reported that Sunshine Coast business leaders supported Abbot and called for the diversification of the economy away from dependence upon tourism, retail and the property industry.

Sunshine Coast Business Council chair Paul Pettigrew said, "Reliance on the mainstays of tourism, retail and property development industries must be reduced. The growth of the knowledge, creative, research and innovation, manufacturing and other such skills-based industries will create a larger total economic base that is better positioned for the region’s social and economic future."

Sunshine Coast Environment Council manager Ian Christesen said the time was right to have a debate about growth₅.

“The time is right, the people have spoken at the elections, so let’s get on with rational discussion,” he said.

“The rhetoric the state government has been going on about for some time is ‘we’re managing growth’. Everyone realises that’s not the case, growth is managing us.

“We have to diversify our economy. We can’t rely on the vagaries of construction and development to underpin our economy.

“We need to move on and develop something a bit smarter.”

However, as former State Labor MP, Cate Molloy, warned (see Appendix 2) Sunshine Coast residents may see their expressed wishes to curb the demands of the developers frustrated. State Labor Government's supposedly independent assessment panel, has powers to over-rule planning decisions of the Sunshine Coast Council and other local governments.

Already in 2007, at the behest of the Property Council of Australia (PCA), the State Government forcibly amalgamated a number of local governments, against the wishes of the residents served by these councils₆. The Property Council viewed the abolished Noosa and Douglas Shire Councils and many other councils, as impediments to its agenda for unrestrained development.

However, the Property Council and the State Government's plans suffered a setback when anti-development candidates in a number of key local government areas including the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, Cairns, and Redland City overcame the additional difficulties caused by the amalgamations and defeated candidates heavily financed by developers₇.

In response to this democratic resistance, the Queensland State Government, encouraged by pro-developer Murdoch Newsmedia, set up the independent assessment panel, of which Molloy warned.

Clearly, if Queensland is to be saved from overdevelopment and overpopulation, then anti-development councils, together with their grass roots supporters, will have to show at least as much determination as the developers and their government stooges.

Footnotes

1. Qld govt rejects population cap in the Age of 22 April 2007.[back]

2. Curbing growth 'would cost jobs' by Jane Gardner in the Sunshine Coast Daily News of 25 April 2008 [back]

3. Sunshine Coast plan to cap population on Radio National's PM of 24 April 2008 [back]

4. See Electoral Commission of Queensland's results for the Sunshine Coast Mayoral elections. [back]

5. Coast told to grow up and diversify by Bill Hoffman in the Sunshine Coast Daily News of 26 April 2008 [back] [back]

6. Cate Molloy : Forced council amalgamations planned by Property Council of Australia of 7 Sep 2007 [back]

7. The Australian laments outcome of Queensland local government elections of 29 March 2008 [back]

Appendix 1: Some comments in support of Mayor Abbot's population cap

Comments were posted in response to Sunshine Coast Daily article Curbing growth 'would cost jobs' of 25 April 2008.

"The coast cannot cope with the current growth. ..."

"Growth on the coast needs stemming. At present there are subdivisions without supporting services. The building quality is less than desired, but maximum price is called for by the developers. All in the name of greed."

"It is ignorant for anybody to suggest that we need "Growth" to sustain a economy, most problems in the world are caused by growth, sure there may be "some" job loss for a while, but this will naturally adjust after a while.

"Nothing is gained without pain.

"It's good to see somebody like Mr Abbot standing up to the development industry."

"There are so many examples across the coast of where we are playing 'catch-up' because growth has not been carefully monitored. I invite any Coast residents to try getting around the Sippy Downs / education precinct between 8am - 9am and again from 3pm - 5pm. I sat in traffic there yesterday for 35 minutes - to move only a couple of hundred metres. We're all waiting for the new Dixon Interchange to open and look forward to a reduction in congestion. I'm sure the residents of Maroochy North Shore are also looking forward to the Maroochy River Bridge project completion.

"What Mayor Abbot is suggesting is reasonable, and shows an interest in the long-term livability of the Coast region. I think his vision proves that we have elected the right man for the job - someone who looks at the big picture and doesn't play into the hands of developers and their dollars."

"We don't have a infrastructure now to cope with the people we have here, Look at the most important stuff like the poor state of hospitals,the lack of public transport, the traffic nightmare."

"I don't see why we have to concentrate so many people into one place changing the entire coast into a rat race, ..."

"Enough is enough.Overdevelopment only puts money into the pockets of large developers who are not domiciled on the coast. They are only here to make fast easy money at the ultimate expense of residents. ...

"We can't afford any further development on the Sunshine Coast that only puts money into the developers pockets and leaves the rest of us to pick up the bill. More strength to Bob Abbot and his plans. And an end to the Natoli 'sleep with the enemy' policy.

"From the story and the comments all I can say is, Good for you BOB!"

"The increase is being driven by the federal government via immigration, due to the failure of various other ridiculous schemes to maintain the human plague i.e 'baby bonus'.

"Since 2003, our immigration rate has doubled. This is short term economics; selling state forest, water supply, and sacrificing entire species for a quick-buck. This is a threat to our future far worse than terrorism."

"Perhaps Mayor Abbott's proposed growth rate will help alleviate the difficulties house buyers are having getting their homes completed due to a shortage of tradespeople. (see Saturday's Daily)."

Appendix 2: Cate Molloy warns of threat of dictatorial use of State Government's planning powers.

This comment by Cate Molloy, former Labor state member of Parliament who was expelled from the Labor Party for opposing the Traveston Dam was also posted in response to the abovementioned Sunshine Coast Daily article Curbing growth 'would cost jobs' of 25 April 2008.

The current Minister for Infrastructure and Planning Paul Lucas has stated a five member independent assessment panel would be given the first right of refusal on all Noosa development applications so that means they also have first right of approval, of those applications not just the ones in conflict with the planning scheme.

We now have this Famous Five who are about to duplicate the work not only done in council but also that which is referred to the State government for review- a call in- how can any council operate effectively if the responsibility to plan and approve is removed from their hands.

OK so Noosa is only one part of the cake but this kind of eroding of democracy smacks of arrogance.

Noosa got much of its planning done well with a great deal of community input, that is now being removed not only from the mayor but also all the councillors.

We can address this by pressuring the mayor and those councillors who enjoy close relationships with both federal and state government ministers to reinstate our democratic rights.

There is a specific tactic of turning the heat up on our elected representatives to stand up for us on this important issue and not simply roll over, making a few noises about how they hope the process is thorough enough and the state government doesn't select poorly.

I would like to see those councillors who have used state and federal politicians to advance their campaigns to now actually do something with that endorsement.

Vivien Griffin and Glen Elmes have openly declared they want to work together that's great so now Viv and Glen you have to take these issues to state parliament and report back to us the people what you have both achieved.

Debbie Blumel has represented as a labor candidate at least 4 times with endorsements from Wayne Swan and a tinny full of state pollies so now come on Debbie, you can get down to Brisbane get Wayne Swan to go with you, to see Minister Lucas.

You then can report back to us on what you have achieved to get Minister Lucas to rescind this ridiculous Famous Five duplication and removal of our democracy.

Russell Green has mates in State Government and has even turned up at a State Labor retreat. This level of friendship surely must allow you Russell to put forward our case.

Of course we have other councillors who also have close ties in government but lets start with this small but highly and well connected group to really start using their connections as they have so implied they would do.

What organisation has only 24 members of which the first ten comprise the current Prime Minister and nine past and present Australian Prime Ministers or Prime Ministerial contenders? And why would they be so dedicated to an organisation with a focus so antithetical to democracy and Australians? Read on.
See also: "Nuclear power, totalitarian spin and overpopulation in Australia", "Bernard Salt on the Population 'debate'> and "Ziggy Switkowski, Population Numbers and Nuclear in the Australian" and "Normalising endless immigration and coupling it to nuclear power in Oz"

The document below probably furnished the blueprint for the Australian government to plan to transform Australian society in a manner which will displace and disenfranchise the bulk of its current population.

The Scanlon Report 30/50 - The Technological Implications of an Australian Population of 30 million by 2050

Note - this link no longer functions - see "Notes" [1]

Here is a new link: https://www.atse.org.au/Documents/reports/30-50-technological-implications-australia-population-2050-report.pdf. (Date last visited was 8 June 2018).

In the 150 pages the word 'democracy' is not mentioned once, although every aspect of Australians' lives and governance is dealt with here.

This is a 'peak oil' document, but it advocates a route whereby any choice Australians might have of reorganizing, locally, to adapt to declining availability of cheap energy, is being abrogated by the Scanlon Foundation’s grand plan to increase Australia’s immigration intake by 1.5% per annum to achieve a population of 30 million by 2050.

Australian politicians have apparently accepted the Scanlon prescription for continued economic growth through social and infrastructure engineering, and social indoctrination at the expense of democracy.

Immigration to increase by 1.5% of total population per year

To cater for our 'aging population' and 'economic growth', with immigration to increase by 1.5% of population every year, based on a recipe worked out by ANU demography, with demographer Peter McDonald, we are to have imposed upon us an unwanted and unsought massive population increase to accompany, service and pay for massive engineering works. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, the report is the result of a study carried out by The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering with money from the Scanlon Foundation. The Scanlon Foundation was, until 2001, the Brencorp Foundation, and the child of Peter Scanlon, of IXL and Patrick/Corrigan fame, currently marketing credit cards to Asia.

The Australian Multicultural Foundation and the Institute for Global Movements

In 2006, the Scanlon Foundation recently made “one of the biggest private sector donations for social sciences” to the Monash University Institute for Global Movements and the Australian Multicultural Foundation,[1] in the words of Professor Nieuwenhuysen (formerly Director of the Bureau of Immigration Research), now director of the Australian Multicultural Foundation and of the Institute for Global Movements.

The study in question seems to have been a project investigating ways to get Australians to accept a massive immigration program, draconian changes to their way of life, and loss of the natural amenities and space they grew up with, in the context of huge engineering works and infrastructure expansion proposed by the abovementioned Scanlon Report. Nieuwenhuysen commented in 2006, when the Monash University study began, that "The results of these studies are destined to generate much interest from government, academia and the wider community, both in Australia and internationally."

Membership list of this exclusive club

Indeed, if you look at the 24 person strong membership list of the Australian Multicultural Foundation, you might consider this a foregone conclusion. Here are the first 10 members:

The Hon Kevin Rudd MP (Prime Minister of Australia), Mr John Howard, The Hon Mr Simon Crean MP, The Hon. Mr Alexander Downer MP, Mr Robert Hawke AC, Dr J. R. Hewson, Mr Paul Keating, Mr Mark Latham, Mr Kim Beazley, andMr Andrew Peacock AC.

This must be the most exclusive club in Australia. I cannot help but wonder, what's in it for the members? Maybe this is how you get a crack at being the titular head of the country, by selling out your constituents to big business.

At any rate, any illusion some naive people may have been clinging to, that the Australia 2020 conference really meant to consult with Australians, rather than get them to do the bidding of engineers and industries which benefit from rapid population growth, should now be dispelled, along with the illusion that we are still living in some kind of democracy, or that the future is safe in the hands of our politicians.

[1] "Monash University > News and Events > Monash Memo
$600K for study on social cohesion

22 February 2006

The Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements has received $600,000 from the Scanlon Research Foundation to study social cohesion in Australian and international societies.

The research program for the Social Cohesion Project will be undertaken in partnership with the Australian Multicultural Foundation.

The grant will fund major interrelated studies on social cohesion: analysing and measuring the components of social cohesion; how to constructively attain social cohesion in Australia; and a study on minorities in Australian and international society.

The research will be led by academics from Monash's Faculty of Arts, including School of Political and Social Inquiry senior lecturers Dr Nick Economou and Dr David Wright-Neville, lecturer in sociology Dr Michael Ure, and Professor Andrew Markus, Director of the Jewish Civilisation department within the School of Historical Studies.

The research will be undertaken in cooperation with scholars at Chatham House in London, the Australian National University and Macquarie University.

The institute's Director, Professor John Nieuwenhuysen, is managing the project in association with Multicultural Foundation Director Mr Hass Dellal.

"This is one of the biggest private sector donations for social sciences," Professor Nieuwenhuysen said. "The Scanlon Foundation is genuinely interested in research and public policy issues and is greatly impressed by the calibre of research staff at Monash.

"The Social Cohesion Project is of central importance to the future of Australia and the international community and is a significant event for the institute.

"The results of these studies are destined to generate much interest from government, academia and the wider community, both in Australia and internationally."

The findings from each study will be presented at the 12th International Metropolis Conference to be held in Melbourne in October 2007. The conference, to be co-hosted by Monash, is the world's largest annual conference on international migration and settlement issues. It is the first time it will be held outside North America and Europe.

The Scanlon (formerly Brencorp) Foundation was established by the Brencorp Group in Victoria in 2001. The foundation's current focus is population and cultural diversity in Australia."

NOTES

(Added to article on 2 April 2010.)

[1] The URL for "The technological implications of Australia at 30 million in 2030" was a href="http://www.atse.org.au/index.php?sectionid=128 but the file is no longer listed there. I have copied and pasted the Address by Peter Scanlon below, to document the launching of the document. This address is quite interesting because it gives us an economic belief context and even admiringly cites a chapter written by Harvard economist, Benjamin M. Friedman, written with the notorious Milton Friedman: Benjamin M. Friedman, Milton Friedman, A. W. Clausen, "Postwar Changes in the American Financial Markets," in Martin Feldstein, ed., The American Economy in Transition," University of Chicago Press, 1980.

If anyone wants an electronic copy of the 2007 ATTSE Report itself, "The technological implications of Australia at 30 million in 2030," contact me through candobetter.org and I will send one to you.

"ADDRESS BY

FOUNDATION CHAIRMAN, PETER SCANLON

TO ATSE REPORT LAUNCH

18th April 07

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Ladies and Gentlemen:

The Honourable Robert Smith MLC, President of the Legislative Assembly.

The Honorable Jenny Lindell MP. Speaker of the Legislative Assembly and Parliamentarians;

Mr. Peter Laver, Vice president of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering

Mr. Vaughan Beck
Distinguished guests.

The Scanlon Foundation is committed to the belief that Australia needs to continue to grow and that this growth will require a substantial and increasing role for migration. As a consequence we see social cohesion as critical to both migration and Australia’s growth.

In that context and separately from the study by ATSE The Scanlon Foundation’s Social Cohesion Research Program incorporates six (6) individual projects, managed by the Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements and the Australian Multicultural Foundation.

One of these projects is the innovative benchmark survey throughout Australia measuring the current status of social cohesion in Australia. This survey has been commissioned and field interviews will commence in May. We anticipate results in July ready for analysis and preparation for release at Metropolis 2007.

However, the study released today by ATSE, and although very much part of our program, has different origins. In the early days of our work on social cohesion it was clear to us that there are a number of people in Australia across a broad spectrum who queried the underlying principal of growth because they worried whether the country was able to accommodate more people. In essence they asked “can we have a population of 30 million people by the year 2050 without creating substantial infrastructure and environmental issues”.
It was to deal with this perception, this question that led the Foundation to commission this study. That is why it is specific both as to numbers and Australia. That is why we went to ATSE as the independent expert with its 750 eminent Fellows.

Clearly the study says we can accommodate 30 million people by 2050. However it does say there are issues and that these are legitimate issues that need to be discussed and dealt with. ATSE concludes in fact they need to be dealt with irrespective to 30/50.

However I ask that as you reflect on this study that you do not do so in isolation. There is a flip side to the debate. That is the consequences of Growth. Too often growth is mistakenly seen to be only about material outcomes.

In his book “The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth” Benjamin Friedman demonstrates why the elements, held out by the Enlightenment thinkers so central to Western philosophy, of openness, opportunity, tolerance, economic and social mobility, fairness and democracy are all enhanced by growth.

Freidman explains that growth, rather than simply creating a higher standard of living, is the key to effecting political and social liberalization in the third world. He shows that even the wealthiest of nations puts its democratic values at risk when growth stops. Merely being wealthy is no protection against a turn toward rigidity and intolerance when a country’s citizens lose the sense that they are getting ahead.

Post war we had the growth of economic socialism which tried to deal with the imbalance of material well being by relying on redistribution rather than creation. It failed miserably.

Today, to me, in many ways there seems to be a populous move to a form of environmental socialism in that there is a concentration on regulating and redistributing what we have as was the case with economic socialism. It won’t be the answer. Separately from mans proven record of ingenuity and adaptation we need to get back to planning and doing. This will be the answer.

That we need to manage better is without doubt. The ATSE report is very clear about this. The short period of elected governments, our system of Federation together with upper and lower houses, the politicisation of the public service and so on has left us with ineffective long term planning. And this when there has never been a better time to set these priorities with our prosperity and surplus investment capital which is searching the world trying to find a home.

If Social Cohesion was not the Foundations main game I think we would have tackled this issue. Pressure and knowledge needs to be focused on our infrastructure and environmental planning. The current situation is a disgrace. We probably need for the want of a better title a Reserve Bank of Infrastructure.

However right now that’s not for us other than to support ATSE’s call for leadership and planning.

In conclusion the Foundation expresses it appreciation to ATSE. In particular my thanks to Vaughan Beck, Ian Duncan, Ian Rae and of course many talented authors and contributors to the 30/50 study.

We at the Foundation look forward to pursuing our ongoing work on social cohesion and positive migration strategies for the future prosperity of Australia.

Thank you"

Sierra Club Ignores the Smoke of Rampant Growth

My somewhat caustic approach can be attributed in part to a sense of urgency that most environmentalists apparently don't share. I believe we are almost out of time, and I have lost patience with dissemblers.

When I am in a house that has caught fire I am not apt to say "Gee, I think perhaps we should maybe call the Fire Department, don't ya think?". I am more inclined to shout "Call 911 you Sierra Club idiots!" Anything to stop them from continuing to robotically polish the wood furniture and calling that valuable work while the smoke envelopes us.

It was the late great David Brower, three time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Sierra Club pioneer who said that overpopulation was the major cause of America's environmental ruin, and that since immigration was the main factor in overpopulation, "it had to be addressed". Even in North America. Even in the politically correct community where I live. Somebody has to mention the nasty "I" word. Somebody has to call the Fire Department. And somebody has to tell them to stop pissing around with the furniture polish, get the hell out and start fighting the fire of runaway population growth! This role is not the role of a politician or a salesman. It is the role of someone who must wear the mantle of unpopularity.

Examples of "polishing the furniture":

Investing great time and hope in Sustainable Energy options. The Jevons Paradox dashes all of these hopes. Technological efficiencies liberate cash, and this cash is spent on yet more consumption. When the efficiency of air conditioners improved by 17% consumers bought 36% more air conditioners. When the fuel economy of the average car improved 30% American drivers responded by driving bigger vehicles greater distances. And thanks to population growth there are 130 million more cars on the road. Fuel efficiency in aircraft improved by more than 40% since 1978 but over all fuel consumption rose by 150% since then because of the explosive growth in air traffic encouraged by cheaper transportation costs. Energy use per unit of US GNP has fallen 50% since 1975 after enormous efficiencies were effected after the Arab Oil Embargo. Yet total US energy consumption rose by 40% The name of the game is to reduce total consumption, not improve technological efficiencies. And without stabilizing population, all benefits from efficiencies are erased. The 900 solar farm in Sarnia will produce only enough energy to satisfy 23 days of BAU immigration. Energy gains from renewable technologies are erased by economic growth (population times per capita consumption)

Nature reserves and much vaunted park dedications. None are secure from p pulation and economic growth. Even Yosemite was invaded by logging and mining interests by the stroke of a Congressional pen. A protected park in Costa Rica was similarly violated. Nature Conservancy admits having to take people to court for trepass etc etc. There are no sanctuaries from population and development pressure. And it must be remembered that in the US 40% of all listed mammals are not even found in refuges, and it is in these unprotected lands that 40% of all housing units will be found in the United States by 2030.

Good works. The typical Sierran is like a singing janitor who keeps mopping the floor---doing good works---but blissfully and willfully ignoring the fact that the tap (population growth) is on and water is pouring across it. Then there is the happy fool of a cabin maid on the Titanic as the ship is badly listing, whistlling as she tidies things up. She feels good about her environmentalism, because she is removing anything that isn't recyclable from the cabin. Criminal negligence, the deliberate neglect and avoidance of population growth by environmental organizations despite its obvious correlation to GHG emissions and biodiversity loss, cannot be forgiven by their inconsequential involvement with "good works". The Moonies do "good works". The BDM (Hitler Youth) did good works building trails and doing conservation work. Capone did charity work too. Sorry. You can't buy salvation with good works.

Sustainable Living Practices. Of course it was Al Gore in his Inconvenient Truth who made the absurd statement that we could through the individual choices we make as consumers in the things we buy, the electricity we use or the cars we drive for example that we could reduce our carbon emissions to zero. But Gore did not appreciate that green consumers can never reduce their consumption to zero, and that an increase in the number of the greenest consumers is going to increase total consumption. GHG emissions will have to be cut 60% just to keep pace with population increases in the next half century. And in the UK it was discovered that one new citizen, born or admitted as an immigrant erased 80 lifetimes of responsible recycling.

Polishing the furniture while the house is burning down. Welcome to the Green Fantasy World, where feeling good about yourself is more important than actually addressing the root cause of the problem---over-population, just as Jacques Cousteau said.

It's over-population stupid!

Tim Murray,
Quadra Island, BC

Who was David R. Brower? He was the dean of the American environmental movement, to be ranked among John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt in importance. Nominated for the Nobel Prize three times, he founded the Sierra Club Foundation, the John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies, Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters, Earth Island Institute, North Cascades Conservation Council and Fate of the Earth Conferences. But it was with America’s flagship environmental organization that he was most associated with. He joined the Sierra Club in 1933, was elected to its board of directors in 1941 and was made its executive director in 1952. Under his leadership club membership grew ten-fold (7,000 to 70,000) from a group of affluent apolitical hikers to an aggressive player on the national environmental scene. David Brower was the catalyst in this transformation. He was the Sierra Club. Yet after 67 years this great crusader felt compelled to resign, “with no regret and a bit of desperation.” Brower, you see, had a problem. He had a problem with corruption, bribery, political correctness and myopia. He knew that demography drives not only human destiny but the destinies of the species we impact, and that unchanged immigration policies would double America’s population by 2100, or if liberalized, add as many as another 700 million by that time. He also knew that post-1970 immigrants and their descendants would be the decisive force fuelling American population growth. If unchecked, it surely meant ecological Armageddon for the country. In resigning Brower stated that “Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of the problem. It has to be addressed.” Brower, of course, was not alone in advancing those beliefs. Earth Day co-founder and former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth First co-founder Dave Forman and Harvard professor and socio-biologist E. O. Wilson all warned of the environmental effects of current immigration policies. Just after the first Earth Day in 1970, the President’s Commission on Population Growth and America’s Future urged Congress to stabilize the population at 200 million expeditiously. Paul Ehrlich was among several ecologists who identified 150 million people, half the country’s present population level, as a number that would ensure sustainable habitat survival. The Sierra Club used to agree with them. It used to believe that population growth was a crucial variable in environmental degradation. After all the Ehrlich –Commoner equation (environmental Impact=Population x Affluence x Technology) was conventional wisdom and common sense. Population stabilization, a function of lower fertility rates and lower immigration quotas, were long a part of its program. According to its Population Report of 1989, “Immigration to the U.S. should be no greater than that which will permit achievement of population stabilization in the U.S.” And then suddenly in 1996 that policy was dropped. It became politically correct to ignore the “P” in the IPAT equation and focus on “A”, affluence or reducing per capita consumption, and “T”, more efficient technologies. Greener lifestyles and renewable technologies would save the day and with the oxymoronic fraud of “smart growth”, we could pretend that we could shoe-horn half the world into this continent merely by channeling, or “managing” growth. But when a group of Sierrans, including Brower, saw the folly of this approach and attempted to restore traditional immigration policy, in stepped a billionaire, David Gelbaum, who threatened that if it was restored the Sierra Club would “never see a dollar of his money”. The ruling clique complied and was dutifully rewarded with in excess of $100 million in bribes, tendered in 2000-1 alone. Elizabeth May, for her part, threatened to change the name of the Sierra Club of Canada if the dissidents succeeded in returning the US Club to its original course. She has obviously carried her globalist convictions into the leadership of the Green Party of Canada with a pledge to chase immigration targets into the stratosphere, even beyond that of other parties. American Presidential Green candidate Ralph Nader, by contrast, denounced open borders and liberal immigration as “absurd” in his 2000 campaign, and for that reason enjoyed Brower’s support. Mass immigration can be understood as a right wing project that benefits from left wing collusion, with progressives essentially lining up behind Bill Gates and 40 major technology companies and agribusiness to drive down wages so that conservatives obtain their cheap labour and socialists obtain their cheap cause. Donations to conservation groups to look the other way while the invasion continues is an excellent return on corporate investment. No wonder Canadian members are kept ignorant about who gives money to environmental NGOs, how much is given and what directors are paid. No wonder sleazy arrangements are made between big corporations like the Royal Bank and Nature Conservancy of Canada, the Audubon Society of America and Toyota (a $20 million deal) and the Sierra Club’s deal to endorse the cleaning products of the Clorox corporation. Now you understand why this pioneer of the Sierra Club had to finally leave it just before his death. He could no longer stomach being a member of a corrupt, money-grubbing, corporate lackey that accepted a massive annual bribe to leave immigration, a vital ingredient of environmental degradation, out of the policy book. He realized that a clique purchased by David Gelbaum’s millions and intent on chasing after potential Hispanic members at the expense of defending the environment against the illegal invasion across the southern border could not be overthrown. And the organization was too irredeemably corrupt to be reformed. It had to be abandoned and by-passed. David Brower. An authentic environmentalist, a man of integrity and principle. A rare commodity in the movement. http://www.susps.org/index.html (The whole story on the Sierra Club) http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/1631 (The Royal Bank and Nature Conservancy) Tim Murray April 22/08

Article below is based on a report by Australia’s Olympic Poet, Mark O'Connor :

Demographer, Peter McDonald, is famous for presenting extreme projections of population implosion. His contributions to a debate at ANU on April 1 were predictable and are now on line. (The PPT versions are the easier ones to read). Peter's ideas suit big business and corporatised government and have thus become very influential. The criticisms and analysis below are therefore very important, since the Murdoch and Fairfax media, and sadly, even the ABC, market these attitudes uncritically and approvingly. Sheila Newman

Peter McDonald's piece, "Australia’s future population: planning for reality," is unlikely to impress environmentalists, according to Mark O'Connor.

In case you haven't time to scan it on line, here are some exerpts, organised and analysed by Mark O'Connor around 5 keywords that McDonald uses:

McDonald's Five Keywords:

Environment
Growth
Labour
Fatalism
"Realism"
"Social cohesion"

Those last two concepts probably really do need to be in inverted commas. The first 3 concepts are mixed together as follows:

The first sheet of his presentation summarises his line on environment:

"Environment and economy

• Australia will achieve a better result in relation to its own
environment and its contribution to the reduction of global
greenhouse gas emissions if it has a strong economy.
• A strong economy will provide the capital that is necessary
to invest in improvement of environmental infrastructure,
repair of degraded environments, and a shift to alternative
sources of energy that are not fossil-fuel based."

The next sheet proclaims:

"Capacity constraints are Australia’s biggest economic problem

• Much of the infrastructure required to support a strong and
productive economy is in short supply in Australia at
present.
• This includes water, transport for people, transport for
goods, ports, energy supply, housing and office space, and
state-of-the-art communications.
• These shortages may be artificially reduced in the short
term by increasing interest rates to slow demand.
• However, we do not want to live in a continued forced
recession. So, higher interest rates are not a long-term
solution. In the long term, the capacity constraints must be."

Notice that this, like most of PMD's talk, is not demography, but growth economics.

Next sheet:

"The requirements for new infrastructure

• New infrastructure involves technology, capital, good
planning and commitment, and labour.
• The technology is available now in most instances and
more will come on line.
• Capital also is in relatively good supply.
• Planning is improving, commitment is stronger.
• Shortage of labour is the problem."

"Why we need labour

• Conservation is highly desirable as far as it goes, but we
shall only solve our water, energy and environmental
problems in the long run through construction of new
infrastructure.
• If we want solar or wind energy, then the solar panels and
windmills have to be made and constructed.
• If we want secure urban water supplies then whatever
policy mix we use to do this involves construction.
• If we want to ease the housing crisis, we need more
houses.
• If we want the economy to run productively and
competitively, we need better transportation of goods and
people, better ports, and better communications
infrastructure."

Which leads, as you've guessed to:

"Why we need labour (continued)

• Conservation is highly desirable as far as it goes, but we
shall only solve our water, energy and environmental
problems in the long run through construction of new
infrastructure.
• If we want solar or wind energy, then the solar panels and
windmills have to be made and constructed.
• If we want secure urban water supplies then whatever
policy mix we use to do this involves construction."

In short, according to Peter McDonald, we need vast population growth in order to provide more labor, so we can have more energy efficiency. Oh, and more mining (presumably solar powered mining).

Well it was April Fool's Day, but Peter didn't seem to be joking:

"Labour demand

• Almost right across the Australian economy, workers are
short supply.
• This is especially the case in the construction industries
(15,000 builders from the USA?).
• The mining industry is desperately seeking workers to
commence new projects (Chinese work gangs?). Note,
revenue from mining is the source of much of our public
capital for environmental and social development."

Next we get a dubious graph showing labor falling:

"NOM = Net Overseas Migration
Note: Assumes fertility constant at 1.8 births per woman and labour force"

participation constant at July 2007 levels

Except that labor, in McDonald's own projection, is actually rising. It is only the rate of increase of labor ("Labour force annual growth rate") that is falling. (If you can't say a figure is falling, you can always go to its first or even its second differential to find a function that is falling.)

What about automation, computerisation, machines? Why do we need so very much labor?

Well, you see, there is a multiplier effect:

• If we had all of these [mining and construction] workers, they will demand more
services and hence more workers in retail, hospitality and
personal services. There is a multiplier effect (foreign
students and working holiday makers?).

The nations of the world will soon be competing fiercely for labor, and hence for immigrants.

Hence we must be fatalistic:

"Inevitable population growth for Australia

• We can improve our productivity and we can raise labour
force participation rates somewhat, but it is inevitable that
overseas migration to Australia will remain high and the
population will grow by 2050 to something in excess of 30
million people.
• In comparative terms, this will be much lower than the
population of California and the population of the USA will
be around 440 million. Canada’s population will be over 50
million."

Apart from economic growthism and a strong streak of fatalism, Peter McDonald now shows a new emphasis on "realism", cf. his paper's subtitle:

"Australia’s future population: planning for reality"

The subtitle seems borrowed from business lobbies like APOP, The Australian Property Council, and the Scanlon Foundation (the latter which funded his recent paper with Glenn Withers). Such groups emphasise "realistic" (= fatalistic) planning on population. i.e. accept that huge growth is coming, and plan for it. (In debate Mark O'Connor called this a bully's argument: "Since we're going to put you in the stocks anyway, why don't you co-operate and then we'll do it more nicely.")

Hence Peter's line: what we have to fear is not population growth but our failure to plan for it.

Hence Peter McDonald's concluding "overhead" runs:

"Conclusion

• Australia will be a better country in its economic,
environmental and social dimensions if we accept the
inevitable and plan for it.

• Not planning properly for future population growth is part
the Australian way of mucking things up."

• The present Australian Government seems to have accepted this message. It has set up an infrastructure council and my educated bet is that it will increase the official migrant intake in the May budget."

cf. APOP's "opinions" page: http://www.apop.com.au/opinions.html

• A recent expert study concluded that there are no insurmountable engineering, scientific or environmental barriers to reaching an Australian population of 30 million in 2050, assuming that thorough analysis and planning occur and that leadership is exercised, especially by governments.
• Long-term planning is imperative to ensure timely and orderly provision of needed infrastructure, and leadership from governments is essential in setting clear policy directions.

--

One other element in Peter McDonald's thinking is worth noting.

Both APOP and Scanlon may be worried that lack of social cohesion might force a halt to such rapid immigration, because they are promoting the need for certain kinds of social cohesion. (Hence the conference that Scanlon Foundation funded recently, with Jupp, Nieuwenhysen, and frequent flyers at such immigration-growth-promoting events.)

As APOP puts it:

"The future prosperity of Australia, underpinned by population growth, will depend on our ability to maintain Social Cohesion in a society with even more cultural diversity than we have successfully accommodated historically."

"Since overpopulation tends to destroy social cohesion (e.g. food riots, water riots, road rage) this line is probably what is known in marketing circles as "advertising against the perceived weakness of the product" --i.e. trying to present your weakness as your strength."

Mark O'Connor

Peter McDonald now styles himself:
"Peter McDonald, Director, Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute, ANU"

and remarked at one point "Mark presents me as an economist, but I think of myself more as a sociologist." Wishful thinking, perhaps. Peter seems like someone who would offer little resistance to the APOP line on social "reality".

Murdoch's Queensland Courier Mail has long been in the business of marketing unacceptable development, but the April 9 2008 editorial read more like a medieval sermon on the benefits of floggings.

“Full story needed on big projects” began with some newspeak and then descended into arguments so crude that one suspected that lack of internal conviction was snarling up logical expression.

The editorialist started off by conflating ‘growth’ with ‘progress’, thus giving the concrete entombment of Brisbane a positive spin. Towards the end, in a kind of third-word medical metaphor for torture, s/he crudely compared undemocratic development with medicine and going to the doctor for an abdominal operation. We were not expected to like what we are told is going to happen, but it is clear that we must accept it. To object to being slashed open in order to …what?... would be unreasonable, apparently.

“Progress will sometimes hurt, but like an unpleasant visit to the doctor, it will hurt less if you are warned in advance of what to expect, rather than having a line drawn through your torso and told this is where the operation will happen.”

Shock treatment without a muscle relaxant would seem a little more congruent to the situation than abdominal surgery. Unless this is some kind of medieval operation to remove our persistent ‘bile’.

The writer (or the mad doctor) tells us that ‘We’ all want progress. It isn’t too clear what progress is, from the editorial, and the doctor seems to be hedging about the outcome of the operation, or its reason. Nonetheless, we must suffer for this abstract thing.

If, like most of us, you don’t want to suffer, and you aren’t sure what progress is anymore, you might feel that you are the only person in Brisbane who feels this way and you probably won’t dare raise your voice to protest.

The journalist-social psychiatrist hits potential protesters against the operation for progress with, not just NIMBYism, which isolates with the charge of selfish the person fighting to defend their territory, but with the dreaded “BANANA” acronym. (See 'Damn 'em all', 23 May Courier Mail, Brisbane, Australia.)

BANANA is even worse than ‘selfish’; it means Totally Unreasonable, maybe even certifyably insane; certainly indefensible. BANANA stands for, “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.”

The charge is that Queenslanders are objecting to nearly every development that goes up.

Well, Mr Editor-doctor, the fact is that Queensland is very densely populated and developed, so it is pretty difficult to find a place to develop which isn’t close to something else. And, with all this development, why should ‘we’ need, let alone ‘want’ more? We don’t like it, so we are protesting.

Brisbane has far less green space left than Sydney and Melbourne. It is obviously overdeveloped and overpopulated:

“ o•ver•pop•u•la•tion (vr-ppy-lshn) n.
Excessive population of an area to the point of overcrowding, depletion of natural resources, or environmental deterioration.”

We are suffering all three of these symptoms in Brisbane. Why can't we admit we have a problem and stop the cause rather than just trying to manage the effects! (Jennie Epstein in Victoria, slightly paraphrased.)

The editorialist-doctor sympathetically admits: “No one wants a freeway, chemical plant or a new power station at their back door …“but,” (s/he concludes harshly informing us that we cannot escape the symptoms of the progressive disease, or curse) “… these things are a fact of life if we are to cater for the needs of a rapidly growing state.”

The dishonest implication, from the main newspaper, the Murdoch voice of authority in Brisbane, is that Queensland’s extreme population growth is some kind of irresistible Brisbanite fate, like Sysiphus’s was to push a stone up a hill every day, except that, in Queensland, that stone gets bigger every day, and so does the propaganda we have to swallow.

What must Queenslanders have done to the Gods to provoke such punishment as

“freeways, chemical plants and new powerstations at their back door; transport corridors and dams which endanger the environment and destroy local communities ...”

... which the editorialist identifies as our inescapable fate?

The editorialist tells us moreover that many of us may be economically inconvenienced or have airports expanded on our “comfortable backyards.” (This was only to be expected, apparently, and we should have moved somewhere else if we didn’t want our surroundings to degenerate into overpopulated slums. Quite a few of us should perhaps have enquired more carefully before being born here.)

Incredibly, the editorialist equates these sufferings with “our very comfortable 21st century lifestyle.”

And that is not the end of our sufferings: No, we must endure dispossession if we are to avoid dying of thirst in the short term. Nevermind the long term.

Our water security is threatened by population growth, which for some reason we cannot question. That population growth was brought upon us by the developer-serving Queensland Government, which advertised far and wide for it, interstate and overseas. Now we have to put up with the ‘solutions’ for water security which the government that made our water insecure tells us it must foist on us.

For stealing fire from the Gods and giving it to men, Prometheus was chained to a rock. Every day an eagle came and tore his liver out and ate it. During the night it would grow back, only to be torn out again.

Was that the operation?

How bad must it get? It could get a lot worse if our progress takes on the shape of India’s or Africa’s or Chile’s. But, as that dear old man, Augustus Pinochet once said, “Sometimes democracy must be bathed in blood.”

We can be sure that we will be told that it is good for us when that happens.

“It seems to me we gotta solve it individually…” from the 1968 hit song by the Young Rascals

Somebody hand me a barf bag. Quick. I was in the supermarket yesterday and came upon one of those innumerable escapist books on how we can ignore the big picture and the root cause of the coming apocalypse by retreating into private solutions. It was a book by cheery CBC talk show personality Gill Deacon called “Green for Life”, a compendium of some 200 “eco-ideas” (ego-ideas?) on how to pack school lunches, plan picnics, birthday parties and weddings, decorate and do what Sir Richard Branson called, in his endorsement, “the simple things in your everyday lives that will positively impact our future.” It is Deacon’s hope that just living sustainably in this fashion will become normal. Branson’s “normal” of course is burning up the stratosphere with jet trails all over the globe and investing in biofuels that entail the destruction of rainforests in Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia. But those are just one or two simple things.

Deacon established her credentials for lecturing me about sustainable living by giving birth to three sons, who collectively will emit 69 metric tonnes of GHG this year. She must be a bona fide environmentalist, however, because she was a director of the World Wildlife Fund of Canada in 2002 and demonstrates her love of wildlife by living in Toronto. You are familiar with the WWF. They suction money from dupes who think you can defend wildlife from population and economic growth by creating sanctuaries for it, while refusing to take positions on population growth and immigration in whatever country they operate. In their defence though, they at least divert donor money away from Nature Conservancy, who make similar fraudulent claims.

The WWF deserves notoriety for providing ammunition to pro-immigrationists by producing eco-footprinting data that purports to show Canada as capable of accommodating more people than it should. The 2000 Living Planet Report, for example, identified Canada as having a carrying capacity of 38 million, an estimate that Optimum Population Trust UK declared took no account of the unsustainability of Canadian agriculture due to serious soil erosion.

It is rather telling that Deacon would devote a section of her “Eco-ideas” to selecting the environmentally correct kind of lubricant to, as she puts it, “grease the wheels of your lovemaking machine.” Yet it is apparently acceptable to conceive three sons in Toronto, or six for that matter, so long as you don’t fuck up the planet with petroleum jelly. I suppose inflicting a large brood on the world is a matter of “personal choice” but tossing a plastic container in the landfill is not.

One Green eco-idea Gill left out, I notice, was for consumers to send a letter to Ottawa or launch a petition against an immigration policy that makes all of her 200 “little things” a joke. Deacon might also send an eco-idea to her employer, the CBC, to drop their euphoric coverage of Canadian foreign aid missions, like Harper’s trip to Haiti, so that Canadians busy with their “Green” lifestyle might learn that their tax money is encouraging people in Haiti, Afghanistan and Africa to have four and five children each and ravage local environments for survival.

But one must not be too harsh with Gill Deacon of course. Cutting down her hypocrisy is like cutting off the head of a many headed hydra. There is a plague of these Green lifestyle books on the market. There is Adria Vasil’s “Ecoholic:Your Guide to the Most Environmentally Friendly Information, Products and Services in Canada.”. Kim McKay’s “True Green: 100 Everyday Ways You Can Contribute to a Healthier Planet”. Greg Horn’s “Living Green: A Practical Guide to Simple Sustainability.” Elizabeth Rogers’ “The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Step at a Time”. And Ellen Sandbeck’s “Organic Housekeeping”, to name but a few.

The impetus for this myopic preoccupation with our personal lives can be traced to the famous entreaty by Al Gore in his documentary “The Inconvenient Truth”. There he states, absurdly, that “each of us is a cause of global warming, but each one of us can make choices to change that with the things we buy, with the electricity we use, the cars we drive. We can make choices to bring our individual carbon emissions to zero. The solutions are in our hands. We just have to have the determination to make them happen.” Gore does not appreciate that green consumers can never reduce their consumption to zero, and that an increase in the number of even green consumers is going to increase total consumption. The solution does not lie in the hands of individual consumers, but in the collective hands of citizens to effect political change.

The limits of green lifestyle habits can be illustrated clearly by a study conducted by Optimum Population Trust UK that found that one new citizen either born or admitted as an immigrant to Britain, wiped out 80 lifetimes of responsible recycling. Put differently, a lifetime of responsible recycling would only make up for one and one-quarter per cent of the damage done by a new citizen. Even if all of domestic waste was recycled, only 10% of the waste contributed by an additional citizen would be counter-acted.

It must be remembered that it is consumption that generates waste. While reducing our profligate per capita consumption is laudable and necessary, one must be aware that it is the number of “per capitas” which is relevant. Thus reducing our per capita C02 emissions from 23 metric tonnes to something reasonably obtainable will prove to have little effect if population growth is permitted to continue at 1.08% per annum.

Similarly our lifetime per capita consumption of 3.7 million pounds of minerals, metals and fuels, if reduced, will still be problematic if more people consume them even at a lesser rate. And turning off the lights for one hour, as we recently did in solidarity with other conservers globally, is a futile gesture if we allow population and economic growth to continue. Case in point. British Columbia Hydro encouraged customers with the thought that if they did that every night it would save enough energy to power an additional four thousand homes for an entire year. But as analyst Rick Shea of Salmon Arm, BC observed, “ British Columbians would apparently have to turn off their lights for about 6 hours each day in order to accommodate the provincial population growth in just one year. After four years of this, we will apparently have to leave our lights off permanently, 24 hours a day, to accommodate that growth.”

In summary then, the movement toward “sustainable living”, as represented by books like Gill Deacon’s “Green for Life”, is largely an exercise in ineffectual do-goodism and feel-goodism. If “every little bit counts”, it counts for little. If “it all adds up”, it doesn’t add up to much buried in a demographic avalanche. The call to “reduce, re-cycle and conserve” in the face of runaway population growth can only be likened to a cheerful cleaning lady tidying up a cabin in the Titanic as the ship is listing, making sure everything in the room is bio-degradable. She could never be relied upon to tell you the truth about the ship’s prospects, or yours, but she was hired by Captain CBC for her pleasant disposition and you will find her trivial advice entertaining.

Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
April 4/08

Can it really be forty years to the day? I remember exactly where I was that terrible day when Dr. King was shot in Memphis. It is hard to believe that one man could accomplish so much in 39 years of life, and could combine so much intellect with so much moral authority and courage.

Much is known and celebrated about his civil rights campaigning. What does not seem to be known however is that this foremost champion of human rights was also one who spoke of the importance of setting limits to our population both domestically and globally as a necessary precondition for those rights. Human rights in a nation whose water supply, housing, infrastructure or farmland is exhausted by overpopulation was to Dr. King largely meaningless And civil rights for a black family overburdened with more children than it could support was less advantageous as well.

In some respects, the career of Dr. Martin Luther King can be compared to that of Cesar Chavez. In death their legacy has been claimed by those who have not entirely been aware of their holistic approach. Chavez for example has been invoked by Hispanic leaders opposed to tighter border controls and immigration restrictions. In fact, Cesar Chavez stood at the border several times on patrol in an attempt to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the United States from Mexico. He realized that illegal immigration undercut the wages, working conditions and job security of established Mexican-Americans.

The following quote by Dr. King two years before his death should unequivocally place him alongside neo-Malthusians. To be a progressive, a leftist, a trade union leader or an environmentalist before the mid 1970s was to be someone who intuitively acknowledged limits. Since then, the zeitgeist changed. Why?

Recently, the press has been filled with reports of sightings of flying saucers. While we need not give credence to these stories, they allow our imagination to speculate on how visitors from outer space would judge us. I am afraid they would be stupefied at our conduct. They would observe that for death planning we spend billions to create engines and strategies for war. They would also observe that we spend millions to prevent death by disease and other causes. Finally they would observe that we spend paltry sums for population planning, even though its spontaneous growth is an urgent threat to life on our planet. Our visitors from outer space could be forgiven if they reported home that our planet is inhabited by a race of insane men whose future is bleak and uncertain. There is no human circumstance more tragic than the persisting existence of a harmful condition for which a remedy is readily available. Family planning, to relate population to world resources, is possible, practical and necessary. Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims₁.

- Rev. Martin Luther King, May 5, 1966

Footnotes

1. From www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/the-reverend-martin-luther-king-jr.htm, www.experiencefestival.com/a/Martin_Luther_King_Jr_-_Overpopulation/id/5279280

Tim Murray,
Quadra Island, BC
March 29/08