population

What is to be done? What should be done? What can be done?

Who are we and why do we write? And for whom? Should we be addressing environmentalists, or a broader readership that is not captive of their myths? If so, how can we reach them?

Hope Sells

A friend of mine, "Barry", is a Jehovah's Witness. He is a sincere and decent man with the best of motives and intentions, filling his day with small acts of kindness and good works. But like me, his motivations and efforts are most probably for naught. We obviously share a burden. The burden of being Cassandras who have a vision of doom that few wish to embrace. Yet despite his tribulations, he and his brethen seem to be attracting more support than I am. Upon further discussion, he confided that he and his fellow missionaries get an overwhelmingly hostile reception---- yet his denomination is the fastest growing sect of any religion. Why? "Because after we tell people that this system of things will soon end, we tell them that there is hope for them and the people they love." That is the clincher. People don't want to be sentenced to a diet of bad news. Even those who take it in look for escape hatches. They grasp at straws. The Sierra Club and other religious organizations thrive only because they fire with both barrels of the shotgun. One convinces people that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, while the other offers them false solutions. It is a proven combination. "This is going to kill you, but this can save you". The Green Merchants of False Hope tell us that we have a terminal illness but that their elixir of green living, land-use planning and tech fixes are a miracle cure. It is a message that reaps donations and membership dues, and encourages New Society Publishers to publish a bushel of their books. Hope sells.

Self-Delusion

Bottom line: People want religion. They want comfort food, not the castor oil of unvarnished truth. So the question is, how much of a liar are you willing to become to gain a hearing? You have already swallowed your own lie---that is the first step to becoming a successful salesman. If the audience doesn't believe that you believe in your product, they will not buy your vacuum cleaner. So you have convinced yourself that you have a solution, and that it will eventually be adopted and implemented.

Now you must put on a happy face, and win over a literary agent with your charm. You buy him or her dinner, ask them about their kids and their hobbies and then present your message of doom wrapped up with Disney ending. Something Chris Clugston, in his book, "Scarcity", didn't do and refuses to do. Any more than a lab technician would doctor the results of my blood test to buoy my spirits and allow me to forget about my mortality. Some people have integrity, while the rest of us make compromises. We do that either because we are delusional or egotistical. We think meaningful change is possible and that we have a significant role to play in it.

Are We Truth-Tellers Or Salesman, Objective Analysts or Motivators For Change?

The question to consider is, why would we want to write a book? Do we want to effect change or do we want to want to tell the truth? Are we politicians or objective analysts? If we find that there are no practical solutions that have a reasonable expectation of success, do we want to broadcast that conclusion? Is there any point in writing an autopsy report on our civilization? Do we write so that we can eventually say "I told you so"? Is writing about the coming collapse just a release, an outlet for frustration? If we write to motivate change that would mitigate or prevent the catastrophe even though we believe the probability of change to be remote, does that not make us merely spin-doctors and propagandists? Are we comfortable with that?

What Do Our Half-Solutions Accomplish?

I am thinking out loud here because these are the recurring questions that have bedevilled me with increasing frequency for the past two years. I am apparently not content just to be a spectator to an unfolding disaster---I want to do "something". But isn't that part of the problem-- that too many sincere people---environmentalists----in an attempt to do "something" by pushing half-solutions, are actually making the problem worse? What did Norman Borlaug actually accomplish---other than allowing our species to add another 2 or 3 billion to its numbers? Was that not his fear? What does 'smaller' living by the rich accomplish? What does smart growth accomplish? What does the introduction of more efficient technologies accomplish? What would population stabilization accomplish? What would egalitarian redistribution of wealth accomplish if there are not enough non-renewable resources to sustain all the passengers on our overloaded global lifeboat for the whole voyage? What would absolutely air-tight borders and gated communities accomplish? What would a steady-state industrial economy accomplish? What would a one-child-per-family regime in only one or ten countries accomplish? Is slowing growth enough? Will Mother Nature grant us a reprieve or a consolation prize for simply not growing any more?

Rick Belfour bowed out of an Internet debate provoked by Dirk Becker with the lament that it was demoralizing to witness such rancour among people who essentially are on the same side--or words to that effect. The point is, however, we are not on the same side. The prescriptions that environmentalists offer are, in truth, growth-enablers. They promote growth by making more room for it. Their message is, "Move over and squeeze tighter to make room for more and more incoming people, either from the maternity ward or the airport (it makes no difference)." That is what land use planning, frugal living, and technology improvements do. They create space for continuing growth. It is not coincidental that the title of the book that formed the plot for Charlton Heston's movie, "Solyent Green", was "Make Room! Make Room!" That would be an apt slogan for the environmental movement. Their goal is to essentially manage the environment to accommodate population growth. Mine is the reverse. To shrink the population to accommodate the environment. Yet they have assumed the mantle of "environmentalists". A more appropriate description would be "growth-managers".

The source of our difference is a matter of speculation, but I have a hypothesis. Their worldview---and mine---has been typically fashioned by different educational experiences and the biases inherent in each discipline. And we continue to live in different silos. I did not take a course in biology, yet somehow I ran the gauntlet of a liberal arts education with a conceptual grasp of "limits" still intact---- but that was in an era when universities were an oasis of intellectual tolerance. Statistically, I should be parroting the same line as the "environmental justice" movement, as if nature cared about human notions of justice. But here's the point:

The Fight For Sustainability Is A Golf Game, Not A Juggling Act

Environmentalists and Malthusians are at ideological loggerheads. Ours is not a sectarian division, but a fundamentally unbridgeable chasm. There can be no alliance between us. There can be no fellowship between lightness with darkness. Or in less Biblical terms, between clarity and confusion. If that sounds arrogant and presumptuous, let me add that confusion is not a character flaw. It is just a point on the learning curve---- and hopefully we are all on a learning curve with an ambition to learn more. I was once confused--- and I am still confused--- but much less so than I was, I believe. My curve was not a continuum. I had that famous "paradigm-shift", and it was a "quantum leap", not an incremental progression. I leapt from one decompression chamber to another one, closer to the surface. Rather abruptly, I came to the realization that saving the environment was not a juggling act between causes and factors that demand equal attention, but more like a golf game. In golf, you don't begin by trying to figure out how best to sink the ball in 18 holes, by dispersing your attention to all of them simultaneously. You focus on the first hole. Without sinking the ball in the first hole, all other holes are irrelevant. In terms of environmental degradation, achieving a sustainable population level is that first hole. It is a pre-requisite of ultimate success, not a variable that must be balanced off with other variables. Thinking about the rest of them is a counter-productive distraction. Without rapid population decline, all other good destinations --- human rights, lasting peace and equity, sensible planning and durable zoning limits, or gains from technological improvements---are unreachable. The problem must be treated as one of priority and sequence, not balance.

In deference to political correctness and the sensibilities of corporate donors, the environmental movement took the "P" (population) out of the foundational formula, the "IPAT" equation, making nonsense of their project. Initially, I took the conventional view that the P must be re-inserted to restore the IPAT filter. But that reflected another kind of misunderstanding. "A" (per capita consumption) and "T" (technology) are not equal partners with "P" because a shrinking human population is a pre-condition for meaningful improvements elsewhere. Now I am putting it back in and putting the "A" and the "T" on the shelf, at the back of the queue for future consideration---where they belong. Let's focus on the first hole.

No Longer An Environmentalist

I was once an environmentalist who attacked symptoms, rather than address root problems, and for all my zeal, I did not make a difference,----unless, in my own small way, it was to make our problems marginally worse. Now I am an ex-environmentalist, still struggling to forgive those who have not followed my path, too often forgetting that I was once on theirs. If I know what they do not know, it is still a small fraction of the whole truth---which is unknowable. In the end, we may all prove to be inconsequential. In fact, that is a certainty. One day the human experiment will end---like that of every other species. But it would be nice if it didn't happen so soon.

Tim Murray
March 14, 2011

The venerable superstars of the population movement carried the cause on their backs for decades, but do they warrant immunity from our criticisms simply on that basis? Are the things that they are NOT saying to remain within the pale of socially acceptable comment impeding the advancement of the "neo-Malthusian" agenda? Is "overpopulation" the most absurd taboo----or is it the measures needed to reverse it?

Which Taboo Is The Most Absurd?

Having just read the transcripts of David Attenborough's recent speech "Planet and Population" and Paul Ehrlich's interview with Alex Smith, my sense is confirmed that the leaders of our movement blunt their analysis with politically correct bones that they throw out to appease critics.

This is not an accusation but an observation. It could well be that they do so because they must. Just as leaders of political parties know that to win, they must move to the centre, our leaders, being the "point men" of the movement, are acutely aware that public opinion will not accept the strong medicine prescribed by some of their followers.

Attenborough said that "all these people"---the extra 3 billion global citizens that are expected----need and "deserve" to be fed, housed etc. "Will they be able to get it? I don't know. I hope so." This is Lester Brown's attitude as well. "How are we going to feed 9 billion people?" Both men do a brilliant job of telling us how serious the burden of overpopulation is, but then after having done so, immediately rule out measures that may be necessary to reverse it. Attenborough says that reproductive health services must be made available to everyone, that they be "empower(ed) and encourage(d)" to use them, "though of course without any kind of coercion". Like Ehrlich, he states that we need a change in culture that nevertheless would be one that where "everyone retains the right to have as many children as they like". Attenborough calls the refusal to mention or deal with overpopulation an "absurd taboo", but how absurd is it to immediately invoke a human, culture-bound concept----- the freedom to procreate-----to rule out options that may be necessary to save our race? "Coercion" is the most absurd of all taboos. It is a word with undeserved connotations despite the fact that all laws that govern civilized people are coercive by nature.

Empathy For Whom?

Ehrlich, meanwhile, calls for "global empathy", that is, an extension of the empathy we have for those close at hand outward to distant humans, whose fate will affect our own. This is a current of thought I call "green globalism", a view that issued out of the John Lennon era ("Imagine there are no countries") and the Apollo missions. "We all share this place, this tiny blue marble in space, so we must work as one". Fine theme, but the practical truth is that we are a tribal species, and the conference on the Science of Morality last year (2010) in Connecticut showcased a host of studies that validate that view. We are a caring people, but primarily toward people close at hand. That shouldn't be surprising, after all for more than 95% of our existence we were hunter-gatherers living in clusters of 50-150 people. Empathy for those whose cooperation was essential to our survival became a competitive advantage. As Ehrlich pointed out, empathy is hardwired in our brains, but since our "tribe" has grown to 7 billion, our project must be to "spread it around".

Ehrlich and company are globalists. They see national sovereignty as a stumbling block to the development of a global consciousness, of global empathy. Tribalism is just a primitive stage that we must get over to survive. William Rees also shops this line. It’s the Green line. As Bruce Cox of Greenpeace Canada remarked, "You can't nationalize the environment". Trouble is, we have already lost national sovereignty to a large extent. And whose interest has that served?

Too Little Local Identification

It must be asked, is our problem today the lack of global caring and global awareness? Or is it in fact the growing lack of identification with those around us, and with our own locality? Is not the major problem the fact that a manufactured focus on more remote concerns has permitted the unfettered movement of goods and people across borders? A movement that fits the corporate agenda? I would submit that the real issue today is not xenophobia but xenophilia in the West---the perverse love of the outsider or the stranger at the expense of those closer to hearth and home. Ironically, however, while we are being enjoined to replace our alleged tribal focus with a global one, our globalist immigration policies have led to the growth of ethnic tribal enclaves within our cities swollen by emigration from undeveloped nations with unabashedly tribal mentalities. We have been persuaded to disarm our national sovereignty so that supra-national forces beyond our control are able to work the needs of one people off against the other.

Misplaced Empathy

Mass migration is a battering ram to knock down workers rights, national living standards and environmental regulations. Instead of the cooperation of sovereign nations, we are getting the domination of sovereign nations by corporations to serve the bottom line. And they are using green globalist sentiments of compassion and 'workers solidarity' as a smokescreen in pursuit of their mission. "Empathy" for the aspirations of migrants but none for the people whom they displace. "Empathy" expressed as unconditional foreign aid for countries like Ethiopia, which thanks to foreign aid, doubled its population since 1985. "Empathy" for Haiti which, thanks to unconditional emergency aid, tripled its fertility rate in one year since the earthquake. Empathy without strings. Empathy that triggers the population explosion that drives cheap labour into the arms of employers in the affluent north. International cooperation is one thing, but globalism is quite another. Surrendering control over our the destiny of our communities does not give us the ability to address global issues.

The Global Ship Is Kept Afloat By Secure Bulkheads

The captain of a ship cares about all of his crew and passengers. He cares about the survival of his ship---which everyone on board depends on for survival. But when the integrity of the hull is threatened by a collision with another vessel, reef, or torpedo, what does he do? He orders that the hatches between bulkheads be sealed. In other words, he secures the "borders". He prevents the potential traffic of water from the compartments that have been flooded and filled up to the compartments not yet filled up. And he consigns those trapped behind the sealed hatches to their fate. His "global empathy" requires him to be callous to the needs of those unfortunate enough to be situated in the wrong place at the wrong time. He will indeed order that the pumps be operational so that the trapped crew have a hope of survival. But that is all. Shifting the weight of a global ship is as destabilizing as shifting weight on a ship at sea. We should do all we can to help people where they live, but we wouldn't be helping the world by helping them to move where they would like.

Mandatory Optimism Trumps Honesty

One more point. Attenborough, Ehrlich, Brown----like almost all of the rest of us, are careful to leave a discussion on a note of optimism that does not connect with the argument that they present. Ehrlich, for example, spoke of the stupendous war effort that America made when it suddenly shifted from the production of automobiles to the production of tanks and planes, and they how it shifted again to the production of civilian products at war's end. That, he said, was a cause for optimism---we can make that kind of effort again to shift to a sustainable economy, an industrial economy that operates within limits. But where will this economy find enough non-renewable resources to maintain it? Can we run any kind of industrial economy indefinitely? The consensus seems to be, "Let's not go there". It would too demoralizing for the troops and besides, no one would entertain our message. That assumption may be correct. Even publishers demand a happy ending.

Unspeakable Truths

The sad truth is, political correctness blurs our vision, and even venerable leaders are occasionally afflicted by it. In order to court favour with prevailing opinion, things that need to be said aren't being said, while popular cant is repeated ad nauseum without contest by those who should know better. The truth is that while our problems are global in scope, they also must be addressed locally, regionally and nationally. The truth is that we haven’t the luxury of taking two decades to stabilize our population---we must reduce our population radically and rapidly. And most of all, the truth is that “empowering” women to have as many children as they would want will not achieve this goal. Only a regime of legal incentives and disincentives that enforce a majority consensus to reduce population will suffice. These truths, however, are not being uttered by population activists in leadership positions. The stakes are too high, I think, not to call them out on it. As David Attenborough said, "It is all getting too serious for such fastidious niceties."

Tim Murray
March 22, 2011

Fear of 'boat-people' coming in massive numbers will continue to be stoked by the Murdoch and Fairfax media and tv and radio. Some people will therefore continue to fear the Greens as agents of the 'boat-people' bogeyman. Others will fear them as politicians who would see their countrymen dispossessed by a strange and unaccountable rhetoric.

Vivienne Ortega's article, "No human being is illegal?" draws our attention to one of the great political mysteries of our time.

Political dissonance

The views expressed in the Greens' policy for "Immigration and Refugees," are quite extreme. If successful they would actually give substance to the grotesque threat that the media have cultivated of endless hoards of 'illegals' overrunning the country. Real 'Greens' scratch their heads and seek ideological or mystical explanations for the persistant coexistence of such policies with ordinary member expectations, but maybe they should look for more practical reasons for this enduring internal dissonance.

Some writers on candobetter.net think that the Greens and the Socialist Alliance are pretend parties, designed to confuse the electorate. Even a pretend party, however, needs an income.

Why do unpopular policies survive?

There is an old political method for working out why unpopular policies survive despite costly impacts. Look for focused benefits and diffuse costs. The people who benefit financially from population growth in Australia are well organised to keep it going, whereas the rest of us, who pay for it, lack the support of the press or the banks which are in favour of this jugganaut for inhuman reasons of profit. Using this logic and method, we can reasonably infer that if unpopular policies survive within the consensus community of the Greens, it is because they benefit some people in the Greens enough to make their time there very worthwhile.

If you look at them in that light, the Greens' unrealistic and extreme immigration and refugee policies bear the hallmarks of a strategy to attract finances from the growth lobby to the party.

Where else can you read views on immigration as extreme as this? You can read them in the writings of flag-bearers for property development.

How do corporate take-overs happen?

In fact it sounds like the growth lobby may have already taken the Greens party leadership over. It would not be difficult. It would start with bullies from socialist alliances, earth-sharers and dodgy refugee action coalitions moving in on the finances.

Indeed, we hear of this.

Later signs could be where architects, planners, and solicitors start to hold leadership positions.

In the face of this kind of anti-democratic extremism, bullying, naive posturing and studied nuttiness, reasonable people who want to preserve the environment and democracy will leave the Greens, which seems to be what the Greens want. This doesn't mean that the Greens started out like this; it's how they have become.

This exodus of bona-fide members has happened to the decimated ALP already, and probably to the Liberals as well. Toothless political parties make it easy for the corporates to run our political system.

There have been many attempts by many members of the Greens to get a rational population policy over the past two decades. Pseudo-left forces in the Greens have however suppressed these democratic attempts quite savagely and continue to do so.

I repeat that these views bear the hallmarks of a bid for corporate funding from the growth lobby. Yes, folks, I don't think this is about refugees or asylum seekers. I think it is about money and advantage from the growth lobby. Why? Because the growth lobby will be the beneficiary and democracy will be the victim.

Ironically these policies don't benefit refugees and asylum-seekers

Policies which focus exclusively on benefits to non-citizens don't make sense in a democracy. They don't benefit citizens.
The asylum seekers themselves also won't benefit because of the predictable reaction which the designers of the policy
must be aware of and which, I would argue, some of them actually courted.

The newsmedia will orchestrate a public perception that the "Green threat" of being "overrun by asylum seekers" can only be combatted by increasing "skilled migration"!

Fear of 'boat-people' coming in massive numbers will continue to be stoked by the Murdoch and Fairfax media and tv and radio. Some people will therefore continue to fear the Greens as agents of the 'boat-people' bogeyman. Others will fear them as politicians who would see their countrymen dispossessed by a strange and unaccountable rhetoric.

Children overboard

Cast your mind back to the time of the Children Overboard. (Mr Howard's time.) So-called Greens raised the alarm that asylum seekers were being discriminated against. This cry was taken up by the newsmedia, which conducted a campaign of community polarisation, so creating two largely fictitious extremes. The community was presented with the idea of an uncontrolled hoard of people from god-knows-where streaming in through our coastline demanding economic support versus a moderate stream of highly educated willing workers selected by skilled bureaucrats for the exclusive benefit of our economy.

In reality it was the numbers of legal immigrants that were out of our control and being ramped higher and higher by forces that benefited financially from this influx. It was the presence of huge numbers of legal immigrants, not that of asylum-seekers that was
pushing up the costs of land, power, water and education. The government was inviting them through advertisements in every state.

These quite viciously false pictures drove wedges between Australians, making the issue of immigration and the consequence of population growth so inflammatory that people were afraid to speak of it.

And the "Greens" cooperated with Murdoch et al by hammering in the wedges.

Who benefits?

Now, did asylum seekers and refugees benefit from this growth-lobby orchestrated electoral division and conquest?

Nauru. Christmas Island.

A situation had been engineered or a crisis had been created, probably with the planned objective of moving our sea-borders further out whilst artificially boosting demand for property and resources by importing masses of wealthy legal immigrants. Mission
successful.

Does it quack like a duck?

The concept of a Green government is a beautiful one that I personally long for. But that doesn't mean that a Party that calls itself Green has any intention of living up to that concept. Look at the evidence.

Does it look, feel, sound, smell and taste like environmentalism or democracy?

They say that patriotism is the refuge of a scoundrel. Well, these days Green seems to cloak some very mealy-mouthed growth lobbyists who are probably laughing all the way to the bank.

We need to turn away from the official political parties and their masters in the mainstream media. We need to look for our similarities, not our differences, and to eschew wedge politics. We should identify and embrace our grass-roots community activists and begin to recognise our own heros by the relevance of their actions to democracy and environmental wholeness. And we should
loudly point out those professional politicians and NGOs whose actions actually undermine our democratic voices, our shelter and our natural ammenity, for all their soothing, slimy slogans.

The Kenyan Government plans to re-introduce family planning, Wycliffe Oparanya, Planning Minister has said. After the vigorous family planning campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s with positive results, the drive petered off after making modest gains, he said.

Originally published in The Standard - for Fairness and Justice in Nairobi, Kenya as Oparanya:High population compromising quality of life on Wednesday, 2 February 2011. Thanks, also, to the Overseas Immigration News Centre for notifying us of this story.

Originally published on The Standard - for Fairness and Justice in Nairobi, Kenya as Oparanya:High population compromising quality of life on Wednesday, 2 February 2011. Thanks, also, to the Overseas Immigration News Centre for notifying us of this story.

By Luke Anami

Kenyan government recognises that overpopulation impoverishes country

The Government plans to re-introduce family planning to check quality of Kenya’s population, Wycliffe Oparanya, Planning Minister has said.

This rapid growth against a gross domestic product of 1.7 per cent per annum would inevitably exert a lot of pressure on the economy.

A population policy will also be reviewed to bring it into conformity with Vision 2030 and the new Constitution and in order to address the effects of high population growth rate. "Last years census indicated the population is growing at three per cent, a very high rate as compared with the current economic growth that is still at 3.2 per cent," Oparanya said.

The minister said 2009 census results showed 65 per cent of the population is below the age of 35 yet the overall population is just about 40 million.

At the current growth rate of three per cent per annum, the population is expected to hit more than 64 million by 2030, translating to a million more children every year.

"The rate of population growth has outstripped the creation of wealth which calls into review our population policies and strategies. The awareness programmes in the 1980s will thus be reintroduced in a move to strike a balance between population growth and the resource base," Oparanya added.

He said after the vigorous family planning campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s with positive results, the drive petered off after making modest gains. There is thus a need to review the census plans to ensure resources are adequately distributed to cater for development in the 47 created counties.

Census results

"In order to effectively manage planning and distribution of resources, we plan to review the population policy that was last reviewed in 1989.

A stake holder’s meeting last week recommended the formulation of a policy within the framework of Vision 2030," Oparanya explained.

Anthony Kilele, Director General of Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said the incorporation of a communication strategy in the dissemination of 2009 census results was crucial in achieving standard results, a feet that should be emulated in other development matters.

"The award is a recognition of what a communication can achieve in development agenda of the Government," Kilele said.

How the public will respond to this development is a subject of discussion.

It has almost become commonplace now for prominent environmentalists like David Suzuki to declare that economic growth cannot continue in a finite world. Even Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May has been heard to quote Paul Ehrlich's old line that "growth is the ideology of the cancer cell". The problem is, however, that they do not follow this insight through to its logical conclusion. What does economic growth consist of? If population growth is a critical ingredient of economic growth, then what drives population growth? And if migration to affluent countries promotes population growth in both the nations of emigration and the recipient countries, must not any credible strategy to fight economic growth involve tightening borders and restricting this flow?

"We have come to believe that growth is the very definition of progress. You talk to any businessperson or politician and say, 'How well did you do last year?' And, within a picosecond, they will talk about growth in the GDP and the economy in profit, jobs or market share. And, anything in a finite world cannot grow forever. We live within the biosphere, that cannot grow- it's fixed." David Suzuki

At long last there is a growing consensus among environmentalists that growth must not simply be managed, but stopped, before nature does it in a more ruthless and arbitrary fashion. Nevertheless, while it takes little insight or courage to identify and attack the problem in broad terms, it requires bold persistence to follow that commitment to its logical conclusions and ruffling politically correct feathers in the process. Unfortunately, not many anti-growth advocates are so audacious. So far there seems to be seven subsets of anti-growth consciousness that must be treated as stages toward total comprehension of the issue.

1.Those who recognize that economic growth cannot continue in a finite world.

2.Those who realise that economic growth must not only be stopped, but reversed. There must be “de-growth".

3. Those who understand that global population growth is a critical component of economic growth.

4. Those who understand that population growth in affluent nations or nations of growing affluence is more dangerous than population growth in undeveloped countries.

5. Those who understand that immigration has become a key driver of population growth in many affluent nations like the United States, Canada, Australia and the UK.

6. Those who understand that mass migration to affluent nations is a spur to global population growth. Open borders are a fertility stimulant to countries of emigration and relieve the pressure upon their governments to pursue sustainable population levels, while affluent nations with immigration-driven runaway population growth lack the credibility to lobby for lower birth rates in developing nations.

7.Those who understand, then, that reducing mass migration to North America and similarly affluent regions is crucial to any effective effort toward pro-actively reversing global economic growth, if for only the reason that migrants from poorer nations greatly magnify their ecological footprints upon arrival. At the same time, we understand it is the practical and moral obligation of affluent countries to address the “push” factors which drive migrants of poorer nations out of their countries.

Lamentably, the great majority of environmental leaders who have “gone out on a limb” to denounce economic growth, or even to declare that it must be reversed rather than simply stabilized, will not go out any further. Perhaps they reason that their constituents are not yet ready come with them----or that corporate donors will de-fund their organizations if they did. It is clear that from the investigations of Washington Post, Johann Hari, Christine MacDonald, Michel Chossudovsky and Cory Morningstar---to name but a few---that corporate foundation money has played a decisive role in taming environmental NGOs and channelling them down paths that our less consequential to the corporate bottom line. But whether it be for mercenary reasons or simply deference to political correctness, Canadians remain puzzled why David Suzuki, for example, can tell Australians on their public radio that their country is over-populated, but is apparently unable to say the same thing in Canada about his own country on the CBC. If Dr. Suzuki—and other prominent green voices---are sincere in their determination to see economic contraction, then they must climb up all of the steps outlined above. They must take special note of Herman Daly’s ninth policy proposal for moving toward a steady state:

"Stabilize Population. We should be working toward a balance in which births plus in-migrants equals deaths plus out-migrants. This is controversial and difficult, but, as a start, contraception should be made available for voluntary use everywhere. And while each nation can debate whether it should accept many or few immigrants, and who should get priority, such a debate is rendered moot if immigration laws are not enforced. We should support voluntary family planning and enforcement of reasonable immigration laws, democratically enacted. A lot of the pro-natalist and open-borders rhetoric claims to be motivated by generosity, but it is “generosity” at the expense of the U.S. working class—a cheap labor policy. Progressives have been slow to understand this. The environmental movement began with a focus on population but has frequently given in to political correctness." http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/556

Tim Murray
January 5, 2010

Editor's comment: This article was originally published as "Decline in some species along with over-abundance of humans" in Your Say.

The abundance of four common species of bumblebee in the US has dropped by 96% in just the past few decades, according to the most comprehensive national census of the insects. Bees in general pollinate some 90% of the world's commercial plants, including most fruits, vegetables and nuts. Coffee, soya beans and cotton are all dependent on pollination by bees to increase yields. It is the start of a food chain that also sustains wild birds and animals.

But the insects, along with other crucial pollinators such as moths and hoverflies, have been in serious decline around the world since the last few decades of the 20th century.

Abundance of four US bee species declines by 96 percent.

Scientists said the alarming decline, which could have devastating implications for the pollination of both wild and farmed plants, was likely to be a result of disease and low genetic diversity in bee populations.

According to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in the UK, three of the 25 British species of bumblebee are already extinct and half of the remainder have shown serious declines, often up to 70%, since around the 1970s.

Experts aren't sure exactly why the bee population is declining (although similar findings have been reported all over the world) but they believe it's due to a "combination of new diseases, changing habitats around cities, and increasing use of pesticides."

Hundreds of birds have dropped dead from the sky in Louisiana just days after a similar mysterious incident left scientists baffled in Arkansas.

The carcasses of around 500 red-winged blackbirds were found littering a quarter-mile stretch of road in Pointe Coupee.

Last week, about 83,000 dead and dying drum fish washed up along a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River, about 100 miles west of Beebe. Wildlife officials say the fish deaths are not related to the dead birds, and that because mainly one species of fish was affected, it is likely they were stricken by an illness.

At the same time US demographers now project that the world's human population may reach nine billion before 2050--in 2045. Right now on Earth, water tables are falling, soil is eroding, glaciers are melting, and fish stocks are vanishing. Close to a billion people go hungry each day. Decades from now, there will likely be two billion more mouths to feed, mostly in poor countries. There will be billions more people wanting and deserving to boost themselves out of poverty. ( Global population report - National Geographic )

The health of humans, like all living organisms, is dependent on an ecosystem that sustains life. Human populations are increasingly concentrated in urban ecosystems, and it is estimated that, by the year 2010, 50 percent of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. The human population is at an all-time high, and associated pressures of human activity have led to increasing degradation of the earth’s ecosystems.

The most effective way to conquer and colonize a people is to strip them of their identity as a people, as a distinctive culture and as a sovereign nation, and to delegate the wet work to a Puppet Intelligentsia. Like the Jews (Kapos) of the Warsaw ghetto whom the Nazis appointed to manage an orderly genocide, this contemptible class of rootless cosmopolitans, with media collusion, then set to work in convincing a new generation that they are part of a greater whole, a noble international enterprise, an empire, and that allegiance to the land of their forefathers is parochial, anachronistic, selfish and ‘nativist’. No sooner did we throw off the shackles of our infantile self-image as British ‘subjects’ when now, we are intoned to become “citizens of the world”. But we are not citizens in a global participatory democracy, but the passive consumers of global capitalism. In the name of diversity were are seeing what is left of our identity tossed into a global blender, with the left is calling it international workers solidarity. Face it. What we are witnessing is an invasion, and multiculturalism is just a useful smokescreen.

Pandering to the people vs.

Pandering to the Growth Lobby How typical of the New York Times. One would think this was written by the CBC.

Instead of discussing the dangers that Islamic fundamentalism poses to western democracies who have opened their doors to mass immigration from Islamic countries, this journalist focuses on the restraint of Sweden's Prime Minister in responding to the recent bombing attempt by an Iraqi-born terrorist. ("Sweden's Near Miss" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/opinion/14tue4.html ). Note how he characterizes those who oppose this policy:

"......the misleadingly named Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party of the extreme right."

"Center-right politicians elsewhere in Europe — France and the Netherlands, for example — have been quick to pander to similar xenophobic parties and their supporters."

This is the standard analysis of PC journalism. "Anti-immigration" is conflated with "anti-immigrant" and those who would defend national sovereignty and the cultural heritage of their own country are "xenophobic" and of the "extreme right".

By what measure of inverse reasoning do the politically correct regard politicians who defer to theopinions of the electorate as somehow "undemocratic"? How is bowing to public pressure seen as "pandering", but bowing to the pressures of cheap labour employers for open immigration as "statesmanship"?

Most governments are puppets of the growth lobby. Rather than confess their collusion with the Ponzi population agenda, these puppets dress it up as a noble act of responsible statecraft. They call it "tolerance", a respect for "diversity", "the rule of law". Whose law? The law of the people, or the law of their so-called "representatives"?

Wars are fought with euphemisms

Political wars, like those fought by armies, are waged and rationalized by the use of euphemisms. It is critically important to frame the battle in terms that will win public support. The Japanese did not define their aggression in 1941 as a naked grab for oil in the Dutch East Indies, but as a project to establish a South East Asian "Co-Prospertiy Sphere". The Bush administration, similarly, did not describe the war against Iraq as a war to secure oil supplies but as a war against terrorism. The annals of colonial conquest are replete with this kind of spin. What is even more advantageous for the invader though, is to convince those who have been invaded that their subjugation is in their own interests. If the conquered can believe that they are actually being "liberated", then the task of exploitation is rendered so much easier. A proven technique is to reward the ruling class of the conquered territory with junior-partner status for their valuable role in helping to manage and channel popular dissent along ineffectual paths. The Vichy regime was a classic case in point. The Romans also were masters of this technique. Nothing works better than to install a puppet regime that allows the locals the illusion of independence.

The Puppet Intelligentsia

That is precisely what "The New Class" is. A puppet intelligentsia. They are that coalition of "progressive" globe-trotting politicians, academics and journalists who, as a badge of membership in the "Those who know better Club", sneer at anti-immigration sentiments, which they characterize as nativist, bigoted and parochial. Their role is to "educate" the masses to accept and embrace the invaders as the vanguard of a new world order. The national culture, as such, must be discredited as an anachronism, and instead the people must be encouraged to shift their allegiance to a distant entity. Citizens must be made to feel proud to be mere cogs in an Empire, and be content with the reputed rewards that colonial status brings. In Canada now, that process of mental assimilation is half-way complete. Left-wing hypocrites who once celebrated Canada's growing independence from Britain, and once fretted over growing American influence in the 60s and 70s, now see Canada's "great multicultural project", as Green Party leader Elizabeth May calls it, as our distinctive mission in the world. It is a belief that has been preached daily for decades in classrooms and newsrooms without challenge, and the dividends of this relentless and rootless cosmopolitanism are now evident. Most readers polled by the National Post in 2008, in fact, voted to make "Canada---Home to the World" our national slogan. We are not to be credited with having our own home-grown culture. Instead, we are merely a mosaic of imported cultures, a United Nations in microcosm. It is a globalist vision, espoused by people who purport to be opposed to globalism. In fact, they share the corporate dream of a world without borders. Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Lennon all "come together right now", if you will pardon the use of Beatles' lyrics.

Multiculturalism is a smokescreen

The truth is, mass immigration is a profoundly and extremely "right-wing" project, and, to use Dan Murray's description, the cult of multiculturalism can be likened to the "artillery" which softens up our lines before the shock troops mount their attack. A good metaphor, but another comes to mind. The Canadians who landed on Juneau Beach in Normandy gained their beach-head by laying down smoke to conceal incoming tanks. The cant about tolerance and diversity can be regarded in the same way. It is just a smokescreen for the invasion, a fog which conceals the prime corporate objective to drive down labour costs and expand the number of consumers. But the Green-Left cannot see through it. Perhaps it is because green NGOs are blinded by corporate donations. The irony is, one day they will wake up and realize that when the smoke has cleared, the net result will be a displaced and pauperized indigenous workforce, and a Tower of Babel where people cannot mount a challenge to their exploitation because of their ethno-cultural divisions. They will cease to be citizens and exist only as consumers. The only common culture will be the culture of money. Some diversity. A rainbow of faces but a conformity of thought and behaviour.

Canada--home to the world. Or will it be "Attention Walmart Shoppers"?

Welcome to the original multicultural paradise, the one that serves The New Class across the world as a model and template for national suicide and global integration.

Tim Murray

By Julianne Bell, Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. and Jill Quirk, Sustainable Population Australia Inc. (Victorian Branch)
Planning issues dogged the Victorian ALP Government, although the ex-Planning Minister seemed remarkably unconcerned about community angst over high rise, high density development. Probably millions of dollars of the community's money and thousands of hours have been spent opposing unwanted, inappropriate developments especially in the established suburbs of Melbourne.

State ALP lost right to govern over population growth

From a quick analysis of the results of the Victorian State election it seems that the ALP lost its right to govern as a result of the direct and indirect effects of extremely rapid population growth in recent years in our State. Former Premier Brumby and his Cabinet failed to recognise the elephant in the living room - population growth. This was confirmed by Daniel Andrews, newly elected Opposition Leader, who attributed Labor's defeat to their having "not kept pace with growth" nor having "stayed ahead of the unprecedented (population) growth in the last few years." (3AW and ABC Stateline 3 December 2010.)

Unrealistic state policy

We submit that, as recent projections indicate Melbourne's population will almost double and reach at least 7 million by 2050, there is no way that the Brumby Government could have kept pace with provision of adequate services and affordable housing for Victorians. The same will be the case for the Baillieu Government if the present population intakes to Victoria continue. Any Government would simply be playing "catch up" and so it is inevitable that the community's living standards will fall further and further behind.

A rough overview of the demise of the Brumby Government follows.

Pipeline another cost of population overgrowth

The ALP was able to hold onto most of its non-metropolitan seats with the exception of South Barwon and Seymour. Constituents of the seat of Seymour were extremely disaffected by construction of the North South Pipeline (also known as the Sugarloaf Pipeline.) This piece of infrastructure was hurriedly installed to provide water for Melbourne's growing population. As it has turned out, it has not been needed as the drought has broken, but the intention was to siphon water away from the northern rivers of Victoria as required to supply Melbourne and hence the community in the seat of Seymour were the losers from population growth. The seat has gone to the Coalition with the help of preferences from independent candidate and Plug the Pipe member, Jan Beer.

Overpopulation-related erosion of living standards

Moving in towards the vortex of Melbourne, the outer suburbs suffered from an erosion of their living standards and financial stress from increases in council rates due to the rising cost of land and cost of infrastructure required by a rapidly growing population and so the ALP seats of Gembrook, Mt Waverley, Mitcham and Forest Hill were lost.

Public transport fiasco another cost of overpopulation

Turning our attention to the sand belt electorates; the seat of Carrum was unexpectedly lost to Labor, then Frankston, Mordialloc and finally Bentleigh became the last ALP domino to fall in the State Election. Constituents reported that they have suffered, amongst other things, from unreliable, unsafe and crowded train services which, in our view, were primarily due to increased pressure of population and failure of the Government to fund public transport. It was particularly aggravating that the Government splashed out on the Peninsula Link freeway which, reputedly, will soak up $2.8 billion of taxpayers' funds by the time it is completed.

Traffic congestion another cost of overpopulation

Focusing right in, the clearway issue due to traffic congestion from increased population and inability for our local streets to cope with traffic volumes even outside normal "Peak Hour" was a very sore point in inner southern suburbs of Melbourne, especially Malvern, Richmond and Prahran. The anger over this was expressed at a rally "Make Brumby History" on Parliament House steps, just before the election. The rally expressed a multitude of citizens' concerns but the impetus came from those opposing clearways.

Planning problems & protests caused by overpopulation

Planning issues also dogged the ALP Government, although the ex-Planning Minister seemed remarkably unconcerned about community angst over high rise, high density development. Regular rallies were held at Parliament and in the inner city, for instance, over the extension of the urban growth boundary; the destruction of the Windsor Hotel with the addition of a 92 metre tower block; loss of other iconic heritage properties in Melbourne; and his ALP fundraising ("cash-for-chat") lunch with developers. Probably millions of dollars of the community's money and thousands of hours have been spent opposing unwanted, inappropriate developments especially in the established suburbs of Melbourne.

No winners in this endless catch-up game

Unless the Baillieu government recognises that it is impossible to make life better for Victorians if population growth continues, as in the last decade, it too will fail to deliver as Victorians suffer anew. With continual rapid population growth, any state government will spend most of its energy just trying to cope with ever increasing demand for all services and housing and fighting escalating costs.

Dire environmental costs of overpopulation

The most serious long term problem that has been brought about by population pressures is the effect on the environment. The areas of concern - waterways and wetlands, water supplies, biodiversity, coasts, estuaries and the sea - detailed in the 2008 State of the Environment Report show our precious and fragile environment to be in a parlous state and this report should be a warning to any government taking the reins in Victoria.

Baillieu government faces same destiny if does not change course

Unless the Baillieu government faces the limitations firstly of our environment and secondly of the capacity of our society to provide requisite infrastructure, it will have little hope of outperforming the last government. The rate of population growth is, to a large extent, a choice made by the Federal Government which holds the actual keys to the immigration gates. We consider, however, that the Baillieu Government should create state history by establishing a joint Parliamentary committee of enquiry to examine just what is a sustainable population for Victoria, in order that our standards of living can be maintained and our environment rehabilitated and protected for future generations.

Jill Quirk is the President of Sustainable Population Australia Inc. (Victorian Branch)
P.O. Box 1173 Frankston 3199.

Julianne Bell is the Secretary Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.
PO Box 197 Parkville 3052

Unless there's economic growth, we're not making progress
Unless the trucks rumble along the roads, we're not making progress
Unless the engines of industry are turning, we're not making progress
Unless the factories and mills belch out smoke, we're not making progress
Unless our armies are on the move, we're not making progress

Until we respect the planet, we won't progress.

Population Forum 7 Nov 2010 Kelvin Thomson MP from Marvellous Melbourne on Vimeo.

Film and text of speech now available inside article. Speech given at Planning Backlash Forum of 7 Nov 2010: "In July last year I made a 22 page submission to the Victorian Government titled “5 Million is too many: Securing the Social and Environmental Future of Melbourne”. So given that I think 5 million would be too many, you can imagine what I think of the idea of doubling Melbourne’s population to 8 million. Melbourne’s population is growing on a scale not seen in Australia before, swelling by almost 150,000 people in the last two years. Melbourne’s population is growing by more than 200 people per day, 1500 per week, 75,000 per year. This is much faster than all other major Australian cities. It will give us another million people in 15 years."

Text of Speech by Kelvin Thomson, Member for Wills Richmond Town Hall, 7 November 2010

In July last year I made a 22 page submission to the Victorian Government titled “5 Million is too many: Securing the Social and Environmental Future of Melbourne”. So given that I think 5 million would be too many, you can imagine what I think of the idea of doubling Melbourne’s population to 8 million.

Melbourne’s population is growing on a scale not seen in Australia before, swelling by almost 150,000 people in the last two years. Melbourne’s population is growing by more than 200 people per day, 1500 per week, 75,000 per year. This is much faster than all other major Australian cities. It will give us another million people in 15 years.

The national rate of population growth has sped up since the mid 2000s. The recent growth rate of 2% per year is faster than at any other time in decades, and faster than nearly every other developed country.

Is this population growth good? Well it’s certainly not much good for the birds, plants and animals. This year Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary was expanded by 43,000 hectares; which is roughly the size of four Phillip Islands.

This will allow the destruction of 7,000 hectares of volcanic plains grassland, and nearly 1000 hectares of grassy woodland. Since European settlement over 95% of Victoria’s original native grassland has been destroyed. I believe we should be protecting the less than 5% we still have.

And it’s hard to see how extra population is good for people, either. Expanding the Urban Growth Boundary contradicts the Melbourne 2030 Plan. Melbourne 2030 was justified in the name of stopping urban sprawl. It hasn’t. Suburbs continue to march out onto the horizon.

Property developers are having their cake and eating it too. We’re growing both upward and outwards. Melbourne is becoming an obese, hardened-artery parody of its former self.

At the current rate of car possession per household, Melbourne will add a further 1.1 million cars by 2036, or well above 3 million cars in Melbourne. Does anyone in this room seriously think moving around in Melbourne is going to get anything but harder? We presently have 2 million cars; we are heading for an extra million! And yes, we should be virtuous and get out of our cars and onto trams and trains, but, as it turns out, they’re full too.

Melbourne’s population growth is bad for the environment. We all know we need to reduce our carbon emissions, but its pretty hard to reduce your carbon footprint when you keep adding more feet.

We are using less water than we used to, but we still have to turn to energy-hungry desalination to cater for our growing population. And Melbourne’s 75,000 extra people every year undermines the value of the water restrictions we put on ourselves. Growing population puts upward pressure on prices and lowers our standard of living. Scarce resources like land, water, petrol, electricity become dearer, as we turn to more expensive sources of supply. Competition for food and housing pushes food and housing prices up.

These cost of living pressures are most clearly evident in electricity and gas prices and council rates. The most populated cities, Melbourne and Sydney, have seen the highest electricity price rises. Prices have more than doubled in the past 10 years. In real terms, Melbourne prices have risen by over 50% - 52%. So have Sydney’s – 51%.

Now you might think that more people – a growing population – would lead to economies of scale and lead to lower electricity prices, but you would be wrong.

Instead of rising population causing lower prices, it leads to a need for extra infrastructure and therefore higher prices. And the more crowded a city becomes, the higher the cost of doing business. Congestion costs kick in, and just maintaining electricity infrastructure becomes more expensive.

Rising population is putting upward pressure on water and gas prices. We’ve already got at the easy water, and the easy gas.

Augmenting our supplies involves things like desalination plants and pipelines, which come at greater expense than our present supplies. It is a similar unhappy story with local council rates. I always expected that more people in my municipality would lead to lower rate bills, due to economies of scale, and more people sharing the rate load. The opposite has been the case.

In nominal terms Council rates in Melbourne have increased by over 100% - more than doubled – from 2000 to 2010. In real terms rates have increased over 48%. Regrettably this pattern of increasing rates is set to continue. Victorians will pay an average of $79 more in their rates in 2010-2011, up by over 6% from last year, based on draft Council budgets. This is well above the CPI, and again underscores the impact of rising population on local government finances. These costs of population growth – rising electricity prices, rising water prices, rising gas prices, rising Council rates – are being borne most of all by those who can least afford them – fixed income earners and pensioners in particular.

Now the growth lobby has to concede pretty much everything I’ve just said, but they say the problems are poor planning and lack of provision of infrastructure. If you scratch below the surface, they think its all about multi-unit developments, dual occupancies, and increasingly high rise.

Now the first problem with high rise is that it doesn’t do what its claimed to do; that is, reduce our environmental footprint. The Australian Government’s State of Australian Cities Report 2010 found that, when both direct and indirect environmental impacts are taken into account, environmental impacts at the household level are associated with higher incomes and smaller household sizes.

Therefore, despite the opportunities for efficiency and reduced environmental impacts offered by more compact forms of urban living, inner city households of capital cities, followed by the inner suburban areas, feature the highest consumption of water use, energy use and ecological footprints, even when reduced car use is taken into account.

The second problem is that high rise and infill spells the death of the suburban backyard. I confess to being a fan of it. There is something intangible but important about the personal space of a backyard.

I believe the children who grow up in concrete jungle suburbs are subject to more bullying and harassment and are more vulnerable to traps such as crime and drugs. What do you call a kid with a backyard? A free range kid. I think free range kids have a better time of it than battery kids.

The third problem is that not everyone wants to live next door to high rise or multi-unit developments, but these things are imposed on them anyway. In Dick Smith’s film ‘Population Puzzle’, you will see the story of the dignified elderly widow in Sydney – I think it is in Double Bay – who refused to sell her home to property developers who wanted to build a skyscraper on it. She found herself surrounded by skyscraper developments which dwarfed her home and blocked out the sun.

The fourth problem is the issue of health. In April the Medical Journal of Australia published a study which found heart disease, diabetes, chronic neck and back pain, asthma and migraine were less prevalent among those with more green space available to them. There was a very strong correlation between lack of green space and depression and anxiety disorders. Those living in more built-up areas are at an increased risk of developing schizophrenia.

Another study found urban sprawl in Sydney was linked to a greater likelihood of being overweight or obese, and inadequate physical activity. Physical inactivity is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some types of cancer.

I want to turn now to two matters which have featured recently in the news. You know that the growth lobby says that Australia is short of workers – to be precise they say ‘Australia has a skills shortage’ for which their solution is to import more labour. Yet a fortnight ago it was reported that Broadmeadows has an unemployment rate of 15.9% - I repeat 15.9%. Broadmeadows is just beyond the northern boundary of my electorate and I know it very well.

According to the 2006 Census, of the people in Broadmeadows aged 25 and over, over 50% were born in non-English speaking countries – over 50%. And for men aged 25-44, over 47% of the Non-English Speaking Country born reported income of less than $399 per week. This is entrenched unemployment, poverty, and disadvantage.

Now if we continue running a high migration program, they might go and work in iron ore mines in the Pilbara, but the evidence isn’t promising. It suggests that significant numbers will simply get caught up in a cycle of unemployment, poverty and disadvantage, as has happened in Broadmeadows.

So I suggest, before we succumb to the wailing of employers crying “skills shortage”, we put our talents to finding work for those 15.9% unemployed in Broadmeadows who are entitled to our attention. I don’t care whether we find them work in Broadmeadows or in the Pilbara, but let’s not talk about skills shortage again until we’ve got them into the workplace.

And the second item in the news recently was the latest rise in interest rates. Australia used to be the envy of the world in terms of its levels of home ownership. It was the place where everyone could aspire to a home of their own. Now housing in Melbourne is as unaffordable as just about anywhere in the world.

During 2009 housing affordability around Australia declined by over 22% due to a massive gap between the number of dwellings being built and the number of new people wanting housing. The Housing Industry Association says Australia’s fast growing population is pushing new dwelling requirements to record high levels. It predicted around 152,000 new dwellings will be commenced in 2010, well short of the 190,000 it estimates is required to keep up with a growing population.

The inevitable consequence of this gap is rising house prices which, combined with the rising electricity, gas, water, council rates, I described earlier, pushes the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates to head off inflation.

Australians now owe financial institutions more than $1 trillion in housing mortgages, almost 15 times as much as 20 years ago, according to the Reserve Bank.

Rising interest rates claw away at already poor housing affordability and will send Australians deeper into debt.

Runaway population growth is damaging our young people’s chances of buying a home. Our children’s chances of buying their own home are fading away, and unless we take steps to tackle runaway population growth, they will disappear.

Many people – a two to one majority according to opinion polls – share my concerns about population growth. But many people think it’s inevitable, that there’s nothing we can do about it. This is not so. Our population number is a direct consequence of our level of net overseas migration, and that depends on decisions made each year by the Federal Government. If we return our net annual migration number to 70,000 – the kind of number we had quite often in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, we could stabilise Australia’s population at 26 million by 2050, instead of the 36 million it is presently projected to rise to.

The best way to cut back our migration number is to cut skilled migration, which in 1995 was 24,000 but is now over 100,000. It should go back to 25,000. There is no need to cut the family reunion program, and indeed there is room to increase the refugee program, which is presently 13,750 and could rise to 20,000.

We should get rid of the Baby Bonus, and put the $1.4 billion we would save each year into educating and training young Australians at Universities and TAFE.

In November last year I issued a 14 Point Plan for Population Reform, which goes into these matters in detail. It is available on my website.

CONCLUSION

Like a man rapidly gaining weight who loosens his belt rather than confront his weight problem, Melbourne needs to ask itself, is a population of 5 million really going to give us a better city than one of 4 million?

Accepting galloping population increase as inevitable, or even desirable, will lead to a more polluted, congested and unsustainable Melbourne. Melbourne is generating more greenhouse gas emissions, using more water, losing open space and turning into a high rise steel and concrete jungle. Planners and developers talk the talk of protecting Melbourne’s environment, but their actions have the opposite effect.

They behave as Gough Whitlam once described rowers-facing in one direction but heading in the opposite one.

We need an environmentally sustainable planning policy for Melbourne. We do not need more loss of open space, high rise buildings turning Melbourne into Shanghai or Mexico City, ever larger dwellings like the energy-guzzling McMansions, or policies which encourage reduced numbers of people per dwelling.

We must show the same foresight the founders of this city showed when it was initially designed. They left us with a city with open space, extensive tram and train networks, and liveable suburbs supported by extensive local infrastructure in the form of schools, hospitals and social services. We too should leave a legacy for future generations that we, and they, can be proud of.

I thank you for your interest in this debate. I think no issue is more fundamental to our successfully discharging our responsibility to pass on a world, and an Australian way of life, to our children and grandchildren in as good a condition as the one our parents and grandparents gave to us.

KELVIN THOMSON MP

Member for Wills.

In Growth We Prosper

There is an unrelenting media campaign to tell Canadians that we must grow our population. We need more babies and more immigrants or very bad things will happen. But there are voices that question this assumption. They are heard on the streets, in the pubs and at the dining room table. But they are seldom heard in the media. Especially not on the airways of the CBC, that vehicle of growthist PC propaganda which all taxpayers are forced to endow.

It has been quite the year.

First the host of CBC radio's "The Sunday Edition", Michael Enright, declared on his June 7th program that Canada needs immigration-driven population growth in order to "prosper". Many of us, like Brishen Hoff, wanted to know what Enright meant by "prosper". As Hoff then asked, "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?"

Then a week later the print media gave the University of Toronto's Irvin Studin, editor-in-chief of "Global Brief" a platform to promote his vision of a Canada of 100 million people-- the Superpower of the century. No submissions for op-eds of equivalent space that would contest his arguments were permitted. Not one. Not in any major media outlet. Nor were any one of several known letters-to-the editor critical of his stance published.

How the CBC Manages To Talk About Demography Without Questioning Population Growth

Then in September, CBC Radio announced that the flagship morning show, "The Current" would be featuring a series of programs about the "seismic" demographic shifts that are occuring in Canada that will "change our work, our health, our families and our politics". The series would not ask if we could resist these changes, or how we might do so. And most conspicuously, not once would they interview a guest who challenged the assumed need to grow our population.

Demographer David Foot set the tone on the September 7th program by arguing that we seek the counsel of demographers so that we may "plan" for a future, which as we are constantly told about growth, is inevitable. Population growth and change is not something we can do anything about. We just have to make the right adjustments. On September 8th, the next day, the CBC then declared that the growing ranks of centenarians was something "worth celebrating"---something re-affirmed on the September 21st segment of the series about "super-centenarians", when listeners were told of the "exciting' , albeit costly research that will help us live beyond 110 years of age. On the 16th, The Current informed CBC listeners that the government of Quebec had spent some $25million this year to cover the cost of several fertility treatments in an effort to hike the province's birth rate, which they said---without challenge--is "crucial" to the province's future. The Quebec College of Physicians made the argument that money would be better spent on fixing what is already an overburdened system---but that was an argument about priorities and not about the underlying assumption that Quebec needed to boost its population. The October 4th show dealt with the old ogre of an aging population, and two days later the burdens of caregiving to elders was discussed. On October 7th, crocodile tears were shed about how changes to the Citizenship Act were impeding the ability of overseas Canadians to pass on their citizenship to children they had outside the country. Another program was devoted to the issue of when--- not if--- couples should have their children. No one spoke of the alternative of adopting one of the 36,000 Canadian children still without a permanent home. The "Shift"---as the series was called---was all about promoting more births, extending the lives of very old people and encouraging immigration. The phrase "carrying capacity" was never heard.

Resistance is Futile. We are the CBC

Meanwhile, "The Sunday Edition", hosted by Michael Enright---remember, the host who asserted that immigration was necessary for Canada's "prosperity"--- gave Irvin Studin 23 minutes of air time to re-iterate what he said in the print media four months before. Only this time Studin was congratulated for doing his bit to grow the population after proudly announcing the birth of his child. I then twice challenged the executive producer of Sunday Edition, Marjorie Nichol, in the interests of balance--to offer equivalent time to a contrarian view, even supplying her with the contact numbers, biographies and posted arguments of three capable and articulate people in the population stabilization movement. But even that was not enough to spark their interest or wake up a journalistic conscience for fair play. But then, what should one expect. I was dealing with CBC Pravda, after all. I might as well talk to my plants.

Now, if this five-month propaganda barrage was not enought, Global TV is announced that beginning Monday evening, November 9th, they will be running a two-part segment about "Making Babies"---designed to offer help and advice to couples who want to produce more unnecessary Canadians by artificial means.

At What Point Will The Media Question Growth?

The obvious question is, "At what point in history will the mainstream Canadian media consider the possibility that Canada already has enough people on its hands?" That there is no law nor reason why any country should feel obligated to "replace" its unsustainable population level?That a 'youth quake' of immigrants or newborns will not arrest the aging of our population nor pay for their pension or medical benefits? That the infrastructure costs of servicing a growing population exceeds their economic contributions? That great majority of immigrants will lack the skills to pay the kind of taxes it takes to subsidize the provision of the government services they demand? That a country without a population plan that is not properly debated with all options on the table is like a blindfolded man walking toward a cliff?

At what point will the CBC honour its mandate to offer a microphone to all strands of Canadian public opinion, a public that pays taxes to this "peoples'" broadcasting corporation for that right? Will that point be when oil is at $200/barrel and we are at 44 million, or when it is at $300/barrel and we are at 54 million? What is your bid----64 million? 64 million, is there anyone who will say 74 million? 64 once, 64 two times, 64---wait, Mr. Gordon Nixon of the Royal Bank says 74 million. Do I hear 84? Yes, Elizabeth May of the Green Party raises her hand for 84 million consumers whose ecological impact can be "de-coupled" from the environment. Its 84 million now--- Ms. May has raised the bar so that Canada can persist with what she calls its "Great Multicultural Project". It doesn't matter if we trash the environment and reduce Canadians' per capita share of resources as long as we are more diverse in our poverty! Wait--- Mr. Studin says 94 million! Now Mr. Gordon Nixon of the Royal Bank counters with 99 million potential bank clients! Now Irvin Studin shouts "100 million"! Whoppee, the sky is the limit! We are going to the mountain top! Mr. Studin may not get their with you kids but, you'll get there! Its 100 million, going once, going twice---- SOLD!"

Studin's Mad Dream Prevails

Congratulations Mr. Studin, your mad vision of a Canada in ridiculous overshoot wins the day! As you argued on CBC radio, at 100 million we will have the political leverage to promote our progressive environmental policies to the rest of the world! We can show the rest of the world how its done! Just look how we are doing that now! We've covered 20% of our Class One farmland with subdivisions and put 500 species at risk in the process! Thanks to post-1990 hyper-immigration we have developed more square kilometres in farmland than the Alberta Tar Sands project has despoiled boreal forest! This is only the beginning---think now of our potential! Not only will we live like Ghandi, as Elizabeth May prescribes, we'll do better than that! We'll live like cavemen! Consume less and less, squeeze tighter and tighter and move over for more and more migrants! By tripling our population by century's end, we can absorb 46% of the number of people the planet adds to its burden in just one year! It all makes so much sense----no wonder the media doesn't want anyone to challenge Irvin's dream.

Tim Murray
November 6/2010

Check out: http://www.vhemt.org/aboutvhemt.htm

- There will be a public forum about the problems of population and planning in Victoria. It is sponsored by Planning Backlash, which is an umbrella group for groups all over Victoria, but particularly around Melbourne, who are sick and tired of the way that planners and the government are running roughshod over democracy in order to push more people into this city. Please come along and learn and support this important forum.

How Many Is Too Many ??

Melbourne's population is over 4 million
They are planning for 8 million
Is that too many?
How many is too many?
IS SUSTAINABILITY IMPORTANT ?
- Infrastructure, who pays for it ??

PUBLIC FORUM

Richmond Town Hall
333 Bridge Rd, RICHMOND
4pm, Sunday 7th November 2010
Speakers:
Andrew MacLeod, CEO Committee for Melbourne
Kelvin Thomson MP, Federal Member for Wills
Panel:
Melina Sehr - Stonnington City Councillor
Rupert Mann - Melbourne Heritage Action Group
David O’Brien - Planning Barrister
Mary Drost - Convenor Planning Backlash
Moderator - David Trenerry
Sponsor: PLANNING BACKLASH INC.

How is this for a coherent ideology: We can protect farmland and wildlife habitat by building zoning fences around our cities which are bursting from the mass immigration which we support. But we cannot and should not build a fence around our nation to protect farmland and wildlife habitat from that same immigrant-driven population growth. We should also densify our cities to lower per capita energy costs, but disperse people to populate our hinterlands at the same time. And we must oppose the corporate agenda of lowering barriers to trans-national movement of goods, but support the corporate agenda of promoting the unfettered trans-national movement of cheap labour. Welcome to the world of the Green-Left. Watermelon Globalists who wear a green coat to disguise a misguided and antique vision of a borderless world. A perverse globalism that markets itself as international solidarity.

It is curious that in the immigration debate---whenever such a debate is permitted to occur------the Green-Left Globalists switch horses in mid-stream.

Within the confines of our national borders, they tell us that what is decisive is not how many people we can accommodate, but where they are situated. The classic mantra is "It is not whether we grow, but how we grow". We can double or triple or quadruple our numbers so long as we steer the population to urban centres, and pack them like sardines in a can to lower their per capita energy consumption and keep greenfield acreage untouched, along with ecologically significant nature reserves. Apart from the fallacy of low-energy urban living, and the political improbabilities of wresting land-use decisions from developer-controlled city councils and regional parliaments, this argument is incongruent with their stance on immigration. At that level of discussion, they tell us that it doesn't matter where people live on this planet, it is only their numbers which should be of concern. Moving people around from country to country, or excluding them from doing so does not address the problem. It is like the proverbial futility of moving deck chairs on the Titanic, they argue. Immigration policy, in their imagination, is not a population policy. Besides, building fences won't keep the global population tsunami from sweeping over us, nor will it keep out global warming. In other words, fences inside our borders are a solution to runaway population growth driven by hyper-immigration, but fences aroundour borders are no solution to runaway global population. Confusing, isn't it?

Now get ready to be more confused. Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May, who argues for an immigration quota 25% larger than the Harper government's (already rivalling Australia as the highest per capita intake in the world), has pushed the traditional green line that "smart growth" planning can confine our growing population within ecologically benign urban boundaries. But when faced with complaints that our major cities are already strained beyond liveability by incoming migrants--- the great majority from abroad--- she has called for their dispersal to rural localities, despite the fact that people have left these regions for compelling economic reasons. So now we have a Green Party that tells us that we should squeeze tighter in urban centres, and relocate to the empty hinterland at the same time.

The Green message is now clear. Fences work, but they don't work. Cram into the cities, but settle outside of them. And if you don't like our principles---just wait---we will find other ones for you.

If that is not enough contradiction for you, then along comes the climate-obsessed Eco-Marxists. They oppose the free and unfettered passage of goods across national borders because they oppose the corporate agenda. But they support the free and unfettered passage of people across national border because they support the corporate agenda of smashing the indigenous labour force with cheap imported slave labour. Except that they call their globalism "international solidarity" with migrant workers. Native-born workers and native culture are expendable. And their idea of fighting climate change is to shift people from nations with low GHG emissions to nations of very high GHG emissions, and then look for a technological fix. Go figure.

Tim Murray
October 09, 2010

Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada has happened upon the John Howard confidence trick. In the shell game of electoral politics, it is important to get the audience to focus on the pea marked "bogus refugees" rather than the one marked "unsustainable immigration". That way corporations get the policy they paid for. The growth of the cheap labour pool and legions of new consumers. We clap our hands at the crackdown, and are none the wiser for it.

I seem to recall that Australia's one-man wrecking crew (lest we forget) John Howard, successfully exploited public anger over incoming boat-loads of refugees by making a show of his hardline crackdown, then using that stance as a screen to jack up immigration levels to stratospheric heights. Right? Well it seems that the Stephen Harper government is taking the same tack. Use the refugee issue as a decoy and a lightening rod so that an even higher number of migrants can be waived through the airport. This is not about curbing immigration to more sustainable levels, levels that would permit cultural integration and ecological recuperation from the two-decade demographic assault Canada has suffered since 1990. It is about quelling growing public anger so that it does not threaten the great unquestioned project of unsustainable economic growth, which all major parties wrongly believe is dependent on population growth.

It is not just Canada's refugee system that is out of control. Immigration is out of control. Making scapegoats out of phoney refugees and the slime who smuggle them takes the heat off an immigration policy based on economic folly and cynical political empire-building. And the Prime Minister knows it. He wants more immigration, not less. And if the opposition parties, who share his mad dream, were smart, they would accede to his inadequate bill, because it appeases misplaced public wrath. Canadians could then be given the false assurance that everything is now "under control", when in fact immigrant-driven population growth will be more out-of-control than ever. While I support the government's half-measures---as far as they go---- I wonder if by applying a band-aid we might forget that we need major surgery. We need to stabilize and reduce our population, and to accomplish that, we could double or triple the intake of legitimate refugees while slashing the immigration quota to modest and reasonable totals. Cleaning up the refugee mess is not sufficient.

Harper's comments, recorded in this news report, "Human smuggling threatens Canada support for immigration: PM"
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/101020/canada/canada_srilanka_politics_refugee_immigration, makes his motives clear.

"A failure to act and act strongly (against human smugglers) will inevitably lead to a massive collapse in public support for our immigration system.... Not only do we have relatively speaking the largest immigration program in the world; not only do we have the most generous system of sanctuary for refugees in the world -- we also have a level of public support for immigration that is unparalleled elsewhere in the world," Harper said. "And that must continue, because our economy will need even more immigrants." The strong new laws will provide incentives for would-be immigrants to enter the country through "legitmate channels".

Tim Murray
October 22/ 2010

Background stories: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Tories+take+refugee+fraudsters+smugglers/3706309/story.html
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Laws+turn+tide+refugees/3709436/story.html

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Have you seen the latest TV commercials promoting the new Jeep Grand Cherokee for 2011? The theme is summarized with the slogan, "The Things We Make, Make Us". The 'manifesto' video ad, 1:01 minutes long, makes an unanabashed appeal to American pride and patriotism. Poignant scenes are punctuated by proud declarations.

"This once was a country that made things, beautiful things, and so it is again." "It was a country of colts (with the image of colts galloping across the screen) that made Colt revolvers, and Jeeps (pictures of a stream of Army Jeeps presumably poised for the Normandy invasion, then liberating the streets of European towns in the Second World War).... These things make us who we are."

The American industrial heartland will surely rise again, given the inspirational lead that Chrysler beckons us to follow. The fact that the non-renewable resources critical to this heroic enterprise will not be affordably available to sustain it is just one of life's tiny, inconvenient details that are best swept under the carpet. Pessimism, not the reality of limited resources, is our real enemy you know. What did Obama say? He repeated FDR. "The only fear we have is fear itself." God, is that all. And here I thought I had to worry about Peak Everything and the prospect of a thermo-nuclear exchange that might follow the desperate scramble for scarce resources. Or the strong possibility of biological and chemical war, but then, here I go being pessimistic again. Maybe I should look on the bright side of life, the life that these SUV ads promise me.

The reality of urban gridlock vs. the fantasy of wilderness escape

It is interesting that the product Chrysler is pitching an SUV whose production involved the expenditure of a least 400 barrels of oil per vehicle--or its equivalent--and tons of metals and minerals first mined, then transported, then smelted, then shipped to a factory to rendevous with rubber harvested thousands of miles away and fashioned into a vehicle by hundreds of employees who demand a range of products and services as recompense for their beautiful craftsmnship. Employees who fought two hours of traffic driving their Jeep to work, only to repeat the ordeal after their shift. But hey, they are Americans, like the can-do Americans we once knew, who get the job done! And once it is done, this same vehicle then is marketed as an off-road machine that is seen dashing through lush forests, across unpolluted rivers and over the vast and seemingly pristine Moab desert of Utah."Go where regrets can't follow" is the motto that subtitles the scene. Cameras don't show the getting there, however. You know, the Jeep Grand Cherokee stuck in bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic on a Friday afternoon as its driver tries to make it to his weekend gettaway, cursing and honking in a vehicle built for speed but trapped in a nation of gridlock. But alas, the promised land of galloping colts, lush forests and pristine deserts, the America of our fantasies, the one advertisers play on, surely awaits us. It is quite the juxtaposition. The nasty, noisy and smoky process of primary and secondary industrial activity that heralds the resurgence of proud American manufacturing, co-existing with an apparently vast and uncluttered American hinterland.

There are more than 254 million registered passenger vehicles in America and more than 100 million are SUVs and trucks, with over 8 million of that category sold in 2008 alone. Few of them apparently know or care to know that it takes 98 tons of dead plants and animals buried for eons at seabed, lake and river bottoms to produce one gallon of gas for a nation that consumes one quarter of the world's crude oil. America isn't a country of colts but a country of dolts. How sad it is to see so many fat-ass Crocodile Dundee wanabees and redneck "chicks with dicks" lay down $40,000 US to feed a self-image manufactured by Madison Avenue when their SUV spends most of its life outside a shopping mall or in the drive-in queue of MacDonalds? How many ever see the wilderness? And of those who do, how, one wonders, do they all manage to find it---where are these huge pristine expanses in a nation bursting with 308 going on 508 million people? The answer can be found in the last line of the commercial that has dominated the airways recently:

"The Jeep Grand Cherokee---built for a world without limits"

That just about says it all. American car manufacturers and their ad agencies--- and those who fall for their pitch---really don't have a goddam clue. The phrase "Peak Oil" is notably absent from all of videos and from all the reviews. Instead, we read about "fuel economy". We are supposed to be impressed that the new Jeep Grand Cherokee can allegedly travel 500 miles on a full 24.6 gallon tank. "That's 16 miles in the city and 22 miles on the highway!". Wow. That means that when gas is $20/gallon as analysts like Christopher Steiner predict it will be, it will cost you about a dollar per mile---that is if hyperinflation doesn't overtake us. Auto journalists, like the consuming public who read their columns, are like deer transfixed by the headlights. They see all the bells and whistles and all of the specs but are blinded by the same infatuation with these toys that Americans of three generations ago had for the Model T Ford. The internal combustion engine is as inefficient as it ever was. But maybe that's a good thing, otherwise there would be more drivers driving more cars. You have to feel sorry for American capitalism, it just can't defeat those efficiency paradoxes. Especially when it encourages runaway populaton growth to grow the pool of cheap labour and delusional, manipulated consumers.

I must agree. The Jeep Grand Cherokee for 2011 really is built for a world without limits. Unfortunately, that world is not the one we live in.

Tim Murray
October 15/2010

Anti-growth activists are caught in a vice. In large urban areas bursting at the seams with overtaxed infrastructure, the potent force of the growth lobby and the pervasive influence of the media that supports it makes opposition to the growth juggernaut hazardous to mind, body and spirit. Yet life in a rural locality presents an even more daunting challenge. The costs of growth are not so manifest to those who do not understand its exponential nature. The benefits of fresh air, tranquility and wildlife are taken for granted, and the allure of big city amenities is irresistible. Locals are beguiled by the promise that new development will solve unemployment, increase the supply of affordable housing and keep young people close to hearth and home. To stand up against growth in a small town is to invite ostracism and ridicule from uncomprehending minds that cannot understand why anyone would oppose "progress". The following letter was submitted to the newspaper of one such town, but it could have been the template for letters to almost any small town newspaper in North America or Australia or elsewhere---newspapers which live on the advertising revenue from the businesses that profit from growth.

Civic boosterism predictable and mistaken

From rural Nova Scotia to rural BC, the clichés of civic boosterism are as predictable as they are wrong. Sables-Spanish Rivers appears to be no different. Forum participants in the upcoming township elections seem to be reading from the same script that growth-addicts in my own community are.

“We need to bring in business to bring down taxes.” “Economic development is a priority...its not just about bringing new business...it’s about smart growth, maintaining the tax base.” “ New development will create needed jobs”. “We need to attract new families”. “We need to bring our kids back”. “There is nothing here for the kids”. “Once a school is gone a community begins to collapse”.

Reality

It is the same tired record heard across the land for time immemorial. But what are the facts?

Bigger towns, bigger taxes and lower average incomes

As a rule, the larger the town or city, the higher the taxes. Why? Because the tax revenues that are generated by growth do not offset the infrastructure costs of extended services that must be provided—water, sewage, road maintenance, police and fire protection, waste disposal and so forth. Creating new jobs may indeed attract newcomers, but is so doing it does not lower the unemployment rate. More people require more jobs. Moreover, business growth is correlated with lower per capita incomes, and lower paying jobs-- not limited housing stock or serviceable land--- makes housing unaffordable. And undeveloped property pays more property taxes than it costs in services---not many cows or trees demand medical or educational services.

Self-importance blinds local boosters both to real values and real limits

Some people seem to equate quality of life with more amenities, and having left the urban rat race wish to reproduce it in the bucolic paradise that attracted them, while accusing those who oppose them of being selfish. But the real question is not whether continued growth is necessary or desirable, but whether it is possible. It is astounding that civic debates are conducted without the slightest comprehension or awareness of Peak Oil and its implications. With triple-digit oil and ten dollar a litre gasoline on the near horizon, we will have more to worry about than keeping ice rinks and schools open. Feeding the mouths that are already here may prove to be an insuperable challenge. Forget fuelling the local Zamboni, fuelling tractors will be our focus. Growth ,“smart” or dumb, will not be an option.

Tim Murray

Quathiaski Cove, BC
October 14/2019

House by house, road by road,
We can see our city grow.
Woodlands, wetlands meet their fate;
Developers, bankers celebrate.
What's a little Nature kill
Compared to money in the till?

Bulldoze the home of duck and turtle?
A minor bureaucratic hurdle!
They just must do an EA first,
Before they dig into the Earth.
That's no great comfort to the frog
Who lost his home that was the bog.

Politicians wring their hands
They say they want to save the land.
They hate to see the greenbelt frayed,
But say that growth cannot be stayed.
So in our parks and nearby counties,
Growth pours cement on nature's bounties.

Now you may think that it's absurd
That no one ever says a word
Against the growth that every hour
Another chunk of land devours.
The greens insist we must conserve,
But won't stop growth: they lack the nerve.

If growth is smart, greens say, we'll manage.
Yes, smart growth will control the damage!
We'll build up high to reach the sky,
We'll in-fill and we'll densify.
It's not the numbers, greens all say,
It's how we live our life each day.

So bankers, builders, and the greens,
Business, leaders, those with means,
Praise "smart growth" in single chorus,
While it consumes another forest.
Perhaps greens can't resist the offers
Of corporate money in their coffers?

To keep the growth of population,
We bring in folks from every nation.
One-quarter million in a year,
Is not enough for us, I hear.
But riches go to just a few,
While gridlock, smog hurt me and you.

So why is pushing growth a mission
For almost every politician?
Big business offers them much more
Than working blokes who mind the store!
Our leaders also want the votes
Of those who come in planes and boats.

Has all this growth improved the lot
Of the average working sod?
Stats Can says that what he got
Amounts to little more than naught.
The truth is that real earnings grew
Only for the richest few.

They saw their yearly earnings rise
Sixteen percent— there's no surprise.
The poorest fifth, alas, not so!
Not only did their funds not grow,
They plunged by a percent of twenty.
Not for the poor—growth's horn of plenty!

They have seen their wages drop
As new competitors take pail and mop.
And ever more people needing room
Turns wilderness to housing boom.
If people need somewhere to live
Field and woodlot have to give.

Environmental laws are but a token
While we keep the floodgates open.
Endangered species make one long list
But surely they will not be missed
By those who benefit the most
From our relentless quest for growth.

So why is it that all we hear
From our media is one loud cheer?
Of growth we never hear them say,
"A few get rich, but we all pay!"
We see growth's damage all around
Yet praises for it still abound.

Just take a mo' to think it through.
Who owns the media? Not me. Not you.
Newspaper ads help tell the story:
Business and banks bask in growth's glory.
So now you can connect the dots
Of why we are in such a spot.

And what will our descendants eat
When farm and field have turned to street?
What do the growth promoters say
About the price our kids will pay?
An old French king once summed it up:
"Après moi—who gives a flip?"

One fine day, we'll hit the wall,
Our growth economy will fall.
It's clear to those not wilfully blind
That nature's bounty has declined.
So have a drink, and drown your sorrow.
Things will be even worse tomorrow.

Madeline Weld
22 September 2010
Ottawa
Bulldozer Blues©

UPDATE September 21, 2010: Millionaire bequest due in 12 months - but money urgently needed now.


On 7 August 2009 I wrote an article about the Wombat Awareness Organisation, which also referred to some interesting 19th century attitudes to wombats in Britain. On September 21 we learned that, although Brigitte Stevens still needs funding urgentlyfor another 12 months or so, after that the organisation expects the release of the first million dollar installment of an $8m bequest from a US horse-racing millionaire! So rarely do wildlife carers get the recognition they deserve for giving recognition and rights back to our fellow creatures. How wonderful to know that there are some rich people in the world who are not, apparently, entirely given over to land speculation and undermining democracy.

To see the whole article:

For the whole article, with the update at the end, see, "Hairy-nosed wombat, South Australia - rescue effort well worth supporting"

Queensland, beautiful one day, black and ruined the next

Queensland Treasurer, Andrew Fraser, has been talking about what a great investment Queensland coal is. On the 19th of September 2010, for instance, on Channel 2's, The Investigators, he said how it was guaranteed to grow, and boasted about Queensland's huge coal haulage capacity - the biggest in the world.

Because of the need that China and India will have for coal, for the business community and a government keen to dig itself out of its debt, coal mining expansion can be marketed to a furious public as a 'wonderful financial investment opportunity'! For Fraser and the narrow thinking team he advises, it seems that the only important thing is digging the stuff up as fast as possible in order to promote financial investment in Queensland. This is the state with a huge debt because of its 'investment' in chaotic and resented population growth, the infrastructure for which it is now unable to attract finance.

What a lemming philosophy!

lemming cartoon author unknown

It strikes one, listening to this celebration of massive expansion of exploitation of a finite commodity, that it can only come from the blinkered idiocy of economic railroad-thinking. Railroad thinking is a term for a rigid way of thinking that can only go along a line, oblivious to wider implications. Apparently it has not occurred to Fraser that, along with rapid economic growth - for a while - he is hastening Australia and the rest of the world towards coal depletion simultaneously as we face declining oil. When we have significantly run down these conventional fuels, there will almost certainly be widespread famine and suffering in Australia and throughout the world. This may happen within the next thirty years, to read Seppo Korpela's timelines for coal depletion in The Final Energy Crisis.

When people are cold and hungry and the roads are deserted and the factories still, no-one then will look back and say, "Wasn't it great that people invested in digging up all the coal and Queensland managed to slightly reduce its insane debt?"

Survivors then will seem little different to those remaining on the destitute nation of Nauru. Once one of the richest, most beautiful and fertile islands in the world, Nauru is now completely devastated due to having excavated and exported its entire bounty of phosphates in a very short space of time. Of course, the Nauruans were conned and coerced by big business and so are Queenslanders.

Queensland, beautiful one day, black and ruined the next. Queenslanders hate the expansion of coal mining in their once-beautiful state, particularly those who have to live with the despair of watching helplessly as their immediate landscapes are defaced. The more widely educated world fears the pollution.

Newspeak from the BCA on population numbers

Relatedly there is the question of bringing in skilled immigrants to make over-exploitation of our coal resources possible. This has required ongoing propaganda from the growth lobby via its chief mouthpieces in the mainstream press. On September 18, 2010, in
The Australian, Michael Stutchbury quoted some sublime newspeak from the Business Council of Australia's president, Graham Bradley.

Bradley complains that the big pressing structural issues - energy, tax, population and infrastructure - were not given "mature" attention during the election campaign. The population debate, including Gillard's rejection of a "big Australia", did not recognise Australia received only 140,000 permanent immigrants on the latest annual figures. And the large numbers of temporary migrants are mostly foreign students who form Australia's fourth largest export market worth $18bn a year. [and therefore presumably should not count?]

"Mature" attention is code word for the inaudible level of debate that occurred before population growth finally hit the mainstream as a serious issue in the last 18 months," writes Ilan Goldman, energy and population critic. "The BCA just wants us to shut up (i.e. be "mature"). Pointing out that we only had 140,000 "permanent immigrants" is one of a few recent ploys contrived to minimize the obvious ballooning of our population. Bradley acknowledges foreign students as another component of population growth, not just formally defined "immigrants". All the other various visa categories that make a difference to overall population growth are pretty much ignored in this editorial piece in its pretense of some kind of sophisticated quantification."

BCA's Bradley, along with so many others, is fighting a carbon tax because it will increase the price of coal and might decrease the rate of sales overseas:

"The BCA's Bradley similarly warns that Australia faces losing its competitive benefit of cheap coal and gas energy."

Stutchbury also writes that BHP Billiton's Kloppers maintains that exploiting the China boom requires "extra sources of skilled labour." But relatively few people are employed in resource extraction industries, and the mining boom will dry up along with the minerals. Then what will we do with all those unemployed and their children, not to mention, without any income or coal for fuel? The resource extraction industries should not be cited as a reason for high immigration. And we should not be using up all our coal just in order to benefit a few financial investors. We need to conserve it.

Australia's population would still grow for a few more decades even if immigration rates broke even. Our current super-charged 2% growth rate means population doubling within 35 years. As Henry notes, Australia will still experience a "sizeable" population increase even if migration falls to "historically very low levels". He calls for "informed" population debate, according to Stuchbury.

"Informed" debate is, of course, another code-word for debate narrowly based on the growth lobby's limited world view that is focused on the profitability of its members.

"Population concerns have been inflamed by a generation of poor planning and infrastructure under-investment," BCA Bradley says, in a breathtaking confusion of cause with effect.

A child would surely recognize that population growth concerns relate to the current high levels of increase in numbers and the resultant impacts. Calling it "Underinvestment in infrastructure" is just a perversion of the symptom of overstretched infrastructure. But, hey, emperors don't really have to wear clothes. The mainstream press isn't going to call the growth lobby masters to order. It suffices that the populace just keep their eyes closed and that children keep quiet if they cannot help looking.

by James Bisset

The effect of immigration on the employment of Canadians became a bit clearer this week. On the Tuesday, Sept 14 edition of CBC Radio's The Current, Economics Professor Eric Howe stated that 1 in 7 Aboriginal Canadians in Saskatchewan lost their jobs in 2009. Mr. Howe is a specialist in Aboriginal issues and teaches at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. He described the job loss as "an utter disaster" for Aboriginals. He said a number of factors had caused this to happen. One was that the Saskatchewan job market slowed in 2009. Another was that the Saskatchewan provincial government was at that time "pushing the hiring of immigrants at the cost of hiring people already here".

The fact that 1 in 7 aboriginal residents of Saskatchewan lost their jobs is very significant. According to the Government of Saskatchewan's web site, Saskatchewan's population is now just over 1 million. In 2001, people of aboriginal descent comprised 13.6% of the province's population. Aboriginals are a rapidly growing group in Saskatchewan and are projected to comprise 32.5% of that province's population in 2045._#main-fn1">1

It is probably safe to say that they comprise close to 18% of Saskatchewan's population today. Mr. Howe did not provide raw numbers for the job losses, but they were probably not low.

In response, Rob Norris, Saskatchewan's Minister of Immigration (as well as of Advanced Education and Employment) has stated that "immigration to Saskatchewan is driven by employer demand for workers already trained for a particular skill". He also said that the province does not "push" employers to hire immigrants, but that it helps employers to find workers. Furthermore, he has declared that the success of Saskatchewan's future is linked to Aboriginals. The government, he says, is doing what it can to help Aboriginals and its Metis population to find opportunities in education and in employment.

The key issue that Mr. Norris should be dealing with is whether the employers' demands are legitimate and whether the provincial government has unintentionally helped some employers to act against the employment interests of its own citizens.

Regarding the conflict between the statements of Mr. Howe and Mr. Norris : Professor Howe has spent a large part of his long teaching career specializing in aboriginal issues. His experience lends a considerable amount of weight to his statements. Saskatchewan Immigration Minister Rob Norris does not have the same amount of experience with the issue. "Hire An Immigrant" initiatives have been well promoted by Canada's immigration industry during the recent recession. Few, if any, Canadian politicians at any level have expressed disapproval about the corrupt motives and obvious dangers of these immigration industry initiatives.

According to Statistics Canada, Canada allowed over 282,000 Temporary Foreign Workers to work here in 2009. That number has doubled since 2005. In 9 of 10 provinces, the number of Temporary Foreign Workers has increased since 2005. In 2009, Ontario took 94,762, B.C. took 69, 038, Alberta took 65,038 , Quebec took 30,552 and Saskatchewan took 5971. Several provinces have experienced dramatic increases. Alberta took 4 times as many TFW's in 2009 as it did in 2005. B.C.'s numbers have more than doubled since 2005.

Here are the questions Mr. Norris, the government of Saskatchewan, and all provincial governments (particularly the provinces with such high numbers) have to answer:

1. Undoubtedly, "utter disasters" have occurred in other parts of Canada, particularly in provinces like Ontario, B.C., and Alberta which have absorbed the majority of Canada's 5 million immigrants since 1990. Why have academics like Professor Howe (as well as governments) not investigated and corrected the "utter disasters" ? Regarding academics, do we have examples here similar to those in Australia where most of the research funds available are for research that portrays immigration in a favourable light?
2. Since most of the 282,000 Temporary Foreign Workers who enter Canada are requested by employers, how closely have Saskatchewan and other provinces monitored employer applications for Temporary Foreign Workers? For example, the jobs that employers are filling are supposed to be advertised in Canada. Only if employers cannot find Canadians for those jobs are they allowed to bring in foreign workers. Mr. Norris says that employers were looking for workers with particular skills. So, what were the "skills" that Saskatchewan's 5971 TFW's had? Were they food service skills such as those used by workers at Tim Horton's, McDonald's, Wendy's, and the like? If so, were Saskatchewan Aboriginals and mainstream Saskatchewan residents just as "qualified" for those jobs, particularly if they had just lost their own jobs? The governments of all other provinces have to answer the same questions.
3. The 282,000 Temporary Foreign Workers that worked in Canada in 2009 is an enormous number. It is very hard to believe that Canada needed that large a number. This is especially true for the last 2 years when Canada was in the most severe of the three economic downturns it has experienced since 1990. The question is probably not "Have employers abused the programme?", but "How many have abused the programme and to what extent?" For example, some people have pretended that they are employers, advertised "jobs" that do not exist and, in effect, used the TFW programme as an alternate immigration programme. To what extent has this occurred with TFW's?
4. Some Canadians like to say that Canada needs Temporary Foreign Workers because Canada does not have enough people to do agricultural work. However, Canada already has a programme (Seasonal Agricultural Worker Programme) to take care of agricultural worker shortages. Regarding actual numbers of foreign agricultural workers : in a June commentary on the SAWP programme, the United Food and Commercial Workers' Union stated that Canada allows about 15,000 foreign agricultural workers to be employed here each year. The key fact is that the number of foreigners who come here as agricultural workers is tiny, about 5% of all those who come here as TFW's. Compared to the number of all agricultural workers in Canada, the number of foreigners who work in Canadian agriculture is still quite small. According to one source, Canada has over 100,000 agriculture workers, but about 80% of them are Canadians. They enter under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Programme (SAWP) and leave at the end of their work term (usually several months).

A big question is this : If Canada is to bring in any Temporary Foreign Workers at all, why has it not used the cautionary devices in the SAWP programme as a model in order to avoid the "utter disasters" that have occurred in the past 2 years?

And of course, the biggest question of all is this : In a recession in particular, but even in good times, why is Canada bringing in so many permanent immigrants?

James Bissett, the former executive director of Canada's entire immigration service, helped set up the Seasonal Agricultural Workers' Programme (SAWP). It originated in 1965 for Caribbean Commonwealth countries and was later expanded to include Mexico. It was called a "Premium" programme because farmers paid the transportation costs of workers from and back to their country of origin. They also paid the prevailing wage for Canadian workers. A consular official accompanied the workers to handle worker complaints. The lodging that farmers provided was inspected by officials from the Canadian government and the home countries of the workers. Farmers could recommend good workers be permitted to return the next year. As a testimony to the good will that existed between workers and employers, on days off, the farmers took workers to events in their communities. In the winter, the workers invited the farmers to attend festivals in the Caribbean. While the workers were in Canada, farmers provided the workers with spending money. However, a key part of the programme was that a large percentage of the workers' wages was held back. This was done to ensure that the workers left Canada. When the workers returned to their countries, their wages were deposited into their bank accounts in their home countries.

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">[back] Editorial comment: Whilst we appreciate that the expected growth in Saskatchewan's Aboriginal population may be the only way that they currently have to prevent themselves from becoming an even smaller minority, we at candobetter, nevertheless, hold that all population growth is unsustainable, whether caused by immigration or increases in the existing population.

Sex is a voluntary act, therefore children are discretionary. The motivation to have many children to support a family is a backward primitive tradition that is an unsustainable, selfish burden and impost upon an already grossly overcrowded planet.

Yes, as one CanDoBetter.org contributor has highlighted: "the explosive population growth we've seen in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other predominately agrarian societies is due to most women having large families of 4+ children."

Big family culture is unsustainable and selfish

I refer to my previous article on this website of 11th August 2010 'Boycott charities until donations linked to conditional birth control and wealthy high-birth nations forced to fund their excess' and to my comment 'Time for third world charity to be conditional on birth control'.

A key solution to the global big family culture is for affected national governments to impose a consistent, long-term, mandatory financial combination of carrot and stick initiatives upon their populations, as well as from the United Nations/World Bank upon those national governments delinquent in population control.

The human global message is: Families must receive no public benefit beyond 2 children.

This is morally superior to China's one child policy. If the global community were to research the Catholic and Mormon culture of more wealthy western nations, they would realise that the burden and impost of big families upon the planet are far worse because the offspring consumerism demands are infinitely more extravagant. The United States is where the big family luxury problem lies.

Meanwhile...the Haiti Earthquake

While human family size is nothing to do with urgent humanitarian relief such as in neglected Haiti (Third World and overpopulated) following the Jan 2010 Earthquate, Haiti's extremely wealthy neighbour, the United States, has a neighbourly moral obligation to lead and finance the humanitarian relief and rebuild the social and economic infrastructure of Haiti.

Meanwhile...the Pakistan Floods

While human family size is nothing to do with urgent humanitarian relief such as in Pakistan (Third World and overpopulated), following the July 2010 Massive Floods, Pakistan's extremely wealthy neighbours, India, China, Russia and India's nearby oil rich Arab nations NO DIFFERENTLY have a neighbourly moral obligation to lead and finance the humanitarian relief and rebuild the social and economic infrastructure of Pakistan.

Indeed, worse than Haiti, given the pre-existing civil unrest associated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda terror threats, the real risk is that Pakistan could else fall into civil collapse and another war zone like Afghanistan. Cheaper to care for Pakistan now than wait until it becomes a terrorist haven. This is not rocket science!

Meanwhile...India's Extravagant Games

India's egotistically extravagant multi-billion Commonwealth Games should be cancelled! It is costing in excess of 15 times the original estimate!

The Indira Gandhi International Airport modernisation alone is costing nearly US$ 1.95 billion! [Read More] This is a comparable value to the crop losses from the Pakistan floods over India's border. [Read More]. And yet Indians and Pakistanis are the same ethnic people with mixed Hindu and Muslim religions, divided in 1947 by a tyrannical colonial Britain.

New Delhi Commonwealth Games Stadium.

Editorial Comment:

Australia is heading down the same way as the countries which John Marlowe uses as an example here. We are being treated like just another colony. There is nothing about our prevailing 'race' or 'ethnicity' that protects us from a colonial-style government that wants to maximise population for commercial reasons that have nothing to do with democracy.

Ed. This article was retitled on 20 Aug 2010 at 21:58hrs
Download how to vote card here

When Julia Gillard hurtled towards the Governor General on July 17, she knew an early election would keep the Stable Population Party of Australia name off the Senate ballot paper. But it did not stop all of our party candidates from standing.

SPPA - Commit to a stable, sustainable, open and tolerant Australia

With members across Australia - from recent migrants to WW2 Diggers - the Stable Population Party was due to be formally registered by the Australian Electoral Commission on July 24.

Although we fell short of federal registration by just a week, at least our party candidates will be on the Senate ballot paper in NSW. Thanks to the 50 members and supporters who signed our nomination form at short notice, we have successfully formed our group of 'independent' Senate candidates and been allocated column T on the NSW Senate ballot paper.

Our candidates are:

1. William Bourke - Businessman and Stable Population Party convenor
2. Mark O'Connor - Writer and Co-author of Overloading Australia

The party's key objective is a stable population of around 23-26 million through to 2050.

For full details on our objectives, policies and news updates, see our website at www.populationparty.com

How can you help?

We only have the resources to stand candidates in NSW, however we ask all of our members and supporters nation-wide to help.

We have the huge job of linking this Bourke / O'Connor Senate group in ballot paper column T with the Stable Population Party. To help spread the word across Australia, please:

1. Forward this newsletter email to every contact you have - across Australia.

2. Do a local letterbox drop in NSW (and reply or email us to tell us where you live). Click here for our how-to-vote flyer. Please download, print and deliver locally ASAP.

3. Volunteer to hand out how-to-vote cards at a local polling place in NSW on August 21. Please reply or email us if you can volunteer, with your preferred polling place if known.

4. Join our Stable Population Party facebook page started by Victorian member Vlad. Please join and invite all facebook friends.

5. Become a party 'cyber trooper' and respond to population articles, blogs and forums with comments promoting our party and NSW Senate candidates. E.g. "Vote for a stable population. Stable Population Party's independent Senate Group T: Bourke / O'Connor in NSW".

6. Ring NSW talkback radio and promote us.

7. Keep a collection of how-to-vote flyers with you and give them to friends and work colleagues.

For our members and polling place volunteers, we have also booked a function room for election night from 7pm in central Sydney. Win, lose or draw, we will celebrate the achievements of the stable population movement. Details TBA.

For a stable Australia: Vote 1 for Senate Group T: Bourke / O'Connor (above the line, in NSW).

Finally, if you would like to hear Mark O'Connor, he will be speaking at 'Politics in the Pub' at the Gaelic Club in Sydney this Friday, August 6. We are not organising this event, but it is a donation entry event with seating for up to 300. Please see: http://www.politicsinthepub.org.au/.

Source:
William Bourke
Convenor
Stable Population Party of Australia
the (only) sustainable choice
Stable Population Party of Australia, Newsletter, 02 Aug 2010

"The growth lobbyists will tell us that we can solve our problems by converting to “clean coal” technologies or nuclear power, building more high rise, producing desalinated water at $10 litre (who knows?), installing “smart” electricity meters, piping water from the Northern Victoria to Melbourne, importing more food on more and bigger ships etc." Federal Candidate, Jenny Warfe writes, "I'm looking forward to a different way of 'moving forward.'"

Editor: Headings introduced by candobetter.org editor

Honouring our Provision of Asylum obligations

Firstly, I believe we must honour in word and deed our international obligations to provide asylum (1) for those who seek it, especially in view of our present international military activities. What’s more, the few thousand refugees who gain Australian residency each year make no significant difference to our population growth, so are irrelevant to the following discussion.

Dick Smith’s recent ‘Population Puzzle’ (2) documentary has brought population impacts into the mainstream so now seems like a good time to discuss one of my policies:

*
Develop a population plan informed by best available relevant science. Migration program should focus on political and climate asylum and reunions. Remove reliance on skilled migration by re-skilling and training Australians.

Neither the ALP or the Libs understand the mathematical realities of growth

As Dick Smith discovered to his amazement – there is no plan and neither major party seems capable of understanding the mathematical realities of growth.

Population growth in most developed countries is declining, but Australia’s growth rate has been rising fast. It’s currently 2% per annum - more than twice the world average and higher than most other developed or developing nation, eg: India’s 1.4% and UK’s 0.4%. At 2% per annum, Australia will almost double its population by 2050. Melbourne is set to double to 8 million in the next 50 years (3). Impacts of our growth rate are being felt in inadequate public transport services whilst tollways and freeways continue to expand; water restrictions; stresses on our coastline, oceans and waterways; loss of productive land to new suburbs; loss of marine and terrestrial biodiversity; destruction of our natural and built heritage for continuing urban expansion – and the accompanying carbon emissions and climate change. Surely the elephant in the room is the world’s inability to deal wisely with our own expansion?

Where's the logical end point to this?

I think every nation on Earth needs a plan based around some concept of carrying capacity. This might be a long way off, but a good start would be to restructure the UN as a real global government, extinguish domination by the USA and its allies, all countries to be represented equally and global defence and armaments expenditure to be significantly re-allocated to humanitarian and environmental restoration activities.

1994 Australian population carrying capacity Inquiry

In 1994 Australia did look at its carrying capacity in the Parliamentary report: Australia's population "carrying capacity”: one nation - two ecologies (4). But – the idea has gone nowhere since - buried it seems under the rise to power of the growth lobby, including the Business and Property Council of Australia – the few faceless entities who benefit from more of everything, and ably assisted by media commentators such as Andrew Bolt and Piers Akerman. The growth lobbyists will tell us that we can solve our problems by converting to “clean coal” technologies or nuclear power, building more high rise, producing desalinated water at $10 litre (who knows?), installing “smart” electricity meters, piping water from the Northern Victoria to Melbourne, importing more food on more and bigger ships etc.

Climate change and paving habitat

Mr. Rudd was right. Responding to climate change is one of the greatest moral challenges of our time, but dealing with that challenge whilst we continue to expand will be all the harder. Until our political leadership has the guts to ignore the ramblings of Andrew Bolt et al we will be stuck in a reactive policy merry-go-round. As our natural heritage disappears it isn’t good enough to fall back on a “19th Century zoo mentality” and list yet another species as critically endangered (what’s the point if we pave over its habitat?) or propose a National Park to save a piece of our land or sea, when what we need to do for the safety of the planet and all who live on it is to reduce the impact we humans are having on the land and oceans.

Psycho-social and economic disconnect from Environment

It’s my view that since the industrial revolution humans have become the only species on Earth whose population numbers, at least in the “First World” are no longer prescribed by the environmental constraints that controlled us for thousands of years and other species for millions of years. Now, especially in the West we have become increasingly disconnected – both physically and psychologically – from the environment which sustains us, allowing us to consider the environment as a resource for our use and exploitation rather than our habitat. But the standards we have constructed in the West and our addiction to growth and its underpinning consumerism have come at huge cost to others on the planet. Poorer nations subsidise our wealth, providing consumer goods made with cheap labour in harsh conditions, and many such country’s lax regulations allow their environments to become degraded and their endemic species to be obliterated.

Capitalism can work well without growth

But, there is another way to organise ourselves. As even capitalism loving Dick Smith says, “capitalism can work wonderfully well without growth”.

We can get along very well in a steady state economy – indeed our quality of life, not just the quality of our possessions – might even increase. There’s quite a bit written about it, and it’s all pretty inspiring. See: http://steadystate.org/

Inhumanity of Growthism and Paying the Ferryman

I reckon if we don’t want to consider our population and growth impacts we aren’t being humane. Already, with 6.5 Billion people on the planet, over 1 billion can’t access clean water. With 9 billion people by 2050 how can we possibly address appalling realities like that? Sometime soon we are going to have to pay the ferryman.

I’m looking forward to a different way of “moving forward”.

NOTES

(1) And on-shore processing centres

(2) http://www.abc.net.au/tv/populationpuzzle/

(3) The Age August 5th 2010 http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/make-plans-for-population-to-double-within-50-years-20100804-11fn5.html

(4) Australia. Parliament. House of Representatives. Standing Committee for Long Term Strategies

Male Gang-Gang Cockatoo under threat in Hornsby and Ku-ring-gai from encroaching Sydney urban sprawl. © Ian Montgomery, Birdways

Australia's greatest social, environmental and economic problems are 'root (cause) driven' by immigrated (human) overpopulation.

Human overpopulation (from immigration and record migrant births) is putting unsustainable pressures on Australia's economy (demand driving higher prices, interest rates, raising the cost of living, reducing housing affordability, unemployment, record consumerism driving import demands and a spiralling trade deficit.

Human overpopulation (from immigration and record migrant births) are putting unsustainable pressures on Australian urban society (creating ethnic enclaves, fueling racism, causing road congestion, overloading public infrastructure - water supply, energy, hospitals, roads, schools, childcare etc).

Human overpopulation (from immigration and record migrant births) is putting unsustainable pressures on Australia's environment (river flows, sprawl destroying bushland and killing off wildlife, sprawl invading arable land).

Perhaps Sydney's Gang Gang Cockatoo deserves to be made symbolic of the environmental harm driven by the pressures of excessive immigrated population sprawl. An endangered Gang Gang Cockatoo population is found in forested gullies in Sydney's northern suburbs. It is threatened with extinction by encroaching urban development resulting in clearing of forest and woodland habitat for more human housing. [DEC]. The Gang Gang surely has a supreme moral right to be protected from extinction than the rights of invading humans.

Yet both Gillard's Federal Labor & Abbott's Federal Liberal talk of 'sustainable population' is mere hollow headline spin. Both are committed to economic growth, because they know no better.
Both are committed to encouraging skilled immigration because if is a cheaper bandaid measure for industries not prepared to invest in local vocational training. Both have deceitfully chosen a joint campaign of media distraction on a miniscule refugee issue.

Both are only using the phrase 'sustainable population' as a slogan for vote catching.
The LibLabs have become irrelevant.

The Greens immigration policy is mainly about encoyraging more asylum seekers and vaguely "support(s) skilled migration programs that do not drain critical skills from other countries and do not substitute for training or undermine wages and conditions in Australia."

The Nationals are just adopting a combined Coalition policy - committed to blind economic growth, a vague interpretation of what 'sustainable population means and a nominal reduction in annual immigration from 2% to 1.4% (170,000 p.a.) while "liberalising" arrangements for temporary business visas (457s).

So where are there immigration policies for Australia that seriously address the problem and subsequent immigration harm being caused? My own policy would be to effect an absolute moratorium for 24 months, during which time an independent commission assesses the triple bottom line (TBL) impacts and establishes true TBL targets and maxims for (1) population, (2) immigration, (3) supply minimums on a per capita basis for TBL outcomes - e.g. infrastructure minimums like '1 hospital bed per 5000 people' within a 30 minute car journey, etc. Such maxims set quantifiable limits on Australian social, environmental and economic values.

Of all the currently registered political parties in Australia, only the following have a serious policy committed to reducing Australian immigration:

Australia First Party (NSW) Incorporated

Australia First immigration policy reads:

"Australia First Party agrees with the notion that our primary reason for immigration should be based on Australia's need, i.e., the only justification for immigration is net value to Australia. We will make sure that immigration takes into account social cohesion, employment opportunities, urbanisation and environmental issues.

Our policy on immigration is "zero net" which means the number of immigrants we will allow in each year will equal the number of people permanently leaving Australia per year."

One Nation

One Nation's immigration policy reads:

"To restrict immigration except that related to investment and for this to continue at least until Australia’s unemployment crisis is resolved."

Secular Party of Australia

Although not advocating reduced immigration, the Secular Party of Australia does advocate reducing the Australian birth rate and has some comparable initiatives:

The Secular Party of Australia's immigration policy reads:

"Global population is a significant issue in dealing with many environmental problems. Australia is a dry but relatively rich country, and has a low population compared with our neighbours. Australia's resource wealth will enable us to maintain a privileged position in the global community. The Secular Party is opposed to policies that encourage a higher birth rate. It is the policy of the Secular Party to abolish the baby bonus.

The Secular Party deplores xenophobic attempts to demonise refugees and asylum seekers. We support continuation of an immigration program that is both economically beneficial and environmentally sustainable, and which provides sufficient allowance for our humanitarian obligations. We note that migrants to Australia must agree to respect certain values, including the equality of men and women, as part of the Australian Values Statement in the immigration application form. It is the policy of the Secular Party to consider means by which migrants may be required to respect these values that they have already agreed to."

is not registered with the Australian Electoral Commission for the coming Federal Election.

Its policies are:

"1. Adopt a formal national 'population policy' to stabilise Australia's population at around 23-26 million through to 2050. (Since we are at 22 million, this would mean a moratorium).

2. * Adopt a balanced and sustainable migration program, with annual immigration at around *50-80,000, being equivalent to total annual emigration.

3. Reject any selection of immigrants based on race.

4. Maintain Australia's current annual refugee intake of 13,750, within the broader immigration quota.

5. Phase out the Baby Bonus and re-direct funds to an appropriate parental leave scheme that promotes greater female participation in the workforce.

6. Tie foreign aid wherever possible to the improvement of governance and economic and environmental sustainability, with a particular focus on women's rights and education and on opportunities for couples to access family planning services."

"The Stable Population Party was due to be officially registered on July 24, but Julia Gillard called an early election on July 17 and prevented us from standing candidates under our party name." [SPPA website]

Serious immigration reduction policy for Australia is overdue. The longer we allow more and more arrivals, the closer Australia is approaching social, environmental and economic crises.

If Gillard is not a rehash of the hollow Rudd, who hoodwinked us into the false hope of the 2007 pork barrelling and spun that hollow 2020 Summit; Gillard's absence of maxims and deadlines for Australia's population/immigration targets only confirms voters ought to realistically presume more of the same.

Tony only wants to stop the boats. He is quite happy for the other 99% arriving by plane to keep coming.

Ordinary voters need to detox from this election bender. Only the political parties, their advertisers and their media allies stand to benefit. Like the pubs and clubs that own the pokies, they control the outcome and the punters lose.

Voters need to stop hoping things will improve under either LibLab party. After 21st August, we won't enter a new era. It will be more of the same. The media phasing will run to formula. First they'll flog reality TV labelled as 'Decision 2010', then there'll be celebration and paralysis by analysis, followed by a month of new government honeymoon hope, before inevitable criticism returns and the eggs start flying again. [I wish that bloke waiting in the Canberra café had been a better shot!]

If only voters for once would accept that after the election things do not improve either way. If voters vote non-LibLab for genuine change, there is a slither of hope that voters may get what they wish for - 'change'.

But who else is out there? With such a political vacuum, why are there so few choices, so few alternatives, so few leaders? The LibLab's have their oliogarchic system sown up with their donated millions providing campaign supremacy, their safe seats, their gerrymanders, the electoral system's prejudice against newcomers and small players, and the mainstream media bias allowing only the LibLabs their time in the sun.

So we cop the same old LibLab pendulous crap. In living memory is has been Holt > Gorton >McMahon> Whitlam > Fraser > Hawke > Keating > Howard > Rudd > Gillard... All LibLab. All like tired re-runs of M*A*S*H* once the ratings finish.

For me, there are a handful of articles that qualify as the most important ever written--at least of the ones that I have read in in the latter half of this decade. The kind that are capable of fundamentally changing how people look at an issue. Until recently those articles, in my opinion were: “Return of the Population Timebomb” by John Feeney. It drew some 242 comments in the Guardian before they had to shut the discussion down. That article answered our critics in plain language like no other essay I have read. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/05/returnofthepopulatio... “Treading on a Taboo” by John Hart. Finally someone took on this Green Living fixation for what it is. An inconsequential distraction from the fact that the environment doesn’t care about our per capita consumption. Only about our TOTAL consumption, which consists of the sum total of "per capitas" (the number of people) times their per capita consumption. http://www.populationpress.org/publication/2008-3-hart.html “A 10,000 Year Misunderstanding: A Short History of Population Overshoot” by Peter Salonius. This 840 word history lesson revolutionized my concept of carrying capacity. No longer will I think in terms of “billions” of survivors. Rather, “millions”. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/12/2241454.htm A related essay of equivalent merit, also by Peter Salonius is http://www.relocalize.net/population_and_intensive_crop_culture_are_unsu... “Quantifying Overextension: America’s Predicament”by Chris Clugston. This article offers a refinement and broadening of the Eco-footprinting analysis pioneered by Rees and Wackernagel. I found its revelations about the United States both shocking and exciting in their potential to educate doubters. In Canada GFN data has been misused by our opponents as a club to beat us. SOA (Societal Overextension Analysis) definitely would not allow them to do that. It really downgrades our carrying capacity. Using SOA guidelines, my guesstimate is that Canada could alternatively, either persist with its current population of 33 million if it accepted a Cambodian per capita income of $1800, or, keep its current consumption level but trim its population to 1.18 million-- about the number of people who live in Ottawa-Carleton and Cornwall, Ontario combined. I personally prefer the latter choice---if I am one of the 1.18 million. But intermediate options are available. Trade-offs are the message of Clugston’s approach, which pays much homage to GFN as the trailblazer. Since then Chris has added substantially to his archive and is refining his analysis with more research. http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46892 "Forget Shorter Showers" by Derreck Jensen http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801 Jensen set the soft green environmental movement straight. Green living habits are a trivial pursuit in relation to the real challenge: confronting corporate power and instituting structural institutional change. But then John Feeney, organizer of the first Global Population Speak-Out, wrote this: "Agriculture: Ending the World as We Know It" http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/html/aug10-20.htm John picks up Peter's theme and runs with it. His approach is radical in the best sense of the word. He gets to the root of our problems, as Peter did. In this article, John manages to be both concise and comprehensive. So many shrill voices locate our problem in the capitalist economic system, in the paradigm of economic growth, in obsolete technology, in greed or selfishness, in irresponsible living habits, in organized religion and so forth. But it goes much deeper than that. Not only is industrial civilization unsustainable, but civilization itself. "Civilization is made possible by agriculture. Agriculture is unsustainable." Tim Murray

ABC TV's Tony Jones' current affairs debate this evening 'Dick Smith's Population Puzzle' provided first prominent Australian, Dick Smith, with a heart-felt concern about the uncontrolled, unplanned immigration surge impacting Australia, then second a rigorous but too brief a debate from nevertheless a fair cross-section of what appeared to be informed observers.

It was a good start and that's all it was. Where to next?

It was disappointing to hear the two ethnic voices, one Asian woman on the panel and a young Bangladeshi man, both critical and disrespectful of deep seated Australian notions of what constitutes Australian cultural values. New Australians do not help their cause when they outwardly condescend local cultural sensitivities. It is read as immigrant prejudice and would not matter which country they were in. Criticism of local values risks unnecessarily inflaming dormant nationalism. And nationalism in Australia is mild compared with that across the subcontinent.

Useful issues were presented from many quarters - Bob Brown from The Greens highlighting the global issue and the finite resource issue, Labor Minister for Sustainable Population Tony Burke MP seemed to have a balanced grasp of the key drivers and problems, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Scott Morrison offered constructive input, a developer in the audience pushed the 'growthist line for migrants at all costs, as did trolling boomer John Elliott. The mayor of Mt Gambier presented a constructive tangible example of regional inequality and opportunity. His example is one that should be extended to other regional centres. Other issues raised escape me from short term memory.

Encouragingly, all speakers on the panel and those Tony selected to speak from the audience, offered constructive ideas and input in one way or another. So let's not close off this valuable discussion while the topic is merely at an early chapter in public/political awareness and maturity.

One key observation is that Dick Smith, who dared to initiate the debate and invest much in the documentary, insightfully concluded that at least Australia is mature enough to start publicly debating the subject, but what needs to be thought through next is a national plan for a sustainable population for Australia into the medium term future.

Well done Dick Smith!

May the debate continue into the public arena hereon! CanDoBetter has been leading this debate on population for years, so it is good to see the mainstream media catch up!

Although human population is a global threat, Australians need to embrace the problem of population in Australia first and recognise it as a core driver of social problems in Australia - lowering quality of life, higher costs of living, urban congestion, overburdened public infrastructure, etc. Australians need to become more mature in tackling the debate and not let it slip into unrelated racism and refugee issues. In the process we need to be wary of self-motivated lobbyists and more attuned to the interests of all Australians at heart - indigenous Australians, ancestral Australians, birth Australians, new Australians, Australian society and the Australian disappearing natural environment last, but not least.

Frankly I am so glad now that Big Kev and his 'Big Australia' madness has been condemned to history.

One of our CanDoBetter commenters, 'RichB', has highlighted the site Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. This is a visionary site! The movement seems to have gone to some considered endeavour to explore the issues. I like the question toward the bottom of the site:

'What will the world be like when our population starts getting smaller?'

As more globally-aware people begin to question the 20th Century 'growth-only' tenet, alternative ideals such a 'Low Population Planet', deserve to be considered and debated. But where to start?

One practical moral campaign that would immediately start curbing the out-of-control human birth explosion would be to lobby against the funding requests of charities supporting countries that have high birth rates. Now before readers jump to questionning the morality of this, this is not to stop funding emergency life support needs, but to make non-life-support funding conditional on recipient self-change.

These are some dominant charities in this field.

* UNICEF

* World Vision
* Feed the Children

* Save the Children

* Food4Africa

While it would be callous to allow people to die from hunger and malnutrition, the charity donation system seems to only perpetuate welfare subsistence and not address overpopulation poverty in undeveloped countries. For time immemorial, the starving of Africa and India have been dumped on our television screens to make us feel guilty.

Why has the problem not been resolved since television was invented and before?
The starving message has become a cliché to the point that it has become a permanent human condition. This is unacceptable. The charity system needs overhaul.

Charities need to be held accountable for fixing the problem not perpetuating it.
Donations need to be channelled through independent organisations that require conditional offerings. Donations can end up anywhere and do, like in arms purchases. The charity donations must stop and be replaced with:

1. Physical shipments of emergency food, shelter and medical supplies

2. Conditional relief funding linked to population control measures - family planning and birth control measures should be advocated - female education, contraception, changing cultural traditions of excess children (more than 2), and UNHCR funded free and professional male vasectomies. Perhaps even a free dwelling could be offered to male heads of families that undertake vasectomy and have only two children. Think of this as an incentive in impoverished countries!

On issues of fundamental cultural change, financial carrots seem more effective and ethical than punitive sticks.

Until then those donating should boycott charities until donations are conditional on and accountable for birth control.

As for wealthy developed nations with high birth rates, they have the financial means to address their own population excesses. Any country over 3% annual growth rate is irresponsible and so a target priority.

According to Nation Master website, the top 20 highest ranked developed countries by population growth rate are:

We should refer to them as the G20 - 'The Greedy 20'.

Rank Country Growth Rate (2008)
1 Maldives: 5.566%
2 United Arab Emirates: 3.833%
69 Saudi Arabia: 1.954%
81 Malaysia: 1.742%
82 Israel: 1.713%
107 Bahrain: 1.337%
114 Australia: 1.221%
116 Luxembourg: 1.188%
124 Ireland: 1.133%
131 New Zealand: 0.971%
137 United States: 0.883%
139 Canada: 0.83%
140 South Africa: 0.828%
144 Iceland: 0.783%
151 Liechtenstein: 0.713%
153 Thailand: 0.64%
154 China: 0.629%
156 France: 0.574%
160 Hong Kong: 0.532%
165 Netherlands: 0.436%

These wealthy countries extravagantly impose a selfish disproportionate burden on the planet's capacity. They have wealth capacity and as global citizens and members of the UN, have an obligation to pay a Greedy Population Levy to fund underdeveloped countries in controlling their excess population growth. The wealthy with an excess problem need to be supporting the poor with am excess problem, because the poor do not have the means to do it themselves. Let's make it means tested and charge say 0.01% of each countries GDP.

As for those poor displaced peoples caused by civil unrest and arms conflict, why does not the UN with the support of developed nations impose a 10% levy on each item of weaponry sold globally, so that the revenue is channelled to allow the UNHCR manage humanitarian and peace-keeping operations for the civilians affected?

International arms sales is the world's largest and richest discretionary industry. It can easily afford such a levy.

A case in point is the plight of millions of Yemeni refugees having fled civil conflict and currently starving in al-Mazraq camp, Yemen:

'Millions of Yemenis starving as donors fail to meet pledges, says UN'

• £70m needed this year and next to feed poor and hungry
• Traditional donors, including Britain, have yet to offer aid

The reasons The Greens remain a marginal alternative party are:

1. They exclude those not ideologically 'green', so alienation keeps them alienated from the mainstream

2. They do not translate their idealistic ideology into pragmatic shovel-ready policy initiatives with dollar values and immediate costed implementation plans; so they remain perceived as a futurist think tank, not regarded as a real-time alternative executive government.
Take the dominant election issue of overpopulation. The Australian Greens have an Immigration and Refugee policy listed under their category 'Care for People'. But they also have a Population policy under their category 'Environment'. This categorisation may seem odd, but the logic is that population is an underlying driver of environmental damage.

I have read The Greens population policy. It logically is grouped into 'principles', 'goals' and 'measures' (or policy initiatives).

The Greens 'population principles' are about factoring the impacts on the environment and society and living standards. They recognise the issue is complex and include issues like women’s rights, unsustainable resource use, inequitable distribution of wealth and power, multiculturalism, international human rights, the shortsightedness of being driven by economic goals, the ageing population and geographical distribution.

The principles and goals are what the Greens are good at.

But getting straight to the 'measures' or policy initiatives for the 2010 election, this is the motherhood waffle, and I quote their 5 vague 'measures':

1. Support, through extensive community consultation, a population policy directed towards ecological sustainability in the context of global social justice.

2. Work to achieve a sustainable relationship between humans and the environment by taking action:
- in Australia, including planning, consultation and a whole of government approach, to improve equity in consumption levels and resource and technology use; and
- globally, to improve social and economic equity and promote programs that empower women.

3. Implement the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action as endorsed by the Australian Government (this is humanitarian immigration and relevant to refugees not population)

4. Ensure that Australian family planning programs, both domestically and overseas, are adequately funded to deliver services in the context of reproductive health programs which increase the power of girls and women to determine their own reproductive lives, and increase the understanding of men of their reproductive responsibilities.

5. Prepare contingency plans for possible large scale humanitarian migration as a result of climate change.

Translated in simple terms, the above 5 measures mean:

1. A population policy so vague as to be anything they want it to mean
2. Make population environmentally sustainable somehow, ensure opportunities are made fair for all, and empower women.
3. Implement an 1994 international obligation on refugee acceptance
4. Improve family planning education to prevent unwanted pregnancies
5. Get ready for massive future refuge intakes.

Don't get me wrong, The Greens have some good ideas and frankly they are more 'forward thinking' than the LibLabs media reactions. But I don't support The Greens per se.

The are too pie in the sky! They come across as intolerant of compromising their environmental mandate with mainstream values of liberalism and work opportunity.

If the Greens come own from their ivory tower, resolve their cultural impasses and get relevant and pragmatic - then they may stand a chance of attracting the mainstream vote.

Until then, green pigs fly!

But the Greens need to learn from past rejection. They need to recognise that evolutionary pace dependent upon protest votes is unsustainable. Laissez Faire Greenness is delaying Green credibility by the mainstream and with recent trends it may be 2050 before Greens get a leg in.

The Greens need to get real, else bring on an alternative Liblab alternative with more than a single policy platform!

The political vacuum across Australia exposed by the LibLab boomer industrial thinking, and abandoned by the Democrats and lost in the rural wilderness by the Nationals, won't wait for no party.

Australian disenfranchisement with politics will not last long. Australia's political landscape is set to change.