Climate change, population growth & Oz Governments

Our "projected" population growth could easily be avoided. Adding more people means more carbon emissions and environmental impacts. However, while people are happy to discuss climate change and ETS, there is a general reluctance to an open debate on population numbers and immigration! Is this "political correctness" or fear of "racism" taunts? Surely our artificially induced population growth rate is the elephant in the room! More people makes it harder to address climate change, and the effects of it potentially more profound and widespread.

We can't expect developing countries to further reduce their lifestyles while we flout our own! A bulging global population is one of humanity's greatest threats and can easily linked to terrorism, pollution, loss of biodiversity, natural disasters, food shortages and climate change threats. Environmentalists have argued that the First World's population growth is actually far more of an environmental problem than that of the Third World. China has a one child policy, and about 200 million of India’s population are completely vegetarian . He is continuing to support a population growth set to double from 1990 to 2020, and our livestock industries! Our population is "projected" to grow by nearly half from 1990 to 2020, not like "stagnant" Europe's. It is not Europe that is "stagnant" but Kevin Rudd's lack of ideas and commitment towards climate change, what in 2007 he called "one of the greatest moral and economic challenges of our time"!

Well, at least one former Labor minister is asking "What the hell is going on?" From The Spectator: Balance population with quality of life Barry Cohen Wednesday, 10th December 2008 Unless I’ve been grievously misled, global warming/climate change is caused by the excessive amount of carbon emissions poured into the atmosphere. The major offenders are the developed countries, and the more affluent members of them in particular. Near the top of the list is our good selves with a footprint Ian Thorpe would envy. And what, I hear you ask, has been Australia’s response? Well for starters, the government has ratified Kyoto; it is developing a carbon trading emissions scheme and is investing in a range of alternative energy proposals, including hybrid cars, solar energy, clean coal, wind and much more. Australia is taking global warming seriously. There are no sceptics or deniers in the Rudd government. There is one problem. An increasing number of people are finding it difficult to equate our climate change initiatives with our immigration policy. Carbon emissions, we are told, are caused by people and affluent people in particular. Ergo, the more affluent nations are the more carbon emitted. You don’t have to be a climatologist, an economist or a demographer to work that out, you just need an IQ above room temperature. Part of the solution therefore, and I stress the word ‘part’, would be to reduce or at least stabilise our population. As reduction is nigh on impossible, that leaves stabilisation as the only alternative. And what are we doing to achieve that? Increasing the annual migrant intake to 190,000, which is double the number during the first year of the Howard government. That doesn’t include 100,000 temporary skilled workers allowed in on 457 visas. One has to be very careful here, for anyone questioning immigration numbers runs the risk of being branded a racist. Nevertheless, I believe it behoves me to ask politely, ‘What the hell is going on?’ If there was a public debate about the level of immigration in the run-up to the last election, I must have missed it. Now, however, we find both government and Coalition united in favour of a dramatic increase in our annual migrant intake. For 2008-9, the projected figure is 203,800 plus 100,000 on 457 visas. When the Chifley government initiated the post-war immigration programme, the slogan was ‘Populate or Perish’. One justification was that having just fought a ferocious war with Japan, we needed to build up our population to defend Australia against ‘the yellow peril’. The White Australia policy was alive and well. Our population of six and a half million could not justify our occupation of such a vast empty continent. Economies of scale would enable us to produce goods at a lower price and increase our ability to export. Only the last of these three reasons has any validity today, and even that is questionable. Our export income is no longer dependant on the mass production of consumer goods. Specialised quality production, agriculture, mining, tourism and educational services earn most of our foreign currency. The latest excuse for increased population is a shortage of skilled labour. Those arguing the case may be right, but in doing so they should answer the following questions: how many of our current unemployed can be trained to fill these jobs? What effort is being made to train unemployed Aborigines in northern Australia where the mining boom is creating demand for the many skilled and highly paid jobs available, or do we believe they are incapable of being trained? If more skilled labour is required, why can’t we cut, at least, temporarily, the numbers brought in under family reunion and humanitarian categories? Halving both categories would reduce the annual intake by 35,000. What impact will the current increase have on our population level? When will we achieve those levels? What then? Where will new migrants live? Where will the water come from to service them? I could continue, but I’m sure you get my drift. Which brings me to my life-long obsession, that governments never connect the dots between increasing population numbers and the ‘crises’ that daily beset our citizens — congested roads, air and water pollution, prohibitive land prices, housing shortages, overcrowded hospitals and schools and so on. And that’s before the impact of climate change. Why am I so obsessed? I was born in 1935 when Australia’s population was around five and a half million. When I became an MP in 1969 it was 12 million. It is now 21 million. In my lifetime the population has almost quadrupled. On 10 June 1970 I asked PM John Gorton for a cost benefit analysis of immigration, and in a speech that followed asked, ‘We all know that if we follow unthinkingly the present immigration programme we will reach any figure we care to name: 25, 50, 100, 200…. The question is, when? Will it be by the year 2000, 2050, 2100, 2200 or 2300?’ The above led to the then minister for immigration, Phillip Lynch, appointing Professor Borrie to lead an inquiry into population. Unfortunately, the Borrie Report, when tabled, avoided the question of numbers. In fact, no federal government has been prepared to answer the following question: How many people can Australia contain and ensure that each and every citizen has a genuine quality of life? If our population doubles in the next 40 years, as it has done in the past 40, what will life be like in Melbourne with seven million people and Sydney with eight million? The mind boggles. All these questions must be asked and publicly debated before any attempt is made to substantially increase our population, and certainly before we take the Garnaut Review seriously.