Government-forced-Population-growth impacts on Democracy

Environmental activism can be all consuming and exhausting. Is it worth making the effort?

In our overpopulated world and fast growing cities of Australia there are too many human forces stirring up the environment to manipulate it in the name of development and growth . Because of the vast amounts of energy and finance available to those who would sacrifice nature for development, the changes that are wrought on the environment can be huge with very far reaching effects.

Citizens' needs, rights and obligations

What do we do as ordinary citizens? Do we simply watch as much loved countryside goes under the bull dozer for development? Do we let it pass that wildlife is massacred on the ever expanding network of roads, each new one cutting across the habitat of other species? Do we cruise by acceptingly in the back seat of the car noting changes to our surroundings that we never asked for and do not want? Do we sit down resignedly and turn on the television instead of protesting when a decision is made to build 8 storeys just down the road where there should really be an public open space in our quiet suburban street? Perhaps the proposed edifice doesn’t overshadow our back yard directly, but it deeply affects our neighbours. Is it our concern? In Melbourne these days there are very few victories for those who don’t want constant changes to our surroundings. Most changes that occur remove open space and amenity and generally pull nature asunder. The trend is the creation of increasingly urban environments where we could perhaps forget that nature exists outside some really good photos on our IPads. We who are adults now know that nature exists because we have experienced it. It used to co-exist with us in the city. But the next generation will not have this familiarity and will not be as acutely aware as their surroundings are further and further modified by development. An 8 storey building becomes a 20 storey building. This is not as dramatic as losing open space to any sort of construction. Their fight reflex will be extremely blunted.

Burn-out

One of the problems with the decision as to whether to act or not is that communities and individuals can be run ragged and burnt out with protest efforts. Those who want to steal our natural environment have the means- political and financial in spades to do this. The scale is enormous and the resources of the rest of us are comparatively small.

The struggle

From my experience, people vary in the attitudes they choose to take. Many I know are torn between wanting to enjoy their lives and making the effort to try to save what they love and appreciate about their local or the larger environment. If they become involved in protests they find that their lives are taken over with meetings, submission writing and rallies to preserve the status quo or mitigate the damage of development to the environment. After a while, especially after a series of failures, the rewards of contacts made through community efforts wear thin and they feel cheated of their spare time. This leads to a paradox – “My life is being taken over trying to put out spot the fires of environmental destruction around me but can I really get on with what would have been my life whilst my environment is being torn apart?” Priorities then seemingly cascade from the dilemma. I will put my time and money into this battle that has a small chance but there is another more far reaching one which we are even less likely to win but which has wider repercussions.

Do we really have a choice?

But do we really have a choice in whether to act or not? Can we afford to live in a bubble containing the elements in our lives which we appear to be able to control and largely ignoring the rest? To take the position that there is nothing I can do to change anything, is to assume powerlessness. I know people who assume this position. Do they do it just in order to take a breather from the constant war? Maybe this is something one can do with some degree of comfort if the battle ground seems sufficiently distant. But what if the destruction moves right next door or across the road?

It is really just a matter time. You may or may not be lucky with how close to your life it comes to you before you move or die and of course not all environmental damage needs to be happening where you live to affect you, anyway.

Ultimately, not to act is really to have a wager that the environment will manage to out last us.

NEW POPULATION BOOK HOLDS SOLUTIONS TO HABITAT DEPLETION: Sheila Newman has just published new theory in a new book, Demography, Territory & Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations (see link). Two chapters are on multi-species demography, the rest apply the theory to non-industrial societies and the author comes up with a completely new test for the collapse model of Easter Island, which will stun those who thought they knew all about it. Forensic biologist, Hans Brunner writes of it: "This book takes us to a completely new paradigm in multiple species population science. It shows how little we understand, and how much we need to know, of the sexual reactions when closed colonies with an orderly reproduction system are destroyed, be it people or animals."

Fire taxes and people taxes - Are we seeing the genesis of what could well be the next tax imposition for the people of Victoria to pay for the population growth that the state forces on us?

It’s been clear for many years that population growth is costing us all big time in Australia and that’s just the money side of it. I’ll set aside the impact of population growth on the environment, the welfare of other animals, our amenity and livability for another discussion.

About 10 years ago, it dawned on the people I know that population growth was not just something that happened on the outer fringes of the capital cities where we never go but that it was pushing its way into the established suburbs. At first, relatively unnoticed but as the rate and volume increased, we all watched in dismay as neigbouring suburban gardens disappeared, houses were demolished for larger, bulkier edifices and our familiar mix of built and un-built environment was transformed into something that would be unrecognizable to anyone who had been absent for a decade. The word “infrastructure” then insidiously crept into our media lexicon ad nauseum. Services such as sewerage and roads and provision of power that we took for granted as being provided by various arms of government suddenly seemed to be in a crisis of ageing and inadequacy. We all knew that there was a cost to this, ultimately payable by tax payers, but most people I spoke to saw this as being long into the future to the point they did not need to worry about it.

Dr Jane O’Sullivan http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10137 in March 2010, highlighted and quantified the inevitability of this burden with a reasonable assumption that the average lifespan of infrastructure would be conservatively 50 years so that on an annual basis this would amount to no more than 2%. If population growth is 2%, as it had been around the time she wrote the article, then the infrastructure capacity must be doubled! This is the position our growth obsessed governments are putting Australian citizens in.
The last growth figures (to March 2012 on the ABS website show a national growth rate of 1.5%) but this is still very high for a developed country. Victoria had the largest numerical increase in population in that year of any state- 82,500

So, the next blow to Victorians is that a planning academic called Roz Hansen has suggested to the state government that they impose a levy based on the value of people’s properties (and therefore adding to house price inflation) to pay for the additional infrastructure necessitated by population growth. This might be OK for someone like Roz Hansen, who we might reasonably assume has a hansome salary as planning adviser to the Baillieu government, but for people on retirement incomes living in ordinary suburbs, it could well mean not being able to afford to stay in their homes!

The Premier is in the clear so far, having said “no” to this idea. It is now on the agenda, however!

The Municipal Association of Victoria does not want the collection of such a tax to be imposed on councils and points out that people do not have unlimited resources. Victorians will also be paying a fire levy from July 2013 and the government proposes doubling the population of bushfire prone townships such as Warrandyte and urban suburbs by allowing 2 houses per residential lot.

Any tax based on the price of a property can become unaffordable to the resident as population growth drives up the price of housing without creating any more real wealth. Although the Georgists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism advocate a tax to property owners based on land value, in a “Geoist” world there is no income tax on wages. Hansen’s suggestion is Geoism without the benefits, although I doubt that this would be a conscious all encompassing tax philosophy on her part. She would still expect us to pay income tax with land-tax a new and additional impost.

What is frightening is that the population growth that drives such draconian potential policies is inflicted upon Victorians against their will, but our political system seems to provide us with no means to stop what over 70% of Victorians manifestly do not want. If a related new tax or charge is imposed, we also have almost no chance of stopping it, since such things tend these days to be decided in parliament, between elections and never to be submitted as items on political platforms at election time. And who can keep up with the sophistry? Isn't there more to life?

My city’s been assaulted by an enemy within
That eats away its organs and pushes out its skin.

My city’s been assaulted by an enemy within
That eats away its organs and pushes out its skin.
Its green lungs are encroached upon with buildings and cement
And trees fall prey to processes not for their benefit
The creatures that inhabit them are treated like invaders
And councils put up possum bands to help their friends, the traders.

An example of a 'possum band'. This ridiculous sort of chastity belt for trees to stop possums sheltering where they have always sheltered is a cruel device for which residents unwittingly foot the bill to councils in nice little rorts arranged with the manufacturers of these totally unnecessary devices.

Our Bay was scarred so drastically, fish habitat destroyed
Dutch shipping firms arrived here by our government employed
Our scarce tax dollars spent on something few can see
To make Port Phillip’s shallow bed a highway in the sea

Our gentle houses on their blocks with gardens so appealing
Are bought for land and then smashed down by developers unfeeling
A moonscaped block means 6 for 1 of this you can be sure,
But these are not, as one might think much needed housing for the poor
They sell for more as “garden free” than all that went before!
If I had my way, most certainly, it would be against the law

Our suburbs densify, we’re told, to save the outer land.
But it’s not saved, it’s sleight of hand, the UGB’s right out of hand
It expanded once and then again. The belt is never ending
Blocked arteries, obesity: that’s the report I’m sending.
Now living here in Melbourne is as on a building site
The noise and the disruption remind us daily of our plight
We’re trapped in growth, why won’t they see?
This is the path to take from us our precious liberty.

Melbourne's environment is steadily deteriorating as rapid population growth continues but some are insulated by wealth against the effects of this.Article first published January 1, 2012 but republished after site damage on January 6, 2012. I had over 100 reads when it was lost.

In city and suburbs trees fall victim to greed,
Backyards are demolished for a so called need
Of people awaiting all our precious spaces
And we give them up and then turn on the *races.

Our surroundings decline as we stand by and watch

And try to explain it in terms in terms of *“hop scotch”
“If you move to there these ones can move in
Then cover your garden, it’s no longer a sin.”

We think ourselves rich but sometimes we wonder
When our Bay is “un-swimmable” after rain, hail and thunder,
Was it like this when we were all kids?
The Melbourne environment is now on the skids!

But to our weekenders, some of us go

To beaches and sun or to ski in the snow
It still seems to the lucky ones everything’s dandy,
While for the rest of the people there’s little that’s handy.

“Have you heard of Peak Oil ?” I hear someone say,
“No problem” ‘s the answer, “Make fuel out of hay!”
“There’s plenty of growth still there in the system,
It’s elastic, you know- build ‘em higher and list ‘em

On domains that take in the populous places
I care not about problems that everyone faces

When too many people chase scarce flats and houses
I’m content with my mansion and grey suit and trousers.”

*"races" broadcast horse racing in Australia a favorite diversion from anything serious.
*"Bay"-Port Phillip Bay, the shallow lake like sea that get's filled with ordure, a danger to health when it rains heavily.
*"hop scotch"-Old children’s game where players move around different parts of a diagram drawn into the ground