David Attenborough

David Attenborough and other renowned conservation figures have urged PM Gillard to retain National Environment Powers. At the moment changes devolving major decision making to our growth-mad developer states are imminent. The writers of a letter to the Primeminister say that their concern arises particularly due to Australia being "one of a very few biologically mega-diverse developed countries on the face of this Earth. The array of natural ecosystems and their component species is simply breathtaking, making Australia one of the most important and exciting places in the world for the long-term conservation of biological diversity." See also this article which contains links to petitions etc.

Sir David Attenborough urges Prime Minister not to abandon National Environment Powers

Today, 23 November, 2012, 33 United Nations Environment Program Global 500 Laureates (elected to the UNEP Global 500 Roll of Honour in recognition of outstanding practical achievement in the protection of the environment) delivered Prime Minister Gillard a letter urging her not to abandon national environmental protection and devolve powers to state and territory Governments.

Among the signatories are Sir David Attenborough and five of the world’s most influential conservation biologists: Drs Paul and Anne Ehrlich from Stanford University, Dr Peter Raven, President Emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, Professor Tom Lovejoy from George Mason University in Washington DC, and Professor Norman Myers from Green College, Oxford University. These are the men and women - the pioneer whistle blowers, who told of the massive loss of species and habitats facing the planet, and of the threat of climate change - going back nearly 40 years.

Also signing on is Veit Koester, who successfully and brilliantly chaired the global negotiations for the Convention on Biological Diversity, the treaty that provided the “head of power” for the Commonwealth’s powerful Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, 1999 (EPBC Act). Joining the 33 signatories is prominent Australian Dr Don McMichael CBE, who chaired the inaugural Federal Biological Diversity Advisory Committee, which prepared the very first draft “National Biological Diversity Conservation Strategy” for Australia.

In their letter the Global 500 Laureates state: “We have been concerned to hear however that there are proposals in train to weaken the EPBC Act and to allow the states and territories to approve developments affecting Matters of National Environment Significance without any Commonwealth oversight. We believe this would be a retrograde step in relation to the development of environmental law in Australia, with significant and negative implications for the conservation of biological diversity and achieving ecologically sustainable development”.

The letter, organised by Humane Society International (HSI) Director and Global 500 Laureate, Verna Simpson, has been presented to the Prime Minister just weeks before the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meets in early December, to discuss the ongoing administrative process for handing over Commonwealth environmental powers, which has a March 2013 deadline. The Government appears not to be listening to Australia’s professional environmental community, but this letter clearly indicates the global concern for the potential deterioration of effective national environmental regulation in Australia.

The Global 500 Laureates concluded: “The individual and organisational UNEP Global 500 Laureates below would like to offer our support for a continuation of your Government’s efforts to develop best possible policies and practices for the conservation of biological diversity through the maintenance of the current powers contained within the EPBC Act, and to avoid, at all costs, the devolution of such powers”.

You can read the full letter here: Letter entitled, "Strong national environmental protection laws".

See also this article which contains links to petitions etc.

Source

This article was based on a press release from the Humane Society International (HSI).
HSI concentrates on the preservation of endangered animals and ecosystems and works to ensure quality of life for all animals, both domestic and wild. HSI is the largest animal protection not-for-profit organisation in the world, with over 10 million supporters globally and has been established in Australia since 1994.

Broadcaster and Naturalist David Attenborough said in a speech to the Royal Society of Arts in London on 10 March, hosted by its president, the Duke of Edinburgh….....”...we can all see that every extra person is – or will be – an extra victim of climate change – though the poor will undoubtedly suffer more than the rich. Yet not a word of it appeared in the voluminous documents emerging from the Copenhagen and Cancun Climate Summits”.

Why this strange silence? I meet no one who privately disagrees that population growth is a problem. No one – except flat-earthers – can deny that the planet is finite.

'Climate change is undoubtedly going to get worse; the only question is how much and how fast, he said. I believe that we somehow have got to prevent the human population from increasing as fast as it is doing.

Big population preferred over tackling climate change

John Howard and Kevin Rudd were both advocates for large populations. Because a growing population equates to a growing economy, until you reach the tipping point of no return on environmental/climate change. No politician has the foresight to see this.

Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd gave priority for a "big Australia" over tackling climate change, the ‘greatest moral challenge of our time’.

Melbourne University reproduction expert Roger Short argues that Australia’s population growth – apparently increasing by one person every two minutes - is out of control, increasing the rate of global warming.

High density developments create hot cities

While Victorians are supposed to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions, at the same time our government is pushing for high rise developments and population growth.

High density housing advocates say planning policies must compel higher density in order to save energy and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. However studies using a diversity of methods demonstrate the converse. The Australian Conservation Foundation Consumption Altas calculation of per capita greenhouse gas emissions shows that those living in high-density areas are greater than for those living in low-density areas. Our cities are becoming hotter and less sustainable.

High-rise developments mean that residents are much more reliant on non-renewable energy and have higher per capita greenhouse gas emissions than those in lower single houses with gardens, solar energy, recycling, trees and shade, and water tanks.

A combination of climate change and urban growth will push temperatures higher in cities worldwide, say researchers. Dr Richard Betts, a climate scientist in the UK, and colleagues found not only do cities retain more heat than rural areas do but hot cities will grow even hotter as the climate warms and cities grow.
By mid-century, night-time temperatures in cities could rise by more than 5.6°C, they say.

As cities grow warmer, it will become even more important to invest in urban cooling strategies, the study suggests, such as white roofs, green spaces, calculated window placement and other architectural decisions that allow buildings to spit out fewer greenhouse gases and less heat. This means more investments and infrastructure needed for high density buildings to replace what Nature provides naturally – and free!.

Food security taken for granted

Climate change will affect the availability and cost of reliable food, water and energy supplies. It will threaten remaining natural ecosystems and biodiversity and increase storm intensity and the likelihood of both wildfire and heat-related deaths.

The Third Intergeneration Report’s “projection” (or social-engineering) is that Australia’s population is likely to reach 35.9 million by 2050.

The people of Australia should be consulted, and respected, not be manipulated by the economic interests of the business elite and the academics entrenched in the economics of constant growth when the priority should be the people of Australia. Population growth can’t be ignored in the context of anthropogenic climate change.

Australians greenhouse gas commitment

The Rudd Labor Government pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Australia by 5 per cent relative to year 2000 levels but this cannot be achieved if Australia’s population grows as projected. Treasury modelling indicates that, with business-as-usual, emissions will reach 774 million tonnes by 2020, 40 per cent above the 2000 level. However, it is set against government encouraged population growth of 20% by then.

Braking the rise in Earth's population would be a major help in the fight against global warming, according to an unprecedented UN report published in 2009. It draws a link between demographic pressure and climate change. "Population growth is among the factors influencing total emissions in industrialised as well as developing countries," it says.

Australia's hypocrisy

Our growing population and relatively emissions-intensive economy means that we will have higher adjustments costs than many other developed countries to reach ostensibly similar goals. Our government's posturing on climate change and ghg emissions is purely rhetoric while we in Australia continue to boost our population. How can we be taken seriously, internationally, with such hypocritical attitudes – that we can continue to grow our population and economy but other nations must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and “save” the planet.

Sir David Attenborough said, there is no major problem facing our planet that would not be easier to solve if there were fewer people and no problem that does not become harder (with more people).

A population growth of 20% by 2020, and at the same time a symbolic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, is inherently contradictory and people will be forced to pay an ineffective carbon tax.

While human populations expand, renewable energy sources must continue to outstrip increasing outputs of carbon emissions to achieve this target. The carbon tax will simply burden the people of Australia, and net greenhouse emissions reduction will be outside their control.

According to a global financial services study, a carbon tax will have to be set at $60 a tonne -- three times the expected $20 tax to be set next year -- to force electricity generators to switch from dirty brown coal in southeastern Australia to cleaner gas to reduce greenhouse emissions.

The Australian "Carbon price 'would need to be tripled' to force change from coal-fired electricity"

With privatisation of the power suppliers, the market forces needed for them to switch to renewable energy, rather than passing on the costs to consumers, would be considerable.

The carbon tax will be a financial burden on families, and businesses, and do little to actually address climate change while at the same time our population continues to boom!

From a nice suburban garden ....

I am sorry to interfere with world affairs, which have no repercussion outside the English speaking community (or maybe just a little disturbance for the few Italians who have been alerted, count them on the fingers of ONE hand !)

I am referring to the interview of Sir David Attenborough by the witty Camilla Long, which appeared on the News review of the Culture International of the Sunday Times (19/4 /2009). It has been a big surprise for me to hear the complete unabridged views of our great naturalist , which have delighted my spirits with his nature documentaries.

When Sir David Attenborough was promoted Patron of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), we all have a reason to rejoice.
He has been quoted as saying:

“there are three times as many people in the world as when I started making television programmes 56 years ago. It is frightening. . We are seeing the consequences in terms of ecology, atmospheric pollution and in terms of space and food production.”

He may say obvious things that nobody in his right mind can deny, - yet oddly, increasingly, most dare not speak - but then, it’s ok, because it comes from the mouth of one of the most respected and famous personalities worldwide, and that counts, for sure.

To have Sir David Attenborough as a spokesperson for the “thorny” (his own words) problem of overpopulation is a great idea, because he is a decent, intelligent, not extremist, all virtues that make him and his views non-threatening, acceptable and almost mainstream. Maybe a bit too much…

Attenborough comes from educated, middle class, English traditional background. He may be labelled as DWM (Dead White Male), but for the fact that he is still, well, alive. He sees life through a retrospective mirror, stuck bang in his childhood: “…idyllic, a time in the Thirties when you could just get on your bicycle and be out in the country in half an hour…”

Today, he implies, the artificial world in which our children are immersed is so far removed from that love-affair with the natural world, and the real tragedy lies in the fact that society as a whole is not aware of the abnormality of the situation, to which we have been adapting so fast and so well. It is the parable of the boiled frog. It has changed the way we live, the way we think, we dream, we make love. The way we see nature, which has become the “environment”, has become profane and banal.

Now, I do not think that nature, in the good old days, was not raped, plundered, ignored but for the things she could provide. The good old days are obviously frozen by a sort of foggy and misericordious memory, which gives us the illusion that there was a Golden Age, and that we have actually belonged to it. For some lucky individuals, like an English curious boy born into a privileged environment, of course, it was. But around him, if he tried to look up from the wildlife and see the human life, the occasions for relaxing and seeing nature were of necessity nil.

Anyway, in later life, Attenborough had more than a chance to see slums and poverty, and, though used to look with complete moral indifference, required by the scientific approach, at the brutal fight for survival of the non-human species, he couldn’t stand the scene of that equivalent horror that is human life. It was life that in a deep sense belonged to him. If he now finds culture to be more determining than evolution, he finds human behaviour morally intolerable although he is well aware that for nature it is quite normal.

Finally the refusal of procreation is an act of charity, a teleological mission, to stop the horror of the futility of millions of wretched existences.

I understand this feeling, I, too, am a white woman, the type of personality described with some humour by another white man, a certain Brendan O’Neill (see www.spiked-online.com, Wednesday 1 April 2009, Brendan O’Neill Mixing with Malthusians):

“spiked editor Brendan O’Neill ventured into a pit of population-controllers, and found himself holding his nose. Looking around the lecture hall of the Royal Statistical Society (A fitting venue for a conference that reduced everything to statistics), I was struck by the make-up of the audience: white-haired demographers; ladies-who-normally-lunch-but-who-today-were-discussing-the-coming apocalypse; comparatively young but equally posh Soil Association supporters.”

Etcetera etcetera.

I am not resentful of irony, it is healthy to look at oneself from somebody else’s perspective, but O’Neill misses the point. As I found out with some dismay, Sir David doesn’t agree to the credo of the OPT. The OPT propaganda hasn’t told the real story, as revealed in toto by the Sunday Time interview. At one moment, the interviewer asks more pertinent (or shall we say “impertinent”) questions. She wants to know, for example, what is the ideal figure for the human inhabitant’s of earth? Sir David is not sure, as I am not sure either, and I would like to challenge anybody to swear that he/she knows for sure. So far, so reasonable.

After a while Sir David stumbles on a rather big and unavoidable obstacle- or shall we say, he falls into an equally big hole ?
But let’s hear it from the lips of the Great Old White Man.

Distracted by the vision of a blue butterfly he slips unaided into a declaration on immigration:

“We have to keep our borders open it’s a worldwide problem… you want a free movement of people round the world because it’ the only way to stop wars …”

I won’t go on, out of embarrassment, but you are familiar with the refrain.

It is clear that the same ethically correct reasons that drove him to deny, in the name of an enlightened Western culture of which he is a brilliant example, the destructive life and death carousel, drives him to extend the liberty. that he himself enjoys to far away strangers.

Though these are noble views, they are dangerous in more than one way and smell of complacency and wishful thinking, They ignore the consequences which will be felt for generations to come, and ruin forever that earthly childhood Paradise which he nostalgically endorses while enabling its destruction.