Greens members harassed for expressing valid views on environment and population
Why has a Greens Population/Sustainability Working Group Member been vilified as racist and sexist and harassed with threats of expulsion for sticking up for our wildlife against needless rapid population growth? Read what Geoff Dowsett wrote and the response he got from candidate Tamara Ryan (included in the article).
This is what he wrote, asking Greens to circularise Greens candidates:
GEOFF:"As a candidate for John Kaye's Upper House seat how about a strong statement and policy improvement suggestion from you to address the desperate need to stabilise Australia`s population growth? The current "economic"---middle class so called skilled (non refugee) immigration rate of 500,000 per year including 457 Visa (a world record high intake) is not sustainable. Sydney's population is growing by 83,000 net pa under the Liberal Govt's Immigration scam. It is causing excessive impact on inadequate infrastructure-impact on natural eco-systems through urban growth and consumer demand. Increased traffic congestion in our major cities - sky rocketing housing prices. Of course the immigration rate is just what big business wants particularly the housing industry while our quality of life, natural environment and urban environment goes down the gurgler. The immigration rate is also closely linked with the insane growth economy which is addicted to continuing growth in consumption. It is HYPOCRISY of the Greens to have a policy of sustainable economy without a policy for a substantial reduction in immigration. Priority should be humanitarian i.e. for political and environmental refugees NOT wealthy middle class business migrants. When will the Greens members such as yourself bite the bullet on population ? I won't vote for you unless you make a statement indicating a clear commitment to reducing Turnbull's excessive Immigration and 457 Visa intake."(Geoff Dowsett. Member. Hornsby Kuringai Greens. Population/Sustainability Working Group Member. Statement above does not represent the views of all of the working group.)
What do you think of this response?
TAMARA: "Geoff. I understand your membership is being collectively reconsidered for your frequent racist and sexist comments like these Jeff. Your views on climate action via controlling immigration have no place in this party.represent the Environment
I don't care about your vote, but I do care fiercely about advocating for women's autonomy over their bodies, rejecting racism and opening borders. Capitalist structures that promote continuous growth and waste by corporations and governments are responsible for stifling efforts on climate change, not people seeking a place and way to live.
Read more here if you would like some more education on this :) Neoliberalism Poisoned Climate Action And Renewables Are The Antidote (2/8/2016) Mew Matilda
Tamara Ryan Candidate
The implied accusation of sexism seemed to be linked to some idea that Geoff was trying to interfere with women's rights to control their bodies. I cannot see anywhere where Geoff suggests this should happen. I also cannot see any reference to race in what Geoff wrote. Tamara makes gestures of support for the unemployed and working class, but for some reason, she doesn't seem to mind the super-rich being imported in hundreds of thousands to Australia as planned invited economic immigrants. Or does she have no idea of the actual numbers and how they are chosen? Does she think all immigrants are actually refugees? Tamara seems to be in favour of completely open borders, not just humane treatment of refugees: "Close the camps, open the borders, free all refugees." (https://www.facebook.com/RefugeesSurvivorsAndExdetainees/videos/1215228178517319/)
Is Open Borders official Greens policy now?
Ms Ryan's unpleasant response to Mr Dowsett seems sexist itself, with an unfounded slur of 'racism', and an implied threat about his membership of The Greens being 'collectively reconsidered'. This is not the only time I have heard of Greens members in population working groups being intimidated, for I have suffered by it personally.
Personal experience
As a committee member of Prosper Australia, around the time of the formation of its ‘green’ Earthsharing brand, I personally experienced, with another committee member, similar treatment from a cluster of new members, vocally hostile about our affiliation with Sustainable Population Australia (SPA). This hostility manifested as a very threatening warning from one of them following a small rally of oddly assorted pro- lifers and claimants to be refugee advocates outside a perfectly innocent but important public meeting on democracy in Australia which we as members of SPA were holding at the premises of Prosper with the blessing of the Prosper committee. As it transpired, our treatment was part of a hostile takeover by Socialist Alliance members of the comparatively wealthy NGO. We had to leave. Some of these people later have thrown their weight about in the Greens on population issues.
I later joined my local Greens, far away from Prosper, but at the mention of population, (myself and) another member (an immigrant from Cairo whom I had only met in that branch) and I were sent to Coventry by a then recent blow-in from the Labour Party, who took over the management of that branch of the Greens email list. No-one now would dare discuss the obvious problem of high immigration, with its huge contribution to high population growth, and the impact on wildlife and the green wedges of expanding suburbs.
Here is someone else’s experience
A few years ago I heard the following tale, which has now been written down for the record:
"This is my recollection of working with a team within the Greens on revising the Population Policy. At that time many of the Greens’ polices were being reviewed by working groups. About eight of us met several times in the city after work to focus on the policy and to improve it.
As I recall there was little or no friction or disagreement within the group on any of the points. We were all focused on sustainability and environment and did our best to reflect this in the alterations to the then policy. This work resulted in a document noting changes on which we all agreed. As I understand , this document was sent to Adelaide for a committee to consider it. As I understand, also, it was rejected completely as it had too many amendments from the original policy. That is what I was told.
Some time after this I was also told that at a large, possibly national Greens gathering or convention in Carlton, that when the issue of population came up, there were very loud intimidating aggressive voices raised to silence anyone who wanted to wade in on the topic. One of the people who had been part of the working group emailed the rest of us after attending this event, saying that he had no further wish to pursue this any further in view of the threatening tone of these people at the meeting. I never heard from this person again and the working group effectively dissolved at that point."
Greens Crucible
[New video version here since last one taken off-line.]
Such censorship and bullying control by people dominating in a group reminds me of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, a play about witch trials in 17th century America. It is a play which has often been studied by high school students with the glaring lesson that free speech can be snuffed out by irrational alliances within the dominant doctrine. It sometimes seems as though the Greens are increasingly defined by people who have taken the role of Puritans accusing anyone they disagree with of witchcraft, except they accuse them of sexism and racism, where none exists. But the implications are similarly terrible, in that they are designed to stigmatise, ostracise, and disempower those they target, thereby silencing their views. In Miller’s Crucible the accusers were themselves guilty of playing at sorcery. They became fearful of being denounced themselves as sinners, and defend themselves by accusing others of attempting to bewitch them.
If this is so then The Greens have gone down a blind alley and philosophically seem to have reached a dead end. What are they about if they cannot tackle the main threat to “green-ness”, environmental sustainability and conservation of nature and wildlife, which is human population numbers in situ?
What are the elders in the Greens doing about the stifling of discussion within the ranks of the party? What do they think of the association between their members, so-called socialist groups and the violent Antifa, who are paid to riot?[1] [No insult intended here to real socialists or anarchists.] They seem to be standing back or even approving while the intimidation grows. [2] Are they in fact also the product of unexamined ideology? Do they agree with its effects, which are to keep Australian political debate confused and unrepresentative, bogged down in imagined racism and sexism (while real racism and sexism continue) and overpopulation and overdevelopment turn our environment into concrete. Are they all globalists? Do they really agree with massive, developed, urbanized import-export economies which destroy the diversity of hunter-gatherers, herders, tribes and nations for this?
What can people who really are environmentalists do when the party that bears their flag provides cover for materialistic land-speculating nature-destroying neoliberalism for which population-dependent economic growth at all costs is God? What can they do about the growing violence and intimidation in the Greens?
NOTES
[1] Internationally: Wrong kind of green.
In the article the writer questions the whole idea of governments making top-down decisions about the size of a country's population. 
The OpenAustralia Foundation, the charity that runs a 
“When discussing population, let your starting point be about finding the issues that you have in common. It could be about congestion, climate change, loss of heritage, the list goes on. It is not about us pushing our view of the world onto people. Instead it is about helping them to see population in a new light by showing how it connects to the issues that are important to them.” This article is based on Mark Allen's speech to the Victorian Branch of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) Seminar: Attitudes and communication in population and the environment on 23 April 2016. Videos of the event will be available soon. 
Entirely predictably, the Murray Darling river system is toxic with effluent again, host to masses of poisonous cyanobacteria. As the Weekly Times reports, "WATER will be switched off to hundreds of farmers and town residents in the Mallee this week as the Murray River blue-green algae emergency worsens. The toxic outbreak now involves almost 500km of the Murray River and has claimed reservoirs, rivers, wetlands and parts of Victoria’s two biggest irrigation districts. Taps were turned off to towns and farms in parts of the southern Mallee late Friday when the algal bloom reached key Wimmera Mallee pipeline pumps near Swan Hill, catching most residents unaware. Experts said a record autumn heatwave, with temperatures soaring above 40C in northwest Victoria this week, was expected to grow the algal bloom until it choked almost all of the Murray River along the NSW-Victoria border within weeks."[1] But these problems have been known for so long now, it seems foolish to believe that we can hope for any resolution that would keep the vast Australian desert from claiming on our only major inland river system. Certainly we should not meddle with the northern river systems, but unfortunately our psychopathic leaders have already started. 
The globally unique and lovable Carnaby's Cockatoo exists only in the South West of WA. They are a totem for Noongar people and a part of our shared cultural and natural heritage. But the cockatoos are endangered and we are at risk of losing them forever.
Instead of helping the cockatoos to recover, the State Governments own analysis shows the Government's Green Growth Plan would further drastically reduce the population of these beautiful birds, intelligent, social and long-lived birds.. By locking in the clearing of thousands of hectares of bushland that the birds rely on, numbers of these already rare birds would be reduced by half and the long-term survival of the population would be placed in question.
Population is a big issue happening in the world today, with our numbers having increased massively from around 1 billion in 1850 to what now looks like 11 billion at the end of the century. Right now, the numbers of the world’s poor increase by 80 million each year and the number of unwanted pregnancies are 210 million per annum. Considering that human population predicts 88% of impact to other animal and plant species (according to the International Union for the Conversation of Nature) human population remains a huge, yet very controversial concern. (This article was written by Michael Bayliss as part of an information booklet with Mark Allen (founder, Population Permaculture and Planning) entitled: 'Why We Need To Talk About Population.' This booklet is designed to engage with a younger, left leaning generation including environmentalists and activists. It will be available at the Sustainable Living Festival Big Weekend at Federation where Mark Allen will also present on town planning and population issues. To 
"Harper gutted environmental regulations!" my NDP neighbour shouted. That was his parting shot in what turned out to be an acrimonious exchange.
A Social Democratic Party that Lost Its Way: Once-upon-a-time Canada’s New Democrats knew that there were Limits to Growth. They knew about the Club of Rome, about Silent Spring and about the Population Bomb. They knew that resources were finite and that their unrestricted extraction would cause irreparable damage. They knew that “growth” was the ideology of the cancer cell. Yes, in the 1970’s the environment was very much on the agenda. Party academic and scholar Charles Taylor spoke of “the politics of the steady-state” and John Harney ran his federal leadership campaign on those kinds of issues.
"Home ownership is a means to an end. It is not necessary for all people in all places. What all people want is housing affordability, security, and autonomy. A place they know they can come to, where they are in control of their own lives, which can be arranged to best serve their interests, tastes and lifestyle, and which will not enslave them financially. It is these values which have been so steadily undermined in Australia over the past decade in particular.
It occurred to me recently that there are four central tectonic splits within the worldwide political left. Like the tectonic plates that shift beneath the surface of the earth, these represent fundamental cleavages between different tendencies, parties and groups under the broad umbrella of the worldwide left. And, like tectonic plates, these positions clash.
The first split is over approaches to globalization. This refers to the major political and economic developments that have taken place over the last 40 years. Economically, it involved the internationalization of the capitalist market economy, following the gradual opening and liberalization of markets (capital, commodity, and to a lesser extent labour) primarily for the benefit of Transnational Corporations (TNCs), which now dominate the global economy.[1] Politically, it involved the gradual erosion of national sovereignty, as increasing power has become vested in transnational political, economic, and cultural institutions, leading some left theorists to argue that globalization has seen the emergence of either a 
A panel in Japan has proposed the government take measures to halt the country's population slide so it goes no lower than 100 million people. At present Japan's population is likely to fall to about 87 million by 2060. This new proposal probably reflects outside interference by globalists, who are pushing for cheap imported labour. We should take into account that Japan's population numbers were stable until international trade and 'development' pushed them up by reorganising the population away from largely rural and small cities to massive land-less labour sources in huge cities. The Japanese are a very big tribe and have managed to regain control over their numbers. This push for immigration will once again destabilise them. Japan can only feed itself by importing food and energy. Already the national atomic power production system has shown itself to be hugely unstable and dangerous. This should be taken as a signal that Japan needs to go with its natural trends to return to a smaller, stable population. Reference: Anthony Boys, How will Japan feed itself without fossil energy? in Sheila Newman, (Ed) The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, 2008.
The panel which the mainstream western press has unsurprisingly given such prominence, reportedly advised, using typical pro-growth terms 'greying population' , 'vibrancy', 'shrinking workforce', 'larger group of pensioners':
Item: Statscan reports that Vancouver and Toronto residents are the least happy of Canadians
The function of Australian mass media seems to be to inveigle listeners into complicity in the terrible transformation that is being visited on us in Australia (turning what were once pleasant capital cities where most of us now live, into dystopian megalopolises) by inviting them to 'choose' between distasteful solution A or unpleasant solution B.
On Friday the 13th of February I attended the “Great Debate: To Collapse or Not to Collapse,” hosted by the Sustainable Living Festival at the Deakin Auditorium. The following Wednesday I attended a screening on the movie Cowspiracy, hosted by Animal Liberation Victoria, which explored the impact of industrial animal agriculture on the environment and the resistance from environmental groups to address the issue in a meaningful way. 
The internet provides the general public, almost anywhere, with access to contraceptive information which your local GP and well-trod academic paths have failed to provide. Here is a male contraceptive that provides months of temporary sterilisation to men. It only requires bathing the testes in hot water (46C or 116F) for 45 minutes a day for three weeks for six months infertility. Bathing in water of water at 43.3C or 110? produces at least four months of infertility. Longterm practice can apparently permanently reduce fertility. Voegeli's method was recommended and used in India in the 1940s by a Swiss doctor who ran her own hospital in India and advocated for the poor. Why have educated people lost this information? My reading leads me to surmise that this was (a) because it was recommended by a female doctor; (b) because you could not make money out of it (c) because it undercut commercial methods [1] (d) due to overvaluation of possible long-term effects in certain cases. All these concerns fail to take into consideration the dire situation of people in countries of high birth rates who do not have access to 'modern' and costly contraception. Note: This article has been retitled from "Simple Male Contraceptive - hot water" to "Revolutionary male contraceptive" because some readers thought it was a joke and, although the concept and practice is simple, this kind of simplicity is revolutionary today.
Of the reasons I have surmised for the failure of this method to be popularised, it seems to me that its very cost-free nature may be why the method has not been promoted widely. In our commercialised global culture, money-making opportunities receive the widest promotion of all ideas. This also explains why population growth is widely promoted but population restraint is not. The first makes money for focused beneficiaries; the second simply removes diffuse costs. Dr Voegeli's method apparently gained local popularity in India during a famine, but who knows what subsequently disorganised the societies and their cultural knowledge in the areas where Dr Voegeli practised?
Australian treasurer, Joe Hockey, stated in April 2014 that the age of entitlement had come to a close. [1] He was of course referring to entitlements that the faux-elite Liberal Party believe that people receive which they don't deserve. Medical health, education, financial assistance during unemployment and so forth. He wasn't referring to Negative Gearing or cash payouts for "Women of Calibre" to stay at home with their child.
This article forms the basis of a brochure, 
Migration is hardly a solution to world poverty and conflict, but the mainstream media predictably push this line. Even the Guardian, for all its purported democratic values, continuously pushes for open borders without disclosing that these also facilitate a right-wing agenda for cheap imported labour sources and the crushing of local industry and employment. Its recently issued 'special report' entitled, "Hardline Australia, confused Scandinavia and tense Russia: the global immigration picture" 
Population numbers are now a democratic issue because the two big parties and the Greens are colluding to push extreme population growth. People will vote against population growth if given the opportunity because it is causing a decline in urban lifestyle. Some of the problems it is causing is severe competition for schooling, hospitals, housing and places on public transport. People are upset by the destruction of established built environment to keep pace with this imposed population growth. If we were able to achieve zero population growth over time and reduce our per capita consumption, we would use less coal, possibly even stop needing to use it and we would never need to turn on the desal plant. It's a no-brainer really.
An old mate of mine and his son are doing their bit to promote awareness of climate change. Good on them. They arranged a presentation and invited an audience of around 100 people. The focus was on what WE could each do to reduce emissions. The direct link between population growth and climate change was not identified as a key issue.
"I learnt a few things. The 4 million left homeless in the Philippines would have been 2.7 million if their population hadn't grown 50% in the previous 20 years.
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