climate change

About 2,000 tourists are stranded in Peru after mudslides hit the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu.  A Canberra man whose son is trapped by the Peruvian mudslides says the Australian consulate in Lima is proving difficult to contact. A West Australian tourist trapped in Peru says her group has been abandoned by their tour guide as stocks of fresh food and water in town dwindle. They say they were getting little or no assistance from the Australian Government.
Heavy rain triggered the slides and swept away roads, leaving the tourists stuck in Aguas Calientes, a small town near the Inca ruins.
Apart from hiking the Inca Trail, a stay in Aguas Calientes, is one of the best ways to get to Machu Picchu before all of the tourists arrive by train from Cusco.

Climate change impacts:

Peru has the most tropical glaciers in Latin America and has already lost 20 percent of the 2,600 kms of glaciers running through its central and southern Andes in the past 30 years, according to CONAM. (Peru's National Environment Council).  If climatic conditions remain as they are, all the glaciers (in Peru) below 18,000 feet will disappear by around 2015, CONAM's President told Reuters in an interview.

Climatic warming during the last 100-150 years has resulted in a significant glacier ice loss from mountainous areas of the world.  Changes in sediment and water supply induced by climatic warming and glacier retreat have altered channel and floodplain patterns of rivers draining high mountain ranges. 

Temperature in the Andes has increased by approximately 0.1 °C per decade, with only two of the last 20 years being below the 1961–90 average.  By the end of the 21st century, the tropical Andes may experience a massive warming on the order of 4.5–5 °C.

According to a study by Britain's East Anglia University, Peru is the country most at risk to global warming, after Honduras and Bangladesh, because of the proximity of its towns to glaciers and a lack of disaster prevention measures.  The glaciers and lakes specifically are of principal interests to tourists. However, glacial retreat and systems for lake stabilization may be negatively influencing tourism.

Climate change could cost Andean countries US$30 billion per year by 2025, according to a study commissioned by the Andean Community of Nations and carried out by the Peruvian University of the Pacific.  The figure represents 4.5 per cent of the countries' combined gross domestic product. 

The study also predicts that 70 per cent of Andean people will have severe difficulties in accessing clean water sources by 2025. By 2020, about 40 million people will be at risk of losing their water supplies as well as some crops, due to the melting of the glaciers and greater desertification of the Andean mountains.

Because of this geographical mismatch between national water resources and the human population, Peru is estimated to be a “water-scarce” country by 2025 if population growth trends remain high. Peru is particularly vulnerable to climate change because some 70 percent its energy comes from hydroelectric plants, supplied mainly by meltwater from Andean glaciers.

A natural hazard in itself does not necessarily cause a disaster; a disaster results when a natural hazard impacts on a vulnerable, exposed or ill-prepared community.  Destruction of mountain forests or inappropriate farming practices can accelerate erosion and expose land to the risk of landslides, floods and avalanches. Moreover, dams, roads or mining enterprises can be hazardous if not properly constructed and managed.

(Yungay showing the remains of the church spire and palm trees)

Yungay area tragedy, 1970:

Yungay, Peru
In a major catastrophe in 1970, some 25,000 people were killed when a mudslide caused by melting ice submerged the town of Yungay in the central Andes.  The reported death toll from what came to be known as Peru’s Great Earthquake totalled more than 74,000 people. On May 31, 1970, an undersea earthquake off the coast of Casma and Chimbote, north of Lima, triggered one of the most cataclysmic avalanches in recorded history – wiping out the entire highland town of Yungay and most of its 25,000 inhabitants. The 8.0 quake destabilized the glacier on the north face of Mount Huascarán, causing 10 million cubic meters of rock, ice and snow to break away and tear down its slope at more than 120 miles per hour.

It is the image of lone surviving palm trees in the Yungay cemetery that is burned into Peru’s memory. In Yungay, only some 350 people survived, including the few who were able to climb to the town’s elevated step-like cemetery. Among the survivors were 300 children, who had been taken to the circus at the local stadium, set on higher ground and on the outskirts of the town. To this day, a crushed intercity bus, four of the original palm trees that once crowned the city’s main plaza and remnants of the cathedral still stand. In 2000 the government declared May 31 “Natural Disaster Education and Reflection Day.”

(Mountain climbing in the Cordillera Blanca)

Cordillera Blanca's deadly avalanches

Cordillera Blanca
As mountains are often located in tectonically active zones, susceptibility to earthquakes is higher than in other areas. In the Andes, for example, as much as 88% of the mountainous area is susceptible to destructive earthquakes.

Cordillera Blanca glacier retreat since the late-19th century has triggered some of the world's most deadly avalanches and glacial lake outburst floods. Although a Peruvian glaciology and lakes security office has “controlled” 35 Cordillera Blanca glacial lakes, 30 glacier disasters have killed nearly 30,000 people in this region since 1941.

The accumulated precipitation values for November surpassed by 127% the average historic values and, in December, this value has reached 36%.

There are innumerable small to medium-size slope failures that cumulatively impose costs to society as great or greater than the large infrequent catastrophic landslides that draw so much attention. Damage to ecosystems has not generally been documented, but landslides may destroy habitats, for example by blocking streams and denuding slopes.

Lake Paron - looming danger:

Laguna Paron, Caraz, Peru
Currently, the Peruvian federal government has funded projects for the stabilization of 35 lakes that were considered to be the greatest threats to the populations inhabiting the valley below. The construction of tunnels prevents the increase in lake size above the tunnel outlet and dams are used to reinforce the existing, and potentially unstable, moraine walls

Lake Parón is a glacial lake in the Peruvian Andes, supporting a community of 15,000 people.  The people in the area live with the looming danger that, as the glacier above the lake continues to melt, the lake will overflow its banks, flooding the area and possibly killing many in the community. 

Duke Energy (a U.S. company) acquired the rights to control Lake Parón that provides water for hydroelectricity generation.  The community decided to reclaim control of the lake, and in 2008 it did just that.  The community has control of the area but they can't physically get inside the tunnel and change the water flow.  Lake Paron is fed with water derived from several large glaciers, and is surrounded by large peaks.  This lake - above Caraz, in the Northern part of the Cordillera - was once much visited, as it is 90 minutes of travel by car from Huaraz - a major town that serves as the jumping off point for those wishing to explore the region. However, the lake has now been dammed and tapped for hydroelectricity in order to support mining activities, and its has developed the characteristic and unsightly "high water mark" so characteristic of such reservoirs.

While Duke Energy has reaped solid economic rewards for its investment in Huaylas province, the Ancash Department maintains very high poverty levels despite its vast hydro and mineral resources.

The battle over the waters of Lake Parón, in the Northern Andes of Peru, came to a head during the late afternoon hours of July 29, 2008, when over 100 farmers from Huaylas province of the Department of Ancash took over the hydraulic operations of the Cañón del Pato Hydroelectic Center. The farmers were protesting the nearly 50% drop in Lake Parón's water levels following the center's release of the lake's water in order to enhance its power production capabilities.

The licensing of Lake Parón's waters for energy development in 1994 coincided with the enactment of structural reforms under the administration of then President Alberto Fujimori, who sought to attract foreign investment through privatization and pro-business economic policies.

The increase in the peasant population in the Andes area and the fact that, with global warming, it will become possible to cultivate, therefore irrigate, at ever higher altitudes, means that the resources required by traditional irrigation are set to grow and will increasingly be in competition with hydroelectric needs. Thus, even in the highest regions, there will be greater and more intense conflict between different users.

De-vegetation:

A mid-sized country with a large and highly biodiverse forest estate, Peru ranks within the top 10 countries worldwide in deforestation rates, emitting an estimated 127 million tons of CO2 equivalent per year.
In 1990, the total forest area in Latin America was 1,011 Mha, and it was reduced by 46.7 Mha in ten years (UNEP 2003a). The expansion of the agricultural frontier and livestock, selective logging, financing of big scale projects like construction of dams for energy generation, illegal crops, construction of roads and increased links to commercial markets have been the main causes of deforestation

Re-vegetation on such sites is a slow process, they may remain unprotected against erosion for decades or even centuries. As a result, slope failures, rockfall and debris flow will pose increasing threats to settlement and infrastructure. 

Sanitation and poverty:

Peru’s per capita GDP has historically remained well below the regional and world averages. It is estimated that 18.1% of the population lives on less than one dollar a day, and 37.7% of the population lives on less than two dollars per day. Peru continues to suffer from incomplete coverage of water and sanitation infrastructure. Inadequate sanitation and water supplies was evidenced by the 1993 cholera outbreak that spread rapidly across Peru.  If the national government does not promote the comprehensive management of water resources, then it is unlikely that regional departments will be able to single-handedly implement management regimes, especially in the context of limited funding.

Caring for Mother Earth:

The scientists of Western society have dismissed indigenous people as sentimental  and superstitious and accused them of being an obstacle to development. Paradoxically, those that previously turned deaf ears to our warnings, now are dismayed because their own model of "development” endangers our Mother Earth.

Pervian helicopters are airlifting tourists from the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu where hundreds remained stranded by heavy rains and mudslides that claimed seven lives.

Click image for the same hamster film that is in the teaser for this article.
Or click to go to thewebsite of the impossible hamster.
You can download a file about how long we have to go before, according to the New Economics group, climate change build up reaches tipping point.

The 2009 Copenhagen Summit “took note” of an 'Accord'.

Well, what a hell of an expensive note taking exercise that was!

The full cost of the Copenhagen Conference (or was it 'talk fest'?) should be disclosed including all return flights, accommodation, livestock killed and A4 paper printed off, etc. Given that green house gases are their specialty, the conference hosts (the UN) should also disclose the total tonnage of greenhouse gas emissions of this latest Conference of the Parties (COP15). This then must become the decadent standard never to be exceeded in future.

Why could the Copenhagen Conference not have been done online through a series of video conference calls? It would have set a leadership example of how human behaviour can be modified to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Stephen Minas in his review article ‘Flight From Copenhagen’ of 21 Dec 2009 at New Matilda is right – “Copenhagen shrank…from the comprehensive, legally binding treaty envisaged in the Bali Road Map”.

The Bali Road Map came out of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Climate Change Conference in Bali Indonesia in December 2007. Many developed and developing countries agreed to step up their efforts to combat climate change and adopted the ‘Bali Road Map’, which included the ‘Bali Action Plan’ charting the negotiating course leading up to the Copenhagen Conference in December 2009 (just gone).

But for the Copenhagen Conference to have been in an "oven-ready" political framework, capable of immediate implementation, time shouldn’t have been wasted since Bali. Just like cramming for an exam rarely works, drafting workable legislation, which was what Copenhagen was headlined to be, invariably takes many iterations of drafting and negotiating.

As Minas points out, "For the legally binding Copenhagen 'Accord' to have stood a chance of success, the positive willingness that emerged from Bali needed to have had its enthusiastic momentum tapped."

Between Bali and Copenhagen there were 24 months. What was achieved during those two years?

To label the outcome of Copenhagen Conference as an 'Accord' is false and misleading. An Accord is a binding agreement and that did not transpire. Copenhagen as an event was indeed an important global summit. But in terms of results, at best it was an 'in principle' broad undertaking by a few of the attending nations that requires follow up. Those now using such a label are only perpetuating the hype in an exercise of face saving - most notably China.

Perhaps the most poignant assessment of Copenhagen comes from Oxfam Executive Director, Andrew Hewett, in Fairfax's The Age and The Sydney Moring Herald papers simulateously dated 21 December 2009, in his article: 'Poorest of the poor ask why Copenhagen failed to listen'

"...it's hard to see how the Copenhagen 'Accord' delivers justice to people in poor countries that are least responsible for climate change but suffer its impacts right now.

The accord is an empty political statement, shredding two years of negotiations down to 2½ pages of purely aspirational goals.

While it recognises the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be kept below 2 degrees, it does not set out a trajectory for achieving this.

In February, countries will list their emissions reduction targets, which will be voluntary. They will have little to do with climate science and everything to do with the political climate in capitals around the world. If this is all the world can muster, we can expect a world that is 3.9 degrees warmer, year-round droughts in southern Africa, and water shortages affecting up to 4 billion additional people."

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One wonders what the thousands of delegates at Copenhagen achieved and whether any of them feel an obligation to follow up what is clearly unfinished business.

As for Australia's contribution, why was Australia not part of Obama's late minute accord that tried to salvage what was left of any undertakings over the two weeks?

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The Australian newspaper on 11th December 2009 reported 'Aussie footprint 1817 tonnes, and counting' by Christian Kerr:

"THE Australian delegation to the Copenhagen climate change conference could number 114, official documents reveal.

The carbon footprint for 114 people travelling to Copenhagen and back business class amounts to 1817 tonnes of emissions -- the equivalent to the annual output of 2500 people in Malawi. The list appears to contradict assurances from Kevin Rudd's office last weekend that fewer than 50 federal officials would attend.

It includes 10 attendees listed as members of the Prime Minister's personal staff, on top of six representatives from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

The names of 29 officials from the Department of Climate Change are listed, along with bureaucrats from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australian Agency for International Development, the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Treasury and the Bureau of Meteorology.

Tim Wilson from the Institute of Public Affairs, who discovered the list, told The Australian from Copenhagen yesterday: "I keep spotting commonwealth bureaucrats here. It seems to reflect the enormous bureaucracy that will grow to support any agreement from Copenhagen."

Was this Rudd putting on one hell of an extravagant staff Chistmas party to Scandinavia at taxpayer expense? If not, what return on investment did the Australian contingent make at Copenhagen?

See also: "A climate con: Analysis of the 'Copenhagen Accord' of 21 Dec 09.

I understand that Australia, if it keeps to its present course, is projected to grow its population by some 14 million people, or 65%, in just 25 years. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong of the growthist Labor administration of Kevin Rudd, was asked this question on September 21/09:

Interviewer:
"Minister, Australia's population is projected to increase by 65% to the level of 30m people by 2050. During that same period, the government is committed to cutting our carbon emissions by 60%. Aren't those goals or those facts mutually exclusive? How are we going to massively cut carbon as our population continues to massively grow?"

Penny Wong:
"Well, absolutely not, because the key issue with reducing emissions is that we have to de-link our levels of carbon pollution from economic growth and population growth. We have to ... Whereas the last few hundred years emissions growth - that is, growth in our carbon pollution - has essentially tracked our population and economic growth, we have to break that link and that the whole world has to break that link and so does Australia. So the key issue here is breaking that link, not, not trying to reduce population." Source: http://candobetter.org/node/1563

Letter to the Minister:

Penny, I have a weight problem. My doctor tells me that if I persist in eating a litre of ice-cream every day, I will increase my weight by 65% in just 25 months. But since it is chocolate ice-cream, I feel it is racist to pin the blame for my growing girth on it. I also feel that it is possible to “de-couple” my weight gain from my caloric intake.

In fact, while I now wolf down 4,000 calories a day, I believe that I should look forward to doubling that intake by 2035. I need a caloric stimulus package that will kick-start my body and brain from its current slow-down. I can compensate for any negative consequences by metabolizing the ice cream more efficiently. I call it “smart gluttony”, and already the environmental movement is wanting to adopt the phrase as a slogan for their “green living” tips.

If I buy green-coloured ice cream, lime-flavoured, it would be a symbolic statement of my fresh approach to a sustainable future for my body. As we know, cosmetic labeling in and of itself usually suffices for a substantive policy shift.

Ms. Wong, I must congratulate you for your faith in human ingenuity. Julian Simon was right. Malthusians chronically underestimate our intelligence. With enough brainpower, we can have our cake (or ice cream) and eat it too. Ice cream that doesn’t consist of calories. Growth that doesn’t result in carbon emissions. The Peter Pan School of Greenwash. Make a wish that growth will have no ecological cost, and that wish will make it true. Pure magic. Hey, I have seen that trick played in Canada too. We signed on to the Kyoto accords in 1990 with the promise that we would reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 6% by 2012 but by 2006 we were 22% beyond our emissions level in 1990. Of course, that had nothing to do with the fact that immigrant-driven growth has increased our population level by 22% (27.7 to 33.7 million today). Like the environmental establishment, we simply ‘de-coupled’ our imagination from reality. Population growth, where? Who cares? Perhaps we could become a race of 15 billion “breatharians” who simply subsist on air in a world where thirst is decoupled from water use and hunger is decoupled from food use. As our population grows, so grows the pool of our ideas. The sky is the limit!

Oh to be young again. Hopeful, credulous and cornucopian.

Tim Murray

Copenhagen was a deadline without a plan. Like Vikings, they rushed in. Too many issues, too many causes, too many delegates, too much reading, too many options and yet forced to deliver a global consensus solution in just 2 weeks!

Copenhagen's approach ought to have been pragmatic. It needed to come down from the statosphere in idealistic thinking to have focused on what could be the fastest means to offer the greatest reduction in greenhouse gases commencing in 2010.

Money is the obvious facilitator. The G11 response to the Global Financial Crisis 'Mark I' demonstrated the sheer scale of quick cash available from developed nations. Since developing nations need the cash, therein lies an obvious negotiating connector.

Try this scanario... rank countries on the basis of to aggregate carbon emissions and also carbon emissions per capita. The size of reduction responses and the amount of funding for carbon reduction programmes should be proportional on both bases. That is, the worst emitting developed nations pay more, and the worst emitting/deforesting developing nations get compensated more.

Pay compensation to countries to stop deforestation is simply a matter of money and there is certainly enough of that around it seems. This should start by Christmas - calculate the forest area, calculate the compensation value, sign the agreement, developing coutries countribute to a trust account, transfer the funds electronical to the host country of the forests, send in UN monitors to enforce the agreement to make sure no trees fall. If Copenhagen just did that, it would have achieve a significant inroad - 20% reduction in one year or something in that order.

News of the pledge by US based Climate Progress of US$1 billion over three years towards decreasing deforestation is an excellent outcome. The funding will go to developing countries that develop REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) programs.

Horse trading in emissions is pure problem avoidance.

Perhaps a less patriarchal culture may have helped too. Perhaps less Viking patriarchal culture and perhaps a more matriarchial approach to negotiation would have achieved better. The alpha male approach has clearly failed.

'COP15' was also a silly name. It just meant the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference. Rather than the meanlingless 'COP15' ('Conference of Parties' #15) , such a vital global forum series deserves a more accessible and meaningful name in order to better engage with ordinary folk. Perhaps the Greenhouse2009, then work towards Greenhouse2010, Greenhouse2011 and for each year, set and achieve a distinct global reduction outcome by legal treaty. Such numbering and annual frequency would better convey the sense of urgency.

Australia presently exports about 260Mt of coal each year, or about 30% of the world’s total coal export trade.

Coal produces 25% of the world's energy (including transport and heat), and 40% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions from fuel combustion . Coal is responsible for 88% of Australia's electricity generation, and 75% of Australia's greenhouse emissions from energy (including transport and heat).

"Every tonne of export Australian coal comes back to us as climate change – more droughts, water shortages and sea level rises," Ms Rhiannon, Greens MP and mining spokesperson, said.

Coal is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. When burned, it produces emissions that contribute to global warming, create acid rain and pollute water.

Carbon Capture and Storage - “Clean coal”:

Those who claim that “clean coal” can help solve the global climate change crisis are referring to a process called “Carbon Capture and Storage” (CCS) , also known as “geosequestration”. This refers to the capture of carbon dioxide emissions from a coal- or gas-fired power plant or other industrial source, transport via pipelines or haulage, and storage of the gas underground or in the ocean, in isolation from the atmosphere.

The Government is putting hundreds of millions of dollars towards championing the commercial use of carbon capture, regarded by many as a key to cutting greenhouse emissions from coal by storing the polluting gases deep below the surface.

A report, prepared by the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, finds the cost increase to coal electricity generation if fully-fledged clean coal technology is installed will be up to 78 per cent.

diagram source

ABARE predicts that Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6) has the potential to “reduce” global emissions in the year 2050 to between 11 and 23 percent lower than they would otherwise have been. This translates into a doubling of greenhouse emissions compared to today's levels.

ABARE's estimate assumes CCS deployment in all new coal plant in Australia, the US, and Japan from 2015, and in China, India, and South Korea from 2020. This seems hopelessly unrealistic, and it should be noted that the Federal ALP's enthusiastic embrace of CCS aims merely for commercialisation by 2030!

In 2006 a report by the Energy Supply Association estimated the wholesale cost of electricity would increase by about 50 per cent to make cuts of 30 per cent by 2030.  That's a 50% hike in electricity prices for a mere 30% reduction in emissions cut. 

According to the World Wildlife Fund: “The reality is that if CCS (or other renewable technologies) is ruled out or delayed we face the the reality of accepting a 2.5 - 3 degrees rise. If we reach a three-degree rise in temperature, 35 per cent of species will become extinct. “

Senator Brown cited generation of electricity as the largest source of green house gas emissions in Australia, noting further that 85 percent of our electricity generation comes from coal burning. " The government wants to inject billions of dollars into upgrading infrastructure in coal industries so we can export more rapidly once the recession is over.”

False hopes?

Former US deputy president Al Gore has likened "clean coal" to "healthy cigarettes" . 

"Clean" coal power stations are not viable until the carbon price reaches a minimum of $60 a tonne, and that is not predicted to happen before 2030, according to Rudd government's own global carbon capture and storage institute.

A recent Greenpeace International report, tracking all peer-reviewed studies of 'clean coal technologies', found that it remains a false hope peddled by coal industry PR merchants and some governments who are in their back pockets (eg. New South Wales).

According to the report:

CCS cannot deliver in time to avoid dangerous climate change.

CCS wastes energy.

Storing carbon underground is risky.

CCS is expensive.

CCS carries significant liability risks.

"The climate crisis requires urgent action. Climate scientists warn that to avoid the worst effects, global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2015 and then start falling by at least 50% by 2050, compared to 2000 levels".

Dr Mike Raupach, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research and the Global Carbon Project:

Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is likely to reach the first climate change danger level by 2028 and if emissions growth continues at the present rate, the point of no return will be reached with dire consequences by 2046, according to new scientific research published at the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr Mark Diesendorf:
This is unproven technology. The reality is that this unproven technology needs a lot of research, development and demonstration. The timescale for developing this technology is longer than getting nuclear power up.

Yet if each person in the world had produced as much carbon as the average Australian, the total release of fossil carbon would have been four times higher.

Nations such as China and India may be in the top five emitters by volume, but on a per capita basis they are both way below the world average. As they industrialise, their per capita rate will go up.

Former Greenpeace International chief executive Paul Gilding said there was growing frustration at the Howard Government and now Labor for building their climate change policy response around long-term charismatic mega-projects with 40-year targets like clean-coal technology and nuclear power.

"It's easy for politicians to make statements about the long term because they don't require much policy action or affect voters now." ( The Australian in April 2007)

Emissions per capita:

Australia has surpassed the US as the world’s biggest per capita producer of carbon emissions, according to a report by a British risk consultancy.

Analyst Maplecroft estimates that Australian CO2 output per head of population now stands at 20.5 tons annually, putting it ahead of the 19.7 tons emitted by the average American.  By comparison, China – which emits more carbon overall than any nation – has a per capita average of about 4.5 tons. In India, where greenhouse gases are expected to double by 2031, emissions are just 1.1 tons per person.

An  audit, by the Global Carbon Project, found carbon dioxide levels from human activities are increasing by about 2 per cent per year, or 1.3 tonnes of carbon per capita.  By 2011, emissions will have "recovered" to something like 3 per cent per year, roughly what they were before the global financial crisis.

Scientists blame an increasing use of coal for the continuing rise in carbon emissions.

Livestock industries:

According to the WorldWatch Institute Livestock now account for 50 percent of emissions from agriculture and land-use change.
"Indeed, a cow/calf pair on a beef farm are responsible for more GHG emissions in a year than someone driving 8,000 miles in a mid-size car.  Serious action on climate will almost certainly have to involve reducing consumption of meat and dairy by today’s major consumers and slowing the growth of demand in developing countries."

Population Growth:

The Economics of Climate Change Report by Sir Nicholas Stern, former World Bank chief economist, clearly shows that reducing greenhouse gas emissions immediately is the cheapest option and essential to limiting the total damage climate change will bring.
How do we immediately reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?

The UN Population Fund report predicted that the global population could reach 10.5 billion by 2050, up from 6.8 billion today, unless urgent action was taken to reduce fertility rates. It said that even its medium-growth forecast of 2.3 billion more people by 2050, which assumes a fall in average fertility from 2.56 to 2.02 children per woman, would make it much harder to achieve the cuts in carbon emissions needed to prevent catastrophic climate change. 

Investing in birth control to reduce population growth could be more effective in cutting greenhouse gas emissions than building wind turbines or nuclear power stations, according to a United Nations report.

The emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialisation and strong economic growth from a world population that has increased sixfold in 200 years , is causing global warming at a rate that began as significant, has become alarming and is simply unsustainable in the long term.

"Even if humankind failed to produce a single baby during the next generation, its life on Planet Earth would still be endangered by climate change.
On the other hand, if the per capita consumption levels of the relatively small and slow-growing developed countries (under the same technological and environmental control conditions) were to be achieved by some of the large and/or rapidly-growing countries, the serious environmental problems of Planet Earth would inevitably take a quantum leap".

 
Can cleaner coal technologies really increase and overtake our rate or industrialisation and population growth without blowing out the costs? With the failure of Copenhagen summit, a more realistic "solution" to climate change would be to reduce our population with birth control, surely.

Copenhagen indeed has proven yet 'Another overhyped talkfest in a series of duds!'

Copenhagen's much hyped COP15 was all navel gazing on communications consultants' hype. Like Copenhagen tourism, I bet the consultants pocketed nicely! And what a setting, beautifully detached Copenhagen!

Arrogant to the needs of developing nations and of sea-level nations and strangely even to the needs of developed nations, Copenhagen was doomed to fail. Copenhagen was doomed to fail simply on the basis of distrust on entry by each of the 192 nations and on account of the threatening opening speech of the conference.

The previous climate forum of 12 years before, labelled the 'Kyoto Protocol', had developed/industrial nations in breach of its undertakings. So with trust breached by industrial nations going into Copenhagen, any offerings of goodwill by developing nations had been undermined before the Danish talks commenced.
So on the back of this leadership shamozzle, do gooding Scandanavians held fast to host 192 disunited countries make cast iron national decisions under the pressure of just 2 weeks. Forced marriages are outlawed in civilised countries these days.

Worse is that the participants were being asked to commit to economic restrictions in the wake of a global financial crisis so that the UN could impose a sense of idealism at a time when pragmatically traits of a recession lingered. Perhaps this aim was a tad adventurous.

When it comes to complex global issues posing long-term adverse economic, social and environmental consequences whose expectations thought a two week brainstorming session by opposing ideologies under duress would deliver a silver bullet consensus blueprint appeasing developed and developing nations in one go?

It's Alice in Wonderland and if the Danish government were accountable beyond its tourism boom it would make publicly transparent the total conference costs, the total greenhouse gas emissions by staging the conference.

Copenhagen was just another wasteful talkfest as predicted. The Scandinavians should think twice next time about offering their white knight image to solve the dirty world's problems.

Tuvalu should host the next one in a year's time, at the complete expense of the top 3 worst greenhouse gas polluters. Nothing like working at the 'coal face' to deal with the real problems and issues.

But wherever the next conference is held, it must be preceded by a series of multilateral negotiations on each of the issues with agreements and funding already legally secured. This should be done using online conferencing not airline fuels. Such a complex overarching conference can only be a consolidation of previously secured agreements.

Source of small picture with coat-hanger in teaser was http://new.savethecourt.org/content/womens-rights

I am frankly sick and tired of growth-promoters raising the spectre of “coercive population measures” whenever a suggestion is made that we must promote family planning or smaller families. Is there some sacred reason why fertility should not be limited if deemed necessary? In a world of 6.8 billion people going on 9 or 10 billion, or in any nation suffering from exponential population growth, there can be no “pro-creative” right.

This must not be confused with “reproductive” rights. Women should have the right not to have children. But they have no right, in the context of overshoot, to have as many children as they or their husbands want. The “right to choose” cannot be the right to abuse. Even the most jealously guarded right must be measured against equally fundamental rights, most especially the right of our species, and others, to live.

I have, at present, the "right" to drive a car. But I do not have a right to drive it over the speed limit. And it is society that establishes that limit, not me. Indeed, if society determines that there are too many people driving cars, it has the moral right to impose petroleum taxes, restrict parking permits and spaces, put tolls on highways and bridges and employ an assortment of other measures to discourage me from driving. I similarly have the right to go fishing, but I don't have the right to catch as many fish as I may like. In the face of shortages, we have come to accept that our collective right to achieve sustainability supersedes any individual “right”. The number of consumers who will compete for critically scarce resources is surely every bit as important as the number of people who go fishing and how many fish they catch. If there is a licence needed to fish, why should there not, in principle at least, be a licence required to inflict a child upon the rest of society? Am I advocating “coercion”? Absolutely. Coercion if necessary, but not necessarily coercion. Mutual coercion mutually agreed upon, if voluntary efforts, yet to be exhausted, prove ineffective. But would fertility controls represent the introduction of coercion where none presently exists? Absolutely not.

Let's get real. A great many women in the undeveloped world at least, are having children precisely because they are coerced. Coerced by husbands, priests and mullahs to have more than the number they want. Coerced by their cultural programming to give male wishes greater priority than their own. Coerced by their lack of access to birth control information, and by the denial of educational opportunities. This is where coercion makes itself most present. Not in China. Not by communist bureaucrats and law-makers. But by the dictates of domestic and religious patriarchal power.

And what of my rights? What about my right not to see my share of non-renewable resources diminished by the “personal” decision of the couple down the street to have an unnecessary child? Did they consult me about their decision to conceive another Canadian, an earth-trampling shopping machine who emits 23 metric tonnes of carbon each year, consumes 40,000 pounds of metals and minerals and accounts for over 150 pounds of curb side waste each day? Did they submit an application to the local planning authority or town council for a permit to stress the environment even further than it is being stressed? Why is their “right” to create more life considered more fundamental than our right to sustain the life that is already here? Why should the human population level of a country or a planet be subject to the whimsy and haphazard “personal” decisions of fertile individuals? Why must they replicate their own genes? Why are so many children forced to live in orphanages, foster homes and on the squalid streets of sprawling cities to fend for themselves while irrational ego-trippers generate more children just because they want to raise someone with the same pair of ears or eyes as they have? Children do not have to share your genes to share your love.

I wouldn't dream of telling anyone to have a child. So why would anyone tell me that I should move over for theirs? To paraphrase Hilary Clinton, it takes a whole ecosystem to raise a child, and as a charter member of it, I have the right to participate in the decisions that affect me. On an overloaded planet anybody's pregnancy is everybody's business. For every extra billion we grow in number, another 200 billion tonnes of Green House Gases are emitted, and to effectively reduce emissions, we must, among other things, reduce the number of emitters. Unfettered procreative rights are of little value on a dead planet. Beyond a certain point, parenthood is not a service but an imposition, not only upon humanity, but disproportionately upon the most disempowered and poorest part of it, the very people whom many Western feminists and human rights crusaders are most concerned with. How can an unsustainable population level enhance their rights? Can anyone seriously contend that the sum total of unplanned or unwanted pregnancies does not restrict personal autonomy more than the most intrusive family planning program? Or maintain that the absence of effective birth control is not the most coercive regime that women can suffer?

Just who is coercing whom?

Tim Murray, Quadra Island, BC

The Great Barrier Reef is one of the seven wonders of the natural world.

It is larger than the Great Wall of China and the only living thing on earth visible from space.
The Great Barrier Reef includes over 2,900 reefs, around 940 islands and cays, and stretches 2,300 kms along the Queensland coastline. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is 345,000 km2, that's larger than the entire area of the UK and Ireland combined!
The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) contributes $5.4 billion annually to the Australian economy - $5.1 billion from the tourism industry; $153 million from recreational activity; and $139 million from commercial fishing.
Over the past one hundred years, the temperature of sea water in many tropical areas has been rising. For example, the Australian Institute of Marine Science has collated data showing that 2002 was the warmest year for water temperatures off northeast Australia since 1870.

Impacts on the GBR causing bleaching:

Rising water temperatures block the photosynthetic reaction that converts carbon dioxide into sugar. This results in a build-up of products that poison the zooxanthellae, the single-celled plants that live in the tissues of animals. They are dinoflagellates, a group of microscopic plants which are usually found swimming and floating in the sea. Organisms which live like this are called plankton, and those that are plants are called phytoplankton. To save itself, the coral spits out the zooxanthellae and some of its own tissue, leaving the coral a bleached white.

In Australia alone, the 2002 bleaching saw nearly 60 per cent of the reef suffer bleaching and, in the worst areas, 90 per cent of the coral was bleached.

Coral reef bleaching is caused by various anthropogenic and natural variations in the reef environment including sea temperature, solar irradiance, sedimentation, subaerial exposure, inorganic nutrients, freshwater dilution, and epizootics (a disease that appears as new cases in a given animal population, during a given period, at a rate that substantially exceeds what is "expected" based on recent experience). Coral bleaching events have been increasing in both frequency and extent worldwide in the past 20 years.

[Tridacna crocea giant clam. Although in the giant clam family this small clam rarely gets more than 10 centimeters long. This species is normally found in shallow intertidal reef flats where its symbiotic zooxanthellae can get the most sunlight for photosynthesis. ] photo courtesy Wikimedia commons.

Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies told a meeting at the Canberra parliament:

Climate Change Alliance scientists briefed
politicians from all sides (17th Nov) that the reef is facing a bleak future.

The Alliance, which is led by Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies president Ken Baldwin, will warn MPs and senators that the reef is on the frontline of climate change.

Professor Terry Hughes and representatives told the meeting at the Canberra parliament that the future of the reef, and a large chunk of Australia's tourist industry, was under grave threat from rising sea temperatures.

Global carbon emissions must be cut by at least 25 per cent by 2020 to give the Great Barrier Reef a better than 50/50 chance of survival, the alliance of Australia's reef and climate scientists says.

The 13 scientists said even deeper cuts of up to 90 per cent by 2050 would be necessary if the reef were to survive future coral bleaching and coral death caused by rising ocean temperatures.

“We’ve seen the evidence with our own eyes. Climate change is already impacting the Great Barrier Reef,” Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, said in a briefing to Australian MPs.

Damage to habitat of marine species:

Professor Charlie Veron, Prof. Hoegh-Guldberg, Dr Janice Lough of Centre Of Excellence Coral Reef Studies
and the Australian Institute of Marine Science and colleagues warn in a new scientific paper published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin: 'Damage to shallow reef communities will become extensive with consequent reduction of biodiversity followed by extinctions,' they add. 'Reefs will cease to be large-scale nursery grounds for fish and will cease to have most of their current value to humanity. There will be knock-on effects to ecosystems associated with reefs, and to other (marine) ecosystems.'

Prof Veron told the British Royal Society recently that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef would be on ‘death row’ unless urgent action was taken to stem global carbon emissions.

'We are tracking the IPCC’s worst case scenario. The global CO2 situation, tracked by temperature and sea level rise, is now following the worst case scenario,' he says. 'The people meeting at Copenhagen need to hear this message.'

Prof Hoegh-Guldberg warns 'We are already well above the safe levels for the world’s coral reefs....
'We are already well above the safe levels for the world’s coral reefs. The proposed 450ppm/2 degree target is dangerous for the world’s corals and for the 500 million people who depend on them.'

Prof Veron: "It will cost less than 1 per cent of GDP growth (over the next 50 years) to sort this problem out. In times of war individual countries have devoted anything from 40 to 70 per cent of their GDP to the war effort, so the effort required to cease emitting carbon is far, far smaller. It is completely affordable, completely achievable.

The Solution- emissions reduction:

"The Great Barrier Reef will only survive if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by at least 25 per cent and even then that only gives it an even money chance,'' Baldwin said.

It has said it would go further, with a 25 per cent cut, if a tough international climate agreement is reached at UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December, but this is looking increasingly unlikely with legally binding targets now off the agenda.

"Unprecedented coral bleaching and extensive mortality due to thermal stress affected over 50 per cent of the GBR in 1998 and 2002, when summer maximum water temperatures were elevated by only 1-2oC," The University of Queensland's Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said.

Other threats to GBR:

Over-fishing is another cause for concern because when parrotfish and large herbivorous fish are removed from reef food webs, it allows an increase in Sargassum algae and cyanobacteria that form large beds over the coral. This blocks off the light to the zooxanthellae algae and affects the resilience of corals. That is, it affects their ability to recover from coral bleaching events.

Tougher regulations on farm chemicals are needed following rain that caused one million megalitres of pollution to spew into the great barrier reef, environmentalists say. Relatively low levels of herbicide residues can reduce the productivity of marine plants and corals. However, the risk of these residues to Great Barrier Reef ecosystems has been poorly quantified due to a lack of large-scale datasets. Elevated herbicide concentrations were particularly associated with sugar cane cultivation in the adjacent catchment.

5% reduction in CO2 is not enough:

Australia is one of the world's biggest CO2 emitters per capita, but has only pledged to cut its emissions by five per cent from 2000 levels by 2020. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that the Great Barrier Reef could be "functionally extinct" within decades, with deadly coral bleaching likely to be an annual occurrence by 2030.

Our environmental “capital” has intrinsic, financial, ecological, environmental and socials value, but without an exact dollar value, it is easily dismissed in the quest for industrialisation, growth, profits and exports. The GBR is an area of great beauty, complexity and mystery. We need to understand the massive stresses our cities and industries are placing on these dynamic and fragile ecosystems.

If the environmental cost of population growth and a developed economy is the loss of our natural heritage and world-famous resources, then the growth mentality of our leaders and economists needs to change with the changing environment.

Thargomindah's “Invasion” of kangaroos and emus

According to a new report a “plague” of kangaroos has descended on the outback Queensland town of Thargomindah in search of food and water due to the drought. Residents of the small town in Queensland have been subject to a “biblical invasion” of kangaroos and emus over the past few days and it’s causing quite a stir in this small outback community.

Map of Thargomindah

Bulloo Mayor John Ferguson says the shire has been struggling with drought since 2001 and conditions are probably the worst they have been in more than 40 years. Councillor Ferguson says most graziers have destocked their properties because there is no feed left, even for kangaroos or emus.

The Burke and Wills 'Dig Tree', 300 km west, tells a story of explorer misfortune, bad luck and bad timing. It was under the shade of this Coolabah tree on the Banks of Cooper Creek that the explorers established their Base Camp in November of 1860. This town was the first in Australia and the third in the world to have street lighting generated by hydro power back in 1893.

“Swarm” proportions

According to a local farmer, “they’re swarm proportions, you have no idea, it gives you a creepy feeling when you see them that thick”. He also says that despite good rain to the east, none fell west of Thargomindah and Eromanga. The “plague” or “curse” is not the kangaroos!

The “exploding kangaroo population” in Thargomindah Queensland, apparently, is because Russia has banned the sale of roo meat.  It sounds like the kangaroo industry pushing their own agenda! The media has reported stupid things like a a woman who was too scared to hang her washing out because of the kangaroo coming close to the town, implying very strongly that they are creating a safety problem as well!

Apart from the emotive and derogatory wording, the situation is indicative of the condition of Australia. Apparently Tharomindah's population of 250 are so “run over” that there are five roos for every person! The local sergeant claimed it was not the first time they had been “ender siege” from the kangaroos!

Clearly, they see their national symbols as the threat, and they on alert for a war against these generally gentle animals.

Theromindah's worst drought in 50 years has hardened hearts against their indigenous inhabitants

Tharomindah is having the worst drought in 50 years and it has left the region desolate.
The temperature reached 41 degrees Celsius recently and Bulloo Mayor John Ferguson says the onset of hot conditions is a huge worry for landholders.

When farmers remove stock from their paddocks because of lack of feed, many of them add urea to the water troughs to kill any kangaroos that come to drink.

If our wildlife are the canaries in the mine, then surely this is a very dire situation and indicative of the terrible toll under which our environment, due to drought and climate change, are under. The industry propaganda states that currently kangaroos are starving to death, and it's kinder to shoot them.

Climate change is exacerbating existing threats

Climate change may happen too quickly for some species to adapt and may exacerbate existing threats such as land clearance, farming and pollution. Australian species with biological traits that make them susceptible to change, or with restricted habitats, are particularly vulnerable to extinction.

Australia already has the worst rate of mammal extinction in the world. Almost 40 per cent of mammal extinctions globally in the last 200 years have occurred in Australia. This incredible continent is losing species at an unprecedented rate and, as most species found here aren’t found anywhere else, the loss of Australian species is a loss for the whole world.

Two of the four species that are extinct on the mainland survive today on a few offshore islands. This trend of extinction and isolation may continue as a result of climate change.

At the time of European settlement the Bridled Nail-Tail Wallaby was a common species.  It now survives in only five percent of the area it once inhabited. They are the only species of rock-wallaby in Victoria, and were once found in large numbers in rocky areas prior to European settlement.

There were once 10,000,000 Mala Hare Wallabies right across Australia in arid and semi-arid areas. The species is now considered to be extinct in the wild.

The list of extinctions of once “common” species is a deadly roll call. Yet, people still don't understand or have compassion for today's common species.

Six macropod species are extinct, 7 are endangered

Out of our 49 macropod species, 6 have become extinct, 7 are endangered and 10 classed as vulnerable due to their small population in restricted areas, and numbers of the remaining species are killed annually.

Incessant and unsustainable commercial shooting has decimated kangaroo populations throughout rural Australia.

A new study published in the December issue of the University of Chicago’s Physiological and Biochemical Zoology found that an increase in average temperature of only two degrees Celsius could have a devastating effect on populations of Australia’s iconic kangaroos.

Authors Euan G. Ritchie and Elizabeth E. Bolitho of James Cook University in Australia say that generally accepted climate models predict temperatures in northern Australia to be between 0.4 and two degrees warmer by 2030, and between two and six degrees warmer by 2070.  Ritchie and Bolitho found that a two-degree temperature increase may shrink its range by 89 percent.
They found that a temperature increase as small as a half-degree Celsius may shrink kangaroos’ geographic ranges.  Pasture and water holes drying up  "may result in starvation and failed reproduction … or possible death due to dehydration for those species that are less mobile.”

We have the highest number of livestock per head in the world! Kangaroos are scapegoats and being vilified for livestock damage and the lack of willingness of landholders to tolerate any animals other than livestock on their land.

Language of hate and fear

The description of kangaroos as a “plague” and a threat is disgraceful and disrespectful of our national icons. People think that kangaroos are indestructible, but climate change and the drought are obviously taking its toll on our wildlife.

The lack of compassion and fear is really astounding! Livestock eat much more than kangaroos, and are clearing our land of trees and native pasture. If they are desperate for food and water, they are indicative of what is to become of Australia - a sterile, hot and dry lifeless desert!

They don't deserve to be begrudged some food.

Bridled Nail Tail Wallaby was a common species.

With just six weeks until the 2009 Kobenhavn Climate Conference, the global community has not much time to review and assess the failures of well-intentioned multilateral undertakings, commitments and promises at such global talkfests of living memory:

2008 - Rudd's 2020 Summit - how far are the results along the tri-election-cycled 12 year milestone?
2005 - Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
2005 - World Summit
2004 - Bali Strategic Plan for Technology Support and Capacity Building
2002 - Earth Summit in Johannesburg
2002 - World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD)
2001 - Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)
2000 - Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety
2000 - Malmö Declaration - first Global Ministerial Forum on the Environment
2000 - Millennium Declaration - environmental sustainability included as one of eight Millennium Development Goals
1998 - Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent
1997 - Kyoto Protocol
1995 - Global Programme of Action (GPA) launched to protect marine environment from land-based sources of pollution
1992 - Rio Earth Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development)
1992 - Convention on Biological Diversity
1989 - Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes
1988 - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
1987 - Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer
1985 - Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer
1979 - Bonn Convention on Migratory Species
1975 - Mediterranean Action Plan first UNEP-brokered Regional Seas agreement
1973 - Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)
1972 - Stockholm United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE)

Twenty three very noble and ideal talkfests!
Most of these may be found at:
United Nations Environment Programme

But where are the results of all the undertakings, commitments, promises and hype?

Why are the total costs of these talkfest not disclosed? - the immense public cost of collective high emitting airfares, the extravagance of flying the delegates business class' and five star aristocratic accommodation, plus the salary costs of all involved apportioned to these events, copious catering, one-off extravagant printing, and the many event overheads unquestioned to date? The TOTAL SUMMIT COST is reflective on the authenticity of any such E-summit. Event organisers (politicians) must be held publicly to account for costs and condemned for such hypocritical largesse.

And what's wrong with online conferencing from home - it would probably save the outlay equivalent to the annual GDP of a small third world country!

Each talk fest should be accountable for on ground results and at the very least a positive Return on Talkfest Investment (ROTI) before launching head long into the next extravaganza. Cut the E-hype! Demand results of past promises and start sacking underperforming UN bureaucrats.

Emission Cut Recommendation:
'By 2020, the E-20 (world's 20 top emitters) fully replace their coal-fired power stations with geothermal power stations and use the redundant open-cut coal mines as non-toxic landfill. UN to provide a financial incentive for each country that does so with granting a 100% national debt forgiveness. Only such large scale pragmatic 'do-able' actions will make a noticeable reduction in global emissions.

Green taxes are well accepted in Scandinavian countries.

Since 1991 Sweden has had a carbon tax of 103 Euros per tonne per taxpayer
It is not compensated in any way and it is not a focus of political protest.

Sweden is proud of the way its towns and cities open out onto green and wild natural spaces.

The tax represents one quarter of the price of petrol and diesel, but most Swedes do not realise this, since the tax is not stated at the pumps.
A litre of diesel costs 1.11 Euros of which 30 centimes is carbon tax.
Driving habits have not changed so much, but domestic heating systems have.
Fuel heating is often swapped for electric heating, with one third subsidised by the state.
The cost of electricity, however, has risen.

Families pay 4 times as much for carbon emissions than industry does, but housing rights are guaranteed and workers have good industrial and unemployment protection and guaranteed rights to free health care.

The government believes that carbon emissions have been reduced by 9% in Sweden due to the tax.
At the same time their economic growth has increased by 40% in 18 years.

Now the average Swedish person emits one tonne less of carbon than a French person, and 16 tonnes less than an American.

Swedish reality is a challenge to the very inferior future that US, British, Canadian and Australian governments and media market to their own populations. Why do we put up with it? Perhaps because we are told that no other way exists.

(Source: France 2 News 26 October 2009)

Population numbers in Sweden

Sweden's population was 8 million in 1974 and reached 9 million in 2004, at a rate which would lead to 10 million in 23 years.

In fact Sweden's population has not increased significantly since 1995, when it began to level out after a steep growth curve.
Most of the increase over deaths is due to immigration from within Western Europe. (Radio Sweden 12 August).

Unlike Australia, the Swedes have learned not to overshoot their carrying capacity and to retain democracy through protecting the established population's networks.
Australia, to the contrary, practices demographic splintering and top-down government, based on an unsustainable extractive commodity and land-speculation economy.

Sweden is able to have a healthy economy and good multi-party democracy where it provides far superior rights to its citizens than Australia does, and in the context of trends to population stability! Compare this actuality to the ideology promoted by the Australian government and the Murdoch media.

In the 19th century, Sweden's yearly population growth rate peaked at 1.2% (i.e. it doubled in less than 60 years), compared to 1% today (migration excluded). This considerable population growth rate led, before the Industrial Revolution, to a pauperization of the rural population, for each generation inherited smaller and smaller shares. Due to years of crop failure in the 1840s and 1860s, the U.S. Homestead Act of 1862, and to a lesser extent religious persecution, emigration started and grew. Between 1850 and 1930 1,050,000 Swedes emigrated (re-migration excluded), chiefly to Canada, U.S. and to Denmark. If they had not left, Sweden's population would have been about 2,000,000 higher today, given that famine and civil war hadn't been the outcome of their staying. (After 1929 the net-migration has been directed towards Sweden.) Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden

Housing Rights

Sweden has a strictly regulated rental market, with laws and taxes that prohibit speculation. (The Australian housing industry would not last a minute there.)
Housing rights are legally guaranteed in Sweden for citizens or legal immigrants. This is also the case in EU countries. (Britain, with an exploitative private housing dominated market similar to Australia's, is going to have a very hard time conforming to this requirement of EU participation.)

Work and standard of living

There is no national minimum wage law. Wages were set by collective bargaining contracts every year. Nonunion establishments generally observe these contracts. Substantial benefits (e.g., housing, childcare) provided by social welfare entitlement programs assured even the lowest-paid workers and their families a decent standard of living. Foreign companies employing workers from their country of origin at wage levels below minimums stipulated in domestic collective-bargaining contracts created frictions in the labor market. For example, in one case, Swedish workers blocked a work site in the city of Vaxholm because construction workers from Latvia, who had been contracted to build a school, did not have collective agreements with a Swedish union.

The legal standard workweek is 40 hours or less. Both the law and collective bargaining agreements regulate overtime and rest periods. The maximum allowable overtime per year is two hundred hours. The law requires a minimum period of 36 consecutive hours of rest, preferably on weekends, during a period of 7 days. The law also provides employees with a minimum of five weeks' paid annual leave. The government effectively enforced these standards.

The work environment authority, a government?appointed board, issued occupational health and safety regulations; trained union stewards, safety ombudsmen, and government inspectors monitored them. Safety ombudsmen have the authority to stop unsafe activity immediately and to call in an inspector. These rules were effectively enforced. Work places were generally safe and healthy. In law and practice, workers could remove themselves from situations that endangered their health or safety without jeopardizing their future employment.

(Source: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61677.htm)

In the lead-up to International Day of Action (Oct 24th),
The Wilderness Society invites you to join us in the Central Highlands of Victoria, home to the most carbon dense forests on the planet.
On October 18th come and be part of a giant in a logged forest to show the world that protecting our native forests is crucial to reducing carbon in the atmosphere to well below 350ppm.
Aerial photographs will be taken on the day to capture our message and will be passed on via www.350.org
DATE, TIME: 10am Sunday Oct 18th
WHERE: Meet @ Wild Thyme Café, Warburton, then drive to local logged forest
WEAR: Red clothing
WHAT TO BRING: Lunch, sunshine
BE PART OF THE PICTURE!
To register interest please contact:
amelia.young[AT]wilderness.org.au
or (03) 9038 0888.
Transport Pooling from 288 Brunswick St, Fitzroy!

The CSIRO recently released their Home Energy Saving Handbook – How to save energy, save money and reduce your carbon footprint.

CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet championed a high animal protein plan - lots of beef, lamb and dairy - which was perhaps not surprising, given that the research behind it was partly funded by the Meat and Livestock Industry and Dairy Australia.

Western Victoria state Liberal MP John Vogels, has slammed the CSIRO's Home Energy Saving Handbook, which promotes vegetarian diets to reduce agricultural green house gas emissions.

According to John Vogels, the CSIRO should apologise to meat and livestock farmers for stating what is scientifically clear - that a move towards a plant-based diet is not only a way to limit greenhouse gas emissions and environmental destruction, but also a route to a healthier diet. "It seems tofu-munching climate change extremists and animal libbers have taken over the CSIRO, wasting taxpayer funds to publish books designed to wipe out our agriculture industries with the ultimate goal of forcing farmers off the land,'' Mr Vogels said.

The book grudgingly admits that although all that meat requires high greenhouse emissions, eating "high-carbohydrate, healthy heart and vegetarian diets…..is an easy way to lose weight and one way to adapt to a lower consumption diet".

In 2007 this MP
attacked Philip Wollen of the Winsome Constance Kindness Trust for telling the truth about the negative impacts of the dairy industry, even going so far as to question his Australian of the Year award. According to him, he could “afford" to be vegan? Surely the diet is actually cheaper?

Vogels says that the Home Energy Saving Handbook was "thinly veiled propaganda advocating Australians change to a vegetarian lifestyle in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If the populace took this book seriously our beef, sheepmeat, pork, poultry and dairy industries would be at risk because the authors want everyone to move to vegetable diets to reduce personal carbon footprints…” Exactly!

Somewhat contradictorily, Vogels is “pro-life" – against abortions. Apparently this does not include the lives of animals that routinely suffer mutilations, confinement and slaughter to feed our commercial meat and dairy demands. His “pro”-life stand does not include protecting our future generations from the devastation of climate change, or consumers from cancers and other diseases associated with high levels of meat and dairy consumption.

According to the book, the average person’s carbon footprint is about 20 tonnes of CO2 per year (not including emissions from our exported goods) and the biggest contribution to this figure comes from the food, goods and services we buy (about 60 per cent of the total).

The agricultural sector is estimated to account for about 16% of Australia’s total greenhouse emissions (National Greenhouse Gas Inventory 2006) making it the second largest source of greenhouse emissions in the economy. Most if it is from livestock emissions, and that doesn’t include transport, processing and cooking!

With health, the environmental burden, animal welfare and climate change concerns of eating livestock products, surely it is time our diets came under scrutiny from numerous levels? Being enslaved to traditions and tastes should be challenged.

The world demand for food and fibre will double within a single lifetime, eclipsing climate change as the world's next great challenge, experts told the National Agrifood conference in Sydney on 24 September.

Being constantly on top of the food chain is an extravagance in terms of natural resource usage, as well as pollution and methane emissions. Maybe it is time for our Government to actually promote alternative “green” plant-based foods to alleviate the demand for livestock products and transform our agricultural industries so that they become more carbon-neutral. The dinosaurs like Vogels need to be challenged!

A recent CSIRO/NASA report on rainfall in Australia’s southeast revealed that the prolonged drought there may no longer technically be a drought - lower rainfall levels may be the new normal.

Economic considerations always seem to over-ride logic and reasoning!
Science should be objective, and the CSIRO should not have been sponsored by industries with a conflict of interests. They do not have to apologise!

We constantly hear the use of the arguments of JOBS and ECONOMIC BENEFITS to justify environmental consumption!

Australian series

Andrew Robb, Federal Opposition member for Goldstein is the latest amongst a series of Australian politicians to announce a battle with mental depression.

I understand this illness is more prevalent in Australian politicians than in those of other countries.

I have had some thoughts about the reasons for this.

Are Australian politicians simply more inclined to come out public with the diagnosis or is depression among politicians actually more widespread in this country than in others?

A theory to explain

I can understand why the job might cause this state of mind in an intelligent and well meaning politician. Politicians must have to constantly make compromises and vote for decisions that they know are not in the best interests of their constituents, but instead in the interests of powerful lobby groups.

Eventfully they must have to delude themselves that they are doing the right thing.

Climate change policy as a cause of mental stress in politicians

Greenhouse gas and climate change policies are areas of particular parliamentary stress and Andrew Robb has been involved heavily in this area for the opposition.

Stress of Carbon-reduction policy example

We might also look at the case of Penny Wong (who has not so far announced depression), which I would have thought carried some big stressors. She was interviewed at the beginning of this week by Fran Kelly for the ABC, who on 21 September 09, asked her how she could reconcile a rapidly growing Australian population with a target of a marked reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Wong's answer to this question drew amazed gasps from the ecologically literate community. She said that targets could be achieved by de-linking the population numbers for the greenhouse gas emissions. Since she gave no further details to explain how such a thermodynamic breakthrough might be achieved for the first time in the history of the universe, one tends to assume that she is engaging in political wishful thinking.

Here is our transcript:

Interviewer:
"Minister, Australia's population is projected to increase by 65% to the level of 30m people by 2050. During that same period, the government is committed to cutting our carbon emissions by 60%. Aren't those goals or those facts mutually exclusive? How are we going to massively cut carbon as our population continues to massively grow?"

Penny Wong:
"Well, absolutely not, because the key issue with reducing emissions is that we have to de-link our levels of carbon pollution from economic growth and population growth. We have to ... Whereas the last few hundred years emissions growth - that is, growth in our carbon pollution - has essentially tracked our population and economic growth, we have to break that link and that the whole world has to break that link and so does Australia. So the key issue here is breaking that link, not, not trying to reduce population."

Perhaps, in fact, Penny Wong holds two conflicting pieces of knowledge in her head and copes with this by "de-linking" them. This is how the thinking might go:

"The population is growing dangerously fast and causing increasing greenhouse emissions.
We have to satisfy the public by promising to reduce greenhouse emissions.
We also want to avoid making the growth lobby angry by stopping ramping up population growth to unheard of heights.
This is impossible. I am going to go mad if I keep thinking this way. I can feel a depression coming on.
I know! I will de-link these two conflicting demands on my brain so that they will stop interfering with the logic of my policy statements and then we can all get some sleep."

Indeed, for an intelligent independent thinking person, this must cause some mental discomfort.

I really don't know if cognitive dissonance is the cause of the widespread depression in our politicians in recent years (Geoff Gallop, Jeff Kennett, John Brogden, Nick Sherry, Andrew Bartlett, Greg Wilton). Nor do I know why politicians overseas do not seem to be so prone to depression.

I do know however that most of them make me very depressed.

Maybe their $153.00 per week pay rise announced today will make them happier.

Although they will need to delink that from the mean earnings of the majority of the population or it will also cause cognitive dissonance with values of equity, equality, and a fair go.

Dear Minister Wong,

On 21 September 2009 you had the following exchange on the Breakfast Show on ABC Radio:

Interviewer:
"Minister, Australia's population is projected to increase by 65% to the level of 30m people by 2050. During that same period, the government is committed to cutting our carbon emissions by 60%. Aren't those goals or those facts mutually exclusive? How are we going to massively cut carbon as our population continues to massively grow?"

Penny Wong:
"Well, absolutely not, because the key issue with reducing emissions is that we have to de-link our levels of carbon pollution from economic growth and population growth. We have to ... Whereas the last few hundred years emissions growth - that is, growth in our carbon pollution - has essentially tracked our population and economic growth, we have to break that link and that the whole world has to break that link and so does Australia. So the key issue here is breaking that link, not, not trying to reduce population."

Please tell me exactly what theory and model you are relying on for this proposed delinking of energy from population numbers in a context of economic growth. Please tell me why you believe it is inconceivable to simply allow Australia's population to return to natural levels of growth rather than interfere to engineer growth ever-upwards.

I am aware of economic beliefs that energy calory decrease trends since the late 1970s meant that there had been a delinking of energy use from productivity. This, however, has been shown to be mistaken. What had changed was the choice of and quality of fuels used for different tasks. Overall fuel use (and concommitant carbon gas output) has continued to increase with economic growth.

If it had failed to do so then the laws of thermodynamics would have been repealed, and that is impossible.

Perhaps you are relying on centrifugal separation based nuclear power, which admittedly uses less electrical energy than the old gaseous diffusion type?

Nonetheless, surely you cannot be unaware that, to replace Australia's current electrical consumption would require at least one thousand MWe nuclear power plant for each million Australians, each supplying 25PJ, plus an average of 4.8 new nuclear plants per year to supply annual growth in consumption. And that is without replacing the energy that oil and gas depletion will leave unsupplied, and it is without catering to the total electrical output of electricity producers, much of which will never reach any purposeful productive activity.

I await your response with real anxiety. Please reply as soon as possible, citing your theory, data and sources.

Sincerely, Sheila Newman Population, Environment and Energy Sociologist Editor of The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, UK, 2008

Article about Brown Mountain on the Anarchist media net says that the logging of Brown Mountain will be done by public servants who would be otherwise deployed in our poorly tended ecosystems if they were not sent off to log. However EEG disagrees on this point. See related important corrections to original article in comments below it inside. They also make interesting reading.

(This article was originally published at http://www.anarchistmedia.org/current.html)

Only 8% of Victoria’s old growth forests remain

Considering just 8% of Victoria’s old growth forests remain, you would think the Victorian State government would continue its seven month moratorium on logging at Brown mountain in far east Gippsland. You really have to wonder who the Environment Minister Gavin Jennings is kidding when he states “the old growth forest surrounding Brown Mountain is not top grade old growth forest and did not warrant protecting”.

It is hard to know who to believe about the real worth of the old growth forest surrounding Brown Mountain when a VicForests spokesperson says the area to be logged is “exceptional forest” and “seventy five percent will become high-grade saw logs”. If it is exceptional old growth forest, you would think the state government would be falling over itself to protect it.

Trying to appease some very angry environmentalists, the Victorian Environmental Minister has set aside 400 hectares of old growth forest around Brown Mountain to offset what will be logged. The only problem is century old trees will be logged while much of the 400 hectares set aside was logged in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Just in case you think hundreds of privately employed timber workers are going to lose their jobs; the logging will be carried out by the state’s timber arm VicForests.

Our taxes at work against us and the environment

Yep folks that’s right, no private contractors jobs are at stake and the employees who work for VicForests who will be doing the logging could be re-deployed into other jobs in the state’s commercial arm VicForests. It seems the decision to log the old growth forests at Brown Mountain has more to do with the state government protecting its tough pro-logging image than it has to do with the state making any money out of logging the old growth forests at Brown Mountain. If the Victorian Environment Minister didn’t believe the ALP wasn’t going to garner a few extra votes, the moratorium on logging at Brown Mountain would still be in place." [See inside; this statement has been contested.]

This article was originally published at http://www.anarchistmedia.org/current.html

Today is a dark day for native vegetation and the environment

Website - http://livingwiththebush.org/dp/
Today (Thursday 3rd Sept) Brumby bulldozed amendments to the Dandenong Ranges and Yarra Valley Regional Strategy Plan.

This was pushed through both houses of parliament with less than one days notice so the Government can soon remove vegetation protection to allow:
- clearing of all trees and vegetation within 10m of a house
- clearing a 4m wide strip of all vegetation along each property boundary
- clearing any vegetation except trees between 10m and 30m from a house;

from all of Victoria except the 20 urban councils around Melbourne proper.

Devastating impact

This will have a devastating impact in many areas of Victoria where many communities live with in a bushland setting.

And the evidence is that doing this will not make us safe from bushfire.
There are examples from Black Saturday of houses without any nearby vegetation that burnt, of fires that raced through short grass fields to ignite buildings. Houses located more than 380 metres from continous bush were lost.

Vegetation can also act as an essential windbreak, reducing the wind that intensifies fires, and may provide protection from radiant heat as well as slowing down or stopping embers.

Yet the Brumby government intends to allow this clearing until the final recommendations of the Bushfire Commission are released next year.

This will encourage unneighbourly behaviour

By then everyone who has been endeavouring to clear their block for any reason, including gaining a better view will have done so. We will have lost forever even more of our biodiversity and dumped more green house gases into the atmosphere.

The Living With The Bush Coalition has been formed to campaign against this proposal. We believe that this unfettered clearing is fundamentally flawed in that it will not protect houses from bushfires, may in fact increase the danger by creating more intense fires and will destroy the reason so many of us live with the bush.

Read our charter, "Living with the Bush"

You can read our charter at as well as more information on this issue, why we have reached this position and what you can do.

If you support the views expressed in the charter please consider endorsing it, either individually or as on behalf of a group.

You can register your support at the website.

With a large community outcry I hope we can get these unilateral changes modified to something that will protect our lives instead of just removing trees.

Please forward this on to your networks to help build the Living with the Bush Coalition,

best regards
Louis Delacretaz
0407 300 188

Apologist for growthism and global capitalism

Linsay Tanner has long been an apologist for growthism and nothing has changed recently. "We have always taken the position that whatever is required to sustain jobs, to sustain economic growth, will be done." (Source:Mark Metherell, "Budget deficit could reach $100b: Tanner," April 6, 2009)

He is an advocate for globalised capitalism. “Lindsay Tanner has chosen instead to be an advocate for globalised capitalism, to persuade us that There Is No Alternative, and that what is good for business is good for government, good for unions and good for everyone.” (Source)

In Lindsay Tanner, "Climate change balancing act", The (Business) Age, 2 September 2009, he writes that

“to […]challege that the Government's in the pocket of big polluters is just juvenile name-calling. It's an easy sledge from someone who doesn't have to get legislation through the Senate, manage the impact on the economy, and ensure community opinion remains onside.”

He therefore seems to admit that the government is in the pocket of big polluters, but rejects criticism about this as juvenile. He then rolls on to justify being in the pockets of big business with:

“Big polluters employ hundreds of thousands of Australians. Their activities are woven throughout our entire economic framework.”

Top down government keeps us on the treadmill

I wouldn't agree with the remark about 'ensuring community opinion remains onside', because how would the government or the community know what its opinion was? It doesn't get any chance to voice it. All we hear is the corporate media's opinion of what community opinion is, and it never asks us either.

The fact is that the government is so dependent on taxes from wage-earners that it cannot allow those wage-earners any freedom to reduce carbon emissions by, for instance, supplementing their incomes through relocalised production of essentials (home gardens) and to reduce of their own volition working hours and consumption in favour of a more sociable lifestyles (local democracy and production minimises travel and fuel consumption). If people simply slowed down production, this would take away from the government’s income and power as well as that of big business. (Slowing down production slows down carbon emissions and gives us more time with less emissions.) And the government’s overspending to continuously pump up economic growth relies on the constant import of more and more paying immigrants, in order to add to the numbers of tax-payers.

Rome did the same thing to avoid its own fall. Eventually it was selling citizenship and land just like Australia in order to get more tax-payers. This did not stop it from falling apart though.

The government’s policies are driving all costs up, along with the price of land, water and electricity, and its own debt.

Lindsay accuses the other side of ‘cheap rhetorical flourish’ about big polluters, but then he subjects us to his own cheap rhetoric about how “in the difficult real world of politics you don't always get everything you want.”

Well, in Australia, it seems like big business does.

ACF and Climate Institute government friendly

Tanner follows up with,

“Key sections of the environment movement, such as the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Climate Institute, have accepted that the Government's proposals are reasonable.”

Well, thank you for fingering the culprits, Lindsay. In fact most of us in the Environment ‘movement’ gave up on the Australian Conservation Foundation years ago, and came to terms with the fact that it takes peoples’ money and represents the government position, forming a kind of road-block to any true engagement between the government and the environmentally concerned and informed public. As for the Climate Institute, so far, it just sounds like some kind of advertisement for itself. It’s not too obvious what it does besides issue press releases and solicit funds.

Greens make Lindsay and his mates uncomfortable

Towards his conclusion, Lindsay knocks the Greens for disagreeing with Labor and failing to “build coalitions with others who have different views”. Lindsay says this helps prevent any action occurring. But if you know Labor, ‘action’ means more of the same: more population growth, more debt and more deals with the big polluters – property development and infrastructure expansion. Lindsay should know: the ALP owns two big property investment companies of its own – Labor Holdings Propriety Limited and Labor Resources Propriety Limited. Wholly owned by the Queensland Branch of the Australian Labor Party. Both were built up by Kenneth Rudd and Wayne Swann. In fact I can’t really tell the difference between the ALP, ALP governments and commercial property development companies. (Source: Expert discusses 'deliberately confusing' labor donations.)

Lindsay also says he believes that the only reason the Greens join other non-Labor representatives to vote down Labor’s policies on climate change is to take votes from Labor.

Short lesson in power of small parties and independents in parliament

In fact, another reason could just be that the Greens are only doing what they can to stop the ALP from expanding the problem of increasing pollution. Here is a good video about the Greens and the role that small parties play in politics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGD0VncZOFI&feature=related

Geological and climatic events in Australia’s history have resulted in the unique species seen today, with marsupials evolving around 56 to 34 million years ago.

The main threats to macropods in Australia are habitat loss, altered fire regimes, introduced predators and now climate change. These are the main drivers of decline affecting many mammals in Australia and have resulted in this continent having the worst rate of mammal extinctions worldwide.

(extinct desert rat kangaroo)

Of 53 species of kangaroos, 29 are now threatened and 6 extinct. According to WWF, Australia's macropods, kangaroo and wallaby species will face extinction if urgent action is not taken to protect their habitat, warns WWF-Australia in the lead up to National Threatened Species Day on 7th September commemorating the death of the last Tasmanian tiger at Hobart Zoo in 1936.

However, we still read the absurd statement that governments and scientists use to support kangaroo “management”:

kangaroo populations have increased dramatically since European settlement in these areas due to the introduction of European farming methods and, for this reason, carefully controlled harvesting is required.

Historical records from settlers’ report are quite the contrary!
1788 NSW Port Jackson- “Kangaroos are very numerous here.”
1802 Barrallie “The hills were covered by kangaroos”.
1818 Oxley “flocks of kangaroos like sheep. I do not exaggerate when I say that some hundreds were seen in the vicinity of this hill.”
1820 Sutherland “A great number of kangaroos in South Australia.”
1828 Sturt “There were very many kangaroos, the intervening brush was full of kangaroos”
1836 Mitchell “During the day we saw a great number of kangaroos”
1938 Hawden “Kangaroos in great abundance”
1849 Sturt “There was no want of game of the largest kangaroos”
1882 Lyne “Kangaroos and emus! A plenty!

Historian John Auty reports that reference to historical records suggest high populations of kangaroos over much of their range. Early historical records are dotted with references to large numbers of kangaroos.

The species identified so far as at risk of climate change comprise one-third of species on the national “Endangered” list, and about one-sixth of those listed as “Vulnerable” under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (Environment Australia, 2001). In other words, climate change is a threat for at least one third, and probably more, of the endangered species the Federal Government is obliged to protect.

Scientific studies in Australia identify 90 animal species at risk from climate change. These studies are far from comprehensive – the actual number is likely to be much greater. Rare species, fragmented ecosystems and areas already under pressure from pollution and deforestation are the most vulnerable.

While some Australian animals and plants are adapted to withstand dramatic seasonal changes in climate each year, many species have quite limited ranges of long-term average climate. Temperature ranges in the order of 1 – 2°C and 20 percent variation in rainfall mean that Australian animals and plants are vulnerable to long term climate change. Average temperatures on Earth have warmed by about 0.76 of a degree Celsius over the past 200 years.

Wildlife moves if possible towards preferred climate conditions for breeding, nesting, growing or feeding. With the temperature increases expected over the next 100 years, many plants and animals will need to be on the move. In the Australian Alps, kookaburras are hunting at higher altitudes than before, preying on alpine skinks that fail to recognise them as predators.

Some species that are sensitive to change will need to move away from their hotter home ecosystem southwards to where their preferred climate will exist in the future. Other species may be able to adapt to the new climate conditions at their current location and will become more dominant.

Some invasive species will be ‘winners’ from climate change. For example, feral cats are known to have caused extinctions of indigenous mammals on arid islands – but not on high rainfall ones – and hence changing rainfall patterns will most likely change the impact of cats on native mammals. Some ‘sleeper’ weeds will expand their range, and some new weeds may emerge. Some pathogens and their hosts will extend their range as temperatures increase.

We now have shooters wanting access to protected areas for “conservation shooting”, including native animals, the ongoing commercial kangaroo killing industry and burgeoning human populations justifying expansion and land clearings. Too many times we hear the “jobs” and “income” arguments to support wildlife killings and habitat destruction - this is where the buck stops! We hear too many contrary opinions!

History and cultural conditioning have animals considered a resource to plunder. Our appalling wildlife conservation record speaks for itself!

VicForests sued for illegal logging Tuesday 25th August 2009

Today, Environment East Gippsland commenced proceedings against VicForests in the Supreme Court of Victoria.

A writ was filed with the court this morning and has just been served on VicForests.

“We ask the Court for a permanent injunction to stop VicForests from logging Brown Mountain” said Jill Redwood, Coordinator of EEG. “We also ask the Court to declare that the logging of Brown Mountain is unlawful”.

Brown Mountain is known habitat for at least five species of wildlife listed as vulnerable or threatened under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act.

The Court has not yet set a date for the hearing of the case.

Kelvin Thomson on Overpopulation in Australia and the World: Parliamentary Speech 17/08/09

POPULATION

We all know that the world has plenty of problems. Let me run out some that come to mind without much effort – global warming, food crisis, water shortages, housing affordability, overcrowded cities, transport congestion, fisheries collapse, species extinctions, increasing prices, waste, terrorism. We scratch our heads and try to come up with solutions.

It staggers me that so often we ignore the elephant in the room – increasing population. Each of these problems is either caused by, or exacerbated by, the global population explosion. In the first two million years of human existence, the global human population was only a few million. Up to 1950, it had managed to climb to 2 billion. In the fifty-odd years since, it has trebled to 6 billion people. The population is projected to double again.

The consequences of the present population pressure are dramatic. In my opinion it is not plausible that the world’s population could double without the consequences becoming catastrophic. And yet when it is suggested that the world’s population is a problem, there is zero interest from policy makers. In my view it isn’t so much a problem as the problem. Let me return to that list of problems, and describe the impact of population on them.

1.

GLOBAL WARMING

Population plays a critical role in global warming. We have one earth, one atmosphere, and every carbon dioxide molecule we release into it contributes to global warming. The more of us there are, the more carbon dioxide is released. Simple, undeniable. Al Gore identifies population growth as one of the big three drivers of the rapid spurt of greenhouse gases during the past 50 years. People who believe we can meet serious carbon targets without curbing population growth are kidding themselves, they are delusional.

There is no reasonable prospect that Australia will reduce its total level of greenhouse emissions, while our population grows by 1 million every four years, as is presently the case. Population stabilisation must be part of the plan to contain greenhouse emissions, not merely for Australia, but for the rest of the world as well.

2.

FOOD CRISIS

The combination of declining arable land and continued population growth has caused the world’s per capita food production to go into decline. We are now in a situation where there is a global shortage of food which is set to get worse. In future, more people will starve, not fewer.

Figures released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation show that the number of people suffering from chronic hunger is rising, not falling. In June last year the Australian Government’s Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation said that world agriculture is experiencing a growing crisis, and its first named demand side factor was increasing global population.

3.

WATER SHORTAGES

As with agricultural decline, population growth is fuelling water shortages, both indirectly through climate change and directly through extraction and pollution. Around the world one in three people is suffering from water shortage. Assuming modest rates of population growth, we will use 70% of the world’s accessible fresh water by 2025. Already 400 million children worldwide are drinking dangerously unclean water, and one child dies from a waterborne disease every 15 seconds. According to Melbourne Water, water scarcity in and around Melbourne is being driven by both climate change and population growth.

4.

HOUSING AFFORDABILITY

Housing affordability in Australia has undergone a period of dramatic decline. John Edwards, an economist with HSBC has noted that Australia’s high level of migration – the highest level in our history – is going to keep upward pressure on house prices. The same goes for rent. The General Manager of Australian Property Monitors, Michael McNamara, said the shortage of rental properties would continue to worsen because of rising migration.

5.

OVERCROWDED CITIES

Our cities are too large. They dwarf people. The sheer scale of them is overwhelming for some, who lose the plot and fall victim to mental illness or drug and alcohol abuse. And for the rest of us the madding crowd swells every year, giving us that little bit less room. Every square metre of space is fought over.

In Africa and Asia, the accumulated urban growth during the whole span of history, is in the process of being doubled between the year 2000 and 2030. A United Nations Population Fund report released in June 2007 says that as a result a billion people – one sixth of the world’s population – live in slums.

The overcrowding of cities is not merely a Third World phenomenon, either. In my home city of Melbourne, a lot of people of goodwill have supported high rise as preferable to urban sprawl. What they don’t realise is that it isn’t halting any urban sprawl at all. Suburbs continue to march out onto the horizon. Property developers are having their cake and eating it, too. We’re growing upwards and outwards. Melbourne is becoming an obese, hardened-artery parody of its former self.

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 like crime and drugs.

6.

TRAFFIC CONGESTION

More people equals more cars. And the more cars there are out on the roads, the longer it takes us to get anywhere. . The time motorists spend on the roads in and out of Brisbane for example – to the Sunshine Coast, the Gold Coast, and Ipswich – is truly appalling.

And each suburb we build out of the city fringes means more traffic coming through the inner suburbs, more congestion, more pollution, more noise. It does nothing for our calm, our quality of life, our sanity. We think we have no choice but to grin and bear it. It’s not true.

7.

SPECIES EXTINCTIONS

The USA based National Academy of Sciences has reported that human activities are leading to a wave of extinctions over 100 times greater than natural rates. Over 12,000 varieties of animal, plant and water life are critically endangered. Thirty percent of Australia’s 760 bird species are under threat.

The world has entered the twenty-first century with little more than 10% of its original forest cover intact. According to anthropologists Richard Leakey and Roger Lewis all the forest cover will be largely gone by 2050.

Sometimes I think we have declared war on everything else. The more there are of us, the less there is of everything else. I consider it a grotesque piece of arrogance on our part as a species that we think that we have a right to destroy everything else on our way to affluence.

8.

FISHERIES COLLAPSE

One of our favourite old sayings was “There are plenty more fish in the sea”. Not any more. 90% of the large fish in the ocean are gone.

Australia is in the same boat as everyone else. Our annual catch has steadily gone down and a Bureau of Rural Sciences Fisheries Status Report says that two thirds of Australia’s fisheries are either “overfished” or “uncertain”.

9.

INCREASING PRICES

Increasing population consumes resources and makes them scarcer, leading to price rises . The rising price of petrol is a clear function of scarcity fuelled by population growth. And the increased cost of basic resources like water and petrol feeds into everything they contribute to – food costs, transport costs, insurance, housing etc.

Some economists argue that increasing population will create economies of scale and put downward pressure on prices. In reality, this downward pressure on prices is sighted less frequently than Elvis Presley.

10.

WASTE

A vast area of the Central Pacific Ocean has become smothered in plastic. It’s referred to as the great Pacific Garbage Patch. The area affected is larger than Texas and to a depth of at least 30 metres. What a disgrace!

11.

TERRORISM AND WAR

Analysts spend a great deal of time assessing the political and religious factors leading to the scourge of terrorism and war in the modern world. They spend less time noting the underlying cause – conflict over scarce resources – scarce land, scarce water, scarce oil – brought about by increasing population.

A Pentagon Report in 2007 detailed a range of scenarios in which population displacement caused by global warming and triggered by extreme weather events would lead to border tensions and armed conflict.

An Oxford University study has estimated that 26 million Bangladeshis, 73 million Chinese and 20 million Indians are at risk of displacement from rising sea levels.

CONCLUSION

In short, it is time for governments and policy makers around the world to come to their senses and take steps to stabilize the world’s population. It needs to happen in every country, including here in Australia. Especially here in dry, arid Australia.

And it is time people and communities stood up and demanded better of their policy makers than the “she’ll be right” growth fetish which is making an utter mockery of our obligation to give to our children a world in as good a condition as the one our parents gave to us.

Kelvin Thomson
MHR for Wills

Logging this massive forest represents huge CO2 sink destruction

News is just in is that a decision to log the huge forests of Brown Mountain will be made in a week or so and the loggers will go in immediately afterwards! Brumby is not planning to protect it! Be there Tomorrow at 10.30am on the steps of Parliament House Victoria. We want everyone who can come along - young and old.

Old Growth stops this land from drying and burning!

The more old growth we cut down the more drying of the land, reduced rainfall, increased temperatures and risk of more and hotter bushfires. Bushfires dominate in managed and thinned forest, not in old growth! Logging Brown Forest will cause more bad bushfires in Victoria. Campervan, 4WDS and cars needed. Contact 0413927044

Climate Change Activism - less talk - more local action on the big factors - defend the forests!

Crikey news 12 August 2009 carries a relevant opinion article today on the farce that climate action has become.

Emissions trading debate: is this the best we can do?
[...] the public don’t have the faintest idea how emissions trading works and are completely disengaged from the debate over model details. They just want something done about climate change and know that the experts think emissions trading is the way to go.

This entire debate is being conducted under false pretenses or on the basis that what is manifestly not the case, is. Is this the best a democracy can do?

Making the 'solutions' very abstract and removed to a global forum of international 'experts' is the best way to keep people from local action and critical thinking and to mire action in impenetrable jargon and unverifyable accounting of C02 tradeoffs, offsets, sinks etc.

So much more we can do for ourselves here

There is so much more we can do for ourselves, crucially by stopping removal of vegetation for population, infrastructure and economic expansion. For instance we have in Victoria a record of climate change related fires which can be linked at their worst to the thinned and managed forests here. See "Victorian Bush-fires: ABC 7.30 Report ignores facts, creates scapegoats". We have climate refugees now living in tents in the winter cold as a result of these fires. Yet, in this most cleared of states, Mr Brumby is about to send in the loggers to Brown Mountain, where 600 year old trees testify to the very low risk of out-of-control fires in old growth forests. Most recently scientists have tied forest to inland rainfall . Deforestation drys continents - new theory explains how and a huge environmental and political experiment in Borneo by Willie Smit demonstrated they are right , "Recreating Eden". Climate activism is a huge source of organised public action in the name of which small groups should be able to act. Instead we see a crowd hypnotised by Al Gore and captured and harnessed by various local political groups in their usual quest for power and dollars. It amazes me that the Al Gore Climate Change activists, for all their repetitive noise are apparently unaware of or incapable of stopping the destruction of forests in Australia. Why are they not converging in busloads to stop the loggers and the developers' bulldozers?

Home Grown solutions in NSF and Permaculture

We also have at least two homegrown major applied science theories and practice in the structural ecology of Peter Andrews' Natural Sequence Farming (NSF), and the social theory (as well as the farming theory) in Bill Mollison's Permaculture.

With this in mind, I hope I may now return your attention to the crucial local political action to save Brown Mountain Forest for tomorrow in Melbourne. This is a huge forest and logging it will make a HUGE difference to CO2 emissions and local and regional temperature and rainfall if allowed to proceed in this (it bears repeating) the most cleared of Australian states. Protest tomorrow (12 August) at 10.30am on the steps of Parliament House Victoria. Everyone who can come along - young and old. Contact 0413927044

click here for film

The picture above shows an orangutang rescued from the rubbish heap as a baby, now thriving with its own baby.
But this isn't just a tale of a few sad orangutangs living on the edge...

Recreating Eden

Willie Smits went back at night to a market where he had seen a very sick baby orangutang in a cage and was not surprised to find that it had been discarded onto a rubbish heap and left to die. He forced it to drink and saved its life. Soon he had 1000 oranutangs and nowhere to put them.

So he found some very degraded land and reclaimed it. In less than a decade the land was reinvigorated and could provide shelter and incomes to many families as well as a healthy population of orangutangs. He integrated this reclamation with empowerment of the local people whose economic fortunes, he was able to show them, were inextricably linked to the health of orangutangs. He was very careful to make government absolutely transparent and describes what was necessary.

They grew a biodiverse forest with seeds planted in orangutang dung. Then many birds and animals found the forest, very quickly. How wonderful!

This is an incredible film, all biologically credible. It occurs in a third world country where the dyak people (the forest people) have been dispossessed and murdered by Indonesian colonists. The people in the area in question had high infant mortality, high alcoholism and lived in misery.

Rainmaking

The film gives a quick overview of the science of rain-making in the tropics and says that there is a different dynamic there from dry forest rain. However, rehydrating the forest is a matter of how and what you plant.

Now the rainfall in this area is huge. The continual forest fires have stopped.

This could happen in Victoria.

I found out about this film from Natural Sequence Farming, which is an Australian method for rehydrating land. I have been discussing forest rehydration in Victoria, Australia to stop this place burning up completely.

We are entering can era of severe scarcity

Illustration: Gustave Doré's Don Quixote

We are entering can era of severe scarcity in which centralised and globalised systems will fail to provide for us and we will have to develop highly localized economies. Most people would probably doubt that we could organize satisfactory communities without vast state bureaucracies and corporations. The achievements of the Spanish Anarchist workers collectives in the 1930s show what miracles ordinary people can do.

One of the strong beliefs reinforcing the acceptance of consumer-capitalist society is the assumption that it has to be run by authorities up there somewhere, by governments, bureaucracies, corporations, experts, CEOs, via big complex systems that ordinary people like us can’t fathom and couldn’t possibly run. People take it for granted that there is a vast distinction between our governors and we who are governed, and this is inevitable in a modern complex technocratic society. Our only role in government is to elect our governors occasionally, then submit to their rule. Meanwhile it is best if we devote ourselves to working diligently, consuming, football, celebrities and trivia.

In my very firm view consumer-capitalist society will soon be over. It is extremely unsustainable and unjust. There is no possibility that the per capita rates of resource consumption the 1.5 billion rich have can be extended to the other 7.5 billion we will soon have on earth. The Australian footprint of 8 ha of productive land per capita is about 10 times the area that will be available per capita in 2050. Well before that we will run into savage and insoluble shortages of oil, water, food, fish, several minerals, phosphorus, and the ecological consequences of the greenhouse problem, destruction of soils and forests, and a holocaust of species loss, the social and political impacts of collapsing states, resource wars and massive refugee movements.

Globalisation is over

Whether we like it or not we will localize. Globalisation is over. If complete collapse and die-off is avoided the only viable path will be in terms of mostly small and self-sufficient local economies in which people cooperate to organize their own local productive capacity to produce for themselves most of the things they need with little trade. In the coming age of severe scarcity economies must be mostly focused on needs and not profits, and organized by rational and cooperative control of the economy as distinct from driven by market forces (although they could still have a role.) Above all there can be no economic growth at all, and affluent “living standards” must be abandoned. The goal must be satisfactory but frugal and self-sufficient ways in stable or zero-growth economies.

Most people would probably totally reject this vision, believing that conservation effort and technical advance will enable us to go on pursuing ever-increasing affluence and GDP. In addition they would not believe that an acceptable alternative defined in terms of frugal living standards and no growth could remotely be designed. However I have no doubt that we could easily and quickly build a very satisfactory as well as sustainable and just society…if we wanted to. Its principles would have to be frugal but adequate living standards, high levels of self-sufficiency in mostly small local economies of the kind indicated above. (For a detailed discussion see The Simpler Way website, .) In my view this is the direction we will be moving in soon, whether we like it or not.

Again l think one of the most powerful ideological forces blocking such a transition is the general conviction that a satisfactory society could not be run without all those heavy bureaucrats, experts and CEOs, and rule by authoritarian and complex governments. Well if that’s your view, let me tell you about what the Spanish Anarchist collectives did in the 1930s.

The Spanish Anarchist Workers Collectives

In a period of about six years after 1933, during a civil war, the anarchists got control of large areas of Spain, containing 8 million people. Possibly 1800 collectives were established. Often they were able to take over factories and estates abandoned when their owners fled the war. With remarkable speed collectives made up of workers in these firms formed and organized to continue production. Many very large ventures were quickly put back into operation. For instance three days after a battle in Barcelona the trams were running again.

Attention was focused on the most important needs, for instance the setting up of communal dining halls. The collectives plunged into the reorganization and improvement of industries, for instance combining many previously struggling small firms, coordinating and integrating. In some regions they ran the fishing industry, from the boats to the canning factories and the distribution networks. They actually organized and ran whole regional economies, including public services such as policing, road construction, flood control, water supply, transport, maintenance of parks. They set up banks, flour mills, theatres an aluminium industry, organized international importing, printed their own money, abolished interest payments, and ran railways and telecommunications systems. Entire health systems were established, including medical centres, hospitals and sanitoria. In Barcelona six hospitals and eight sanitoria were built. Dental services and surgery was free, provided by doctors receiving set payments. Schools were free. Ordinary people gained access to medical services they previously could not afford when doctors only served the rich. They even established engineering and optical training institutes, and a university. The city of Barcelona with a population of 1.2 million was run in these ways.

Towns exchanged surpluses. Some towns and collectives abolished money, arranging all production and distribution in terms of needs and vouchers. Abundant things, such as fruit in season, were free, but scarce things were rationed.

The basic format for this “governing” was the weekly assembly of all workers in the factory, reviewing all operations, planning, electing managers, making decisions. Factories would send delegates to meetings handling issues involving several factories, and similar delegations up to larger and more centralized assemblies would deal with wider regional issues. These latter gatherings had little or no power because recommendations would be taken back down to the factory assemblies where everyone had a vote. That’s the essential Anarchist principle; all power is held by citizens and any centralized issues are thought out by delegates but the recommendations are taken back to the citizen assemblies for approval. They refused to resort to bureaucrats, let alone paid or professional officials, managers or politicians. Managers were just more experienced workers elected by the assemblies, recallable at any time. Committees mostly met after work hours or on the weekend. In other words the government of factories, farms, industries and entire regions was actually carried out by ordinary people deliberating in citizen assemblies. Of course in all these domains more experienced people had key roles but were not bosses or privilelged.

From accounts such as those in Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives, (1973) the production of goods, the efficiency of operations, the effectiveness of distribution and allocation, and the social welfare and justice consequences were huge improvements on what had prevailed before when control was in the hands of privileged elites and most people lived in poverty and oppression. They reorganized and innovated extensively and quickly. Men and women became much more equal. Large transfers of goods were organised to poor towns, supplies to hospitals were quickly established. A voluntary retirement age of 60 was set. Unemployed people were paid a full wage. By bringing previously idle and inefficiently used productive capacities into operation huge surges in output and welfare were quickly achieved.

Where wages were retained they were made more or less equal. However in many industries wages were abolished, for ideological reasons. Wages are elements in the system where capital hires labour, controls production, and takes the product, and workers have no involvement in production other than selling their labour and they can be dumped at any time at the whim of the employer. Instead in some cases they simply organised to provide all workers with listed necessities, sometimes via voucher or coupon systems. These entitlements varied with need, for instance being greater if there were children in a family. Thus they implemented the basic “communist” principle of allocating according to need not work done or skill.

In his introduction to Dolgoff, Bookchin makes some important observations on the mentality of the industrial worker. A lifetime of taking orders, discipline to often mind-numbing grind, no control or responsibility or concern with the uses of the product or its social value or who benefits, is likely to produce passive consumers primarily interested in their wages, i.e., purchasing power. Workers tend not to think they should do any managing. It is not surprising that in Spain the alternative thrived most in the rural regions because in addition to the collectivist traditions, the peasant way of life involves conditions and dispositions that are foreign to the industrial worker. Small; farmers must be multi-skilled handymen, energetic, thoughtful and responsible. I believe the coming revolution will be led by the spirit of the peasant and homesteader. When your welfare depends not on a wage, but on whether you organise and manage and fix and plan and think ahead and troubleshoot, and plant the beans in time,…and maintain the cooperative relations with the people in your community you depend on…then you are more likely to have the dispositions Anarchism requires.

Marx didn’t grasp any of this. In my view Marx’s analysis of capitalism, how it works, why it has problems, where it is taking us, is of the utmost importance. But what he thought about the post-capitalist society and how to get to it are I think of little value or mistaken (apart from the principle “From each according to ability, to each according to need.) If we get through to a sustainable and just society it will not be via violent revolution led by the working class led by a vanguard party which will rule from the centre until we become capable of communism. None of that can lead to local economies run by local people in participatory ways. In addition Marxists still fail to see that a satisfactory society cannot be heavily industrialized or affluent. But what’s most important here, as Bookchin points out, Marx didn’t think the outlook and personality of the worker was important (except in so far as he would support revolution.) That could be left until after the revolution. All that mattered was harnessing workers to revolution. The Anarchists in Spain had a totally different view, realizing that everything depended on how aware, committed and autonomous ordinary people are. They put a great deal of thought and effort into developing what they called “personalities”. That’s our main problem now.

Achievements were more impressive in rural areas than in the urban and industrial areas. Many impoverished peasants were able to come into larger and more farms. They were not coerced to do this and many remained outside the collectives as independent farmers. These received surprising levels of assistance from the collectives, often enjoying the benefits they would have enjoyed had they joined. They were not allowed to own more land than they could work.

These achievements were made in difficulty conditions, with many able bodied people away at the front, produce sent from regions to the troops, and at times under destructive attack from enemies.

The material I have read does not throw much light on how they were able to coordinate things. How were they able to make sure that enough bolts of the right size turned up at the right factory when they were needed. Remarkably it seems that such things were sorted out well enough just by people organizing to get and send the necessary information and supplies. They did put a great deal of effort into collecting statistics to enable sound decisions, and into research to improve production.

The extremely important point for us in all this is that their achievements demolish the claim that you have to leave the mass of decisions to the workings of the market or to centralized state bureaucracies. They seem to have shown decisively that rational planning carried out by citizens can run an economy at least well enough. Remember that in the coming era our economies will be far less complex than they are now, greatly simplified by the absence of growth, making the control of small and local economies more tractable.

Note that although they did these things without huge professional planning bureaucracies. They did plan and make rational decisions, based on the detailed statistics they continually collected. But apparently they could quickly see what needed doing and then make the necessary decisions and carry them out via grass-roots assemblies and elected managers. Compare that with our bureaucracies where if you are lucky you get a letter back in two months.

So there, we can do it! Ordinary people can run economies via participatory democracy, without states, capitalists, bureaucracies or authoritarian rule.

As I see it Anarchism defines political maturity. For thousands of years humans have tolerated rule by kings, tyrants, dictators, and politicians. Representative democracy does not allow people to govern themselves. They are treated as infantile and untrustworthy. The goal must be citizens taking responsibility for running their own collective affairs directly, with no one having power over anyone else, via highly participatory procedures. In his discussion of the way this was done by the Ancient Greeks, the Medieval and New England towns, Bookchin stresses the educational significance of this, its importance for the development of mature, thoughtful, caring and responsible citizens. When your fate and that of your town depends on whether or not you can help make good decisions in the assemblies you have a strong incentive to develop conscientious thoughtful and caring dispositions.

So it’s a bit more complicated that I have made it appear to be at the start. I misled you by saying that in Spain “ordinary people” achieved all those things. The key to the Anarchist success is to be found in the long history and powerful ideological traditions of the regions. For hundreds of years rural villages had functioned in highly collectivist ways. In addition Bakouknin’s Anarchist theory had been brought to Spain in the 1880s and had been widely influential. The movement had grown significantly in the decades before 1930, so when the opportunity came with the civil war large and sophisticated pre-existing forces sprang into action. Ideas, values land practices that had been in existence and rehearsed for a long time could be quickly put into operation.

The point is that the remarkable achievements of the Spanish Anarchists were made possible by extra-ordinary people. We will not be able to do these things unless the right ideas and values have been widely established. People in consumer-capitalist society are far from the necessary state. Governments cannot do it for them. They cannot develop the new local participatory economies, firstly because they can’t think in any other than centralised, top-down solutions, free markets and capitalist control. More importantly, the required economies of The Simpler Way will by definition be run by the citizens of the town or suburb. Only they can learn their way to the procedures for doing this that suit their local conditions. We cannot begin down that path until people in general see that it is the way to sustainable and just society, and eagerly seek to take that path because they can see that it will yield a much higher quality of life.

We are sadly very far from having anything like the necessary ideology and values among the passive, trivia-preoccupied consumers of late capitalist society. That defines the task before those who want to help solve global problems. We have to work very hard to build the required world view, values, and commitments, and there isn’t much time left to do it.

How do we do it?

In my view the Left has always been remarkably weak on the nature of ideology and how to liberate people from the dominant ideology of consumer-capitalist society. Here are brief notes on how I think we should try, given the global situation we are in. (For a more detailed discussion see.)

Again we are in a historically unique situation because after hundreds of years in which increasing wealth and abundance were taken for granted we are likely to rapidly enter an era of permanent and intense. Especially as petroleum dwindles, people will realise with a jolt that the old systems will fail to provide for us and that communities will have to organise local economies. This is already happening, most inspiringly within the Transition Towns movement. By far the most important step that can be taken by anyone who wants to save the planet, prevent global warming, eliminate Third World poverty, bring peace to the world, etc., is not to join a green party, buy a Prius, lobby against wood-chipping, or learn how to fire an AK47. It is to come and help us start building aspects of the new society, here and now, within the towns and suburbs where we live. This is not just because those are the alternatives that must eventually be built. More importantly it is because working there side by side with ordinary people will give us the best possible access to build the necessary critical global consciousness, that is, to get people to understand that the old systems cannot be made sustainable or just, that vast and radical change is needed, that free markets, growth, competition and acquisitiveness must be scrapped, and that there are far more satisfactory ways.

Dolgoff, S., Ed., (1990), The Anarchist collectives : workers’ self-management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936-1939 ,Montréal, Black Rose Books.

Ted Trainer
6.6.09

Full text of this submission may be downloaded here in a pdf file 293.43kb.

Kelvin Thompson, ALP, Federal Member for Wills, (a House of Representatives seat.) Wills is located in the north-west of Melbourne, Victoria, comprising Coburg, Coburg North, Gowanbrae, Hadfield, Oak Park, Pascoe Vale, and Strathmore, extending as far north as Fawkner, Glenroy and the Western Ring Road and south to include most of Brunswick and Brunswick East and containing parts of the State electorates of Pascoe Vale, Brunswick, Broadmeadows, Thomastown and Essendon. At a local Government level it shares most of its borders with Moreland, but includes Strathmore from the municipality of Moonee Valley and the Essendon Airport.)

It is indeed cheering to hear a member of the Federal Government criticise the policies of the Growth Lobbyists in Australia. The speech quoted at length below was in Labor MP attacks Melbourne's expansion plan ( July 20 2009) misreported in the Age where it was conflated with statements from the Committee of Melbourne. This conflation misled me and others to believe that Kelvin Thompson was against expansion into the Green Wedges, but was calling for open slather along the main arteries of Melbourne. If you read his submission or the quotes below, you will see that he is actually stating that more population growth in Melbourne is environmentally and socially unsustainable. He is critical of arguments for expansion or infilling. He also exposes the related hypocrisy and nonsensicality of the Government's climate change policies in the light of continuous population growth. He even exposes the fact that the Victorian State Government advertises for high immigration, a fact that they constantly avoid making clear to the long-suffering public.

I have to say: Bravo Kelvin Thompson! You show leadership in a government apparently composed mostly of cowards and ignoramuses who take orders from big business against the interests of their electorates. The only thing you have left out is the role that the Federal Government plays in granting the states the numbers they so vociferously demand of it.

Headings are by the candobetter editor:

Kelvin writes:

"Our city is forecast to have 4 million people living in it by the end of this year, with annual population growth rates reaching 2% (Colebatch 2009). The outer fringe of Melbourne is currently taking 61% of our population growth (Buckley 2009). This is placing pressure on the existing Urban Growth Boundary.

Climate change is the biggest moral issue of our time

Climate change is the biggest moral issue of our time and addressing it must be at the forefront of our public policy planning. Compared to other major cities throughout the developed world, Melbourne has one of the highest rates of carbon emissions per capita. Our city’s cars, trucks, motorcycles and public transport services were recently recorded to generate 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, compared with just 8.5 million tonnes in London. This equates to 3.1 tonnes of carbon per person in Melbourne compared with 1.2 tonnes per person in Greater London. One of the key reasons for our significantly higher rate of emissions per person is because of Melbourne’s larger geographic area, which means journeys tend to be longer and heavily reliant on cars (Lucas & Millar 2008).

Twice the number of people in Melbourne will mean twice the amount of carbon emissions, congestion and pollution.

Existing Government policies are encouraging an expansion of up to 75,000 people a year. If we continue down this public policy path we will need to accommodate another 1 million people before 2025 (Buckley 2009). By 2036 Melbourne is predicted to have a further 1.8 million people, nearly twice the number forecast in Melbourne 2030 (Moncrief 2008). Twice the number of people in Melbourne will mean twice the amount of carbon emissions, congestion and pollution.

Submission to the Urban Growth Boundary Review

1. Executive Summary

Our city has reached the point where we need to change direction or risk our social and environmental future.

Melbourne is at a fork in the road. For a long time our city, its way of life and the opportunities it offers to all who come here has been the envy of cities around the world. To maintain this desirable situation we must act decisively to address the issues that threaten Melbourne with becoming another crowded, over populated, congested and polluted metropolis. Our city has reached the point where we need to change direction or risk our social and environmental future.

The Urban Growth Boundary Melbourne@ 5 million review provides the opportunity to investigate the issues currently facing our city and the options we still have to address them. This submission will identify the ecological issues associated with expanding the northern, western and southern Urban Growth Boundaries and discuss the long term consequences for Melbourne of the proposed expansion. I am making recommendations which will protect Melbourne’s social and economic
growth, local amenity, transport system and reduce our carbon footprint. I have put forward an alternative plan to that of an ever expanding urban fringe.

Melbourne is one of the world’s most liveable cities. This year it was ranked third out of 140 cities as being the most liveable city. Our lifestyle, employment opportunities, health system, education system, infrastructure and environment are all aspects of a community that is the envy of many around the world (The Age 2009).

Melbourne is now the fastest growing city in Australia, with thousands flocking to live here on a never before seen scale. Melbourne’s population is growing on a scale not seen in Australia before, swelling by almost 150,000 people in two years (Colebatch 2009). The 2001 Census recorded Melbourne’s population at 3.3 million people (ABS 2001). In 2006 our population reached 3.6 million (ABS 2006). It has continued to grow faster than that of any other city in the country.

Melbourne’s population grew by 74,713 in the year to last June and by 74, 791 during the previous year. Melbourne’s population is growing by more than 200 people a day, or almost 1500 per week. Melbourne’s population growth last year far outpaced all other major Australian cities. Sydney grew by 55,047 (1.35%), Brisbane by 43,404 (2.3%) and Perth by 43,381 (2.8%) (Colebatch 2009).

In response to revised population projections showing that Melbourne will reach five million people faster than anticipated, the Victorian Government announced its intention to review the Urban Growth Boundary in December 2008 (DoPCD 2009:i). The Urban Growth Boundary was introduced in 2002 as part of Melbourne 2030 (DoPCD 2009A). The boundary was expressly put in place to contain urban sprawl. It was expressly designed to prevent ongoing urban expansion into rural land surrounding metropolitan Melbourne and its fringe (DoSE 2005). It set out to place a clear limit to metropolitan Melbourne’s development. It sought to concentrate urban expansion into growth areas that are served by high capacity public transport (DoSE 2005A).

The most recent review of Melbourne @ 5 million forecasts an additional 600,000 new dwellings in Melbourne with 284,000 of these needing to be located in growth areas. Most of this future growth will be in the north and west of Melbourne (DoPCD 2009:i).

The State Government is investigating changes to the Urban Growth Boundary in response to updated population forecasts and revised longer term growth issues (DoPCD:6). Areas under consideration for urban expansion include 20,448
hectares in Melbourne’s west around Caroline Springs, Melton and Werribee; 25,385 hectares around Sunbury, Craigieburn and Donnybrook and 5560 hectares east of Cranbourne.

Under the plan Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary would be allowed to grow another 41,000 hectares to accommodate an extra 415,000 people. Development of these areas would lead to a loss of some of the most valuable grasslands on the city’s fringe (Dowling & Lahey 2009).

Around the urban fringe, we have a concentration of some of the most endangered ecosystems in Australia, including Western Basalt Plains Grassland and Grassy Woodland, and a diverse range of other vegetation types and threatened species (Environment Victoria 2009). It is vital we do everything we can to protect these ecologically sensitive and important areas from being overrun by high density development.

The Victorian Government is now seeking public feedback on the proposals regarding the proposed changes to the Urban Growth Boundary before a final decision is made (DoPCD 2009:3). In making a final decision, I encourage the Victorian Government to consider the issues of population, local amenity and liveability, climate change, economic growth and transport. I have put forward recommendations that are designed to tackle urban sprawl and that will continue to protect the
things that make Melbourne great.

Everything that makes our city the great place to live, work and raise a family, is potentially under threat if population growth and urban sprawl continue at the current rate.

Everything that makes our city the great place to live, work and raise a family, is potentially under threat if population growth and urban sprawl continue at the current rate. We must implement a strategy to control population growth, urban expansion and development. Our way of life, open spaces and infrastructure cannot be sacrificed on the altar of ever expanding population. We have a responsibility to secure our city’s future through thorough, thoughtful and detailed planning. This
planning should not include an expanding Melbourne waistline.

[...]

Encouraging urban sprawl and ever increasing high density developments will lead to a more
polluted, congested and unsustainable Melbourne. Bringing millions of people in to Melbourne will increase the stress on water supplies that are already strained, increase reliance on fossil fuels by communities that are on our urban fringe, and it will increase Melbourne’s carbon footprint when we must be reducing it.

Regrettably the planning process in Melbourne is not being used to achieve environmental sustainability. Melbourne is generating more greenhouse emissions, using more water, losing open space and turning into a high rise steel and concrete jungle. Planners and policy makers 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.

The promise of Green Wedges to give Melbourne lungs of open space in which to breathe has been broken

A fundamental component of planning for Melbourne’s growth during the 1970s was the concept of
urban growth corridors radiating outwards, separated by wedges of non-urban land (Friends of Merri Creek 2009:3). But the promise of Green Wedges to give Melbourne lungs of open space in which to breathe has been broken, and is proposed to be broken yet again. We need to retain Green Wedges as permanent wedges between growth corridors, not as potential urban land supply that is bulldozed as soon as there is a demand for it.

Al Gore has been involved in the business of raising Black Angus cattle for most of his life.

Not once during the 96 minute presentation, An Inconvenient Truth, did Al Gore mention livestock and our diets as a cause of global warming, or suggest any form of solution or alternatives. This omission would be similar to not mentioning cigarette smoking in a discussion of lung cancer!

According to a report, Livestock’s Long Shadow –Environmental Issues and Options, released in November of 2006 from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, livestock emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to every one of the most serious environmental problems. Additionally, animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalents.

It's not just the well-known and frequently joked-about flatulence and manure of grass-chewing cattle that's the problem, according to a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Livestock:

Produces 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2.

Accounts for 37 percent of all human-induced methane (which is 23 times as warming as CO2.

Generates 64 percent of the ammonia, which contributes to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems.

With a burgeoning world population, and rising middle classes in Asia, the demand for meat and dairy will continue to grow.

The loss of species is estimated to be running 50 to 500 times higher than background rates found in the fossil record, largely due to the land required by livestock.

Land-use changes, especially deforestation to expand pastures and to create arable land for feed crops, is a big part of the industry's damage. So is the use of energy to produce fertilizers, to run the slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants, and to pump water.

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems," Henning Steinfeld, senior author of the report, said when the FAO findings were released in November.

With a burgeoning world population, and rising middle classes in Asia, the demand for meat and dairy will continue to grow.

The twin "elephants in the room", livestock production and population growth, are avoided by Al Gore and by many environmental and climate change groups.

Surely these "inconvenient truths" need to be debated at Copenhagen if there are to be any realistic gains made?

Al Gore's web site

It was entirely predictable that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would concede that the Copenhagen summit in December would fail to reach a global emissions reduction deal. ABC Online
Despite his pre-election rhetoric, he is worse than a climate change sceptic and has failed even his own aims on carbon emission cuts! He did an about-face on deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions just days after Australia's delegation backed the plan at the climate talks in Bali. He backed a 25-40 per cent cut on 1990 emission levels by 2020 rather than 60%. This further whittled away his commitment to only a 5% reduction of carbon levels by 2020!

Like his failed grand gestures on Kyoto and vow to Japan's illegal whaling, this conference in Copenhagen is also doomed!

G8 leaders failed to persuade India and China to join a push to cut greenhouse emissions by 50 per cent by 2050. Why should nations with much lower per capita output of greenhouse gas emissions make more sacrifices than Australia? On the contrary, our obligation, as one of the highest per capita emitters in the world, is to lead the way.

"On a global scale, Australia has the highest rate of greenhouse gas emissions per capita," said Professor Mark Diesendorf, co-director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

Kevin Rudd's real masters are the coal, banking and mining industries.

His "projected" (deliberate) population growth is to stimulate further consumerism. If we accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change, it cannot be addressed while we have a historically high population growth rate and continue supporting highly polluting industries. We are digging ourselves into a hole, and the deeper we go the harder and more costly it will be to scramble out!

With contradictory policies we will see no leadership on climate change from our present Rudd Government. Global population, and a population policy for Australia, should be on the agenda in December. Kevin Rudd is self-fulfilling his own prophesies about Copenhagen!

By chance I noticed an article in the Guardian newspaper on Thursday and managed to attend an interesting conference at Manchester Town Hall this weekend 4-5 July. It was chaired by Lord Bingham, formerly Britain's top judge, and part sponsored by the Guardian, who will be running a feedback on the conference in a special supplement next Monday 13 July.

Advocates for 20 proposals to mitigate climate change were invited to speak. They covered scientific and engineering solutions to economic and social solutions. A couple of interesting solutions came from Australia. One of the delegates, Kirk Sorenson, has an interesting site on thorium reactors.

There was no pre-agenda and I went along expecting to lobby for why population was not included as a key solution. Climate and Energy Secretary, Ed Milliband, would be speaking at the Saturday session.

Population Sustainability Network

In the event, I found on the day that a talk on renewing commitments to reproductive health policies was included for the final Sunday afternoon session. This was given by Louise Carver of the Population Sustainability Network. It turned out to be fairly low key and was cautious on really highlighting the issues, but at least it was there. One interesting point was that she said family planning funding was at an all time low and had dropped by 30% in real terms since the mid-1990s.

Milliband waffling, out of touch on population problems in developed countries

I did question Milliband at the Saturday Q&A on how politicians and the media were neglecting and ignoring population as a key driver on Climate change and other key issues. Predictably he waffled, saying that he heard this issue raised quite often in relation to climate change, but really we were doing all that can be done and the key was to make reproductive health care easily available and improve the education of girls in developing countries in particular.

I replied that both politicians and many green groups were in denial on population as a key issue. The UK Government had no policy on population and we would not solve the critical problems ahead without going further and incentivising a move to smaller families through the tax system, instead of raising perverse incentives to increase our numbers as is happening in several developed countries like Germany and Australia.

He responded by saying that Australia was a big country well able to absorb a bigger population. Due to question time pressures, I did not have the chance to point out that in fact Australia was a very fragile country ecologically, much of it desert and unable to withstand further big population pressures, but his reply demonstrated how out of touch influential and supposedly well-briefed people can be on ecological and population pressures.

Even so, there were some very interesting presentations.

The aim of the Report is to narrow the best solutions (in the opinion of the panel) down to ten from the original twenty. These will be covered in more detail in the Guardian next Monday, but all will be mentioned.

Thorium and fission

As a nuclear skeptic, I found the presentation on the Thorium alternative to Uranium energy fission by Kirk Sorensen, an aerospace and nuclear engineer from Alabama USA, quite compelling. I spoke to him later and he is basically an advocate for developing the Thorium fission process as a far more effective energy performer than the uranium fission path. He said Thorium was ignored because the US Government wanted to make weapons grade material via Uranium and consequently went down the nuclear/uranium development path. His blogsite, he says, has all the details: www.energyfromthorium.com or www.thoriumenergy.blogspot.com

Improving grass to capture more Carbon gases

Another presentation of interest was by Tony Lovell on soil carbon and redefining grazing habits in arid areas to improve grass quality and consequently carbon capture. A further interesting presentation was by UK scientist, Mike Mason, who looked at an Australian company domestic ceramic fuel cell appliance called BlueGen. This seemed to promise a lot.

Cloud-seeding

A Professor Salter has also been trying to get £25m funding for 6 years to complete development for around 50 cloud seeding ships to reflect more solar energy back into space. Again, this was compelling in its simplicity. To find out more go to www.see.ed.ac.uk/-shs then browse to climate change.

Leggett on Solar

Jeremy Leggett of SolarCentury photovoltaic company made a good presentation on increasing solar power cells, claiming that 116% of UK power needs could potentially be provided by solar power, if north and south facing roofs of all UK properties were adapted to use solar voltaic cells. He also mentioned a WWF UK report coming out in late 2009 "Pathways to a one planet economy".

Economics

Andrew Simms of the (UK) New Economics Foundation gave a very assured presentation on Do Good Lives have to cost the Earth? It seems they are all following the UK Sustainable Development Commission's groundbreaking Prosperity Without Growth report published April 30, 2009. I hope to get in touch with him on several related issues.

Lifeboats and overpopulation

Andrew gave a good analogy on the thinking of many modern growth economists, quoting a now deceased economist Mesham. "A man falls from a 100 floor building. As he heads down the 99 floors they say look he's still fine. Then he suddenly smashes into the ground. Too late! Another one was on lifeboats - from another delegate. "We need to plug the hole in the lifeboat and bale it out." The hole in this case being population. Most green groups are busy concentrating on bailing it out!

Brian McGavin

Australia's population growth out of control

World leading reproduction expert Professor Roger Short, of the University of Melbourne, says Australia’s population growth is out of control, increasing the rate of global warming.

According to the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Australian population is increasing by one person nearly every two minutes.

“Australia is a disgrace. We have one of the highest rates of population growth of any developed country. What are we going to do about it?” he says.

Nature too stressed already without us adding to stress even faster

According to a paper submitted on to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, “Nature is already under stress from human activities. The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005 concluded that two-thirds of ecosystems on which humans depend are currently being degraded or used unsustainably.”

The report recommends the Copenhagen conference acknowledges the importance of population as a key driver of climate change and places the issue high on the agenda.

The latest population projections from the United Nations, reveal that the world’s population at 1 July 2009 will be 6.8 billion and by 2050 will be 9.1 billion.

Governments need to instigate population control policies sooner rather than later

Professor Short spoked at the University of Melbourne Festival of Ideas on 16 June. He said that the planet is already stretched for resources and space and governments need to instigate population control policies sooner rather than later.

Professor Rob Moodie

Fellow presenter Professor Rob Moodie, says Australians need to start their own internal carbon trading scheme by “getting out of the car and off the couch at every opportunity”.

Professor Moodie, who is Chair, National Preventative Health Taskforce and Professor of Global Health Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne, says we have the irony of burning too much fossil fuel, but not burning enough of our own personal fuel.

“Addressing climate change will require cultural shifts in the way we treat our planet, the way we treat each other, the way we treat ourselves, and the way we build our cities and towns,” he says.

“We have been lulled into a false sense of sedentariness. One hundred years ago we had to stop our work every so often to rest. Now, because sitting still for long periods increases our risks of heart disease we actually have to get up every few hours and move.”

Need for different land-use planning focus - 'Sub'-suburban

He says the design of cities and towns must go sub-suburban by re-creating local villages – “metropolettes” - where we can get to shopping, food, recreation, entertainment and schooling on foot.

Source: 'News' from the University of Melbourne, Festival of Ideas website Contact: Rebecca Scott, University of Melbourne, Mobile: 0417 164 791

Other speakers included Sana Nakata (University of Melbourne PhD candidate) and Associate Professor Catherine Bennett (Chair) from the School of Population Health at the University of Melbourne.