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:

"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.

POPULATION REFORM – POLITICAL CHALLENGES

SPEECH TO SUSTAINABLE POPULATION AUSTRALIA 29/11/2009

by KELVIN THOMSON, MHR FOR WILLS
I have been greatly encouraged by the avalanche of supportive emails, letters and phone calls I and my office have received since I first spoke on the issue of population in the Parliament back in August. The response I have received – over 95% support – reaffirms the opinion poll evidence that 60% of Australians believe that a population of 35 million by 2049 (the most recent official Treasury projections) is too many.

We have a lot of supporters out there. What I want to talk about this afternoon is how do we win this – how do we meet the political challenges and translate that support into real policy change and a better future for our children, Australia and the world.

The first political challenge

is to understand the problem. We have to understand where the push for higher population comes from. While some of it comes from migrant representatives, and some of it comes from particular religious leaders, who adhere to highly literal interpretations of religious texts written when the world’s population was one twenty-fifth what it is now, most of it comes from sections of business. Business enjoys close and regular access to political parties and political leaders courtesy of endless fundraising breakfasts, fundraising lunches, and fundraising dinners.

During my political lifetime money has assumed a progressively larger role. Mass political parties used to have plenty of volunteers to letterbox their material. Increasingly the volunteers have disappeared, and political parties look to paid distribution services such as Australia Post or the private distributors to distribute their material.

This of course costs money. So too does alternative means of campaigning, such as TV, radio and newspaper ads. And it’s also the case that political parties are wary about getting offside with business. And regrettably some business entities, and property developers in particular, are in the ears of politicians, day in, day out, seeking high population. They regard population growth as the yellow brick road to easy profit. For them it has two functions – creating a pool of surplus labour to put downward pressure on wages and salaries, and even more importantly building a bigger market to generate more sales. It seems easier than competing with rival businesses over market share.

One other group we need to be aware of who are fond of population growth is Treasury and other government bureaucrats, because population growth means a bigger GDP. It doesn’t mean we’re better off – if a country’s wealth increases by 25%, while its population increases by 60%, on average each resident is actually poorer. But the media always report GDP, rather than GDP per person, and it always sounds good to be able to say the economy is growing, and hope that nobody looks at the fine print.
Upton Sinclair put it succinctly: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”.

So that is what we are up against. I don’t think anyone in this room underestimates them, and we certainly shouldn’t – they have won every single battle so far. Australia’s runaway population, and the world’s, bears that out.

The second political challenge

is to expose the arguments in favour of rising population for the myths they are . Let me deal with seven of them. First, that we need a bigger population to drive economic growth and prosperity. The bigger is better myth. If this were true, the wealthiest per person nations in the world would be those with the biggest populations. They’re not. In fact eight of the top 10 nations in the world in terms of per person GDP have populations of less than 10 million.

Sweden, for example, is entrenched in the world’s top 10, with a growing economy but a population which has been stable for many years. On the other hand, Argentina started the 20th Century far wealthier than Australia, but having doubled our population growth, Argentina today has per person GDP worth only 40% of Australia’s.

I hear some population boosters lamenting that Europe’s population has stopped growing and saying we don’t want to follow that example, calling it stagnation and so on. Europe’s population is indeed now about the same as it was in 1950. But of those ten wealthiest per person countries, eight are in Europe.

Do the population boosters seriously prefer what has happened in Africa? Since 1950 Africa’s population has more than quadrupled, growing from 221 million then to 973 million last year. 25 years ago Ethiopia had a population of around 34 million. Now its population is 72 million.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation the number of chronically hungry people in the world – people suffering from perpetual and severe hunger – has risen to 1 billion. In addition, as many as two billion more people live in perpetual food insecurity, missing meals and often not knowing where their next meal will come from.

No prizes for guessing where this increased misery is happening – it isn’t Europe. World population growth is precisely the reason why world food prices have risen and why more people, not less, are starving and suffering from water-borne diseases.
And for Australia, runaway population means our mineral and resource wealth is spread more thinly, and there is greater competition for our available food, water, petrol and land, pushing up food prices, pushing up the price of housing, pushing up the price of water, pushing up the price of petrol. We are not – repeat not – better off as a consequence of this.

The second myth is that a bigger population will tackle population and workforce ageing, and that population and workforce ageing is a terrible problem. Let me observe that the 14 point Population Reform Plan I have proposed would not lead to an ageing population or workforce. But we should not fall for this idea that social ageing is a disaster and older people are a burden. Ageing is a sign of success, individually and as a society. The ‘oldest’ societies are the healthiest and wealthiest, the youngest societies are those with the lowest life expectancy. We are not just ageing, we are ageing healthier, and are capable of working on for longer than we used to. And there is abundant scope to bring people into the workforce who are presently not in it –many young people are out of it, many aged between 45 and 65 are out of it, many indigenous Australians are out of it. Bringing them in would be good for them and good for the country.

And if you really think workforce ageing is a disaster, let me quote from the Department of Treasury Economic Roundup of December 2000, which said “in response to the slowdown in the growth of the working age population, business may introduce incentives to retain existing workers, encourage them to increase the number of
hours they work or defer their retirement, and to attract additional workers into the labour force. These incentives could take the form of higher real wages or other non-pecuniary benefits such as the opportunity to work from home, part-time hours for those full-time workers considering retirement, or more generous maternity leave arrangements”.

So there you have it, folks – this is the catastrophe that awaits us if we don’t act to increase the population – higher real wages, working from home, part-time options, more generous maternity leave arrangements! What a disaster!

The third argument for increasing population is that this will make Australia a bigger country, and that we should aspire to a ‘big’ Australia. This argument is harder to understand than an episode of “Lost”. Australia is already a big country. Bringing more people to Australia means there is less room for us as individuals, we lose our backyards and get cooped up in high rises. In my book that makes a place smaller.
A big country is one we can share with koalas and kookaburras and platypus and wombats and lyrebirds. A big country is one with wide-open spaces where you can drive for miles and hear yourself think. If you drive up or down Australia’s eastern seaboard now it’s all suburbs and traffic lights and retail franchises – that’s not a bigger country, it’s a shrinking one!

The fourth argument for increasing our population is that other countries have. Australia is not overcrowded compared to other countries, it is said, and our cities are not overcrowded compared to other cities around the world. Recently we were told to take a look at Bangladesh. We have, believe me, we have! We don’t want to live like Bangladesh. With the greatest of respect, that’s the whole bloody point!

The population of Bangladesh has doubled since 1971, from 75 million to 150 million. Needless to say its per person GDP is miserable – just $421 US for the whole year 2003-04, and it is one of the poorest countries in the world, with severe deficiencies in its health and nutrition services.

And yes, Australian cities are less crowded than many of those overseas. But what is this cultural cringe that causes us to believe that Australia and the Australian way of life are somehow inferior to those of other countries and other cities? If Australia is not as good a place to live as other countries, how come so many people are busting their backsides to live here?

When we start seeing boat loads of people leaving Australia, then it will be time to start thinking about where we’re going wrong. In the meantime, why don’t we celebrate Australia and its way of life and seek to protect it?

The fifth argument for increasing population, one I heard recently from a former Howard Government Minister, is that this will give us more weight in international forums. By this he means more power and influence. But power for its own sake is over-rated. The power and influence I want for Australia is the power and influence which comes from setting a good example – keeping open spaces for our unique native wildlife, keeping our food, water and housing affordable and our cities safe and liveable, having room for refugees and a generous overseas aid program, cutting our carbon footprint. These are the things that will provide leadership to the world and give us real weight.

The sixth argument for increasing population relates specifically to migration, and says that a high migration policy is evidence of our compassion, and is a duty we owe to peoples around the world less fortunate than ourselves. I am personally strongly in favour of Australia being a compassionate international citizen, and have proposed a 45% increase in our refugee intake from 13,750 to 20,000 and that we maintain our family reunion intake at 50,000 per annum. But the skilled migration program cannot be defended as Australia’s obligation to the world. Skilled migrants are claimed to be bringing to Australia skills we don’t have; to the extent that they are skilled they are actually denuding the countries from which they come. This is not Australia being compassionate; this is us being selfish.

Moreover, I think we should be wary of appeals to our better nature when the outcome of those appeals is not a better Australia or a better world, and when those appealing to us to be unselfish are in fact being utterly selfish themselves, putting their corporate bottom line and personal financial interests ahead of everything else.

It is utterly insincere of business or political leaders or commentators to call on Australians to make sacrifices in the shape of water restrictions, reducing our carbon emissions, paying more for food, housing, water and petrol, having less open space and more traffic congestion, less say in planning decisions about the neighbourhood in which we live, when the value of these various hardships is absolutely undone by increasing population.

I am not in favour of selfishness in the pursuit of ever greater material wealth, I am not in favour of greed, I am not in favour of ripping off and exploiting those less fortunate than ourselves, but I believe we are entitled to fight to protect our standard of living and the Australian way of life. Don’t be conned into giving these things up by appeals to selflessness made with all the sincerity of a Mississippi river boat gambler.

The last myth coming from population boosters I want to mention is that it will all take care of itself. Yes population is rising now, they say, but soon it will level off and stabilise of its own accord. Extreme versions of this even claim that in future our population will fall. For a long time I thought there was something in this. The realization that all the past projections of population numbers were gross underestimates and that this problem is not going to solve itself, is a key reason why I have started calling publicly for population reform.

Back in 1984 the World Bank’s population projection for the year 2100 was 21 million. We reached that in 2007! A decade ago, forecasters were predicting we wouldn’t hit the 22 million mark until 2040. We’re there already! Two years ago Treasury’s Intergenerational Report predicted Australia would be 28 million by 2049 – within just 2 years, they’d revised that figure up by 25% to 35 million.

So the idea that population growth is a problem that will one day solve itself is also a myth.

Having refuted the arguments in favour of higher population, the

next political challenge

is to come up with an alternative. As well as addressing those who believe population growth is desirable, we have to address those who think that it’s inevitable. They don’t believe anything can be done about it, that it’s out of control. We have to point out that some countries have done it, so we can too. And we need to have an alternative.

Two weeks ago I set out a 14 point Plan for Population Reform.
The heart of this Plan is a proposal to stabilise Australia’s population at 26 million by 2050, by cutting net overseas migration to 70,000 per annum. While refugee numbers would increase, and family reunion numbers would be held constant, skilled migration would return to the 25,000 figure of the mid 1990’s.
Temporary entry sub-class 457 visa permits would be restricted. A renewed focus on educating, skilling and training young Australians at Universities, TAFEs and apprenticeships would receive a funding boost with money obtained from abolishing the baby bonus and limiting family payments for third and subsequent children to those already receiving them.

The policy I released generated a certain amount of controversy in New Zealand because it proposed a cap on the presently uncapped Trans-Tasman scheme. So I did some more work on this, and the formula I propose in fact would not have prevented any New Zealanders wishing to migrate to Australia from doing so in any of the years I looked at, which were the four years from 2004-05 to 2007-08.

You might ask why I put the cap in place, and why I have kept it, when it doesn’t seem to have any practical impact. The reason is this. When I propose stabilising the population through 70,000 net annual migration, I can be asked – “but you don’t know how many people are going to leave Australia in any given year”, and I would have to admit I don’t. And I could be asked – “you don’t know how many people are going to come to Australia from New Zealand in any given year, do you?” And I would have to admit that I don’t. So I could be challenged that given this, I simply couldn’t guarantee a net 70,000 or indeed any figure. So the point of having a cap, and linking Australian departures to New Zealand arrivals, is that it will give us control over our net migration figure, and is an essential ingredient in delivering a population policy. And indeed there may be circumstances where the levels of departures from Australia or the levels of applicants from New Zealand necessitate the application of the cap.

The fourth political challenge

is to have a strategy. There are a number of elements of such a strategy I want to suggest this afternoon. The first is about unity. To succeed in any political endeavour you have to work co-operatively. There has to be some give and take. People will naturally have differences of opinion about particular points, though I have been delighted by the degree of support I have received for important elements of my plan, such as increasing the refugee intake while at the same time greatly reducing the overall migration program. We need to respect differences of opinion, and keep nitpicking about detail to a minimum. When you’re up against what we are up against, it’s a luxury we can’t afford.

Next, avoid traps which see people of goodwill who care about Australia’s future being played off against each other.

Planning is a classic example. People who oppose the loss of open spaces and backyards in the inner city to high rise and multi-unit developments get told they are contributing to urban sprawl. People who oppose the extension of the urban growth boundary get told they are contributing to high rise and contributing to the blight of “veni, veci, verdi”, which I am told is “I came, I saw, I concreted”. By pitting people in the inner city areas against people in the outer suburbs, planners and developers get to have their cake and eat it too. Our cities grow both upwards and outwards. It is OK to say, Not In My Backyard! We do have rights and should have rights, concerning the kind of neighbourhood we live in. But when we seek to exercise those rights, it should not be at someone else’s expense, and that is what population stabilisation is all about. It means no-one has to lose their neighbourhood character, no-one has to lose their open space.

I was pleased to see the public transport campaigner Paul Mees recently come out and say we don’t all have to surrender our backyards and live in high rise in order to have a decent public transport system. I have always supported public transport, but it should not be used as a justification for increasing population density. People who don’t like increasing population density should not be played off against public transport advocates.
We also need to draw the link between the myriad problems we see daily in our community, and runaway population growth. Interest rate rises is a classic example. The Reserve Bank regularly cites rising house prices as a reason for lifting interest rates. And the principal factor driving house prices ever higher is population growth. Rising interest rates is a bad thing for both business and home-owners with mortgages, and we should constantly point out the link. And we should not fall for the idea that rising house prices is a good thing. It might feel good if the price of your house goes up, but it doesn’t feel so good when your mortgage and rate bills follow it. And yes you could sell your house, but you will still need somewhere to live, and you will find that the price of houses everywhere, and rents for that matter, have gone up as well. It is a zero sum game. And yes, some people own more than one house, and use property as an investment. But they will find this doesn’t make it any easier for their children to afford to purchase a house.

Housing affordability in cities like Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane is among the worst in the world. When I was 25 I put down a deposit and took out a loan to purchase a house. Today a 25 year old doing that is as rare as rocking horse manure. It is a shame. Home buying encourages personal financial responsibility, as opposed to binge drinking and endless expenditure on mobile phones and computer games.

Similarly, we need to draw the link between rising prices for essentials like food, water, petrol and electricity and population growth. The reason these prices keep rising is simple – demand is outstripping supply. People need to understand that the reason their trips to the supermarket keep costing more is population growth.

When unemployment is discussed, or casualisation of the workforce, we need to point out if that we reduced skilled migration and temporary entry 457 work visas, there would be more jobs available for our young, for our mature-aged workers, for people with disabilities, for aboriginal Australians.

When climate change is discussed we need to make the point that it’s pretty hard to reduce your carbon footprint when you keep adding more feet. This is true right around the globe – the world is on the road to increase its population by 50% by 2050, at the same time as scientists are saying we have to cut carbon emissions by 60%. This needs to be on the Copenhagen Agenda.

And when business leaders say, government should be spending more on infrastructure, or levels of government impose taxes and levies to fund new transport or electricity infrastructure, or when people complain about traffic congestion or the monstrosity being built next door to them or down the street, we need to point out – these things wouldn’t be needed if we stabilized our population. We need to hammer home the daily consequences of runaway population growth. We need to point out that a man who drives like hell is bound to get there.

The final element of campaign strategy

I want to suggest is the need to build support networks and international contacts with like-minded people and organizations. I am recommending that people join
Sustainable Population Australia , and I believe that by working together and sharing information and making our views known through the media, the Internet, and directly to political leaders and policy makers we will make progress. We need to encourage and learn from the experience of like minded groups around the world. I believe there is a lot of support for our position, but it needs to be harnessed and mobilised.

This brings me to my fifth and final political challenge

– the need for patience. Quite a few of the emails and letters I have received have urged me to present my views to the Prime Minister or the Immigration Minister at once. They have the view that what I am saying is so sensible and reasonable that all I have to do is to present my views and they will be instantly adopted. Would that things were so simple! The pressures governments and policy-makers are under from business are massive.

Political leaders, appropriately in a democracy, listen for the voice of the electorate. We need to make our voice heard. Since I first starting raising this issue back in August, I have received a supportive stack of emails and letters you couldn’t jump over. I have received support from former Labor Ministers, State and Federal, members of other political parties, and hundreds of ordinary Australians.

I said back in August that we needed to have a debate about population reform, and it is happening. Newspapers are regularly carrying articles and opinion pieces about it. Radios and TV stations have carried stories and interviews about it. Two opinion polls have showed that 60% of Australians believe that Australia at 35 million is too many. The Australian Conservation Foundation is supporting population stabilisation, and I sense that other environmental and non-government organizations are starting to find their voice concerning an issue about which they have long been timid.

For environmentalists for years population growth has been like Voldemort in the Harry Potter books – the evil which can’t be named. I hope that is changing.
But these particular Walls of Jericho are not going to fall down after a couple of days or months of trumpet blowing. It will take a sustained effort. Sometimes political victories come swiftly, but other times it requires a long hard slog, and the patience to see it through.

So, to recap, understand who you’re up against, counter their myths and arguments, come up with an alternative, have a strategy, and settle in for the long term.
I know this is intensely frustrating to people who see this beautiful country and its precious native wildlife being exposed to new pressures and stresses every day. I share that frustration. But I am totally convinced that this patience, and this issue, is worth it.
It is absolutely central to the core obligation of stewardship that we have as human beings to pass on to our children, and to our grandchildren, a world, and an Australian way of life, in as good a condition as the one our parents and grandparents gave to us.

Interactions between microbes and human hosts can range from a benign, even symbiotic collaboration to a competition that may turn fatal — resulting in death of the host, the microbe or both.  What could seem benign could be a threat to existing host cultures.

Rome Scenario:

British Military strategist Rear Admiral Chris Parry pointed to the mass migration which disaster in the Third World could unleash. "The diaspora issue is one of my biggest current concerns," he said. "Globalisation makes assimilation seem redundant and old-fashioned due to the Internet and communications..."  Europe, including Britain, could be undermined by large immigrant groups with little allegiance to their host countries — a "reverse colonisation" as Parry described it.

Parry stressed that these mass population movements could lead to the “Rome scenario” – a reference to the collapse of the western Roman empire in the 4th and 5th centuries under repeated blows from groups such as Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Suevi, Huns and Vandals surging over its borders.
"In my view," concluded historian Peter Heather, "it is impossible to escape the fact that the western Empire broke up because too many outside groups established themselves on its territories." In the end, the Roman Empire, built by controlled immigration, perished under an onslaught of uncontrollable barbarian migration.

Rear Admiral Parry went on to say he was not labelling any particular group as threatening stability , but observed that there were already more than 70 diaspora groups in Britain.

More white families are moving from London to the regions while many immigrants arrive in the capital from overseas, the think-tank
Migrationwatch says.

The change in 10 years has been "extraordinarily rapid'', with 606,000 more people moving out of London than arrived from elsewhere in the country. In the same period, a net 726,000 immigrants arrived in the capital.

The recent referendum in Switzerland that saw 57.5 per cent of the population voting to ban the construction of minarets.  This is extreme tolerance considering Christians in many Muslim-background countries are being evacuated, persecuted and even martyred for refusing to conform.

Denmark now has a law preventing citizens under the age of 24 from securing residence rights for their foreign spouses. In September this year, the Flemish city of Antwerp joined France in banning the headscarf in schools.  This is hardly "ethnic cleansing" or persecution but a protection of the host's skyline, religions and cultural identity.

Weapon of “racism”:

The weapon of choice for the political elite, against any members of the indigenous population who show dissent against loss of their homeland, is the charge of 'racism'.  The pursuance of 'racism' as the ultimate taboo is the means to a political end. This is about changing the face of a nation.

The best estimate of the First Fleet, that we celebrate on Australia Day, is 1373 people.  Today the numbers of permanent and long-term migrants arriving in Australia to more than 500,000 a year. 

A 50 year 'visionary' migration plan for Australia is being developed to take into consideration such things as climate change, water availability, security and labour demands.  There is nothing about preserving our identity, or assimilation, wildlife, or the greater challenges of climate change and the higher costs of living with more people here. 

It is all so easy to come to Australia and apply to stay here.  Students can do "post graduate" studies without having completed their first degree.  Students numbers who successfully apply to live here are a hidden number.

Ad hoc population growth is colonisation:

Immigration Minister Chris Evans may have branded Mr Andrews as hypocritical in saying that our intake of migrants to Australia is too high when the Howard government welcomed more than 1 million migrants during its tenure.  (#10;http://www.theage.com.au/national/andrews-call-for-debate-on-slashing-immigration-20091210-km93.html"> Andrews call for debate on slashing immigration, )
However, Kevin Rudd has increased the number of permanent and long-term migrants arriving in Australia to more than 500,000 a year!  John Howard was Prime Minster from 1996 to 2007, and this means his government's increase happened over more than eleven years!

Australia is already under stress from population. We are losing Ramsar wetlands, record numbers of native species, even flagship species, our coastlines are under threat from oceans rising, the Great Barrier Reef, the Murray Darling food bowl and our rivers are being choked by dams and drying. The projections for Australia’s climate make it clear that farmers and other Australians should be prepared for a hotter, drier future. Higher temperatures, less rainfall, and extreme events will affect water availability, water and soil quality, fire risk, loss of wildlife and the proliferation of pests and weeds. Despite the warnings, food producing fertile land, is under threat from urban sprawl.

Ad hoc population growth, without a population policy or scientific assessment of our carrying capacity, is reckless and potentially disastrous!

In fact 'immigration',  at Australia's rate of half a million new people a year,  is an incorrect description for a process that is, to all intents and purpose, that of colonization.

Dalby is situated one-hour from Toowoomba, two-and-a-half hours west of Brisbane and three hours from the Gold and Sunshine Coasts. The town faces a severe water shortage and the worst drought in history.
Map of Dalby

The Mayor Ray Brown says the town's in real danger of running out of water and restrictions may be increased to their highest level if the situation doesn't improve.

Cr Brown says the weir is empty and the town's been drawing its water supply from bores.

The construction of a reverse osmosis plant will provide an additional 1.7 million litres per day or about 25% of Dalby's water supply needs on an annual basis. Will allow the conversion of previously unsuitable water into water suitable for town supply purposes of a very high quality, which will improve the overall quality of our town supply. The reverse osmosis produces water at a cost comparable to the treatment of river water but is much more reliable in dry times.
Dalby's economy

Dalby and the surrounding Wambo Shire is is at the centre of rich coal and natural gas reserves which underpin the power generation industry for SE Qld. The region is renowned as a rich agricultural area, growing crops such as cotton, sorghum, wheat, barley, sunflowers, chickpeas, mung beans and corn, as well as the production of lamb, beef and pork.
Dalby's economic forecast looks “bright” as infrastructure developments, a growing resource sector and population increases combine to promote continued business growth.
Over the period to 2031, the population of Dalby is expected to increase by 3,723 persons – or an average annual rate of 0.9% – to a population of approximately 19,734 persons.

El Nino:

El Niño - the extensive warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that leads to a major shift in weather patterns across the Pacific - is often experienced as drought affecting large parts of eastern and northern Australia. The 1982/83 Ash Wednesday bushfires were largely due to drought conditions caused by the El Niño effect. The most recent strong El Niño event was 1997/98.
The El Niño phenomenon affects runoff in catchments serving all major water supply systems in eastern Australia.

IPCC have indicated that El Niño events have become more frequent and drying in the last 30 years compared to the previous 100 hundred years.
Additionally, IPCC make the point that many world climate models indicate that mean conditions that are ‘El Niño-like’ may well prevail in the future.

Fastest-growing region:

Peter Garrett’s decision earlier this month to kill off Queensland Premier Anna Bligh’s $1.8 billion project to dam the Mary River at the Traveston Crossing, near Gympie, has got the Premier in a spin about how the Government’s going to manage future population growth without running out of water.
Ms Bligh described the veto as a blow to the residents of Australia’s fastest-growing region. With figures showing 70 per-cent of new arrivals to Queensland settled in the south-east, it’s now critical the government find ways to move people on to regional areas.

Dam levels in Toowoomba, Queensland's biggest inland city, are down to 8.5 per cent.
A pipeline has been built connecting Toowoomba to Brisbane's major water source, the Wivenhoe Dam.

It is due to begin pumping in January. In the meantime, Mayor Peter Taylor says several emergency bores have been sunk to keep the city going.

Obi Obi Creek:

Obi Obi Creek, the town's only source of water of the Sunshine Coast hinterland town of Maleny, received just 39.2mm of rain in November, almost 100mm short of the 140mm November average.

Maleny resident, zoologist and conservationist Dr Les Hall has been in the limelight again lately. And it's all because of his survey of platypus burrows in the banks of the Obi Obi Creek, adjacent to Cornerstone's proposed construction site for a Woolworths supermarket.  Les told the company that the creek bank adjacent to the site has the highest platypus population density compared with any other part of the creek. He said that in his survey he counted an average of one burrow every three metres; some of these were old, some collapsed, but many others along the bank were fresh and in use and some were obviously occupied by mothers and their young.

"No matter what happens, whatever the developers' protections, they will still destroy the platypus burrowing area along the creek bank," Les warned.

The wetlands will also provide habitat and feeding areas for the two bird species, rainbow bee-eater and cattle egret, listed in an international agreement (RAMSAR) that Australia has signed. The two sites will provide habitat for a number of wetland-dependent threatened species.

Obi Obi Creek is the main contributor of water for the Baroon Pocket Dam.  This dam will soon be linked to the southeast Queensland pipeline network.

Water crisis:

‘Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink;’ Thus spoke the Ancient Mariner in the 18th century.

A recent report warns that without global action, demand for water in 2030 will outstrip supply by 40 per cent.

Desalination technology comes with drawbacks as they require significant energy, and pollute the marine environment with hot, hyper-saline and chemical-rich outflow that is discharged back into the ocean. There are already dead areas in our oceans.

There is a limit to the number of dams that can be constructed, the amount of water that households water restrictions, and the number of rivers that can be manipulated and strangled.   

A 2% growth rate means a double of population every 35 years, even if it doesn't sound much.  Growth should be "managed" at a time of climate change and global water and food threats. 

Wivenhoe Dam failure

"Recent pronouncements have left us exposed to a repeat of History. (...with the prospect of dam failure evident since 1992 in the dam levels chart and as yet unexplained). 

Large scale rainfall events occur, on average, every 3.7 years, The panic caused by a 6 year gap will be repeated in the future with the possibility of even larger gaps as wide as 14 years.”

Limitless Growth?

There is no such thing as limitless growth on finite ecosystems, or finite natural resources.

An action plan has been developed in consultation with the body responsible for regional water security, the Queensland Water Commission. There will be four or five tanker loads of water this week (up to 11,000 litres in each tanker) trucked to Maleny.

Despite the massive problems with water in southeast Queensland, it still has an unfettered high rate of population growth. No effort whatsoever has been put into slowing this growth rate. Apparently not even a thought of it from anyone in the state government except for Gold Coast Mayor Ron Clarke.

Bligh acknowledged recently that south-east Queenslanders are beginning to think the lifestyle costs of population growth outweigh the economic benefits. "But population growth is a fact of life in Queensland. We cannot put up the barbed wire fence at the border, we can't stop people having babies, so we have to find a way of coping," she said. She could cap the population and ask our Federal government to stop economic immigration!

The southeast corner of the state is becoming more populated, with an estimated 15,000 people a year moving there from all over Australia in search of a “better life”. Premier Anna Bligh is considering a $3000 boost to the  first-home owners' grant for people buying property outside the southeast.

South-east Queensland already resembles one giant building site, as the State Government spends billions this year alone on bridges, rail extensions and new bus and motorways to help move all these extra people around.

Premier Anna Bligh is not interested in a sustainable water supply for Queensland, but in water to sustain population growth, something that is not fait accompli but socially engineered by immigration and baby bonuses.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says she has assurances that the town of Dalby won't run out of water. 'If we need to help them truck in water, we'll do that'. She will probably have to!

Make Poverty History aims to halving global poverty by 2015 and achieving the Millennium Development Goals by:

Sub-Saharan Africa is headed for a "population emergency" according to a new French NGO analysis of demographic trends.

Africa takes up more than 12 percent of the world's population, while its Gross Domestic Products (GDP) accounts for a mere 2 percent. With a population growth of 3 percent annually and an agriculture growth of 2.5 percent, the continent can hardly feed its increasing population. The words ‘population explosion’ are hardly ever heard nowadays, even though Africa’s population is still doubling every twenty-odd years.

The population of the continent south of the Sahara, decimated by the slave trade and colonization, stood at 100 million in 1900. It had grown more than seven-fold to 770 million by 2005. By 2050, it will grow by as much as 2.6 times above that level, to 2 billion. Abnormal climate and natural disasters have resulted in the emergence of a new kind of "eco-refugees."

Campaigns promoting the balanced family such as those successfully run in other developing countries (Bangladesh, Jamaica for instance) have never really been implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Today, two out of three inhabitants of this large region of Africa are under 25 years of age (twice the number prevailing in Europe) and, with 32 inhabitants per km2, Sub-Saharan Africa is more densely populated on average than Latin America (28 inhabitants/km2).

Band Aid was a supergroup founded in 1984 by Bob Geldof and to raise money for "Famine relief" in Ethiopia. In 1950 the population of Ethiopia was just 16 million. According to the nation's only census, conducted in 1984, Ethiopia's population was about 42 million. By 2005 it had increased to nearly 78 million and is forecast to increase a further 80 million over the next 25 years.

The UN has admitted that it won’t meet its Millennium Development Goals in Africa but fails to explain the underlying causes for pessimism. Africa has had more than ten times the Marshall Aid given to Europe since the Second World War - a trillion dollars, or $5,000 for every African alive today. Yet many African countries are poorer now than in the 1980s.

According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world faces the challenge of producing 70 per cent more food for another 2.3 billion people by 2050. Meat production will need to increase by more than 200 million tonnes on the current 270 million tonnes by 2050. Unrealistic Western livestock-based diets means that grains fed to livestock could be distributed more equitably throughout the world to avoid some of the starvation.

In Australia, Make Poverty History is a coalition of more than 60 aid agencies, community groups and religious organisations. Make Poverty History has some lofty aims, but ignores the impact of Western diets, makes no mention of family planning or contraception schemes, or even population growth. Unless the people of Africa take some ownership of their own destiny we could be trying to fill a bottomless bucket! Neither will the campaign be achievable until we recognise the threat to our planet and humanity due to runaway global population growth. World poverty (like climate change) is unavoidable whilst governments, including ours, willfully encourage unsustainable population growth. Growing our own population will do nothing to alleviate the portion of the world's population that is already starving, and violence will escalate as resources diminish. Immigration globalises overpopulation.

Increasing population might seem to be a way of growing the economy in the short term, but in the third world it is only likely to lead to even greater poverty.

Racism is:

1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race, and that one’s own race is superior, and has the right to rule others.

2 : racial prejudice or discrimination, hatred or intolerance of another race or races

3: a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.

(photo: from Wikimedia commons: Australian Government poster — "The Southern Cross, the call of the stars to British Men & Women" issued by the Overseas Settlement Office to attract immigrants).

Racism is a global phenomenon which is influenced by a range of historical, social, political and economic factors.

It takes different forms in different contexts and as a result has been defined in many different ways. In Australia, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (1998) defines it as:
Racism is an ideology that gives expression to myths about other racial and ethnic groups that devalues and renders inferior those groups that reflects and is perpetuated by deeply rooted historical, social, cultural and power inequalities in society.

Institutional racism (or systemic racism) describes forms of racism which are structured into political and social institutions. It occurs when organisations, institutions or governments discriminate, either deliberately or indirectly, against certain groups of people to limit their rights.

Historical perspective

In May 1901, the Australian parliament met for the first time. Its first major act was to pass the Immigration Restriction Act. Under this policy, people from Asia and other "non-white" people were systematically kept out of Australia. The "White Australia" policy was the product of decades of racist agitation against Chinese immigration.

Henry Parkes, now venerated as the "father of Federation", was often at the head of anti-Chinese laws restricting where they could live. In 1857 his newspaper Empire railed: "Total exclusion of the Chinese from the goldfields should be the law”.

The first identified threat by white settlers was from thieving, dispossessed Aborigines, who were placed in the same category as Australian fauna. Racism included the removal of Indigenous children from their families and the denial of full citizenship rights to Indigenous people.

People with similar backgrounds naturally like to be together. The ideals of multiculturalism were welcome here in Australia when most people were Anglo background, and Prime Minister Bob Hawke promoted it well. Most people embraced it, and we have benefited from immigration both economically and culturally. However, in recent years, the numbers of immigrants has risen so high, a twist of racism has seeped in.

Immigration today

The Australian government, acting on behalf of their mates in the real estate industry, is effectively inviting foreign populations to move in and colonise parts of the country.
Australians are forced to carry the costs. They have to compete with rich foreigners for housing in a country already facing a chronic housing shortage. They have to pay their taxes just so that wealthy foreigners can simply move in and make use of Australia's public services and infrastructure.
(Eye on Immigration: selling Australia)

The Howard government left behind a robust immigration program of more than 120,000 net immigrants a year. The Rudd Government set a target of 190,000 migration places in 2008-09, a 20 per cent increase over the previous year's target. It increased the working visa program to double its size four years earlier. Not a word was said about this during the 2007 election campaign.

Racism phobia

Are we so terrified of the R-word, racism, so brainwashed by the thought police, that no dares mention skin colour any more? Not even the cops when seeking a
crime suspect?
Surely skin colour is just as objective as hair colour?

Hey Hey It’s Saturday ratings success has been marred by accusations of racism after a skit on the Red Faces talent segment featured a group of doctors in black face paint re-enacting a Jackson 5 song. Would a similar skit about ABBA have been racist if they painted their faces white?

Racism today

In the UK, Pakistanis are twice as likely as Indians to be unemployed. Two years ago, their government’s research showed almost half of British Asians and blacks arguing that there are too many immigrants.

Particularly following the September 11 attacks, both Muslim and Arab Australians have experienced a significant rise in Islamophobia and racism.

More recently we have witnessed race-based confrontations in Cronulla and now fears have grown over the perceived violence and gang culture of Sudanese immigrants.

There was a backlash against Sudanese immigrants and a move by our Government to attempt to justify a freeze on our African refugee intake.

Kevin Rudd scrapped the "Pacific Solution", abolished temporary protection visas, and let illegal arrivals get more lawyers. The Federal Police warned that this may increase the number of attempted arrivals to Australia. The dismantling of the Howard government's border protection policies has led to a surge in boats. 255 Sri Lankans asylum seekers, now bobbing off Java, are refusing to leave their boat. They now face detention in Sumatra rather than Nauru. Is it not surprising that Australia is their choice of refuge, knowing that we have the highest migrant intake in the developed world?

Our heavy intake of well-educated and well-off immigrants is a stark contrast to those that are turned away or places in detention.

The recent attacks on Indian students have thrust the issue of racism in Australia into the mainstream news bulletins.

Over populating Australia

Australia's population is forecast to surge from 22 million to well over 35 million in 40 years. . Our population this year grew by 439,000, or 2.1 per cent, the highest in the developed world.

In the past anyone questioning immigration to Australia risked being labeled racist. But now there's a new accusation leveled against anyone speaking against the massive surge in immigration to Australia. Now debate is being shut down by economic and political ‘correctness'.

Modeling by the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University shows each additional one million people adds 25 million tonnes of pollution to Australia’s greenhouse accounts.

“An increase in population to 35 million by 2050 would mean 325 million tonnes of additional pollution, costing us at least $10 billion a year in extra carbon pollution costs alone,” Mr Berger of Australian Conservation Foundation said.

GDP ignores the cost of the environmental damage done by immigration. Head hunting skilled workers from developing countries roughly doubles their greenhouse gas emissions, in the process making it all the harder for us to achieve the necessary reduction in our emissions. Our greenhouse gas emissions are rising, contrary to Kevin Rudd’s climate change commitments.

Immigration-fed growth in the economy is good only if it raises the real average incomes of the existing population. If it doesn't, we're running a high immigration policy mainly for the benefit of the immigrants who are able to earn more in our country than they were in their own country. Sharing finite resources means an erosion of the quality of life.

The
ABC's Four Corners program recently ran a piece on the 'new homeless'; families that couldn't find an affordable house to rent.
What do you do when you've lost your job, lost your home and you have three kids to feed? You end up in a motel cooking, eating and sleeping in one room at the taxpayer's expense. These are Australia's new homeless.

The narrator failed to mention one of the causes of the homelessness - the increased demand for housing fueled by high immigration levels.

Time for debate on immigration

It's time to drop the political correctness that for years has meant anybody who questioned immigration levels was labeled racist, or a supporter of Pauline Hanson!

One Nation was anti-immigration, anti-economic liberalization party. According to their web site, “One Nation is not, nor has ever been, a racist party. We are however a fiercely nationalistic party that puts the well being of Australia and it's people before anything else. It is obvious by the tens of thousands that came out to support us that there is a ground swell of ordinary people in this country who are sick of the self serving, on both sides of politics, that has been passed off as leadership for so many decades.”

There was no hint of racism, just a questioning of our high immigration and how it serves the interests of Australians. Racism was muddied by an immigration debate!
The issue now is not about race.
This is about numbers, and the future. (Herald Sun)

Capitalist leaders have always known immigration was a great way to permanently weaken unions and culture in favour of economics. Are our leaders deliberately diluting Australian-ism, patriotism, so we are accommodated into a global market? Already our real estate, many industries, tertiary education, job markets, consumer items and our population are being quietly globalised.

THE Rudd government must urgently rein in migration or tens of thousands more young Australians will miss out on their first jobs , a new report warns. (The Australian)

Already, 15- to 24-year-old Australians are bearing the brunt of burgeoning migration levels, their unemployment rate rising from 8.8 per cent to 11.7 per cent in the year to September, the study by Monash University academic Ernest Healy reveals.
Cut migrants to aid jobless:

India as a nation is faced with massive problem of unemployment. Unemployment rates for women are higher than those for men. The incidence of unemployment among the educated is much higher than the overall unemployment. If our definition of unemployment is defined to include any job which does not move an individual to living wages within one year, then India’s unemployment is not the official 7-9% but about 26%!

If our unemployed, or underemployed, or students went to India to access their tertiary education system and raided their limited casual or professional job opportunities, surely there would be a "racist" backlash!

Let's get back to some basic good old-fashioned Australian patriotism instead of all the globalisation that is being inflicted on us. Tertiary educational institutions should be funded to educate primarily Australian citizens, not internationals, and jobs should be for Australians, not outsourced overseas or for opportunist students hoping to stay here.

Australia’s population growth has been historically driven by immigration. Now we need to be stabilized and established as a distinct but multicultural entity.

The abuse of the word “racist” is manipulating us into silence and being used to enforce policies that were appropriate and beneficial in past decades, but are not appropriate for Australia in the 21st century.

In an editorial piece in
"The Australian" newspaper, Bernard Salt explained that over the next 50 years, the Australian tax base (the segment of population who contribute to tax) will be eroded, as more people retire and our low birth rate.

Mr Salt said all metropolitan plans developed in the previous five years had to be rethought: in the state of Victoria, Melbourne 2030 has been recast as Melbourne @ 5 Million; Adelaide in South Australia has a new 30-year plan; and southeast Queensland has a new regional plan. “Indeed, I would say that recruiting workers (and students who turn into workers) from overseas must remain one of this nation's growth industries over the next 20 years.”

(Global population growth 1950 to predicted in 2050)
Has Mr Salt taken into consideration the social, ecological, cultural impacts of this continuing, socially engineered, population growth?
It’s just pure extrapolation without understanding the exponential nature of growth.

Our population is estimated to reach 35.4 million in 40 years, a dramatic revision from the 28.5 million projected only two years ago. However, with our rate of growth, the “over” 35 million is an understatement! According to calculations by the Centre for Population and Urban Research that Bob Birrell heads, net immigration of 180,000 a year and a fertility rate of 2.0 would be required for the population to reach 35 million in 2051. However, our immigration rate is well over this rate, plus we have hidden numbers students applying for PR, and New Zealanders living here.

Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal that the population grew by 2.06% in the year to March this year, the fastest growth in the that period since figures were started in the their current form back in 1981.

All in all more than 502,000 people arrived here under varying migration schemes, such as family reunions, business and work visas of varying types. This is a doubling rate of 35 years!

By contrast, Japan's population started falling three years ago and is projected to keep doing so at an accelerating rate, contracting by one-fourth to 95 million by the middle of this century.

To offset the loss of funds involved in a larger base of people exiting the workplace, and to pay for services needed for the older population Mr Salt believes that governments will look at expanding migration.

Data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows the proportion of Australian people aged 65 will almost double between 2006 and 2036, from 13 per cent to 25 per cent. For all the growth, the proportion of the aged will still be higher than it is now?

Immigration at present is running at the highest levels since the post-war immigration boom.

The most rapidly expanding elderly age group, however, is the over-85s. Their numbers will triple from 333,000 in 2006 to about 1.1 million in 2036, up from 1.6 per cent to 4.2 per cent of the total population. During the same period, the number of centenarians is projected to increase more than five-fold, from less than 5000 to more than 25,000.

The Federal Government has been increasingly concerned about ''longevity risk'' in the retirement income system - the risk that self-funded retirees may run out of money if they live longer than they expect.

Other reforms to tackle longevity risk are being considered by the Government's tax reform panel, headed by the Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry. To help prepare the economy for the changes, the Government announced in the budget that the pension age would rise from 65 to 67 between 2017 and 2023.

Australian National University demographer Peter McDonald said the recent increase in the birthrate in Australia, up from 1.79 to 1.93 in the past two years, was “encouraging”.
"The lower the birthrate, the more migrants you need," Professor McDonald said. "If we had birthrates like those in Germany or Italy we would need to look at greater numbers of migrants."

Adding more people will never keep our population young. Adding more people to “replace” or “compensate” for our dangerous ageing population is surely a way to blow-out our numbers!

We cannot just superimpose earlier conditions on today’s. Australia has changed since the 1950s and we have environmental, resource and climate change challenges now that didn’t exist before. Extrapolating the benefits of adding more people is dangerous under the stresses we are facing of today.

--------------------overseas----------------

Japan, known for its low-fat staple of fish and rice, will have the most centenarians in 2050 – 627,000, or nearly 1% of its total population, according to census estimates. Japan pays special respect to the elderly and has created a thriving industry in robotics – from dogs and nurses to feeding machines – to cater to its rapidly ageing population. Japan has one of the world's oldest populations, with many young people putting off starting a family because of the burden on their lifestyles and careers.

Italy, Greece, Monaco and Singapore, aided by their temperate climates, also will have sizable shares of centenarians, most notably among women.
Italy - But with the country’s plummeting birth rate and ageing population, many parts of the economy would find it hard to survive without foreign workers. Last year a government report on immigrant relations showed that 42% of Italians recognise that immigrants are essential to the economy

Populations in the Gulf are getting older and increasing in size, with a big bulge in the number of teen-agers who will be entering the work force within the next 10 years. These trends are making its harder and more costly for governments to provide high-quality healthcare and schooling. The Gulf has one of the world’s highest rates of obesity; 27 per cent of all men and 40 per cent of all women are clinically obese. The older people become, the fatter they get – though this seems to conflict with the ob-gen argument that we need to get fat to avoid starvation. On this view, an ageing population means a fatter population in the United States, China, Japan, and much of Europe.

In Indian context the older population has been rapidly increasing. It is said that while it took France 120 years for the population of the elderly to double, it took India just 25 years to achieve this phenomenon. India’s elderly population increased from 12 million in 1901 to 19 million in 1951 and 77 million in 2001. According to an estimate by 2021, India’s elderly population will cross 137 million. Presently India has the second largest aged population in the world. Nearly 90 per cent of the total workforce in India is employed in the informal sector. Thus, social security offered by pension schemes is available to only 10 per cent of the working population retiring from the organised sector.

----------solutions?------------

It is true that the only way our leaders are able to combat an ageing population - bar introducing state-sanctioned euthanasia for the over 85s - is to have a faster-growing population of young people. Australia has no comprehensive plan to deal with its growing population. Decisions on migration are made at one level of government - federal - in isolation from the states, which are responsible for actually housing, educating and caring for the new inhabitants. This solution that has been in the news of late; an increase in immigration.

Australia is perceived to have one of the largest countries in the world, yet we have one of the smallest populations. In this plan, the government intends to use this excess space, to open the doors to a controlled form of immigration, in which only younger people are allowed. They hope this may counter the effects of an ageing population, through stimulating the economy with greater activity and productivity.

The employment challenge of ageing populations cannot be solved by perpetual population growth, because perpetual population growth is not possible in a finite world.

Today's young people will always grow into the elderly of the future, and therefore today's workforce into the dependants of the future.

Definitions of economic dependency focus too narrowly on the proportion of older and elderly people in a population, while the contribution of dependent children and other economically inactive groups has been ignored.

Impossibly large numbers of additional births or settling migrants would be needed to maintain the dependency ratios enjoyed by growing populations.

Population Trust POPULATION POLICY: EUROPE

• Welcome the projected stabilisation of EU population in 2025 and gradual decrease over the period 2025-2050. The world has no choice but to welcome ageing populations as the better educated nations reduce their natural population. Climate change implications should mean that less people means less greenhouse gas emissions and thus easier to scale up renewable energy sources.

• Improve the health, education and training of the working-age population. Improved diets would avoid Western diseases and obesity, and thus the costs to the health care system.

• Improve the education and training of young people - the future workforce. Our massive HECS fees and having our universities and tertiary education system globalised should stop. Concentrate training on our own youth, not those from overseas.

• Create more flexible jobs to enable groups such as working mothers, the disabled and older people to join the workforce. Retirement should be more flexible, a phasing out system, not just a cut-off point. A chronological age is not the best indicator of readiness for retirement.

• Raise state and corporate pension ages in line with life expectancy and personal health and well-being levels.

• Encourage and enable people to save more for retirement.

One-quarter of Japanese men are still working after they have turned 75. "The biggest thing that Japan has that we don't have is a much stronger participation in the workforce," Professor McCallum, Victoria University's deputy vice-chancellor, said. In Japan, older men step down from senior positions and take lower-level jobs to make way for younger generations.

Special attention should also be devoted to the development of annuity markets and other instruments which help the retirees in the pay-out phase.

An important part of the myth of disaster from ageing populations is the fallacy that growth must be unending. This has been promoted by pressure groups that benefit from population growth through escalating values of real estate, mass markets, demands for building, and, in supporting immigration, importing cheap docile labour for unpleasant jobs, and already-skilled personnel that have not cost the reception country any expense in education and training.

However, there is less recognition that growth has downsides. Past civilisations have grown beyond the resources available to them, and collapsed.

There is no easy solution to the economic impacts of an ageing population. However, we need to stabilize our numbers, not replace older people through adding more people! We all must share the pain until we reduce our numbers to a sustainable level.

The alternative, an overloaded Australia and the implications of the erosion of our ecosystems, destruction of our wildlife habitats, loss of arable land, the threats of water and food shortages, and climate change, all need to be taken into consideration.

Biological systems can grow until they consume their natural resources, and then find equilibrium with other species. Nothing can grow forever on finite ecosystems, and economists should take a lesson from biological communities, not just extrapolate the benefits of a growing population and ignore the many facets and implications of infinite growth.

35 Million Australians by 2050?

The Age September 19th

Start preparing now:

Treasurer Wayne Swan is quite resigned to the fact that we will have “over 36 million” people by the year 2050! This is a dishonest understatement. According to our present growth rate, we will have doubled our present population of nearly 22 million by 2046. He clearly is being evasive or is showing a lack of understanding of arithmetic despite being our Treasurer. We will be facing more than 44 million by 2046, and the numbers will keep escalating.

At the present rate Australia will have a population of about 50 million by mid century and 100 million by the end of the century. If this sounds implausible, consider that at the end of World War II, just 64 years ago, Australia’s population was only 7.5 million, i.e. it has almost tripled in that time.

Online Opinion

The Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2008 models show Australia’s population on course 42 million by 2050, and Sydney and Melbourne's population each surpassing 7 million, on current trends.

Our Treasurer has released update population forecasts that confirm that now is the time to start "reshaping the way we live”. This means that despite our diminishing and threatened natural resources, climate change, loss of biodiversity, impending threats from diseases, starvation, famine, water shortages, ocean destruction, ecological collapse and atmospheric pollution, he is willing to risk all and keep adding more people for the great idol of “economic growth”!

“Reshaping the way we live” is an euphemism for higher density living, few private backyards, more concrete or living in outer urban sprawl areas with more travelling time, for higher costs for fuel and water, and for congestion and poverty.

“Sustainable” growth is pure fiction!

The “shift upwards” trend to create higher density living has been the goal of urban planners for some time, but this has been “stymied” by NIMBY-ism! Why should our lifestyles and our suburbs be a resource for developers and a growth phenomenon that is contrary to our interests? Why should our children be denied back yards and safe places to explore and play? Why should we be denied the right to grow our own vegetables, have pets and gardens? Already our democratic rights to justice are being threatened to speed up development approvals.

Mr Swan’s speech was delivered at the launch of a Sydney-based institute on population ageing, which he said was “arguably one of two of our greatest challenges along with climate change”! Really, older people are a threat, equal to climate change? On the contrary, older people usually consume less and are more conservative in their needs. Perhaps he would like a voluntary extermination program so that the ageing aren’t a financial burden to the growth industries!

Another major think-tank is Melbourne’s Grattan Institute to “promote vital debate about the city of the 21st century”. However, it will depend on the public being “engaged and persuaded”. Does that mean the public will be able to input into the debate on “why” or just add to the “how”? The Age newspaper is intending to play a leading role in this process. With Fairfax’s interest in land developments and the real estate industries, just how detached and objective will this input be?

The article conceded that many Australians will respond to all this with the “deceptively simple question - why not cap the population”? This question is not “deceptively simple” but IS simple! According to the article, the main reason that it is not a good solution is a “demographic one” – migrants are significantly younger on average than the general population. Only young people are considered desirable! This is not a demographic reason, but an economic one. Once our “baby boomers” from the post war baby boom finally expire (and I am one of them), without immigration, we should reach equilibrium and have either population stability or even decline. Our leaders worship growth, and youth, but neither can go on forever! They strive and worship economic GROWTH, and with their limited and short-sighted model for growth, it requires population growth.

Adding young migrants, no matter how educated they are, will not avoid them ageing! Immigration will never be able to keep our population young. Adding people to “compensate” or “replace” older people means our numbers will keep blowing out, and the following generation will have even more older people.

Fact Sheet, Australia's ageing population problem

The proportion of older people has been revised to be 22% by 2049, which is even higher than our present 13%! Where’s the logic?

According to World Book figures for 2008, a rising population is not necessary for economic growth. Sweden, Cuba, Norway, Russia and Italy all enjoy small population growth rates, and all have viable, if not growing, economies and healthy GDPs. However, many of our industries have been swamped and eradicated by globalisation. Maybe these countries will prove the sensible ones that survive better in the long-term.

Treasurer Wayne Swan, and our PM Kevin Rudd who is “excited” about population growth (link) because it will raise the “tax base”, are willing to sacrifice Australia’s landscape, native animals, heritage, culture, vegetation, lifestyles, gardens and green wedges, coastlines to developments and desalination plants, and destroy all that is good about Australia, all in the name of economic growth! This formula for growth will inevitably increase the base of customers for gigantic corporations and global industries but will increase poverty in Australia! Growth at all costs is malignant and will eventually diminish human rights and dignity, and disempower the majority.

Kevin Rudd, who professes to be a Christian, has sold his soul for the god of Mammon and materialism. God and Mammon

His masters are the corporations and business who shape these warped policies, not patriotism and love for our country Australia.

The U.K. government is planning to review its immigration policies, in a move likely to make it more difficult for foreigners to become British citizens. The move comes as unemployment is now at a 12-year high and as concerns about terrorism have fueled a surge in protectionist sentiment in the U.K., long one of the world's most open countries. Once-marginal anti-immigration politicians have been gaining ground.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson plant to announce a points system ('PBS') will be modeled after one in use in Australia and introduced last year, that grades workers and students hoping to enter the U.K. on criteria including education, age and need for their skills. Immigration minister Phil Woolas said the scheme would stop the population reaching the 70 million predicted by Whitehall statisticians and bring "control" to the migration system. The number of passports handed out to migrants is on course to hit a record of almost 220,000 this year. Critics in UK say the recent increases to their population, through heavy immigration, are placing a huge burden on public services as hospitals and schools face increased demand but no increases in their budgets.

Traditionally, foreign workers boost both the economies of the countries they work in as well as their home countries. But studies say that the current global economic crisis has sapped much of such cross-border monetary exchanges. The short-term benefits of growth are evident, but the long-term implications are severe.

Other European countries are clamping down on immigration as their economies slow and citizens complain that too many people are being allowed in.

In future migrants to the UK would have to spend five years as temporary residents, before becoming "probationary citizens". Points could also be deducted and citizenship either delayed or withheld for those found breaking the law or engaging in anti-social behaviour.

With record immigration levels to Australia, and so-called "skills shortages" in areas such as hair-dressing and cooks, this system hasn't reduced the number of foreigners entering Australia! Citizenship to Australia is extremely easy to aquire. The "skills shortages" hasn't translated into full employment or increased training courses. HECS and loans are escalating costs for university and now TAFE loans in Victoria and more Australians trying to aquire skills will become casualties of excessive fees.

Assisted by higher birth rates and heightened net overseas migration, Australia added a record 406,000 residents last year. The previous record was 375,000 in the year to June 2007. Bernard Salt: Clusters of growth excite property developers and concern planners. They localise demand for property and intensify demand for infrastructure. Our growth is determined by the property market!

Political lifecyles last until the next election. Australia must try to survive, intact, until at least the next generation and remain "sustainable" after that!

It’s time Australia cut immigration, apart from genuine refugees. Anti-immigration is not racism! It is about having an optimum population plan, a sustainable limit to how our environment, society and economy can equitably cope with the projected number of people.

John Howards "go for growth" mentality, and that record numbers of births implies confidence in the economy, still hasn't been re-evaluated. Developing countries have high birth rates too, to ensure an income in old age!

The points based system is trivial and has done little to reduce our immigration numbers, and legally discriminates against genuine refugees.

Bernard Salt: Population growth at record levels

The Age, June 25th

Planning Minister Justin Madden should consult the people of Victoria if he wants a planning strategy with the needs of individuals and Victorian families at its heart. He would discover that a bulging Melbourne population is not in the interests of Victorian families at all, and adding to our urban obesity without considering what the people want is actually snobbery on his part! Why isn’t there a debate?

With 2000 new people entering Victoria each week, "sustainability" has become a throw-away word with no meaning, and “affordability” is something that most families are struggling with!

A burgeoning population will not bring "economic benefits" to the average person. Most people know that the contrary is true. As natural resources become increasingly scarce, they also become more expensive. Land and housing prices have soared, and water prices are set to sky-rocket.

We already have had the fatalities due to people choosing to live in more open outer suburbs, close to Kinglake National Park! Most people don't want to live in sterile and car-dependant outer suburban housing estates, and high density living is not "family friendly". Our parks and reserves are under threat from human impacts and fires due to the urban sprawl, and people seeking more open spaces.

Fertile farming lands closer to Melbourne are being consumed for housing, and vulnerable wildlife and biodiversity habitat will be become more threatened. Our connection with Nature will further diminish, and so will our ecological life-support system!

Adding more people to Victoria will not solve one problem , and the growth will continue to destroy our biodiversity and remaining wildlife habitat. Population growth with not stop at 5 million but will keep blowing-out to 6, 7...10 million!

Marvellous Melbourne, one of the most "liveable places in the world", under our Brumby's Melbourne@5Million plan, is under threat! Justin Madden’s accusations of “cultural snobbery” are because he wants to grow Melbourne boundaries, and our suburbs, as resources for land developers and the building industry, guaranteed Labor supporters!

Lou Dobbs interview on US population explosion

The following transcript is instructive for its revelation of the globalist mentality of mainstream environmentalism. In this case represented by Robert Engelman of Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org). Engelman, the good environmentalist that he is, takes the safe, easy way out. He opposes population growth alright. On a global front. The Worldwatch Institute says it's a bad thing and Engelman has written a book saying all the politically correct things. You know, "Women don't want more children, they want more for their children", so let's empower women. Fine.

It's when you start talking about population growth at home that environmentalists get nervous. And as soon as you mention "immigration", they get more than nervous, they get a panic attack. They start thinking about losing their donor base, especially that donor whose initials are D.G. and who gives $100 million every year on condition you don't take a stand on immigration. If you press them too hard and win the argument, well then you are a racist and the discussion is over.

What do folks like Engelman do? As you will see in the transcript, he blames the population increase on more people having babies. Environmentalists are very comfortable about discussing a "woman's right to choose" but apparently not a whole people's right choose how many shall become citizens. What Engelman doesn't want to face up to is that the fertility boom America is experiencing is driven by immigrants. And even if it wasn't, isn't there something perverse about an environmental movement that a)ignores population growth as an agency of environmental degradation and b) ignores immigration as an agency of population growth when in Canada and the US it accounts for 70% of such growth, irrespective of the children of immigrants?

The environmental movement can be likened to a police force that sets up a road block to arrest drunk drivers but allows the drug impaired to drive on through. It is prepared to arrest unwanted pregnancies but mass and illegal immigration can just drive on through.

The transcript was circulated by Bill Ryerson. I highlighted the juicy parts and inserted some annoying comments. Tim Murray

This is the transcript from Lou Dobbs' CNN program segment on U.S. population growth broadcast on August 21, 2008. For the entire program, see transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0808/21/ldt.01.html. Be sure to send Lou Dobbs your comments on the program and encourage him to do more programs on population issues at loudobbs [AT] cnn com .

Dobbs: The population of this country is expected to grow, get ready, by 135 million people in just the next 40 years. That growth is driven principally by immigration, both legal and illegal, and not by birth. There are serious concerns whether this country's national resources can keep up with and support such an outright explosion in our population.

Joining me now are three experts on population growth. From Washington, D.C., Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute (www.aei.org). Norm, great to have you with us. Norm is co-author of "The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get it Back on Track."

Robert Engelman is vice president for programs at the Worldwatch Institute. Good to have you with us. Robert is the author of "More: Population, Nature and What Women Want."

And that is one of my favorite titles. And here in New York is Jane Delung, president emeritus of the Population Resource Center (www.prcdc.org). Great to have you with us.

Let's begin. We're talking about an outright explosion. Almost 50 percent increase in our population over the course of the next four or five decades. That's crazy.

Jane Delung, President Emeritus, Population Resource Center: It is an explosion. For every two people that are in the United States today, there will be a third person. And this explosion is occurring both because of immigration and descendants to immigration. All respective experts say that it's between 60 and 75 percent of that growth will be driven by immigration. No one talks about this.

This is the hidden elephant in the room in the United States. We will have immigration reform discussions and debates next year. And it is beyond me why the American public is not willing to talk about what size do we want to be and how fast are we going to get there? We're growing from 300 million people to almost 450 million people in 40 years. Three million additional people a year.

Dobbs: That's incredible. To put that in some context, that growth rate is in excess of 10, 15 percent greater number than the entire number of people living in this country in 1940. That's nuts.

Delung: It's double the population in the 1960s. We hit 200 million in 1967. We're going to hit 450 million in 2040. It's an extraordinary growth rate.

Dobbs: Robert, let me ask you this. The environmental impact -- at a time when this country is being criticized for consuming so much of the world's resources. At a time when we are finding ourselves running into limits in terms of this country's resources whether it be for building, for the production and manufacture of products and goods, whatever it may be, what is the environmental impact?

Robert Engelman, Worldwatch Institute: Well, first of all, it's probably worth pointing out that these projections sometimes change. This is actually an increase in what the census was projecting just a few years ago. Probably more because of increases in births than actual increases in immigration. (Nonsense! What Engelman fails to note is that much of the current baby boom is attributable to illegal Hispanics exploiting the 14th amendment that allows citizenship to anyone born in the country. "Anchor babies". Hispanics in the US are having more children than they did in their home country. Population growth is driven by immigration. Other factors are peripheral.-Tim)

But let's assume the number is more or less accurate, it's going to be fairly close to that. It's interesting that this discussion is occurring at a time when everyone from President Bush on down has recognized that one of the reasons Americans are paying more for gasoline, more for food, is increases in demand. Demand matters and we're starting to lose confidence that I think we used to have that we can always produce more, we can always find more of everything we might need, so it doesn't matter how many people are consuming.

It clearly does matter and what we're seeing in America is a high consuming country that will need to consume about 50 percent more of the energy of housing. Whether it's John McCain's numbers or our own individual houses. We're going to be consuming more living space and more transportation. All of these things that we're worried about right now will need to find a lot more of.

Dobbs: So where is - where are the environmentalists on this? The impact is tremendous on the environment, on water supplies, on air. It's extraordinary and we're not hearing any discussion at all of what is a critically important issue from the environmental sector. (They have been bought out my friend. Google David Gelbaum. $100 million will make the "P" in the "IPAT" equation go away. Then all of America's environmental problems become ones of our sinful over-consumption.-Tim)

Engelman: I think the whole topic of population has become very sensitive. It's scary, it's very difficult for the environmental movement as a movement to take on. And it's one of the difficulties with a lot of things we face.

Dobbs: Sensitive and scary. Why should any American in any quarter ever be scared?

Engelman: People like to have safe conversations at least when they're not on television.

Dobbs: On this broadcast, we would like to have honest conversations. We want to tell everybody in this country who watches the broadcast, it's OK talk straight. We don't have to be politically correct. We don't have to be bound up with some silly orthodoxy on the left or right, some partisan nonsense. And it is all nonsense, coming from the right or left in this country. Feel free.

Engelman: Fine, I do. But for those who are trying to raise funding, for those who are trying to gain members, when you're looking at a phenomena that's basically about births and immigration, it has a lot to do with sex. It has a lot to do with contraception, touches on abortion.

Dobbs: You mean life itself?

Engelman: Yes, it can sometimes be sensitive and that's one of the difficulties of population. It's not like technology in just saying if we put up enough windmills, we'll be OK.

Dobbs: Let me put this in an expression of one of my daughters. Is the environmental sector about ready to man up on this issue?

Engelman: I don't know if I would put it that way. But I think we're going be forced more and more to examine where we're going demographically, because it is so important. At some point, we're going to have to decide whether we're going to cap our greenhouse gas emissions. Then it will get very interesting as our population keeps growing.

Dobbs: To me, it's already interesting, Robert, to be honest, and troubling. Let me turn to you, Norm. The idea as Jane just pointed out that we're not having a conversation. We don't hear from John McCain or Barack Obama, despite all of their nonsense on the campaign trail, we're not hearing from either of them about what the country will look like, how should our country function. What should we be thinking about in terms of the resources we will demand for the population one or two generations out? We're talking about finances on some levels at the margin. But we're not talking in any real terms about population growth, environmental impact, scarce resources, all of the tough issues.

Norm Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute: You know, it's almost inevitable in a political campaign that you look at short-term driving things. Right now, it's $4 a gallon gasoline. You mentioned the word that I think is an absolutely critical one, Lou, which is water. There will be an international water shortage. Safe potable drinking water, for other purposes that will make the oil crisis look pale by comparison.

And we really need to have a discussion of this. It's not going to happen in a political campaign, I'm afraid. We're going have to have a discussion about transportation. As more and more people move to exports, how are we going to afford to or find the vehicles or ways to get them around? And it's certainly great to have this conversation now.

You know, I might add one other thing, though. Keep in mind that as we look at our projections, in Europe the projections are exactly the opposite. They're going dramatically falling birth rates. They're actually going to have fewer people. They're going to have a whole lot more older people with very few young people to pay for the services that they've grown used to having. There's going to be crises in a lot of different ways and a lot of places, Lou.

Dobbs: We're going to don't talk about just exactly that when we continue with our panel here. Stay with us, we'll be right back. We're going talk about how in the world is the planet going to support over 9 billion people in the next four decades. Stay with us.

(Commercial break)

Dobbs: Jane, let me turn to you first quickly. The projections here for population growth. Do you believe that we're going to be growing faster than the rest of the world? Is it possible that it would even be growing even faster than these projections?

Delung: I do not think we're going to be growing faster than the rest of the world. But as Bob said, there's a real possibility that we will actually grow faster than these projections. I believe we will. The last population projections were in the mid-1990s. These projections have us with 45 million more people than they did in the mid-1990s.

Dobbs: So we continue to underestimate.

Delung: The growth has accelerated. We are underestimating the population that we're going have.

Dobbs: That's even more troubling. Robert, the environmental impact here, the political correctness issue, the sensitivity if you will as you described it here, there's a point of which, when we look at the issues of clean water, the energy demand that is resulting, natural resource demand. Why in the world would the environmental groups not now coalesce around this issue and start dealing with political issues that are going to have to be made in this society?

Engelman: Well I think one of the things that we need to communicate better is there are reasonable choices to make. One of the big factors in this that doesn't get talked about is the high level of unintended pregnancy in this country. If we had universal health care, and I might say if we had health care that was accessible to people who are not documented here as well as people who are undocumented here so that everyone, whether you're legally here or not, could at least get access to good family planning service, we could eliminate a large proportion of the pregnancies and thus the births that are occurring in this country. That's something we don't tend to talk about, environmentalists.

Dobbs: So it's politically incorrect to discuss illegal immigration, but it's politically correct to talk about substituting the national birthrate for immigration.

Engelman: I'm not sure which is politically correct.

Dobbs: We'll have that debate later. I want to turn to Norm very quickly. Norm, the choices that are here. We're talking about political choices. How do we get the political choices involved with exploding population growth on the national agenda?

Ornstein: You know, we're going to have to among other things hope that we can have more than three structured presidential debates. Have a different way to focus on all of the policy implications that flow from larger population. Some are positive. We're going have young people who at least can pay into a social security system and perhaps provide some of the resources to pay for health care for the elderly population and a whole lot of others that aren't.
(Unbelievable. The old Population Pyramid Scam. And who will pay for their health care when they reach old age, another billion immigrants? Young people cost more to care for than the elderly.-Tim)

Dobbs: You make them sound like social security slaves that we can bring in for the great entitlement plantation.

Ornstein: For our age, that's something we've got to think about, Lou.

Dobbs: Well, I didn't dismiss it out of head. Norm, thank you very much. Robert, thank you. Jane, thank you. So much, all three of you for being here to help us examine this. Come back soon, please.

Tonight's poll results: 98 percent of you say the Rhode Island bishop would be better served by calling upon the Mexican government to exercise morality in providing for its own citizens rather than encouraging them to break the law and enter the United States.

We thank you for being with us tonight. Please join us tomorrow. For all of us here, thank you for watching. Good night from New York. "THE ELECTION CENTER" with John King begins now -- John?