dystopia

Cumulatively worse than bushfires: Destruction by development, all year round.

On the outskirts of a north eastern Victorian town there is a nursing home nestled beside a golf course which is framed by ancient eucalypts.

The nursing home is quite expensive and even more so if your room looks out on a restful view of the golf course.

An elderly relative after breaking her leg in July was admitted to this nursing home- the best available it seemed after exhaustive searches in the area. The main feature of this new living situation for my relative was the wonderful setting which she could enjoy from the common living area that she inhabits by day.

I visited her recently en route to Canberra and found her to be well cared for in a light and airy place. She ruefully said to me, though "Isn't it a shame that they're getting rid of the golf course to build houses?" My heart sank as she had been there for less than half a year and already here was a massive change! I checked with a few people and found that the golf course would in fact remain but that it would soon fringe a new housing estate replacing a treed area.

When I returned from Canberra 3 days later, there was a pile of tree trunks lying in the middle of the view from the window. How many birds had lost their habitat in that exercise? I was told that the trees had been chopped down that day and the residents of the nursing home were naturally were very unhappy about. One lady said sadly "I suppose people have to live somewhere."

How quickly our environment is being destroyed! This kind of loss of nature happens every day, it happens in many places in Australia on the same day. Is there another way of describing this apart from "environmental destruction"?

Editor: I assume that the author of this article has left the geographic identifiers out because she is afraid of repercussions for her elderly relative. It's a nice world we are making for ourselves by passively accepting the dictates of the growth lobby. That governments at local and state level actually facilitate this kind of anti-social system is cause for alarm.

Radiocarbon-testing has confirmed that a giant rare old-growth Eucalyptus regnans located in its natural forest habitat on East Gippsland's Brown Mountain has been chainsawed by VicForests, despite it being scientifically confirmed to be at least 500 years old.

No regard has been made for the existence value of a Victorian 500 year old natural asset, nor the habitat requirements for the typical arboreal animals and forest owls dependent on this old growth habitat tree or its associative forest dependent habitat. Under State-sanction, ignorant VicForest butchers have plundered, ransacked and run.

Manager, Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, Orbost, Steve DeVoogd, has been formally advised that this chainsawing of rare old growth forest is an offence committed under the section 46(1) of the Sustainable Forests (Timber) Act 2004. The action is also a breach of Code of Forest Practices (CFP).

VicForests Chairman, Warren Hodgson, Board members Monica Gould, Jim Houghton, Fiona McNabb, Bob Smith, Susan Walpole, and Chief Executive Officer David Pollard should all be sacked forthwith. VicForests token 'vision' 'purpose' and 'values' which profess motherhood notions of 'sustainable', 'environmentally responsible' and 'ethical' are but Mugabean. This 500 year old tree epitomises the reality of Brumby's 'Sustainability Charter for State forests.

Botanist Steve Mueck has worked for the Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment and is now a consultant in the private sector. He says radiocarbon dating of eucalypts is unusual and the result in this case is significant.

"Current forest managements practices are looking at harvesting on rotation times in the vicinity of 80 to 120 years with the perception that that's a particularly long period of time," he said.

"Now it is, I suppose, in the context of a human lifetime, but it is a very, very short period of time in comparison to the age in which many of the components that live in these forests can in fact get to in a natural system."

Back in the 1860s timber workers and naturalists emerged from the forests with stories of massive trees towering to immense heights and as wide as houses. Government botanist Ferdinand von Mueller recounted the existence of a tree as high as the Egyptian Pyramids at 480 ft (144m) and another fallen tree in the Dandenong Ranges over 400 ft (120m). A giant was sighted in the Otways with a girth of 64 ft (19m).

VicForests senseless decapitation of one of the last Victorian giants is a harbinger of extinction to Victoria's old growth forests. It's like grabbing an old ANZAC from the march past and slitting his throat.

For those with their eyes open population growth and the immigration that fuels it are never out of the news. ... unaffordable housing drives young families into debt slavery (even pushing some to the less-expensive urban fringe where a number died in Melbourne’s recent fires)... strained infrastructure leading to blackouts, cancelled train services... traffic congestion, draining energy from the economy and from human lives...hospitals that can no longer care for the people they serve... water supplies that dwindle as drought and growth desiccate cities and stretch the capacity of farms... pleasant suburbs degraded by intensive redevelopment; greenhouse gases ...and a natural environment wilting under the burden of numbers.
Click here to purchase book
"Review by Katharine Betts of Mark O’Connor's and WilliamJ. Lines's book,Overloading Australia,"
People and Place, vol. 17, no. 1, page 76.

Australia’s population is growing rapidly. In March 2009 it stood at 21.6 million. The current Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, takes it for granted that it will grow to 35 million by 2051.[1] In 1999 when Philip Ruddock was Minister for Immigration he told Australians that there was no need for a population policy because we were unlikely to grow much beyond 23 million. He added that the ‘nation cannot afford to return to [an immigration] program characterised by big numbers and little thought’. [2] Nonetheless the current growth surge, keenly embraced by the new Labor Government, began quietly under the Coalition soon after Ruddock’s 1999 statement.[3]

Much of Australia’s growth is directly due to immigration (nearly 60 per cent in 2007–08) and much of the growth from natural increase is attributable to the Australia-born children of immigrants. For example, in 2007, 25 per cent of all births were to overseas-born mothers.

For those with their eyes open population growth and the immigration that fuels it are never out of the news. There is the unaffordable housing that drives young families into debt slavery [4] (even pushing some to the less-expensive urban fringe where a number died in Melbourne’s recent fires).[5] There is strained infrastructure leading to blackouts, cancelled train services, and to traffic congestion, draining energy from the economy and from human lives. [6] There are hospitals that can no longer care for the people they serve;[7] water supplies that dwindle as drought and growth desiccate cities and stretch the capacity of farms;[8] pleasant suburbs degraded by intensive redevelopment;[9] greenhouse gases that refuse to abate;[0 ]and a natural environment wilting under the burden of numbers.

But while stories of water shortages and degraded infrastructure abound, few of the public figures who comment on them acknowledge the role of population growth in creating these problems and making them harder to overcome. Here Mark O’Connor and William Lines have done us an important service; they have joined the dots between these social and environmental ills and our rapid growth.

From the picture they create a reader could, at first, believe that Australia’s pattern of growth was promising. It is mainly due to government immigration policy, so shouldn’t it be relatively easy to rein it in? Besides immigration is not popular; support for the post-2000 increase is minimal among both the Australia-born and migrants themselves.[11] But as O’Connor and Lines make clear, immigration in fact makes it harder to halt growth because the businesses that profit from it lobby for it, and property developers with deep pockets appear to have bought the favour of some of the politicians who create it.[12]
High migration means more customers, cheaper labour, and minimal training costs. All of these boons intensify pressures from self-interested groups to keep the numbers coming. As O’Connor and Lines put it: ‘It is no surprise that the housing industry lobbies not for the size of housing industry that Australia’s population needs but for the size of Australia’s population that the industry needs’.[13] The concentrated benefits enjoyed by special interests (on the right of the political spectrum) trump the unorganised interests of the majority who bear the costs.

At the same time many opinion makers on the left are quick to decry criticism of immigration-fuelled growth as scapegoating immigrants, even as racism.[14] As if this were not enough, business interests fund academic research into demography and immigration, naturally channeling their money towards those likely to produce results friendly to growth. This is a chilling circumstance at a time when universities are starved of money and academics are under crushing pressure to bring in research grants.[15] Other sources of research funds include state and federal government departments, most of which are committed to the growth targets set by politicians.[16] Researchers who might otherwise point to the costs of growth are unlikely to win such grants; they also risk the disapproval of their left-liberal peers.

The authors point out that the left’s fixation on seeing criticism of immigration-fuelled growth as racism is ‘a good cloak for elitism … the people must not be given power because their views are barbaric’.[17] Thus even though high migration is unpopular, a pro-growth right and a left that is anti-anti-growth mean that voters are unorganised and voiceless.
The authors marvel at the way in which the motives of the occasional reformer who questions growth are earnestly probed while no one examines the growth lobby as it enjoys the handsome profits brought to them by each plane load of new consumers. O’Connor and Lines assert that left-wing xenophobia hunters are not interested in old fashioned rent seekers despoiling the community for their own advantage; they prefer to enjoy the comforts of their moral superiority.[18]

Why must O’Connor and Lines be the ones to point to the damage done to Australia by this blend of greed and snobbery? Why have the media failed to show it to us? Here the authors have a telling vignette about Ian Lowe, a distinguished scientist who takes population seriously. He is also president of the Australian Conservation Foundation and a frequent media commentator. O’Connor asked him why he so seldom spoke out about population. Lowe replied that he often did but that when he did he was ignored. He also told O’Connor ‘how he was sacked as a columnist from one paper for insisting on it. He [Lowe] found that the most biased media were the grossly pro-growthist Murdoch papers’.[19]

Media silence on the question is not always an accidental byproduct of pleasing pro-growth advertisers while deferring to the sensibilities of the intelligentsia. It can be deliberate.[20] O’Connor and Lines argue that just as other vendors to the domestic market have a product to sell, so too do the commercial media; it is always easier to sell to a growing market rather than to compete for market share, or indeed to export. The commercial media have their own vested interests in growth. While the ABC should be immune from these interests, it is more likely to be infected with the racism virus, the infection that makes its host see any scepticism about growth as racism in disguise.[21] Nonetheless, perhaps because it does not profit from growth, the ABC has proved more receptive to Overloading Australia than have other media outlets.

Both authors are accomplished writers and the book is brief and clear; so far it has achieved a fair degree of media coverage. It was launched in February 2009 by Bob Carr, former premier of New South Wales, and a rarity among Australian premiers in that he is a critic of growth. At the launch Carr said: ‘There is a hardly any significant process at State or Federal level today that is allowed to proceed without an environmental impact statement ­ except the pushing up of population’.
O’Connor’s account of the launch goes on to report how Carr ‘spoke of his frustration, when he was Premier, at having a vastly increased Sydney population forced upon him by decisions made in Canberra. … He was then in the invidious situation of having to destroy amenities and allow developers to invade protected areas. As he put it, people don’t want Sydney to be crowded and built up, but they also don’t want it to expand into places like Kuringai Chase and Botany Bay; yet one of those two things has to happen if a million extra people are put into Sydney’.[22]

Some of the media reports have been neutral [23] or even favourable. For example O’Connor was invited to write an opinion piece for the Sydney Morning Herald,[24] and the Adelaide Advertiser.[25] He was also interviewed on the ABC Radio National station on Counterpoint,[26] Breakfast [27] and Late Night Live.[28] But press coverage has been more ambivalent and its tenor bears out the authors’ analysis.

A former Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, said that ‘the extent to which population influenced environmental policy depended on how selfish Australians wanted to be’ and that ‘some people citing environmental reasons for reduced migration were simply opposed to immigration’.[29] Charles Berger, in a generally sympathetic piece in The Canberra Times, wrote that: ‘Overloading Australia … has sparked another round of debate about Australia’s population. Some commentators have been quick to detect a murky agenda of xenophobia hovering behind a green cloak in the population debate. They are right to be suspicious. …’[30] He did, however, go on to exonerate O’Connor and Lines.

Brigid Delaney in the Melbourne Age was not so generous. She wrote that to rein in growth was to risk ‘the development of our inner lives’ because immigrants energise their adopted countries. But there was worse:

Environmental issues can be a handy Trojan horse with which to wheel in policies and debates about immigration that we are too squeamish to discuss baldly. After all, no one wants a rerun of Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in 1968 that led to race riots across England, nor Pauline Hanson’s polarising comments on immigration that brought Australia to the brink of a spiritual crisis.[31]

But O’Connor and Lines do not advocate an end to immigration, just a balanced intake which would still leave room for refugees.[32] This is a humanitarian position; they write that deliberately ‘pushing up our own population … cannot be justified on environmental grounds. It could only be justified on international humanitarian grounds if we could believe that it would leave us, somehow, very much more able and more willing to help our neighbours’.[33] They also point to the immorality of Australia continuing to pirate doctors and other health workers from poor countries to compensate for our own reluctance to invest in local training.[34] Xenophobia hunters, however, are more interested in displaying their self-righteousness than in understanding and debating an opposing point of view.

How can serious advocates of a moral and sustainable position on population growth cut through in such a climate? One way is to write the kind book that O’Connor and Lines have written, well researched, cogent and readable. Another is put forward a shocking policy proposal.

This concerns both sacrifice and exploitation. We can see its outlines in debate about the Rudd Government’s proposed emissions trading scheme. This will cap Australia’s overall greenhouse gas emissions through the sale of permits to industry, but it will also set a floor under which emissions are unlikely to fall. As community awareness of this has spread many householders are dismayed; their individual sacrifices to lower emissions are not only going to count for nothing, they will actively help polluters to pollute. Private spending on solar panels, solar hot water, and on low-emission cars will do nothing to reduce greenhouse gases; it will just enable dirty industries to emit more. But the same can be said of many sacrifices that individual Australians make for the environment; they are all nullified by the extra people brought in to pander to the growth lobby.

Here O’Connor and Lines put forward their suggestion. Instead of washing up only once a day and letting the garden die, we should all waste water. Saving water just makes it easier for growthists to increase the population. (They do say that would never suggest that we waste a non-renewable resource.)[35] But why struggle to cut your shower to less than two minutes when the Government is bringing in more than 200,000 extra people a year?

The answer? Take a deep bath and bring the crisis to a head. And while you are enjoying your bath you could read this excellent book.

Mark O’Connor and William J. Lines, Overloading Australia: How governments and media dither and deny on population, Envirobook, Sydney, December 2008, ISBN 9780858812246, A$19.95

Available online from , and .

References
1 See Rudd quoted in M. Franklin, ‘Rudd warns Australia must prepare for emerging arms race across Asia­PM flags major naval build-up’, The Australian, September 10 2008, pp. 1, 6
2 P. Ruddock, ‘The Coalition Government’s position on immigration and population policy’, People and Place, vol. 7, no. 4, 1999, pp. 6–12
3 See P. Kelly, ‘Restocking the nation’, The Weekend Australian, 3 August 2002, p. 28.
4 J. Hewett, ‘Under mortgage pressure’, The Australian, 20 October 2007, p. 21; B. Day, ‘How to plan for a fiasco’, The Australian, 22 April 2008, p. 14
5 Editorial, ‘A tragic week in Australian history’, The Australian, 14 February 2009, p. 16
6 AAP, ‘Heatwave claims lives’, The Age, 1 February 2009; AAP, ‘Qld: Labor plan to cut southeast traffic conges­tion’, Australian Associated Press General News, 26 February 2009; J. Gordon and R. Sexton, ‘National road chaos looms’, The Age, 8 March 2009, p. 1; C. Lucas, ‘Connex hit with commuter squeeze’, The Age, 5 March 2009, p. 10
7 R. Wallace, ‘Hospitals fail to meet most targets’, The Australian, 3 October 2008, p. 7
8 G. Roberts and P. Murphy, ‘Recycled sewage “will have bugs”’, The Australian, 29 October 2008, p. 9; B. Doherty, ‘Water plan may not go far enough’, The Age, 23 October 2008, p. 1
9 M. Clayfield, ‘There’s a hole in our suburb, dear Labor, oh dear’, The Australian, 7 March 2009, p. 5
10 G. Readfearn, ‘Pollution skyrockets ­ Coal and gas for electricity blamed’, The Courier-Mail, 12 January 2009, p. 11; T. Arup, ‘Emissions heat up in economic meltdown’, The Age, 14 March 2009, p. 4
11 See M. O’Connor and W. J. Lines, Overloading Australia, Envirobook, Sydney, 2008, p. 107.
12 Others may not need persuading. See ibid., pp. 4, 8–9, 26, 88ff, 98, 106, 145, 162.
13 ibid., pp. 125–6
14 ibid., pp. 141ff, 160, 164, 167, 172–3
15 For the role of the Scanlon Foundation with its mission to create ‘a larger cohesive Australian society’, see ibid., p. 82 and p. 205 n. 199. The Foundation believes that the future prosperity of Australia is ‘underpinned by continued population growth’. See accessed 9/3/09.
16 For example academics critical of the high growth trajectory of the Victorian Government’s Melbourne 2030 strategy, and who are likely to apply to it for research contracts, are well advised to keep their criticism to them­selves. A public servant conveyed this warning, as a friendly gesture, to a group that I was a member of in late 2003.
17 O’Connor and Lines, 2008, op. cit., p. 144
18 See ibid., p. 145. 19 ibid., p. 171
20 ibid., pp. 38, 133–34
21 O’Connor and Lines devote a chapter to the pro-immigration bias of the ABC. See ibid., pp. 158–164 and p. 141ff.
22 Email from Mark O’Connor to [email protected] 10 February 2009
23 See P. Ker, ‘Population Australia’s “big threat”’, The Age, 24 January 2009, p. 3; P. Ker and A. Morton, ‘Popula­tion debate booms’, The Age, 30 January 2009, p. 2.
24 M. O’Connor, ‘Many in denial over rising population’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 December 2008, p. 27
25 M. O’Connor, ‘Australia’s bizarrely high population growth lies behind many of our worst problems’, The Advertiser, 3 March 2009, p. 18
26 Monday 1 December 2008, audio available at accessed 9/3/09
27 Wednesday 28 January 2009, audio available at accessed 9/3/09
28 Tuesday 5 March 2009, audio available at accessed 9/3/09
29 Quoted in Ker and Morton, 2009, op. cit.
30 C. Berger, ‘Aim for sustainable population and generous immigration’, Canberra Times, 13 February 2009, p. 15
31 B. Delaney, ‘Murky agenda behind this green debate’, The Age, 27 January 2009, p. 11
32 O’Connor and Lines, 2008, op. cit., p. 72ff
33 ibid., p. 57
34 See ibid., pp. 69, 110.
35 ibid., pp. 182–184

Food garden in White House

In the aftermath of breaking ground on the new, 1100 square foot White House garden, Michelle Obama named chef Sam Kass to head the White House Food Initiative. And Kass isn't a fan of big agriculture and mass fertilisers.

All of this positive PR for organics feels very threatening to Big Ag. So one group, the Mid America CropLife Association, has sent an email defending chemical ag to Mrs. Obama. See the letter reprinted below.

After sending the letter, MACA forwarded it around to others, with the following message:

"Did you hear the news? The White House is planning to have an "organic" garden on the grounds to provide fresh fruits and vegetables for the Obama's and their guests. While a garden is a great idea, the thought of it being organic made Janet Braun, CropLife Ambassador Coordinator and I shudder. As a result, we sent a letter encouraging them to consider using crop protection products and to recognize the importance of agriculture to the entire U.S. economy. Read below for the entire letter.

If you want to send your own letter, it can be sent to the White House ..."

Except one person on the forward list didn't shudder at the idea of an organic garden - and that's how the letter reached the person who sent it on. Here it is:

Letter from Big Ag

"March 26, 2009
Mrs. Barack Obama
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mrs. Obama,

We are writing regarding the garden recently added to the White House grounds to ensure a fresh supply of fruits and vegetables to your family, guests and staff. Congratulations on recognizing the importance of agriculture in America! The U.S. has the safest and most abundant food supply in the world thanks to the 3 million people who farm or ranch in the United States.

The CropLife Ambassador Network, a program of the Mid America CropLife Association, consists of over 160 ambassadors who work and many of whom grew up in agriculture. Their mission is to provide scientifically based, accurate information to the public regarding the safety and value of American agricultural food production. Many people, especially children, don't realize the extent to which their daily lives depend on America's agricultural industry. For instance, children are unaware the jeans they put on in the morning, the three meals eaten daily, the baseball with which they play and even the biofuels that power the school bus are available because of America's farmers and ranchers.

Agriculture is the largest industry in America generating 20% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. Individuals, family partnerships or family corporations operate almost 99% of U.S. farms. Over 22 million people are employed in farm-related jobs, including production agriculture, farm inputs, processing and marketing and sales. Through research and changes in production practices, today's food producers are providing Americans with the widest variety of foods ever.

Starting in the early 1900's, technology advances have allowed farmers to continually produce more food on less land while using less human labor. Over time, Americans were able to leave the time-consuming demands of farming to pursue new interests and develop new abilities. Today, an average farmer produces enough food to feed 144 Americans who are living longer lives than many of their ancestors. Technology in agriculture has allowed for the development of much of what we know and use in our lives today. If Americans were still required to farm to support their family's basic food and fiber needs, would the U.S. have been leaders in the advancement of science, communication, education, medicine, transportation and the arts?

We live in a very different world than that of our grandparents. Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and aging parents. The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family's year-round food needs.

Much of the food considered not wholesome or tasty is the result of how it is stored or prepared rather than how it is grown. Fresh foods grown conventionally are wholesome and flavorful yet more economical. Local and conventional farming is not mutually exclusive. However, a Midwest mother whose child loves strawberries, a good source of Vitamin C, appreciates the ability to offer California strawberries in March a few months before the official Mid-west season.

Farmers and ranchers are the first environmentalists, maintaining and improving the soil and natural resources to pass onto future generations. Technology allows for farmers to meet the increasing demand for food and fiber in a sustainable manner.

Farmers use reduced tillage practices on more than 72 million acres to prevent erosion.
Farmers maintain over 1.3 million acres of grass waterways, allowing water to flow naturally from crops without eroding soil.
Contour farming keeps soil from washing away. About 26 million acres in the U.S. are managed this way.
Agricultural land provides habitat for 75% of the nation's wildlife.
Precision farming boosts crop yields and reduces waste by using satellite maps and computers to match seed, fertilizer and crop protection applications to local soil conditions.
Sophisticated Global Positioning Systems can be specifically designed for spraying pesticides. A weed detector equipped with infrared light identifies specific plants by the different rates of light they reflect and then sends a signal to a pump to spray a preset amount of herbicide onto the weed.
Biogenetics allows a particular trait to be implanted directly into the seed to protect the seed against certain pests.
Farmers are utilizing 4-wheel drive tractors with up to 300 horsepower requiring fewer passes across fields-saving energy and time.
Huge combines are speeding the time it takes to harvest crops.
With modern methods, 1 acre of land in the U.S. can produce 42,000 lbs. of strawberries, 110,000 heads of lettuce, 25,400 lbs. of potatoes, 8,900 lbs. of sweet corn, or 640 lbs of cotton lint.
As you go about planning and planting the White House garden, we respectfully encourage you to recognize the role conventional agriculture plays in the U.S in feeding the ever-increasing population, contributing to the U.S. economy and providing a safe and economical food supply. America's farmers understand crop protection technologies are supported by sound scientific research and innovation.

The CropLife Ambassador Network offers educational programs for elementary school educators at http://ambassador.maca.org covering the science behind crop protection products and their contribution to sustainable agriculture. You may find our programs America's Abundance, Farmers Stewards of the Land and War of the Weeds of particular interest. We thank you for recognizing the importance and value of America's current agricultural technologies in feeding our country and contributing to the U.S economy.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions.

Sincerely,

Bonnie McCarvel, Executive Director
Janet Braun, Program Coordinator
Mid America CropLife Association
11327 Gravois Rd., #201
St. Louis, MO 63126"

Real proportion of farmers in the US

Note that Christopher Cook, in Diet for a dead planet gives the number of farmers in the US at around 2 million only now, and he comments that this is fewer than the number of Americans in prison.

As for big ag being environmentally caring ....!
Oh puhlease!

Listen to the interview with him about his research for many more realities of the unsustainable and depraved basis of our industrial economy - currently worst of all in the US but quickly turning Australia into something very similar.

As for the claims made by Big Ag above about the time needed to tend a garden - well, it certainly takes a lot longer to work to buy food and the car to tote it from the supermarket than it takes to produce enough for one person to eat! And it's a lot more enjoyable. What is hard is making a big profit out of agriculture, but that's not what you and I are necessarily seeking when we plant an easy to maintain orchard and a few vegetables. I am so over hearing how hard gardening is. Once everyone did it and had plenty of time to spare.

See also: discussion on the Life After the Oil Crash Forum

The Property Council of Australia's "Sustainable Urban Growth Conference" was the scene of lively protest for the first time as demonstrators against unsustainable population growth and infrastructure expansion handed out leaflets about peak oil and population to incoming conference participants. See also the second part of: Melbourne 2008: Life in a destruction zone

Today outside the Property Council's "Sustainable Urban Growth Conference", there was some unexpected - but long awaited - activity. For one hour during the registration at the beginning of the conference 9 people from Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) and Beyond Oil in South Australia (BOSA) greeted conference attenders with a big SPA banner and handouts for all the delegates.

Placard: Sustainable Growth is a scam!

Their placards were much in evidence, bearing slogans, including, "Sustainable Growth is a SCAM", "Sustainable Growth oxyMORONIC", "TODs mean too many BODs". etc.

Most conference attenders received a handout from the demonstrators. SPA Member and ex-Democrat, Dr John Coulter, was interviewed by Channel 10, although noise from traffic made this hard to hear.

Property Council Australia (PCA) conference organisers looked stunned as demonstrators posed for photographs with international invited speakers, but many in the throng appeared to have a good time.

Protest outside more cost effective than ticket to conference

The cost of attending the "Sustainable Urban Growth Conference" is beyond the means of most ordinary people. Protests outside such events seem like the only way that Australians can show what they think of the policies that the PCA boasts of influencing the government to adopt.

From a Property Council powerpoint presentation slide

Policies to grow Australia's population, reduce the taxes that property developers, investors, financiers and realtors pay, and policies for endlessly renovating and extending big infrastructure and housing, despite constant resistance from people whose lives are adversely affected by these policies, which increase the cost of living and decrease quality of life.

BOSA hits the right target

Beyond Oil South Australia is a group which supports radical action by government and individuals to cope with a future constrained oil supply and high petroleum prices. It seeks to bring about a clear understanding of where economic growth is leading and that growth requires an increasing oil supply. It supports population stabilisation and eventual reduction.

Population sociologist compares situation in 2002 at the Bracks Melbourne Population Summit

Population sociologist, Sheila Newman, who wrote The Growth Lobby and its Absence (2002) about how Australia is dominated by the growth lobby and France is not, commented, "I handed out a press release on behalf of SPA Victoria naming the members of the growth lobby's peak body (which was APop then and is now the PCA) on the steps of the Steve Bracks Melbourne Population Summit in 2002. The Financial Review ran the press release in its entirety, but SPA failed to take the matter up more widely, which always struck me as a tragic lost opportunity, because, since then the growth lobby has become frighteningly powerful and population growthism has been quasi-normalised by governments with the help of the mainstream press. Recently, however, Mark O'Connor came out with a book called Overloading Australia, which was distributed by SPA and which talked about the Growth Lobby."

Growth lobby undermining democracy

"It is great that they are now linking the push for population to the development lobby. Children should be taught of this menace to democracy and sustainability at school."

Newman said that, "Unfortunately democracy has gone out the window as government simply takes its directions from the PCA and similar growth lobby groups, which are internationally powerful and very wealthy. With the public almost excluded from decisions about their towns and cities, there is nothing left to do but picket the lobby groups."

"Let's hope that this is the beginning of a whole new trend in grass-roots democracy." Newman is also the editor of The Final Energy Crisis, (Pluto Press, UK, 2008), which is about Peak Oil, alternative energies and population scenarios.

Michael Lardelli of BOSA can be contacted on E-mail: michael.lardelli[at]adelaide.edu.au or phone: (08) 8303-3212

Brumby downsizes democracy upsizes development

About a month ago Brumby gave Madden new call-in powers with the excuse that development was held up because of people - you know - citizens, voters - and democratic local councils. So under the excuse of "getting the economy going" Madden was given these extra powers.

Irresponsible authority

The very next week he intervened in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) over a bike track through Willesmere Park in Kew. Now that is really good for job creation!!!

Then last week he declared himself the Responsible Authority for 2 days and approved a development in South Yarra, where the developer was going against the approved plans and the council stopped it. So the developer went to Madden complaining and Madden approved it.

Developers Run to Mama Madden

The developers can now run to Mama Madden and she will wave a magic wand and make democracy disappear. It is rumoured that that Madden sees councils as getting in his way, basically.

Citizens appeal to omsbudsman

Today candobetter received information that Stonnington Council are appealing to the Ombudsman about the arbitrary call-in by Madden when the developers went knocking on his door.

The Ministers action will now be tested and the result will have bearing on all our futures.
If the Omsbudsman cannot stand up to the government on this issue of democracy then it is really time for a review of all our laws.

Remember solidarity?

Let all the people in all the states stand together in solidarity against the developers' overweaning demands, remembering that is was the growth lobby's demand for population growth to create demand for housing and the finance sector's exploitation of this undemocratic, unstable and anti-social market through sub-primes and various unreasonable fees and hidden cuts, that brought, not just Australia, but the world into the current depression.

Victoria's dinosaur economy - big projects, big debts, big talk

Mr Madden is acting for a dinosaur economy that is completely unsustainable and contributing frighteningly to overpopulation, greenhouse gas emissions and reduction in biodiversity and freedom for citizens. He should be made an example of for other arrogant state ministers to heed and reform before we lose even more of our natural ammenity and quality of life for nothing more than inflation to line the pockets of parasitic developers and their finance jockeys.

Recsei says high density causes more problems, fixes none

Dr Tony Recsei, President of SOS Sydney has written to the SM Herald about the fact that there is no high density city in the world not suffering from the problems that high density is supposed to prevent. He states that local research shows when you have high density you get increased traffic congestion, longer travel times, more energy per person used, no saving of water, increased housing costs and housing choice reduced. This retrofitting high density onto areas designed for low density does not save on infrastructure costs, it just overloads infrastructure and is much more expensive to fix than putting in new infrastructure in new areas.

(Comment available on the following topic - Geoff Brown 0431 222602)

Residents everywhere need to support each other against giant development companies

Penrith Council is set to vote tomorrow night to approve 2 new suburbs totalling 3420 dwellings at the former ADI Site. Council planners are urging councillors to approve the plans.

Residents that have fought a 16 year campaign against the development of property giant Delfin Lend Lease are calling on councillors to defer approval due to the general public having no idea what is going on. Councillors are being asked to hold a series of public meetings so that fair dinkum community consulation takes place

.

There are multiple problems with the development ranging from environmental, bushfire, traffic, noise, access, provision of parkland. Essentially this development looks like a disaster to us.

Council overshadowed by authoritarian State planners

Council cannot amend or reject the development plans of Delfin without first getting the approval of Planning Minister Kristina Keneally. They must be seen to be advocating on behalf of the public and take this planning mess back to Kristina Keneally. The NSW gov allowed most of the problems with pro developer zonings suggested by Delfin.

Councils report outlining amongst other things the issues raised by public and Government Dept submissions can be found here http://203.221.255.19/pccbps/Open/2009/PRC_09032009_AGN_AT_WEB.HTM
You may note want to look at comments about DECC's submission. They have raised concerns about development close to bushland. They are also trying to get out of managing wetlands (featured heavily in the Daily Telegraph) zoned Regional Park by Frank Sartor.

Below are just some of the issues that we notified local residents about this weekend when letterboxing

· 3420 dwellings with apartments up to 8 storeys (PCC 2008 Report) high ruining our landscape. Building blocks as small as 125sq/metres with tiny setbacks
· 10,000 residents meaning 5000 more cars on our choked roads
· 362 hectares of land will be cleared which is largely endangered Cumberland Plain Woodland. Sensitive wetlands home to endangered waterbirds to be surrounded by housing
· The fracturing of a biodiversity corridor which currently links ADI to bushland north of the site. Housing will fracture the existing corridor
· Delfins tree survey identifies a staggering 20,000 trees within the development areas that may potentially be removed
· The entire development is classified as a bushfire prone area
· The Central Precinct is another Glenmore Park and the only access is by one east west road which will cut through the 900 ha bushland area. This is poor planning resulting in a public health and safety issue.
· Bushfire Asset Protection Zones of only 25 metres
· The obliteration of the Northern Rd bushland view
· 4 new roads entering off the Northern Rd
· Housing will surround Xavier College and there will be a road behind it
· Delfin need to provide 19.46 ha of public parkland in the Western Precinct yet they are only offering 15.63. This means Council is allowing them to rip off the public and profit from developing this extra land
· The list goes on and on. More info at www.adisite.org

There is still time for Council to fix up this planning mess. Call your local Councillors to demand a public meeting and urge them to defer their decision until they have fixed up the development plans of Delfin Lend Lease. Attend the Council meeting this Monday night at 7pm

Clr Kathryn Presdee 0418 288488, Clr John Thain 0411 427812, Clr Ross Fowler 0419 738484, Clr Ben Goldfinch 0401 678509, Clr Kevin Crameri 0401 995 825, Clr Jim Aitken 0418 288488, Clr Greg Davies 0419 177259, Clr Jackie Greenow 96232366, Clr Mark Davies 0416 085597, Clr Tanya Davies 0421 600 025, Clr Prue Guillaume 0401 678520, Clr Karyn McKeown 0401 995945, Clr Kaylene Allison 0401 995843, Clr Marko Malkoc 0401 678512, Clr Robert Ardill 0401 678505

Introduction:

I find it incongruous - to say the least - to think that the humans are sitting in armchairs watching t.v., driving cars, eating with their partners and children, leading affluent lives on the basis of earnings from the industrialised depravity - nazi-like in its cleanly-institutional style - we see in the video.

Go on, have a look; it's not that kind of video

original photo by Michael Nichols at http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/animals/images/primary/chimp-peeking-through-leaves.jpg

But it's also nothing like the photograph above of a young chimpanzee free in his natural surroundings.

The video does not contain intentional torture. It shows many chimpanzees and monkeys in bare cages with concrete floors, who are kept there for many many years. They are powerless and frightened. Baby chimps are bred there and taken from their mothers for experiments. You don't see the experiments, but you do see the animals restrained and a baby chimp crying as blood is being taken from it or it is being given a drug. You also see animals thrown roughly down on hard operating tables. Most of all you see a great deal of barren cleanliness with living creatures confined like criminals in tiny cells as masked and gowned staff go about 'just following orders' no doubt. One chimp was taken from the wild 25 years ago and has lived in concrete cells since then, apparently.

This situation is a reflection of the hardness of US society where keeping a job requires uncritical subservience. It also reflects the kind of ignorance that many people thought had disappeared with the Victorian era of tiny zoo-cages, or because we have all become 'civilised' in the western world, due to ... ahem... human 'progress'...

Political engagement against dystopia

But, yes, we do live in a world where this is going on all the time for other animals for food production, and the US has something like 7 million human beings confined in prison cells as well. But being surrounded by industrialised cruelty is not an excuse to give up. It is all the more reason to protest - because not to do so depraves us all. When we are all depraved, accepting this as normal, then there is no hope and we have all become part of the machine.

How to register your disgust

Here is a link to a form you can fill in to send automatically to US legislators if you live in the US. Alternatively, you could just look up your US embassy and send them an email with a copy to the US Humane Society, at this email address: humanesociety[AT]hsus.org. I sent a copy of this article to the Melbourne-based US embassy. You might also email a copy to the NIRC itself: NIRCadmin[AT]louisiana.edu

Anyone associated with this research, especially those in charge of it, in my opinion, should be stripped of their assets gained through such unacceptably callous exploitation. We need names and faces to pin to these atrocities. Anonymity is what keeps such practices going.

It would be much harder to condemn the New Iberia Research Center (NIRC) in Louisiana if the institution had obviously made a great effort to compensate these animals by giving them trees and a lovely environment between 'sessions'. But they have confined these forest creatures to an environment as friendly as a toilet block for life.

What sort of rectal human phenomena would do such a thing? I simply do not know, but I guess someone emotionally dead and fixated on material survival. Or perhaps someone who actually believes that non-humans have no feelings or worth. Unfortunately a lot of humans have become like that and the rest of us have to try to fix up the damage they do everywhere.

The story is from the Humane Society of the United States, which has a lot more clout than the Australian RSPCA. Supporting them will probably lead to a real improvement in this problem.

Story accompanying the video (informative, not schlocking)

A nine-month-long undercover investigation by The HSUS has exposed the mistreatment of nearly 300 chimpanzees and other primates at the New Iberia Research Center (NIRC) in Louisiana. These chimps, living lives of deprivation and misery, are among the more than 1,000 chimps languishing in laboratories across the United States. Chimps, our closet genetic relative, are complex, social, and long-lived creatures. Many chimps currently warehoused in research facilities have lived for decades behind bars. Especially heartbreaking are stories of the 26 elder chimps at NIRC, who were taken from their mothers in the wild.

The Great Ape Protection Act (H.R. 1326) has just been re-introduced in Congress. This legislation aims to end invasive research on the chimpanzees remaining in laboratories, retire the approximately 500 federally-owned chimpanzees to permanent sanctuary (including the elder chimps at NIRC), and make the recent decision by the National Center for Research Resources (part of the National Institutes of Health) to stop funding the breeding of federally-owned chimpanzees permanent.

The United States is the only country, besides Gabon, that still uses chimpanzees in invasive research. The United Kingdom, Japan, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain have all banned or severely restricted the use of chimpanzees. Please help the U.S. join this list of nations by co-sponsoring The Great Ape Protection Act.

Something else you can do - sponsor a chimp via the Jane Goodall program!

The Jane Goodall Institute of Australia has launched a Guardian Program where you are able to:

* become a caretaker of a chimpanzee, an orangutan or a gorilla;
* support the Lwiro Sanctuary in Congo;
* assist their tree planting efforts in Tanzania.

That is a good idea and we need it for koalas and kangaroos (among other victims of human expansion) in Australia as well.

It seems that the people who have managed to get into power in this country simply cannot take seriously the importance of the natural world to climate, aesthetics, society and human survival. Money eclipses everything in their Growth Lobby paradigm, including democracy.

Today this dreadful news arrived from Geoff Brown of the ADI Residents' Action Group:

Keneally gazettes green light to Delfin Lend Lease to bury last grasslands in vast suburbs

Kristina Keneally the NSW Planning Minister on Friday gazetted amendments to the SREP 30 the zoning plan for the ADI Site. Under the NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Act the Minister could, based on submissions received from the public, amend SREP 30 any way she saw fit. We called on her to use her planning powers to protect a further 100 ha of Cumberland Plain Woodland by rezoning land from urban to conservation (E2 Environmental Conservation was proposed - therefore no cost to government). Nearly 300 ha of regenerating bushland is zoned urban by SREP 30 and will be cleared so our proposal was a compromise in the hope that we may just get some support from the NSW Government. It would of reduced the development by 1000 dwellings = $100 million that Delfin would of lost.

As a result of Fridays gazettal of SREP 30 Penrith Council now has the green light to approve Delfin Lend Leases massive Western and Central Precinct Plans (suburbs). This equates to 3400 lots. Council planners are now rushing to prepare for next Monday night the 9th March when a Report will come before the full Council urging that they approve both plans.

Government by cynicism

We recently met with Council Planners about Delfin Lend Leases abysmal plans. Despite raising numerous issues it was obvious they just don't care. They had no valid responses to our questions. Talking to them was like talking to the developer. Q's such as 'Delfins tree survey identifies 20000 trees - will these be removed? Answer - Don't know. Q's What are you going to do about the fact Delfin have a 3.8 ha shortfall in the provision of public parkland (open space) within the Western Precinct. Answer - Delfin can use the Regional Park to cover the shortfall. Apparently only 40 comments were received on the Precinct Plans so they are cocky that there will be little public opposition from here on. Personally I am quite disappointed that such a massive ecological disaster could only attract 40 comments.

So if you are not completely over it and still have some concern then do what you can. It would be good to wind up this 16 year campaign (arguably one of the longest resident campaigns) next Monday night with a packed public capacity giving Penrith Council what they deserve.

Info on the planning disaster that Council will approve and the issues we raised with Councils Planners are here http://www.adisite.org

You may be interested to know that Blacktown Council refused to commit to the acquisition of the Norman St bushland at Prospect. Council voted unanimously. They came up with some excuse to make continued representation to State and Fed Gov'ts to obtain funding.

Crucial investigation must not be highjacked by Melbourne's planners and developers

The Victorian Environmental Assessment Council is currently conducting investigation into Crown and Public Land in the Melbourne metropolitan area. Track record of such inquiries mean that only a naive Melbourne citizen would expect anything from this one, other than excuses to confiscate and give away to developers more and more of Melbourne's public land.

For this reason it is important for alternative forums to give as much publicity as possible to the issues in hand. We do this here via one excellent submission, from Jill Quirk, on behalf of the Victorian Branch of Sustainable Population Australia. (Below this report the submission is reproduced in its original form.)

This investigation springs from competition for land-use due to the pressures of population growth

Ms Quirk states, "SPA (VIC) with its particular focus on the interaction of population levels/lifestyle and the environment notes that the investigation into public and crown land has most likely sprung from the pressures of population growth on land use and the increasing importance and competition for the use of this land to a growing population with diminishing private open space available to it."

Ms Quirk's submission highlights what should be the outstanding priority of the report, the problems caused by the State Government's obdurate engineering of a much bigger population. Without this massive population, Victoria's water supply would probably be adequate and the city would be cooler, because there would be fewer buildings, less industrial activity and more trees and green spaces.

Purposes of the Investigation

The purposes of the investigation which the SPA VIC submission addresses are to systematically identify and assess the uses, resources, condition, values and management of Crown land, and public authority land in metropolitan Melbourne; to assess values of Crown land, and public authority land for areas not committed to a specific use, and report on appropriate future uses relevant to Melbourne's livability and natural values; and to report on the contribution of Crown land, and public authority land to Melbourne's livability and opportunities for enhancement of this contribution.

Ms Quirk explained that SPA VIC would urge a broad approach with particular consideration given to the pressure on land- of a rapidly rising population with diminishing private open space.

Melbourne 2030 creates the problems it then purports to resolve

She observed that, "Diminished private open space is prescribed by the Melbourne 2030 urban consolidation blueprint necessitated by projected massive population growth, and she also notes that this projected population growth was under- estimated at the time of design.

On current trends, problems are exponential

This situation makes it necessary to contend with the problem of a very much larger population in the future in Victoria with no end of this growth anticipated.

"At current rates of growth Melbourne could have 8 million people well before the end of the century", Ms Quirk warned.

The problem of encouraging population growth with no end in sight is further complicated by the declining state of the Victorian natural environment (as noted in the 2008 Victorian State of the Environment report).

Urban heat island effect increases urgent need for trees to modify temperature

The inevitable increased urban temperatures in Melbourne from an increasing proportion of built up areas, (Urban Heat Island effect) make the "need for open space with vegetation, especially trees to mitigate or modify increased temperatures at local levels", especially urgent.

Urban water management

"Open space which is not concreted or paved allows maximum absorption of water in to the ground which is important for the health and survival of vegetation in the surrounding area. It is therefore imperative to consolidate and increase permeable open space," Ms Quirk observes.

Democratic representation a factor in environmental degradation

Ms Quirk has called the Enquiry's attention to the fact that democracy is a victim of Melbourne's recent land-use changes. "The impact on democratic rights and democratic structure of centrally engineered changes in use of public land and reduction of public land," she said, and referred to http://candobetter.org/node/628.

Pure environmental value of open land-

Ms Quirk points out that, "There is a pure environmental value of open land."

"A fundamental contribution of land that has not been built over is its capacity to absorb water. Once it has been built over it cannot serve this function. In addition, water shortages through drought and increased demand on our water supplies have resulted in noticeable loss of green areas both in public and private gardens. Thus any that remain are crucial to the health of Melbourne’s urban environment..

"The other contributions of land with vegetation (especially trees) are to cool the immediate environment via shade and transpiration. Heating up of the urban environment has occurred through expansion and densification necessitated through population growth (Urban Heat Island effect) as well as because of global climate change. The cooling attributes of trees and other vegetation create a microclimate of relief in an environment which is otherwise incapable of modifying the effect of summer heat. They thus reduce the need for inside use of energy using air conditioners and other cooling systems.
It must also be remembered that birds and small animals require habitat to survive. e.g. every Grevillea Robin Gordon that disappears removes food for several wattle birds. Public open space has become even more crucial for our wildlife than it was before the massive loss of private open space i.e. private gardens that is well under way.

Public open space has become even more crucial for our wildlife than it was before the massive loss of private open space i.e. private gardens that is well under way.

Value of open space to residents of Melbourne

"With a rapidly increasing population (largely socially engineered by governments- notably state governments by designating nearly all areas in the state as in need of immigration) over the last 10 years, (see http://www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au) there has been noticeable pressure on both public and private land. This trend will continue with bipartisan pro population growth stances. Private gardens are being lost at an alarming rate as houses on generous blocks with trees are bulldozed for units and town houses , resulting in a far greater coverage of the land with impermeable surfaces and building, loss of trees, shade and other vegetation This leaves neighbours with less and less relief from built up areas and often owning no garden themselves people rely more and more heavily on public land for recreation. The benefits of open space to people may not always be accurately measured by the number actually on the land at a particular time. The benefit to some may be simply in the relief and reassurance of walking past an open space."

"The value of open land is so much more than the dollar price estimated in terms of what it would yield if subdivided and sold to developers or built on to create a revenue raising venue. It is a defect of our land valuing and legal system that it fails to account for many damages to quality of life through changes to land use."

"We were fortunate in Melbourne that our founders were far sighted in setting aside areas of land for Melbourne’s people. Unfortunately their provisions for future generations have sometimes been exploited for short term objectives (according to Coasian economic values) at the expense of the general population.

These considerations should be uppermost when making assessments with respect to –uses and values of public land. Democratic rights and structure at a local level should be strengthened as opposed to their removal to distant government and commercial forums."

The Final Recommendation made by the SPA Victoria report is that there should be no erosion or loss of public open space from our current situation. It asks that the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council focus on maintaining and maximizing the natural attributes of any land under consideration for the benefit of Victorian citizens present and future.

"We ask that the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council focus on maintaining and maximizing the natural attributes of any land under consideration for the benefit of Victorian citizens present and future."

ORIGINAL SUBMISSION BELOW

The Secretary
Metropolitan Melbourne Enquiry
Victorian Environmental Assessment Council
Level 6
8 Nicholson Street
East Melbourne 3002

16 February 2009

Dear Sir/Madam

Re Investigation into Crown and public land

Introduction:
I am writing on behalf of Sustainable Population Australia: Victorian Branch (SPA VIC).
SPA is an environmental organization whose aims and objectives are:

.To contribute to public awareness of the limits of Australian population growth from ecological, social and economic viewpoints.
.To promote awareness that the survival of an ecologically sustainable population depends on its renewable resource base.
.To help promote policies that will initially lead to stabilization of Australia’s population by encouraging near replacement fertility rates and low immigration rates.
.To promote urban and rural lifestyles and practices that are in harmony with the realities of the Australian environment, its resource base and its biodiversity.
.To advocate low immigration rates while rejecting any selection based on race.
.To help promote policies that will lead to the stabilization, then reduction of global population.

SPA (VIC) with its particular focus on the interaction of population levels/lifestyle and the environment notes that the investigation into public and crown land has most likely sprung from the pressures of population growth on land use and the increasing importance and competition for the use of this land to a growing population with diminishing private open space available to it.

With reference to the purposes of the investigation

(“The purposes of the investigation are to:
(a) systematically identify and assess the uses, resources, condition, values and management of Crown land, and public authority land in metropolitan Melbourne;
(b) assess values of Crown land, and public authority land for areas not committed to a specific use, and report on appropriate future uses relevant to Melbourne's livability and natural values; and
(c) report on the contribution of Crown land, and public authority land to Melbourne's livability and opportunities for enhancement of this contribution”)

SPA VIC would urge a broad approach with particular consideration given to the following:

1. The pressure on land- of a rapidly rising population with diminishing private open space. Diminished private open space is prescribed by the Melbourne 2030 urban consolidation blueprint necessitated by projected massive population growth (which as it turns out was under- estimated at the time of design.)

2. A very much larger population in the future in Victoria with no end of this growth anticipated (At current rates of growth Melbourne could have 8 million people well before the end of the century.)

3. The declining state of the Victorian natural environment (as noted in the 2008 Victorian State of the Environment report)

4. The inevitable increased urban temperatures in Melbourne from an increasing proportion of built up areas, (Urban Heat Island effect) and the consequent need for open space with vegetation, especially trees to mitigate or modify increased temperatures at local levels

5. Urban water management: Open space which is not concreted or paved allows maximum absorption of water in to the ground which is important for the health and survival of vegetation in the surrounding area.

6. The impact on democratic rights and democratic structure of centrally engineered changes in use of public land and reduction of public land. (http://candobetter.org/node/628)

Pure environmental value of open land-

A fundamental contribution of land that has not been built over is its capacity to absorb water. Once it has been built over it cannot serve this function. In addition, water shortages through drought and increased demand on our water supplies have resulted in noticeable loss of green areas both in public and private gardens. Thus any that remain are crucial to the health of Melbourne’s urban environment.
The other contributions of land with vegetation (especially trees) are to cool the immediate environment via shade and transpiration. Heating up of the urban environment has occurred through expansion and densification necessitated through population growth (Urban Heat Island effect) as well as because of global climate change. The cooling attributes of trees and other vegetation create a microclimate of relief in an environment which is otherwise incapable of modifying the effect of summer heat. They thus reduce the need for inside use of energy using air conditioners and other cooling systems.
It must also be remembered that birds and small animals require habitat to survive. e.g. every Grevillea Robin Gordon that disappears removes food for several wattle birds. Public open space has become even more crucial for our wildlife than it was before the massive loss of private open space i.e. private gardens that is well under way.

Value of open space to residents of Melbourne

With a rapidly increasing population (largely socially engineered by governments- notably state governments by designating nearly all areas in the state as in need of immigration) over the last 10 years, (see http://www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au) there has been noticeable pressure on both public and private land. This trend will continue with bipartisan pro population growth stances. Private gardens are being lost at an alarming rate as houses on generous blocks with trees are bulldozed for units and town houses , resulting in a far greater coverage of the land with impermeable surfaces and building, loss of trees, shade and other vegetation This leaves neighbours with less and less relief from built up areas and often owning no garden themselves people rely more and more heavily on public land for recreation. The benefits of open space to people may not always be accurately measured by the number actually on the land at a particular time. The benefit to some may be simply in the relief and reassurance of walking past an open space.

The value of open land is so much more than the dollar price estimated in terms of what it would yield if subdivided and sold to developers or built on to create a revenue raising venue. It is a defect of our land valuing and legal system that it fails to account for many damages to quality of life through changes to land use.

We were fortunate in Melbourne that our founders were far sighted in setting aside areas of land for Melbourne’s people. Unfortunately their provisions for future generations have sometimes been exploited for short term objectives (according to Coasian economic values) at the expense of the general population.

These considerations should be uppermost when making assessments with respect to –uses and values of public land. Democratic rights and structure at a local level should be strengthened as opposed to their removal to distant government and commercial forums.

Recommendation: that there should be no erosion or loss of public open space from our current situation and we ask that the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council focus on maintaining and maximizing the natural attributes of any land under consideration for the benefit of Victorian citizens present and future.

Sincerely,

Jill Quirk
President: Sustainable Population Australia (Victorian Branch)

Contact: Via candobetter.org or by post to PO Box 1173 Frankston (for public correspondence)
20 Feb 2009

Just in via the bush telegraph, more on woodchip sales downturnLast week there were TWO woodchip carriers moored just off the south head of Twofold Bay (site of chipmill) for several days before one departed without loading any chips. The other is still there and has not loaded any chips. The talk around Eden was that as many as FIVE chip carriers might be expected there, all at once. The reason is: it is cheaper to park a boat there (avoiding port fees) than sail around aimlessly hoping that someone will buy some woodchips needing shipping. It was not unusual in happier times for the woodchipping industry for spot sales of chips to be negotiated very rapidly by carriers on the run in similar circumstances, almost like flagging down a taxi, only this time there are no customers wanting to flag them down.

Editor's introduction. We were amused to read of this report in the Age and it seems a fitting introduction to the analysis below by A.H. of the infamous 'New Residential Zones for Victoria.

"NIMBY mentality holding us back:
JASON Dowling (Comment & Debate, The Age, 20/2/09) outlined some prime examples of how Victoria's "not-in-my-back-yard" mentality is damaging the modernisation of our state. The disruption to development timetables caused by frivolous complaints often delays essential community projects for months. Master Builders Association surveys show planning delays average over 20 weeks and push up the cost of new homes significantly. More than $1 billion in community projects are held up in the planning system now.

We do not support open-slather development. Municipalities have the right/obligation to set the strategic planning framework. Thereafter, the interpretation should be left to people who can dispassionately interpret whether projects fit within the framework.

The State Government's plans to fast-track some of these projects will help provide essential community infrastructure, underpin 194,000 building jobs, and provide greater certainty for Victoria's building industry. Brian Welch, executive director, Master Builders Association of Victoria"

The DEVIL is in the detail. What every residential property owner should be aware of:

SUBSTANTIAL CHANGE ZONE

• The name says it all, open slather, free range for development, Substantial Change. Money for jam for all developers. NSW style development. Anything goes. Let it rip!! You bewdy!! Towers, Towers, Towers etc. You know what it means. This is where we stuff the 1000 new residents who come to Victoria each week to live, if we can, and some in the other zones too. In 5-10 years this Zone won't be the same. Substantial means just that, Substantial Change. No further explanation needed or required.

INCREMENTAL CHANGE ZONE

• The information sheet (bottom of cover page) dated February 2009 states “The Incremental Change Zone allows for a variety of housing types including medium density. housing provided that it respects the character of the neighbourhood”

• However, upon reading the description of the Incremental Change Zone it states: “Purpose. To provide for residential development at a range of densities with a variety of dwellings to meet the housing needs of all households”.

• NOTE: Information sheet says Zone is to provide “medium density”, yet in the Zone description the word medium density suddenly becomes “range of densities”. Medium density is not mentioned in the description of the Incremental Change Zone at all.

• Question: What is a range of densities? Is that like free-range eggs, big ones and small ones?

Subdivision of Land
Exemption from Notice and Review (Appeal to VCAT)

• An application to subdivide land is exempt from the Notice requirements (you don’t get told about any Subdivision). The decision about the application and your existing review rights to VCAT are exempt. (You don’t know about the decision and no longer have any right to have the decision reviewed by VCAT)

Construction and extension of one dwelling on a lot
Exemption from Notice and Review (Appeal to VCAT)

• An application for construction and extension is exempt from the Notice requirements (you don’t get told about any construction and extension). The decision about the application and your existing review rights to VCAT are exempt. (You don’t know about the decision and no longer have any right to have the decision reviewed by VCAT).

LIMITED CHANGE ZONE

Purpose: To ensure residential development protects the neighbourhood character of the area.

Subdivision of Land
Exemption from Notice and Review (Appeal to VCAT)

• An application to subdivide land is exempt from the Notice requirements (you don’t get told about any Subdivision). The decision about the application and your existing review rights to VCAT are exempt. (You don’t know about the decision and no longer have any right to have the decision reviewed by VCAT)

Construction and extension of one dwelling on a lot
Exemption from Notice and Review(Appeal to VCAT)

• An application for construction and extension is exempt from the Notice requirements (you don’t get told about any construction and extension). The decision about the application and your existing review rights to VCAT are exempt. (You don’t know about the decision and no longer have any right to have the decision reviewed by VCAT)

BOTTOM LINE:

• The Brumby Government is attempting to take away property rights in all three proposed Zone changes, which home owners have had for many years. These rights include, the right to be notified of an Application, the right to object to a development, and where necessary, seek a review of the decision made by the Council at VCAT. In these three Zone proposals, each homeowner is being done over by the politicians. There is no Government mandate for this style of change which was never mentioned at the last state election by the Bracks now Brumby Government.

• We employ the politicians. We are their masters not the other way round. Kick butt!! Do you know who is your State member of the Legislative Assembly and the other lot in the Legislative Council. (Look under Parliament in the Business White Pages) or Google: Victorian Parliament.

• It’s your property. Don’t leave it up to someone else. Express your concern to your employee the politician! Do something now. Defend your property rights whilst you still have them .

• Soon it may be too late other than to say “there goes the neighbourhood!”. Now is the time for all Good Men and Women to lay siege to their State Member of Parliament whatever their political persuasion maybe and defend the home-owner’s piece of paradise. The game is not over yet. We must all stand shoulder to shoulder like any Victorians and fight this proposal which will change our lives forever. Bad public policy is just that, Bad. These proposed changes are designed to appease the usual suspects, the Property Council of Australia, the Master Builders of Victoria, the Housing industry Association and the Institute of Public Affairs. Will you willingly relegate your property rights to these vested interests? Will you sit by whilst the above-named culprits receive a leg-up and financial windfall at your cost. It's time to attack the Brumby Government with all our fortitude and get rid of these new Zones.

A.H.

In Victoria in 1992 some bureaucrat got the idea of changing the name (and focus) of the Department of Conservation and Environment to a Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, then in 1996 to a Department of Natural Resources and Environment, then in 2003 a split to (1) a Victorian Department of Primary Industries and (2) a Department of Sustainability and Environment.

Source: http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/asaw/biogs/A002037b.htm

Currently it's known by its obscure acronym DSE...(Don't Support Environment, or Department of Sparks and Embers).

Across the border in NSW, in 2007, the Department of Environment and Conservation was changed to the Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC). Rather than forming a dedicated research and response organisation to focus on climate change, the conservation was dropped from the existing department. Cynically, including 'climate change' as a name of one of its departments, government must feel cosy sending a message it is addressing climate change. For a while the department was headed up by The NSW Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water - a bucket of outdoor type activities that sounded good together.

Across the border in South Australia, they have the Department for the Environment and Heritage (DEH), which sounds borrowed from the federal Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (another collective bucket). It is hard to see how with so many diverse portfolios, a minister can dedicate any leadership to making genuine improvements to what's left of Australia's intact natural environment and its desperate need for conservation.

With all the money spent on names changing, the tens of thousands could have gone into onground conservation activities like fox control programmes.

I have been monitoring the Jan-Feb 2009 Victorian bushfires from NSW and have turned my attention to the bushfire management in a natural area - Wilsons Promontory. I note satellite observations of the fire with concern showing the lighting ignition on the east coast started 9th February, but had almost extinguished itself by the 13th. Then a wind change drove it out of control. A week later it has burnt out 22,000 hectares (almost 50% of our precious 50,000ha Prom)!

While the Country Fire Authority (CFA) has paid special attention to non-imminent bushfire risks to rather distant private property. The CFA says "the fire does not currently pose a threat to the Yanakie community." Backburning the Prom is given as the only bushfire response strategy. So do we interpret this as a noncommittal response by the CFA for the Prom - that is since no human lives or private property are at threat, the CFA's bushfire response is to just 'monitor' the fire and put out the spot fires threatening private property to the north?

The CFA reports read as though CFA policy for active and damaging bushfires in important conservation areas is to wait for rain, but otherwise 'let it burn'.

And yet the Bureau of Meteorology forecasts hot and windy conditions for tomorrow Monday, 23 Feb 2009.

I interpret this bushfire management by Victoria's CFA as one that respects only human life and property, but does not rate the natural asset values of fauna and flora habitat of the Prom with any respect. It seems at best an opportunity for de-facto hazard reduction that it would normally not get permission to do, and at worst an inconvenient distraction for CFA crews.

If this is the prevailing attitude of rural firefighting then clearly the CFA has no interest in natural assets, and no mandate to protect them from fire in the same passionate way it does private property? There seems no difference in approach or skill set by the CFA to that that would be exercised by urban fire brigades.

So why do we have a CFA? Professional fire brigades are expensive, whereas volunteers are cheap is the political answer!

On this basis, it is overdue for the CFA to be incorporated within the urban fire brigade structure. While this initial structural change won't save Victoria's vast tracts of wildlife habitat in the short term, it will sure will remove the false premise to the community that the CFA respects and defends natural wildlife habitats.

What does Victorian Government's Department of Sustainability and Environment have to say for itself? It is charged with the Promontory's protection.

See also: "Crews unable to slow Wilsons Promontory blaze" on ABC online on 17 Feb 09, "Huge blaze threatens the very heart of the Prom" in the Age of 19 Feb 09.

Immediately after the first record-breaking heat-wave in Victoria - before the major fires - the Coroner came out and said that the death rate had increased noticably. [1]

Illustration from an oil portrait by Sheila Newman of Barry Jones, Chairman of Australia's Population Carrying Capacity Inquiry, 1994

Government policies made Melbourne residents vulnerable to extreme weather.

Deaths from heat-related illness, with power-supply failures to homes relying on air-conditioners and fans as their sole means of cooling, and dry gardens exacerbating vulnerability to fire, can all be related to the push by three successive Victorian governments and two Federal governments to increase Australia's population numbers.

In Melbourne, the ambulance service responded to 1600 jobs a day, double the normal figure of 800.
Ambulance worker, Mr Holman said the heatwave's impact was sharpened by the loss of power, and therefore lack of air conditioning, in parts of the state and concern that some hospitals would have to be evacuated."[1]

The policy of increasing urban density also increased the intensity of urban activity, which creates heat.

The style of many new houses is antithetical to sensible architecture for Australia. The lack of eves or verandas runs counter to soundly-based local culture. Thin walls, big glass windows without shade and tiny tree-less concrete yards packed closely together provide little defense against direct sunlight or drying winds. The sealed surfaces absorb heat and give no opportunity for water or plants. Air-conditioners have become common. Unfortunately, they pour heat into the atmosphere, raising the temperature again. What other choice did some people living packed in badly designed mass-produced housing or cheap sub-standard accommodation in our overpriced rental-market have? And what chance did they have when the power-supply failed due to predictable and exploited for profit over-demand?

Other factors worsening our chances in Melbourne would be allowing the practice of moon-scaping, i.e. the removal of cooling trees to facilitate the construction of new housing estates. (One willow, for instance, has been described as "equivalent to 28 reverse cycle air conditioners. They absorb a tremendous amount of heat from the sun and convert it into cool moist air. At night, if the wind in not too strong all that moisture comes back down to earth and settles on the cool vegetation and warms the local climate. It won't happen if the ground is hot and barren....it doesn't rain too often on a desert." - Comment from farmer on Natural Sequence Farming forum) It is well-known that the soil loss entailed by moonscaping also releases enormous amounts of carbon contained in topsoil.

Predictable water scarcity with unfair restrictions could all have been avoided and were foreseen

And then there were the restrictions on using water to facilitate this much resented process of urban intensification. For, as various premiers kept on stating so cynically, we would not have enough water for the population growth if we did not cut back, cut back more, continue to cut back.

Even more cynically, state politicians gave the impression that they had no control over the population growth. And some of them (e.g. Steve Bracks) simultaneously pretended that deaths were outnumbering births, whilst stating that we had to have more houses for the growing population. This absurdity was allowed to go unchallenged on the ABC on Jon Faine's program.[2a] (Indeed, the ABC sounds more and more like a real-estate promoter.)

No slack was left in the system by people supposed to be professional planners!

The power failures and the water restrictions would not have been necessary if we had not increased our population beyond the capacity to supply Victorians with adequate and affordable power and water.

No slack was left in the system. Scientific caution and citizen welfare were jettisoned for pie-in-the-sky about "Future generations" and various spokespersons spoke in a mealy-mouthed way about virtuous reductions in personal water-use. Industry kept expanding its water-use at the same time, with little information available about this to the public.

Just before the heat-wave and the fires the State of the Environment Victoria Report came out, supposedly lambasting the government for our mutilated environment, and warning that human population growth was placing the greatest demand on this environment which sustains us, bringing us close to eco-collapse. However the Commissioner, Dr Ian McPhail, then gave the government the go-ahead to continue this insane growth. What is the responsibility of the Chairman and the participants in this report for business as usual and its consequences?

And then the Victorian ALP started to let Victorians know that the one million more people it had already dictated Melbourne citizens should submit to had overshot disasterously! At one stage Brumby mumbled something about perhaps we had had enough iimmigration - but never, at no stage, was reducing the rate of immigration allowed as a serious response. In Parliament the matter was treated. ridiculously, as one of 'too many guests invited to a BBQ' which we would all have to make welcome. Later, Brumby attempted to turn the dire situation of overloaded public transport during the petrol-price hikes to media advantage in Parliament, by boasting that more Victorians than ever were using public transport.

Even as late as 20 February, 2009, Federal Minister, Julia Gillard, was rejecting the idea of reducing our record high immigration in a half-dead economy. Then, on 26th of January, around 9.24am, Mr Brumby was asked by the populationist ABC radio announcer, Jon Faine, who was referring to loss of manufacturing jobs, "Do you think there should be cuts to immigration?"

Brumby- (pause and nervous cough- followed by approximately these words.)

"I said last year- we have been growing very fast the time is now to cruise along-not have our foot on the accelerator.
We don't need to increase immigration going forward. Our immigration figure in the last year was about 200,000
I say this number is about right for Australia."

So, who is responsible for power failures and water shortages and deaths from exposure to merciless heat in a city that has overshot its power and water supply? Who is responsible for the role that dessication of gardens may have played in the recent bushfires? Who is responsible for overshooting supply from the Thompson dam? Who is responsible for the empty recreational waters in numerous country towns, which could not pay the skyrocketing water-prices? Who is responsible for allowing community-built and paid-for public swimming pools to be closed down in hot suburbs like Sunshine, Footscray and country areas like Wodonga (several more examples) whilst nearby huge new housing estates privately franchised small indoor pools over which the community had no control?

And who paid the cost of these ridiculous and dangerous policies and turned a blind eye to their impact on democracy and survival in Melbourne and Victoria's towns?

What legal recourse do the families of the victims of imposed water and power shortages have?

What do the families of the victims of these dangerous and dictatorial policies have to say?
What costs can they demand from the government?
Who is responsible?

In my opinion, those who persistently, year after year, drove, promoted and marketed population growth are responsible. The authors of the Victorian government netsite inviting immigrants to come and live in Melbourne, the demographers who lent their 'expertise' to the growth lobby, and those media-presenters who always invite the pro-growthers to speak and make out that those who object to population growth are racists - thus frightening people from speaking up. Also those politicians and planners, and the policy reviewers, who resisted community objections, facilitating Melbourne 2030, and gave the impression that they had the authority to visit this burden upon us - and did - are responsible. They are all the more culpable for persisting year after year amid warnings of climate change. And what about those lobby groups, business-groups, and their representatives, who egged our governments on? (See:, /node/623, /node/569, /node/431, /node/421 - and more - for a rich source of suspects.)

High costs engineered and approved by government

The rising costs of necessities - notably power, water and shelter (homes) - is also related to demand, and this rising cost is another factor which discourages citizens from using enough water to keep their gardens moist, take baths and extra showers, or fill pools and ponds.

But the government has quasi-privatised power and water, which makes the situation so much worse. For instance the sector that provides power from electricity generators is now complaining that they cannot get bank-funding because of Rudd's mooted emissions trading plans. Why on earth did the government sell these generators off in the first place - leaving people hopelessly out of their depth in the private sector trying to make a profit from unsustainable fossil-fuel burning in the middle of a credit crunch, whilst the rest of us wait nervously for the next power failure? (See Annabel Hepworth, Katja Buhrer and Mathew Dunckley, "Climate plan hits power refinancing", Australian Financial Review, 25 February, 2009, p.1.)

Estimating water catchment capacity should be done with high and low rainfall records in mind, erring on the side of safety. This basic public health precaution has been completely ignored by government policy, which has done the opposite. And what has the government done about this engineered predicament? It is insisting on building a desalination plant in the middle of a closely-knit community, from which the transport of water over hundreds of kilometers, will require - MORE ELECTRICITY!

The government ministers, planners and economists involved in 'managing' our State's population overshoot of water and power supplies should be suspended from employment and publicly placed on trial for gross negligence towards Victorians' welfare, contributing to death and suffering.

Risk well-known last century and Danger signs obvious for more than 10 years

Victoria's Thompson Dam, which took ten years to fill, was once adequate for a population of around 15m people, which was the population of Australia in 1983, at the time of its completion.

It is not adequate now.

Between 15m and 21.5 million there were many chances to stop, but we were dragged onward by political desperados.

All Australian parliaments have had access to loads of information from scientists and historians that Australia would run into water-shortages if it grew its population past around 20 million people. The danger signs have been neon-lit for the past ten years. Changes to our climate already have reduced our carrying capacity and our economic viability (which both rely on our environment). Nothing we have done, no technology, has succeeded in reversing this process.

Vast body of literature on Australia's limited population capacity has been ignored at our peril by government

Taylor (1880-1963) argued that Australia could never support more than 65 million people due to its biophysical limitations. He later amended this to 20 million, assuming much higher per capita living standards. Not only does Taylor seem to have been the first to publish the connection between population numbers and affluence (consumption) against the background of local biophysical characteristics and constraints, but he eerily predicted the likely population of Australia as no more than 20 million in the year 2000.[2]

It was not until 1968 [a date coinciding with the release of Ehrlich's Population Explosion], that Australia's huge post-War immigration program began to be questioned in the light of its contribution to population growth and environmental impact.

Subsequently, between 1975 and 1994, there were seven national enquiries and reports which purported to or actually did examine the population question within the scientific context of environmental impact. Five were The National Population Enquiry (Borrie Report) 1975, which paid lip service only, The National Population Council Report 1992, which recommended a population policy; between 1990 and 1992, The National Greenhouse Response Strategy and The National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development, which identified nine elements of a population policy consistent with ecologically sustainable development;[3a] and The Ahrlburg Report 1994, on the foreign aid implications of the economic impact of unrestricted population growth.

The Australian movement, Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population, which tried to have a scientifically-based philosophy, was formed in 1988. In 1994 an Australian Academy of Science symposium recommended early population stabilization on ecological, economic and quality of life grounds. The Australian scientific research center, CSIRO, began the 'Ecumene project,' an internationally-linked population modeling and projection study using environmental and economic data (discontinued by the Howard Government). In that same year Tim Flannery published his Australian best seller, The Future Eaters,[4] a scientific work on the ecological and economic evolution of Oceanic countries, which advocates a long term goal for Australia of between six and twelve million people.

Also in 1994 the Australian Population "Carrying Capacity" Report,[3]the "Jones Report" - chaired by Barry Jones), was published. More than 90 percent of submissions, including those from Aboriginal organizations, argued against population growth. The Inquiry's inspired recommendation was to separate political and administrative responsibility for population and immigration (to avoid contamination with racial issues). Immigration intake should become an instrument of population policy, rather than population policy a "long term side effect of ad hoc immigration policy."

The (then) Labor government, with Senator Bolkus heading immigration and ethnic affairs (who had promised the ethnic vote to the Prime Minister of the day, by favoring family reunion and a high migration program), could not deal with the "Jones" report. The Chairman Barry Jones was also the national president of the Labor Party. All hell threatened to break loose if the matter was put to parliamentary debate. An election was imminent. In the interests of Labor's return to power it was decided to keep a lid on the issues for fear of losing the ethnic vote. Jones expressed his opinion that the environmental vote would easily compensate for the ethnic vote, but failed to convince the Prime Minister.

In September 1995 the Government published its response to the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development. This reactionary document was the work of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. It was also the Labor government's only reference to the matter of national population policy, which it rejected as too controversial. Other issues raised at Cairo were dealt with in a superficial manner and with only token reference to the environmental connection.

In March 1996 the Labor government was resoundingly voted out of power.

The Howard Government which followed came in partly because voters thought it less likely to rely on high immigration and practices like ethnic branch-stacking, which were disorganising the democratic organisation and representation of communities. Initially the Howard Government placed emphasis on skilled immigration as a means of 'controlling the numbers'. Unfortunately, after the Bracks Government "Melbourne Population Summit, " the Federal Government appeared to cave into the mass of pressure by developer-aligned media to raise immigration. The Howard Government raised immigration to the highest levels ever known and made these very difficult to estimate by dismantling the statistical series which Australia had kept since first settlement (a nearly unique credential for our country.)

After the Howard Government lost power, Rudd's labor government came in with the 2050 summit, which, in guise of a debate, guided the marketing of more policies to increase more rapidly Australia's population.

Do not for a minute think that the State Governments of Australia had no control over this. The opposite is true; the majority redefined their states and even their cities, as 'regions in need of immigration' - a terminology previously reserved for country areas. The Treasurer, Mr Lenders, once said that he didn't think that it was the job of government to determine how big Melbourne grew. Yet that is exactly what the Victorian State Government has been doing.

All these politicians responsible for growing our population had the information at their fingertips that what they were doing was dangerous. But they went ahead against every public and private objection.

Indeed, my own predictions are right on course, with more horror to go if we keep on growing our population. Please read them for it can only get worse.

Behind all this was the Growth Lobby and I think it is reasonable to say that this lobby has taken control of every level of government in Australia. That is not to say that the government has lost control of policy, it means that the Government is now indistiguishable from the Growth Lobby. WE have lost control of it. Commodification of everything and speculation on population-fed inflation and scarcity has been normalised - by the media and by those whom the media have allowed the publicity to have a good chance at entering parliament.

This is why it is so important for you to support alternative media like candobetter and to assist independents to run for government. I draw your attention now, for instance, to the fact that James Sinnamon, the owner of Candobetter, is running for State Government as an independent in Queensland for the election scheduled in less than 4 weeks time. We need lots of independents in every state. We also need lots of help with candobetter, which is entirely voluntary.

Notes:

[1] http://www.theage.com.au/national/heatwave-left-hundreds-dead-20090221-8ea4.html?page=-1 Heatwave left hundreds dead Melissa Fyfe, The Age February 22, 2009:

"January's brutal heatwave may have killed 100 Melburnians - and more than 200 people across south-eastern Australia - an ``invisible tragedy'' now the subject of investigations by the Department of Human Services and the Coroner's Office. "A Monash University analysis of the event in late January - when temperatures rose above 43 degrees for three consecutive days - indicates the heatwave claimed hundreds of lives across Victoria, South Australia and northern Tasmania.

Ambulance Victoria operations manager Paul Holman said the service went into major disaster mode during the heatwave and was busier than at any other time in the service's history, including during the bushfires.

In Melbourne, the ambulance service responded to 1600 jobs a day, double the normal figure of 800.
``People have forgotten about the heatwave, but it had more of an effect on us than the bushfires,'' Mr Holman said.
``We did more jobs in those four days than we had ever done before.'' Mr Holman said the heatwave's impact was sharpened by the loss of power, and therefore lack of air conditioning, in parts of the state and concern that some hospitals would have to be evacuated."
"Data from the Coroner's Office reveals that his figures are probably too conservative. Deaths reported to the Coroner during the heatwave were 2.5 times more than at the same time last year."
"The Alfred hospital reported a 70 per cent rise in admissions, with many patients arriving in the days after the heatwave suffering cumulative effects.""

[2a] Jill Quirk of Sustainable Population Australia, Victorian Branch, wrote to Faine and to Bracks about this, but was not offered a spot on Faine's program to counter the dangerous misinformation and never received a reply from Mr Bracks, former Premier of Victoria. Mr Faine suggested that she try to ring up and put this as an informal comment, unplanned and unassisted, to his show.

[2] T.G.Taylor, 1922, "The Distribution of Future White Settlement," Geographic Review, 10[12] 375-402 and T.G. Taylor, 1937, Environment, Race and Migration, Toronto UP, Toronto.

[3a] "Jones Report," (See note [3]) p.12
[3] Australian Population "Carrying Capacity Report" - One Nation, Two Ecologies, AGP, 1994, p.8. Chaired by Senator Barry Jones, and known herein as the "Jones Report."

[4] 35 Tim Flannery, The Future Eaters, Reed Books, 1994. (Flannery occupied the Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University in 1998.)

Kicking the immigration-fix

The ABC reports that
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has rejected a push for a big cut in Australia's migration intake (20 February 2009), despite "Research from Monash University demographer Bob Birrell [which] says the Government's economic rescue package will not save jobs unless the migration intake is cut by two-thirds."

The ABC describes Ms Gillard as having rejected the research, saying there is still a need for skilled migrants.

"We've made some recent changes so that we are taking skilled migrants who have jobs," she claimed, insisting that, "(...) even in today's economic circumstances there are still some parts of our nation where people are crying out for skilled labour, and we have the migration system to assist with that."

Let's see, Gillard believes that there are still some parts of the nation that desperately need skilled labour. Maybe so, but do they "still" need (as if they ever really did), an imported labor force and all its family members coming in annually at a higher rate than ever before, equivalent to the population of a small, rapidly growing city each year? And what do we do with the newly unemployed when these immigrant-demanding businesses go bust?

Politically addicted to unsustainable immigration; any excuse will do

I'm afraid that Ms Gillard sounds to me as if she is more interested in satisfying the demands of the property development and finance industry (which have driven our economy and democracy into the ground) than in serving her constituents (the broad population of Australia) and looking after our long-term welfare.

As candobetter commentator, Greg Wood, rails, "Can someone get Gillard to specify where the skills shortage is now that the resources industry and construction industry are beginning to majorly shed jobs?

Who pays for this costly habit?

While they are at it, can they also ask how increasingly unemployed and under-employed Australians are going to pay the pressure-cooked urban rentals that her lackey Government seems intent upon trying to prop up?"

Update: Immigration Minister Chris Evans 'expects' skilled immigration numbers to drop 'next year' due to the global economic crisis. See "Australia to cut skilled immigration" in the Age of 23 Feb 09

Speak up today or our parks will pay … only days to go!

Below this list of "What you can do", there is more information...

Take action!

1. Attend a public meeting
WHEN: Thursday 26th February, 6.30-8.30pm
WHERE: Footbridge Theatre, Parramatta Rd, Sydney University

2. Get the message out! email your friends and colleagues who are passionate about national parks;

3. Volunteer! Help get involved in the campaign, contact notforsale[at]npansw.org.au or phone NPA on 02 9299 000;

4. Lobby! email Environment Minister, Carmel Tebbutt dp.office[at]tebbutt.minister.nsw.gov.au or the Premier, Nathan Rees thepremier[at]www.nsw.gov.au and say you don’t want national park laws weakened to permit private developments;

5. Lobby some more! Call, write or email you local member and let him know your concerns (CALL NPA to find your local member);

6. Become informed! For more information visit the National Parks Association’s website at

http://www.npansw.org.au/web/conservation/tourism/tourism.htm

7. Write a letter to the editor of your local papers and protest that you were not asked about these changes.

What's this National Park Development Agenda about?

NSW Government will attempt to introduce weaker national park protection laws to permit the development of damaging private accommodation, such as cabins, lodges and ‘eco-resorts’ in our national parks. And we need to stop these laws.

The NSW Government has not even asked the community if they want national parks developed!

Environment groups want a stronger nature tourism industry in NSW and more people enjoying our parks. This can and must be achieved without the development of national park.

Unless we act now increased development in national parks will be allowed by law in March.

The changes are not needed

National Park visitor growth will easily exceed the State Plan Target, outperforming all other sectors of the tourist industry. Domestic overnight visitors visiting national parks will increase by 100 per cent by 2016, and the State Plan target is for 20 per cent growth. So why push private development into national parks?

[Editor's comment: Probably because the land can be given free or near free to developers who, having crippled our economy with their land speculation, now expect us to lose everything on their behalf. The developers have no right to public land and it is not the government's to give away.]

It is inappropriate to remove protection from national parks and to offer sites within them to the tourism industry, in an ‘investor-ready’ condition - these public lands are set aside for nature. And our wilderness areas have been protected from commercial use for over twenty years and there is no need to exploit these wild places for commercial gain.

What to say to the local paper, NSW Government or back bench member:

1. Don’t weaken the National Parks and Wildlife Act, 1974 to permit private developments in national parks, especially as many more visitors are enjoying national parks just as they are, as set places for nature aside from development;

2. Wilderness areas should not be commercialised;

3. Fast tracking accommodation and other private facilities in national parks without asking the public what they think of these proposed changes to national park laws is a giant leap in the wrong direction;

4. The priority given to nature conservation and protection of wilderness by national park laws is appropriate;

5. New low key facilities are needed for the increased numbers of visitors coming to national parks;

6. Local communities will benefit park visitation most when accommodation is provided in the towns near national parks.

Like humans, ducks form long-term bonds with their mates

Department of Sustainability (DSE) Victoria's dismal record on wildlife protection reaches new lows

The Department of Sustainability in Victoria seems to be a friend to the trigger-happy as regards kangaroos and seems not to care at all about possums. It shows no interest in promoting wildlife corridors and has pushed against local feeling to make Devilbend into a hunting and fishing and horseriding area, instead of a desperately needed sanctuary for the threatened animals on the Mornington Peninsula (a beautiful rural area redesignated for intensive development). Given the Department's failure to honour its obligations to Victorians to protect wildlife, it is surprising that it bothered to recommend a year's amnesty for ducks.

Hunting Advisory Committee trumps limp-wristed DSE on ducks

But, that's not the whole story. We learn that there is another force out there, besides the property developers, running wildlife into the ground in Victoria.

Minister Jennings was reported in the Age 5-2-09 to have said the Department of Sustainability and Environment had recommended the season be cancelled for a third straight year, but contradictory advice came from the Government's Hunting Advisory Committee, which backed allowing a season with few restrictions.

Waterbird numbers in Eastern Australia fell 80%+ in past 2 decades

So, lead bullets will again be hailed on defenseless ducks this year by people who call what they do a sport. This, despite waterbird numbers in Eastern Australia falling by over 80% in the past two decades and advice from the Department to cancel the season.

The cruelty is ignored.

Vote in two polls on this issue

The Age website –
Vote No if you do not agree with the decision to have a duck season in Victoria -
http://www.theage.com.au/polls/national/form.html

The 3AW website -
Vote Yes if you would like to see a ban on duck shooting. (scroll down and it is on your right on the website) http://www.3aw.com.au/

More information

For more information you may contact the Victorian Hunting Advisory Committee (HAC) 2/8 Nicholson St, East Melbourne VIC 3002, (03) 9637 9815,
(03) 9637 8451; zachary.powell[AT]dse.vic.gov.au

If you know nothing about the 'industry' of wildlife shooting in Victoria, this draft submission gives a lot of information: http://www.veac.vic.gov.au/riverredgum/rrgfsubmissions/1824.pdf , including on the government's pro-hunting policies.
The arguments which say hunting brings a few jobs to rural Victoria are easily countered by the amount of jobs brought by tourism of a less violent kind.

If we were not such a huge and damaging population, if the wildlife were not so horribly stressed by our day to day impact, hunting might be defensible in some lights. In the current situation where nature is trampled, burnt, mobbed and built over, the excuses seem pathetic.

The illustration above, of the Virgin Mary, would be a good poster for promoting small families and women's rights to education. Detail from The Virgin and Child before a Firescreen by Master of Flémalle, (b. ca. 1375, Valenciennes, d. 1444, Tournai)

The Virgin Mary had a small family

This article looks at some statements and assumptions made by Daily Mail (UK) journo, Melanie Phillips, in what I would call a reactionary article, "Why do Green zealots think they can dictate how many children we are allowed to have?" (03rd February 2009)

The caption under a stock photo of a slim, attractive woman playing with a baby in a clean bedroom on a double bed, in "Why do Green zealots think they can dictate how many children we are allowed to have?" reads,

"The Government's 'green' advisor Jonathon Porritt said couples who have more than two children are 'irresponsible'".

Did he? Implicit in his remark, I think, was consideration of human impact on climate change and other environmental problems which threaten human survival.

Melanie seems to be taking this all down to the personal, when it is clear that Porritt is looking at a big picture.

She writes,

"So the deepest green of them all turns out to be not so much a friend of the earth as an enemy of the human race."

Seems pretty amazing that she can accuse Porritt of being an enemy of the human race without being sued for defamation. She is equating him to a Hitler. Where is the evidence?

"Apparently this is all because people have to accept responsibility 'for their total environmental footprint'. That's what having children amounts to, apparently, in his mind. The blessings of a large family and the contribution this makes to prosperity and progress don't figure at all," she continues.

Prosperity and progress

Some of us don't believe in this idea of prosperity and progress which is supposed to accompany increasing populations and large families. To some of us it looks like we are all getting land-poor and that the rich excuse their high consumption (and large families of consumers) by pretending that it's all going to be shared... one day ... with everyone. Not much evidence that this is happening.

Instead, children are to be measured solely by their burdensome impact on the planet.

Is Jonathon Porritt really reducing children to this alone? Or is he making a valid argument about population policy needing to adapt to a fragile environment?

"What kind of sinister and dehumanised mindset is this? It is no coincidence that the country which comes nearest to Jonathon's ideal society is Communist China, which imposed a murderously cruel policy of restricting families to one child apiece. For the desire to reduce the number of children that parents produce is innately totalitarian."

It isn't innately totalitarian. It was normal in all societies to limit family sizes to within what their environment could comfortably support. Then the English speaking countries, from the 13th century, came to be known as the nation of orphans, because they dispossessed all but the first child, and contributed to a stock of landless labour, without the vote and without the right to refuse to labour for the landed. This socio-economic aberration was then exported throughout the British colonial world. This is what progress and big families in the same sentence really mean.

"Reproduction is humanity's strongest instinct", Phillips asserts.

I'd like to see her defend that indefensible statement. How about food, water and shelter? In every generation, large numbers of people have never reproduced. Why does she utter these baseless generalities? Oh yes, she is a mainstream journalist. That is her job.

"To seek to curb it is to interfere with one of our most fundamental freedoms and desires," she rants.

Hunger, thirst and land-poverty curb all our fundamental freedoms and desires, including procreation. Porritt is offering us a choice. Melanie Phillips sounds like she is defending ignorance and lack of choice. A dictatorship of unknown options.

Then Phillips starts to hurl mud hysterically at a man who simply urges us to choose a safe route through danger.

"To do so on the basis that Jonathon Porritt possesses unique insight into the needs of our world which is denied to the lesser mortals who inhabit it is not just monumental arrogance - it is also the delusion of totalitarian tyrants from Stalin to Hitler to Mao."

But Hitler gave out prizes to women who had the biggest families and Mao said that "Every child that is born has two hands to feed himself." Mao caused overpopulation in China. Hitler wanted space for Germany's population to grow. Is Phillips a professional ignoramus?

"But then the green movement is essentially totalitarian in outlook. It sees people as a nuisance which has to be controlled. Accordingly, green interference in our lives now stretches from turning the ordinary lightbulb into an endangered species, telling hospitals to stop serving meat on patients' menus, and sending round the garbage police if someone commits the crime of putting a tin can or plastic bottle into the receptacle designated for paper."

If we had not so massively increased our populations then perhaps people would not be so worried about consumption nor go round policing garbage.

This 'green movement' Phillips talks about must be some creation of the mainstream press. I'm an environmental sociologist and I find that the problem is that governments and big business force countries of the first world to have bigger populations, by breaking down their land-use planning laws, and their local democracies. Such alliances also mislead naive men and women into having children in the absence of security, by giving out small sums of money and fostering cornucopianism. Thus the demand is maintained for the endless suburbs that cover the nature that protects us from our own pollution. And denying other creatures even the right to exist, let alone have big families.

"Now," she writes, "by pointing out what he says is the population 'ghost at the table', Porritt has blown environmentalism's cover. For he is not some maverick sounding off. These views are mainstream within the green movement, and they are growing.

Actually, Melanie, the population of Britain and the English speaking countries is growing, and candobetter.org has blown its cover. Melanie Phillips sounds like a propagandist for growth and she is working for the corporate press, so she probably is. Have a look at http://candobetter.org/PropagandaWatch Melanie; it's a mirror.

The final version of Jaws dwarfs all the others. This new monster is eating towns up alive. This is not just a battle to the death; this is WAR! In the novel, Jaws, the monster was not really a white pointer shark, it was the property development lobby, which metastasized with the colonisation of a modest fishing town by rich people from other places. Developers drew power from the wealthy tourists and sea-changers. They took over the original fishing town for their own purposes and democracy seemed fatally wounded. Right to the point of the shark (the developers) trying to eat the boat (symbol of the fishing industry which had begun the town). Until an odd bunch of people had the guts to stand up to the big developers.

How many people stopped swimming in the sea after reading the Peter Benchley blockbuster of the 1970s, Jaws? Well you can stop looking down now, because there is a much worse enemy and it has two legs.

In the novel, Jaws, the monster was not really a white pointer shark, it was the property development lobby, which metastasized with the colonisation of a modest fishing town by rich people from other places.

Developers drew power from the wealthy tourists and sea-changers. They took over the original fishing town and the mayor listened to them more than he did to the citizens. The local police became confused about their powers because of this. People were encouraged to risk their lives for the sake of 'economic growth'. They shut up in case they sounded stupid.

Sound familiar?

Because the mayor's ear was tuned to the tourism and development business it was tuned out to local democracy.

Local government and democracy looked as if it was fatally wounded. Right to the point of the shark (the developers) trying to eat the boat (symbol of the fishing industry which had begun the town). Until an odd bunch of people had the guts to stand up to the big developers. But were those people really so odd or was the rest of the town in a trance?

Hard to imagine anything worse than that shark, isn't it? But, since 1975 the problem has got so much bigger. The monstrous cold black-eyed machine of 'economic development'; sub-prime species, which only exists to patrol the world in search of food for its disgusting and insatiable appetite is now so big that it is engulfing the world. Destroying whole forests. Digesting democracies in a single livid gulp.

Are you ready to stand up to the developers?

You will need to understand ecology, be able to think against the tide, and get your ideas somewhere else besides television and the Murdoch and similar newspapers, because all these media-sources are major real-estate marketers and barrack for population growth.

In an article published on Freedom Arizona, bankruptcy is reportedly racing through the US, threatening governments at all levels.

46 Of 50 States Could File Bankruptcy In 2009-2010

"There is a high chance a majority of the States within the United States of America could file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. There are currently 46 states with high budget deficits, Arizona being one of them."

"The ... State of Arizona has 90 to 120 days before they completely run out of money. After that, all bills and tax refunds owed to the citizens will go unpaid. ... With neighboring California on the verge of bankruptcy this year, many States will follow in their steps.

"Many States are already scurrying to cut unwanted costs, cut State-funded programs, raise taxes, not issue tax refunds to their citizens, and borrow money just to survive in 2009.

[...]Many banks — the same banks the Fed bailed out — are refusing to loan money to the States and their Treasury agencies.

At the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities website you can see that 46 of the 50 States are clearly in the financial red.

Freedom Arizona comments, "It’s very possible you’ll see the end of the United States as we know it. If the Fed doesn’t bailout the States when their cash dries up and the banks don’t loan them money, then our States will be left in financial ruin. This would be a tragic and unprecedented event never experienced in the United States. No State has ever filed bankruptcy, but it could be coming to a State near you this year."

"We are on the brink of something far worse than the Great Depression," the article concludes.

Canada, Australia and Britain are in the same ... um... boat

Unfortunately Canada, Australia and Britain have all fallen prey to similar population-growth-and-land-speculation systems. Spain has also managed to become the premier basket case in Europe due to its having abandoned its economy to the construction industry and now has 20% unemployment.

Land sharks belong in prison

We have to get rid of the property development lobby which is running our country and ruining our ability to democratically restrain such excesses. We have to find some real ecological heros. We won't find them in the traditional places. They won't be ordinary people. They won't be well-known. They will come from the outside.

We have to find or make laws to stop our governments from engineering population growth against our welfare and from serving our countries and citizenship up to the developers and bankers. Work that is necessary can be shared. Wealth can be shared. Sharks are just fine in the sea, but property developers and their hangers-on belong in zoos, museums and prisons.

Today, Wednesday, 4 February, 2009, a media release from the Victorian government, entitled, "Brumby acts on jobs", came out with the worst possible news.

Brumby (the Premier of Victoria, Australia) has announced he is fast tracking development - supposedly for the sake of the economy.

Mr Madden given dangerous powers

Instead of the infrastructure that should be worked on and which would employ lots of people, he is fast tracking building. He is giving the Minister for Planning, Mr Madden, the power to call in anything he wants to.

What this is doing is pouring our tax payers money into the developers pockets. Some of developers are on the skids financially and now our hard-earned money is going to be poured into their parasitically acquired debts.

An unhealthy obsession

Brumby is obsessed about building and so prepared to be a dictator and wipe out our remaining democratic rights.

Read the press release below and make a big bloody fuss.

Write to the media and get on to the morning radio shows if you think that will make a difference. Write to Brumby, but please also send copies to people all over the country, and to astridnova[AT]bigpond.com so candobetter can know about them. See the https://marvellousmelbourne.org/ for contact details for the so-called authorities and mainstream media.

The media release also included a lot about building public housing, which would not be necessary if the private development lobby had not been allowed to push the price of housing up by forcing population growth on Victoria.

Yesterday the demonstrators wanted a return of democracy - this is another nail in the coffin of democracy.

What will you do when your back is to the wall?

See the original government propaganda below

"Media release From the Premier of Victoria
Wednesday, 4 February, 2009
BRUMBY ACTS ON JOBS

“In these tougher global times, our Government is taking action to create jobs now and lock in Victoria’s future,” Mr Brumby said.

“Under changes I am foreshadowing today, our Government will identify key projects to fast-track; the Planning Minister can call them in; and we will get the work and the jobs flowing much more quickly.”

Joined at the start of works by Grocon CEO Daniel Grollo, Housing Minister Richard Wynne, Planning Minister Justin Madden and the Member for Melbourne Bronwyn Pike, Mr Brumby said the planning reforms were a result of the Jobs and Economic Roundtable he hosted last week with key banking and development representatives.

Key reforms to speed up investment and jobs will centre on the State Government undertaking a rolling audit of pending projects and identifying significant projects that will deliver economic and employment benefits while meeting the Government’s planning policy objectives.

Once projects are identified, the Minister for Planning will consider whether to take a range of actions, including;

· Calling in significant projects that generate jobs, environmental or social benefits held up at VCAT, such as a Southbank project for 224 apartments representing $75 million and 2700 direct and indirect jobs;

· Removing roadblocks that may be holding up good development projects such as placing on exhibition a planning scheme amendment to break the impasse holding up a $50 million shopping centre in Waurn Ponds with 1800 direct and indirect jobs;

· Calling in complex planning permit applications from councils that are gridlocked such as the Northcote Bowl redevelopment of 96 apartments worth $37 million creating 1300 direct and indirect jobs; and

· Identifying projects early and work with councils and proponents to achieve quicker approval such as the Pakenham retail, office, community and residential development worth $100 million and 1500 jobs, Chirnside Park golf course residential subdivision worth $300 million and 1500 jobs.

“Our Government owes it to all Victorians to do everything we can to create more jobs as quickly as possible and that is precisely what our reforms to planning will achieve,” he said.

“There are currently 1876 pending planning applications before VCAT, worth $1.3 billion. We want to work in partnership with VCAT to see how much of that potential investment and jobs can be unlocked by fast-tracking significant projects.”

The Minister for Planning, Justin Madden, said he was prepared to take appropriate action on significant development projects on a case-by-case basis, provided they complied with the State Government’s planning framework.

“To ensure this happens, our Government will provide clear guidance and ensure that well designed projects will be approved in a reasonable time. I can also give an assurance that decisions will be transparent and community views will continue to be sought,” Mr Madden said.

Further reforms to planning announced last year are in progress with legislation creating Development Assessment Committees being introduced this parliamentary session. These will help to promote appropriate development around Central Activities Districts."

Buggar the Central Activities Districts. Victorians don't want them or need them. Redistribute land and wealth from the developers and stop population and economic growth. Time to grow up and clean up our rotten government and its retinue of parasitic planners, builders, banks and developers.

The tragedy below is not unique to India or to elephants. In Australia exactly the same thing is happening to kangaroos, wombats, quolls, and all the other animals and their forests - as you can read most days on candobetter.org

In Viewpoint, Amirtharaj Christy Williams, in “Where should the elephants go?” writes,

“The country, the people, the language or the retribution are different, but the cause for elephant-human conflict remains the same - humans displacing elephants from their natural habitat. …”

She says that, “In India, Nepal and Bangladesh, humans encroach on elephant habitats, which are further fragmented by roads, canals, dams, mines.”

She explains that elephants need about 200 sq km of ‘forest home range’, and that it is when, ‘… humans move into forested habitats, elephant-human conflicts are born.”

She describes how those invading elephant habitat use the cruelest of methods, such as “throwing burning tyres, shooting at the beasts with sharpened nails, even by laying out foods laced with killer pesticides.”

Infrastructure moguls and their government minions cause inexcusable cruelty

But those examples of human depravity are only symptoms of the cause, which is the destruction of the elephants’ homelands, often with the help of “short-sighted government officials who encourage large areas to be set aside for monoculture cash-crop plantations or infrastructural and development projects.”

Corrupt officials and academics, politicians, industrialists, and contractors

Williams' comments indicate that governments are responsible for the failure to protect these animals’ habitats, due to their foolish and naïve decisions made in response to big-business propaganda.

“In India, we have seen this with the collusion of corrupt officials and academics writing fake Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) designed to serve the interest of a small group of politicians, industrialists or contractors who profit from the untruths.”

She adds that many apparently expert plans to manage development are drawn up by people who do not have knowledge of elephant behaviour and ecology. (We see the same in Australia with people 'managing' kangaroos.)

"The brunt of the resulting conflict is borne by local communities and the beleaguered giants who stand no chance against the destructive power of humans."

The real monsters

"Our power to transform things is so much greater than our power to understand them. In this way we are the same as the cattle that unknowingly destroy the banks of rivers with their hard hoofs."
(Jill Quirk, Victorian President of Sustainable Population Australia)

There is more to Williams' article but I have cut it out in order to report the news of the elephants without, for once, making people choose between people and elephants in their imaginations. This is no choice. The growth-economics system is what forces people off their land where they used to grow food for free and into a spiral of population growth simply to survive on tiny wages so that employers might profit from industries built on stolen land.

We have to stand up for the elephants and we have to stand up for the people so that their land may not be ceded by their governments to big business in India, Australia, the US, Canada, or anywhere else.

India or Australia; different places, same sh**

As I said in the beginning of this article about Williams's article, the tragedy below is not unique to India or to elephants. In Australia (a supposedly scientifically and ecologically sophisticated first world country), exactly the same thing is happening to kangaroos, wombats, quolls, and all the other animals and their forests. In Australia, if the engineered rapid population growth fuels demands for land used by kangaroos, the kangaroos will be shot or simply forced out with no provision made and if no critic notices then the perpetrators get away with this. The government and even the developers may talk about poor people who need houses, but it is the government and the developers who are driving up the cost of land for housing. And they know it. That is why it is a crime worthy of trial and punishment.

Forests are clear felled without even requisite studies of the areas to ascertain the numbers, rarity or range of resident wild life. No provision is made for the future of the wild life whose forest falls around them- if they're not killed outright by the operation, they die soon after retreating to another animal's territory

Yet Australians are not yet as densely populated as Indians - not in humans and not in other fauna. They never will be. Australia is biophysically much poorer than India. That is the reason that humans and other animal populations here are less dense in most parts of Australia, but very dense where there is comparative fertility.

The problem of cruelty and depravity against nature's many beautiful and contrasting faces is caused by overpopulation and development in both cases, and it is politically induced by big business lobbying. Both Indians and Australians have lost effective self-government to global corporations.

Colonialism and economic growthism

The problem is a product of colonialism and economic growthism, in India and Australia. Rural commodities industries, property developers and other corporate interests which have ownership of physical assets want to earn more than is reasonable or fair in a finite system. A malignant global media is their mouthpiece. They therefore convince governments to break-down local self-government, then to force up population growth. This drives up the cost of land and water, hence the cost of living. Only big business profits. "Jobs, jobs!" you will hear. Yet nomadic big business constantly finds excuses to downsize employment. In good times and in bad times. Growth, smart or foolish somehow amounts to the same thing; the earth is always poorer; the rich are always richer; and democracy is always more unreachable.

This modis operandi is common to all colonised countries which have inherited the British land-tenure system and growth economics. It happens in Australia, it happens in India.

I urge readers (people) not to be confused by the question of rights of disempowered poor people and wild life at the jungle's edge, but to rise up against the real monsters, the corporations and the shareholder system, and the governments and media which promote and portray this exploitative, sick system as inevitable. We must do battle against the merchants of growth instead of the other creatures who share our planet. The growth-merchants should be put on trial for crimes against nature and locked away in zoos.

First day back Vic Parliament greeted by disgusted protesters

Over 200 people gathered for a rousing, energetic pro -democracy rally on the steps of Parliament House in Spring St. Melbourne the first day of sitting for the Victorian parliament,Tuesday Feb 3rd.The rally was led by Victorian Water Forum (Plug The Pipeline, Water Shed Victoria and The Clean Ocean Foundation)

Public anger in Victoria

The over- all visual thrust of the rally was public anger over water and transport mismanagement in Victoria under the Brumby Government.

Most participants were supporting "Plug the Pipeline" or the Wonthaggi anti -desalination group, Water Shed Victoria. Others held up anti road tunnel placards.

Speakers ranged from farmers from the north side of the "Divide" whose water is being piped to Melbourne, community group leaders of the Wonthaggi area whose residents are the unwilling hosts of a proposed massive desalination plant, to politicians and local Melbourne community group leaders.

Stand out speakers

Stand out speakers were: Steve Canon from Watershed Victoria, Peter Ryan (MLA Leader of the National Party in the Victorian government,) Greg Barber (MLC The Greens Spokesperson for Environment,Finance and Indigenous Affairs in the Victorian Government) and possibly the most memorable, "Anton" from the Clean Ocean Foundation whose last name escaped me, a surfer from the Wonthaggi area spoke brilliantly, logically and directly of the historical ineptitude of government as regards water management in Victoria .

Anger at loss of democracy in vital decisions affecting Victorians' lives

The common thread through the entire rally and all speakers was anger and disgust over the lack of consultation of the Brumby government in vital matters affecting people's lives , and the loss of democracy in Victoria. One of the speakers railed against the seeming deliberate strategy of government to divide the populace e.g pitting city residents against country residents as water is stolen from the north to assuage the thirst of the city and a peaceful country seaside area is spoilt to manufacture water for the same city's (endlessly increasing) needs

Solidarity despite Gov policy of divide and conquer

The spirit of the rally was however one of solidarity with people unanimous in advocating water re-cycling and harvesting at local level instead of desalination on a pristine beach and taking water from a food producing area to supply city residents as well as in their in their support for public transport vs. road building for more cars.

Julianne Bell on Bass Desalination and Sugarloaf Interconnector Pipe

Julianne Bell speaking for Protectors of Public Lands pointed out to my mind the most blatant concrete example of the Victorian Government's scorning of consultation and democracy where government approved the Desalination Plant on the Bass Coast and the Sugarloaf Interconnector Pipeline before the Parliament committee on the environment and natural resources enquiring into Melbourne's Future Water was complete.(!)

In her own words -

"Yesterday Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. and one of our member groups the Royal Park Protection Group Inc. addressed the Parliament Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources which is enquiring into Melbourne's Future Water Supply. Unfortunately Government had already approved the Desalination Plant on the Bass Coast and the Sugarloaf Interconnector Pipeline before the enquiry was complete. (The Committee is only just completing its hearings of witnesses - yesterday was the last day.) PPL VIC and RPPG told the Committee that Melbourne could secure its own water resources without robbing regional Victoria. Out submissions were on firstly - the need to stop logging water catchment areas. This could provide a supply of water to service 600,000 households in Melbourne. The other RPPG submission was on the need for local urban water sourcing projects - wetlands which recycle storm water, harvesting storm water off the roofs of large buildings as is being done at the SNHC in Royal Park and the use of storm water. We suggested that local Councils be funded to under development and manage projects."

Post script - People silenced on the root-cause of loss of democracy and quality of life

The massive population growth which has brought about the need for all these impositions was not mentioned by any speakers. My feeling is that raising this topic would have unnerved a very united group and the person introducing it would have been punished. I surmise that to most of those gathered ,the enemy was clearly Mr Brumby and his team. If population growth had been brought up it would have led to confusion as the group would not have seen Mr Brumby as being so clearly responsible.

Channel 2 fails its duty to report event to the public

This event was not reported on the channel 2 news the same night.

The title of the article is the clue to its meaning, "Populate without perishing". Ziggy Switkowski, who was on Australian Prime Minister John Howard's nuclear power team, is writing for the Murdoch press, which is always spruiking for population growth. If you read carefully, Switkowski doesn't actually say that Oz's 21 millions (plus) are bad; he says what they do is important. (Fine political distinction usually used to promote or excuse more population growth).

Ziggy is alluding to climate change, but he is not, I think, talking down Australia's population, any more than is Frank Lowy, of the Lowy [Climate Change] Foundation.

Why do I say this?

There are a bunch of investors and developers out there who seem to be creating a ... um... climate ... where the idea of population growth and fuel depletion and climate change can be used to promote the need for nuclear power and therefore to promote investment in it.

That might be defensible on the face of it, since the Energy Returned Over Energy Invested (EROEI) of conventional nuclear has become relatively defensible with the the centrifugal separation of U235 from U238, if some very rich men, associations, and politicians did not seem to be relying on further driving up population numbers to enhance the chances of schemes for giant new nuclear-powered cities getting up. They intend to invest, not just in nuclear - and nuclear may simply be the flagship that will take a loss further on after they get out early with profits from land-speculation - but in big cities which they have managed to goad Australian governments to promise them. (An early document talked about somewhere between 50 and 150 huge new cities all around Australia.)

Continuous massive development schemes rely for funding on gambling on profits from continuous land speculation, but this is not possible if there is no project, however unsustainable, upon which further population and industrial growth can be pinned. Some big development speculators would be interested in the land and infrastructure associated with big new cities that population growth they have been promised by politicians (without agreement having been obtained from the community) will bring, far more than in investing in the power and plants themselves. They have been more or less guaranteed large dependent new cities to consume the nuclear power. They will make money on selling off land in advance and in floating schemes for other infrastructure - at least this is what they hope for.

Never mind that the nuclear power plants - at one $2bUSD plant per million or so Australians, just to provide per-capita electricity needs now [1] (not future expanded needs or replacement of fossil fuel) will probably never be achieved due to the financial cost of these plants and materials in a debt-ridden country in a debt-ridden world (where ultimately population and demand will fall in line with fossil-fuel). The gamble is that the promoters of these big city schemes will get away with funding the initial big ideas, leaving a host of unseen costs and unresolvable debt to smaller investors, and a gutted economic and political system for Australia with vast numbers of people in worse poverty than landless Mexicans, without a wealthy USA close-by to emigrate to.

In Australia the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering Sciences (AATES) put together a document for a scheme like this a couple of years ago for government, with the collaboration of the Australian Multicultural Foundation. Note that Scanlon has also invested in tollways. Article and links to it below:

Scanlon report underpins threat to Australian democracy
Posted April 23rd, 2008 by Sheila Newman

What organisation has only 24 members of which the first ten comprise the current Prime Minister and nine past and present Australian Prime Ministers or Prime Ministerial contenders? And why would they be so dedicated to an organisation with a focus so antithetical to democracy and Australians? Read on.

[1] Figure based on French nuclear electric provision per capita in 2009 as provided by France 2 News covering provision of electricity during interruption to gas supplies from Russia and during severe cold spell. Note that Australians actually use more electricity per capita than the French and they also use more petroleum and more coal.]

Andrew Bolt, who works for the right-wing Murdoch-owned Melbourne Herald Sun newspaper, has political views, which, in many, ways conform well to those of his employer. He is anti-union. He supports US foreign policy including the so-called "war on terror" and he illogically holds environmentalists responsible for many of our problems. However, in contrast to the stridently pro-population-growth pro-high-immigration stance of his employer, he rightly condemns the ongoing idiocy of the policies of the federal and state governments to encourage population growth when, during the heat wave of the previous days, the infrastructure of Melbourne failed abysmally to meet the needs of Melbourne's current residents. By speaking the truth about population growth and immigration he may well be serving the public far better than many of his 'politically correct' detractors who still won't openly question population growth.

Andrew Bolt's article "Melbourne is wrecked and full" of 30 Jan 09 put the finger squarely on numbers and especially immigration numbers, in a robustly rhetorical way that will connect and generate emotion with readership. Without emotion the reader has little basis for memory let alone action.

Most writers fail to address the former. Those few who do most often fail at the latter.

Bolt has made indulgent and stupid statements about rivers and dams, as much to bash the Government as to exert his sense of macho human dominance over all things natural:

"Victoria is now paying the price for being too green, blind and thick to build basic stuff for a population we let grow far too fast."

"So incompetent are our politicians - so blinded by green ideology - that they even managed, in this vast continent, to run out of land for housing."

"It would break your heart to see where this lot scattered your money instead. On releases of precious drinking water into our rivers for 'environmental flows'. ..."

Nonetheless he has made numbers and immigration the primary focus overall:

"But now consider this: at the rate we're being growing lately, Victoria will add at least another 1.5 million to its population over the next 20 years.

"In fact, it could well be more. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last year cranked up our immigration intake to a record high - more than 330,000 a year, if you include workers on temporary visas. And that's not yet counting new births.

"A year ago, even before Rudd opened our door even wider, the Australian Bureau of Statistics noted Australia's population was now growing by 1.6 per cent a year, which means that if we don't stop this madness, there will be half as many of us again by 2050.

"And, of course, most of these new people will be trying to squeeze into our cities. Like Melbourne.

"Imagine Melbourne growing 50 per cent bigger in your children's lifetime, if not your own. That's 50 per cent more people, cars, houses, gardens, air-conditioners and train travellers. Everywhere where's there's two, imagine three by 2050.

"Forget the social stresses of simply getting on with so many more immigrants, or of trying even to find a little elbow room.

"Consider this more basic problem: how on earth are we going to give all our new neighbours power, water, roads, land and trains when we don't have enough for the people here already?"

If, within that overall view, the case for rivers and against dams can be well-argued then the numbers have to be reduced even more.

Bolt is promoting an important but nearly invisible debate placing the core matter at its apex. I dislike the man but give credit where it is due and take opportunity where it arises. It's worth responding to re-inforce the importance and point of primacy within Bolt's position. Argue the natural resource issues secondarily as a function of social security. As an utterly vital input to society, water resource exploitation must afford soundly generous buffers for direct supply (water consumption) and ecological services (fisheries, biodiversity in general). The more security wanted the less people fit into the equation. We can fill the landscape horizon to horizon with a thickening clot of citizens, but supplies of water, energy, etc become russian roulette on any given day. How lucky does everyone feel? Can we have a vote on it perhaps?

Bolt even stabs the desalination fraud in the heart when he cites its energy demand in context to the energy supply that wasn't even available to meet existing demand. So we can have desalinated water but not on really hot days? How good is that? The real point here is the inherent incapacity of this or any Govt. to assure reliable provision of increasingly complex and expensive supply systems. The public need to realise this incapacity and be rightly afraid of it.

Treasury Gardens when well-watered
At the same time as I received a report on Bob Brown's speech on endangered species at Brown Mountain Forest, I also heard really disturbing... awful... news of time spent in the adjacent Treasury Gardens on Wednesday, when temperatures were well over forty degrees.

These gardens are known for their fountains and ponds and large shady trees. Captain Cook's cottage was imported from England and now resides here.

Apparently birds were going around with their beaks open, their wings extended, parched and distressed because there was NO WATER in any of the fountains and ponds there.

I thought that the Parks and Gardens had some kind of water recycling program, to mitigate the awful damage that the governments forced population program is doing to our water reserves.

Apparently not.

The person reporting this to me was so appalled that she emptied her make-up purse and filled it with water from the taps in the Ladies' toilets and placed it on the ground for the animals.

If the commodification of water has come to the pass where we will allow all the animals and possibly the trees in our parks to die; if our governments are going to show this degree of callousness, they must be pursued to the wall.

The following action was reported to me: A representative of Melbourne City Council was rung yesterday and told of the situation. It is reported that "he sounded genuinely sorry about the birds and agreed that drinking fountains with receptacles for overflow water for birds and humans was a good idea and will initiate it."

He said, however, that it obviously can't be straight away but he said it sounded as though it should be done.

He was asked if he could get something rigged up as an interim measure for birds during this terrible heat and he said he would look into it.

Mind you, he also said that he was about to go on vacation.

He also agreed that there should be lot more water fountains all around the city.

Note: prompt action by this person will be greatly appreciated, but who is responsible for this situation arising?

There have also been reports that animals are falling into the new plastic lined waterways that the Victorian government has allowed to be constructed. They cannot climb out on the slippery plastic, and drown. It is hard for me to imagine a dialogue with public servants and politicians so far removed from the reality of natural hydraulics that they would actually deprive the earth of water. What destructive buffoons rule this State.

Yesterday I rescued a bird from a bathtub full of water and lilies in my garden. She had gone in and become too wet to get out. I placed some plastic netting in the bath, where it formed a good bird-platform. I put her on the platform and she sat there until her wings dried off. I had also placed bowls of water around the garden and on the garage roof, with rocks in them that birds and other creatures could sit on or climb out of the water on.

If people do not take these measures for wildlife, not only will the wildlife suffer, but they will become extinct even more rapidly.

Please be kind and responsible to our fellow creatures, even if the Victorian government is barbaric in this regard.

See also: "A Place to die" of 31 Jan 09, comment The last of our urban wild life of 22 Jan 2011.

A Re-Classification of Devilbend is critical to preventing the total demise of wildlife on the Mornington Peninsula: designation change from a ‘Natural Features Reserve’, to a ‘Nature Conservation Reserve’. Interconnecting wildlife corridors, through private land, minimum 200 metres in width and the rigorous preservation and restoration of Devilbend as a central core Reserve are essential.

Re-Classification of Devilbend is critical

by Maryland Wilson, President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council

[Editor:See Background to this Campaign at the bottom of this article for the wider politics and land-use planning history]

A Re-Classification of Devilbend is critical to preventing the total demise of wildlife on the Mornington Peninsula. A designation change from a ‘Natural Features Reserve’, under Section 4 (1)(m) (and Part 3 of the Fifth Schedule) of the Crown Land Reserves Act 1978 to Devilbend as a ‘Nature Conservation Reserve’ under Section 4(1)(0) (and Part 1 of the Fifth Schedule)of the same Act, is absolutely critical if we are to save remaining native species on the Mornington Peninsula. Interconnecting wildlife corridors, through private land, minimum 200 metres in width and the rigorous preservation and restoration of Devilbend as a central core Reserve are essential to reserve the area for ‘the propagation or management of wildlife or the preservation of habitat'

Precautionary principle

The precautionary principle: “We must act together to prevent impacts, particularly where there is potential for serious or irreversible damage to occur. A lack of scientific certainty or information should not delay these actions., towards working towards restoration as an intact haven for wildlife.” Parks’ Guiding Principles Appendix 1 Devilbend Reserve Community Workshop, 22.11.07 P5 Sect. 3

Population dispersal needs

Genetic dispersal and variation is the genetic key to survival of species. The prime reason why re-Classification of Devilbend as central core habitat link for wildlife corridors is critical. It is to prevent genetic drift so species have genetic diversity /variability dispersal through wildlife corridors, to ensure their survival. Native species are trapped in isolated, fragmented areas of habitat, and populations without interconnecting habitat in which to move, breed and live, eventually implode and die-out, causing local extinction.

Holistic approach needed

A holistic approach is needed to manage Devilbend Reserve as a necessary tool of management to save rapidly declining species from certain demise if we do not heed their vulnerable state, now subject to drought and climate change. With roads and railways proposed, dredging on both sides of the peninsula, massive population growth and industrial development, inappropriate recreational users of Devilbend, birds and animals are threatened. Devilbend is not monitored to a degree sufficient to prevent illegal activities already occurring, let alone on a scale proposed in the Draft Mgt Plan 2008.

Current management failing

The Mc Phail Report slates Victoria for failing to protect native species, clearing more land than any other state in Australia. The critique of Victorian bureaucrats impacts directly on the importance of Devilbend as core nucleus habitat, on the Mornington Peninsula, which must be preserved as a sanctuary.

An AWPC Devilbend leaflet produced with Malcolm Legg ecologist and Glenn Ehmke of Birds Australia reveals our strong conservation concern for the future survival of wildlife:

“When wildlife is lost from a landscape/region, the number of species decline and local extinctions result. Extinction however, is a process, not an event, and the time scale over which species loss occurs is highly variable and species-specific. Therefore, despite the fact that major changes are in many cases yet to be fully manifested. This “time-lag” between landscape change and species loss is termed “termed “species relaxation” or “extinction debt”.

A number of studies both overseas and in Australia where landscape modification is very recent (-200 years) have identified extinction debt as a significant concern for biodiversity conservation in highly modified landscapes. Even in the absence of further direct loss and fragmentation of habitat, degradation of habitats will continue as weed invasions, dieback, edge effects and other processes impact isolated remnants, and isolated populations will continue to suffer the effects of genetic drift, inbreeding and susceptibility to chance events. Thus, the local populations of some species may be expected to decline to extinction over time. This is reflected in the large number of threatened and declining species in the region today.”

Devilbend as a wildlife sanctuary

It behoves government to pay more respectful attention to expertise and public opinion the Devilbend Foundation and AWPC bring to this inquiry. Government's job is to adapt to our demands, not to impose the demands of developers and big business on us or the rest of the people and creatures on the peninsula. Our very strong opposition to developing Devibend as a playground for recreational users, with all the negative ecological impacts on native birds and animals continues to be ignored by Parks.

Kangaroo Management in Devilbend and the Mornington Peninsula

Existing habitat in parks and reserves on the Peninsula is not good kangaroo habitat- Kevin Street, retired Wildlife and Fisheries officer

• the role of Devilbend as core nucleus habitat - Devilbend could support a significant kangaroo population but seems so sparsely populated, due to unfriendly fencing, hunting in years past by leasees and others.
If we are to sustain significant kangaroo numbers on the Peninsula then we need to come up with a management plan that may include such things as:

• habitat improvement in existing reserves and parks
establishment of important wildlife corridors linking Devilbend to Greens Bush, Arthur’s Seat, etc so that range animals like kangaroos can have freedom of movement for genetic dispersal
• Grazing leases are incompatible to conserving and protecting biodiversity
• Natural regeneration approach focusing on highest quality areas to start
• Identify wildlife corridors in reserve and linking outside

Ecologist Hans Brunner wrote:

“The total disappearance of the Southern Brown Bandicoot on the Peninsula is a classical example of the Government’s ignorance. There were thousands and now there are none left. We always get politely steam rolled. It is most disheartening.”

Background to this campaign

(Candobetter editor's note)

Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, where Devilbend is located, is a biodiversity hotspot and, until Premier Jeff Kennett came to power in 1999, it was a rural area.

Because of that government and the following Bracks and Brumby governments' undemocratic pro-development agendas, it was re-termed part of 'Greater Melbourne'. This was meant to make it incapable of resisting a massive development program, which to date includes mass movement of people to many new suburbs, talk of a second city to Melbourne, and a 400 ha industrial development at Hastings.

In the mean time a toll-way is scheduled to splice the Peninsula from North to South, cutting through and affecting major remaining habitat.
Arguably it is these kinds of expansionary activities, requiring huge amounts of fuel and materials and funded on debt, which have brought the world economy to a skidding halt.

At the same time, bizarrely, the area became a UNESCO 'biosphere', but ecological activists who worked to have it declared a biosphere were successfully dissuaded from commenting on government plans to massively ncrease population on the Peninsula, even though it was obvious to 'Blind Freddy' that this would destroy unprotected grasslands and the fauna habitats. The carrot and stick approach was used.

And Devilbend, until recently a reservoir, now decommissioned, only narrowly escaped becoming a housing estate. An unsuitable compromise was instead unilaterally inflicted by the Bracks Government, in a sort of activities theme park, with little or no effective sanctuary for our terribly ill-treated Peninsula wildlife. All big animals are on the wane - notably kangaroos and koalas. We must have a fauna protection and promotion policy.

Maryland Wilson, of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council, has the key to this in her promotion of Wildlife Corridors.
Editor

Those who care about Brown Mountain are not all high in the giant trees, these protesters at ground level are on the same side as the tree dwellers and are horrified about the destruction of this magical place.

The Star

But, right now, everyone is relying on this little guy:, the Endangered Orbost Spiny Cray (Euastacus diversus), who, if the law is respected, has a right to a buffer-zone of 100 m on either side of the creek he lives in.

Original article by Sherwood Ross published as "Move to End 'Internet Neutrality': Blow to Bloggers. 'Ten Pin Strike against Political Freedom'" on www.globalresearch.ca on 26 Jan 09.

If the cable and phone companies that transmit Internet data are allowed to charge higher rates to some producers for faster service the result will be "a ten pin strike against political freedom," a prominent legal authority warns.

That's because the change will enable the wealthy to "quickly take over the high speed transmissions (for their trash commercial content) just as they completely monopolize radio and TV, and just as their incredibly greedy profit-seeking has had a very deleterious effect on print journalism," writes Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover.

Velvel's plea for "internet neutrality" comes in his new book "An Enemy of The People," subtitled "The Unending Battle Against Conventional Wisdom(Doukathsan)." Essentially, he writes, the proposed change is an "attempt by the wealthy to make the internet into yet another repository of their power".

Under the new scheme sought by transmission firms, Velvel writes, "large companies would pay more, no doubt a lot more, in order to have their messages, videos, audios, and any other content transmitted rapidly. The rest of us peasants, who could not afford to have our content move fast, would pay less and have it move more slowly."

"One can be sure that the average guy with something he wants to say will be relegated to lower speed transmissions," Velvel writes. "Blogdom, and the use of the internet by average people for political purposes, will likely be as good as dead."

According to Save The Internet.com(STI), "The nation's largest telephone and cable companies ---including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner---want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won't load at all."

"What we have here," Velvel explained, "is a bunch of unregenerate capitalists, who think that nothing else is important except trying to make as much as they can conceivably get away with. As with the oil companies and the investments banks, huge profit margins and scores of millions annually for their chairmen and CEOs isn't enough for them. They want more. Always more. Nothing else matters to them. The pipes (transmission) companies are no different."

Velvel pointed out, "The average guy can't be published in a newspaper, and cannot afford the money to pay to be on radio or television. His voice is limited. The great benefit of the internet, the reason it bade fair to be the new version of the poor man's printing press (which is what picketing and marching were once called), is that it gave everyone a chance to have his or her say in a way that was immediately available to anyone who found it or knew of it and wanted to read it."

"That is why tens of millions of blogs sprang up," Velvel continued, "with (at least) many thousands of them being on political subjects, and with blogdom sometimes having major political impacts."

Others besides Velvel have also commented on efforts to destroy net neutrality. As a consequence of a 2005 decision by the Bush Federal Communications Commission, Internet Neutrality, "the foundation of the free and open internet---was put in jeopardy," STI says. "Now cable and phone company lobbyists are pushing to block legislation that would reinstate Net Neutrality."

"Without Net Neutrality, startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay for a top spot on the Web," STI says.

"If Congress turns the Internet over to the telephone and cable giants, everyone who uses the Internet will be affected," STI continues. "Connecting to your office could take longer if you don't purchase your carrier's preferred applications. Sending family photos and videos could slow to a crawl. Web pages you always use for online banking, access to health care information, planning a trip, or communicating with friends and family could fall victim to pay-for-speed schemes."

STI warned the consequences of abandoning Internet Neutrality would be "devastating." "Innovation would be stifled, competition limited, and access to information restricted. Choice and the free market would be sacrificed to the interests of a few corporate executives."

For interviews with Dean Velvel, contact Sherwood Ross at sherwoodr1 [ AT ] yahoo.com. Email Dean Velvel at velvel [ AT ] mslaw.edu

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