environment and population

After fruitless and protracted negotiations between the Human Social Justice Union and Mother Nature, U.N. mediator Hoo R.U. Kiddun has booked off. His decision came after the HSJU reps and Mother Nature failed to hammer out a deal in the latest of enumerable all-night bargaining sessions. “The parties are just too far apart”, Kiddun remarked, “To come to an agreement, there has to be some give and take on both sides, but it seems that for 250 years Union members have been doing all the taking and Management refuses to continue giving.”

Social Justice Negotiators Fail to Gain Concessions from Mother Nature

CBCnews.ca November 16, 2016

After fruitless and protracted negotiations between the Human Social Justice Union and Mother Nature, U.N. mediator Hoo R.U. Kiddun has booked off. His decision came after the HSJU reps and Mother Nature failed to hammer out a deal in the latest of enumerable all-night bargaining sessions. “The parties are just too far apart”, Kiddun remarked, “To come to an agreement, there has to be some give and take on both sides, but it seems that for 250 years Union members have been doing all the taking and Management refuses to continue giving.”

After humanity had reduced the global wildlife population by 40% since the first Earth Day in 1970, and raised global temperatures by 1.03 C since 1750 when the industrial revolution began, Mother Nature has threatened to lay off 7.5 billion people unless the Union agrees to major reductions in wages and benefits, including medical, dental, and vision care, and carbon emissions. In fact, it appears that human civilization itself is on the chopping block, but apparently the Union is cool with that as long as the social safety net remains intact.

The Union in fact, for its part, refuses to believe Nature’s claim that there are no more cookies in the cookie jar, or at least, not enough to satisfy the growing appetites of a rapidly growing union membership. “Let her show us the books---what is she hiding?”, asked chief negotiator J. Simon. “She is sitting on a cornucopia of natural capital while crying poor. If indeed there isn’t enough to go around, she should call on us for help before wielding the axe. There is a lot of intellectual capital on our side of the table---all she has to do is plug into it. We are ideas people and there are no limits to our ingenuity.” When questioned about whether boundless human ingenuity will be able to resurrect the millions of species that his members have extinguished, Mr. Simon refused comment---or place a bet.

But Kiddun reported that Mother Nature is intransigent, and refuses to move on any of its demands for voluntary cutbacks, or modify its biophysical laws. Her chief negotiator, I. Asimov, said that the Union could demand anything it wanted. “It can demand that every human being has a right to have his or her basic needs satisfied. It can demand that everyone has a right to access the bathroom in their apartment at any time day they want to—free of charge. They even can put it in the Union Constitution. But our problem is that we can only provide one bathroom and there are 7.5 billion tenants in the apartment. “

One Union negotiator, Bernie Sandpaper, rejected Asimov’s contention as absurd. “As a socialist”, Sandpaper said, “ I have to believe that if resources are fairly and equally distributed, there is enough to go around. All tenants in our national apartment can have free and universal access to quality bathroom care if we tax the rich and double our national debt to $38 trillion. Moreover, we can accommodate any and all the tenants from other apartments in the building who aspire to move to ours.”

Green HSJU negotiator Jill Stoner concurred. “All we need to do is reduce our footprint, move over and squeeze tighter for more and more incoming migrants ad infinitum. Migrants have rights too, and their rights and needs trump ours--no pun intended.” Another outgoing member of the team, Billary Winer, added, “We need to build bridges, not walls. Instead turning people away, we need to extend the table…ours is a vision of inclusivity, not exclusivity.” Ms. Winer is even rumored to have told a banker she wants to allow uninhibited traffic between all apartment suites, even to the point of tearing down bearing walls. “I want man-servants who will cook and clean for substandard wages,” a leaked email had her saying, “and if deplorables lose their jobs I am going to call them racists.”

Upon receipt of her comment, Asimov was reported to have said that Winer could extend the table all she wants, but there is not enough food in the kitchen to feed all the diners she wants to invite, nor enough energy to run the ovens or the stoves. “And we anticipate that energy costs will skyrocket to the point that customers are going to go home hungry……I expect fights to break out”, he added.
“Some may even burn down the restaurant.”

Kiddun, reflecting upon the impasse, sadly concluded that the fundamental problem was that the Social Justice negotiators just can ‘t rap their heads around the reality of scarcity. “And they don’t acknowledge that there are limits to growth….

“Once more”, Kiddun continued, “their Green wing doesn’t understand that it doesn’t make any sense for their union members to cut their consumption in half, only to turn around and double the number of members.” “They can argue until they are blue in the face, but Mother Nature won’t give. She doesn’t care about per capitas. Per capita energy consumption, per capita waste, or per capita carbon emissions. She only cares about TOTAL energy consumption, waste and C02 emissions. In other words, the number of members times their average consumption ….

“What we have here is a failure to communicate…. Mother Nature’s books are open, but the Union just doesn’t seem willing to read them …..

“I suspect that their brains just don’t do reality. They can’t cope with it. Reality is so ugly that denial is an essential coping mechanism. It is a part of their nature. They can deal with the short term, but aren’t interested in the long term”, Kiddun remarked, “They are neurologically f***ed.”

The consensus among seasoned observers is that massive layoffs are now inevitable.

Tim Murray
CBC Bullschiesse News
November 17, 2016.

"Mark, I am fully aware that your job must be challenging and frustrating at times, but ignoring the elephant in the room – the increasingly obvious negative impacts of population growth - is putting EV and all who care for our environment on a never ending hamster wheel of frustration, disappointment, and ultimately hard earned campaign money down the gurgler. Unchecked population growth is having a ratchet effect, steadily increasing the pressure on the environment and reversing previous efforts to protect it. " (Jenny Warfe)

To: 'Mark Wakeham'
Subject: Population impacts

 

Hi Mark

Thanks for your recent response to my concerns about Victoria’s population growth being the biggest threat to Victoria’s natural environment, and apologies for my slow reply. Congratulations too on EV’s campaign on moving away from coal.

You made two main points

1.      Population policies are largely set at the national and international level and it is a global issue

2.      Solutions cover numerous issues on which you (EV) are not the experts

My response is:

1.      Population policies are largely set at the national and international level and it is a global issue.

Climate change and renewable energy are National and International issues too, but EV has no problem running effective campaigns on these issues. Of course everything about climate change, energy and water use has numerous variables, but it is disingenuous to ignore absolute numbers of people as one of the most impactful variables. Melbourne’s population is currently increasing by around 2,000 people per week – over 100,000 per annum - (~ 60% of which is migration), so it is ridiculous to ignore this ever increasing, compounding, input and its effect on energy and water consumption and other ecological services.  

I recently gave a talk on sustainability to the Mornington Peninsula Shire and made these points:

·         With the current 2% annual growth, Victoria’s population will double by 2050 – mostly in Melbourne.

·         Victoria has the highest population growth rate of any state.

·         Costs of population growth are largely hidden, and fall disproportionately on local and State governments: roads, drainage, waste management, public facilities, schools, hospitals, etc. etc....

·         This leaves less $$ to protect local biodiversity – an issue which Councils and environment groups keep saying they are concerned about.  

·         Academic research shows that costs far exceed the increased revenue generated by additional people¹

·         Australia’s growth doubled from 1% to 2% per annum in the last decade, so we must now spend an extra 7% of government revenue on  infrastructure just to avoid infrastructure deficit² – let alone what we should be spending to protect the environment and prepare for climate change.

·         Expanding capacity merely to maintain level of service already provided per person provides no net gain in utility

·         All this means that, contrary to the Growth lobby’s rhetoric, population growth is not an investment, it’s a recurrent cost – a drain on local and state government budgets

State and local governments, NGOs and community organisations are left to mop up the excesses of the population Ponzi scheme currently driving our economy. Funding for our task is hopelessly inadequate. I suggested to MP Shire that they should lobby the Victorian government with these facts, and request the Victorian government to lobby the Federal government via COAG and relevant Ministers. State and local governments should also include population facts in locally produced information on biodiversity and the environment. I make that same suggestion to EV.

In our favour, I think the tide is beginning to turn on the until now unquestioned benefits of population growth. The mainstream media has run dead on the issue for a long time, no doubt to placate vested interests, but perhaps they can no longer ignore the failing infrastructure, falling living standards, housing unaffordability and appalling growth in homelessness, etc. etc.  Here are just a few examples of former Growthists changing their tune:

·         Professor Judith Sloan – Economist and contributing Economics Editor at The Australian (!) is starting to talk about the downside of population growth, See: Judith Sloan  

·         Josh Gordon state political Editor, The Age 25^th October 2016 See: Josh Gordon

·         John Masanauskas John Masanauskas City Editor Herald Sun October 28, 2016

·          Productivity Commission  Annual Report 2010-11, and its 2016 report found no economic benefit of high immigration for existing Australians and warned of many down-sides at: Productivity Commission   This quote from the PC Report is relevant:

The broader impacts from any increase in Net Overseas Migration (NOM) also need to be taken into account. Increasing numbers of immigrants can adversely affect the quality of Australia’s natural and built environment unless governments take action to mitigate congestion and other pressures. Even with such action, there are additional costs for the community as environmental services have to be replaced with technological solutions. While there are various estimates of the cost of these solutions, the actual cost can be lower due to economies of scale, or higher if environmental services are currently ‘free’. Moreover, some environmental impacts, such as the recreational value of near empty beaches and the value of biodiversity, are hard to measure, let alone monetise. Yet, such considerations should be part of the broad cost-benefit assessment underpinning decisions on the long-term migrant intake. To inform this debate, the Australian Government should publish projections of the impact of varying rates of migration and population growth on the natural and built environment. This would also help to address community perceptions (as expressed by participants) that debate about the impacts of immigration is lacking

·         The Grattan Institute in 2014 found that the extra money State governments are forking out for infrastructure fully accounted for their burgeoning deficits - You know, those deficits that cause them to cut social and environmental programs. See: Grattan Institute

·         Commonwealth Bank. In its recent paper "How does Australia look on a per capita basis?", quoted at: Business Insider

Note the graphs of GDP per capita, per capita income, labour force participation rates, travel time index, dwelling prices etc.

·         International media is also starting to question population ponzis. Eg: The Globalist  

So, if former “economic rationalists” have even started talking about the financial downsides of population growth without the usual mutterings about racism being slung at them, surely it’s time for us to talk about the ecological downsides? NGOs and community groups who care about our environment are being handed an opportunity to add ecological degradation to the growing list of down sides from population growth. The real issue is about bums on seats, not the colour of them.

Colleagues have suggested a campaign along the lines of “Canberra is the problem”. As we agree it is federal immigration policies out of Canberra driving most of the growth and we are growing by about a Canberra-worth (or maybe Canberra-worthless) of people every year, an advertising campaign could be run showing Canberra’s popping up all over a map of Australia next to already big cities, or swamping our natural attractions, habitat for other species etc. (Just this week, C7 reported on distressed kangaroos becoming common in Melbourne’s suburbs, stating that spreading suburbs are wiping  out their habitat).

 

Indeed, the Victorian government itself has produced evidence of the negative impacts of population growth in its State of the Environment Reports 2008 and 2013 showing that population pressures were adversely affecting Victoria’s environment. So, it’s hardly fringe opinion that I am propounding. It’s time to remind government of their own findings.  

 

2.      Solutions cover numerous issues on which you (EV) are not the experts. My response is:  

Non experts influence public debate all the time on a vast range of issues. Politicians aren’t experts in all issues, but they happily pontificate on anything that appeals to their particular world view or party dogma. Indeed their cultural/religious beliefs, which should have no role in good government, are influencing some policies which have a negative impact on the environment. Environmentalists should be naming that problem.  

It is a cop out for environmentalists to pronounce that because we are not say, demographers, we cannot have a reasoned and informed position on human population impacts on the environment – which we purport to care deeply about and may have spent years studying and working in. As long as we are well informed and use facts what is there to be scared of? At least we should have a go in my view.

It’s interesting too,isn’t it, that Bernard Salt is not a qualified demographer but he calls himself one, is considered an expert, and his opinions are widely publicised on a wide range of issues. Conversely, the mainstream media rarely consults Sociologists/Demographers such as Dr. Katharine Betts and Dr. Bob Birrell from The Australian Population Research Institute.

Mark, I am fully aware that your job must be challenging and frustrating at times, but ignoring the elephant in the room – the increasingly obvious negative impacts of population growth - is  putting EV and all who care for our environment on a never ending hamster wheel of frustration, disappointment, and ultimately hard earned campaign money down the gurgler. Unchecked population growth is having a ratchet effect, steadily increasing the pressure on the environment and reversing previous efforts to protect it.

 

There is no logical end point to infinite growth with finite resources. Unless we address the (irrefutable mathematical) problem of compounding population numbers, we are sitting ducks for exhaustion, disappointment and job dissatisfaction – and of course environmental degradation.

 

Perhaps a coalition of well regarded community, planning and environment groups could support one another to really get stuck into the issue?

 

As Paul Ehrlich has said, "Whatever your cause, it's a lost cause if we don't stop population growth". Obviously that applies just as much in our local area as globally.

 

Cheers,

 

Jenny Warfe

 

1.      For example: O’Sullivan JN (2012) The burden of durable asset acquisition in growing populations. Economic Affairs 32 (1): 31–37)

2.      Pers comm. Dr. J O’Sullivan Senior Research Fellow UQ. http://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/4920

“It’s completely disingenuous for anyone who is truly concerned about this nation’s sustainability and carrying capacity to continue to ignore the jet engine driving U.S. population growth: immigration.” - Dan Stein, President of FAIR

(September 20, 2016, Washington, D.C.) – One of the most important factors in achieving environmental sustainability in the U.S. is to reduce immigration, finds a new report, “U.S. Immigration and the Environment,” by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).  America’s rapidly growing population is one of the biggest impediments to meeting critical environmental goals, and immigration is by far the largest factor driving U.S. population growth.

 

“It’s completely disingenuous for anyone who is truly concerned about this nation’s sustainability and carrying capacity to continue to ignore the jet engine driving U.S. population growth: immigration,” said FAIR President Dan Stein. “Immigration fueled more than half of U.S. population growth in the last 50 years, and will generate three-quarters of it in the next 50 years,” he added.

 

The U.S. has the largest ecological footprint in the world, measured by emissions of greenhouse gases and resource consumption. Adding to that footprint is the growing number of human feet, largely a result of mass immigration, which continues to undermine our efforts to minimize America’s impact on the global environment. All of the gains that have been made through conservation and improved efficiency have been wiped out by continued immigration-driven population growth. 

 

“It is simply impossible for the United States to address critical ecological challenges while increasing our population by more than 100 million people by the middle of this century,” said Stein. “A high-immigration, high-population U.S. threatens the future successes of the environmental movement, including efforts to fight global climate change and urban sprawl.”

 

The report makes five recommendations, noting that any delay reducing immigration will make it increasingly difficult to achieve a political consensus to finally bring immigration back to traditional levels.  The recommendations include:

 

• The government should adopt an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on U.S. immigration policy.  No U.S. government agency has ever produced an EIS assessing the impact of large-scale population growth.

 

• Set a national goal of population stabilization.  First recommended nearly 50 years ago and then again under President Clinton, the U.S. should adopt the goal of population stabilization.

 

• End chain migration.  Admission to the U.S. should be limited to the immediate nuclear family of immigrants, including spouse and unmarried minor children.

 

• Reduce immigration levels.  Immigration should be reduced from its current 1.25 million to roughly 300,000 per year.

 

• Adopt an immigration policy that lives within an immigration “budget.” Living within an immigration budget will inject some much-needed discipline into the system and address the continued use of “temporary” categories that remain in place long after the crisis that created the need ends.

 

“In recent years, many environmental groups that had previously taken strong, common sense positions in favor of reducing immigration have abandoned their core principles in favor of other political agendas. Given the existential challenges posed by global warming and other threats to the survival of our planet, these groups need to support commonsense population policies now,” said Stein.  “The only way to buy some time in the race the save the environment is by acting now on immigration.”

 

Read the full report here.

 

ABOUT FAIR    
Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country’s largest immigration reform group.  With over 250,000 members nationwide, FAIR fights for immigration policies that serve national interests, not special interests.  FAIR believes that immigration reform must enhance national security, improve the economy, protect jobs, preserve our environment, and establish a rule of law that is recognized and enforced.

David Suzuki says Australia and Canada are ‘full’ and calls country’s immigration policy ‘crazy’. "We plunder southern countries by depriving them of future leaders, and we want to increase our population to support economic growth. It’s crazy!” This translated excerpt situates Suzuki's remarks on numbers in context and is a response to an email recently doing the rounds. Candobetter.net Canadian writer, Tim Murray, has frequently criticised Suzuki for failing to criticise Canada's mass immigration which drives urbanisation and destroys natural habitat. Perhaps, in fact, Suzuki would not speak up like this in a Canadian interview, so savage is the Canadian mass media in its support of the commercial population growth lobby. Apparently hearing about this French interview, Canadian immigration Minister Jason Kenney attempted typical damage-control of his own party's indefensible immigration ideology, by slandering the famous environmentalist Suzuki, as “toxic and irresponsible” on Twitter. He also made remarks that indicated that he expected the mass media to similarly label anyone who disapproved of mass invited economic immigration. Which explains why Canadians fear to speak out about overpopulation. This interview, currently being cycled on email, was conducted by Jean-Michel Demetz and published on 01/07/2013. (Translation by Sheila Newman)

JEAN-MICHEL DEMETZ: In your autobiography, you evoke 'a happy childhood in a racist British-Columbia'. Seven decades later, is Canada right to call itself the most harmonious multicultural society in the world?

SUZUKI: It is a remarkable experiment. The presence of Asiatics is impressive: on the campus of the University of British Columbia one might think one was in Hong Kong! My parents' generation, although born in Canada, continued to intermarry among Japanese. Today 90% of Canadians of Japanese origin marry non-Japanese. In pushing for recognition of the diversity of the multicultural mosaic over the American-style melting pot, Trudeau helped integration.

Whatever their origins, Canadians recognise their common values: respect for differences and preference for peaceful and democratic solutions. This said, the First Nations remain the worst treated. Now the fate of these populations touches me, not only because of what they have suffered, but also becasme they have conserved an authentic relationship with nature. And that link is the greatest gift that they can bestow on us.

JEAN-MICHEL DEMETZ: In Australia environmentalists oppose population growth and immigration on the grounds that natural resources will not sustain them. What do you think of this?

SUZUKI: Oh, I believe that Canada is full too! Even though it's the second largest country in the world, our useful area is small. Our immigration policy is sickening: we pillage countries of the South and deprive them of their future leaders and we want to increase our population in order to increase growth of our economy. It's nuts.

JEAN-MICHEL DEMETZ: It's still a bit selfish to want to close the door behind yourself...

SUZUKI: That doesn't mean that we have no responsibility towards those who have difficulty surviving elsewhere. But there is no more room. All the same, Canada should alway s open its doors to those who suffer from oppression or crisis. During the 1970s, when we took in 50,000 boat people from Vietnam, I was particularly proud of being a Canadian.

People often ask me why I campaign on population and the reason that I give is that it is an issue that is often overlooked by the environment movement and by the wider world at large. I feel that by ignoring this topic, so much of the other great work done by environmentalists and campaigners is in danger of being severely compromised. Rapid population growth is a worldwide issue and it is also an issue here in Australia. One reason for this is because Australia has one of the highest migration rates in the ‘developed’ world. Due to the way our infrastructure is distributed this is a major reason why an average of 1760 people are added to the population of Melbourne every week and 1600 are added to Sydney. (More by Mark Allen at http://candobetter.net/taxonomy/term/7484)

As a town planner I cannot ignore the impact that this growth is having in terms of how we can create long-term sustainable communities. This is why I run workshops on suburban sprawl and inappropriate high density and the impact that it has on our changing climate.

With my work I am asked a lot of questions, many on a reoccurring basis, so I thought that I would give my best shot at providing written responses to a number of written questions and comments that I have received over the past twelve months.

Where better to start than the issue of reducing population growth and xenophobia?

Population is not the right factor to focus on. It's a slippery slope to xenophobia and not directly linked to sustainability. It is also very dubious on ethical grounds, no real policy levers, and divisive all around. My suggestion would be to focus on sustainability if that's your objective.

I do understand why people are put off by the topic of population because there are so many people who have hijacked the issue with xenophobic intentions. This is all the more reason why we should embrace the topic with a critical, thinking mindset so that those with narrow minded views can be quickly called out. It is reasoned and rational discussion that will prevent a descent into xenophobia, not ignoring the topic and leaving it in the hands of those who feed off irrational soundbites.

In the meantime, if we continue to ignore the issue here in Australia, we will have to accept that suburban sprawl and unsustainable rates of high density development will continue until the current system breaks. By then we will have greatly reduced our ability to adapt to a low carbon society and we will be left with an environmental and social legacy that may take generations to reverse.

Eventually migrants will want to stop coming here due to the increased commutes and expense as well as services becoming increasingly inaccessible. This is already starting to happen (see The root of Sydney and Melbourne’s housing crisis: we’re building the wrong thing – Bob Birrell The Conversation).

If we wait until migrants stop wanting to come, we will make it so much harder for those migrants who need to come. In short we have to get our planning back into the hands of people who want to build communities.

Population growth has not been sustainable since the Howard era when it was massively increased to increase GDP with deliberately little fanfare. This kind of growth fuels the worst types of development; the type that forces generations of people to live lesser lives, all to justify short term profits. We need to shift our population policy away from growth for the sake of growth model towards one that does what is the most sustainable and the most equitable from a global perspective.

This means using some of the money that would otherwise be spent in trying to reduce the massive infrastructure debt that accompanies rapid population growth to help other countries stabilise their population in a non-coercive way. This money could also be channelled into partnering with them to create permaculture based communities as a way of adapting to and helping to combat climate change.

Secondly, by slowing population growth we can better utilise land that would otherwise be developed to house a rapidly growing population to sequester carbon through regenerative farming practices.

Thirdly, most of our population growth is directed towards the fringes of our cities or in ribbon developments along the coast. As well as being some of our greatest areas of biodiversity, these areas are also have some of our most fertile soils. Therefore slowing population growth in Australia may help us to increase global food security or at the very least reduce our reliance upon importing food from areas of the world who will likely have food security issues of their own.

Lastly, slowing our current rate of population growth will allow us to engage in the slower more considered method of planning that is required to create resilient and meaningful communities that will benefit everyone including incoming refugees and other migrants.

High immigration to Australia doesn't add to net world population so it seems right that Australia should take some of the load.

When you consider that the population of the world is increasing by 80 million a year, the effectiveness of Australia in helping to more evenly distribute global population growth is negligible and it does nothing to stabilise the rate of growth in those regions that are struggling to adapt. It is a reactive approach rather than a proactive one. The fact that Australia’s population centres are situated in some of the most ecologically rich and fertile areas of the continent coupled with the fact that we have a planning system that puts profit before resilience, means that this is having a massive environmental and social impact.

Most of us agree that we need to be reducing our emissions rapidly. Therefore the last thing we need to be doing is compromising our capacity to reduce our food miles by pouring huge amounts of carbon intensive concrete over our inner suburbs and urban fringes. It makes much more sense to reallocate the money that would otherwise be required for all the additional infrastructure into helping people in their own countries adapt to the climate crisis and importantly to partner with them to reduce that crisis. Otherwise we only help a small number of people at a massive environmental and long-term social cost.

We want to be in the best position to provide sustainable resilient communities for those people who cannot stay in their own country for one reason or another. Otherwise incoming refugees will be blown like feathers in the wind into the social isolation of an ever increasing suburban sprawl.

Why not just change the planning system?

We need to work hard to change the planning system and work towards reducing GDP driven population growth. If we do one without the other we will fail because deliberate high population growth is the driver of fast paced suburban sprawl style development as well as prefab concrete apartment developments that are quick to build and quick to age. It is a never ending vicious circle. I saw this with my own eyes when I worked as a planner. Sustainable planning takes time as it is about regenerating wasteland, increasing medium density in the post-war middle suburbs and building new village communities complete with recreation, services and capacity for permaculture. This requires a slower rate of population growth for a slower more considered rate of development.

You seem to be advocating for more development in the middle suburbs. This is where much of our food security could lie and we could end up losing this if we are not careful.

Many of the houses in the middle suburbs are being demolished because they do not meet the perceived needs of 21st century living. Also, because most of them lack heritage appeal, very few people feel the inclination to retrofit them. The middle suburbs (unlike the outer suburbs) are much more connected to public transport and much of the housing stock is within walking distance of public open space. Many of these houses have large backyards. Some of these are well utilised while many are not. So the question is, should we see this 'outdated stock' as an opportunity to encourage increasing the density of these areas (as much of it is likely to be demolished over time) in order to reduce the pressure on the urban fringe? Or should we instead regard these backyards as an underutilised resource which will become all the more relevant as we move towards a low carbon, steady state economy?

Could it be that the larger backyards of the middle suburbs will one day provide the food security that other medium density settlements cannot provide? If so, how much of a willingness is there for the occupants of these areas to become urban farmers? In reality most people see their garden as something that simply needs mowing but resilience is all about the ability of communities to adapt to new social and economic circumstances. In which case those backyards could be seen with a new perspective. I really don't have any firm answers. I believe that we can potentially increase housing diversity in the middle suburbs without threatening their potential as permaculture communities but I know that with the current planning system in place, this will not happen. In reality it will be ad-hoc and many good gardens will be lost and much more besides. Increasing housing diversity in the middle suburbs does make a lot of sense but the potential of these areas to grow food and contribute to local self sustaining economies could be critical in the future. We need to tread very carefully (for more on this issue check out the co-founder of Permaculture, David Holmgren's youtube videos and forthcoming book on retrofitting the suburbs)

Are you not just some privileged white guy trying to protect his way of life?

Anyone who thinks that we should be protecting our way of life is in for a rude awakening sooner rather than later as we are currently living well beyond the planet's capacity to absorb our lifestyle. The only thing that we should be trying to protect is our potential to create sustainable resilient communities that are adaptable to energy descent and that can absorb population growth sustainably. The demographic of the inner suburbs of Melbourne has changed a lot in the past few decades as more and more Greek and Italian migrants are displaced by a white middle class demographic. The irony is that it is this very same demographic that is rejecting a suburban model of living that originated and is still championed by white culture. This will continue under the current paradigm as multicultural areas such as Footscray and Richmond become increasingly gentrified through modern apartment living, all of course under the greenwash banner of urban consolidation*. This forces more communities to be dispersed into the social isolation of the urban fringe. We need to prevent the further gentrification of our existing suburbs while ensuring that new communities are built around a village model, as this is the most socially, ecologically and economically sustainable method of creating communities.

*Urban consolidation (the act of increasing densities within the existing built form as a means of reducing urban sprawl) does not have to be greenwash if:

a) It is not perpetual and ongoing. In other words if the high density is not being constructed to house the endlessly growing population that is needed in order to prop up an over inflated housing market.
b)If a substantial proportion is affordable and within financial reach of those people who would otherwise live on the urban fringe where land is cheaper.
c) A substantial proportion of the units are large enough to be viable for families. This includes being within close proximity to services that are within walking distance, including childcare (most inner suburb areas currently have waiting lists of over a year for childcare services).
d)The apartments are resilient and will last for generations.This includes high quality finishes that will not require constant maintenance and trips to landfill.
e)Apartment developments are incorporated into the fabric of existing neighbourhoods in a way that they do not become the dominant built form and that that their presence is subtle and not detrimental to the overall streetscape. Maintaining the village like feel of our suburbs, including the green spaces within them is essential for long term social and environmental resilience.

Much of the urban consolidation currently taking place in Melbourne fails on all of these points and as result does nothing to reduce urban sprawl whist also compromising much of the existing urban landscape.

You support the Greens policy of increasing our refugee intake but in the future there could be many more refugees as climate change worsens. Where do you draw the line?

Assuming that we do not end up becoming refugees ourselves due to climate change (especially as most Australian cities lie on the coast while the interior is becoming increasingly dry) we could theoretically house an increased number of refugees without increasing sprawl or over developing our existing neighbourhoods. We won't have the economic or environmental justification to build many new towns so the focus will be on retrofitting what we already have and part of this would be retrofitting existing housing stock. In Maroondah alone, at the time of writing there are 3000 empty homes. These are artificial “housing shortages” created by speculators and developers to inflate the value of their investments. Therefore we can provide asylum for people without compromising the ability of our cities to adapt to a low carbon world but of course we have to change the paradigm.

Preserving our capacity to provide food close to and within our cities will however be critical. This is why we need to be focussed on retrofitting what we already have as opposed to creating new development on our precious soils.

New research shows that Melbourne's "food-bowl" supplies 41 per cent of all fresh fruit and vegetables to the city but that is set to plummet to just 18 per cent by 2050 thanks to urban sprawl. It is a similar situation in Sydney.

A major component of reducing our environmental footprint lies in sustainable town planning and that just cannot happen at the current rate of population growth because it is quicker and cheaper to build new estates on the fringe or the unsustainable prefab concrete apartment blocks that we are increasingly seeing in the existing suburbs.

Surely population growth is good because it stimulates change and innovation?

There are some areas of Melbourne that in combination with sound planning and urban design principles could be enriched by a modest increase in population. This however is an issue of poorly distributed growth as opposed to it being an issue of there not being enough growth. Many areas within the wider Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane conurbations are growing much too fast while there are some areas that could benefit from the modest amount of growth that is needed to generate commercial activity (helping to decentralise jobs) while making public transport more economically viable. Therefore we need a slower rate of growth coupled with an improvement on the way that growth is distributed.

We have an ageing population so we must increase our population to compensate.

The drain that older people have on services is over emphasised. Many older people contribute to society well past retirement and if we need to create more jobs to support them, then no problem. It might mean fewer jobs running and maintaining poker machines, a few less real estate agents perhaps, a few less loggers and a few less property developers. And how would we pay for it? The last time I looked there was 452 billion dollars from big corporations and millionaires in Australia that are not being taxed (source: Getup). It is also worth considering that:

1)The average age of a person migrating to Australia is 30. That means they are 30 years older than a newborn baby, which has the affect that in 30 years time the ageing population problem will be even worse than it is now.

2)It is worker-to-dependency ratio that matters, not youth-to-elderly. Australia's un/underemployment is probably over three million people.

3)Demographer Dr Jane O'Sullivan has estimated that it may be costing thirty times more in growing our population to offset ageing than our ageing population is costing.

Migration policy is not the only way of achieving a sustainable population.

Very true. For the answer to this question I will quote Michael Bayliss who is the president of the Victorian/Tasmanian branch of Sustainable Population Australia.

“I envision a future where families with no children are respected as being the societal norm just as much as families with children, and where adoption is seen as a viable and accessible alternative to couples of all sexual and gender identities. The key as always, is through education, empowerment, and allowing people to make their own choices. High schools for example should educate young people into the pros and cons of having children, and with due consideration given to the environmental impacts of having children. I do not advocate fiscal policies that reward large family size, instead this money should be spent on children’s services, such as schools and medical subsidies.”

The questions and answers written above form part of a booklet that is available in electronic format by emailing [email protected]. It is also available as a hard copy from the New International Bookshop in Carlton, Melbourne.
Feel free to contact me at that same email address with your feedback.

Mark Allen is an ex-town planner and environmental activist with a particular interest in population. He runs workshops on Population, Permaculture and Planning across Australia and runs a Facebook group of the same name.

Saturday April 23 rd at 1.00pm to 4.00 pm. Venue: Hawthorn Arts Centre, 360 Burwood Rd. Hawthorn Vic 3122. Members and non-members are welcome to attend. Speakers are: Mark Allen, Founder, Population, Permaculture and Planning; Dr Katharine Betts, Population Sociologist, Swinburne University; Hon Kelvin Thomson MP, Environmentalist and high profile sustainable population advocate; Rod Quantock, Environmental activist, Much loved comedian. M.C. SPAVicTas President Michael Bayliss. Audience Q&A and discussion will follow (Free parking behind venue or at nearby Glenferrie Station).

All Welcome

All welcome to come and join in this free public afternoon seminar and discussion!

Speakers

Mark Allen, Founder, Population, Permaculture and Planning
Dr Katharine Betts, Population Sociologist, Swinburne University
Hon Kelvin Thomson MP, Environmentalist and high profile sustainable population advocate
Rod Quantock, Environmental activist, Much loved comedian
M.C. SPAVicTas President Michael Bayliss.

Audience Q&A and discussion will follow

Attitudes and communication in population and the environment
Venue: Hawthorn Arts Centre, 360 Burwood Rd. Hawthorn Vic 3122
Members and non-members are welcome to attend (free parking behind venue or at nearby Glenferrie Station)
www.population.org.au

Further details: Jill Quirk jillq[AT]optusnet.com.au 0409742927

Population is a big issue happening in the world today, with our numbers having increased massively from around 1 billion in 1850 to what now looks like 11 billion at the end of the century. Right now, the numbers of the world’s poor increase by 80 million each year and the number of unwanted pregnancies are 210 million per annum. Considering that human population predicts 88% of impact to other animal and plant species (according to the International Union for the Conversation of Nature) human population remains a huge, yet very controversial concern. (This article was written by Michael Bayliss as part of an information booklet with Mark Allen (founder, Population Permaculture and Planning) entitled: 'Why We Need To Talk About Population.' This booklet is designed to engage with a younger, left leaning generation including environmentalists and activists. It will be available at the Sustainable Living Festival Big Weekend at Federation where Mark Allen will also present on town planning and population issues. To find out more, click here.

Australia's population numbers

It almost seems absurd to extend these world population concerns to Australia. Australia's a population of just under 24 million (at time of writing) and a density of around 3 people per square kilometre seems minuscule when compared to the demographics of other (mostly densely overpopulated) countries. Surely with miles and miles of free uncharted space, Australia could take its fair share of the world’s load? Isn’t Australia one of the highest per capita fossil fuel guzzling and carbon emitting countries in a society awash with consumerism and materialism? Couldn’t we all consume less, replace those coal industries with renewables, and open up our borders to take in our fair share?

Ecological and logistical considerations

The problem is that when you look at our continent more closely, our vast land of plenty starts to look a bit wanting. Only around 6% of our soil is arable by world standards, with 80% of the land-mass arid or semi-arid. This means that we have an incredibly fragile ecosystem with a very low carrying capacity that has struggled with white occupation for the last 200 years and it is about to get another wallop through climate change. There is every good reason why the south-east coast of Australia is populated and the central and north-west are nearly vacant, and that having large numbers of people live in the interior of Australia makes almost as much sense as populating the Sahara.

Academy of Science opinion on our population

The Australian Academy Of Science has suggested that our capacity to sustain ourselves will be maximised by not exceeding 23 million (whoops, we’ve just done that!) with Jared Diamond and Tim Flannery, painting a bleaker picture - that Australia can only support around 8 million people in the long term for our society’s current level of per capita footprint. This means that to be sustainable, we need to find ways of reducing our per capita and overall consumption by 1/3 at our current population to be sustainable, according to these predictions. However, our population is also growing at a rate of an Adelaide every 3 years, and at this rate our population will double in 35 years time. This will mean reducing our per capita output by 1/6 of current levels in a very short amount of time. What happens after then?...

Breaking taboos

The topic of population has become a taboo in Australia over the past 20 years, partly due to the ongoing perception of us living on an empty continent, and partly due to the mass media promoting the social-demographic arguments of Pauline Hanson, One Nation and others to drown out rational ecologically-based discussion. While there are educated people with no xenophobic agenda currently championing for a sustainable population such as Kelvin Thomson and Dick Smith, there is still confusion in many people's minds between population numbers concerns and racial prejudice. When I ask my friends in the environment movement why they don’t think more about population, the typical reply is: ‘Every time we discuss it, it always ends up with a white guy in his 60s ranting about immigrants.’

Rational discussion

I would like a rational discussion about population to return to the conversations of progressive and socially minded people. Population numbers are intrinsically linked to our economy, and manipulated by our government to fast-track GDP growth (as I shall explain soon) so it is really difficult to talk about the end of neo-liberal capitalism without talking about population numbers at some point. It is hard to talk about cooperative self-resilient communities and eco-villages as the way of the future whilst our town planning system is trying to keep up with an Adelaide’s worth of growth in our major cities every few years. It is hard to share our environment with our native plants and animals for much longer if an end point to our population growth is never debated and if our only option to reduce our per capita footprint infinitely lower is unrealistic. Finally, higher population growth does not automatically mean greater diversity and better outcomes for refugees and asylum seekers. Under our currently societal structure, it can even be the other way around!

Three models and three ideologies

Below are three models of possible population growth in Australia, representing three ideologies, where I want to table the pros and cons with each model. The first is the ‘business as usual’ approach of our current system. The second is an open borders policy, and the third is a sustainable population model.

Model 1: Business as usual:

Business as usual with ~1.5% growth per annum, majority of growth policy regulated to raise GDP, and with a current tax system that allows people to pay less tax from owning property (negative gearing).

As can be seen from the chart, our current model of population growth is beneficial for government to raise money through more people paying tax. It is also very beneficial for employers, as it allows an environment for more applicants for jobs, placing downward pressure on wages and conditions. It is most certainly of benefit for those in the property and construction industries, especially for those who invest in property, where a growing customer base ever drives up the demand for the price of properties in established suburbs (for now).

Unfortunately, things become pretty much worse for everyone else. Whilst it is easy enough to deduce the negative effect of this kind of population growth policy has on young job seekers (for example) and in raising general costs of living, it may be surprising to note that refugees, both past and present, are adversely affected by this type of population growth. For example, past generations of migrant market gardeners have been priced out of their area as the urban boundaries of Melbourne and Sydney expand. Likewise, refugee immigrants are being pushed out due to the increased gentrification that comes with high density living in inner city Melbourne suburbs such as Footscray, Carlton, and Richmond that have traditionally been very viable hubs of strong migrant communities. In recent years, new arrivals through the humanitarian program have tended to settle in areas around Broadmeadows, Deer Park, Heidelberg Heights and Dandenong. A far cry from (say) Victoria Street in Richmond, current generations of refugees face social isolation and difficulties in accessing essential services, which makes establishing community or assimilation more difficult. The Multicultural Development Association has reported that refugees in current times are lacking access to essential information, such as what the swimming flags mean on Australian beaches! The fact that Broadmeadows has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country is telling.

Most people are surprised to find out that our humanitarian intake has gone DOWN since the Howard Era, as proportion of our intake, from 25% prior to 1996 down to current levels of around 5-10%. As Howard himself said on 2014 on live radio:

“One of the reasons why it’s so important to maintain that policy is that the more people think our borders are being controlled the more supportive they are in the long term of high levels of immigration. Australia needs a high level of immigration. I’m a high immigration man. I practiced that in government. And one of the ways that you maintain public support for that is to communicate to the Australian people a capacity to control our borders and to decide who and what people and when come to this country.”

In other words, the asylum seeker fiasco during the Howard Government era, Tampa crisis et al, was politically engineered so that people would be complacent to another kind of population growth that the government (and big business) prefers!

Imagine if we traveled to another planet and witnessed and alien society where the government, swayed by big business, had an immigration policy that was based almost entirely on making money for small sectors of society. Imagine this was at the expense of refugees, or people in desperate need from other countries. Imagine the government engineered a border crisis so that refugees were seen as a huge problem so that, once a tough stand seen to be taken towards them, the government used that ruse to bring in population growth policies from other avenues. Imagine, in this society, the the former leader could basically state this word for word and pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. Imagine, in the society where the left were disinclined to call the government out on these policies, for fear of sounding anti-refugee and xenophobic, even when the population policies themselves are discriminatory towards asylum seekers. Imagine if keeping silent perpetuated this growth as a component of the neo-liberalist growth-at-all-costs agenda and if keeping silent on this was a liability on environmental objectives. From an outsider point of view, I’m sure the whole situation would seem more than a little illogical and farcical.

Population has been a very prickly issue for us on the left, particularly in recent decades, with the shadow of Pauline Hanson and One Nation/Reclaim Australia, and particularly when population growth is generally equated in our minds to refugees and open borders policies. However, if we choose to not debate population at all, then our current social and politically engineered population growth policy will continue, the same one that unfairly disfavours refugees and asylum seekers in favour of migration programs that generate short term increases in GDP. This is, to my mind, a very cynical neo-liberalist ideology. We, on the left, have the obligation at the very least to be educated on population policy as it currently stands, and at very least, lobby for a change in policy in favour of the humanitarian program again, even for those of us who are pro-growth. There is also a strong argument that it is very important to support the anti-war movement to prevent the formation of refugees in the first place and that refugee crises are generated by arms manufacture, neo-colonialism and global conflict.

Even if one were recipient to the short-term benefits of this kind of population growth, it must be recognised that the positives are just that - short lived. Eventually, property becomes so expensive that it is not worth investing in anymore. This is called a housing bubble, and has happened to Japan in the late 80s early 90s and currently China and the USA. Coupled with an infrastructure deficit and environmental overshoot, this can only affect everyone in the long term.

So if the current model sounds unfair to most, one might consider a more egalitarian open borders approach. Let’s explore that below, with its associated pros and cons.

Model 2: Open Borders policy:

Open borders policy, no cap on humanitarian intake, no policy to mitigate natural birth rate or GDP fuelled migration (This is in spirit the policy of the Greens Party). This model assumes growth of 600 000 per annum (250 000 humanitarian, 250 000 GDP, 100 000 natural growth).

This model is conducive to the ideal for many who identify with the social left, as an open border policy provides an unbiased avenue of entry into Australia regardless of race, religion, socio-economic status etc. An opens border policy means that industralised countries such as Australia can play a more definite role in accommodating displaced people from abroad and the idea that everyone is free to move wherever they wish to worldwide. The idea of border restriction or control can be uncomfortable for many as this implies an exclusion from those living in the majority world from the relatively privileged position of Australia. From the political field, many Labor-Left and Greens politicians support this ideology, with perhaps Sarah Hanson-Young of The Greens being the most vocal and well-known advocate of this position.

However, in trying to write the above table objectively, I tried to come up with tangible Pros that were practical rather than ideological. This proved to be more difficult than I was anticipating, and had to put in a few question marks in the pros column as the practical benefits are either tenuous or are a double edged sword with associated cons.

Speaking of the Greens, I’ve observed that many Greens policies cry out for more and more infrastructure (trains, trams, social services, public housing etc). At the same time they generally do not support environmentally destructive mining practices, not least unconventional mining such as fracking. But then, where will all our infrastructure come from? Trains lines, schools, public housing, plumbing - these all require raw materials that need to be dug up from the ground, and processed into tram lines by use of fossil fuels. There really is no way around this unless we learn a way of making train lines out of renewable resources, which isn’t likely. So much of Australia’s per capita consumption is embedded within the town planning system - suburbia and high density apartment living are both inherently resource hungry. Separation of homes and workplaces, and our physical and economic separation from our food sources result in a reliance of our earth’s resources that no amount of wilful reduction of our per capita consumption will mitigate, unless our town planning system changes substantially. If it doesn’t, there is no way we can really put much of a brake on our dependency on resources, and with model 2’s annual growth rate at 600 000 per annum, this could only escalate within our current town planning system. Instead of being able to plan to change the town planning system to accommodate more people in a sustainable way, any government would probably be doomed to play an endless cycle of infrastructure catch up under our current system - at the environment’s expense, even more-so than under our currently system.

I doubt an open borders policy would be practical for any government in the long term. Without an opportunity to transition large scale to a better town planning system, the housing, services and infrastructure costs would be huge. This means either a steep decline in quality of life for residents, or huge taxes or government debt (most likely a combination of all the above). Voters tend to not like those things. Voters on the left would also feel alienated and lied to by a government that would be forced to continue to mine for resources to build the infrastructure with, even if the economy was completely powered by renewable energy. Finally, the huge population growth would have a massive and unavoidable impact to the environment, particularly habitats and water supplies near to the large urban conurbation, even if our per capita footprint were to go down. Any government being elected on an environmental platform would soon let down many of their voters. This is probably a realistic prediction of the Greens if they won government on an open borders platform - they’d soon be shot down. This is also a conundrum that I’m sure many of the left deep down struggle with. That environmental, as well as anti-capitalist objectives, are at odds, at some point, with a human population growth that is not sustainable. Government would survive better, in the long term, if there was some compromise and balance between open borders ideology and the realities of environmental objectives.

Open borders policy only works in the long term if we can work with the world to address the root causes of conflict and displacement that generate high numbers of refugees and asylum seekers. Without this, an open borders policy is great at helping individuals in immediate need for asylum, but can only serve to diffuse the larger problem into the long term. One example is the island of Tuvalu, which made a strong case for evacuating many of its people to Australia and New Zealand in 2003, due to land loss as sea levels rose. New Zealand now has a relocation policy which is very reasonable in those circumstances, however their population is expected to more than double from 12 000 to 28 000 in by 2050. This will mean an endless cycle of relocating people, unless there is a way for Tuvalu to be sustainable in its population growth. Fortunately, according to the UN, non-coercive population sustainability strategies work if women are empowered and educated, and when there is access to family planning and contraceptive strategies (often at odds with the predominating patriarchal religions in host countries). No need for one-child policies or for coercion by the west to the majority world! Mostly grass-roots foreign aid and proactive international cooperation is key.

One final concern with an open borders policy is consideration of the original custodians of our land. My instinct is that any policy to promote population growth without consultation of aboriginal people can be easily argued as more unsolicited colonization of Australia. This belief was certainly shared by some my Noongar identifying friends and community back when I lived in WA, many of whom would be very welcoming to a generous refugee intake, if only their people were consulted on policy. If aboriginal perspective on population issues is hard to find, I imagine this can be attributable to the many other uphill battles that their communities are fighting daily, and poor representation of both aboriginal perspective and the population issue in Australian society. For those willing to search however, there are references in the literature, perhaps most poignantly expressed in the Deaths In Custody Watch Report (1994):

‘Since 1788 the non-Aboriginal powers within our lands have taken upon themselves to increase the population by many millions, meanwhile our population became near to extinction...Australia’s population is bearable at this point in time but further ecocide of this country will leave nothing for no one...Ecologically our land is on its knees: with help it can survive and resuscitate itself, but with any major increase in population this land will die, and we will die with it.’

Model 3: Sustainable Population policy:

A medium term sustainable population numbers policy that promotes (1) fiscal policies that do not encourage large family sizes and (2) promotes policies where immigration = emigration (e.g. Between 70 - 80 thousand per annum), with priority given to the humanitarian program (intake of at least 20 000 per annum, with flexibility in times of crisis). An emphasis on foreign aid funding would go to empowering women to make their own life choices, including career decisions, earning capacity and family size.

No model is perfect, and although it is probably self-evident that I advocate for this third model, it would not be objective of me if I did not acknowledge the cons associated with the model. However I would like to highlight that most of the negatives are either risks arising from poor management of the model, or from short term changes as our society goes through adjustments. On balance, this model of population sustainability strikes me as one that allows for the best balance of long term economic objectiveness, environmental and pollution goals, town planning goals, whilst allowing for a defined but generous humanitarian intake. Keep in mind that refugees and asylum seekers would be better off adjusting to a country that had the capacity to provide them with the services that they required to participate fully in their new home. They would not need so much the additional burdens of suburban sprawl, un-affordable housing, and an unforgiving job market that many refugees, along with other disadvantaged groups, face in today’s growth-at-all-cost system. That’s not to say that these problems will disappear, but they will be less and so much easier to address and manage. Currently, many migrants who come to Australia in recent times report feeling very socially isolated in the outer suburbs and miss the greater sense of community that they had back home.

Not that immigration is the only way to a sustainable population - far from it. I envision a future where families with no children are seen as societal norms just as much as families with children, and where adoption is seen as a viable and accessible alternative to couple of all sexual and gender identities. The key, as always is through education, empowerment, and allowing people to make their own choices. High schools, for example, should educate young people into the pros and cons of having children, and with consideration of the environmental impacts of having children, and the implications for future generations with worsening environmental conditions. I do not advocate fiscal policies that reward large family size, instead this money should be spent on children’s services, such as schools and and medical subsidies.

With a sustainable population, more money and energy could go into grass-roots foreign aid instead of more and more infrastructure and more investment could go into transitioning our society and economy into one that less focused on growth and more focused on social and environmental resilience. If our town planning system were to reflect the ideals of eco-villages, intentional communities, and permaculture principles, we would be in a better position to accommodate our current population longer term. We may also be in a better position to assist people in need of asylum or refuge into the future.

Final Words:

I hope this article has helped to disentangle some of the confusion and assumptions that have been barriers for further discussion on population issues for Australia and abroad. Although my own views are currently for population sustainability at this stage, I acknowledge that there will be many differing views and ideas on this topic and I hope my ideas may help to stimulate further thoughtful discussion and debate. I have not yet heard a successful argument for long term high rates of population growth that can also account for positive outcomes for our cities, towns, environment and asylum seekers, however that does not mean that one doesn’t exist! Please let me know if you have any ideas =).