Populate and Perish: 2008
January
19/1: Enough already
This blog is for occasional rants about one of my major social concerns: overpopulation. Reducing the number of humans would alleviate a lot of the social and environmental problems that beset humanity. I actually began this in 2009, but have backposted entries from my static website blog for 2008.
Some rants about articles that promote overpopulation and overdevelopment – two of my main concerns:
“Children the wellspring of hope that nourishes a country,” Sydney Morning Herald, 19/1. The sort of article that makes me gag … The author waffling on about how children “enrich” society, how we’ll run out of future workers because there are no kids to replace them (I guess he is unaware of automation), how the oldies will have to be euthanized because there is no one to look after them … the usual alarmist nonsense. It might be notable that the author is a Catholic and has inflicted 9 children on his wife.
“Housing drought hits Victoria,” Herald-Sun, 19/1. The growing population is causing a housing shortage and various groups want more land to be released. I guess they won’t be satisfied until the whole state is smothered in urban development? “Opposition planning spokesman Matthew Guy said people would be discouraged from moving to Victoria. ‘If we can’t house people, they won’t come here,’ he said.” Well, good – please do everything possible to discourage more people from coming here! A growing population is not a good thing as it leads to pressure on resources and social dysfunction from overcrowding.
Coping with this change will doubtless create challenges, but there will also be benefits. Whereas in a developing nation with high birth rates as many as half its citizens may be under the age of 15, in industrialised societies there are typically fewer than 20 per cent. Commentators raising alarms about aging populations neglect to mention that with fewer children, far less of their society’s resources will be needed to support and educate them. In addition, fewer young people means lower crime rates, because crimes – including terrorist acts – are overwhelmingly committed by people aged between 15 and 30. In the US, crime rates fell markedly from about 1990 on – 18 years after a big drop in the birth rate. We don’t think this is a coincidence.
Other advantages of a non-growing population include less pressure to expand national infrastructure – roads, buildings, housing, schools, hospitals and the like – or to keep creating more jobs.
– “Enough already”
I agree with this letter written to The Age last year:
Personally, I preferred Australia with a small population, plenty of water to go around, no economic growth, and high interest rates.
– Madeleine Love, Benalla, 5/2/2007
February
1/2: Being a backwater
I have come to intensely dislike Victorian Premier John Brumby – he is as bad in his own way as the former Premier Jeff Kennett. He is obsessed with economic and population growth, no matter how unliveable this will make the state become in the future. It is already becoming unbearable. His latest gaffe is to say Melbourne will become a “backwater” like Adelaide (the South Australian capital has a smaller population) if the channel deepening project doesn’t go ahead (a project that many see as unnecessary and devastating to the marine environment here, myself included). Well, if it meant a smaller population I would be happy for Melbourne to be a backwater. Even moving to Adelaide looks appealing (Melbourne’s population boom is making life here increasingly stressful), though they were having water shortages last summer and the weather also gets over 40°C in summer.
7/2: World without us
There was a book released called The World Without Us, about how the Earth would adapt if humans were to vanish overnight. (A review in The Age.) A chapter excerpt shows the alarming impact that the huge amount of plastics humans manufacture have upon the environment. A bit of trivia I came across is that a plastic container might not decompose for as long as 50,000 years! Imagine the millions of tonnes of plastic items that end up in the world’s landfills and oceans, and the long-term implications are alarming, as the book extract points out.
What did this mean for the ocean, the ecosystem, the future? All this plastic had appeared in barely more than 50 years. Would its chemical constituents or additives – for instance, colorants such as metallic copper – concentrate as they ascended the food chain, and alter evolution? Would it last long enough to enter the fossil record? Would geologists millions of years hence find Barbie doll parts embedded in conglomerates formed in seabed depositions? Would they be intact enough to be pieced together like dinosaur bones? Or would they decompose first, expelling hydrocarbons that would seep out of a vast plastic Neptune’s graveyard for eons to come, leaving fossilized imprints of Barbie and Ken hardened in stone for eons beyond? […]
“Plastic is still plastic. The material still remains a polymer. Polyethylene is not biodegraded in any practical time scale. There is no mechanism in the marine environment to biodegrade that long a molecule.” Even if photodegradable nets helped marine mammals live, he concluded, their powdery residue remains in the sea, where the filter feeders will find it.
“Except for a small amount that’s been incinerated,” says Tony Andrady the oracle, “every bit of plastic manufactured in the world for the last 50 years or so still remains. It’s somewhere in the environment.”
That half-century’s total production now surpasses 1 billion tons. It includes hundreds of different plastics, with untold permutations involving added plasticizers, opacifiers, colors, fillers, strengtheners, and light stabilizers. The longevity of each can vary enormously. Thus far, none has disappeared. Researchers have attempted to find out how long it will take polyethylene to biodegrade by incubating a sample in a live bacteria culture. A year later, less than 1 percent was gone.
“The Fate of the Ocean,” Mother Jones, March 2006. This was linked from a Wikipedia page about the ocean; it’s an alarming read about how human activity is damaging the world’s oceans on which all life depends, and the damage might be irreversible. Reading all this makes me fervently wish that someone would genetically-engineer a virus to sterilize most of humanity.
12/2: Suburban destruction
I was walking to the local library and stopped to take some photos of a group of 3 houses that will be demolished to make way for a group of 15 expensive 2-storey townhouses. An older woman walking past with her dog asked me what I was doing and I said I was taking photos before the houses disappeared. We then got into a conversation (well, she did most of the talking!) about the development which the local residents had strongly objected to as it would erode the amenity of the street and cause horrendous traffic problems. There is a tall oak tree that will inevitably be felled, and all the vegetation will be cleared too.
The local council made an amendment to put the properties “within the Bentleigh Urban Village area, namely within a new ‘Higher-Density Residential’ Precinct, east of Arthur Street which essentially encourages higher-density residential development.” The residents’ objections were overridden by the ogres at VCAT. So there is someone else who feels the same way I do about all the overdevelopment in my suburb. As she remarked, the suburb will become a slum in the future with all this overcrowding.
The root cause of all this is population growth, but State and Federal governments are obsessed with promoting this because it’s “good for the economy,” never mind the impact it has on living conditions.
16/2: Miscellany
Some collected letters and quotes. A letter from the local newspaper regarding overdevelopment:
Lethal mix
Regarding “Our green-wedge blues” (the Leader, January 30), I think that for an estate agent and an Opposition spokesperson who do not live in this area to criticise the decision of State Government who has some foresight to leave some breathing space for our city is a negative approach to our quality of living.
I enjoy our low-density living, I enjoy our open spaces – something that in the future we will be most thankful for. Remember the schools that Mr. Kennett sold? The developers worked every square centimetre with narrow roads, large houses on very small blocks, no open space and perhaps the slums of the future.
Put an estate agent with a developer and we have the lethal mix of medium and high density living in an instant. And will it make housing cheaper? How can it? All we will get is more of the expensive housing we have now, without our open space – our breathing space.
Thank you Mr. Estate Agent and Mr. Opposition Planning Spokesman. We can do without the unbroken suburb-to-suburb housing sprawl. Let some of us have a quality lifestyle please and not feel crowded out.
– John Spragg, Dingley Village
Overpopulation: some comments that infuriated me (bolded), from an article in the Good Weekend magazine, an interview with some woman radio personality, Shannon Lush:
We retire to an outdoor table where she can smoke, and the conversation turns to the low national birth rate – another subject on which she has strong opinions. “This business with people not having kids – I’m sorry, I don’t understand it,” she says. “People are supposed to have children. It’s a biological directive.”
I make the point that being childless is not always a calculated decision. Sometimes the circumstances just aren’t right.
“I think it’s laziness, really,” says Lush, who has a daughter from each of her two marriages. “Laziness and greed.” Too many individuals simply have the wrong priorities: “‘I want money before I have children. I want this and I want that before I have children.’” She laughs. “What a lot of codswallop.”
She seems to be an Australian equivalent to Martha Stewart, though it’s the first I’ve heard of her! I wouldn’t be buying any of her products out of sheer disgust at those remarks. (Posted to Childfree Hardcore.)
A letter in today’s The Age about a little-publicized problem in East Timor: the lack of women’s rights, including access to abortion and contraception, as it is a predominantly Roman Catholic country.
Aid, not grenades
Instead of sending soldiers to East Timor we should give money for social welfare. East Timor is the poorest country in the world, and many of its people can barely feed themselves. The country’s biggest problem is its high rate of population growth.
At eight births per woman, East Timor has the highest birth rate in the world, and 42% of the population is under 15 years of age. With such statistics, and when everyday life is a struggle, civil conflict is likely to continue. The best way the Australian Government can help the people of East Timor is to provide family planning aid.
– Anna Payne, Boronia
19/2: Skewed priorities
From yesterday’s Herald-Sun: just what Australia doesn’t need – more people!
Skilled migration scheme expands
February 18, 2008 12:00 a.m.
The Federal Government is to expand the skilled migration program.
Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Chris Evans said the government aimed to increase the program by 6000 places in 2007-08, bringing the total number of visas to 108,500.
“Employer-sponsored visas are the highest priority because they put a migrant worker directly into a skilled job,” Senator Evans said.
The minister yesterday unveiled a package of measures designed to address the nation’s skills and labour shortages.
The government will also work to expand the working holiday visa program for young people.
Senator Evans said the package had the potential to provide thousands of additional workers in the short term and would help address inflationary pressures.
This while every month, it seems, some company closes down leaving hundreds of workers unemployed (recent examples being a steel mill and a car manufacturer).
23/2: The last taboo
A letter on overpopulation from today’s The Age – somewhat unusually it got highlighted!
Time to tackle a troubling taboo: population control
Now that the severity, urgency and gravity of the climate change situation has been revealed by Professor Garnaut, and the consequential extreme cuts required, it surely makes no sense in politicians encouraging Australian population growth to upwards of 50 million by 2050. More importantly, a world population of 9.5 billion by the same time is flirting with calamity.
Even if climate change were contained to a global temperature rise of two degrees by 2050, it isn’t going to restore rainfall patterns as they were. It isn’t going to address excessive land clearing. It isn’t going to address over-utilisation of replenishable resources. Climate change discussions have no scope to address or take into account sustainability, and while civilisation is predicated on more and more consumption based on an ever larger population, then the future is pretty bleak.
Climate change is the tip of the iceberg, as replenishable resources, food, housing and energy become less able to service an ever increasing global population. Our political leaders must wake up to themselves and stop treating population control and reduction as a taboo as time is running out. We have one earth and all innocent bystanders will pay the price of the greedy minority.
– Tony Smith, Burwood
March
1/3: Hate the HIA
“State urged to release land to ease crisis,” The Age, 1/3. The Housing Industry Association is urging the Victorian Government to release more land for housing – not surprising as the greedy bastards stand to make money out of constructing more and more houses. I guess they won’t be content until Victoria is smothered in housing estates? Missing in all the agonizing over rising house prices is that a major cause of this is the growing population – something which the Government is deliberately encouraging and which is eroding the livability of Melbourne. (Posted this at the Public Population Forum.)
I also sent off a slightly more civil version (removed the “greedy bastards” phrase) to The Age letters – I don’t know if it will get published; it is my first attempt at writing a letter there. The topic is of great concern to me though, and I have to vent somewhere.
A house 2 doors down from us was auctioned today; I am dreading its fate (i.e. likely demolition and replacing with ugly townhouses). I am so sick of this constant overdevelopment and degradation of a once-pleasant suburb.
2/3: A plague of Poms
My letter got published in The Age! :-) (See 1/3/2008 entry.) I’ll buy a copy and keep the page. The letter was retitled but otherwise wasn’t edited (I kept it short and to the point).
“23,000 Brits head to Australia,” Herald-Sun 3/3. Article on the high rate of British immigration to Australia. I found this comment by one new arrival significant:
“Britain is a difficult place to live in at the moment – it’s overcrowded, congested, difficult to get around,” he said. “The economy is not doing that brilliantly, there’s a lot of red tape. What we’ve got down here is space, it’s a great country to explore.”
If our high rates of immigration continue, Australia will end up in the same situation as Britain! Much of Australia is infertile desert and thus uninhabitable (not to mention the ongoing drought), so we can’t support a large population – something politicians don’t seem to understand (or want to). (Posted at Public Population Forum.)
4/3: Build it and they will come
Another overpopulation rant coming as I wake up to the news today: “90,000 new housing blocks for Victoria” (The Age) and “Brumby fast-tracks land for housing” (Herald-Sun). The State Government’s so-called solution to the housing crisis is to build more houses – and thus encroach on yet more valuable open land and wilderness. And if that’s not bad enough, the PM is considering importing foreign workers to build these houses!
The blindingly obvious solution of restricting population growth so that demand for housing is reduced seems not to occur to PM John Brumby (whom I am coming to detest as much as I did Jeff Kennett - both are obsessed with “growth” no matter what the environmental cost). In the same edition is another article saying that water restrictions will stay because of the ongoing drought. Something of a contradiction here! I am so disgusted and furious at seeing what made Melbourne a liveable city – its open spaces and low urban density – destroyed.
“An inconvenient truth about rising immigration,” Sydney Morning Herald, 3/3. Those who criticise high immigration rates risk being accused of “racism” (see “Conspiracy of silence and exclusion: the Shunning of Immigration Critics by the BBC, ABC and CBC”), but such criticism has nothing to do with that issue; just the simple fact that you can’t keep importing huge numbers of people without putting a tremendous strain on resources, and creating stress from overcrowding.
The wonder of it is that, despite the deterioration in affordability, house prices are continuing to rise strongly almost everywhere except Sydney’s western suburbs. Why is this happening? Probably because immigrants are adding to the demand for housing, particularly in the capital cities, where they tend to end up. They need somewhere to live and, whether they buy or rent, they’re helping to tighten demand relative to supply. It’s likely that the greater emphasis on skilled immigrants means more of them are capable of outbidding younger locals. In other words, winding back the immigration program would be an easy way to reduce the upward pressure on house prices.
Finally, there’s the effect on climate change. Emissions of greenhouse gases are caused by economic activity, but the bigger your population, the more activity. So the faster your population is growing the faster your emissions grow.
6/3: Strangled city
“Population boom to choke city, says Monash experts,” The Age, 6/3. PM John Brumby’s plans for Melbourne’s expansion get well-deserved criticism from university experts – but the focus is still on coping with population growth rather than restricting it in the first place.
My second letter to a newspaper this week got published! In today’s Herald-Sun (they don’t have an online letters page, unfortunately). The letter was titled by the editor:
Reduce the population
Reducing population growth and thus the demand for housing is an obvious solution that politicians such as Mr. Brumby seem reluctant to acknowledge.
They are obsessed with “growth,” no matter what the environmental cost.
I am dismayed at seeing what has made Melbourne a liveable city – its open spaces and low urban density – relentlessly destroyed.
15/3: Baby extravagance
“‘Stop paying the well-off to breed’,” Herald-Sun, 14/3. The Government is to keep paying the baby bonus, unfortunately. I sent a letter to the Herald-Sun; don’t know if it will be published Update 21/3/2008: it wasn’t:
The Government’s hypocrisy in continuing the extravagant baby bonus (“Stop paying the well-off to breed,” 14/3) in the same week it considered cutting bonus payments to vulnerable carers and pensioners is dismaying. In an already-overpopulated world, paying people to reproduce is irresponsible and the scheme should be scrapped.
17/3: Future slums
“The Next Slum?,” The Atlantic.com, March 2008. How the suburbs of “McMansions” are gradually decaying into slums. This is in the USA, but this fate has also been predicted for the similar housing estates being build around Melbourne (“New housing ‘failing future generations’,” The Age, 21/10/2006). I would love to see these blights on the landscape razed and returned to bushland.
21/3: None so blind as those who will not see
The Australian Government is obsessed with increasing immigration (“Migration plan to ease skills crisis,” The Age, 20/3; “Record migration but more needed,” 21/3). I have doubts about the so-called “skills shortage” that is given as a reason for this; it seems more that employers want cheap labor:
The 457 visas have been controversial, with Labor claiming in opposition that unscrupulous employers were using foreign workers to undercut local wages. Unions also claim that temporary skilled migration is a form of indentured servitude, which is used to keep a lid on wages. […]
Meanwhile, Australia’s population is growing at its fastest rate in almost 20 years, with imports of skilled workers lifting net migration to a record 179,122 people in the year to September, and population growing by 318,500 to 21,097,148. But the arrival of new workers has exacerbated the housing shortage.
So, reduce population growth – restrict immigration – and the housing shortage won’t be so acute! The obvious solution that governments don’t want to see. I am so sick of this idiocy; increasing overpopulation is eroding the livability of this city.
South Australia’s Premier has pledged that “the state will not run out of water” despite its ongoing drought and allocation from the Murray River at a mere 10%. So where is this extra water going to magically come from? There are plans for a desalination plant (as there is in Melbourne), but it is years away, and won’t address the problem of living sustainably. The self-delusion of politicians is dismaying.
23/3: Cancerous cities
“The naked truth about a world class city: Letter to a friend.”” This is from an anti-overpopulation/growth site and is a letter from a former Vancouver (Canada) resident about how his city is being ruined by growth and development. I found these observations meaningful:
The other incident took place the very first time I came into Vancouver. I hit a wall of freeway traffic, arrived at the clinic, sat down. Then along comes this woman in her late twenties. She’s wearing high-heels and those sickly long painted finger-nails. Yep. This must be Vancouver alright. These women by their dress and their cosmetics betray the fact that they are totally cut off from nature. Quadra women garden, hike, kayak and chop wood. Their clothes are functional and they have little time for fashion statements. Vancouver is a space ship. A bubble with its own environment. And the woman who sat across from me at the clinic is typical of the millions who are feeding the consumer economy with their addictive shopaholicism.
My sad impression of this growing cancerous necropolis is that it will not be stopped until its host – the environment – dies. The people who live there are sleep-deprived, workaholic, zombies fueled on a caffeine-overdose fully committed to their artificial lifestyle because they can’t foresee its provisional nature or imagine alternatives. We can lobby, we can educate, we can polemicize – but the great masses of Canadians we are trying to reach live in these urban fantasy worlds. What we mean by quality of life – what we know to be an authentic meaningful quality of life – has no meaning to them. When we tell them that a Canada of 40 or 50 million people would not be a pleasant place, that farmland and habitat would be lost to housing, how can that have meaning to people who don’t mind living like sardines in a sardine can, as a tenant in 12 story highrise in a forest of highrises in a city of two million? Quality of life for them is not wildlife habitat – it’s access to a Big Box store.
This description applies to virtually all cities; horrid, polluted, overcrowded, stressful environments cut off from the natural world but still dependent upon it for – and draining it of – vital resources (food, water, etc.).
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April
16/4: Population control, not food aid
“UN calls for farming revolution,” BBC, 15/4. There has been much media attention recently on increasing food prices in some (mainly poorer) countries due to various factors. Yet little mention of one major factor: population growth! A letter in today’s The Age:
Population is the crisis
The world’s population has increased threefold during my lifetime, and you are surprised that there is a food shortage? As long ago as 1798, Thomas Malthus warned of the danger of the population increasing faster than the food supply.
Since then the world’s population has increased from 1 billion to 6.5 billion. The projected world population figure for 2050 is more than 10 billion. The crisis isn’t food supply, the crisis is population growth, and sustainability.
– Gordon Cheyne, Armadale
Perhaps food or other aid should come with a caveat that population control methods also be implemented (family planning, providing contraceptives to women).
May
6/5: My published letter
I got another letter published in The Age today! Much the same topic as my previous one (2/3/2008 entry). (The other letter is from a lady who also posts on the Public Population Forum.) The newspaper is doing a series on planning for Melbourne’s future, but it is focused on how to accommodate more people rather than a more fundamental solution of containing population growth. I would like to see a Government with the courage to say, “We’re full up, you’ll have to go somewhere else.”
Not just supply and demand
Housing Industry Association Victorian acting executive director Robert Harding (“City’s house prices among cheapest,” The Age, 5/5) warns that “we” need to be conscious of housing prices moving towards the “dearer markets if we are going to have the population growth and attract industry and development.” Healso says that increasing housing supply would cap property prices. Obviously, if the supply of housing is increased so that it exceeds demand, then property prices will stabilise and might even fall.This is also true of increasing the supply of pumpkins in a marketplace.
Mr. Harding’s thoughts have no more ultimate direction than the proverbial dog chasing its tail. Housing prices are obviously subject to the vicissitudes of supply and demand, and population growth will certainly increase one kind of industry – housing. There is not, however, in what Mr. Harding says an explanation or argument extolling the actual benefits to Melbourne residents of striving for an ever-increasing population.
– Jill Quirk, East Malvern
No winners in this contest
Those interviewed in “City’s house prices among cheapest” seem to regard population growth as a competition in which the city that can cram in the most people is the “winner.” They appear oblivious to the negative social or environmental consequences of such overcrowding. Reducing population growth would reduce demand for housing and help lower prices.
– Suzanne McHale
14/5: Skills shortage – not!
With the ongoing drought and declining water storages, barely-coping infrastructure, ever-longer hospital waiting lists and so on, what does the Government decide to do with some of its Budget money? Increase the immigration intake to address the so-called “skills shortage”! I can't adequately express my disgust. From the Herald-Sun:
Add 31,000 to skilled
AN extra 31,000 skilled migrants will be accepted in 2008-09 to help tackle the worsening labour shortage, Immigration Minister Chris Evans said yesterday.
All up 133,500 will be let in.
Senator Evans said the scheme had not grown sufficiently in the past to respond to the skills shortages.
Australia will accept 190,300 migrants in 2008-09, including 56,500 for family reunions.
The increase in skilled migrants will cost the Federal Government $1.4 billion over four years through the cost of settlement, health, education and employment services.
More than 100,000 migrants are expected under the uncapped temporary skilled worker scheme.
The money spent on supporting immigrants is money that should be spent on services for the people who are citizens here! Especially with headlines such as “Patients needing treatment being forced to wait longer” – “More than 200,000 sick Victorians were left waiting unacceptably long times for treatment as the public health system buckled under increased pressure late last year.”
31/5: Vanishing plains
“More loss than gain in encroaching urban sprawl on threatened open plains,” The Age, 31/5. The grassy plains surrounding Melbourne are under threat from overdevelopment; they are important to the environment but get overlooked.
Dad emmigrated from England in the 1960s and it is not a place he would want to return to now. According to one report the country is more dangerous than the Balkans in terms of crime! As politically-incorrect as it is to say it, England’s huge growing population (mainly through excessive immigration) would be a contributing factor – crowding millions of people together on a relatively small island is asking for trouble, especially when they come from disparate cultures. (The Optimum Population Trust focuses on overpopulation in the UK.)
June
2/6: Culling surplus males
A relevant article: “Waking from the dream,” ABC News, 28/5. Our wastefully extravagent lifestyles are becoming unsustainable.
“The Family Way,” Time magazine, 29/5. The recent Chinese earthquake has given some in the media an excuse to once again attack its one-child policy, as some families lost their only child when shoddily-built schools collapsed. But the issue is with the corruption that resulted in the buildings collapsing – if a family had 2 or more children and lost all at the school, it is still the same result (if that makes sense). The article does note that “couples whose only child was killed or disabled will be permitted to have another one,” which is fair enough. But China can’t afford to otherwise relax this policy – its already-huge population is having a worldwide environmental impact as they become more affluent (the hunt for mineral resources in other nations being one consequence of this).
Clearly, a rising birth rate would place an enormous burden on China’s social and medical infrastructure, which is far less developed than physical infrastructure like roads and rail. A change in emphasis will be essential. Hospitals will need vast new infusions of money and other resources. The weak system of homes for the elderly, child-care providers and other social services will have to be greatly expanded.
Where will the money and resources come from to provide for a massive population?
China also faces one of the most skewed sex ratios in the world: men outnumber women 1.2 to 1. The male surplus, which means many Chinese men will never be able to have a family, creates an ominous future; already, an underclass of young male thugs is proliferating in Chinese cities, a group easily recruited for crime. In Beijing’s worst nightmare, these angry young men could turn against the state. As scholars Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer wrote in a 2004 book, in the mid-19th century unequal sex ratios, which left men idle, contributed to armed rebellion in the Chinese countryside.
A radical solution might be to cull (as in kill) the surplus young males (wars already tend to do this, in a somewhat uncontrolled manner). In fact, that is something that could be done in any society with a surplus of single, young, unemployed males between 12-25 years (who tend to be the most troublesome elements – just consult any statistics for violent crime). As a female, I would feel a lot safer if there were fewer aggressive young males around. How would you identify the aggressive ones, as, of course, not all males fit this description? One way is to catch those who roam the streets at night in groups or gangs – I see the results in my neighborhood the next morning (graffiti, vandalism). Another is to target those convicted of violent crimes. Note that humans don’t hesitate to cull other species (some being elephants and kangaroos) – species that are seen as being in competition with humans for land and resources.
16/6: My published letter
Another letter published, in the Herald-Sun today! Highlighted in a box with 2 others on the same topic. I actually emailed the letter on 6/6, so they must have put it aside.
Melbourne’s population is expected to increase by approximately one million within the next 20 years. This is a frightening prospect.
Already, with the impact of global warming and the rising cost of fuel, our city is struggling to provide essential services.
Our transport system is woefully inadequate, hospitals and public schools need additional funding, and each summer and winter we are warned of possible blackouts.
Worst of all, our reservoirs are running dry. Melbourne’s population is already roughly equivalent to that of major cities such as Madrid and Berlin, and greater than that of San Francisco, Copenhagen, and Birmingham. Isn’t it time that city planners developed strategies based on a population status quo?
This would allow for consolidation and improvement of existing infrastructure and would ensure that the city has the capacity to provide essential services to all its citizens.
– Maureen Kutner, Glen Waverley
Considering our current environmental, infrastructure, cultural, and cost of living problems, the thought of another million people in Victoria within 12 years seems idiotic.
The State Government can’t responsibly manage the population it has got without burdening us with more people to compete for resources.
Governments need to drop this “populate or perish” mentality.
They should look beyond their own lifetimes and set ways in motion for a society that can economically survive without devouring our way of life and environment.
– D. Spooner, Bruthen
News that Australia’s population is booming is dismaying.
Water and housing shortages and overstretched public services mean an increasing population (and competition for resources) should be a cause for alarm, not celebration.
The Brumby Government seems to be in denial of these negative effects of growth.
– Suzanne McHale
July
3/7: My published letter
Another letter published! In today’s Herald-Sun. The letter was edited and most content cut out, presumably to fit in the “50/50” section.
The obvious solution to the housing shortage would be to reduce the absurdly high immigration rates.
Original letter:
The obvious solution to the HIA’s scaremongering regarding the housing shortage (“Crisis in home building,” Herald-Sun, 1/7) would be to reduce the absurdly-high immigration rates to ease this pressure – but then the HIA would not profit from this.
28/7: Growing too fast
“Premier John Brumby warns of dangers in growing too fast,” Herald-Sun, 28/7. The Victorian Premier actually admitted that the state’s population growth is causing problems! Perhaps he read the letters I and others have had published this year! But will he do anything to reduce this unwanted growth? Probably not.
John Brumby has conceded Victoria’s population growth is pushing its limits, thanks to the baby boom and immigration. The Premier said pressures on the transport and health systems showed the need for caution. In his strongest comments yet on the state’s booming population, he said: “I think we are probably at the limits of growth.”
In an interview marking his first year as premier, Mr Brumby told the Herald Sun that Victoria needed to keep an eye on its aging population and plan for the future. And he questioned the sustainability of high growth. While stressing the strength of the state’s multiculturalism and its value, he said immigration had doubled over five years and Victoria had attracted a quarter to a third of that intake.
“Plus, fertility rates are high. More women are having babies – that’s a good thing. I think it’s a sign that people are more comfortable about the future,” he said. “But I think we’re at the limits; we’ve got pressures on our public transport system, we’ve got pressures, obviously, on our health system.”
His comments are the first sign the Government may be forced to put the brakes on population growth as Victoria struggles to keep up with providing transport, health and police services.
December
30/12: Fewer people = more food
A source of exasperation is articles like “Food needs ‘fundamental rethink’,” on how current food production methods will be inadequate to feed the excessive numbers of humans in the future.
“The level of growth in food production per capita is dropping off, even dropping, and we have got huge problems ahead with an explosion in human population.” […]
Professor Lang said that in order to feed a projected nine billion people by 2050, policymakers and scientists face a fundamental challenge: how can food systems work with the planet and biodiversity, rather than raiding and pillaging it?
Well, maybe governments should be looking at reducing population growth instead! The environment can’t cope with 7 billion, let alone 9. Nature will force population reduction sooner or later in unpleasant ways (such as millions killed from natural disasters), and it’s not something I can feel too upset about (as long as it doesn’t involve anyone I know).