Populate and Perish: 2014
April
3/4: Melbourne on the path to ruin
Haven’t written for a while, though there have been quite a few articles on population issues; I feel disheartened that nothing ever seems to change regarding the problems faced, and that governments and business remain in denial of overpopulation’s negative effects.
“Fast-growing Melbourne heading towards becoming Australia’s largest city,” H-S, 3/4. Dismaying news for my home city, and this will completely destroy its livability, despite the positive statement of the apparently-delusional Premier. At 4.35 million now, traffic on the roads virtually grinds to a halt at times every day, and public transport is beyond capacity. Victoria’s population has also been growing rapidly as a whole (from overseas and interstate), currently at 5,768,000, most of whom head to Melbourne. It has become too popular and this is ruining it. But all Premier Denis Napthine does is “welcome” the strong growth.
“Mumbai: Bright lights, tight city,” The Age, 21/2: article from February on the extreme overcrowding in an Indian city. The situation is quite horrifying, and the people questioned are obviously unhappy about their situation – “We have already reached saturation point. We’ve got skin-to-skin contact on the trains. How much closer together can we live without going mad? There is nowhere to walk, nowhere to throw a ball or have a picnic.” It is obviously extremely unhealthy both mentally and physically. The proponents of high-density living in other countries (including those in Australia) should read this as a cautionary tale: an ultimate outcome of uncontrolled population growth and urbanization.
There has been a lot of recent attention on foreign buyers purchasing residential property in Australia – estimated at one-fifth of all buyers – particularly those from China. Our lax laws encourage this, and it is a major factor in driving up property prices to ridiculous levels, along with strong population growth. Canada recently (and sensibly) canceled its own 28-year-old visa scheme designed to attract wealthy foreigners to the country, so Australia is now the next easy target for buyers. Of course such attention inevitably attracts criticism that such concern is “racist,” but a government’s priority should be toward its own citizens in providing essential services – shelter is a basic human right – and in this it is failing. The trend is also fuelling unwanted demolitions and inappropriate developments in once-pleasant suburbs, as a columnist laments.
Some collected letters:
Herald-Sun, 23/12/2013:
Fluid ideas needed
THE State Government has released its plan to provide the extra water needed for the millions of extra people expected to live in Melbourne by 2050.
Already the cost of water is overwhelmed by infrastructure and fixed charges, which have little relationship to actual domestic quantities of water used. Under medium growth scenarios, Sydney and Melbourne will each have about 8.5 million people in 50 years’ time.
Superannuation funds, businesses and property investors are basing their portfolios and profits on ongoing population growth, and the finer details, such as limited and costly freshwater supplies, are an afterthought.
Melbourne’s proposed population growth should be questioned. A longterm plan for a sustainable population size, and good stewardship of our natural resources, is urgently needed.
– Margit Alm, Eltham
30/12/2013:
Cut migration, save jobs
VICTORIAN MP Kelvin Thomson is right to call for cuts to the permanent skilled migration and temporary schemes (“Visas are a love match,” HS, Dec 27), especially at a time of rising unemployment, when many skilled workers face losing their jobs as major companies go offshore.
With jobs in decline, our own should be employed before filling them with skilled overseas workers. If our own have trouble finding skilled work, what chance do migrants have?
Or do they end up being exploited here, taking jobs for a lesser wage because of not knowing their rights and entitlements?
I also question how genuine are these partnership reunions? These schemes are open to abuse and rorting from unscrupulous people who will seek already settled migrants or single Australians to secure a partner’s visa and help someone gain entry into Australia.
– Vita Mezzatesta, Pascoe Vale
Important issues
THE article by John Masanauskas raises important issues about our future way of life. It was excellent to read what Kelvin Thomson has to say about migrant numbers.
It is hard to understand why other MPs aren’t prepared to say we should not be adding so many migrants. At what point of unemployment will they be prepared to cut the increase down to a manageable level?
I feel sorry for the young people who can’t find work and the skilled people losing their jobs.
As for “love matches,” many of these are arranged back in their home countries, and many of us know of marriages of convenience simply to obtain a visa.
– Mary Drost, Camberwell
Unwise growth
IN the year to June 2013, Victoria’s population grew by 106,000 – 60 per cent of which was from immigration.
There are many reasons why this level of population growth is unwise. If environmental sustainability factors do not raise alarm in governments, one would hope the unemployment situation would.
Kelvin Thomson points out that anticipated job losses in areas such as car manufacturing and construction for the resources industry are likely to exacerbate unemployment, and Australian nursing graduates cannot find work in hospitals while nurses are imported from overseas.
The Federal Government should rein in skilled migration, and thus increase local people’s chances of earning a living.
– Jill Quirk, Victorian president, Sustainable Population Australia
The Age, 30/11/2013:
Land is degrading
Various letter writers (29/11) have expressed valid objections to unfettered population growth. The most important objection, however, is that the land we live on cannot sustain a population significantly greater than the one we already have. Australia is much older than Europe and North America, its layers of soil are thinner and of poorer quality, it has far less naturally available water and the rivers we have flow slowly and do not easily flush away impurities. We are already over-farmed by about two-thirds. Over-development of the coastline, particularly in Queensland and NSW, has generated toxic slugs of sulphuric acid, which have entered our soil and waterways.
Housing, transport and infrastructure problems can be solved with adequate planning. The nature of the continent cannot. It is sadly typical of our age that this empirical reality is not even an input to a calculation about the number of people needed to keep us “competitive.”
– Rod Beecham, Monbulk
Model is finally broken
Successive governments have based Victoria’s economy on population growth while ignoring opportunities to invest in new technologies to meet the needs of future generations. We now have an economy second only to Tasmania (“First drop in per capita figures since GFC,” 29/11).
The old model that population growth will fix all is broken. We have extraordinary traffic congestion, crowded trains, deteriorating public schools, long waiting lists at public hospitals and overcrowded jails, yet the government wants to increase the population with nothing in place to cater for this growth. When will we get a government that has any idea how to tackle this massive problem?
– Pauline Ashton, Maribyrnong
2/12/2013:
Development by population growth is a Ponzi scheme and, like all Ponzi schemes, most people don’t realise until it is too late.
– Andrew Rawlings, Blackburn
A terrible blight
We are told that Melburnians do not want to live in high-rise towers or two-bedroom dog boxes (“Wrong way, go back,” Focus, 26/3). Our migrants from China, Hong Kong and Singapore, among others, also want to escape that way of living and have come to Australia to enjoy its open spaces and clean air. We do not need to be overwhelmed with incessant development of high-rise buildings that will, ultimately, be a blight on our landscape.
– Peter McNamara, Canterbury
31/3:
Apply brakes now
So Premier Napthine welcomes a population growth rate of 2 per cent a year (“State’s population soars faster than expected,” 31/3). Perhaps he should explain that this means a doubling of our population to nearly 12 million in only 35 years. Then what, Dr Napthine? Former premier Brumby said that an “about right” growth rate was like a car travelling at 100km/h. But the open road doesn’t go on for ever. A car has to stop some time. The question is whether it can slow down and stop safely, or runs headlong into disaster.
– Ralph Judd, Blackburn North
Stretched to the limit
Has Dr Napthine thought rationally about the consequences of a future based on the population growth imperative? About how incessant population growth will impact on facilities that are already stretched to the limit, such as public transport, roads and access to health services and education? About climate change, habitat loss and bushfires? It appears not.
There is no evidence to suggest population growth solves our long-term problems; rather, by straining basic services and the environment it exacerbates them. The perpetual population growth model as a solution to humanitarian and environmental problems must be abandoned.
– Leigh Ackland, Deepdene
October
23/10: Humans increase as wild animals decrease
Another gap in writing, and I again have a huge backlog of articles. Writing just feels pointless at times as few want to acknowledge that human overpopulation is a major problem – certainly not those with influence.
A new and horrifying report was released in September that predicted the world’s population could climb to 11 billion by 2100 – rather than peak and decline as has previously been the accepted scenario. That is just over one-and-a-half as many people as today.
Another analysis was also released last month by the WWF stating that Earth had lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years (as contrasted to domesticated animals, which are also in plague proportions). However the report only mentions human consumption as the culprit, not our growing numbers also.
Despite the implications – ultimately far more alarming than the terrorist scaremongering currently occupying governments – the extinction article barely recieved a mention in the mainstream press, as the letter below points out (Herald-Sun, 3/10):
Threat underplayed
I READ with great interest the snippet, “Wildlife plummet” (HS, Oct 1), stating that wildlife numbers have plunged by more than half in 40 years as the Earth’s human population has nearly doubled.
Given that humans are consuming natural resources that would require L5 Earths to sustain, I cannot comprehend why this was on page 21. This is an extremely serious threat to life as we know it. Granted, it doesn’t appear to be as immediate or sensational a threat as terrorism, but this has the potential to be a planetary disaster. Every day I am further convinced of the truth of the underlying message in Dan Brown’s novel, Inferno, in which the problem of overpopulation is the central theme.
– Geoff McKeon, Huntly
Given these two factors, the Earth of 2100 (when I will be dead, barring access to any life-extension technology of then) will be a far less biodiverse planet. The few wild animals left will live out restricted lives in nature reserves or zoos. Megacities of tens of millions will sprawl over the various continents like grey cancer cells. Big forests such as the Amazon or Siberian taiga will have all but vanished. Global warming will wreak havoc. Aside from the mega-wealthy, many humans will likely also have miserably restricted lives, seeking to escape from their bleak reality into the virtual world with whatever technologies have evolved then. In fact that is not too far off the Earth presented in the movie Avatar.
A recent book by Paul Hanley on the topic of eleven billion was featured on io9. He seems to be optimistic that humans will find ways to cope, but I find such optimism dangerous – it is a complacent feeling of “No worries, things will work out” rather than take measures now to prevent the population getting to such a huge number in the first place (prevention is preferable to the cure).
Well, we can look at 11 billion as too many people, or look at the population as huge potential to do things like reclaim deteriorated ecosystems. There are some 3 billion hectares of deteriorated ecosystems by some reckoning (se Rattan Lal) Restoring those lands, which would require a huge amount of work, would be like adding a new continent to the world. It would also ameliorate climate change by capturing huge amounts of carbon in plants and soil. But in rick areas where people have more than we need, we will have to look at shorter work weeks, more job sharing, lower income and consumption, but more time to do things like hang out with family and friends, be creative, garden, etc.
We may be able to restore the natural world, but I think there will be a net loss of biodiversity what ere we do. But ecological function can be prioritized, leading to better incomes for the rural poor. I talk about an outstanding large scale example of this on China’s Loess Plateau.
I don’t find the prospect of such loss of biodiversity at all acceptable – humans don’t own the Earth, but share it with other lifeforms. We as a species should not let things get to such a condition in the first place – this should be considered a moral imperative.
“It is not primarily the number of people that’s important in population policy, it’s what they are capable of, their level of education, and their health.”
– Wolfgang Lutz, director of the Vienna Institute of Demography
A quote from the first “11 billion” article which I strongly disagree with for reasons previously stated.