The Age carries a report of a presentation by Melbourne University professor, Roger Short to an international conference in Sydney. The Professor says that “for the first time in history, human activity is outstripping the natural world’s ability to cope.”

The reason, he says, is exploding and uncontrolled population growth.  Professor Short will bring to the conference the conclusions of a scientific investigation into the impact of global population changes that were aired by eminent scientists at the Fred H. Bixby Forum at the University of California.

The 41 scientists from across the world who attended the forum found that rapid population growth combined with massively increasingly use of fossil fuels was exhausting the earth’s capacity to support life.

It is good to see some more focus being given to the global dilemma presented by population growth. While it might seem self-evident that the environmental pressures of population is an issue for the planet as a whole, debate on the issue and how best to solve it is often hijacked by those who are focused mainly on running an anti-migration agenda. The issues used to provide a vehicle for pushing an anti-migration agenda tend to change over time, but when you drill down into the reasoning behind anti-migrant stances, there is often little difference to the reasoning used in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Greenhouse emissions, water shortages and habitat clearing are the current environmental issues being used to push the agenda, while the global financial crisis is providing the main current economic rationale. Until recently, the main economic argument being used by anti-migration advocates (apart the old myth that migrants take ‘our’ jobs) was that migration was responsible for the housing affordability crisis in Australia.

There is a real danger in using concerns over greenhouse emissions and water shortages to co-opt the environmental movement as a cloak for running an anti-migration agenda, because it seriously compromises one of the most fundamental and important credos of environmentalism – the need to recognise that the world is an inextricably intertwined and interlinked eco-system, not a series of isolated environments which happen to defined by national borders.  We as human beings are all in it together when it comes to suffering the consequences of damaging the planet.

This principle is best captured in the well known slogan to “think globally, act locally.” The anti-migration argument subverts this approach, trying to put the argument that keeping people out of Australia should be a central part of dealing with greenhouse emissions and resource depletion, while ignoring the obvious fact that migration has absolutely zero direct impact on global population.

The reverse political correctness that applies these days means that making simple points like this tends to attract vehement accusations from some anti-migration advocates accusing people of trying to gag them by labelling them as racists.

The ‘acting local’ part of dealing with environmental issues should be about improving our woeful performance in living more sustainably and efficiently, not about keeping people out so we so we don’t have to do as much about the fact we live in a more environmentally profligate way than just about any country on Earth.

I haven’t seen the full text of Professor Short’s remarks, but the report in The Age notes his call for “a vast increase in the availability and use of contraception to slow the birthrate worldwide.” While this is certainly one part of the solution, improving overall education opportunities – particularly for women and girls – and getting people out of dire poverty are also essential parts of the solution.

Just as blaming migration for the environmental consequences of population growth relies on pretending Australia is somehow cut off from the rest of the world, blaming migrants for increasing unemployment or economic downturns has the similar effect of ignoring the reality that we are part of a global economy. The growing calls to slash migration in response to the economic downturn falls into this trap.

It would be worthwhile to heed the calls of people such as Professor Peter McDonald from ANU, who is both a demographer and an economist. He has just presented a report to the Immigration Department which states that “Australian labour force policy tends to be more a matter of reaction than of long-term planning.” (I might add that the same could be said of Australia’s population policy – in as much as we have one.)

Professor McDonald has called on the Rudd government “to resist pressure to slash Australia’s permanent immigration intake in the face of lengthening dole queues, or risk stifling the nation’s eventual economic recovery.”

Leading demographer Peter McDonald has warned against short-sighted immigration decisions, saying overseas migrants will be the key drivers of economic growth over the next 40 years as millions of baby boomers move into retirement.

Migration numbers will reduce of their own accord when employment opportunities decrease. But putting extra barriers in place specially to block people – whether for economic or environmental reasons – is a short-term solution which ignores the underlying causes of current problems.