Population policy is one of those deeply vexed issues that often seems to bring out the worst in political discussions. Too often it is used as a cypher for racist politics. Too often, those who are honestly trying to grapple with the issue sensibly are labelled racist by association. I wish I knew which of those two categories Julia Gillard’s comments of recent days belong to – dog whistle or unfairly criticised as such. I suspect we’ll find out very soon.
Meanwhile, within the Greens Party membership, it’s no secret that there is a longstanding dispute over how to deal with and communicate on the issue. I stress that these are my opinions and not necessarily those of the party.
Having got the preamble and the caveats out of the way, here’s my 2c on population.
Australia is not an island.
Not on this increasingly small globe, it isn’t. And it’s not earth-shattering to note that population is an issue of far greater significance globally than it is locally. Population stresses overseas dwarf any here in Australia. With business-as-usual approaches to foreign policy, aid and climate, those stresses will inevitably boil over and inexorably head our way. And here’s the rub.
Australia is not an island.
Australia, frankly, cannot be a fortress. No matter what we do, if people want to come here – as they will in coming decades more and more – we won’t be able to stop them. If you think a few thousand refugees each year is difficult to handle, wait until climate-related desertification, sea-level rise and storms start uprooting tens of millions of people from Bangladesh to Kiribati, from the Mekong delta to the plains of western China. Scott Morrison’s tough rhetoric will not be able to stop them coming to Australia.
We need to accept that the path we are heading down currently is a dead end. We have to change direction.
What does that involve?
In my opinion, our task is threefold: help slow population growth around the world and in our region; help turn around the climate crisis so populations in our region don’t face the huge stresses it would bring, driving them in our direction; and massively change our own economic and social structures so that Australia can cope with a larger population.
By investing wisely in appropriate aid, education (particularly of women), Grameen-style micro-financing, renewable energy and other projects in our region, Australia can help slow population growth in the developing nations that surround us. By reducing their population stresses, we can increase their relative standard of living (and do so sustainably, if we put in the effort, by helping them leapfrog our fossil fuel addiction and head straight to renewable energy and fuels) and thereby decrease the pressures that send people in our direction.
By working positively towards a fair, science-based global solution to the climate crisis, we can avoid the tremendously increased stresses that are projected for the large populations of poor people in our region. There are actually great synergies to be gained – seriously tackling climate change will involve major investment in sustainable development from countries like Australia in our developing country neighbours. And it will also involve the third task.
By radically changing our own economy – re-building our energy networks for 100% renewable energy, re-designing our cities for localised, livable hubs linked by fast mass transit, replacing our vehicle fleet with electric engines, re-discovering community food gardens and boosting sustainable local production and much more – we can build a country which can sustain many more people. It’ll take decades, but that’s OK. As long as we start fast.
Remember that ecological impact is a factor of population x consumption x technology. If we make the shift to sustainable technology and make the choice to consume less, we can sustain a larger population. And here’s another positive feedback loop – if we make the choice to consume less here in Australia, we lead by example those in developing countries who see our consumption as the key to our standard of living. This will not only help the global community be more sustainable, but could also reduce the pull factors bringing people to our shores.
Now, regardless of all this, some will doubtless raise the spectre of problems with integration of people from different cultures. As a child of refugees from the holocaust whose parents were seen by many anglo Australians in the late 50s as alien and slightly scary, this, in my opinion, is largely a question of attitude. As we get used to each wave of migrants, we realise that they aren’t scary and they actually add to our society. If, instead of demonising refugees, we welcomed them and helped them become actively citizens, we would build a more cohesive society. If we didn’t lock asylum seekers behind razor wire when they arrive, would we be less anxious about them? I suspect so.
So here’s an idea – how about we try to be friends?
Oh, and one final point.
Australia is not an island.
We are one pretty damn lucky country on a very small planet. We have a responsibility to play our fair role on this planet, and that goes for dealing with population stresses just as much as it goes for the climate crisis.
Let’s not pretend we can shut our eyes, close our borders, and hope it’ll all go away. It won’t.
38 Comments
Tim
I think your general argument has strengths. But your threefold tasklist misses at least one crucial ingredient, IMO. That is to use our best endeavours to heal conflict in other parts pf the world – and above all NOT to contribute to it ourselves.
The illegal and immoral invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have contributed many millions to global refugee numbers. Now the same Zionist influences are pushing for an attack on Iran, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the whole world, including but by no means limited to additional refugees.
To leave the war and peace factor out of your analysis, IMO, is bizarre.
It’s a good point re conflict, Syd, although I would argue that I did address it more than in passing. I would also leave out the weird Zionist crack.
I guess the fact that I didn’t include it as a separate issue reveals my assumption that, if we take a new approach to foreign policy, aid and climate change, that would make a huge difference towards both resolving and preventing conflicts.
Great post Tim. I agree with you.
However on reading your article, I had a moment of recall re. the story about the Protestant priest(?) who when asked for help during the Holocaust, said “Sorry, not my problem”. For each of the peoples taken away/victimized, his response was the same. Till finally one day, they came to take him away and he looked around, and there was no one left to help him. (I am sure there are variations of this story around.)
My point is, as unlikely as it seemed to the priest that he would ever need help – it did happen; – and as unlikely as it seems to us now that we Australians would ever be refugees needing help – it can happen. What would we feel like if that happened, the shoe falilng on the other foot, and we needed help? Would we be more understanding then, albeit belatedly? Will there be anyone to help us?
Surely, we cannot keep seeing ourselves as separated and whole, distinct from every other country. We have to learn to think of us – people, planet, animals, ecology – as one Whole being. To echo you Tim … Australia is not an island.
No man, no country can afford to be anymore.
This is good stuff in general but be careful about microfinance. A lot or all of it is just distributed loansharking – a way for first-worlders to feel good about being charitable “without losing anything”. The interest rates are stupendously high, nonpayment penalties usually involve hiring local thugs, and most of the businesses fail.
There needs to be an enormous and permanent movement of capital to the developing world, but loans are not the way to do it. It’s nonsense to lend $500 to a farmer in Kenya then subsidise all Australian farmers by $500.
With due respect, Tim, I think the issue of war and conflict is more than a ‘good point’.
Surely it is CRUCIA to an understanding of the ongoing global refugee crisis. It’s not the only factor involved, of course – but any attempt at a broad analysis that leaves it out is necessarily inadequate, IMO.
As for what you call my ‘weird Zionist crack’, why is it ‘weird’ to point out the driving force behind recent and ongoing wars that have caused millions of refuguees – as well as the driving force now seeking military agression against Iran?
If we want to stop wars, we must be able to speak freely about the key influences that create these wars.
See ‘The Israel Lobby’ by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt if you’re not already familiar with it.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the-israel-lobby
Here’s a single paragraph extract re: Iraq:
Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, the ‘real threat’ from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The ‘unstated threat’ was the ‘threat against Israel’, Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002. ‘The American government,’ he added, ‘doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.’
If you doubt the connection between the Zionist Lobby and the Afghanistan invasion in 2001, I’m happy to provide further references, but don’t want to overburden this thread with material that might be judged off-topic. Regarding Iran, it is simply obvious that the Israel lobby is primarily behind the current push to isolate and threaten that even more populous nation – a nation that has not attacked any of its neighbours in centuries.
Back to the main subject of your article. You suggest a formulation “ecological impact is a factor of population x consumption x technology”. I think I get your point.
As I see it, the overall, long-term goal should be genuine sustainability. In other words, humanity’s ecological impact should be brought into balance with the environment so that, among other key indicators of sustainability, biodiversity loss arrested to ‘normal’ (pre-human) levels.
Humanity’s overall ecological impact is a function of human population x per capita ecological impact.
Population is ‘sticky’ and any significant reductions would take generations, absent catastrophes which should be avoided if at all possible for obvious humanitarian reasons.
Per capita ecological impact, on the other hand, is potentially amenable to quite rapid change. Use of appropriate technology is part of that change – but not the only factor.
Where I do agree with your analysis is in the potential synergy between doing the right thing domestically and overseas.
Some good general principles in there, Tim. A few niggly points however:
* Australia is a middle power – we certainly have regional influence (which gets more pushback the further north we move into Asia) but I think our ability to directly affect macro issues is limited when you have the likes of China, Russia, India, Europe and the US pursuing reasonably narrow national self-interest, bolstered by very powerful internal pressure groups (The “military-industrial complex” in the words of that commie radical Dwight D. Eisenhower). Australia has always punched above its weight in supranational organisations, but as Rudd’s failed effort in Copenhagen to bring in even a watered down, mealy mouthed plan to limit emissions has showed, this ability has limits. I’m all for lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness, but there’s an awful lot of dark out there.
* Environmentally Sustainable Development – economic development is always going to be a key priority of nation-states, and few are going to hold back on it due to global concerns which appear indirect and long term. The challenge then is to ensure that models of development with comparable growth can be achived with minimal environmental impact. The obvious way in which this can happen (and fortunately, one where Australia can contribute in a very substantial way) is in technology transfers, prefarably as non-conditional aid or at nominal royalty rates. Australians are good innovators, and if Australian techniques and technologies can effectively drive sustainable industrial expansion in developing economies then this is something MEANINGFUL that Australia can do. This has to happen on a governmental level, as well as supporting NGOs and philanthropic organisations in a far more substantial way than that which is currently done.
* Our own technological transformation – technology change is easy to most consumers, no matter how problematic it is for business or government. SOCIAL change, however, is very hard. People have an inherent conservatism in terms of their day-to-day lives. The sort of changes you envisage ARE radical, and need to be planned for and approached over the long term. Social preparation and (hate to use the word) conditioning for these long-term changes needs to be an ongoing, gradual process. Ordering large swathes of the population to decamp to rural centres has been tried on a couple of occasions, but not generally by sane, non-genocidal leaders.
* Australia’s local conditions – there is a limited amount Australia can do to increase its population capacity given the environmental limitations (especially water availability and the amount of arable land for food self-sufficiency) and the high degree of population and economic centralisation in the capital cities. I’m not at all saying that Australia is AT or ABOVE its environmental capacity to support any particular level of population, but any long term population policy (without reference to refugee policy, which IMO is a separate policy concern) needs to take account of these “hard” limitations on human habitation.
Phew. Sorry for that. Once you start with this sort of discussion, it can take an awful long time to stop.
@banana – I’m sure there are issues with some micro-financing providers. However, there are so many examples of it working very well. As with everything, vigilance is vital.
Syd @5, the way I see it, your formulation of per capita ecological impact is a factor of levels of consumption and what is consumed. If we consume less or consume products with a lower impact (ideally both, of course), we reduce our per capita impact.
Tim
I think focusing on consumption is not the most fruitful way of thinking about sustainability – and ‘ecological impact’ is more useful. A short thought experiment to help explain why…
Imagine a product that could be conjured out of thin air – and that dissipated back into nothingness after use. Such a product (eg. software) could be consumed ad infinitum and at close to zero ecological cost. On the other hand, a range of human activities – including but not limited to the production of commodities – have profound ecological impacts.
Of course there is a correlation between consumption levels and ecological impact. But it’s also possible to ‘decouple’ the two to a significant extent – and that’s part of what we need to do.
For these reasons, I think ‘consumption’ is a poor surrogate for ‘ecological impact’ and we are better off trying to make reduction in ecological impact the central goal.
Terms of trade on the zero-impact product you mention would have a real-world impact, though, I would have thought. The old “how many bags of wheat [consumption and environmental impact] for a personal computer [for the sake of argument, a zero cost commodity]” aphorism would apply. You can reduce the ecological impact of producing the wheat, but there’s still a point at which the conceptual product impinges on real-world resources.
Tim as I see it there are 2 causes of refugees coming to Australia.
1) Fleeing terrible circumstances, usually being the on the receiving end of a conflict that may or may not qualify as genocide (basically any civil war seems to turn into this). This is where all the Sri Lankan refugees came from. Tamils getting slaughtered/persecuted/etc.. when the government effectively won the civil war. This is the source of Afghan refugees as well. And the Iraq. And the Somali and Sudanese previously. And the vietnamese back in the 70s. Many come here because to be blunt its the closest safe place. Nowhere in Africa will accept them (or may not be much safer). Nowhere in Asia. The US and Canada are too far.
2) Economic migrants wanting a better life, fleeing poverty and social exclusion. e.g. all my white anglo-celtic ancestors from the UK.
Those in category 1 will come regardless of how brutal our immigration processing is. Regardless of the rhetoric of our governments. We get a tiny fragment of those displaced by conflict.
But Syd, that product still has an impact. If it has a tiny impact, all the better.
Ecological impact is a very abstract concept for most people, I think. Consumption is very tangible, and being aware of what we consume and how it is produced is very familiar – we already do it with food labelling for nutritional info and provenance.
What I argue for, essentially, is that we all need to become much more aware of what we consume.
Not sure I’d put it quite in those terms, EnergyPedant, but I agree with your conclusion. These people will come regardless of what we do. So our task is both to reduce the pressures that drive them here and to make ourselves more able to welcome those who do come.
Tim… how powerful do you believe that consumer sentiment actually is… how much can people reasonably emotionally invest in their consumption choices? For mine, you need substantial sticks and carrots. Moral authority doesn’t have sufficient weight.
@ Tim
One reason I think the focus on consumption is mistaken is that ‘products’ are consumed in a given context. Change the context and the products may become completely unecessary. Example: All the ‘products’ currently consumed in order to wage war in Afghanistan…
A second reason is that consumer products are only part of humanity’s range of impacts on the environment. Take transport systems. Does it make sense to think of them as ‘products consumed’? Take waste disposal systems. In general, infrastructure design is critical – and not well captured under the heading ‘consumption’.
A third reason is the enormous variation in the ecological impacts of different ‘products’ (the point I made before).
In general, I think that trying to sell the idea that people should consume less – without an economic strategy that avoids the current corrollary of a general reduction in demand (ie economic recession) – is not likely to be sucessful. It may be popular in isolated Puritan communities, but not elsewhere.
The proposition that we can all experience healthy, fruitful, satisfying and free lives by conscious, carefully-planned transformation of our way of life so it becomes genuinely sustainable is, IMHO, a much easier sell.
I wonder. I vaguely remember a scene in James Burke’s late 80s-early90s(?) TV doco ‘After the Warming’ exploring a post-greenhouse world from a future perspective. The presenter strolled along a north Australian beach amongst rusting razor wire and machine gun emplacements, explaining that these were the means by which Australia ultimately solved its climate refugee issue. If some of the scenarios listed come to pass, I wonder what it will turn out we are capable of.
Mind you, I think it was also that doco that posited rolling fields of wheat in a climate-changed central Australia; an outcome that subsequent modelling indicates as extremely unlikely. But still, given current electoral sentiments, the former scenario strikes me as all too plausible.
It’s not obvious to me what technology is doing in that equation. I would argue that, if anything, it should actually be in the denominator.
Ravenred @13 – absolutely need carrots and sticks to make it happen! It won’t happen on its own and I didn’t intend to suggest that it would. This is more of a think-piece on what needs to happen, not a policy prescription.
Syd @14, I guess I am thinking of consumption in broader terms. To me it includes choice of transport, waste disposal and everything. There is no perfect word for it, though.
Mark @15, that’s what I’m afraid of. A militaristic outcome is the worst outcome. And I fear we are heading down that route.
Re technology as a variable in the equation – it is short hand for means of production, I guess. It is a frequently used equation in ecological studies, sometimes expressed as population x affluence x technology (EI = PxAxT). How would it work as the denominator?
To the extent that technology acts as a human impact multiplier, it’s already accounted for in the consumption/affluence term. As the energy intensity of most advanced economies is now falling, it seems reasonable to ascribe most of this to technological advance. Obvious examples are efficiency facilitators, nuclear & solar energy generation etc.). Sure, there are techs that apparently increase EI, but they invariably do so by increasing consumption/affluence, so you’re effectively double-counting.
On the whole it might be best to say EI = PxA and leave it at that.
tim
one missing element in your logic – the Greens need now to deconstruct the common market economists’ argument that society needs poulation growth to keep the economy from falling over. this is a dead-end argument that takes no account of the physical resource and global warming limits to growth. but it appeals to powerful business lobbies – you need to convince them how it is wrong, because it is they who are driving a lot of australia’s population growth now. how do you sell the case that slowing population growth can be done without knocking over the economy, creating mass unemployment etc? Greens need to work on this if they want to lift their voter appeal. At the moment, you are sitting on the fence, with odd allies there (those whose businesses profit most from high immigration – new housing and shopping mall developers, whitegoods sellers etc) – an uncomfortable place for the Greens.
Tim, in one respect you are correct. But never the less what you are advocating is fundamentally anti-green.
In effect you are saying that we our powerless to do anything about population growth in Australia and that we should throw our hands up in the air, give in and allow unrestrained population growth to destroy what little biodiversity we have left on this ecologically unique continent.
Tim you have to decide whether you are a conservationist or a humanist. If the latter you need to get out of the ‘Greens’ and start an appropriate party. The Green Party was originally about conservation first and formost but members like you have corrupted the purpose of the party to predominantly humanist agenda.
More than ever Australia needs to lead the world in establishing an ecologically sustainable and stable population (zero net population growth). To link all foreign aid to mandatory family planning and fertility control and to do what it can to change the global mindset.
The only real environmental problem we have is to many humans and the only solution to it is for there to be vastly less humans.
This is critical for Australia’s unique biodiversity and critical if we are to pass on an Australia, and a world, to our decendants that is in at least as good a conditions as we received it from our ancestors.
Congratulations Tim, on a fine editorial. However, I do think you lust after the gentle rolling meadows and dew-soaked alpine passes of Utopia.
You mention things which should have been achieved years ago, yet, in a world population of seven billion people, how long does it take for the next billion people to arrive? Five years? Ten?
The very fact that the natives are talking about Population Growth/Climate change is probably a fair indication that we will not do anything about it. This is the great Australian way; watch footy, but we’re too unhealthy to play it.
“By radically changing our own economy…” Hello? Radical change is utterly alien to the Australian way of life. Hell! We can’t even get a Republic going for us; how the hell could we change our consummate greed and fix our economy, to facilitate a balanced environment?
You mention educating women as being important and, of course, it is. But education is an on-going process, yet we have run out of on-going time.
How is it possible to cut through the religious claptrap of ten thousand years of mud-brick, fundamentalist religion? How do you appeal to the Catholic church to restrict the reproductive rate of Australian Catholics? The Orthodox Jews? The fundamentalist Muslims and Fundamentalist Exclusive Brethren and their ilk, and the Fundamentally Stupid?
There is nothing anyone can do to limit the amount of people coming here, is completely correct. So, inundated by refugees, economic or the terrorised; we HAVE to mandate for a one child policy. We have to allow abortion, and we have to allow people the right to make their own decision about terminating their own lives.
The arguments against allowing these things are facile, specious and rooted in religiosity. But how are these minefields crossed?
Whoever it was that said ‘Man carries within him the seeds of his own destruction’ was unintentionally spot on the money.
Australia, to do something radical about its population growth in order to fix our environmental woes, should A) Abolish all forms of Fundamentalist religion. B) Introduce, as of now, a one child policy.
So are we condemned to blindly stumble along our rocky road to oblivion.
We could let in 100 million people. It would make hardly any difference considering how many poor, dispossessed people there are world-wide. It would only serve to wreck our environment (even further).
And you expect people to voluntarily lower their consumption? To expect new migrants to voluntarily limit their consumption? This is fantasy. Goes against human nature. Won’t happen.
And anyhow what would be the purpose of growing our population into the hundreds of millions (which is what you are asking for). What would it achieve? Would this improve our quality of life? Would it even benefit out economy in the long run?
I used to have hope, am increasingly of the opinion that no-one is going to do anything on the scale that is required to avoid, as Tim rightly says, climate-change induced population movements.
The earth will recover from the mess we are making – in a few hundred million years. It is us as a species who won’t survive.
The elephant in the room is ocean acidification, happening right now.
Humans are the worst thing for this planet so it’s probably good that we exterminate ourselves by continually crapping in our own nest.
Great article and some terrific posts here. Dunno that we need to teach sustainable (industrial?) development to the third world. I reckon they’ll be teaching us how to live on a shoe string – or at least, have small well built houses, no cars, PVCs, bikes and change our lawns and rose gardens to vegies. It is irritating that the pollies continue to speak as if the refugees were “our problem” rather than telling Australians the truth – “People are already moving and they’re not going to stop. So get real about climate change and stand up to the big polluters (BPs).” Oh, that’s right! They just did that and the BPs showed them who’s boss!
Tim,
Quote:re-designing our cities for localised, livable hubs linked by fast mass transit, replacing our vehicle fleet with electric engines, re-discovering community food gardens and boosting sustainable local production and much more – we can build a country which can sustain many more people. Un-quote
Has anyone ever tried to wean Australia’s dream of home ownership away from ‘own home’ on ‘own block of land? It is the most un Australian idea you could possibly bring up at a dinner party or around the Webber. Our cities are small in population but huge in size and even though there are pockets of somewhat higher densities, we remain stuck on building expensive low density suburbs and housing our population well away from any possibility of having ‘liveable hubs with ‘fast mass transit’.
Sorry, I just watched ABC and a film on Rome where people start going out at a time when we tuck ourselves under the doona..
Quote: …if we put in the effort, by helping them leapfrog our fossil fuel addiction and head straight to renewable energy and fuels.
This typifies Greens logic. Ignore the impossibility of achieving your target and then die trying to fight for it. There is such a thing as being too pure of thought, because pragmatists will trample dreamers every time.
If global electricity consumption is to wean itself off coal, and I very much hope that it does, it will not be exclusively to renewables; that is, unless you class Type 4 nuclear as renewable. The job is simply too hard and we are dealing with humans here, actual people who make decisions.
When, in a couple of years at the most, Australians demonstrate that their annual 3% increase in electricity consumption is not elastic and the blackouts start, will the editorials be screaming for more tidal power? No.
There will be extremely angry people voting for the party which promises them a coal or nuclear powered station the fastest, and at any cost. It will be written on the tombstone of the Greens Party of Australia that “Here lies a party which was born to good and honourable people, but which failed to see the world around itself whilst it concentrated on the trees.”
That said, I agree wholeheartedly that the cost of war is far too great in our national accounts and the benefits to be gained long term from massive increases in the foreign aid budget will bear fruit for ever. Eventually, the need to procreate will only be lessened by building societies which look after their elderly, for otherwise parents will feel pressured to have children to look after them in their declining years. It is ultimately all about living standards overseas, not about fortifying Australia’s international borders.
I see so many people calling for more population growth. Mostly from the business lobby, but also misguided greens. Population growth has a powerful momentum, which is not to be underestimated. If we endeavored to stabilize our population now, we would probably reach 50 million before it peaks. But nobody wants to commit this, so we will grow into the hundreds of millions. At this point, sadly, it looks unavoidable.
Chris;
Why are the greens misguided on more population growth?
We are a continent with the lowest population density. Driving, or preferably walking through our suburbs you’ll be lucky to see anyone about, although I must admit I saw one yesterday, walking his Jack Russell.
I think there are remnants of people still suffering from xenophobia perhaps even descendants having grown up under the ‘white Australian’ policy, unable to shake off suspicions about coffee coloured people.
Years ago, boat people, including myself, were called refo’s and yet we brought in real coffee and garlic, Dutch herrings even, but perhaps inadvertantly invaded a culture based on lamingtons and lamb chump chops. So sorry about that.
Tony, Greg and Chris @18, 19 and 26, I fail to see where I am arguing for increased population growth. I am not arguing for it at all. I am arguing for dealing with population growth as a global issue while acknowledging Australia’s responsibility to take an increased population – and indeed the necessity of doing so.
Frankly, the issue of the carrying capacity of Australia as a continent is dwarfed by the issue of the carrying capacity of the globe itself. Even if, for argument’s sake, we could limit Australia’s population to 10 million or whatever number, if the global population pressures were still growing Australia could not survive. Because we do not live in a vacuum. We are not an island. We are part of one globe.
Greg, as for there being a contradiction between being a conservationist and a humanist, I’m sorry, but that is an extraordinarily blinkered view of environmentalism that I simply do not subscribe to. And, frankly, I don’t know of any serious greenies who do.
Homo sapiens is part of the ecology of this planet, whether you like it or not. The problem is that, like thousands of species before us, we are tipping the ecology out of balance. I don’t buy the ultra-simplistic line that it is all because there are too many of us. There are many species which outnumber us by several orders of magnitude. The problem is we have developed consumption patterns and technological capacities which multiply the impact of a too large population manifold.
The great thing is, we are the first species (as far as we know) to have reached this point as sentient beings. We are the first species to have both the technical capacity to change and the self-reflectivity to decide to do so.
I hope.
@Venise – lusting after Utopia? Maybe. Rolling meadows? Not really. I would have thought it was obvious from my posts that my utopia is a highly technological one.
As for all of you who say it can’t be done – please just step aside while those who are already doing it get on with the work.
If politicians call for halting population growth by limiting immigration, you can rest assured its empty rhetoric meant to placate voters. They will keep the population growing rapidly my continued mass immigration, indefinitely. Our population will reach and surpass the huge numbers journalists are calling for. And our consumption of resources and environmental footprint will increase, exponentially, indefinitely, until we hit some kind of wall. Call me a pessimist or a cynic, but this is what is going to happen.
Chris, you’re a pessimist and a cynic.
You did ask for it.
There is another way to peel a potato apart from also generating renewable energy through the use of the sun, wind and more. That is to use less energy.
We have done away with hot water storage. It is the most inefficient ways of heating water. Why use energy to store hot water that is not being used?
We now have warm water only when we use it, cutting our energy bill by about $140. a quarter. When coal generated electricity triples, just watch consumption going down. I am also contemplating taking less showers, especially in winter. Daily showering is overrated, especially considering we attract each other mainly by bodily odeur, called pheromones.
Tim – in the flood of robust commentary on your article – which is actually a compliment to you, in that it shows you stimulated thinking – – you missed my point
(No 18 and 28). I did not say that you – or the Greens – are ”arguing for” increased population growth. Of course I see that you are not. I did say – and you have not answered this – that as Greens you need to find a better response to the familiar business argument that population growth is essential for Australia to avoid economic stagnation or decline (Costello’s famous half-jest ‘one for him, one for her, and one for the country’ ). As a Catholic, I recognise people’s human right to have more than two kids if this brings them a sense of purpose, fulfilment and joy. But there are plenty of others who will choose to have one or no chilldren -which hopefully will balance things for a ZPG or NPG overall outcome, excluding immigration. And I agree the environmental impact is very much about lifestyles and consumption, not just numbers of people.
What I object to – what increasing numbers of us are objecting to, esoecially those less affluent – is the insistent message from government or big business that we ”have” to have an expanding Australian population for the sake of some abstract goals of national security or national economic wellbeing. Both these arguments are fraudulent – so why aren’t the Greens helping to expose them? What do the Greens owe to the Gerry Harveys, the Lindsay Foxes, the Frank Lowys, the Harry Triguboffs, and the Rupert Murdochs? Nothing, I hope.
Actually Julia Gillard’s Lowy speech on the weekend had sensible and new things to say about ordinary Australians’ desire for a sustainable population and quality of life. This is something the Greens need a better story on than the one set out in your article which – I;m sorry to be blunt – offers very much a passe, inner-city elite perspective. We need to help the less fortunate of the world, yes, but we do not need to make the suburbs of our cities unliveable, and our best agricultural lands built over,and see a decline in our people’s general quality of life, just in order that our rich can go on getting richer.
Answers please, Tim?
Tim, I can see your viewpoint and I have the same opinion with you. It is not the point of wanting to increase the numbers of population but to share it as a global responsibility. Being the 6th largest country in this planet, Australia only accommodates 0.33% of world population. The population density in Australia is 2.908km2 while our other well-developed counterparts are 32.161km2 in the USA and 254.68km2 in the UK. So, I fail to see the point why we cannot accept more people to live in “our land”, in case anyone regards this is ours. And the fact is, Australia, as well as other developed countries, is facing the ageing population issue. So we are really in need of an increase in the number of younger citizens to enter the workforce in the coming 20 years to maintain the population balance and this is the real stable, in my point of view.
To encore what many of you have mentioned, the real concern would be how the government manages it. Once population rises, especially when we are talking about the immigrant numbers, many issues would also come. What is our direction of education? How do we immerse them, the minority, in our society? Do we have enough resources, water, energy…?
I think there are thousands of things the government can do to welcome the increasing population. Better infrastructure, better urban planning, and better cities development. It certainly costs us a lot, but if it is worth it, then why not? As citizens on this land, our responsibility is to make good use of it and maximise its worthiness.
The most important thing we need to bear in mind is that—the land has never been ours.
Tim, the intellectual shallowness of the support you have received here from christophery exposes the fragility of your position on population growth. Your supporter shows no sensitivity to sustainability or systems stress issues – it is the old techno-optimism, mechanistic fallacy, ”she’ll be right” mentality – pack the country to the rafters, we’ll cope somehow as long as we are clever enough.
But it’s not clever at all to argue for endlessly increasing population so that there will be always be enough young people around to support aged people – actually, we have to manage our population numbers within a finite living resources world and nation. We have to find ways of ”looking after” the aged in a ZPG world. Redefining ”aged’ would be a good place to start. People do not become useless at 60 or 65, 15-20 years before their current expected lifespan ends. It is a question of redefining what kinds of work are valued and how those kinds of work are paid for. In a caring extended family context, older people can go on being useful and valued almost till the very end of their lives.
There are obvious environmental reasons why Australia’s population density is so much lower than Europe’s or North America’s. Just take a bus trip across Australia to see why.
Why, when we have learned how to control our numbers in ethical ways, would we want not to? Whose interests does endless population growth serve, except socially short-sighted profit-hungry developers?
We need to have serious discussion about Australia’s environmental sustainability as part of any serious climate policy discussion . This is not closet racism – it is just common sense and responsibility to the welfare of all our children and grandchildren . Our own parental or family ethnicity should have no bearing whatsoever on this discussion. Read the final chapter of my book ”Crunch Time” to see just how bad things could get here in terms of environmental deterioration within 50-100 years, if we do not act fast on all fronts – including population growth.
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Great article Tim, to me you’ve hit some of the most important points about population. But it seems that, like a lot of other political commentators, you’re overstating refugees as a significant contributor to population and ignoring the much larger numbers of people who migrate to Australia through other channels, including skilled migration and family reunions.
These people bear the significant brunt of Australian xenophobia and cultural whitewashing. They are also the target of the population wowsers, racist or otherwise, and I think perhaps ignoring this group in an article on population leaves your otherwise strong argument open to hole-poking.
Well done Tim. As someone who will be giving first preference to The Greens I’d just like to commend you on striking the right tone.
I don’t hold with your view on consumption, and Syd has substantially covered what I have to say on this. While the lifestyle we have here certainly is appealing to the dispossessed, the bulk of the increase in standards of living of poor people will be well the other side of that we could or would accept as minimally dignified here.
Tony Kevin @ 31 said:
This is a red herring. Whether business is right or not, we are going to get increased population. That is simply a reality, and what arguments are advanced for accepting or rejecting this are moot.
Raising the argument in the form you offer it merely winks at the ignorant xenophobia one sees so often in such debates, as it encourages people to look askance at those seen as outsiders (such as asylum seekers and migrants more generally). Indeed, when I took some of my students out on an excursion recently one such person pointed to a couple of my darker-skinned children — and asked where they were from. Australia, I responded truthfully. They were both born here, but in the view of many, they will always be outsiders.
I really appreciate Tim’s attempt to separate the Greens’ approach to population issues from some of the right-wing variants of the argument. But after watching Tony Burke’s dogwhistling performance on Insiders yesterday, I would like to challenge Tim’s invocation of “ecological impact is a factor of population x consumption x technology”, which is tacitly accepted by most people I have met in the environment movement and the Greens. This is because I see this equation as weakening a progressive response to the current overpopulation hysteria.
The problem with the equation is that it is tautological rather than explanatory, and at best leaves people arguing over which factor is most important but unable to resolve the debate.
It can open the way to blaming all humans equally for environmental impact when clearly there are massive differences between *and within* countries. It can also lead to the view that social organisation of production can only take from the natural world and never give back. It says little about *how* production is organised except through the ambiguous use of the term “technology”, and certainly nothing about how decisions are made about these things.
Most importantly it doesn’t consider the possibility that population growth may be a (partly or wholly) dependent rather than independent variable, and therefore goes to the question of whether it is really population per se we want to be controlling. So, for example, Tony Burke portrays the scandalous running down of public transport, services and infrastructure (by mainly ALP-led state governments!) as a problem caused by too many people coming to our cities for service provision to “keep up”.
Disentangling what is cause and what is effect (and how they relate to each other) is not an abstract argument. Rather, it is vital if we are to make real change to the problems we face.
I certainly don’t believe there is some “techno-fix” to the problems of a runaway capitalist system, but IMHO the Left’s abandonment of ideas of democratic social planning in the face of the neoliberal, free market ideology leaves it disarmed around these questions. Even at a reformist level, the Left no longer seems to have a vision that we could change the social organism’s relationship with nature precisely because it cannot imagine a world outside cold market logic.
And if that logic is seen as unchallengeable then looking for some other variable to control, like population, seems the easier option. Sadly, the global history of attempts to control population is one of good intentions strewn all over the road to hell.