RECORD POPULATION GROWTH DISASTER FOR CLIMATE TARGETS
“Australia’s greenhouse emissions are rising in lock-step with population increase”, says Dr Coulter, National President, Sustainable Population Australia (SPA).
"Premier Brumby welcomes Melbourne growing to five million by 2020, adding almost half a million more homes plus requisite roads, hospitals, power stations…. Every premier has this attitude to population growth and house building, an attitude shared with the Rudd Government,". "The energy expended and greenhouse gases emitted from this continual expansion are huge.
"No wonder Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong would not commit Australia to a 2020 target for emissions before the Poznan, Poland meeting next week," he says. "It is impossible to reconcile cuts in emissions with Australia's continued population growth. Australia's very high population growth rate will make it impossible to achieve acceptable greenhouse emission targets.
“Professor Garnaut told us that a10 per cent cut in emissions by 2020 involves a 30 per cent per capita cut; three times more difficult.
"Surely the Rudd Government can do the simple maths. Why does it persist with such high population growth rates? The answer lies in its priorities. It has done the maths, it does know the answer, it pursues the same business-as-usual economic goals as its predecessors (ever more population and economic growth) while paying lip service to climate change and environmental sustainability. We know this because Minister after Minister has refused to meet with SPA and discuss this matter or even to answer questions addressed to it.”
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has announced that as at June 2008, Australia's population had grown to 21,374,000, an increase of 1.7 per cent or 359,000 people. “Such growth rates are characteristic of Third World countries but most unfortunately for our children’s future, it’s occurring in Australia with the highest per capita emissions in the world” concluded Dr Coulter.
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