Australia's bizarrely high population growth lies behind many of our problems

From Adelaide Now:

Australia's bizarrely high population growth lies behind many of our worst problems

By GUEST COLUMNISTS
March 03, 2009 12:00am

IN Australia, Right-wing "growthists" demand endless growth of the economy backed by endless growth of population. Forced since late 2006 to accept a serious public debate about water supplies and about how to maintain "growth" without more greenhouse gases, they are nevertheless determined to scotch any discussion about limiting population.

Many on the Left also refuse to debate population matters. They confuse immigrants with refugees and make absurd claims that limiting immigration would tumble us into fascism.

Various Lord Nelsons of the media will put the telescope to their blind eye and discern individual problems - unaffordable housing, environmental destruction, urban crowding, out-of-control greenhouse emissions - while somehow managing to not see any connection to population numbers.

Yet when I turned to the email news group run by the admirable society, Sustainable Population Australia society (www.population.org.au), it was the reverse.

I was inundated with evidence of how our bizarrely high levels of population growth lie behind many of our worst problems.

How could politicians and journalists, and even ordinary acquaintances, keep asserting that we had a falling population when they saw new suburbs going up everywhere? How could they raid the public purse for "baby bribes", claiming that births were not keeping up with deaths, when Australia has twice as many births as deaths?

During the 2006-07 drought, some folk gave up pretending Australia wasn't overpopulated. In fact, Bob Hawke and Bob Brown, two politicians who had long seemed determined to suppress concern about population growth, signalled a seeming change of heart.

In general, Australia's growth lobby might be best described as a well-organised stuff-up. However, not only can it be shown why this group's claims are false but also how and why it deceives itself. It can also be demonstrated why it is necessary to cap Australia's population growth, and that it is perfectly possible to do this without policies that are inhumane towards families and immigrants.

The population debate is a debate that we can no longer avoid.

Getting it wrong - as almost all government and business policies currently do - will lead to disaster. Getting it right will make a huge difference to the quality of life of our children, and also to those other species with which we share this unique continent.

Australia's population boosters continue to spread the myth of an empty land. In 2001, a growth-obsessed lord mayor of Brisbane, Jim Soorley, told the press Australia needed to triple its population in 20 years. Former Victorian premier Steve Bracks unveiled plans to increase the state's population by one million by 2025. South Australian Premier Mike Rann planned to raise immigration to SA to 50,000 a year and lift the population half a million by 2050.

Such boosters stand in a long tradition. They manage to believe that the world as a whole may be overpopulated, but Australia is a special case and actually needs more people. Overpopulation, they argue, is always over there. Who cares if the Coorong dies?

This belief that Australia has no limits lies deep in our culture. Yet population growth lies behind most of our troubles: Congested cities, bizarre housing prices that turn couples into mortgage slaves who work absurd hours and neglect their children, the endless ongoing destruction of environments and other species, water shortages, falling food security, greenhouse emissions. The list goes on.

I determined to write a book that would refute the boosters, and show why and how we can safely and humanely cap Australia's population.

BIGGER BUT NOT BETTER

• There is a powerful lobby concerned not with whether human life (or that of other species) would be better in a "larger" Australia, but with profits.

• Profits are likely to be much larger in a more populous Australia. More people means more customers, and more sales.

• In fact, this lobby insists that Australia, a First World country, must grow at faster than the average population growth rate of Asia (now 1.1 per cent a year).

• Australia is now growing at 1.7 per cent a year, on course for 42 million by 2050, and more than 100 million by 2100.

This is an edited extract from Mark O'Connor's preface to Overloading Australia: How governments and media dither and deny on population, published by Envirobook.

Original article

Aim for a sustainable population

Aim for sustainable population and generous immigration

CHARLES BERGER
13/02/2009 9:25:00 AM

Last October, the Commonwealth Treasury released modelling intended to inform the design of the Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme. The modelling assumed net migration to Australia of 150,000 people a year through to 2050, which would result in an Australian population of about 33million by 2050.

Operating on an assumption of 200,000 a year in the last half of this century, Treasury's modelling envisages about 45million Australians by 2100.

Pause for a moment to consider whether you support an increase in Australia's population that would, among other things, transform Melbourne and Sydney into mega-cities of 10 million residents each.

Now consider that the Treasury's assumptions about Australia's population in advising the Government on climate change were woefully on the low side.

Australia's actual net migration in 2006-07 was 177,600, the highest on record at the time. The preliminary net migration figure for 2007-08 is 213,500. Because the Government further increased skilled migration numbers in 2008, it is likely net migration for 2008-09 will be higher still. In fact, we are now roughly tracking a ''high-growth'' scenario developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2006, which projects an Australian population of more than 62million and growing by 2100.

There is a real difference between an Australia with a stable population of perhaps 25 million to 30 million people and an Australia with twice that number and still growing fast. Our ability to cope with climate change and manage our environment sustainably is vastly improved with a lower, stable population.

It is not only the Treasury assumptions for its climate change advice that now appear completely superseded by population growth. Most state planning frameworks, including Melbourne 2030, were based on population estimates that are now laughably out of date, largely due to the massive increase in migration begun by the Howard government and accelerated under the Rudd Government.

As a result, state and local planning schemes for housing, water supply, electricity, health care, education and transport are becoming redundant almost before the ink is dry on them. Victoria's latest State of the Environment report concludes that development on Melbourne's urban fringes is driving the loss of natural habitat and biodiversity, degrading waterways, taking up good agricultural land and creating a host of other pressures.

In this context, the release of the book Overloading Australia by Mark O'Connor and Bill Lines has sparked another round of debate about Australia's population. Some commentators have been quick to detect a murky agenda of xenophobia hovering behind a green cloak in the population debate. They are right to be suspicious. Population control movements have been associated in the past with anti-migrant agendas and coercive birth control policies in developed and developing countries. In light of this dark history, it is critical for those who advocate population stabilisation to reject any such association unequivocally.

And yet it is possible to argue for a sustainable population policy that includes some limits on migration without being anti-migrant. When I was in law school in the US, I spent many late hours volunteering at a legal clinic that represented refugees making application for asylum. I feel deeply that one of the true measures of a society's ethics is how it treats refugees and others on the wrong end of the modern global economy.

Many people may not realise that in recent years more than half of Australia's permanent migrants have been through the skilled migration stream, compared with only 7 per cent of the total being humanitarian migrants and 25 per cent family migrants. So having a sound population policy that brings migration back down to reasonable levels does not mean shutting the door on refugees. In fact, Australia could even increase its refugee intake, while still tracking for stabilisation of the overall population by about 2050, if we reduce skilled migration substantially.

Since most of the recent increase in migration is attributable to perceived economic requirements, not humanitarian or family obligations, perhaps we should scrutinise more closely the claims by industry that they are needed to meet ''skills shortages''. One wonders whether such claims are really just code for ''lower wages''. The truth is, the rapid increase in skilled migration is being used as a crutch for the economy, a way of providing a short-term boost to things like housing construction and retail demand but without any serious reckoning of the long-term consequences. Relying on migration to prop up sectors of the economy also diverts us from the task of devising more sustainable solutions.

In trying to ease the pressure overpopulation and excessive consumption are having on our planet and its ecological systems, we must debate immigration and demographic patterns while keeping Australian values of justice, equity and fairness front and centre.

Those who are sceptical of calls for a sustainable population policy are also fond of pointing out that our modern, high-consumption lifestyle is the most pressing cause of our environmental problems. They are correct that we must tackle our high pollution and consumption levels and shift to a more sustainable lifestyle. According to the World Resources Institute, Australia's greenhouse pollution level of 26tonnes of CO2-e per person per year is double Germany's, six times China's and 11 times Indonesia's.

But, while a lower-impact way of life must be a top priority, we must also understand that a rapidly growing population will make that transition much more difficult. For instance, in 2002, a CSIRO report analysing the possible consequences of different population levels for Australia found a 28 per cent increase in the nation's population by 2050 would lead to 20 per cent more energy use and greenhouse pollution, 25 per cent more urban water use and higher food import requirements (especially for fish and vegetables), among many other impacts. The sobering reality is that the growth of a consumption-intensive population in Australia is seriously damaging our environment. Despite these pressures, Australian governments have continued to pursue high-population-growth strategies or have had no coherent demographic policy at all. The baby bonus (or the new plasma screen bonus, as they call it at one major retailer) is an example of such a misguided policy.

Australia now needs to shift its focus to policies that seek to match human populations and consumption levels within nature's carrying capacity, while transforming our economic and social systems to function within the limits of ecological systems.

We should also support programs in high-fertility countries that improve education and maternal and child health care as well as provide sustainable economic opportunities. The good news is, these programs are the most effective means of reducing fertility and promoting sustainable development. We can achieve a sustainable population while discharging our ethical obligations to accept refugees and play a positive role internationally. It is not only achievable: our future may depend on it.

Charles Berger is director of strategic ideas at the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Original article

I found some of the reader responses to this article interesting.

One reader called "Katherine" commented:

It is absurd that our Government is pursuing high population growth while, at the same time, having no population policy at all. It is also odd that the motives of environmentalists who question immigration-fueled population growth are sometimes deemed suspect. In contrast the business interests that profit from population growth (and lobby for it) are seldom subjected to scrutiny.

I would argue that the Government does have a tacit population policy: import as many people as quickly as possible!

As for the question of motives, Mark O'Connor and William Lines made this point in their book Overloading Australia:

"In general, rather than opponents of high immigration having a hidden agenda, it is immigration's advocates who have a personal or institutional vested interest, whether they are are ethnic 'leaders' seeking to increase their 'market share', industry groups seeking to increase their business opportunities, or New Class intellectuals expressing their moral superiority."


Another reader called "Milly" wrote:

We in Australia have a right to control who comes here to live, and how many. It is not about being "anti-migrant" or discriminating according to nationality. It is about numbers. Without people emigrating, our gross numbers are increasing, and already our environment is under stress. Garnaut's report is being virtually ignored, and the threat of losing our MDB food-bowl is not even making any impact in Canberra! Kevin Rudd is denying and ignoring climate change. We cannot reduce our greenhouse gas emissions or have any real conservation while our numbers are increasing, deliberately. Only few people benefit from our heavy immigration program. With contradictory policies from our government, they are obviously not taking our environment seriously and future generations will pay the price for their short-sightedness and greed.

Milly is correct. For conservationists (which I am not even though I obviously share their concerns about the ruinous environmental impacts of population growth), the issue is about numbers and numbers only.

To quote O'Connor and Lines again:

"Questioning population and especially immigration will always attract controversy. But conservationists need not involve themselves in debates as to whether our national identity benefits or suffers by a very large influx of people with different cultures or values. (Although this is an important debate to have.) Conservationists need not even be interested in the effects on living standards, life-style, house prices, or security from terrorism. The conservationist's main point is that all groups coming to Australia aspire towards the same high-consuming material culture and lifestyle. In terms of their impact on nature in Australia, differences in language or ethnicity are irrelevant. Numbers, not culture, count."

Rudd evading the question of population

From Online Opinion:

Population pressures

By Barry Naughten
Posted Thursday, 22 January 2009

The Rudd Government has allowed vested interests to veto serious action on climate change.

Rudd himself has rationalised this with an argument about rapid population growth but evades the question of population policy. This comment takes up aspects of the nexus between population policy and climate change.

The White Paper’s conditional target for 2020: the backdown
In its December 2008 White Paper on CO2 reduction schemes, the Rudd Government failed to adopt the “conditional” abatement option of 25 per cent reduction relative to 2000 levels by 2020, as recommended in the Garnaut Report. Instead, the Government has adopted the far more modest target of 15 per cent reduction for 2020.

A reduction commensurate with the 25 per cent cut would be required internationally if global concentrations in the atmosphere were to be held to no more than 450 ppm CO2e, thereby significantly reducing the risk of “dangerous” climate change. Such a path would also require countries such as Australia to adopt 90 per cent emission reduction by 2050.

Other examples of weakening resolve evident in the White Paper included its excessive allocation of free emission permits to trade-exposed industries and unconditional payments of as much as $3.9 billion in free permits to coal-fired generators.

Professor Garnaut has harshly criticised the Government for caving in to the pressure from vested-interests in what has been the most expensive, elaborate and sophisticated lobbying pressure on the policy process ever.

In the White Paper, a lower, “unilateral” target of 5 per cent reduction for 2020 is based on an assumption of no comparable burden being accepted by other countries. The purpose of the higher “conditional” rate is to enable Australia play its part in encouraging a sufficient and co-ordinated response from the rest-of-the-world.

The next major step in these international negotiations is in Copenhagen on December 7-18, 2009 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. This will be the first test for the most critical player, the United States under the new Obama Administration.

The urgency of such action is heightened by indications that an Obama Administration may systematically conflate climate change with a bogus campaign - supported by neo-conservatives, “oil hawks” and others - urging US independence of “foreign” oil.

Rudd’s “population gambit”
Prime Minister Rudd’s rationale for rejecting the “conditional” 25 per cent abatement option is that Australia’s population growth is high relative to Europe’s. His claim was that “If the Europeans were to embrace the same per capita obligations that we're about to embrace, then you'd be seeing European reductions of the vicinity of 30 per cent”.

Consistent with this claim, the White Paper states that the 15 per cent cut in Australia’s emissions is equivalent to a 34 per cent cut in per capita emissions. Similar calculations show the 25 per cent cut to be equivalent to a 42 per cent cut in per capita terms, in both cases assuming a projected population of 24.6 million in 2020.

This 2020 population projection amounts to as much as a 44 per cent increase on the 1990 level, or a 29 per cent increase on the 2000 level. The Bureau of Statistics (ABS) projects that by 2056, Australia's expected resident population (ERP) could be between 31 and 43 million people. These are extraordinarily high figures for a fragile land under increasing stress, as documented for example in Jared Diamond’s chapter on Australia in his book Collapse.

We do need debate about the nexus between population and climate change
Clearly, a lower projected population growth to 2020 and beyond would ease Australia’s burden in meeting a tighter emission target. But what Rudd’s rationale for “15 per cent” ignores is the absence of any explicit population policy that takes into account Australia’s limited “carrying capacity”, especially given climate change that is already “inevitable”.

Yet there is a lack of informed public questioning of Australia’s population goals.

That said, prominent environmentalists such as Ian Lowe and Tim Flannery have long argued the ecological dangers of excessive population growth, not least as one major determinant of unsustainable forms of economic growth.

By contrast, in his comments on the deficiencies of the White Paper, Ross Garnaut says:

Our population grows strongly because, for good reasons, we choose to keep our doors open to people from many lands. Our new citizens need transport, a home with Australian accompaniments and access to employment income - all of which generate greenhouse gas emissions.

Other environmentalists such as George Monbiot also discount population growth as an issue comparable to, and relevant to the excesses of consumerism or “affluenza”.

Indeed, the role of population growth, whether due to natural increase or to immigration, is “difficult” for many reasons - political as well as technical.

With respect to natural population increase, it is generally agreed that improved living standards, personal security and education, and especially the empowerment of women, tend to reduce family sizes. But impacts on population growth will also depend on factors such as longevity and age-specific death rates.

The case of “dangerous” climate change shows that affluent states can impose burdens on the less affluent majority of the world’s population. Along with pricing emissions and a variety of other “complementary” mechanisms and abatement policies, this burden can be lightened by curbing excesses of both per capita consumption and of population growth, especially in the affluent countries.

“Lifeboat earth” and right-wing politics of climate change
Immigration and population movements also encompass controversial aspects of population debate.

On the extreme isolationist and elitist right-wing of environmentalism is Garrett Hardin’s notion of “lifeboat ethics”. This envisages the inhabitants of affluent states, having heedlessly created a global environmental crisis such as “dangerous” climate change, then withdrawing behind their own borders to repel environmental refugees by all means deemed necessary. The image is of a “lifeboat” that will capsize if too many boarders are admitted. The Howard government was not averse to playing on such xenophobic fears, when electoral advantage could be had.

Climate change denialists and the “adaptation only” policy pessimists alike can offer only a business-as-usual scenario, both groups failing to support strong abatement of global greenhouse gas emissions. In such a business-as-usual scenario, the affluent states - having predominantly caused the problem - can use their wealth to adapt to such climate change as impacts on their own regions, at the same time choosing to ignore the consequences for the more vulnerable and less self-reliant rest-of-the-world.

Repelling environmental refugees by force - the lifeboat image - is just one component of such a business-as-usual strategy, albeit one rarely highlighted publicly. The Canadian journalist Gwynne Dyer has documented military establishments around the affluent world more-or-less secretively planning for just such an eventuality.

Whatever their views on population policy, part of the reason that progressive environmentalists push for sufficient action on abatement of global greenhouse gas emissions is precisely so that such a “Hardin” scenario, catastrophic for human civilisation and humane values, will not come about.

Conclusion
The main conclusions are twofold.

First, the Rudd Government’s rejection of the 25 per cent reduction proposed in the Garnaut report is reprehensible. This is especially so in a political sense, with the Government having rejected any notion of blocking with the Greens on the issue, instead openly seeking to negotiate just with the Coalition, a strategy that risks even further dilution of targets, and offers little prospect of dividing the main political adversary.

Second, Rudd’s population gambit has, if inadvertently, highlighted the role of population growth, not least in magnifying greenhouse gas emissions. Like most of its predecessors, the Rudd Government has sought to keep population policy off the agenda. Its rational and balanced discussion should not be inhibited by “elaborate and sophisticated lobbying pressures” such as those identified by Garnaut.

Barry Naughten was a senior economist with ABARE, specialising in technology-based energy systems analysis. Currently he is at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (CAIS), ANU, Canberra.

Original article

The threat of population growth

From The Age:

Population Australia's 'big threat'

Peter Ker
January 24, 2009

PROMINENT Australians have thrown their support behind a controversial new book which argues that population growth is the biggest threat to environmental sustainability in this country.

In a provocative attack on water conservation schemes, such as Melbourne's Target 155, the book Overloading Australia urges Australians to ignore water conservation, forcing politicians to rethink population and immigration policy.

Focusing on perhaps the most taboo aspect of environmental debate, authors Mark O'Connor and William Lines have argued that pro-immigration and "baby bonus" policies are at odds with plans to reduce carbon emissions and secure water supplies.

"The task of simultaneously increasing population and achieving sustainability is impossible," the book argues.

Predicting Australian cities will suffer more congestion, pollution, loss of biodiversity and diminished services, the authors argue there is no point conserving water "until we get restraint in population".

O'Connor said his background was largely in poetry, yet despite his lack of conventional expertise in demography and population studies, his book has struck a chord with prominent Australians and increasingly echoes the views of leading environmentalists.

Former New South Wales premier Bob Carr has agreed to launch the book next week, and has lauded O'Connor's previous books about the perils of unchecked population growth.

The Australian Conservation Foundation has also called for a "substantial reduction" in the nation's skilled migration program in this year's budget.

In its budget submission, the foundation said Australia's population needed to be stabilised at "an ecologically sustainable level".

"Population increase makes it harder for Australia to reduce carbon pollution levels and is placing immense stress on state and regional planning, infrastructure and ecological systems."

The comments will resonate with the Brumby Government, which has presided over an increase in total emissions in recent years, despite improvements in emissions on a per capita basis.

Monash University population expert Dr Bob Birrell, who has read Overloading Australia, said despite the global nature of the emissions problem, national borders still mattered because people tended to adopt the typical emissions profile of the nation they lived in.

"When you add an extra million in a society like ours you are imposing a very considerable additional burden, there is no way of escaping it, and that's the key to understanding why the population issue is so serious in Australia; we live very high on the hog," he said.

Australia will welcome a maximum of 203,500 new migrants this financial year, with skilled migration accounting for 133,500 of those places, and refugees just 13,500.

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the Rudd Government had started developing a longer-term migration plan that would consider "net overseas migration rates and the impact of demographic changes".

Victoria has swelled by about 1500 people a week in recent years, a rate that Premier John Brumby has described as "about as fast as we want to go".

Original article

Put quality of life first

Barry Cohen, former Federal Labor MP, asks some tough questions about the Rudd Government's massive immigration program.

From The Spectator:

Balance population with quality of life

Barry Cohen
Wednesday, 10th December 2008

Unless I’ve been grievously misled, global warming/climate change is caused by the excessive amount of carbon emissions poured into the atmosphere. The major offenders are the developed countries, and the more affluent members of them in particular. Near the top of the list is our good selves with a footprint Ian Thorpe would envy.

And what, I hear you ask, has been Australia’s response? Well for starters, the government has ratified Kyoto; it is developing a carbon trading emissions scheme and is investing in a range of alternative energy proposals, including hybrid cars, solar energy, clean coal, wind and much more. Australia is taking global warming seriously. There are no sceptics or deniers in the Rudd government.

There is one problem. An increasing number of people are finding it difficult to equate our climate change initiatives with our immigration policy. Carbon emissions, we are told, are caused by people and affluent people in particular. Ergo, the more affluent nations are the more carbon emitted. You don’t have to be a climatologist, an economist or a demographer to work that out, you just need an IQ above room temperature.

Part of the solution therefore, and I stress the word ‘part’, would be to reduce or at least stabilise our population. As reduction is nigh on impossible, that leaves stabilisation as the only alternative. And what are we doing to achieve that? Increasing the annual migrant intake to 190,000, which is double the number during the first year of the Howard government. That doesn’t include 100,000 temporary skilled workers allowed in on 457 visas.

One has to be very careful here, for anyone questioning immigration numbers runs the risk of being branded a racist. Nevertheless, I believe it behoves me to ask politely, ‘What the hell is going on?’ If there was a public debate about the level of immigration in the run-up to the last election, I must have missed it. Now, however, we find both government and Coalition united in favour of a dramatic increase in our annual migrant intake.

For 2008-9, the projected figure is 203,800 plus 100,000 on 457 visas. When the Chifley government initiated the post-war immigration programme, the slogan was ‘Populate or Perish’. One justification was that having just fought a ferocious war with Japan, we needed to build up our population to defend Australia against ‘the yellow peril’. The White Australia policy was alive and well. Our population of six and a half million could not justify our occupation of such a vast empty continent. Economies of scale would enable us to produce goods at a lower price and increase our ability to export.

Only the last of these three reasons has any validity today, and even that is questionable. Our export income is no longer dependant on the mass production of consumer goods. Specialised quality production, agriculture, mining, tourism and educational services earn most of our foreign currency.

The latest excuse for increased population is a shortage of skilled labour. Those arguing the case may be right, but in doing so they should answer the following questions: how many of our current unemployed can be trained to fill these jobs? What effort is being made to train unemployed Aborigines in northern Australia where the mining boom is creating demand for the many skilled and highly paid jobs available, or do we believe they are incapable of being trained? If more skilled labour is required, why can’t we cut, at least, temporarily, the numbers brought in under family reunion and humanitarian categories? Halving both categories would reduce the annual intake by 35,000. What impact will the current increase have on our population level? When will we achieve those levels? What then? Where will new migrants live? Where will the water come from to service them?

I could continue, but I’m sure you get my drift. Which brings me to my life-long obsession, that governments never connect the dots between increasing population numbers and the ‘crises’ that daily beset our citizens — congested roads, air and water pollution, prohibitive land prices, housing shortages, overcrowded hospitals and schools and so on. And that’s before the impact of climate change.

Why am I so obsessed? I was born in 1935 when Australia’s population was around five and a half million. When I became an MP in 1969 it was 12 million. It is now 21 million. In my lifetime the population has almost quadrupled.

On 10 June 1970 I asked PM John Gorton for a cost benefit analysis of immigration, and in a speech that followed asked, ‘We all know that if we follow unthinkingly the present immigration programme we will reach any figure we care to name: 25, 50, 100, 200…. The question is, when? Will it be by the year 2000, 2050, 2100, 2200 or 2300?’

The above led to the then minister for immigration, Phillip Lynch, appointing Professor Borrie to lead an inquiry into population. Unfortunately, the Borrie Report, when tabled, avoided the question of numbers. In fact, no federal government has been prepared to answer the following question: How many people can Australia contain and ensure that each and every citizen has a genuine quality of life?

If our population doubles in the next 40 years, as it has done in the past 40, what will life be like in Melbourne with seven million people and Sydney with eight million? The mind boggles.

All these questions must be asked and publicly debated before any attempt is made to substantially increase our population, and certainly before we take the Garnaut Review seriously.

Original article

Many still in denial about Australia's population explosion

From the Brisbane Times:

Many in denial over rising population

Mark O'Connor
December 19, 2008

The United Nation's Population Fund is concerned population growth in Asia averages 1.1 per cent a year. Australia, as a First World country, should have a much lower growth rate. It does not. By the end of the Howard era, our annual population growth had risen to a stunning 1.5 per cent: almost off the First World scale and high even for Third World countries. (Indonesia's, by contrast, was then 1.3 per cent, but has recently come down, with much effort, to 1.2 per cent.)

Under the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, our rate has increased. According to Bureau of Statistics figures, it is now 1.7 per cent. Both natural increase and net migration continue to rise. At this rate, one which many are determined to maintain or increase, our population will reach 42 million by 2051. By the end of the century, it will pass 100 million.

This is far above any credible estimate of the population Australia could hope to feed.

Troubles will come sooner. This week's government white paper proposes a 5 per cent cut in emissions, but this, like Ross Garnaut's report, assumes large per capita cuts can outpace population growth, like a swimmer prevailing against the tide. But this planning is based on the dubious assumption we are heading for 28 million people living in Australia by 2051, rather than 42 million. If the Rudd Government does not change course, even painful per capita cuts will deliver no overall cuts, but an increase.

Much the same goes for water consumption. El Nino droughts come two or three times a decade, yet state and federal governments are, in effect. gambling it won't happen on their watch. Several of Rudd's ministers, most notably Penny Wong and Peter Garrett, are "population deniers". Even Rudd has been heard repeating the nonsensical claim that "numbers are not the issue". They are.

Some claim Australia is a big country, "boundless plains to share", etc. Yet the geographer George Seddon has remarked Australia is more truly "a small country with big distances". Even our agricultural areas are not so large, or fertile, as population boosters pretend. Wheat is our main crop, yet France, for instance, grows twice as much wheat (and far more of most other crops).

The human as well as the natural environment deteriorates as population grows. Two years ago, the NSW Government instructed Sydney's councils to accommodate an extra 1.1 million people within 25 years. Bankstown, for instance, was told to build 26,000 extra homes. Most councils protested it was impossible to reconcile this with conserving the amenity of the suburbs. Even these draconian plans will be overwhelmed by additional people.

In the Hawke-Keating days, the knee-jerk reaction to any suggestion that population growth, and therefore perhaps immigration, should be reduced was to accuse the critic of "racism". Yet polls show most immigrants think immigration is too high.

But the Government seems asleep at the wheel. The Minister for Immigration, Chris Evans, claims to foresee only "a continuing modest increase in our population levels over coming years".

Others continue to claim that births are not keeping up with deaths. Bureau of Statistics figures show that births each year in Australia are twice the number of deaths, have been so for decades and look like being so for several years more. Baby bonuses are the last thing we need.

Tim Flannery has suggested that, granted the rate at which we are losing soil, Australia's safe carrying capacity in the long term may be as low as 8 to 12 million people. As he points out, humans are extremely long-lived mammals. Population growth, like herpes, is easily acquired but very hard to lose.

In 1994, the Australian Academy of Science held a conference to publicise its findings on population: 23 million people should be our limit. Today, with peak oil and climate change now realities rather than theories, that might have to come down.

Over the years, Australians have been promised a series of points at which population growth would supposedly be capped: Bob Hawke spoke of 25 million, which the Fitzgerald report had suggested might be the limit set by water resources. Within the last decade, Philip Ruddock, as minister for immigration, spoke soothingly of our population naturally peaking at some 23 million (later he said 25 million). Peter Costello's Intergenerational Report claimed that population would be only 28 million in 2051. Our current trajectory is to break 100 million by 2100.

Just as every fat person was once a normal child, so every bloated behemoth nation of 100 million-plus was once a nation of 5 or 10 million, with intact ecosystems and abundant water. Even Java, as late as the early 19th century, had fewer than 5 million people.

Population increase suits governments wanting to please the business community now, by doing something the full cost of which will only emerge over the next 20, 30, 40 or 50 years - far beyond the attention span of three-year governments. There is still a way out and it is not economically naive to think population growth can be slowed.

Much of politics is repetitive and unproductive, but sometimes a logjam breaks. In the past two years, most politicians have ceased being in denial about climate change, greenhouse emissions, limits to water, and peak oil.

All these crises reflect the deeper underlying problem: our population growth is out of control. Waiting for the population debate to begin is like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Mark O'Connor is co-author of Overloading Australia : How Governments And Media Dither And Deny On Population, published by Envirobook.

Original article

Rudd puts immigration over carbon cuts

From Candobetter.org

Surprise, surprise! The Federal Government has welched on its emissions-cut targets to mitigate climate change.

The Herald Sun reported today that the reason given is that the Rudd Government doesn't believe "the world will get its act together on climate change soon."

The global emergency is being treated like some kind of board game. Why don't they simply cut population growth?

You might just as well ask a bunch of lemmings not to take a running jump.

This is from Monday's ABC radio national PM programme. Kevin Rudd comments on the emissions targets that have just been set: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2446990.htm

The Prime Minister defends his 2020 target with the option of going higher if the rest of the world moves, saying it's comparable to Europe's response.

KEVIN RUDD: The EU's 20 per cent target announced over the weekend is equal to a 24 per cent reduction in emissions for each European from 1990 to 2020. Our five per cent unconditional target is equal to a 27 per cent reduction in carbon pollution for each Australian from 2000 to 2020 and a 34 per cent reduction for each Australian from 1990.

That is because Europe's population is not projected to grow between 1990 and 2020. By contrast Australia's population is projected to grow by 45 per cent over the same period.

Note that Rudd totally misrepresents what is happening: The growth is 'projected' ... as if it happened all by itself. Europe has cut back on its growth since the first oil shock. Rudd is setting out purposefully to grow Australia's population enormously. It would not grow much at all by itself and, without his interference (despite the interference of Howard), would stabilise and hopefully decline within a couple of generations. People should understand that Rudd is forcing a population growth policy on Australians and is selling it to them by pretending he has no control over it; allowing them to infer that this is a natural phenomenon. It is not. It is a conscious, coercive political policy carried out by the Federal government with the complicity of the States.

Comment on Rudd's speech from a disgusted correspondent on roeoz@yahoogroups.com: "This means that the Labor Party is fully aware that population growth makes it more difficult to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but have decided to grow anyway. Australians will be faced with making larger cuts in living standards than people in Europe in order to feed the growth monster. We will be sacrificed on the altar of the housing industry by a government that represents business before the people."

Original article

A poster writes:

When are we having a public debate on immigration and population growth?

Our Government is factoring in a population growth of 48 per cent between 1990 and 2020 to meet the 5% reduction of emissions by 2020. As one of the planet's highest per capita carbon emitters, surely our obligation to cut back means we should not be deliberately increasing our numbers? Businesses and land developers benefit from a continual demand for goods are services but most of the population is disadvantaged and have their liveability reduced. More people means additional environmental impacts as more people demand and compete for natural resources. While people are encouraged to live sustainably, and become more conservative in their water and power usage, our government boasts of our high population growth rate! Surely these efforts are contradictory?

Isn’t time we realised that our high and artificial population growth rate is prohibiting our ability to reduce carbon emissions? Just because we have always had a heavy immigration program it doesn’t mean it has to continue! We are not a colony any more, or living in the 1950s. Our high population growth rate could easily be avoided by halting our skilled immigration program. When is the debate starting?

Two Demographic Bulimics

From On Line Opinion:

Australia and Canada: what cost cultural diversity?

By Tim Murray
Posted Tuesday, 16 September 2008

Poet and author Mark O’Connor has written another important analysis of Australia’s ecological eclipse at the hands of the growth cult. While the continent is obviously unique in its botanical character, the similarities with Canada that O’Connor reveals in his description of the evolution of the growth ethic are simply astounding.

Like Canada, “Australia was and still is, even though much trashed and abused, a treasure house of biodiversity,” towards which the people have a somewhat schizophrenic attitude. On the one hand, “Australians are genuinely proud of their wildlife … many people assign a very high, almost religious value to conserving nature”, as evidenced by their tolerance of crocodiles which make it impossible to swim in their tropical waters. Australia also has 10.7 per cent of its land incorporated in a strategic network of parks.

Yet O’Connor writes, “Attitudes to Australia’s biodiversity remain mixed”. It may be inspirational to watch them in flight but “people don’t appreciate kangaroos eating their crops”. Sadly Australian experience shows that democracy is not good at preserving other species - they don’t vote. “(There is) a theme that runs through Australia’s ecological history: the clash between the desire to protect biodiversity versus the need of an ever-growing human population to make a quid from it.”

He had this warning about false confidence in the natural park system:

These parks have supposedly been created in perpetuity; yet there is a risk that further shifts in ideology may leave a future government free to revoke national parks. (It would by then be able to plead the housing and resource needs of a much expanded population, plus its need of export earnings from lands that would be otherwise going to waste.) Developers constantly agitate for governments to become less sluggish in releasing more land.

O’Connor reminds readers that Australia’s ecology was dynamic. While “we might prefer to praise the Aborigines’ achievement in living sustainably with the land for millennia, and contrast this with the damage eight generations of European lifestyle have wrought,” Aboriginal hunters had already modified ecology by the fire regime they imposed before Europeans arrived.

Paul Watson asserts that Aborigines killed off 85 per cent of the continent’s megafauna before the British hit Botany Bay, an assertion that has been contested. Nevertheless, Watson is one of the very few Canadians not given to romantic illusions about indigenous stewardship of precious resources.

The foundation of Australia’s current ecological crisis, and that of Canada’s, is their false self-perception as vast empty lands desperately in need of more people. Two bloated bulimics who look in the mirror and see themselves as Twiggy with lots of room to grow. The myth is best captured by Australia’s national anthem Advance Australia Fair when it says “For those who’ve come across the seas. We’ve boundless plains to share.”

But as O’Connor notes, Australia has only 6 per cent of its land mass proven as arable. For Canada it is 7 per cent with soils marginal by European standards. As for wheat, because Australia provides 20 per cent of the world’s wheat imports, feeding 40 million people, the “baby boomers” argue that Australia could feed a far higher resident population than its current 21 million. But they forget that much of that foreign exchange is needed to pay for the fuel and nitrate fertiliser used for production, and also that soil loss, acidification, and climate change will diminish yields: “Every tonne of wheat still costs some 50 tonnes of eroded soil”, O’Connor observes.

Even so, with the drought tolerant wheat grown in fertile soils in a good year Australia produces less wheat than France, and in a bad year sometimes less than Britain; all at the cost of “fascinating” bio-regions being cleared and species eliminated.

So if the big empty land in fact suffers from a limited carrying capacity, if food self-sufficiency is a myth, if biodiversity is taking a beating, why then does Australia seem in a frenzy to add to its numbers? Canada could be asked the same question. Who drives growth? Cui bono? Who benefits?

The answer might be found in research done by the Australian Greens which revealed that the governing Labor Party of New South Wales received $8.78 million in 1998-99 from property developers, while the opposition Coalition Parties received $6.35 million. Not surprising then that Sydney’s councils have been instructed to accommodate an extra 1.1 million people (an extra 24 per cent) in 25 years so that Australia offers the paradox of a huge country with urban housing prices comparable to New York or London, where land prices double in a decade and its 1.5 per cent population growth is higher than Indonesia’s and indeed many Third World countries.

As O’Connor says:

Local and even national newspapers run a depressing spiral of puff pieces about how we are desperately short of skilled and willing workers - alternately with pieces about how we are desperately short of projects to provide employment. The intended solution is of course an endless cycle (or spiral) of increasing population and increasing construction. If only politicians could give Australia the construction industry its population needs, rather than the population its construction industry would like.

O’Connor cites Australia’s British-style property system for fuelling the drive to: “fill the country with people” by rewarding private speculation in land. He says:

By contrast, the nation’s capital, Canberra, was built on a French-style system, with the government resuming land from farmers at fair but moderate prices, auctioning it as cheaply as possible, and using the profit it couldn’t help making to provide roads, schools, services and an elegantly planned layout. Canberra remains one of the world’s most livable cities, and (for the developers who control much of Australia’s politics) an embarrassing proof that there is a better way.

To footnote this observation it should be noted that Australian population sociologist Sheila Newman has ably documented the relationship between the British property system and the population growth lobby on the one hand, and the French property system and the absence of any meaningful lobby for growth in France on the other hand.

Students of Canadian civic politics know that developers virtually own city councils. What sinister role do they play behind the scenes in framing federal immigration policy or influencing it?

The Urban Futures Institute, a high profile Vancouver-based think tank, is a consistent cheerleader for massive immigration. Its mouthpiece was formerly “demographer” David Baxter who couched his arguments in demographic statistics to prove that he was in possession of a crystal ball, in fact had no credentials as a demographer. He was merely a front man for the real estate industry which fully funds the institute. He was guaranteed an interview by every media outlet when occasion demanded it.

Has any voice of caution or restraint been raised against this mad rush to ecological oblivion? Well there was the Whitlam Labor government of 1972-75 which reacted to the first global oil shock by limiting immigration and population growth. Then the Australian Academy of Science made a major public statement in 1994 that advised that Australia’s population not exceed 23 million and that immigration be half of what it was during the Hawke-Keating era.

The Science Council of Canada issued a similar report in 1975 when it warned that Canada’s population should not go beyond 30 million. The government responded by abolishing the Science Council and then proceeding along a path that saw the land of frozen tundra, lakes and mountains fill up one-fifth of its Class 1 farmland with subdivisions and become a nation of 33 million with the fastest growth rate in the G8 group.

The Australian Democrats came out in favour of zero-net-migration, but the political culture was poisoned. Under the Hawke-Keating Labor governments of 1983-1996 Australia was essentially a “plutocratic democracy” where voters were presented with a Hobson’s choice between parties who were “servants of business-growth lobbies”. While cognisant of conservationist sensibilities, “Hawke dared not offend the growth lobby”.

But even the large immigrant communities were among the 73 per cent of voters who in 1991 said immigration levels were too high, or the 71 per cent in 1996 who held to this opinion. Again, Canadians have affected consistent opposition to immigration in the same proportions, but like Australians, have been presented with a solid parliamentary front in favour of a policy they detest.

But nevertheless, given the scale and persistence of this discontent Labor’s spin-doctors needed to give the old myth of Australia as an empty land a make-over. There was no farmland available and urban land prices were beyond reach, so alright then, it would no longer be Australia’s manifest destiny to build a “great” nation but rather a “diverse” one.

It would become a United Nations of ethnicities and races sustained by permanent immigration long after the pioneering period had past. But the obsession with cultural diversity would trump concern for preserving biological diversity.

O’Connor writes:

Thus instead of being ashamed that we have lost so many of our marsupial species, many Australians on the left seem more ashamed that we do not have flourishing Inuit or Bantu community in their particular city. Quite why it should be Australia’s duty to turn itself into a representative sample of the cultures of the earth is never explained. Instead, there are constant shouts that any reduction of immigration will lead us tumbling back into an abyss of “racism” and “boring monoculturalism”. Thus Labor was able to disguise a right-wing policy of relentless growth as left-wing “tolerance”.

Hawke’s and Keating’s spin doctors even took advantage of the Anglo-Celtic guilt over having immigrated upon the Aboriginal tribes without their permission and violently displaced them. Somehow this became a further reason why high immigration, so long as it was no longer Anglo-Celtic, was essential - as if inviting in the rest of the world would legitimise it.

O’Connor forecasts that the Rudd Labor Government will continue on the traditional quest for economic growth, only addressing GHG issues if they do not compromise this goal. He compares Australia to “a cruise liner whose captain is required to sail in the direction chosen by a deck-steward whose priority is to keep the sun shining on the deckchairs in the saloon section, so that their occupants will order more drinks.”

The metaphor is an interesting one, for Canada too could be compared to a cruise liner. The HMS Ecological Titanic still robotically stopping to pick up more passengers as it ploughs forward towards the iceberg of over-population.

We may, albeit in diminished numbers, adapt to climate change, but we will not adapt to biodiversity collapse. O’Connor spoke of Australia’s botanical and ecological fragility, but this is what environmentalist Brishen Hoff said of Canada: “Our boreal forest continues to experience wholesale clearcutting and relentless road expansion. More water is being diverted from the Great Lakes watershed than what is being replenished, causing the highest lakes (Nipigon, Superior, etc.) to dramatically drop their water levels. I could go on with thousands of examples of species extinctions and worsening environmental quality right here in Ontario and Algoma-Manitoulin all because of human population growth.”

In fact most of the more than 500 threatened species dwell within the range of Canada’s major urban centres where they are imperiled by sprawling subdivisions roughly 70 per cent of which are occupied by immigrants. But remember, mass immigration is to be celebrated in Canada as, in the words of Green Party leader Elizabeth May, “our great multicultural project”.

Like Sydney, Vancouverites are told that they must move over and accommodate another 800,000 migrants in the coming 23 years (24 per cent growth) and appreciate the newcomers for the “diversity” they bring. But at what cost this “cultural diversity”? An infinitely richer, more vital heritage. The biological diversity of the species that this growth will extinguish.

What’s the answer? O’Connor quotes Gordon Hocking of NSW: “As long as we stick with an economic system that needs to perpetually grow we will remain trapped on the road to ecological and climate disaster.” Brishen Hoff would add “None of these symptoms can be reversed without shrinking the size of our economy and then moving to a steady state economy”.

Bulimics gorge, then purge. Let’s hope our national binging ends soon and our demographic weight loss is progressive and incremental rather than dramatic and deadly.

Watch for the upcoming book by Mark O’Connor and William Lines, Overloading Australia.

Tim Murray blogs at (We) Can Do Better. He is Director of Immigration Watch Canada, and Vice President Biodiversity Canada which he co-founded. Tim is a member of Sustainable Population Australia, the Population Institute of Canada and Optimum Population Trust UK. His personal blog is at sinkinglifeboat.blogspot.com.

Original article

Immigration-driven population exposion a disaster for climate targets

From Sustainable Population Australia (SPA):

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.

Source

The case for zero net immigration

From Online Opinion:

Zero immigration and sustainable populations

By Eric Claus
Wednesday, 5 November 2008

In April 2006 the Australian Government Productivity Commission published a report entitled Economic Impacts of Migration and Population Growth. The study included economic modelling of an increase in skilled migration of an extra 50,000 migrants per year, for 20 years, compared to the skilled migration numbers in 2004-05. Some of the conclusions were:

• economic gains accrue mostly to skilled migrants and capital owners (page 151);
• hourly wages will drop slightly under high immigration (page 161);
• the incomes of existing resident workers grows more slowly than would otherwise be the case (page 151);
• these results are consistent with research both in Australia and overseas (page 161); and
• environmental impacts are likely to impose a drag on productivity and living standards, but the details are "too hard" to quantify (page 122).

This is not a report by some racist group that wants to limit immigration to keep Australia white. This is not a report by some deep green environmental group that wants everybody to live in communes and wear jute shirts. This is the Productivity Commission. The Productivity Commission - primarily an economic research organisation.

If the economic case only benefits the capital owners and makes the average citizen worse off economically, without even considering environmental and sustainability impacts, why is it being done?

The obvious answer seems to be that the capital owners are running the show for their own benefit, at the expense of the average Australian. And why shouldn’t they. Their goal is to maximise profits and high immigration helps them do that. High immigration increases the supply of workers. Increased supply of labour, lowers the cost of labour. Lower labour costs means an increase in profits.

High immigration also increases the supply of consumers. Increased demand means higher prices. Higher prices mean increased profits. It’s a double bonus. Higher profits from lower labour costs and higher demand. Whoopee.

But something that obvious would be quickly exposed by the ever diligent media. Or perhaps they have other incentives. On October 28, the Sydney Morning Herald ran an editorial entitled “Keep the doors open”. The sales pitch is that Australia needs high immigration to have solid economic growth and then the implication is that this economic growth will benefit every Australian. But it just isn’t so. The editorial writer’s trick is to say that “the 2006-07 migrant intake benefited the economy by $516 million in the first year” and then we are supposed to think that we got some of that $516 million. The SMH is smart enough to make sure they don’t mention that the average Australian gets none of that massive $25 per person.

With a significant part of newspaper profits coming from real estate advertising, it is not hard to understand why newspapers pump up the housing market, but how far can their logic be stretched. They admit that there is a housing shortage, rents are too high and finance is hard to get in the current climate, so the answer is … wait for it … bring in a lot more people to increase the demand for housing. That will make housing harder to obtain, rents will become higher and finance harder to get, but it will increase profits for the housing industry. At least we know who comes out ahead.

Another angle we hear is that we need immigration because we have a skills shortage. What that really means is: we have a skills shortage at the salaries we are willing to pay. We never have a skills shortage for investment bankers. We always have plenty of them, because they get paid a motza. We have a shortage of qualified tradesmen because it is a really tough job that doesn’t pay very well. If the pay was increased, there wouldn’t be a shortage of qualified tradesmen, but that would reduce the profits of the construction companies and factory owners. The easier solution, for business, is to call for increased skilled immigration to keep wages down and profits up.

The skills shortage is a major change from the usual “can do” attitude of business. For example:

• ask business what we should do about climate change and they respond, “Business can sort that out - use market forces with a carbon trading scheme and use geosequestration in coal fired power plants”;
• ask business what we should do about water shortages and they respond, “Business can sort that out - build new desalination plants, dams and pipelines”;
• ask business what we should do about Fossil Fuel depletion and they respond, “Business can sort that out - replacements for petroleum will be found as soon as the price gets high enough”;
• ask business what we should do about depletion of farmland and they respond, “Business can sort that out - market forces from higher food prices will give farmers incentives to repair their land”; then
• ask business what we should do about the skills shortage and they respond “Oh, nothing we can do. Government needs to bring in lots more skilled migrants or the Australian economy will fall apart.”

Another issue sometimes associated with immigration is the ageing population. Most commentators know that increased immigration doesn’t significantly slow the ageing of the population, because the average age of migrants is only a little less than the average age of the overall population and migrants age, just like existing residents. Not everybody is clear about that, though.

A few years ago, Louise Markus, Federal Liberal Member in the seat of Greenway, rang me in response to a letter I wrote her regarding the negative environmental impacts of increased population. She said something like “But Eric, we need increased immigration to battle the effects of our ageing population.” I said immigration doesn’t do anything for the ageing population and the phone went quiet for a few seconds. She then said “Well I don’t think most of the people in Greenway agree with you on population.” Game, set and match.

What really mattered to her, and to all politicians, is what the majority of voters think. Politicians don’t need to clutter their minds with logical arguments, as long as they are on the same page as the electorate.

It would be easy to blame business for lowering our standard of living and politicians for being their accomplices, but that is wrong. It is NOT up to business to make Australia sustainable (although it would happen more quickly if they led the way). It is up to the citizens of Australia to vote in the politicians who will best serve their interests. Both major parties now serve the interests of big business.

We have given business the goal of making profits for themselves and they have done that very well, and provided us with the goods and services that make Australia one of the best places on earth to live. When business is given limitations and guidelines, they adapt to those guidelines and continue to produce the high quality goods and services that make Sydney such a great place to live.

If Australia adopted net zero immigration and made efforts to become more sustainable, business would adapt and smart businessmen would continue to make millions and billions, because the changes would not be that great. It is also likely that the average Australian would be better off and the average Australian’s children and grandchildren will be better off in the future.

Eric Claus has worked in civil and environmental engineering for over 20 years.

Original article

A cut in immigration needed to cut Australia's carbon emissions

From the Herald Sun:

Immigration must be cut to tackle climate change, says study

John Masanauskas
July 23, 2008 11:52am

IMMIGRATION must be slashed if Australia has any chance of seriously tackling climate change, says a Monash University study.

The report said Australia's high population growth would be a major driver of greenhouse emissions, and would counter tough government measures to reduce carbon output.

But the Rudd Government and its climate adviser Ross Garnaut were ignoring the population issue at their peril, said the study, entitled Labor's Greenhouse Aspirations, by Monash's Centre for Population and Urban Research.

The nation's migrant intake is at record levels, with the Government recently announcing an increase of 37,500 places for 2008-09.

Given current migration and fertility rates, the population will increase by at least 10 million to 31.6 million by 2050.

Monash researchers Bob Birrell and Ernest Healy used computer modelling to predict the effect of population and economic growth on greenhouse emissions.

If no carbon trading scheme is introduced, Australian emissions will reach 797 million tonnes - or four times Labor's target - by 2050, the researchers found.

Emissions would only fall to 502 million tonnes if the nation managed to cut carbon intensity levels by one per cent a year under a tough cap and trade scheme.

"The problem with radical decarbonisation proposals is the limited political feasibility of these measures,'' the authors said.

"It is hard to understand why the population driver has been ignored in the recent debate, including the work of the Garnaut climate change review.''

The authors said that net migration would contribute to most of the 50 per cent increase in Australia's population over the next 40 years.

"Like all Australians they'll be living at twice the standard of living of current residents if the Government's predictions for per capita economic growth are correct,'' they said.

"Clearly, it's not possible to achieve the Government's target of 60 per cent reduction in emissions at the same time we add an extra 10 million people living at twice the current income level.''

The authors called for immigration to be slashed, and the population stabilised at about 22 million by 2050.

Prof Garnaut has predicted the population will reach 47 million by 2100.

The Monash report, which appeares in the latest issue of university journal People and Place, will be released today.

Source


More from ABC News:

Migrants to fuel emissions increase: researchers

Researchers have warned that greenhouse gas emissions will increase dramatically as immigration increases Australia's population.

The Federal Government is being accused of ignoring the role of population growth in Australia's increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Monash University researchers predict the population will grow to 31.5 million by 2050, with almost 10 million migrants making up the increase.

That is despite industry groups warning the workforce is set to shrink as baby boomers retire.

The researchers project emissions will grow to 800 million tonnes annually, about four times what the Federal Government hopes to achieve by 2050.

Dr Bob Birrell has told ABC Radio's AM that population growth is the main driver of emissions.

"It is a puzzle as to why the Rudd Government has made no reference, nor its adviser, Professor Ross Garnaut, to this factor," he said.

"I can only deduce from their behaviour that although they would like to achieve a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, it's a lesser priority than population building policies."

Dr Birrell says the environmental and economic effects of the population increase will eventually flow on to consumers.

"Every extra million associated with migration will add to economic activity and thus, greenhouse emissions, and businesses who are vying for permits will have to pay more because of the competition to get those permits," he said.

"That means of course passing on the costs to consumers, or struggling to compete against imports."

Source

Questions for Kevin Rudd

From Sustainable Population Australia (SPA):

No Commitment to Sustainable Future by Rudd Government

Media Release 17 May 2008
Sustainable Population Australia

“With the announcement by Minister, Chris Evans, that Australia is opening its doors to a massive increase in unskilled migration, the last vestiges of any appearance that the Rudd Government is committed to environmental sustainability or social equity have been swept aside”, said Dr John Coulter, National President of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), today.

“The total intake is planned to exceed 300,000, the largest intake since the migration scheme started in 1947 according to Minister Evans.”

Despite having been asked, Dr Coulter said that “Nowhere has the government answered the following questions:

• How does increasing our population by more than a million every three years make our climate change/greenhouse emission problem easier to solve?

• Every city in Australia is water stressed. How does increasing our population by an additional 5% every three years make our urban water problem easier to solve?

• It is doubtful whether in a climate changed, post peak oil world Australia can maintain water supply to its farmers. How does such rapid population growth make it easier to maintain our rivers, soils and food production?

• Australians have one of the highest per capita environmental impacts in the world. An increase in the Australian population has a larger global impact than the addition of a person just about anywhere else in the world. How does the Rudd Government morally justify increasing Australia’s demand on the global environment at the expense of many peoples far less well off?

• Australia has an acute housing shortage. More and more Australians cannot afford the rising price of a house or rent. One of the main drivers of this situation has been clearly identified as our already high immigration intake. How does Kevin Rudd justify making this situation even worse for ‘working families’?

• Australia has approximately 5% unemployment and another 5% of under employment. How does the Rudd Government justify bringing in unskilled workers when there are Australians unemployed and underemployed seeking work?

• There is a rapidly growing global food shortage. Increasing Australia’s population is leading to more and more high quality, well watered, food producing land going under housing and related urban infrastructure. Where is Kevin Rudd’s much advertised Christian morality?

Source

The case against immigration

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

An inconvenient truth about rising immigration

Ross Gittins
March 3, 2008

JOHN HOWARD never wanted to talk about his booming immigration program. It seems Kevin Rudd's lot doesn't want to either. Why not? Because it just doesn't fit.

For Mr Howard, it didn't fit politically. Didn't fit with the xenophobic rhetoric he used to win votes back from Pauline Hanson and to wedge Labor.

For Mr Rudd, it doesn't fit with any of his professed economic concerns - about inflation, about mortgage stress and about climate change.

You'd hardly know it, but we're in the biggest immigration surge in our history. According to Rory Robertson of Macquarie Bank, net immigration has exceeded 100,000 a year in 12 of the past 20 years, having exceeded 100,000 only 12 times in the previous two centuries

*snip*

The third point in Mr Rudd's five-point plan to fight inflation is to "tackle chronic skills shortages", and part of this is to do so through the immigration program. Clearly, the Government believes high levels of skilled migration will help fill vacancies and thus reduce upward pressure on wages.

That's true as far as it goes. But it overlooks an inconvenient truth: immigration adds more to the demand for labour than to its supply. That's because migrant families add to demand, but only the individuals who work add to supply.

Migrant families need food, clothing, shelter and all the other necessities. They also add to the need for social and economic infrastructure: roads, schools, health care and all the rest.

Another factor is that their addition to demand comes earlier than their addition to labour supply. Unemployment among recent immigrants is significantly higher than for the labour force generally.

Admittedly, the continuing emphasis on skilled immigration - and on the ability to speak English - plus the fact that many immigrants are sponsored by particular employers, should shorten the delay before they start working.

Even so, we still have about a third of the basic immigration program accounted for by people in the family reunion category. You'd expect the proportion of workers in this group to be much lower. So though skilled migration helps reduce upward pressure on wages at a time of widespread labour shortages, immigration's overall effect is to exacerbate our problem that demand is growing faster than supply.

The Rudd Government professes to great concern over worsening housing affordability. First we had a boom in house prices that greatly reduced affordability, and now we have steadily rising mortgage interest rates.

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.

Our immigration program is so big it now accounts for more than half the rate of growth in our population.

It's obvious that one of the quickest and easiest ways to reduce the growth in our emissions - and make our efforts to cut emissions more effective overall - would be to reduce immigration.

Of course, you could argue that, were we to leave more of our immigrants where they were, they'd still be contributing to the emissions of their home country. True. But because people migrate to better their economic circumstances, it's a safe bet they'd be emitting more in prosperous Australia than they were before.

My point is not that all immigration should cease forthwith but, leaving aside the foreigner-fearing prejudices of the great unwashed, the case against immigration is stronger than the rest of us realise - and stronger than it suits any Government to draw attention to.

Full article