Population growth — it’s time we talked about it
|
Australia’s population is currently growing at twice the rate of the rest of the world. Click here or on the image to view a larger version of the graph On Friday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released an update on the nation’s population, which reached 22,066,000 on September 30, 2009. 66 per cent of population growth was due to overseas migration. 34 per cent was due to there being more births than deaths. Like Prime Minister Rudd’s speech yesterday, political discussions about population growth are usually couched in terms such as liveability, innovation, sustainability and planning. Others are more blunt — “Growth doesn’t have to be a dirty word,” Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said yesterday ahead of the Growth Management Summit she’s hosting this week. But the fact is, population growth isn’t a very popular notion. Take this polling from Essential Research from just over a fortnight ago. When asked the question: “It has been estimated that Australia will have a population of 36 million by 2050. Do you think this will be good or bad for Australia?” — this is how people responded:
Drill down deeper and it gets more complicated. Take this set of questions from Essential Research posed in late February:
Pretty politically unpalatable stuff. According to Essential, Labor voters were more likely to agree that having a larger population will help our economy (42%) and disagree that we don’t have the infrastructure and services to manage more population growth (23%). Coalition voters were more likely to agree that we don’t have the infrastructure and services to manage more population growth (82%) and agree that immigration should be slowed as it causes too much change to our society (74%). And Greens voters were more likely to agree that Australia has a fragile environment that cannot cope with a much larger population (66%). This week we’ll be exploring the subject as it relates to areas such as housing, infrastructure, climate change and immigration. Today Bernard Keane weighs in on housing supply, Chinese investors and xenophobia, and Charles Berger expands on the Australian Conservation Foundation’s campaign around population growth and the threat to biodiversity. We also want to know what you think — populate our inbox with your thoughts by emailing boss@crikey.com.au with ‘Population Growth’ in the subject line. |
|
|
|
18 Comments
It’s all a selfish whine because the world’s population will continue to expand and we cannot cull humans or put a little wall around Australia with “do not enter, we are full” on it.
2 billion human beings don’t have enough food, we grow enough for tens of millions and waste billions worth of it every year and then whine that we can’t accept more people.
8 million people come here each year, the country neither sinks nor do we have people bringing their own water or dying of thirst in the streets.
While I respect the environment and have always done my bit to preserve it I find this whinge about population control to be Orwellian and rather selfish and sick.
This is not our island, it is part of the world and we have no right to pretend otherwise.
What are we proposing to do? Penalise couples for having too many children? Implement Hansonesque immigration policies? I just don’t see how people plan to “limit” population in any reasonable, liberalistic and democratic way.
In any case the fact is that some nations are facing a rapidly declining population that threatens the viability of these states themselves. Russia may not be a viable nation in 50 years if population trends continue along their current trajectory; comparatively we are in an envious position. Australia’s geopolitical weight, its long term security, its economic prosperity and the continued vibrancy of Australian society are all improved by an increasing population. It seems like a no brainer to me, the real question is how do we manage it in an environmentally, socially and economically responsible way?
Well, I am probably one of the aforementioned Green voters. And while I strongly believe in aiding the Third World and give to Oxfam and Fred Hollows every month, no, I don’t think we should be increasing Australia’s population beyond current levels (and indeed should be trying to reduce the population in a gradual and sustained fashion).
For one thing, there isn’t much evidence to suggest that emigration from third-world countries will reduce their populations over time. Uganda has the almost the highest emigration rate in the world at 8% per year - yet despite this, its population manages to grow at 3% per year, thanks to high-fertility rates. Without addressing the underlying causes of high fertility absorbing more migrants will at best only buy time for overpopulated countries.
Why is any mention of population limitation immediately met with Tea Party-ish screams of “They’re going to cull humans!” or ” Environmentalists want a one child policy!”? It’s lunatic and doesn’t help the discussion.
What we should be talking about is balancing baby bonuses with baby taxes. Encourage couples to replace themselves, but put a substantial tax levy on further offspring.
It would also tilt the playing field toward satisfying those who fear being outbred by immigrants by making the white middle class the most likely to be able to afford to breed.
As the mother of 3 children, I can’t be bombastic about limiting the number of kids people have. I agree a lot with SHEPHERD MARILYN and insist on what I’ve said before - education, education education. If a responsible govt took the initiative and spent our dollars on educating people, then it may raise peoples’ consciousness. However, the number of kids women are having in this country still isn’t 2 per woman. There are other avenues to explore re conservation of food, water and other resources. Let’s educate people. I also agree, that we need to get rid of just thinking of us on this continent. The world belongs to the world’s people! We should start by acting accordingly!
(It certainly makes using high quality land suitable for growing our food, handed over to wealthy mining companies to mine even more coal - in the NSW Hunter region???) How dumb is that?
SANCHO - I agree. Perhaps we shouldn’t hand out a baby bonus after 2 kids? Or support paid maternity leave for a 3rd child?
There’s only been 22,000 asylum seekers accepted here over 35 yrs? Last year, the immigration figure was over 140,000 people. The present hysteria over asylum seekers arriving by boat is ludicrous - apart from the horrific human misery involved!
We need facts and common sense, not taking advantage of global problems to make stupid and unjust rules etc!
Two words: Human Myxomatosis. You know it makes sense!
Onya Stevo!
Humans are a plague on the Earth,
our cities, teeming sores.
MATTT - So, why don’t you show the way? Get rid of yourself? Or is everyone else to blame! Whose kids would you like to get rid of? Mine? Your mother’s? Come on, don’t stop now!
STEVO - Come on! Perhaps you and MATTT can join hands and ‘do it’ together? Oh! You mean everyone else, and their kids? Of course! Silly me!
Fair dinkum! You make me sick! Do you have any intelligent/helpful titbits to add to this serious issue? Or are you just going to continue to being a mindless s**t? Grow up!
The whole planet is almost at bursting point and short of sprinkling ppl poisoning throughout the world, we are stuffed.
It had been my dream that the politicians of Oz might have become aware of the fragility of Oz eco-systems and just slowed the traffic enough to give this country the time needed to adjust to a population which seems to be exploding.
Alas and alack our politicians aren’t up to running a coffee shop. Their veniality is squalid. For every MacMansion slum it is possible to offer a concomitant disaster committed by a premier of any state, any time, anywhere.
Ladies and gentlemen. I give you the once-fair state of Tasmania, and with one word. GUNS.
VENISE - The name of the game is capitalism at any price! And who cares about the environment, people even? The main players are OK with our population reaching over 30-35? million! If the journalists in the country did their job, they’d be asking the questions you raised Venise, but they don’t? What investigative question did any journalist ask several weeks ago when the pollies were supporting this huge increase in population? Not one of them asked about the supply of housing, water/how? sewerage(where will the waste go?)educational needs, hospitals etc. It’s pathetic! And if a fair dinkum journalist like John Pilger states the bleeding obvious, he’s denigrated and treated with disrespect like Tony Jones/Lateline ABC did the last time! Most frustrating!
I just ‘shakes me head’?
Agree with a lot of the threads above,
Going back to core principles, I believe our current economic models need to be strenously re-examined to confirm they fit to the current paradigm. The reason politicians look to the simple ‘more people’ solution is that they are the ones that have held sway since the industrial revolution in Europe , America and the new world where there was a plethora of resources available and land to colonzie and explore.
Our current economic model with the debt supercycle where every interest plunge we make requires a greater future cycle of growth does not account for a world with limited resources.
The tragedy of the commons is an illustrative paper that should be being mentioned in this discussion. The cost of negative externalities in pollution, social disorder, exploitation are not being met by the market. Where is the ‘invisible hand’?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
If these costs had properly been built in (for example a pollution/resource usage tax) the current imbalances we see in our world would likely be much less of a problem than they are today.
We are tracking towards 9 billion people on the planet, shortages in key resources of the industrial age such as metals, oil and water. Maybe our economic and political models are letting us down?
Sancho
So the notion that we may be penalising people for having children is Lunatic? Hmm, isn’t that PRECICELY the proposal you just put forward??? Lets not debate the socio-economic or personal consequences of that little chestnut shall we?
What per say would you do about immigration considering the majority of population growth is driven by people who were not born here. If you want to limit population growth then you need to limit immigration to, well, zero considering you will have organic population growth to deal with as well. That policy paradigm does remind me of a certain fish and chip shop owner who thought she could dance.
Its crap like this that makes me consider not ticking that “greens” box every time I vote for the senate. Lets make policy that has regressive socioeconomic, security and economic consequences and a tangible negative impact in the lives of real people for some vaguely defined environmental benefit. If you are going to make policy then you have to do it in the national interest, not so you feel better. What is the specific environmental benefit of this policy and is it worth the cost? That is the only question which matters.
In any case no one has established any firm reason we should in fact be limiting population in Australia. Are there specific recourse limitations which cant be managed? Do the environmental consequences outweigh the economic & strategic benefits? Do the personal and social costs of limitation outweigh the benefits? None of these questions have been thoroughly argued.
the man on the clapham omnibus@
While I agree in principle with what you are saying I think you are missing a critical point. More people was not a policy outcome, it was a product of economic and technological reality. The fact is that the current economic model has population limitation in built in its very DNA. Economic development goes hand in hand with literacy rates and higher education levels for women, which in turn go hand in hand with (eventually) negative population growth.
I think you give people too much credit. The current economic model was not designed and neither was the industrial revolution; they evolved out of technological innovation and market processes.
As for externalities, I think bringing a market failure into a discussion on population growth is a little disingenuous. The standard treatment for an environmental externality is internalising said externality in the market process by a Pigouvian tax or some other market based solution i.e. an ETS. Again little to do with population growth unless you plan on accounting for and internalising the environmental cost of having a baby on a decision which fundamentally is not a market based. Put simply you can not impose a solution to market failure when there is no market.
Sancho
So the notion that we may be penalising people for having children is Lunatic? Hmm, isn’t that PRECICELY the proposal you just put forward???
Nope. I said culling humans and one-child policies were lunatic.
Care to rewrite that post to address my actual statements?
One thing that is missing from the discussion is how we will survive when oil runs out, or gets too expensive for us to buy. The way we currently grow our food is very dependent on oil to power our machines and manufacture our fertilisers. Therefore our food prices are very much linked to oil price, and food supply is linked to oil supply.
Have the people pushing to grow our population considered how this will affect us? We already import more than 50% of our oil at a cost of some billions per year, and this number is growing quickly as Bass Strait runs out. We have not done anything to encourage the motoring industry or farmers to use our LNG supplies as a fuel yet, and this sort of change-over would take some time and lots of money. Our cities are congested with cars and trucks, yet almost no money is spent on increasing the capacity of other transport systems. Plenty of billions for roads, nothing for rail.
In a recent report UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES) found that “oil shortages, insecurity of supply and price volatility will destabilise economic, political and social activity potentially by 2015”. How will things look here by 2050?
It is magical thinking to assume that everything will be OK just because the Economists tell us so. Quite frankly, their “crystal ball gazing record” has not been so great recently Unless the problems that will be exacerbated by a growing population such as loss of fertile soil, water shortages, loss of biodiversity, insecure and high cost energy, inadequate transport infrastructure, inadquate housing etc) are addressed, we are setting ourselves up for our society to collapse, with all of the accompanying human and environmental costs. Cheap portable energy in the form of oil is the only thing that has allowed the human population to grow so large in such a short time. What do we do when it runs out? We have got major challenges to our civilisation in the very near future, even without factoring in AGW.
Wot LindsayB sed - the entire Western economy, and thereby society, is like an inverted pyramid, teetering on its capstone which is oil. Raise the price (it´s currently$84pb, more for TAPIS) and the West slows, the 3rd World staggers and the new 2nd World (China & India) uses more coal, mostly dirty enodgenous seams.
There is a good argument that the insane price oil reached in 2008, $145pb, was driven by futures dealing as the GFC slowed the real economies (making stuff & selling it) and those with too much cash and too few ethics sought a safe place to stick the filthy lucre, screw the consequences.
Oz is best placed of ANY, repeat any, Western society to survive when the black stuff becomes scarer. Not unscathed, in the sense that our affluently effulent ways will change - for the better IMuHO -, but we´ll continue to eat our own food, live in our own pleasant climate (unlike Euroids & NAmerikans who must heat 4-6 months per year or die) and be relatively free of the riots, civil upheaval, wars and rumours of wars on the other side of Girt´s seas.
On the latter point, it would help if our Tweedledum & Tweedledumber political class, servile apparatchiks & toadying chatterati would just stop forelock tugging whenever our Great & Powerful “Friends” crook their finger.
Rearing Children is giving life, proper life, bringing those into the world who will SERVE much MORE than they take by being here. Natural wedlock is about bringing life; that is why whole people are given eternal life. However dishing out money in the form of baby bonuses for bastards to be produced via IVF seems ridiculous on every account. SANCHO, why should we need to encourage people to have babies? Particularly when it is done in a man made way.
I think raising peoples consciousness through education should not cost money.
LIZ45, I think STEVO and MATTT’s comments are justified. Dinosaurs were made extinct from my understanding because of cannabalism. Cannibalism is simply not conducive to life. Cities are an eyesore as they are so man dominan. Why can man not do things that cares for other life forms here. (drinking of sewage water as is done in London is not my idea of ideal life on earth for anything).
Population does not necessarily grow, so why should humans be even pushing for it. We are not so important as a species to tramp over other life forms to stay around as this in itself is again not life promoting.
Australia can, if we are going to separate from the rest of population, look after what is here as there are MANY OTHER SPECIES on earth to consider. Perhaps not encouraging population growth all over the globe will give a little room to others.