Forget the carbon price, forget the opposition’s Direct Action climate plan. Australia could probably meet its targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without either, provided we did one thing. But you won’t hear the politicians talk about it.
A statistical analysis by Crikey, based on data released this week, indicates that if Australia’s high population growth rate were reined in, the country would already be meeting its targets to cut pollution. In fact, we’d probably be under those targets.
The federal government’s data on greenhouse gas emissions for the December quarter points to the major impact the population boom has had on Australia’s emissions. Here’s the Crikey number-crunching that shows why it might be time to talk about the environmental impact of Australia’s growing population. (This is a crude statistical analysis, but you won’t find the government — both major parties support and plan for significant population growth — doing it. So we had a go.)
Australia’s per capita emissions actually dropped between 1989 and 2012. But the population increased by 35% during that period, and overall national emissions soared by 32%. That took national greenhouse gas emissions from 418 megatonnes a year in 1990 to 552 megatonnes in 2012 (a megatonne is 1 million tonnes).
Australia has a high rate of population growth, caused in part by a relatively high rate of immigration. What would the country’s emissions be if that was not the case?
The ABS calculates that in the decade to 2007, the population grew by 1.3% pa on average, with “just under half from net overseas migration” (the rest comes from births). The proportion of population growth coming from migration increased to more than half at the end of that period; last year the federal government said migration “has in recent years had the largest impact on overall population change”. In 2009, migration provided 65% of population growth.
Based on those numbers, if Australia had net zero migration from 1989 to 2012, we can estimate the population would have increased from 16.9 million (1989) to roughly 20.4 million (2012).
And based on the government’s calculation of current per capita emissions, that would give us total national emissions in 2012 of 495 megatonnes. So our actual total emissions are 11.5% — or 57 megatonnes — higher than if we had had net zero migration.
“The short answer is that we may well be meeting that (emissions) target already if we did not have the population boom.”
So what? Well, the body politic is consumed with how to meet the bipartisan target to reduce national emissions to 537 megatonnes of emissions per year in 2020. It’s an issue that has toppled prime ministers, helped decide elections and keeps politicians awake at night.
The short answer is that we might well be meeting that target already if we did not have the population boom.
With the swelling population, it’s a different story. Australia’s headcount stands at a ticker under 23 million. The ABS predicts there will be between 31 million and 43 million of us in 2056. By 2101, the ABS estimates it could be as high as 62 million.
This above analysis is rough and is no substitute for rigorous modelling by teams of economists and demographers. It’s worth bearing in mind that per capita emissions simply divide up national emissions by the headcount, yet a chunk of those emissions are not from individual people, they come from industry (including export-oriented industry). So some of the increase in total emissions would have happened regardless of population growth. Also, it’s difficult to directly compare population growth and emissions for the exact period 1989 to 2012. However, the numbers crunched here do point to an aspect to the climate debate that is seldom discussed at the political level: more people means higher emissions.
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd famously declared he believed in a “big Australia“; in the ensuing criticism both major parties toned down the rhetoric, but neither major party has moved away from significant population growth fuelled by skilled migration.
Tony Mohr, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s manager of climate change campaign, calls for a stabilisation of Australia’s population. “More people in Australia means more roads, more energy use and more greenhouse gas emissions,” Mohr told Crikey. “Population is one driver of emissions growth in Australia.”
He says Australia should address the problem rather than “add fuel”. “We’ve already got a really big emissions footprint … certainly taking another look at our skilled migration would help reduce the growth in our greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.
Mohr calls on politicians to debate the impacts of population growth on the environment and cities. He adds the ACF did not support reducing Australia’s humanitarian intake, which is a fraction of the overall migration intake. In the 2010 election campaign, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said:
“I do not believe in the idea of a big Australia; an Australia where we push all the policy leavers into top gear to drive population growth as high as we can. Australia cannot and should not hurtle down the track towards a big population.”
However, Labor has done little to seriously challenge projections of significant population growth (apart from criticising the 457 visa program). Tony Burke, the federal Minister for Population, has issued 46 media releases this year, but none appear to be about population. Last year Burke issued an 86-page sustainable population policy, which appears to make no recommendations on what Australia’s population should be.
68 thoughts on “The dirty little secret to tackling climate change”
Aidan Stanger
April 21, 2013 at 12:38 pmandrew36 #57
Of course I’ve heard it. I’ve also heard the moon is made of cheese. I go with the evidence, and the evidence is clear that human activity is resulting in a substantial amount of climate change.
John Smith #58>
Though a higher population does make the pollution and native flora and fauna issues harder to solve, keeping the population steady won’t solve the problem either. We need to stop undervaluing the environment.
Clean water is an engineering issue – there are many alternative sources we could take advantage of. Congestion is also an engineering issue – and the infrastructure to solve the problem can bring much greater benefits than having a stable population and doing nothing can.
Unemployment is largely the fault of the Reserve Bank board deliberately keeping interest rates too high, in the mistaken belief that keeping unemployment high is a necessary part of their job of controlling inflation. A bigger population doesn’t mean there’s less jobs to go round, as the number of jobs available isn’t fixed.
We can have a sustainable population that’s higher than Rudd was aiming for. But to do so we must stop treating the environment as worhtless.
Ian
April 21, 2013 at 1:54 pm[email protected],
Sure antibiotics, the green revolution and other technologies have allowed us to increase population phenomenally over the past half century, that is a fact. Can we rely on future technologies to continue providing for more and more people to inhabit the planet for the next half century? I don’t think so especially since we are running out of so many of the resources vital for our existence including as I said, phosphorous.
We agreed that the population growth rate is slowing but it is still growing exponentially and in absolute terms it goes up annually by increasing amounts. For instance between 2000 and 2001 it rose by 76.7 million and between 2011 and 2012 by 93.6 million. This info is available on indexmundi.com.
Now it’s your turn to back up some of your assertions and perhaps explain how phosphorous can be recycled in meaningful quantities.
Any facts you can supply will be handy thanks.
Aidan Stanger
April 21, 2013 at 4:45 pmIan #61
If the population growth rate is slowing then by definition it is not exponential. If it were growing exponentially then thhe rate would not be slowing.
We’re not actually running out of phosporous. The stuff is geologically abundant – the average rock is 0.1% P and some rocks have a much higher content. What we’re running out of are the high quality phosphate reserves, which means the price will rise substantially unless there’s a lot more recycling of it. But even if that wasn’t the case, a lot more recycling would be needed for environmental reasons – a surplus of phosphates in waterways tends to lead to algal blooms, which is likely to result in oxygen depletion where they subsequently decay.
At sewage works, recycling can be done by physical, biological and chemical methods. A lot of it stays in the sludge when it is separated from the water. That which is in the water can be precipitated out, or plants can be used to remove it, or IIRC it can be filtered out somehow, though I don’t know the details.
There’s also scope for more P recycling in intensive farming.
Of course phosphorous can also be recycled by nature (with plants removing it from seawater) albeit at a slower rate.
Aidan Stanger
April 22, 2013 at 11:11 amRoy Inglis #60
The link you cite doesn’t appear to contain any examples of a shortage of resources limiting growth. The discovery of errors in some of the criticism of the Club Of Rome’s work doesn’t say much about the basic point they were trying to make, and the comparisons with reality are too limited to draw any useful conclusions.
At the mement, growth isn’t being limited by a shortage of natural resources, but rather by economic factors. Environmental degradation is a different issue, and is the result of failing to properly recognise the value of nature.
Ian
April 22, 2013 at 5:35 pm[email protected],
You are playing with words which is not the reason I got into this debate so I’ll say no more.
Roy Inglis
April 22, 2013 at 9:09 pmAidan Stanger @ 64
Astounding conclusions.
“There are none more blind than those that will not see.” J.Heywood 1546.
Ian @ 65 is right.
Julien Peter Benney
April 28, 2013 at 3:02 pmMicroseris,
the myth to be dispensed with is that Australia has ever been a first-world nation: it never has and never will be.
What Australia has been ever since European settlement is a high-income mineral-exporting nation, whose closest allies are South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and the Gulf oil states.
These nations have the very lowest primary productivity in the world, but are sufficiently rich in inorganic resources that they match the high-productivity extratropical northern and western hemispheres in wealth in a manner Michael Huston overlooks somewhat.
However, whilst the extratropical northern and western hemispheres tend to lean politically to the left because of their mountainous terrain and limited high-cost housing stock, Australia and its allied nations are mainly flat and have abundant housing space. Along with the strong political power of their mineral companies, who largely control government policy as even the sceptical Kevin Williamson on page 137 of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism admits, this causes Australia and allied states to lean politically far to the right, with much smaller welfare states and very limited business regulation. These drive the high immigration and fertility in Australia, although as Tim Flannery and Jared Diamond show Australia has been overpopulated relative to the carrying capacity of its ancient soils for a good fifty years.
The only way to deal with the immigration problem lies in making Australia’s relative living costs much higher – which actually means the “Enriched World” (extratropical Eurasia and the Americas, plus New Zealand) needs to lower relative living costs through smaller government, which the political power of unions and large welfare populations strictly forbids.
Ian
April 29, 2013 at 1:11 am[email protected],
So are you saying its the high cost of welfare in the northern and western hemispheres that are pushing immigrants to come to Australia and smaller government is the answer there? I’m pretty sure welfare costs have little to do with it and smaller government, the right’s answer to everything, is also no answer.
Good healthcare and education are services that affluent societies seek. They can be provided as a public service via governments without a profit motive or by private enterprises with profit or other motive, (eg religious) driving them. Where profit is the motive, health provision or education is merely a means to achieve that profit and only those that can afford it get the service. (Of course that is so if governments don’t intervene by providing subsidies or other inducements.)
Australia is actively seeking immigrants (while at the same time actively discouraging refugees) and the mining development boom (in order to a large extent to convert natural assets into consumption) is what at the moment is driving the immigrant boom.
In fact it is the austerity drive in the northern and western hemispheres that seeks to gut the welfare state and government services that creates economic refugees – not the reverse. The financial crisis has been caused by the sort of policies you are seeking to impose.
There is more to say but I will leave it at that for now.