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The Forum > Article Comments > The necessity of protecting the natural world > Comments

The necessity of protecting the natural world : Comments

By Sheila Newman, published 1/11/2007

The more of other creatures and the fewer of us, the better for the planet, and for those who will inherit the mess we are making.

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We are a species in plague proportions. We are destroying the planet and the only way to reduce the impact of our devistation is to either dramatically change the way we interact with our environment or simply stop breeding at our current rate.

There is a strong statistical corellation between literacy and its impact on a country's birth rates, health and economic development. If we focus on education in the third world maybe we can slow down the booming population growth rate and learn something about our environment and eachother at the same time.
Posted by Bunny_Firecocker, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 12:00:48 PM
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Dozer,

For an overview of the problem, see this graph from Wikipedia which plots per capita environmental footprint (i.e. consumption) for different countries against rank on the UN Human Development Index (i.e. human well-being and freedom).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Highlight_Findings_of_the_WA_S0E_2007_report_.gif

As you move from the left where the poor countries are, you see that human well-being rises with consumption. The correlation breaks down once you get to a European standard of living, showing that past this point more consumption does not make people better off. It is clear that overconsumption is a real problem. However you will also note that all the high ranking countries consume well above the global average. If it is possible, just by reducing waste, to give people wonderful lives on very low consumption, why isn't anyone doing it?

If your fertility rate stays below replacement level indefinitely and you don't compensate with immigration, then your society will eventually become extinct, just as any rate of population growth, carried on long enough, would eventually lead to standing room only, if it were physically possible. It can take up to 70 years for sub-replacement fertility to stop population growth, because the deaths are in the small elderly cohort and the births in the large young adult one. Here in Australia, from ABS figures, approximately two babies are born and one net migrant arrives for every death. The countries that have extremely low fertility tend to be very crowded places, because of enormous population growth after they industrialised. Britain (not one of them) now has 6 times as many people as in the 18th century. These countries would be very poor if they had to rely on their own resources. There is a big difference between an anorexic starving herself and going on a diet when you are almost too obese to walk. Problems due to a skewed age structure are trivial compared to problems due to overpopulation.
Posted by Divergence, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 1:11:39 PM
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The Australian Government is thinking about setting up a 'consultation blog' to give the public a chance to comment on policy and proposed legislation affecting the environment (and everything else).

If you'd like to help shape this blog then take this quick survey at

www.openforum.com.au/Survey

It could lead to something really worthwhille,

Thanks.
Posted by nickmallory, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 8:25:57 PM
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Whoever wins the election must review how federal and state funds are allocated to large conservations and Trusts that attract large public donations and how these organisations use roll over funds, after claiming that they buy land with endangerd species that needs protection. There is an urgent need to protect small nature reserves. More funds are to be directed to the recognition and purchase of vegetation remnants with recognised high heritage and conservation value to be declared nature reserves when there is an organisation able to support its management. Our wildlife need more care!
Posted by gianni, Tuesday, 20 November 2007 10:41:35 AM
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Dozer, on Tues 6 Nov. wrote:

"There appears to be an assumption that somehow the Western World “doesn’t get it” about population growth. This is completely wrong- the West has actually stopped reproducing itself at sustainable levels. The average European and Japanese woman bears 1.3 children. In Australia this is 1.76."

1. Our current population numbers are unsustainable: we are fouling our nest and fighting over territory. Why would we try to keep up these never-before behemoth populations, let alone increase them?(You must be completely out of touch with reality. Do you ever go outside the city and suburbs?)
2. Our levels of reproduction are such that our population would keep on growing until about 2040 with zero-net immigration. As it is, between December 2003 and November 2007 Australia's population grew by one twentieth of itself and in that time ABS projected population for 2050 went from 30 million to 34 million.
3. One person in Australia does not stand to be counted alone: they must be counted with their car, their house, wardrobes of clothing, electric devices, and the impact of the extractive industries which provide these things, not to mention the industrial scale cruelty of our farming system and all the soil lost because of it.
4. The economic wealth based on this model is an illusion; our individual activities are more and more in conflict. Choice of living is reduced mostly to wage slavery with increasing insecurity in a Spencerian landscape. Land competition means that the choice of modest self-sufficiency is beyond most people. The collectively suicidal imposition of the profit motive on everything we do and to justify transferring land to fewer and fewer people is horrific and depends on population growth.
5. Australia and the rest of the world were perfectly viable when they had much smaller populations. It is a dogma to insist that we must grow.
6. This dogma is primarily an anglophone economics one. There are many other kinds of economics.
Posted by Kanga, Tuesday, 20 November 2007 2:58:58 PM
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I have been watching your comments on this matter, and to try and save all of nature while we are still growing, is! and Iam sorry to say, its just a whole wast of time and effort. We are the problem!
And until we see what we are doing, there is nothing I can do.

I hope you like the word, EXTINTION! Because you are all looking right down the barrel.

Message to the leaders of the world. The way we are going, in three hundred years, its all over. AND THATS A FACT!
Posted by evolution, Saturday, 24 November 2007 12:32:13 AM
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