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The Forum > Article Comments > Common myths of the population debate > Comments

Common myths of the population debate : Comments

By Michael Lardelli, published 13/3/2009

How bad does the degradation of our environment and the decline of our economy need to be before we accept the need for a smaller, stable population?

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I think most of us would agree that there is a limit to the number of people this planet can sustain. It may be 10 billion or 100 billion but there is a limit. The only debate is over what the limit is and how do we prevent the human population from reaching the limit and destroying the planet.
We are currently witnessing planetary degradation such as diminishing water supplies and agricultural land. We also have increasing species extinction, and reducing resources. In fact there is talk of peak everything.
This is an extract from Richard Heinberg’s book Peak Everything.
Link: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/34357
The great transition of the 21st century will entail enormous adjustments on the part of every individual, family and community, and if those adjustments are to be made successfully, rational planning will be needed. Implications and strategies will have to be explored in nearly every area of human interest - agriculture, transportation, global war and peace, public health, resource management, and on and on. Books, research studies, television documentaries, and every other imaginable form of information transferral means will be required to convey needed information in each of these areas. Moreover, there is the need for more than explanatory materials; we will need citizen organizations that can turn policy into action, and artists to create cultural expressions that can help fire the collective imagination. Within this whirlwind of analysis, adjustment, creativity, and transformation, perhaps there is need and space for a book that simply tries to capture the overall spirit of the time into which we are headed, that ties the multifarious upwellings of cultural change to the science of global warming and peak oil in some hopefully surprising and entertaining ways, and that begins to address the psychological dimension of our global transition from industrial growth to contraction and sustainability.
The sooner we accept that there are limits the sooner we can work towards creating this brave new world.
Posted by John Pratt, Saturday, 14 March 2009 1:02:02 PM
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Andrew Bartlett wrote: "I haven't seen any sign of Australians reversing the growth in our individual consumption - and if we keep shifting the blame to migrants, we can keep pretending we don't need to."

If that case, wouldn't it be wise and logical to place a moratorium on further immigration until Australia's growing per capita consumption rates have been reversed?

"Still, if we just keep those Bangladeshis poor (and in Bangladesh), there's obviously no problem."

I wasn't aware that Australia was required to accept the world's poor masses and clothe, feed and shelter them.

Care to explain why the Australian people are obliged to share not only their wealth but also their country with foreign peoples who have already ruined their own countries largely through overpopulation?

Call me a cynic, but there doesn't appear to be anything particularly "humane" about Third World countries dumping their surplus populations on Australia. In fact, one could argue that it is nothing short of a policy of Lebensraum.

Generally speaking, Andrew, it seems to me that you are emotionally and ideologically committed to ongoing immigration-driven population growth irrespective of the substantial environmental, social and economic costs it inflicts on Australia. You care not one iota for the wellbeing of your fellow Australians. Rather, you are concerned solely with "helping" the citizens of other countries pursue their own neo-colonial ambitions.

I think Mark O'Connor summed up the attitude of "immigrationists" such as yourself rather well:

"In short, for those emotionally committed to immigrationism the optimum population debate is a morass. It involves issues many of them are either not expert in or simply don't care to think about. Many immigrationists prefer to see their creed simply in terms of human charity, of helping people. Yet, like the Unjust Steward in the Bible, they try to give away what is not quite theirs to give. In a more modern analogy, the would-be charitable immigrationist is a bit like someone who writes a check to the Salvos on someone else's account - and without even finding out if the account has the required funds."

http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0402/article_318.shtml
Posted by Reyes, Saturday, 14 March 2009 3:44:20 PM
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For whom do you speak
Populationist freak?
I'll read what you wrote
If it's a suicide note

From your ivory te-nure
You hurl your ma-nure
Not a toss do you give
To "live and let live"

Why so terrified
of people multiplied
If climate disaster
Will grant your wish faster?
Posted by fungochumley, Saturday, 14 March 2009 3:50:33 PM
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Slug wrote: "We do not have the firepower to sustain a smaller population. We would be taken over in no time."

Why would Indonesia, China or any other Asian country bother with an armed invasion of Australia when they can simply send their populations here legally through the front door?

Just because a "takeover" occurs through waves of peaceful immigration rather than through armed force doesn't make its impacts any less profound. Indeed, I would argue that the largely unconsidered result of past and present immigration policies is that Australia is in the process of a dramatic demographic transformation probably unprecedented in human history except for situations involving the military conquest of a society by a foreign aggressor.
Posted by Reyes, Saturday, 14 March 2009 4:02:58 PM
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Dear Reyes,

Peaceful immigration is not the same as a military takeover. Chinese coming here no more take over the country than English or Italians take over Australia. They change Australia, but Australia changes them. My wife and I have asked a younger Chinese friend to be executor of our wills. We asked her because we are closer to her than with anyone with whom we share ethnicity.
Posted by david f, Saturday, 14 March 2009 4:13:22 PM
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<Care to explain why the Australian people are obliged to share not only their wealth but also their country with foreign peoples who have already ruined their own countries largely through overpopulation?>

That is unfair, Reyes. For people who may have next to no rights in the governing of a country, what role exactly do you see them playing in its destruction? The people in power in these parts of the world no doubt profit substantially and protect their power via rapid population growth. Look at how feudal these places are in comparison with Australia. They have a few very wealthy and powerful citizens who own everything, and a mass of dirt poor citizens, devoid of assets and education. There is no middle class. Educate the citizens of these countries, and things will change. But do the rulers of these places want things to change?

What Australia could share is her knowledge. But I think you might find that the citizens that Australia is interested in are the educated ones: She pilfers them from such parts of the world. So through immigration, Australia may in fact be decreasing the chance of these countries improving the lot of their citizens.
Posted by Fester, Saturday, 14 March 2009 5:11:06 PM
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