Interesting article. Nice to see someone crunching the numbers rather than just accepting the government/corporate spin. This applies to so many other aspects of what is supposed to be "sustainable".

The article amply illustrates that the growth mania - driven by developers frolicking in easy profits and throwing a small fraction of their earnings (but nevetheless large in $ terms) to donation-hungry politicians - is clearly unsustainable. That is the nature of exponential (%/year) growth - it does not plod along at a linear rate - it accelerates.

As to democracy - the politicians are only interested in getting relected and they do not believe that they can do this without donations to support advertising. What the people want does not matter. They can be convinced by self-deluded politicians that such oxymorons as "sustainable growth" are actually possible.

Of course, the solution is to stop population growth. Reduced CO2 emissions and sustainability are, ultimately, impossible if this is not done. It has not yet destroyed some of the nicest (and wealthiest) places to live in Europe. Why are we afraid of it?

Obviously the SEQ plan is complete crap, for one simple reason: it just panders to rapid never-ending population growth. No suggestion is made that this growth rate needs to be slowed or that limits to growth need to be reached.

In a region that has enormous growth pressure, a plan is needed that is in line with the goal of progressively slowing growth and reaching a limit…before the quality of life of SEQ residents is ruined, and the environment along with it.

What sort of a plan have we got that just facilitates rapid population growth, in a region that is so obviously suffering in all sorts of ways as a result of it?

You’ve got plan for disaster. Nothing less.

OK, so Ross Elliott has pointed out some enormous problems with the desires of the plan and the practicalities of meeting those goals. But really, as significant as this stuff is, it is NOTHING compared to the UTTER MADNESS of the brazenly never-ending rapid-population-growth-facilitation strategy that constitutes this so-called plan!

Ross can see the extraordinary mismatch between the practical facilitation of the projected population increase and the plan’s means of accommodating it, but he still obviously thinks that we have to have this growth. In fact, he seems to be fearful of it even slowing down a bit.

He writes;

“In the meantime, a region with a demonstrable housing shortage could find the shortages worsen, affordability deteriorate and growth - the economy’s engine room - falter.”

Well, I’d suggest that this is a terrible philosophy for the Executive Director of the Residential Development Council of the Property Council of Australia to hold, and that he absolutely has to come to terms with the need to slow down this growth rate and plan for limits to growth.

This sort of growth is NOT our ‘engine room’! Areas of Queensland that don’t have massive population growth are not suffering from a significantly lower quality life.

continued

We need to start measuring growth in terms of technological improvements, improved resource-use efficiencies, environmental health, etc…and NOT by way of ever-increasing economic activity due to ever-more people increasing the demand and consumption rate of all sorts of stuff!

And we need to concentrate on per-capita growth instead of an ever-increasing GDP with an ever-increasing population base, which leads to no average per-capita improvements….and places more a more pressure on our resource base and environment! This really is extremely basic.

Come on, it is well and truly time to knock this population-growth worship rubbish on the head once and for all.

Ross and his Residential Development Council simply MUST get right away from the critically flawed notion that population growth has to be facilitated or that it can’t or shouldn’t be tackled.

The author has established that the numbers of 20 storey towers don't stack up, but he doesn't even ask the correct questions, like:

where will the power for all those new homes come from?
where will all the water?
where will all the food?
Where will all the fuel for their transportation come from post Peak Oil?

And how many hundreds of millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases will be released during the construction of the housing AND the associated necessary infrastructure?

And then, there's the ticklish issue of whether we will even have an economy capable of supporting all this growth, as Capitalism succumbs to the exponential growth of the debt crisis http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14680

Ross

You might be interested in this from the Centre for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy: http://www.steadystate.org/Files/SteadyStater_vol2_iss3.pdf

I’d love to hear from you regarding some of my comments.

Ludwig old son,
You're hopeful aren't you?

The author is not interested in the truth or even other alternatives.
His entire essay is a collection of self-interested selective chosen information and several grand sweeping statements that bear no bearing on the whole reality. In short Magic pudding economics. Your questions are more than apposite.

His assumptions include lack of public in put. While in Qld at I was involved in three separate revolts against developers via their loading of councils.There were mass swings against the development lobbies.

In short the people DID say they didn't want the developers green fields solution (sic).

Two developers currently have sufficient land and are waiting to until they can get sufficient funds in order to gouge out bigger profits. They're not interested in either enough or appropriate houses simply maximizing profit.

They want the public to pay for their avaricious plans prior to the GFC.

There are several more dubious assumption included.

If some consultant presented this concoction of amateurish assertions to me as a government I'd advise him to write to the LTE CM where his article belongs. it is an ordinary opinion that doesn't stand to any real examination.

Your linked sites are indeed interesting but I would like to see more explanation of their mechanisms.

In principal I largely agree with your statements about lack of population policies and steady state economics models but how de we integrate them given we can't change the world,country, state SE win one hit.

PS why don't Casse piggy back on like minded groups in the SE one I know of has over 5000 members and would be open to negotiation.

Good luck