As an adjunct to this commentary.

A federal politician, Kelvin Thompson, has just made a speech critical of population growth. ( A very rare event).

The whole speech can be read here:

http://d.yimg.com/kq/groups/4065847/1616857852/name/Kelvin's%20090817%20Parliamentary%20Population%20Speech%20ac[1].doc

or you can read the ABC summary and viewer's comments here:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/18/2658750.htm?section=justin

Lets hope that this encourages other politicians to look at the issues more seriously.

Onya Kelvin Thomson!

Check out the enormous support that he is receiving, as is evident from the comments on the ABC article (see link in last word’s post above).

I think this might just be a watershed moment in Australian politics and in our country’s future.

Obviously there is a great deal of support out there in the general community for the issue of population growth to be tackled. And with all this support, it really does become politically tenable….and then very easy to address.

Wonderful!

One more point:

One poster on the ABC forum commenting on Thompson said this:

"It has been shown that where women are given political, economic and reproductive rights there is an alleviation of population, poverty, ignorance and war."

But all we REALLY know about Women uplifted, that is, Women with POWER, is that they are every bit as ABUSIVE as a Man.

There have already in the media, been groups suggesting In Vitro spermatogenesis so women won't even need Men to overpopulate the planet into OBLIVION. Women have a Carbon footprint 2-3 times that of a man because of their biological NEED. Men only aspire to a bit of lineage and to keep her happy so he can get his his Kinsey quota.

But most of all, the whole notion of maintaining feminine BEAUTY (and women maintain high cost ATTRACTIVENESS with or without men in their lives - global economies and entire media-political systems would fall apart if they didn't) is a THERMODYNAMIC issue where sustained hyper order(Beauty) must be paid for with hyper emissions of climate changing wastes.

So when she says its your turn (again) to put the garbage out, you KNOW why!

And when her overbreeding creates global and civil/internecine wars, it'll be your turn to go out and fight the baddies. "Oh and don't worry if you're killed I can use spermatogenesis or anyone handy to carry on OUR family".

Have you mowed our LAWN today Honey? Translation: Have I moidered you into open wallet paralysis yet Darling?

And don't think I'm Misogynistic. I love and appreciate wild Tigers and Elephants and seek to preserve them forever on this, THEIR pale blue dot planet. I would even go to war for them. But we wouldn't want to see herds of them hyper-crapping all over the Sydney CBD now would we?

last word says

"Rick S in Canada

Thanks for the Canadian perspective.

Your numbers work out at $7320 per migrant; I do not know of a similar study here, but it is possible, and perhaps someone on this forum can provide further info."

It's pretty typical of the growthist cult that they will make all sorts of wild claims with no analysis or real data as support. Yet the average person (if such an entity exists) seems to buy the hype, hook, line, and sinker. You know...the usual...grow or die, aging population, support the housing industry, "smart" growth, and on and on and on...

If Grubel is anywhere near correct, then each Canadian graciously contributes approximately $600.00 or more per year to subsidize immigrants (18.3 billion divided by approximately 30 million Canadians). It warms the cockles of my heart to know that, since 2002, I have personally contributed at least $4200 to support immigration to Canada. The fact that this leads to more loss of arable land and all the other negative effects detailed by Gruber makes this even better, eh? And the fact that immigrants to Canada typically magnify their ecological footprint by a factor of four or more, making it even more difficult to reduce total consumption and meet all the other targets a sane society would set, is the icing on the cake.

Rick S and last word,

In 1992 Professor Russell Matthews, a most respected man in his field, published “Immigration and State Budgets” for the former Australian Bureau of Immigration Research (BIR). His findings were that each immigrant cost the state and federal governments approximately $26,000 dollars during the migrant's first five years in Australia. An unwelcome result, his findings were not publicised by the BIR and were ignored.

As Mark O'Connor noted in his 1998 book "This Tired Brown Land":

"The former BIR conceded that there might be long-term environmental and economic costs (especially with balance of payments) caused by immigration-fed population growth, but it denied that state or federal governments could reap budgetary benefits by cutting immigration. This seems to be completely wrong. Mathews' figures (available to the BIR since 1992, yet oddly neglected by them) leave no doubt that reducing immigration would provide large savings in both the short and medium term to both state and federal budgets. His figures also leave little doubt that to use immigration as, in effect, a form of 'industry subsidy' cannot be defended as being in the public interest."

High immigration obviously incurs huge infrastructure costs, but such costs are almost completely ignored by governments. The reality that immigration imposes a significant burden on the Australian taxpayer is hardly welcomes news for our pro-immigration political elites. Hence the reason why the federal government no longer expends any real effort examining the costs of immigration.

Efranke, is Kelvin Thompson aware of Matthews' conclusions? He may need that to help ward off the typically strident overpopulation deniers who are certain to attack him. As I noted earlier, it's pretty typical that facts and data are ignored by the growthists, until we make it impossible to ignore them, that is.