The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Turning back the boats - back to the future on asylum policy > Comments

Turning back the boats - back to the future on asylum policy : Comments

By Adam Fletcher, published 1/2/2012

Knowingly instituting a policy which puts lives at risk is inconsistent with Australia's obligations.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. Page 4
  6. 5
  7. All
SPQR,

People who think that the overwhelming majority of experts are likely to be right about AGW, and not stupefied by groupthink or part of some vast conspiracy, should be even more concerned about high immigration and open borders for anyone claiming to be a refugee. If our agriculture is at risk of a big hit from AGW, then we need even bigger safety margins. We currently export about 60% of our grain in an average year and 40% in a typical drought year. Production might halve with peak phosphate, etc., even without AGW. What killed all those Irish in the Potato Famine, when the late blight was repeatedly wiping out entire crops, was that so many Irish were living on plots of land that were too small to feed a family on anything but potatoes. (Potatoes had been a wonderful new superfood that could feed three times as many people to the hectare as grain under Irish conditions. The Irish then increased their population from about 1.2 million in 1600 to 8.5 million in the 1840s.)

Saltpetre,

Before you let your heart get in the way of your head, you should consider the facts about environmental limits and about how Malthusian trap societies (the sources of most of our asylum seekers) actually work. See this Nature paper on 9 serious thresholds that will put us out of a "safe operating space for humanity".

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html

Open version:

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/

See also the Global Footprint Network 2010 atlas, where they have actually done the math on resources and consumption.

http://issuu.com/globalfootprintnetwork/docs/ecological-footprint-atlas-2010/1?mode=a_p

The bottom line is that there isn't enough to go around even for the present gloal population, with the resources of about 3 Earths required to give everyone a minimally decent standard of living. We humans are also in danger of destabilising important natural systems that are keeping us alive. A nation state's first obligation is to its own citizens.
(cont'd)
Posted by Divergence, Friday, 3 February 2012 9:33:19 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
(cont'd)

In Malthusian trap societies, people outbreed their resources and overexploit their environment, sometimes out of sheer greed as in developed countries, but often just to stay alive. Amy improvements to carrying capacity due to better crops or new technology simply result in more people living at the same bare subsistence level. See the graphs for the poor countries on page 26 of the Atlas I linked to. The ultimate result is a large population living in grinding poverty under a tyranny and liable to collapse because safety margins are so thin.

When there is no strong central government to stop them, people try to drive off or kill their neighbours to take what they have. All the land the Afghan refugees left behind now belongs to someone else. Although ethnic or religious tensions get the blame, religion and ethnicity simply function as good rallying points when people join up sides. In the Rwandan genocide, Roman Catholic Hutus killed other Roman Catholic Hutus in districts where there weren't any Tutsis, and the people who were killed were likely to have been involved in disputes over land.

The only cure is for the poor countries to get themselves out of the Malthusian trap, as many other countries have done before them, not for people like Marilyn Shepherd to coo over them and shield them from the consequences of bad decisions at the expense of the rest of us. Instead of telling us to take them in, perhaps you should be telling them to have fewer babies, support honest and competent leaders, and change cultural patterns that have become dysfunctional and are keeping them poor and miserable.
Posted by Divergence, Friday, 3 February 2012 9:53:05 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Hi Divergence,

I am reluctant to cross swords with you because I consider you to be one of the more enlightened posters on OLO --a white hat, whose posts are always well written & reasoned.

I agree that anyone genuinely concerned about the environment should be on the stop-the-boats side of the debate --as you clearly are.
Nevertheless, if you do a survey of posters on OLO & other sites you will find that the most ardent believers in AGW are also the most ardent supporters of (what amounts to) open borders. AGW & immigration are both convenient tools to bludgeon the "robber baron" West.

It is always a good idea to reduce pollution & minimize waste. But I don't think that your scientific consensus tells us that CO2 emissions are the ONLY factor affecting climate.Yet it is implied (almost daily) that if we control CO2 we would stabilize climate.

And far from solving problems, the IPCC potlatches have made things worse--see here:

"Changes in the weather and climate used to be blamed on gods or demons, but no longer. If something nasty happens - meteorologically and climatically - in the developing world today, a cacophony of voices invariably insists it is the developed world's fault. Most delegates at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) seventeenth annual meeting of its Conference of the Parties (COP-17) in Durban, South Africa, agreed with this alleged causal connection."
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13002

Now thanks to the IPCC & its acolytes, all other problems are *caused by climate change*--and we have a nice Little Red Hen situation:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/stories/fairytale/littleredhen/story/
We have most of the world, who when they're not hard at it making babies,are sitting on their hands waiting for an invite to the next free lunch.
Posted by SPQR, Saturday, 4 February 2012 8:05:08 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
The enhanced greenhouse effect is NOT the only contributing factor to climate change, that is the consensus.

It is however a significant component, that is also the consenssus.

"Yet it is implied (almost daily) that if we control CO2 we would stabilize climate."

A lie, distortion or misrepresentation from someone who clearly does not understand the science.

Some 'sceptics' only see and hear what they want to see and hear.
Posted by bonmot, Saturday, 4 February 2012 9:35:02 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
*The only cure is for the poor countries to get themselves out of the Malthusian trap, as many other countries have done before them, not for people like Marilyn Shepherd to coo over them and shield them from the consequences of bad decisions at the expense of the rest of us*

Great posts Divergence, well written and informed. But I suspect that
there is a certain percentage of the population, so overcome with
emotion and empathy, that they throw all reason and examination of
the big picture, clean out of the window. The Marilyn's of this
world come to mind.

Sadly it seems that our species needs pain to learn the realities
of nature. Perhaps that will be it's eventual downfall.
Posted by Yabby, Saturday, 4 February 2012 2:48:49 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
The question that the author seems to have avoided is this;

How can Indonesia refuse entry to passengers on an Indonesian vessel
even if those passengers are rescued by a ship of another nation ?

What would happen if an inter island ferry sank, could Indonesia
refuse entry to those rescued ?

Or is Indonesia using the nationality of the passengers to refuse entry ?
Posted by Bazz, Monday, 6 February 2012 3:23:50 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. Page 4
  6. 5
  7. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy