Yuyutsu says that immigration is all that gives us non-indigenous Australians the right to be here. Unfortunately, people have been fighting and displacing each other since before there were modern humans. No one's hands are clean. The Aboriginals and American Indians were fighting each other at first contact and there is DNA evidence for waves of migration and displacements in the pasts of both of them. (See e.g. A.J. Redd and M. Stoneking, Am. J. Hum. Gen. 65 (1999) 808-828 or just google "DNA" and "peopling of Australia" or "peopling of the New World".) Therefore, in Yuyutsu's view no one has the right to keep out immigrants and there is no point in protecting the environment and building up any kind of collective property, such as decent public health or education systems or decent labour standards, because people will flood in to share them until the country is turned into one more Third World hellhole. Thanks, Yuyutsu! Why not throw personal property into the pot as well? You can see the endgame in California where 84 hospitals have closed because they were obliged to (but could not afford) to provide free care to illegal immigrants. The Salinas library has closed. The public education system has gone from the best in the US to the second worst.

David Latimer would be correct about greenhouse gases (but not most other environmental pressures) if all immigrants came from Canada, NZ, the US, or Scandinavia. However, a Bangladeshi moving to Mexico and adopting the standard of living there would increase his greenhouse gas emissions by 5 times, and by 20 times if he moves to the US (see the Redefining Progress website environmental footprints). For a full calculation you would need the proportions of migrants from the individual countries.

Diversion, you have gone too far...

Our only moral obligation with regard to immigrants is to keep the doors open (except for criminals and contagious disease carriers, which is a case of self-defence). Sharing our collective (and private) property, such as schools and hospitals, is not included - it may perhaps be a practical option but not a moral matter. Another such practical option could be to tell immigrants: "if you want schools and hospitals, etc. - go to Wagga Wagga". Admitting people into the continent does not automatically imply admitting them as full members of our society.

Fester,

your analogy is inappropriate: a wealthy individual may or may be not be hostile to others, but that's regarding their own property, while the land of Australia does not belong to anyone (alternately, it would belong to its indigenous people): we are its guardians but not its owners. We do have the duty to protect its environment - but on behalf of the whole world, not just ourselves.

Yes, other countries also have moral obligations and many do not keep them - but why should it make any difference to us?

Yuyutsu

Thank you for taking the time to clarify things for me. I understand from your comments that you think it morally wrong for a country to protect the wealth of its citizens by not having a high immigration policy, especially from countries with a lower standard of living. On an individual basis however, you think it morally acceptable for a wealthy individual to keep their wealth rather than share it with the less fortunate in the world. Thus an inequable distribution of wealth is morally acceptable on an individual basis within a country, but morally unacceptable between countries. This seems clear, but I am still uncertain about why you think that Australia would be more at risk of invasion from other countries by not having a policy of high immigration? Why would we be making ourselves more vulnerable by making ourselves wealthier?

On the topic regarding the flaw is where Eric multiplies the following numbers: 1,200,000 new immigrants after 10 years AND 28 tonnes of greenhouse gas per Australian per year. On this result he claims that we would save 34,000,000 tonnes per annum if those immigrants were not accepted. The calculation is nonsense as rejected migrants would use fossil fuels in their own countries and the gasses would be distributed across the atmosphere.

Fester says "David Latimer should read the article again". Having now read it again, I'm still sure the calculation is flawed. The article itself says it is about "reducing immigration to reduce greenhouse emissions." It concludes that "The current government seems willing to embrace high technology ... options for reducing greenhouse, but the low technology or no technology solution of reducing immigration does not even get a look in." and that if Australia reduced immigration it would show "Australia is starting to get serious about tackling climate change."

The article gives an estimate as to the amount of gasses saved, and the calculation for that estimate is flawed.

Response to Divergence:
The methodology you propose makes far more sense. Certainly a large number of Australian migrants are from developed nations, especially NZ and UK. I would add that migrants are not randomly taken from their populations. They may have a different environmental footprint to the average resident in both origin and destination countries.

Fester and Divergence are correct.

Assuming that our immigration over the next 12 years will be similar in character to the previous 12 years, the world’s total greenhouse gases will be significantly reduced if the 1.2 million stayed in their home countries. Assuming that the 1.2 million immigrants are:
25% from UK (11 tonnes GHG per person /yr),
10% New Zealand (14.4 tpy),
22% EU and South Africa (11 tpy),
18% Poor Asian countries (India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.) (3.5 tpy),
2% Rich Asian countries (Hong Kong, South Korea, etc) (10 tpy),
11% Poor Europe-Middle east (4 tpy),
6% Africa (1 tpy),
2% USA and Canada (26 tpy) and
4% Latin America (8 tpy)
then the overall average of all the immigrants would be about 9 tonnes of GHG per person per year.

Therefore, the 1.2 million immigrants would produce about 11 million tonnes in their home countries and 34 million in Australia or a savings of 23 million tonnes for the whole world. That is 9 million more tonnes than would be saved by the Nuclear Power plants, so in fact the world would be better off if Australia reduced its immigration rather than having high immigration and nuclear power plants.

The reason I use 34 million tonnes is that Australians can only directly fix our own greenhouse and other environmental problems. If we limit our greenhouse gas generation, including limiting immigration, we deserve all the credit. We don’t have to take responsibility for the whole world’s greenhouse gas generation.

That, though, (as Fester and Divergence also noted) was not my primary point. My point was that if Australia wants to send a meaningful message to the rest of the world, that it is limiting it’s greenhouse and trying to be sustainable, then reducing immigration is the easiest way. Plus there are other environmental advantages to reducing immigration. Water, wastewater, land degradation, etc. impact only Australia. They don't flow overseas like greenhouse gases.

Response to Eric:

You have adopted the methodology proposed by Divergence, and although not perfect, at least Australia is now sharing its atmosphere with the rest of the planet.

I guess you've took your data from this report:
http://www.tai.org.au/MediaReleases_Files/MediaReleases/MRpercapita031199.pdf

You say that "Australians can only directly fix our own greenhouse and other environmental problems." For land/river issues yes, but for atmospheric problems: no. Let's be clear that global warming is either solved across the planet, or not solved. Raised sea-levels will affect every coastline ect...

You also say: "If we limit our greenhouse gas generation, including limiting immigration, we deserve all the credit." Sorry, but we would only deserve credit for contribution to the objective, which is not the value 34,000,000 tonnes per annum.

To your credit you have provided a summary of migrant patterns to Australia and greenhouse gas tonnes per capita per annum, abbreviated as "tpy". What do we notice about the tpy values for developed countries?

UK, EU and SA (25% + 22%) 11 tpy
New Zealand (10%) 14.4 tpy
US and Canada (25%) 26 tpy
Compare these to Australia: 28 tpy! Almost double New Zealand!

What's going on? Somehow you conclude that if "Australia wants to send a meaningful message to the rest of the world ... reducing immigration is the easiest way."

The only "meaningful message" from these statistics is that Australia is the most polluting nation (per capita) on Earth, as it's the per capita statistics that will be unaltered under your low-immigration proposal. I point out that you chose not to mention this in the article. The report you read and others like it, would show Australia's utter failure to make a contribution.

The good news is that, in reality, Australia IS making a genuine contribution to solving climate change, and doing it properly by identifying wasteful practises, investing in efficient systems and through the initiatives of ordinary Australians and businesses.