Excellent Banjo. At least some of us can see just how corrupted our so-called democratic system has become, or perhaps always has been, when governments are so hung up on continuous rapid human expansion when they know full well that it is time to stop increasing pressure on our life-support systems.

Hendo, I agree that immigrants contributed greatly to the building of our nation, but there is nothing sudden about the “voice” that links high immigration with environmental problems and calls for it to be drastically cut. This issue has been voiced at least since the ZPG movement of the 70s and solidly all the way up to the present. But it was strongly suppressed by media and government until fairly recently.

Your conclusions about the fertility rate are completely wrong. Despite the personal fertility rate of 1.75, our national reproduction rate is well ahead of replacement level. There is no chance of Australia’s population going into decline, not that there would be anything wrong per se if it did start slowly decreasing. There are many more people in their reproductive years than there would be if the age distribution was typical of a stable population. So even with net zero immigration, our population would continue to grow for another 20 to 30 years, as Ericc points out.

And as Daggett points out, our illustrious treasurer keeps on spouting gross misinformation on this critical point.

w:

First: yes we certainly do have to address both our per-capita and total carbon emissions. High immigration greatly dilutes or overwhelms efforts to reduce total emissions. And it makes a mockery of reducing average per-person emissions if there are forever going to be more and more ‘per-persons’. Addressing one without the other is nonsensical.

Second: we certainly can set ourselves up as an essentially no-growth “enclave”, and demonstrate to the world that we can practice a sustainable lifestyle, and contribute very significantly to world refugee and poverty issues at the same time, by way of limited acceptance of refugees and much more importantly; a very large international aid effort.

Third: I think you mean 12 million, not 1.2 million. Anyway, if we can just convince our pollies to plan for stabilisation at about 23 million, it would a massive step in the right direction.

Fourth: how does the argument for population stabilisation imply that we cannot limit greenhouse gases? This seems completely contradictory. We can’t do it if we continue to have rapid population growth. You seem to be highly offended by the notion of “putting up a FULL sign”. Well, I think you need to visualise the alternative – continuous growth with no end n sight. Even you must admit that sooner or later the continent will be ‘full’. So do you want it to be declared full well after we have witnessed massive decline in quality of life and massive increase in resource consumption and waste production, or do you want to plan for limits while we can still have some hope of redeeming some of our gross mistakes of the last 218 years?

Post WW2 migrants had to agree to work for two years where ever they were sent. There were standards they had to reach .
Now we are taking migrants from countries who would never fit the standards of the post war intake.
We are getting migrants from countries who are totally opposed to our way of life, isn't that setting the stage for absolute strife?
Some of today's migrants come from nations that are naturally aggressive ,with unrestrained birth numbers , lacking in work ethic, education and no respect for women. They crowd into the cities and regard the countryside with distaste.
Some posters here shudder at the thought of the White Australia Policy, until the last thirty years it kept this country peaceful and progressive.
Until now.

Ludwig –

I think some of the comments that have been written here, give a clue to your original questions. Many of the people who agree that increased immigration does not raise living standards and damages the environment, still want high immigration. We got a sense of that in the forum with Andrew Bartlett earlier in the year. Australia is a country that likes immigrants.

Many people just won’t accept criticism of immigration. The politicians understand that. It is too emotional an issue. We all know immigrants who we love and wouldn’t want to live without. The thought of limiting immigration makes people feel that you will never see those people again, and that is a very strong negative feeling.

I’m sure there are many people on this forum who would rather have a $20/tonne carbon dioxide tax rather than slow down immigration. It would only add 4 cents a litre (about 3%) to the price of petrol and less than 2 cents per kW-hour (about 20%) to the cost of coal fired electricity. I would prefer both reduced immigration and a carbon tax, but I'm not holding my breath.

The $20/tonne carbon dioxide tax would cost the average Aussie about $400/year. It would do nothing for water conservation, land degradation, traffic congestion, urban air pollution and several other issues. It would also slow the economy, but even so, it is likely to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas generation. The government would also get about $8 billion dollars/year that could be used to build wind farms, encourage biodiesel and photovoltaic energy, buy parkland, rehabilitate eroded and salt impacted land and provide other environmental protection measures. All these things would only happen if we could ensure that it would not just be another tax, that would go into general revenue.

The encouraging thing about this forum is that nobody has said “lets do nothing.” I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who feel that way, including our current political leaders of all persuasions, but this forum has been positive from that viewpoint. Thanks to everybody.

Hi Ericc

Thank you for a very well argued paper. I found it and related postings most interesting reading.

Cheers
Kay

BENNIE YOUR BLIND SPOT ON POPULATION IS SHARED BY MANY OTHERS

Bennie, you write “I don't buy into the argument we need immigration to support our expanding economy, since eventually we'll simply outstrip our resources.”

It is amazing to me that you clearly understand that if our population keeps growing we will eventually run out of resources, but then you say “What the **ck has immigration got to do with it?”

I have come across this kind of thinking before and it’s very interesting – people will say in one breath that world population growth is a really serious problem, but then in the next breath they’ll say anybody opposing population growth in Australia is somehow “blaming foreigners” and is avoiding doing some “introspection”.

As if there’s a problem in the world, but it’s got nothing to do with us in this country.

Why, Bennie, do you think so many people want to come here? It’s because their own countries are so badly overcrowded and so badly run down that they need to come to some place that’s not so crowded – at least not yet.

We have had only 218 years to pack the world’s population onto this continent, and if we keep going the way we are, we will wreck it just the way places like Iraq have been wrecked – once an agricultural paradise, now a ruined desert.

It is very interesting that people will say things like “eventually we’ll simply outstrip our resources” but then immediately run away from what they have just said, as if the truth is just too awful to cope with. Eric’s article is fantastic because he focuses on the very simple facts – but it seems that simple facts are not what people want to hear.

I have a question for all who want to see populations keep growing: do you think there is ANY limit to the numbers of people this planet can support?