Spot on John. This has surely got to be the most important subject of our time; our absolutely mad addiction to continuous growth.

Nothing befuddles me more than this.

We have major problems with water in southeast Queensland, Sydney, Perth, etc, and yet there is practically no suggestion that population growth or any other aspect of human expansion even be slowed, let alone stopped, in these places!!

We have become aware of the paramount importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But bizarrely, we in Australia can all see the need to reduce per-capita output while the vast majority of us at the same time just blithely accept and ever-increasing number of ‘capitas’!!

We’ve become aware of the need for sustainability, but both Howard and Rudd have us hooked into rapid continuous unending expansion, which is going to take us directly away from sustainability! Practically no one is objecting to this!!

This is insanity at its greatest level!

Ditto Ludwig.

Unfortunately, our society is driven by consumerism and self-interest. Political parties dangle the carrots that the people want for their own back pockets, with disregard for the wider issues.

It's a societal problem and one would have hoped that our leaders could have lead us - they haven't. They too are driven by their own self interest.

They may be intelligent, they may be knowledgeable - they certainly have not been wise. Humanity deserves better

An excellent essay, stating the case succinctly while repeating the hundreds of warnings of dire consequences unless we change our ways, that have been offered humanity since the early 1970's with such publications as "The Doomsday Book", as well as all those hundreds self-sufficiency publications exhorting us to live sustainably. Everyone with a modicum of intelligence has understood the idiocy of growth in a finite, closed system since the 1960's... but therein lies the archilles heel of democracy. As soon as the first politician opens his/her mouth democracy becomes demagoguery and susceptible to the votes of the uninformed.
We cannot expect to be well governed by a tri-annual popularity poll... that is as stupid as government by lottery.
The lesson to be learned by considering human history and the last thirty years of inaction, is that human societies respond only to catastrophe. The only thing those of us who think about such things can do is sit tight, take what precautions we can, and try to avoid the worst of the horrors to come.

"A difference of Opinion" on the ABC last Thursday said it all NOT. The first half hour was a completely pointless discussion on Kyoto. Not a word was said about sustainability or population control. No one suggested that a responsible government should spend its surplus on research into renewable energy. We are all waiting for someone else to do something first as we don't want to be economically disadvantaged. In another 50 years time our farmers are going to be producing food without the addition of artificial fertilisers and our nutrient poor soils are not particularly good at that as I have found from personal experience. Add a shortage of water to the mix and we will be lucky to produce food for 6 million, let alone 60 million. We might all have to change our diet to include a fair amount of goat meat, the same as a large percentage of the world's population. Fortunately, there seems to be no shortage of these animals in the back blocks of NSW and Queensland.

David

John Coulter - going to battle again for a rational approach to global warming and all those other problems resulting from our culture's philosophy of mindless growth!

It is remarkable to see the resurgence of rational battlers like John Coulter. Twenty, thirty years ago they were arguing the case for a "conserver society" rather than a "consumer society". So many people of vision are back in the fray again - now that their message is so desperately needed.

Just for one example - the musicians - Jackson Borown, Bonnie Raitt, Harvey Wasserman - again making loud and influential noises in the U.S. in favoutr of conservation, renewable energy, and a stop to the mad push for nuclear power and unbridled growth and consumerism.

I have been so often reminded lately of Schumacher's seminal book of the 1970s - "Small is Beautiful". It's time too, surely has come.

The grandiose plans for energy growth through "clean coal", and nuclear power, should be discarded. Even Concentrated Solar Power is questionable, compared to the opportunities now for small scale. decentralised solar power. And of course - a cultural movement towards a conserver lifestyle and the recognition that "small" truly is beautiful. Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com

"there's nothing we can do". that sums up every discussion in oz. and it's precisely accurate. all the levers of power are in the hands of the politicians guild, none in the hands of the people.

so, like the good subjects you are, you turn to the sports pages, and await disaster with a clear conscience.

yet there is something you can do, and it's not even hard. just admit that the structure of your society is killing you, and you have to change it. how to change it? (kevin's got me doing it now) very simple, it just takes patience and persistent pressure on the people who have power now, the pollies.

withdraw their legitimacy by withdrawing your vote. notify the candidates in your electorate that you will only support those who will enable democracy through legislation. that's probably none, this time. so don't tick any boxes, just write in "democracy".

form groups of like-minded people for mutual encouragement. publicity is necessary, a group can get it's op-eds published. stick to a simple message:

1. direct election of ministers.

2. open administration of public affairs.

3. primacy of citizen initiative legislation.

see, i told you it was easy. it just needs people wanting to do something effective about the oncoming resource and environmental disasters. otoh, if you're used to having your ass wiped by pollies, maybe not so easy. still, consider the consequences of inaction.

A gorgeous children’s book “Wonderful Earth!” by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen, describes how God made everything so perfectly in the beginning, and how we’ve made such a mess of things:

“We’ve chopped down the forests….

We’ve filled the air with dirty smoke….

We’ve made the rain sour….

We’ve poisoned the rivers and the seas….

And destroyed the places were animals live….

We’ve even made the weather go wrong!”

And finishes:

“We’re spoiling the beautiful place God gave us to live in. …..But if we ask him to help us change, maybe….just maybe…”

If we listen to what nature is telling us “loudly and clearly”, we can see God’s hand patiently over His creation.

I agree that a sense of urgency is necessary (which is why, like the Coulters, I have spent the last month preparing my urban backyard for chooks, vege patch, fruit orchard, compost, and water collection - I don't wish to continue contributing to the problem). I want to agree with Q&A’s assumption that humanity deserves better. But that would be ignoring what has been revealed in the scriptures. Tragially, it could be that humanity is getting what it deserves.

"all the levers of power are in the hands of the politicians guild, none in the hands of the people."

Actually not so Demos. Politicians are not silly, they reflect the
views of the majority and they all want more. Note how many want
pay rises and buy lottery tickets! They say that people get the
politicians that they deserve.

There is a well known economic theory called the "Tragedy of the
Commons" and I kind of think its going to apply here. So perhaps
in the end, nature will have to sort it all out, as we people
won't.

World population is still increasing at 80 million a year and
nobody says zilch, its accepted as a given. In that context,
Australia's 20 million just don't matter, we would be replaced in
90 days of human breeding, if we all dropped dead tomorrow.

Technology is one hope that we have. I'm still amazed that we all
run air conditioners, when its 40deg outside. One would have thought
that somebody would have figured out a solar driven air conditioner.

As to comparing our emmissions with others, the figures seem
somewhat questionable to me. If we got rid of massive power users
like aluminium smelting for instance, our figures would look dramatically better.
Yet that aluminium is for the benefit of
others. We use energy to grow food, yet export most of it.

Thank you for the wise words:
To be practical let's each of us who are in agreement with the article above begin practically to change for the good.

We are attempting to influence politicians.
Let's leave the lights and heater off when possible.
Let's leave the car at home and take the bike or bus.
Let's notice and budget precious water

There now we've started our own green revolution for change.

Only when the last river is poisoned
Only when the last tree is cut down
Only when the last fish is gone

will we realise that gold cannot be eaten.

(Anon)

Why must growth always be the target of land enviromentalism campaigns? Why are we not trying instead to actually make a good human achivement and be able to use technology and intelligence to work around these obstacles to growth rather than trying to cripple our great Australian civilization continuously? Australia here has a great oppourtunity to lead the world in what will one day be a great market of thinkers and innovation but oh no once again environmentalists who are as blind as disguised-foreigners wish to simply have no consideration.

would it not be great to have a government who would support green technology as you suggest?. How about tax relief for bicycle purchase rather than large cars being subsidized. Bikes are great technology and work to heal the world. It is governments who need to support human powered commuting!

Thanks JC, nice restatement of the root of many problems, think you're overcautious on oil peak, 40% of human nitrogen from fertiliser is a stunning statistic, any ref?
Lobbying government and improving policy is worthwhile, but far from only action to take. Anybody still relying on government to look after their basic needs needs their head examined..

'Hope is something we supply for ourselves by demonstrating to ourselves that we are capable of meeting the challenges of our time.' JH Kunstler

Go local folks, start thinking beyond petroleum, and beyond cheap supermarket abundance, and beyond all economic rationalism. Cos if we don't, and long before government develops a clue, we will be toast

Why must growth always be the target of Hutu enviromentalism campaigns here in Rwanda? Why are we not trying instead to actually make a good human achivement and be able to use technology and intelligence to work around these obstacles to growth rather than trying to cripple our great Rwandan civilization continuously?

Rwanda here has a great oppourtunity to lead the world in what Rwanda will one day be a great market of thinkers and innovation but oh no once again Hutus who are as blind as disguised-foreigners wish to simply have no consideration.

What are we Tutsis to do?

PS therin lies the beginning of the end of Australian society under the pressures of PEAKOIL.

Ya gonna need a bigger Planet!

25 million Australians ..

went into that post PEAKOIL thermodynamic-chaos-year of 2025 --
and ten thousand and 36 got out, along with the fittest 2billion thugs and murderers across the globe. Yeah.

Two thousand and twenty five.

June the 29th.

(pause)

Anyway, we prevented anyone building the nuclear reactors that could have saved us.

Then the Asian neighbours came and took all the Uranium we sat on.

Whilst not disagreeing with the author and other posters about the absurdity of continual growth, a rational approach should examine why it is universally pursued by just about every government on the planet.

It is not hard to work out why. All we need to do is to remember that the last period when we had a sustained period without growth was called the Great Depression. Economic growth is the only method that has been devised to maintain low levels of unemployment and inflation in the capitalist system. All other systems have been even worse, involving things such as the Berlin Wall, total economic collapse, and worse.

It is also remembering the famous phrase of John Maynard Keynes, who said that we are only interested in the short term because in the long term we are dead.

Coupled with the current inexorable increase in world population, which is supported by every leader from George Bush to Osama Bin Laden, we are headed for very turbulent times, and should give thanks that we are out of the mainstream and may survive in our isolated corner of the world.

Hey Demos!
well put.
There are many undemocratic things about our system of government; the two that really bug me are:
1 Compulsory preferences
2. No proportional representation.
Because of compulsory preferences, and our 'two party preferred' system, no matter who you vote for, your vote will eventually be given to either a coalition or a labor politician.
And because of no proportional representation, the Greens, for example, could receive 30% of the primary vote and yet not get a single seat.
Also, it is undemocratic for parties to 'allocate' preferences. And it is insulting for people to hand out 'how to vote cards'.
I write: "I want proportional representation" on my forms.

It's a little early for a wake yet folks!

Not a word for the willingness of the population to modify their behaviour when presented with a well argued case eg domestic water consumption in Sydney

Not a word about human ingenuity and future technology.

Not a word about mankind's goodwill.

No attempt to educate- just a whine.

Coulter could not sell ice in the Simpson Desert.

This man would not know economics if it bit him on the bum. A dollar spent on, for instance, solar power is still a dollar spent and still counts as GDP and growth.

Negative and depressing and a backward vision for sure.

I was working for John when the CFC debate was being raged in the parliament in 1988 and it was the same then. The liberals were the worst as they stood one by one in the senate and argued that we had to keep using CFC's to support the chemical companies even though the ozone layer was being utterly destroyed.

Business in the end did the re-tooling on their own and they didn't all go broke and the sky didn't fall in. Look at your fridge next time you open the door, that was largely down to John and the Democrats in 1988 and is forgotten in this latest debate.

As a person who grew up in the SA Mallee and watched the land being turned into a desert I am endlessly astonished at the lackadaisikal behaviour of Howard and his mob who continually before the "conomy" before everything else.

Palimpsest,

With the tools of modern science, archaeologists have gotten better at figuring out what happened to some of the past societies that ended in collapse. Overexploitation of the environment played a major role. Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" summarizes the evidence on a number of these cases.

No doubt Easter Islanders who suggested that it might not be a smart idea to cut down all the trees were condemned in words equivalent to "economically illiterate" and "unable to sell ice in the Simpson desert".

Liam,
You asked for a reference to the origin of the nitrogen in our bodies. I picked it up first in Thomas Homer-Dixon's book, 'The Upside of Down' p141. The original references are available at http://www.ourplanet.com/imgversn/111/may.html and Vaclav Smil 'Global Population and the Nitrogen Cycle' Scientific American 277 No 1, July 1997 pp76-81.
As regards the comments implying that economic growth is the only way forward for the last time we did not have economic growth we had the great depression, this writer does not know his/her history. GNP, as was the earlier measure, did not come into widespread use until the time of WWII and after the war.
GDP, the measure now used, grows faster the faster we use up our non-renewable resources. It's like saying you become richer the faster you run down your bank account.
There is a world of difference between a society desperately trying to maintain growth of GDP and failing and one that deliberately sets out to create a sustainable dynamic steady-state economy.
There is nothing magic about full 40 hours per week employment. We have a very productive industrial system now. Having everyone engaged in paid employment in that system is only one way of sharing out the products of that system. There are other ways.
The analysis here should revolve about redefining a productive and creative contribution to the overall social welfare and how equitably to share out the goods and services now available from our highly productive system.
This is the future, endless growth is the past and has no future.
John Coulter

We also have to learn how to do it all while reducing the number of people on the planet. That might be a little difficult to do, given our potential for unlimited shagging, particularly in our youth.

Any suggestions?

VK3AUU we are obviously going to have to lose the "a baby for dad, one for mum and another for the country" mantra. In fact most Australian women have ignored Costello's pleas as the fertility rate is about 1.7 births per 1000 population. Public debate might have to be more open to contraception and abortion.

To reduce the population you have to reduce immigration. We do not have low unemployment, what we have is a lowered workforce participation rate in comparison to other OECD countries. This will lead to cries about what are we going to do about

1. the skills shortage

a. it requires long term planning to train up enough skilled workers. The planning isn't hard but politicians strategically plan on a 2 year horizon. Large scale mines or capital plants are planned on a 10 year horizon. Stop using stock brokers and share traders in lieu of economic planners.

b. many unskilled jobs are lowly paid and part time, they could disappear with no adverse effect on GDP or society. This might reduce Jerry Harvey's profits and we might have to do away with 24 hour shopping

2. aging population - what's the problem?

a. Health costs - most elderly only become a drain on the health system in their last 2 years of life.

b. Tax - its only this year that over 60s became tax exempt. Treasury obviously did their sums, right?

----

Our society has to become mindful of our environmental footprint.

a. We have to condemn the "look at me" culture that advertises HUMMERs on Melbourne trams. Definitely don't want to see one of those vehicles jostling with me on the tram tracks

b. we are going to have to buy local produce, no more cheap Chinese crackers or fresh green beans, no more Mareeba mangoes being shipped to Melbourne then back to Cairns for sale, maybe no more Queensland citrus in southern states

c. build solar passive dwellings with opening windows close to public transport

d. design work places and jobs that are not reliant on cars

Billie and others... you have good ideas.... so does just about everyone who thinks and cares - but they don't become politicians; people who want power do that. and they dont have time to think, because they're too busy getting re-elected by promising what they can't deliver.
Australia could be put on the right track in three years if:
1. We make it illegal to belong to political parties; only independents may stand for election in the electorate in which they live, and they must speak for themselves.
2.Every candidate is given $1,000 to spend and no more.
3. Independent umpires decide whether campaign speeches are truthful and factual. Candidates are given one warning, then removed from the list if they transgress.
4. There should be no government and opposition because presumably every representative wants the best for Australia and its citizens, therefore, in the one chamber all the representatives elect a chairperson for the assembly, and for each ministry, to which members are allocated.
5. there should be no voting on issues. Every topic must be discussed calmly with opinions sustained by facts and research, until a consensus is arrived at, to which everyone agrees .

Said with intelligence Billy,
Until a personal responsibility is taken for one's own environmental impact then 'tis all really only hot air. We all need to lobby for solutions constantly in our own immediate sphere of action with exemplary behavior and simple tenets. This is hard at times, but forgoing the food-mile rich crackers or ridin' the bike in the rain to do the locally produced vegie shopping can become free adventures!

Divergance, my criticism is twofold. First, I don't think Johns tone of pessimism will successfully sell his argument. I await the pollie who will sell alternative energy as an opportunity, who will appeal to our altruism and our sense of progress and pioneering spirit. In this article there is no inspiration, no real direction. Does he really think he will get the Latham/Howard aspirationals fired up by trying to sell a bleak future of an irreparable planet peopled by a populace who have less in the future?

Second is his insistence on the incompatibility of growth and sustainability. He allows for no goodwill, no technological breakthroughs, no opening of new northern hemisphere lands and no recognition of our ability to change.

The 'market' will get us most of the way there,with the right amount of carrot and stick by govt. This article was too much stick and no bloody field to sow carrot in.

Palimpest, you only want to hear the good news? Excellent! A positive thinker.
Always look on the bright side – believe in growth and sustainability.

Be cheerful.
While there seem to be rumours that we are currently living beyond our limits, it will take time to spend all our capital.
To date we have had the good fortune of almost unrestricted access to withdrawl of capital from the bank.
And our bank is big – it is the material and environmental resources of this great big island. Heaps!
With effort, it is possible to maintain an attitude of deferring worry about what reserves remain.
Our GDP (basically our spending) has only been increasing at 4% per year.
At that rate it will be a whole 17 years before our annual expenditure doubles.

With spirited entrepreneurial attitude, 17 years might provide time to overcome both present deficiencies, and the pressures for doubled efficiency in resource use.
No worries, mate, for 2024.

Sustain that growth of optimism for better than present sustainability:
By a factor of 2 in 2024; 4 in 2041; 8 in 2058; 16 in 2075; 32 in 2092 when the population at continued present growth rate of 1.4% would be about 70 million contented(?) souls.
It took the British 80 years to kick the last tiger out of Singapore by about 1900. With our present progress, it will take less time than that to wring dry the northern rivers and leave our crocs destitute