If our population is to double by 2050, it doesn’t make sense to be even talking about climate change and controlling emissions.

For starters, two thirds of Australia is uninhabitable, and at least 5 years ago Tim Flannery, Australian of the Year and a person whose professional views are generally respected, advised that 13 million was the optimal population for Australia given the fragile environment and lack of water in most of the country.

That “We have to run just to stay still”, to achieve 50% reduction in emissions even now, as the author claims, is very frightening indeed, and the wild claims of ‘experts’ and politicians for the future become even more bizarre.

Unlike most other commentators, Peter Ridd rightly asks why population is not a factor in discussion on climate change, pointing to the 300,000 annual increase in population. He even spells out the effect of this increase with: “We need to build a city roughly the size of Canberra every year along with the power stations and water supply that goes with such a population increase.”

But will anybody take notice of this simply explanation? No, they will not.

In South Australia where our water situation is desperate, the Government is still insisting it wants to add another 500,000 to the population. The best they can come up with as far as water goes is a desalination plant in 5 to 10 years time which will provide only one quarter of the water needs of the current population.

Population control must be placed high on the agenda for Australia. We can’t do much about the current level, but we can cap it, starting with the cessation of all immigration save that really needed. Added to this, people languishing on the dole for lack of training should be trained and put to work, whether they like it or not. People on disability pensions should be thoroughly vetted; many of them could perform some form of useful work.

Too many migrants; too many bludgers.

Good lord – the nuclear industry has found yet another Doctor Faustus! At least we have been spared much of the hot air which underpins the foundations of its supposed benefits. The article, like the Curate’s egg, is both tasty and smelly - depending on the part.
The author makes statements that are plainly wrong, and others that are in the right ball-park – statistics which can be readily checked elsewhere. All-in-all, that doesn’t do much for credibility of the whole.
The statement “The right wing wants population growth because they believe, mistakenly that it is required for economic growth” is a curious one - what are we to infer from it?
No doubt more people have more needs, and produce more wastes; and that the Property and Business Councils have been leaning heavily and successfully on Governments (of whatever persuasion) to foster increasing population.
But, does the author want us to believe that we can continue economic growth, business as usual, and just not increase the numbers? We get to the same destination with or without population increase – it just takes a lot longer without it. Admittedly we are off to hell in a hand-basket at a fast clip with present numbers, and the more there are the faster the rate of travel.

A good commonsense article. Its time for nuclear power greenies.

Australian Environmental Foundation was set up in 2005. It is a front for the Institute of Public Affairs a right wing think tank headed by Jennifer Marohasy.

This convoluted article does not represent the true positions of the established conservation movement. I was unaware that the Greens think that population is not an issue. Wasn't it Tim Flannery that said Australia's eco-system can support a population of 13 million

There is good case for nuclear power on grounds of health and safety:

From Chap 6 of the Switkowski report.

I quote only direct fatalities per GWe/y.

Coal 0.876
Oil 0.436
Coal
[China Excluded] 0.690

Natural Gas 0.093
LPG 3.536
Hydro 4.265

Hydro
[Banqiao/Shimantan
Dam excluded] 0.561

Nuclear Reactor 0.006

Wind farms have caused at least 37 fatalities in accidents since 1970.

I too classify myself as a Greenhouse sceptic.

Thanks, Billie, for pointing out something that all Australians should know. That is - that the Australian Environment Foundation is a front group for anti-environmentalists and the fossil fuel and nuclear lobbies.

The Australian Environment Foundation is Australia's version of America's Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, and other well-funded front groups - the Heritage Foundation etc.

Peter Ridd can join Jennifer Marohasy, Bob Carter, Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine - etc etc - spruiking for those right wing think tanks, such as the Institute of Public Affairs. They all had such a good go in the Howard era.

But the Howard era is over. It's no longer enough to get an environmenty sounding name, and accuse real environmentalists of being "hysterical".

As in the USA, people are waking up to the pseudo-environmentalists - Patrick Moore, Fred Singer, Bjorn Lomborg, etc - so Australians need to pay attention to just where these nuke-spruikers are coming from, as well as to the unsubstantial nature of their claims about nuclear power.
Christina Macpherson www.antinuclear.net

An interesting commentary, one with which in general I find agreement. There are however other energy sources which are slowly being developed, even here in Australia, which may make our need for nuclear power less urgent, even though new nuclear technology is being developed and its use is probably inevitable long term.

For a start, I refer to the emerging fused salt technology which is being used to store energy from solar energy collectors, at the 10 megawatt station at Cloncurry. There are hundreds of towns all over Australia which could use this technology.

Geothermal is building what is hoped to be a 500 megawatt thermal energy plant in the Cooper Basin and it reckons there are available resources capable of generating power equivalent to fifteen Snowy Rivers.

On top of this, there are many wind farms, operating and planned for the coastal areas of Australia, all capable of significant power generation.

All it requires for governments to bite the bullet and spend money developing all these resources with the realisation that inevitably, we are going to pay significantly higher prices for our burgeoning energy needs.

David

Christinamac, how about giving us some logical argument against the article if you disagree with what the man had to say, instead of this inane diatribe about those who he represents. It gives your arguments, or lack thereof, no credibility whatsoever.

David

While I fully agree with the point about population control, I lack the ability to 'doublethink', which has to be necessary for anyone to put 'green' and 'nuclear' on the same side of any argument.
Surely one of the key contributors of not only global warming, but environmental degradation in general, stems from our continued insistance on living beyond our means, and being so shockingly wasteful.
History will remember the generations since WW2 as the ones who lived beyond their means, shackled their children to hugely inflated real estate prices, blew personal debt to almost unimaginable levels, and left their offspring to clean up the mess.
No country on earth has -or could- come up with a viable long term (and long term in nuclear terms is longer than written history) plan to deal with existing waste; apart from keeping it in Australia.
There's a great plan.
What if every country on earth had a nuclear power station (or twenty)?
Oh, that's right, we have the kids to clean up our mess... I'm sure they'll think of something.

I fully agree with Dr Ridd’s overview of the population connection to CO2 emissions and I share his great concern about ongoing inaction on population stabilisation.

But I don’t share his faith in nuclear power as being our saviour.

The most important thing that we simply MUST do is to get right away from the notion that we have to be forever growing, or growing until we come up against immediate and insurmountable barriers to further expansion.

If we don’t do this, then the implementation of nuclear power is simply going to facilitate continuous expansion, and hence ever-increasing energy and resource consumption, pressure on our environment, and pressure working against us developing a sustainable future.

If nuclear power can be shown be an absolutely necessary part of us developing a stable-population steady-state-economy sustainable society….then maybe, just maybe…it might have a place.

But we MUST be totally convinced by our illustrious leaders that this is the path that they will take us on before there can be any nuclear energy industry in Australia.

A well argued case from Dr Ridd. Of course, if Australia reduced its man-made CO2 emissions to zero tomorrow no one would ever be able to tell if it made a measurable difference to global temperature or not.

There was an overwhelming silence, vacuum, emptiness in Ridd's piece - not a mention of changing the way we live, consume and destroy. Not a mention of the capacity to stop consuming everything at the obscene and inexcusable levels that we currently indulge in. Not a flicker of understanding that population is inextricably linked to levels of consumption - and Australian are among the greediest, most gluttonous of all countries. Ridd is probably correct in saying that the chances of Australia solving the problem of climate changeare low - but not because we avoid the slow, centralised, expensive and definitely not energy neutral nuclear power - but because we seem unable to move beyond rhetoric and into acting.

"Relentless population growth is bad no matter what the climate might do."

Thanks Dr Ridd

If this guy is such a right winger and front for evil types, he sure hasn't followed the supposed protocol. Maybe he's just a guy putting forward some ideas.

Great Article,
Thank you for addressing the real issue of population growth.
This issue that I, the greens and most Australians are concerned about.

Unfortunately, global warming, and various options for power sources are all off-topic.

Our current governments population target is infinity.
You can't provide power for infinity people, you can't provide water for infinity people and you can't provide land for infinity people.
You can recycle plastic bags and build nuclear power stations 'till the cows come home, but until you have a stable population, you have an economy of the nineteen fifties, a bygone era, an economy for idiots.

Nice of you to refer to ye olde solar and wind power as "unproven", and imply that 10 year old nuclear power stations are rock solid technology, more advanced and reliable than a space shuttle or an aeroplane.
The Chernobyl waste will be actively causing DNA damage in everything from Mushrooms to Mice for another thousand years I'm sorry to inform you that you're a little ignorant in that respect.

This is a classic example of the well-known fact that a tiny risk of apocalyptic disaster generates far more media attention and public hysteria than a serious risk of financial and personal inconvenience. If the global warming hypothesis is nonsense, then the probability of doom from it is precisely zero and we should spend our time and money on things that will provide genuine benefits instead -- Indigenous health and public education, for instance.

One does not evaluate the likelihood of a scientific prediction by counting the number of people who vote for it, but by an independent and objective assessment of the evidence. If the evidence is flawed then any actions based on that evidence will be harmful and probably futile.

From the comments it's great to see Australians aren't buying the rubbish about nuclear power, which has no place in any plan with sustainability as a goal. Might avoiding nuclear make it more difficult to reduce CO2 emissions? Perhaps. But we do know it will have major negative impacts in terms of use of water, concrete (CO2 intensive) and sustainability of the fuel source and waste disposal. Fortunately those who really get it understand we have to work on the two multipliers in the equation for human impact on our planet: population and resource intensity. And that means we must get unhooked from growth addiction. Anything else is a distraction.

Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
<A HREF="http://www.growthbusters.com">www.growthbusters.com</A>

i don't have much respect for greenies. they observe the system failing to provide a sustainable society, year after year, but the penny never drops: it never crosses their mind that if you want a different outcome, you need a different system.

now the end-state of parliamentary rule is coming in view, and they're getting anxious. still the penny doesn't drop. still they imagine the socio-political system that brought us to the brink of ecological disaster will suddenly turn 180% and lead them back.

being really dim is not survival-oriented.

Basic economics and climate science suggest global warming needs tackling on a global plan, ie each country needs contribute as best suited to it's environmental and economic circumstances. Australia's contribution should be negotiated and argued with other countries and fit into a jigsaw puzzle where, although the pieces each differ, the whole is the least disruptive solution.

As we are well-endowed with alternative energy options, hot rock, etc it seems short-sighted and economically irrational for us to argue that we should arrogate to ourselves the use of nuclear power. If we can't make alternative energy work with all of our advantages then how can we argue that less well off and less endowed countries should even try?

For Australia to go nuclear is both economically irrational and a signal of despair. By all means sell uranium to less well-endowed countries but surely Economics 101 suggests that they will pay a higher price for our uranium than we are willing to consider.

Excellent article, Peter Ridd

To put some numbers on what the government is doing in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, have a look at the cover article by Fred Pearce in the Nov. 17, 2007 issue of New Scientist. Our new government intends to carry on with Malcolm Turnbull's idea of phasing out incandescent light-bulbs. According to Pearce, approximately a quarter ton of carbon dioxide emissions a year are saved if a household switches from tungsten filament light-bulbs to compact fluorescents. However, each Australian is responsible for the emission of about 19 tons of carbon dioxide every year, as opposed to about 12 tons in the UK. This means that one additional baby, conjured into being by the government's baby bonus, will wipe out the benefits of 75 households that switch over.

A migrant adds less to global emissions than a baby, since he would still be contributing if he stayed at home. However, migrants tend to adopt the consumption patterns of the host society, and their children certainly do. Approximately 2 European migrants would have the same effect as one additional Australian baby, with migrants from poor countries adding even more. The Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, accepts this, but said in a recent interview that this is no reason to leave a migrant from Africa to languish in poverty and despair at home. Does he perhaps take this view with all 5 billion people who live in countries poorer than Mexico?

We need to consider to what extent the politicians' conservation initiatives are simply window dressing to create the illusion that something is being done. They may also believe that Australia would be under less pressure from other countries if per capita emissions go down (even as total emissions go up).

We’ve got record high immigration. The utterly absurd baby bonus has significantly increasing our birthrate and is going to be boosted even further to $5000.

Could you ever have believed that Rudd could be significantly worse than Howard?

We now have a regime that is even more rapidly taking us away from sustainability.

Rudd is demonstrating duplicity in a most extreme manner, by advocating large-scale greenhouse gas emission reductions while boosting the rate of increase in the number of consumers!

The Australian public is silent. Environmental NGOs and academics are also predominantly silent. There is no outrage being expressed!!

How is it possible for any thinking person not be outraged by the stated goal of a huge reduction in GHG emissions, while the same crazy government is making every effort to increase the rate of consumers with no end in sight?? ?? ??

As Dr Ridd says, if the population doubles by 2050, which it is set to do, then the size of the per-capita reductions will have to be much greater in order to achieve the same goal.

If the population doubles, per-capita emissions will have to be reduced by 50% just to break even! And by a further 50% (75% of the original) in order to achieve a goal of a 50% reduction!

The baby bonus needs to be stopped forthwith and immigration needs to be quickly wound down to at least net zero.

Talk of nuclear power without the essential element of an end to expansionism is at best a distraction from what we should really be concentrating on and at worst a deliberate attempt to prop up the continuous growth (and antisustainability) paradigm.

This from the AEF website: "Mine Your Own Business" is a journey through the dark side of environmentalism. It demolishes the cosy consensus that environmentalists are well meaning agenda free activists and shows them to be anti-development ideologues who think the poor are happy being poor and don't want the development that we, in the west, take for granted".

This alone highlights the agenda of this group who while denigrating 'environmentalism' then go ahead and name themselves the Australian Environment Foundation.

Please provide evidence that substantiates your claim that environmentalists want everyone to be poor and define what you mean by poor. Reducing an overbloated lifestyle does not equate to advocating poverty. This is just pure sensationalism and I wonder about your own motives.

Environmentalists do talk of overpopulation (Tim Flannery for one) and the need for population policy coupled with a better use of resources (eg. addressing issues of overconsumption). I admit there could be more advocacy from the Greens Party and I am not sure why they don't have a clear policy on overpopulation. I would be disappointed if it was because of a fear of being seen as racist which only means they need to grow some bigger appendages on this issue.

The author said: "I can only conclude that those who oppose nuclear power do not really believe in anthropogenic global warming, but follow along with the mantra to prove their green credentials."

This kind of comment is a bit playground worthy and I think the author knows it. Nuclear power is not an environmental alternative and scientists give it only a 20 year lifespan - hardly a long-term viable alternative. You speak about the deaths (immediate and long term) from Chernobyl as significantly small - the deaths from Chernobyl have been grossly understated. This was just one reactor imaging the risk with a proliferation of global reactors. The difference it would appear between AEF and other environmentalists is the difference between a short-term fix and long term sustainability.

Well now, we haven't heard too much yet from the others about long term sustainability, so you had better give the AEF some credit for something.

Let us hear some suggestions, instead of just bagging the AEF. For instance, how are we going to address the very difficult problems of exponentially increasing world population, exhaustion of mineral and energy resources, just to name a couple.

David

How unusual for government to set highly dubious targets, most likely unattainable built on a foundation of contentious reasoning and argueable facts, which are more or less beyond emperical validation.

How unusual for them to rouse the masses behind something that cant be proved, beyond the force of majority. How unusual for them to rely on a consensus of opinion, instead of rigoursly proven fact.

How unusual for them to build a framework and peddle a consciousness based on uncertaintly, on the unproveable. On something that might or might not be true. How unusual for them to peddle such uncertainty in service of poking people with the sentiment and emotion stick. How unusual for them peddle fear and regret and that wounderfully useful device of human manipulation... fear of regret.

We just gotta, just in case, maybe, if, because... what if? Its too grave, blah, blah, blah. Unfortunately the majority of folks are proplelled by emotion and ego, not logic, reason nor facts. The latter takes foar too much work. Most everyone is conditioned to respond to the former, it makes us more maleable. And its the fudamental basis of all the worlds woes and all social ills.

And this is exactly how the political snakes want it, the masses mired in a consiousness of addiction, too oblivious to ever acknowledge or challenge.

Gotta hand it to the politicians, for their machiavelan master stroke of self validation and relevance. After the cold war ended, they were more or less in limbo. What, without a perceived threat to wack everyone about with the fear schtick. That lasted about a decade or two and low and behold, along come global warming. A fantastic threat that can be fought into perpetuity, with its attendant contoversy and uncertainty.

A master stroke really. Now WE are our own enemy and the govt will intermediate this self flagelating, guilt striken hot war, with ourselves.

Of course the target wont be reached. Of course they're unreasonable and contentious. Of course there is no light at the end of the political tunnel. Thats the whole point.

Whether or not you believe in human impact on climate change or even that there is climate change at all, this should be irrelevant.

It is basic common sense to move towards sustainable technology and living. Why continue to use up all our remaining non-renewable resources? There is no justification for it.

Be sceptical about the analysis, observation and research by the majority of the world's scientists if you wish, but please explain why we should not change our current practise of pollution, excess waste and use of non-renewable energy?

“Antarctica's massive Wilkins Ice Shelf has begun disintegrating under the effects of global warming, satellite images by the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center showed…..

The collapse of a substantial section of the shelf was triggered February 28 when an iceberg measuring 41 by 2.4 kilometers (25.5 by 1.5 miles) broke off its southwestern front. That movement led to disintegration of the shelf's interior, of which 414 square kilometers (160 square miles) have already disappeared, scientists say...

Over the past half century, the western Antarctic Peninsula has experienced the steepest temperature increase on Earth, 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 Farenheit) per decade…...”

The full story is at Sydney Morning Herald website:http://news.smh.com.au/big-chunk-of-antarctic-ice-shelf-falling-apart/20080326-21p3.html

Below is a link to a cartoon voiced by the inimitable John Clarke – warning it contains images of Polar Bears….

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=pK6KZE4gxa0

fractelle,

the various forms of schtick peddled by vested interests isnt necessary to reduce our impact on our environment. That one shouldnt crap in their own yard is self evident. There's no need to prove why people shouldnt do what a proponent is saying should be done. Thats the proponents burden.

The interesting side of it is the way the climate change 'debate' is being steered by vested interestes, on all sides. They basically play to uncertainty and distortion about a whole lot of scientific mumbo jumbo to flog their little doomsday routines. Works pretty well too.

Problem is that this points to a lack of integrity on the part of vested interests and has much potential for distortion, malfeasance and possibly corruption. Theres a huge pile of money to be bilked from this. And being bilked it is. And many flaws arise (out of short-sightedness and poor reasoning), which funnily enuff is useful for bilking the process.

Govts in particular, have a way of showing their tendency to appeasement by tokenism. They sign treaties one day and build desal plants the next and on another day takes five 19yr olds out of one car and put them into three. Do they listen when they talk to each other.

To my mind this sort of exposes the game thats being played. Disingenuous politicians scoring points.

A lot of worthwhile things get done and a hell of a lot of waste is produced in the process. Argueably the price of innovation. Arguably the product of a process distorted by special interests. l tend to the latter.

l would prefer they drop the doomsday scenario, drop the guilt and negativity and sell a more simple and honest message based on sustainability, moderation, clean air and fresh water.

That they persist with blatant emotional manipulation (fear) and a makes them highly suspect.

To those who claim that green organizations are interested in population issues, the silence of the ACF and others is deafening. If I hear that the ACF is advocating a reduction in immigration to 50000 per year, I will eat my words, but I am very safe. Tim Flannery, the notable exception mentioned by some correspondents, is a member of SPA which I mentioned in the article. SPA was formed after the ACF completely refused to discuss population.

To those who oppose nuclear power. Fair enough provided you are doing for the right reasons. I'm actually not that keen on it myself. But wrongs reasons are

(1) Chernobyl caused millions of deaths. It did not. Read the official reports.
(2) There is a very limited supply of Uranium. There is enough for a few hundred years.
(3) Nuclear energy is likely to cause more deaths than a 6 degree rise in temperature. Do the risk comparison. You don’t need to like nuclear, you just need to fear massive global warming more to choose nuclear as an insurance

To those who claim that the AEF is some sort of front for all sorts of nasty people. I can only offer my contempt. There is no argument that can counter these conspiracy theories. Why is it that being pro nuclear (which many in the AEF are not!) means that one is in the pay of the mining companies? I am a minor academic at a small University in North Queensland with no commercial interest in uranium mining save what my government superannuation fund may (or may not) have. I base my arguments on logic, I hope. I could well be wrong, but take care to question the motives of people of whom you know little or nothing.

Peter Ridd

Well said, Peter.

Most of your detractors don't understand logic or reasoned argument based on facts.

David

Trade

"l would prefer they drop the doomsday scenario, drop the guilt and negativity and sell a more simple and honest message based on sustainability, moderation, clean air and fresh water."

I get what you mean, however, while our society is based around the economy rather than the other way round, all we'll get out of government or big business is a load of jargon. In Victoria the state government is pushing for a desal plant - this would be unnecessary if we looked at containing water BEFORE it reached the ocean. But where would the money be made if we all had water tanks and all big buildings had water collection tanks instead of using from the mains water supply?

The same goes for solar energy - we all have solar panels (and the technology will improve to the point that the average home can generate its own power) and then what happens to the energy suppliers?

Ditto building consumer goods that actually last instead of winding up in landfill.

Working towards a sustainable lifestyle means a complete change on how we do business. The biggest losers would be the biggest corporations who are based around traditional modes of business. The winners would be small business adaptable and flexible enough to change and offer innovative technology. The irony is that the big end of town has always had the $ to invest in research however, they have failed to do so - "business as usual" because change is scary and they may lose the level of control they have now.

As for doomsday criers? As I said in my previous post, does it matter whether you believe in climate change or not? Surely we cannot continue with the waste that a consumer based economy inevitably produces?

I got you all thinking. hahaha! and thats the point! Funny old world, isnt it. ahahaha! When you have seen as much as I have, you will see its time to help.

I will go now, but my lesson is! THINK FOR YOURSELFS and may it be what comes, do the best with it. ( there is a paper here)

All the best

Evolution.