Wow! Strong words Peter.

As someone who has been very active in the green movement for decades, having held the positions of president and long-time committee member of the North Queensland Conservation Council and two other non-government organisations, having been a state candidate for the Queensland Greens, a member of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, etc, I can only say…..

You’re spot on!

Following the collapse of the communist system, the socialist radicals abandoned their overt representation of a failed political system and basically went “underground”.

The process of ‘entryism’, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Entryism

And http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/nicholas_blincoe/2008/02/how_green_is_my_berry.html quote “The Greens are now only Green in name and the reason lies in the creation of Green Left in 2006, a leftwing entryist movement that now occupies many of the most powerful positions in the party. Founded by Peter Tatchell, among others, Green Left is an avowedly anti-capitalist movement.”

where someone of one political belief fraudulently enters another political group with the intention of either deliberate sabotage (something which Ted Bailleau is possibly experiencing) or to modify the goals and ideals of the host organisation, to better support the hidden entryist agenda. This practice was wide spread in UK throughout the 1970-1990s and is presumably still going on today.

The victim targets of many trotkyites and extreme left wing malcontents were the green and environmental movements, from where they could use the sentimentality of “saving anything” to undermine the democratic processes which are the real targets of their malcontent.

Now that all sounds terribly “Manchurian Candidate” stuff and conspiracy theory but

based on a comment from the article “In short the Green movement is no longer a defender of environmental conservation, of the flora and fauna.”

I would ask, if not the preservation of the environment, what is the real “green agenda”?

Until someone can explain where all the political radicals and agitators of the past went (apart from those who have thrust copies of “Green Left” in my face with pleadings to buy), I am going to assume they have entered, among others, the environmental movement, from where the will continue to corrupt and pervert that movement to their real will.

Ludwig, interested in your response. I would appreciate your greater elaboration.

Peter - a well written, accurate post. The Greens are a political party hiding behind an environmental facade to raise public awareness of the party's existence but pushing left-wing ideology on a range of issues completely unrelated to and often antagonistic to the environment.
My best example of this was in the late 1990s when the Howard government needed one more vote in the Senate to get its GST legislation through. I wrote to then WA Greens senator Dee Margetts urging her to vote in favour of the GST in exchange for a wide range of green, pro-environment concessions such as no tax on solar hot water systems, reduced taxation on fuel efficient cars, etc. After my second letter (she didn't bother replying to my first one), she somewhat arrogantly advised that the Greens would not support my suggestion as they had their own ways of protecting the environment!
The sad thing is that 90% of their supporters are well intentioned people who genuinely want to see Australia do more to protect its environment but they have no understanding of how they're being conned by Green propaganda nor of the Greens' real political and social agenda.

There's a lot of bile from Peter, but very few facts.

Here's the actual Australian Greens Population Policy.

http://greens.org.au/about/policy/policy.php?policy_id=52

As you can see, it bears very little resemblance to his abusive tirade.

The Greens suffer the same problem that every ideology does. They seek black and white solutions in a complex world of many hidden variables, This is the reason that Labor or Colaition will always be in power as they deal with complexity in the only way possible - with rhetoric, gestures and just plain empty waffle.

Please, MR online opinion, less from these front organisations spewing propaganda drivel.

You are just insulting your members.

More opinion from any extreme, but from people who actually believe what they write (for reasons other than just money).

As a previous campaigner of the Wilderness Society, committed activist for 15-years, one who dedicated my life to the 'cause'...

I left, and now oppose the 'greens' I still support the environment? Why do I oppose the 'greens'?

Because they are now committed to excess and damaging the world and our children's future. They have been taken over by the irrational zealots of many 'social causes', like nasty-feminism. FemiNasties don't want equity or fairness. They want to hurt men.

According to the Greens, Democrats and ALP Left it's OK for women to lie under oath in court.

During the debate on the new Family Law Act 2006, The Greens and Dems lined up, to support a women's FREEDOM TOP LIE IN COURT!

Democrats Senator STOTT DESPOJA said "a number of us feel very strongly... (we oppose) costs where a false allegation or statement in proceedings is proven." (30 March 2006 Hansard SENATE page 203)

ALP left Senator LUDWIG also wanted those who intentionally lie in court to be let off scott-free. (Page 204)

Finally Greens Senator SIEWERT "The Greens strongly... request that the government... withdraw this particular amendment... This is of extreme concern for us...The impact it will have is to discourage women from making claims..." (Hansard, page 206)

SO IT IS OK FOR WOMEN TO LIE IN THE FEMINST COURT according to the Greens, Dems. and ALP!

Lying in court is child abuse!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Now if the Divorce Court is trying to find the best interests of the child, and if that decision is based on a lie... then the child's best interests are not achieved, the child's rights are hurt by the lie.

Lying in court, under oath, is CHILD ABUSE!
But the Greens say it's OK.


Citation Senate Hansard; Refering to the clause in the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act 2006 No. 46, 2006, page 32 (PDF page is different).
117AB Costs where false allegation or statement made... the court is satisfied that a party to the proceedings knowingly made a false allegation or statement in the proceedings.

PartTimeparent@pobox.com
www.Fathers4Equality-Australia.org

There seems to be an upper/lower case problem with the article. It is clear from the article as a whole that Peter is talking about those groups that collecively may be called 'greens' or 'the greens' or 'the greenies', but NOT particularly to the Greens. That is a political party and is but a very small subset of the 'greens' as a whole. Such a shame that what is little more than a punctuation issue has the potential to divert attention away from the essential message in the article. Perhaps the editorial side of the OLO should correct the problem, though it is very late.

Can I get that printed on a metal plaque, healthwatcher? It's timeless.

eyejaw: "It is clear from the article as a whole that Peter is talking about those groups that collecively may be called 'greens' or 'the greens' or 'the greenies', but NOT particularly to the Greens"

I wondered about that myself. However, I thought that Peter Ridd might be engaged in a bit of "obfuscatory word play" himself, since his intemperate spray appears to be overtly political in intent and he persistently refers to "the Greens" throughout, while conflating the name of the political party with positions he attributes to the wider environmental movement. I note that a recruitment advertisement for the Australian Environmental Foundation appears on the second page of his tendentious article - are they "Greens" as well?

Having said that, I have long been disappointed in the absence of a comprehensive population policy from the Australian Greens political party, and a general avoidance of the population issue from other, more exclusively environmental, groups. I also agree with Ridd on the issue of Indigenous hunting of endangered species - if a species is endangered it should be protected, rather than hunted by anyone for whatever reasons.

On the other hand, to label the Greens or the environmental lobby generally as "illogical and treacherous" is hardly conducive to encouraging them to address these policy deficits and inconsistencies. We are not going to get a sufficiently rigorous population policy from Labor or the Coalition, nor it appears from pseudo-environmental puppet groups like the AEF.

An excellent article and excellent comments from Ludwig, Col Rouge, and Bernie Masters.

Lev, the international aid aspects of the Greens' population policy look good, but at home it looks pretty obvious that concern for the environment is trumped by international social justice concerns, as can be seen by such clauses as "in the context of social justice" and "prepare contingency plans for possible large scale humanitarian migration as a result of climate change".

The other issue is that the Greens do not follow up their policy in their public pronouncements. What did the Greens have to say about the baby bonus? Why aren't Bob Brown and his colleagues criticising the mass migration policy of both the Liberal and Labour governments, which now amounts to more than one net migrant for every death? Britain's Optimum Population Trust has calculated that, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, one additional baby is equivalent to 650 round trip flights between New York and London. It would be 980 such flights for an Australian baby, as our per capita emissions are higher. The Australia Institute has calculated that two net migrants, on average, add the same amount to global emissions as one additional baby.

Extinction is forever, so the protection of endangered species has to come before indigenous rights.

If we trash our environment and collapse our society, we won't be able to deal with anyone's social justice concerns. The order of priorities ought to be obvious.

Exactly the sort of cherry-picking ideologicaly based polemic that you would expect from the so called "Environment" Foundation with its facade of scientific "objectivity". Never mind that it is a front organization for big-business and its bottom-line imperatives.

Any culture that uses the bottom-line as its sole (soul-less) measure of value will go down the tube in very quick time.

The Greens are a political party and there are contradictions in both their policies and actions. So what?

At least they ask REAL questions re what our "culture" is really all about.

Are the Greens, or anyone else for that matter, who is interested in social justice issues, supposed to offer some kind of apologetic/explanatory statement re the countless examples of horrors being committed against Earthkind every day.

Each of can only do the best that we can within our own limited sphere of influence.

Meanwhile our way of life, that is of never-ending "growth" IS unsustainable.

The ruling credo being I shop therefore I am. I AM my possessions.

And how "free" is the consumer anyhow?

Sitting in front of his/her idiotification machine (TV) being "entertained". Or rather ENTRAINED or CLONED into the system-- so that the system has become the only POSSIBLE "reality" as in the virtual world of the Matrix films

Being LIED to about almost everything. And being PASSIVELY told what is "real", what to believe, what to buy, what to get excited about, who to hate etc by the 24/7 relentless propaganda for the military-industrial-entertaiment machine.

We even plonk our babies, toddlers and children in front of the idiotification machine to be "entertained". To be CLONED and ENTRAINED from day one. Huxley's titty-tainment and the 1984 Ministry of "truth" all combined in one seamless whole---or is that hole.

And we wonder why the MEGA- machine is unstoppable

Vance Packard (The Hidden Persuaders) told us years ago how the system works. As did Stuart Ewan in Captains of Consciousness and Culture Against Man by Jules Henry. Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds

Meanwhile I quite like this assessment of the "reality" created by the media.

1. http://www.ispeace723.org/youthepeople4.html

There is a lot to agree with here but some of it is a little extreme.

What is not commonly known is that the Greens nearly abandoned any population policy by simply not putting a new one up for consideration at the last policy review and it was only last-minute action by the SA branch that led to them still having one. (The policy was seen as too contentious by the people drafting the revised policies.) However, there has recently been as lot of talk among the Greens in SA about population (the water crisis makes the problems of population increase all the more obvious) and it is becoming much more easy to talk about it here. (When I first started addressing this issue I was publicly called an "eco-fascist" by another Green.)

I don't agree with the idea that nuclear energy can really help us. I hold a licence to work with radioactive substances so I am not knee-jerk against nuclear energy per se. However, when you see how they handled the Maralinga cleanup (eventually burying the waste under a few metres of earth) then you just know that, if we had a nuclear industry here, then pressure to reduce the enormous financial costs would lead to shortcuts in waste-handling being taken. When you are talking about storage for hundreds of thousands of years then that is just not good enough. The UK is currently finding that the costs of cleaning up its old reactors is now increasing far, far beyond all previous estimates. The only way to see a nuclear energy industry as viable is to ignore the responsibility for waste-handling and to push this onto future generations - that may literally not have the energy to cope! That is a risk we cannot take.

partTimeParent,

You claim that Senator Joe Ludwig is a member of Labor's left faction. I suggest you double-check those facts.

Although, I will tentatively agree (claiming no expertise on this matter) with the rest of your post.

healthwatcher,

There is a gentle irony on your post following mine. Just as I showed in policy that the Greens recognise the complexity of variables involved in population and the environment, you claim that they seek "black and white solutions in a complex world".

I really do wish people who do their research before posting.

Speaking of which, our good poster Peter Ridd is an interesting character isn't he? Science co-ordinator for the benignly-named Australian Environment Foundation.

Except, the AEF is a front for the Institute of Public Affairs, and is strongly associated with the logging industry lobby group "Timber Communities Australia". Indeed the head of the AEF admitted that the group was set up to protect timber interests (from an interview on ABC Radio station Triple J's Hack program).

Well said, Peter Ridd.

The Greens rose on their anti-population growth; now they don’t even mention the subject.

“The Greens nowadays are less of an environmental movement and more of an extreme left wing conglomeration…”

Yes, but they were never really sincere about population growth, and they have always been left wing extremists, hence their (thankfully) low vote.

Dear Eyejaw,
Mea culpa. This was my mistake not Peter Ridd's. It has now been fixed.
Susan Prior - editor

Mr Right. In the context of present time Australian, UK, Europe and USA culture (and indeed the entire world) what is a left-wing extremist?

Perhaps you could name a few and give us a well reasoned explanation as to why you describe them as such.
Not just a bunch of your usual cardboard cliches.

It would seem by your postings that everything is threatened by these left-wing "extremists".

Meanwhile out in the real world it is mostly those on the right, wherever they are geographically and culturally who are in to the applied (bloody) politics of extremism.

And who are preaching and practising hate and the applied politics of "purity". And arming themselves to the teeth and looking for scapegoats to dump their toxic emotions on to.

In the USA for instance those on the left dont have much to do with the "culture" of guns. Conversely those on the right are very much into the "culture" of guns, especially the dreadfully sane right wing militias, including the official ones like Blackwater.

In my opinion these militias are just waiting waiting for the right moment to dramatise their well rehearsed (and long expected) scapegoat politics. The USA body politic will be thus "cleansed" of its "toxic" elements and everything will be hunky dory again. Apple pie and motherhood will be restored to their righful place(s) just as in the Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post fantasy world or the dreadfully sane colourless "world" depicted in the film PLEASANTVILLE.
Or the tightly scripted "life" of Trueman in The Truman Show.
No REAL questions allowed---indeed no questions at all.

And "right"-thinking normals will again rule the world with their rigid binary exclusions. No ambiguity, paradox, shades of gray,or multiple perspectives will be thus allowed.

Just like in the 1984 nightmare world of Winston Smith.
And in the dreadfully sane "world" enforced by Agent Smith in the Matrix.

Lev,

I read The Green party population policy and it is exactly the way I described it. It does not say that we must reduce immigration as a matter of urgency, and it does not give any indication of what Australia’s population should be (e.g 25 million peak). It is just a bunch of words, just like the 2020 statement. Instead it is full of social motherhood statements about, for example and I quote,

both global and domestic social justice and equity;
intergenerational equity;
multiculturalism;
international human rights obligations; and
decent wages and conditions for all workers.

The policy is far less about the environment than social issues.

In fact it is not just The Greens that don’t have a population policy of any value. The greens (i.e green organisations) virtually all fail the test. Check out the ACF, the Wilderness Society etc. They are all the same, they won’t touch population with a barge pole and should thus stop pretending to be green

Peter Ridd

Peter you didn't ask the next question, which is why didn't the greens remain a true party of environmentalists, as they appeared to be at their inception?

Answer: Because they opted to sell out for the sake of more votes, more power.

They were courted by the socialist left and saw greater electoral popularity by that route, even though adopting socialist policies directly contradicted many of their green ones.

So now you have Bob Brown looking increasingly foolish arguing we should open the floodgates to more immigrants while at the same time reducing our environmental footprint.

While the editor has corrected the ambiguity between "the Greens" and "the greens", it seems that Peter Ridd wants to maintain the confusion. His response to Lev about the Greens political party's inadequate population policy ignores the fact that, as a mainstream political party, environmental policies form only one of the "Four Pillars" of Greens political parties worldwide: "Social Justice, Grassroots Democracy, Ecological Sustainability and Non-Violence".

As a political party, the Greens are far more than the single-issue party Ridd apparently wants them to be. On the other hand, the Australian Environment Foundation (of which Ridd is Science Coordinator, according to their website) appears to be one of those small-g green groups who campaign on environmental issues but who have no population policy whatsoever. According to their brochure ( http://aefweb.info/data/AEF%20Brochure%20Ver2.pdf ), they are a "practical" organisation:

<< This practical knowledge and experience has given the AEF a unique ability to contribute to public debates on the full range of environmental issues. Such issues include:
• Access and adoption of genetically modified crops
• The more sustainable use of water and fisheries resources
• A more sensible management regime for Invasive Native Scrub
• Active forest management
• Exploring all options in energy production >>

Strange, isn't it that such a practical and experienced "green" organisation makes no mention whatsoever of population policies on their website, despite its Science Coordinator's castigation of other "green" groups for the very same sin. At least the capital-G Greens make some effort to locate population issues within a broader policy framework.

Indeed, if one was to apply Ridd's blinkered analysis to his own organisation, one might be tempted to say that " The AEF are less of an environmental movement and more of an extreme right wing conglomeration devoted primarily to business issues ".

I thought it was worth noting that, earlier today, I invited the Greens to send in a riposte to this article. They have declined my offer.
Susan Prior - editor

As a fully paid-up member of the Greens I can say that I am very disappointed by the leadership's refusal to respond to this opinion piece. Perhaps if it had been written in less inflammatory language it might have encouraged debate. However, it IS worrying that, in order to be popular, the Greens have begun to make serious compromises in principle when it comes to the environment. Their solutions to global warming and energy security continue to push techno-optimist, you-can-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too, middle-class greenwash-type responses. The role of the Greens as I see it is to stretch the boundaries of the intellectual space so that more "rational" (i.e. acceptable) -sounding voices within it can begin to be heard. The Greens need to drag an ignorant public kicking and screaming into the full daylight of the drastic measures needed to maintain something resembling civilization. People have voted in the past for the Greens because they spoke the truth even when that was unpopular or controversial. However, they have dropped the ball on population and energy. If the Greens lose that credibility then they have lost the game. Maybe it is time to establish an "Environment Party"?

Ho Hum, its pretty easy to define a left-wing extremist.

There the ones who want to force everyone to do as they say, by law.

The last thing they are interested in is convincing, with logical argument, others to join their cause. They are even less interested in developing policies which would draw more people to their cause.

How could they? They believe they are the font of all wisdom, like most other would be dictators.

I am not surprised SusanP, what have the Greens Party got to gain from engaging with just the latest mashup from an Institute for Public Affairs front group? OLO will run another tomorrow, i'm sure.

I too condemn the Greens for their "lets pretend" population policy, but at least they are closer to engaging with reality than the suicidal "growth forever" pushed by the IPA and our ruling neoliberal (and neoliberal-lite) duopoly.

Yes there are leftist infiltrators in the Greens who are crippled by the same ecological illiteracy as Karl Marx and Milton Friedman, but thats not justification for tarring all Greens & greenies, rather reason to spotlight and weed out the Left zealots. If only we lived in a functional democracy... (free and open media? political accountability?)

Call it ecological conciousness or Responsible stewardship, either way its harder than the Footy Show and the 'jam tomorrow' promises of the IPA and we all know which is dominant. Ecological conciousness works and could help with all of the problems facing us, the problems lie in the selfinterested inflexibility, deceitfulness and plain old stupidity of politicians and their wealthy sponsors.

I guess that when you're so far to the Right, EVERYBODY becomes a lefty and the degree to which they differ on any point becomes a measure of their degree of extremism.

Who is actually regarded as moderate these days?

“As a fully paid-up member of the Greens I can say that I am very disappointed by the leadership's refusal to respond to this opinion piece”

I take it Michael that you have appealed directly to them and have been told that no response will be rendered?

Perhaps you could re-appeal and make the point that there are a lot of respondents who essentially agree with the author, which could be responded to if they feel that Dr Ridd has hurt their feelings and that they’d rather sulk…or just let concerned people believe the criticisms levelled against them at face value (coz it’s the truth afterall i’n it)… than defend themselves.

“Maybe it is time to establish an ‘Environment Party’?”

Most definitely.

We need Clive Hamilton or Tim Flannery to head a new party, or find a person or an agenda that they are willing to very publicly endorse.

I have tried to convince opposition parties to embrace the necessary new paradigm based on sustainability. I’ve had a fair whack at appealing to Beazley, Rudd in opposition and the Qld Nationals, on this forum.

I think that this new political paradigm could easily be embraced by the old dinosaur parties when they are desperate for power….. if they could just see the enormous potential in it for them to appeal to the constituency. Quite frankly, the Federal Libs and indeed just about all of the state opposition parties would have a better chance of winning power at the next election or the one after, if they embraced this political direction, and strongly promoted it, rather than upholding the practically identical same old same old as the incumbents.

The Greens and Dems could do it too. But they would have to convince us no less so than the others that their conversion was genuine. Afterall, their agendas in practise have barely been better than those of the liblabs.

But I guess it would be better if the new party emerged independently.

.
“Ludwig, interested in your response. I would appreciate your greater elaboration.”

OK Col. Tomorrow (:>)

"Ho Hum, its pretty easy to define a Right-Wing extremist.

They are the ones who want to force everyone to do as they say, by law.

The last thing they are interested in is convincing, with logical argument, others to join their cause. They are even less interested in developing policies which would draw more people to their cause.

How could they? They believe they are the font of all wisdom, like most other would be dictators."
_________________________

Thank-you Hasbeen,- preview and spell check has allowed me to correct your errors.

Other than that; nicely put.

The Greens do have their faults, and it is to be hoped they rectify them.

Though its hard to take the criticism of a rightwing organisation, even when in parts its constructive!

Hasbeen. Did you have a private school ecducation?

I have the solution.We get the Greens to become Muslims so they can create a whole new perverted logic.Instead of Allah we could have Green God,or the great GG.Do we have any bets on who would win the race for stupidity?

Healthwatcher “The Greens suffer the same problem that every ideology does. They seek black and white solutions in a complex world of many hidden variables, This is the reason that Labor or Colaition will always be in power as they deal with complexity in the only way possible - with rhetoric, gestures and just plain empty waffle.”

On that basis I would repeat what I have been suggesting for some time, smaller government, lower taxes and less interference in the sovereign decisions of individuals.

partTimeParent “They have been taken over by the irrational zealots of many 'social causes'”
more examples of the entryism which I suggested.

The passion and anger of your post is not missed and I would suspect well founded.

Divergence “international social justice concerns” is a euphemism for “manically obsessive anti-capitalism”, regardless of the superior social benefits and national fabric we all enjoy under a libertarian-capitalist system.

It is the sentimental choice of the envious and under-skilled, to believe they are being held back by an unfair system, when they are really being held back by their own inadequacies.

Ho Hum “Any culture that uses the bottom-line as its sole (soul-less) measure of value will go down the tube in very quick time.”

You really should get up to date with modern business systems and measurement.
Whilst some businesses look solely at the profit line, the successful ones consider long term business security and growth, the ethical discharge of all its responsibilities, including social, environmental, legal etc. as equally important in the long term security of its monetary, intellectual and skills investments.

And I thought our “culture” was about respecting people to make their own decisions.

Grn “They were courted by the socialist left and saw greater electoral popularity by that route, even though adopting socialist policies directly contradicted many of their green ones.”

Proving that if you lay down with dogs, you get fleas.

Arjay, check the history books, Gadaffi beat you, by a couple of decades.

*WOW*.....

I mean....*WOWWWW*....

What a breath of fresh air... some honesty about the Greens at last.

looking at all the bickering.. I'm thinking our various denominations are like an oasis in a wide desert by comparison :)

GINXy...

"Ho Hum, its pretty easy to define a Right-Wing extremist.

They are the ones who want to force everyone to do as they say, by law."

Well said.. now we can all rejoice that 'Christians' are definitely not 'Right Wing Extremists'.. because their Bible says:

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." (i.e..the LAW)

"You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace."

Now that's freedom :)

I'm amazed (but welcome it)that the true colors of the Greens (party) are being nailed to so many masts here.

What saddens me though, is my own hairdresser and a few others who don't really dig into things much are influenced by the 'para-message' of the Greens "We care for the environment" when in reality.. the darkness of their Orwellian hyper managed Socialist "Utopia" is lurking like a hungry lion in the background.

They don't want to respond ? hah!.. cowards.. utter cowards... absolute wimps and lacking in intestinal fortitude..as they KNOW they cannot control the agenda HERE!

Col Rouge. A refugee from Thatcherism!

As someone who has been a member of a number of conservation and environmental groups and who very nearly, by a cat's whisker, joined the Greens, I only partly agree with Peter's article.

In the Greens defence, they are a political party. Political parties hoping to get elected (even if primarily in the Senate)are required to formulate policies across the broader spectrum. The Greens were criticised in their 'birth' stages for being too narrowly focussed on the environment and now it seems they face similar criticism for coming out strong on social justice issues - those evil, mean Greens. :)

The Greens are not incorrect when they argue that sustainability is not achieved solely via population numbers but has to include issues of consumption. I quote:

"- Australia must contribute to achieving a globally sustainable population.
- our environmental impact is not determined by population numbers alone, but by the way that people live.
- consumption patterns and levels, distribution of resources, agricultural practices for domestic consumption and export, levels and types of industrial activity, urban design and transport options determine the ecological footprint of a group of people."

The Greens are also about equity - that is not a bad thing. I suspect the Green's reticence about population policy is influenced by a fear that this issue will be exploited by those with racist agendas.

Despite this, I agree that the Greens need to be more forceful on a 'numbers' approach in population policy in addition to their 'consumption' focus. They are both important - we cannot continue to overpopulate or consume at the same unsustainable rate. Poorer countries can ill afford to increase their populations in an ever increasing spiral of poverty.

While it is the Greens perogative to decline to responsd, I am also disappointed and I believe they do themselves a disservice. I have great respect and admiration for Bob Brown as a man of integrity and one who holds a vision for global economic equity.

"Me too". Excellent article and good discussion. Yes a Green party without a strong proposition on population is contradiction in terms, and deserves outing. And as others have said it looks like Greens have set aside their roots in pursuit of the political ground occupied by the Democrats.

Pity. We are going to run into the limits of this planet in this century. We need politicians with a clear grasp of the implications of this - and it seems the obvious choice, the Greens, have lost interest.

I find it hard to square Peter Ridd's articles here on OLO with the rest of the stuff that comes from the AEF. Reading elsewhere, it seems Don Burke is a AGW believer. That makes the AEF a fairly broad church.

So what do you guys actually have in common? It isn't your views on the environment. You all look to have a right wing bent. My guess is you all take pleasure in mouthing off at your left leaning environmental brethren. The attitude reduces the impact of your message - and seems like a waste given you have so much in common.

The Greens (ie the party, not the more widely defined movement) are hardly radical. They are occupying some of the ground the Left of the ALP had before it moved to the Right.

The difference is the Greens have no links, direct or indirect, to the working class, while the ALP, through the trade union bureaucracy, does.

Infiltration? Entryism? Really, why would the radical left bother? This sort of watermelon analysis (green on the outside, red on the inside) just doesn't stack up. The Greens don't challenge the profit system. They are part of it.

Population control as the answer to environmental problems? Malthus was a reactionary. His logic was reactionary (and wrong). Resources are "limited" by a system based on production for profit.

Some people in the green movement see people as the enemy. Those who sprout population control are anti-human. They see only the effects of the profit system and overproduction, and blame the wrong group for that. Let's put people before profit.

Peter.

I tried to decode your article.

I say "decode" because frankly, I couldn't really recognise the Greens of which you speak. One can always cherry-pick stuff from well-meaning but otherwise outworn ideas, as you did. After all, the extent of the environmental damage we are causing is being revealed to us almost on a daily basis - an exponental rush of revelations you might say. It's easy to be left floundering in the flotsam of yesterday's most cherished beliefs.

All sides accuse each other of being illogical, because all sides - including yours - have been caught flat-footed and bereft of excuses for their idiocy.

".....the process by which the external world of physics is transformed into a world of familiar aquaintance in human consciousness is outside the scope of physics." (Arthur Eddington).

What bothers me Peter, is the idea that any physicist is prepared to bash and beat the metrics of natural laws, until they are distorted enough to fit into the pockets of profiteers.

Enter the Australian Environment Foundation.....

They're definately not green when it comes to economic self-interest.

As someone who values the debates in Online Opinion I am a little worried by the multiple appearances of writers associated with such a well exposed fronts as the Australian Environment Foundation. While I value open debate, and enjoy having my own values challenged by those I disagree with and respect their right to put their views across, this sort of subterfuge is unbecoming of a forum such as this.

If the IPA and the logging industry wants to posts its point of view on these issues then they should do so. But to hide behind front organisations, and for OLO to be part of the process I find most distressing

Sorry Michael. You were responding to Susan’s post. I could swear that her post wasn’t there, coz the first thing I did after reading yours was to look at other posts to see if you were responding someone else’s comments. Bizarre (:>|

But I do reckon that you, or Susan, should have a further attempt at impressing on the Greens that they really do need to respond.

.
Col, I consider my years with non-government environmental organisations, the Democrats and the Qld Greens to be a huge waste of effort.

In my experience, few people in those organisations could appreciate the enormous importance of the population / continuous factor, or even for the need for us to develop a sustainable society. And of those who could see it, very few were interested in contributing much, or anything, towards the fight.

I found this absolutely extraordinary and very difficult to deal with, especially given that in many conversations with ordinary people, continuous population growth was expressed as an obvious concern.

In more recent years I have travelled around the countryside visiting grazing properties, cane farms, etc all over north and central Queensland. Many times landholders have said; ‘I’m not a greenie but…’ and gone on to express continuous population growth as being of the most fundamental environmental and societal concern, totally unprompted by me.

At times I think it is almost as though the greenies are really the anti-greenies and that most or many ordinary people, not least the man on the land, are a whole lot greener!

Then I think; no, that is ridiculous. And then I remember the appalling lack of expression on continuous growth pressures from the Greens, Democrats, ACF, Greenpeace, QCC, NQCC, etc, and I think…..yep, I was right the first time.

The late Arthur Eddington was the "physicist's physicist" alright. His work had the stamp of modesty, which sets a true intellect apart from a mere technical observer, which is all that is required to be a servant of the AEF or the IPA.

Although the following quotation refers to particle physics (circa 1930s), the simple wisdom of his words is timeless:

*

"You leave them conversing on their special problems or their latest discoveries; but return after an hour and it is any odds that they will have reached an all-engrossing topic - the desperate state of their ignorance.

This is not a pose. It is not even scientific modesty, because the attitude is often one of naive surprise that Nature should have hidden her fundamental secrets successfully from such powerful intellects as ours.

It is simply that we have turned a corner in the path of progress and our ignorance stands revealed before us, appaling and insistent."

*

Pity old Sir Arthur has gone to the great particle accellerator in the sky. We could use a few more like him right now.

Don't you think so Peter?

Re: population overshoot, here's Prof Bartlett's Youtube presentation on the exponential function, for those who haven't yet had the pleasure.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

Peter,

The Green population policy states as its first item; "Australia must contribute to achieving a globally sustainable population". All the other policies you quoted are in the context of that first item.

Political party policy does not normally quote precise figures leaving such promises to election platforms. Other organisations behave a similar fashion. Exact figures are determined from policy in the process of implementation.

An intuitive knowledge of physics will tell you that it is quite possible to increase population and reduce environmental impact. Impact is measured by the simple equation I = P * R, or Impact equals population times resource use per capita.

Introducing a population cap, as you propose, says absolutely nothing about per capita resource use. Read the next item of the policy; "our environmental impact is not determined by population numbers alone, but by the way that people live".

As an aggregate figure, the Greens policy seeks a net reduction in the use of natural resources. This is the appropriate policy as it measures actual impact.

I may also point out even if resource use per capita remains unchanged, even a radical reduction of the Australian population will not affect the global environmental problems. We simply cannot isolate Australia from the ocean currents and atmosphere from which the country exists.

The Greens provide a more comprehensive analysis of the situation that your tirade against them. It seems that you're more upset that they have bothered to include global and domestic social issues such as human rights obligations and decent wages in their population policy.

Yet it is this sensitivity to the a complex of issues is why the Green's Senate vote (poor Mr. Right is Mr. Wrong yet again) has consistently increased from the 1998 election (2.7%) to the 2001 election (04.9%), to the 2004 (7.7%) to the 2007 election (9.0%).

By not stressing a population cap, the Greens have taken correct approach. In this case you are incorrect and on a matter of simple arithmetic. It would do you well to acknowledge this.

Passy “Infiltration? Entryism? Really, why would the radical left bother?”

The first action of an entryist would be to deny the even strategy exists. Thanks for confirming it.

“Let's put people before profit.”

If you understood economics you would realise this “mantra of the inadequate” is simply untrue.

Our modern economy derives profit from the people who value the products/services sufficiently to buy them and those people are perfectly able to invest part of their income into the businesses which produce that profit.

The overall social benefit is an efficiency which can never be matched by a centrally organised society, because the centrally managed system is never able or willing to respond to the “chaos” of individual choice in the way free-market capitalists do.

“Those who sprout population control are anti-human.”

No, those who spout that “unbridled population growth is suicidal and the biggest single cause of environmental degradation” are those equipped with the vision to see the consequences of such actions.

They are also the ones who are recognising a personal responsibility , rather than making it a “governmental problem”.

Now we get down to the real issue, “taking responsibility for the consequences of ones actions” is a capitalist quality (the opposite side of the coin to “reward for personal effort”). Something which I guess the internationalists would rather hide from, when we consider the historic consequences produced from the “vision” of past internationalists.

Ludwig.. thanks for the elaboration. Count on my support for your view.

I have privately considered population growth and absolute population numbers the “elephant in the room” of both sustainability and environmental preservation for many years.

Regardless the rhetoric of the left (Passy) and my supposed “anti-human” stance, I see no alternative to some form of population constraint, preferably voluntary.

Because, ultimately, “a resource based policy for population control” is a euphemism for “Mass Starvation”, especially when it is the underdeveloped nations who are responsible for the population explosion and they who will be first to suffer.

Central governments action never solved anything. Only people taking responsibility for their own lives produces any sustainable benefit.

Tutt tutt Mr Ridd

Let’s look at the state of Australia and ask ourselves how the Greens are responsible for the Labor/Conservative mismanagement of this nation and the resultant stuff-ups:

- Largest polluter per capita on the planet
- Appalling health system
- Failing education system
- Continuing population growth
- Murray River – trashed
- Land salinity and soil degradation
- Threatened ecological communities and extinctions
- Suppression of vital health and environmental information (all governments)
- Sydney Harbour waters contaminated (dioxins)
- Lack of regulation on industrial pollution
- Government approval of industrial estates which encroach on established residential areas
- Crime and corruption in our halls of parliament
- Lack of decisive policies on climate change (particularly Howard’s government)

And so Mr Ridd, to alleviate all of the above pressures, you recommend turning this nation into a moon crater by digging up Australia to mine uranium. Have you perused the myriad of uranium tenements awaiting a green light – tenements which will make vast tracks of this land uninhabitable and which will obscenely gobble up our already depleted water resources?

Rather than cap carbon – reduce our carbon footprint, you recommend “business as usual” by procrastination - future sequestration of billions of tonnes of CO2 with unknown consequences.

Ah…..the free market – free for whom?

And the glass house Mr Ridd?

A very refreshing alternative point of view by Peter Ridd.

He succinctly observed that “The greens nowadays are less of an environmental movement and more of an extreme left wing conglomeration devoted primarily to social justice issues.”

I suggest that the Greens have been infiltrated by many more vested interests than just an “extreme left wing conglomeration.”
The social engineering influence of the Roman Catholic Church’s Peace and Social Justice Committee especially in relation to population and immigration growth, refugee and anti-globalization policies is clearly apparent.

It seems to me that The Greens are suffering from similar problems that afflicted the Australian Labor Party in the 1950’s where they were covertly white-anted by external pressure groups whose aim was to either capture the party or else use it as a megaphone for their own policies.

Today the naive say that The Greens democratically accommodate disparate points of view.
But do they?
Their avoidance of immigration and population growth debate with its attendant problems for water and land conservation and cost of housing,health and education speaks very loudly and ominously indeed.

I am cynical enough to believe that the exponential growth of The Greens vote has more to do with covert power politics than the awakening altruism of the Australian voter. The Greens are undergoing machinations, which could be parodied as a modern day Trojan Horse with disparate power groups in its belly striving for supremacy.

Dickie,
If Australia is and has been such an awful place to live in and if being an Australian is such an embarrassment for someone like yourself, when are you migrating overseas and which countries would you be happy to live in

Lev,

I agree with you that per capita consumption is equally important and that it is, by definition the product of these terms that is important. I want to make it quite clear that we must concentrate on both. My problem with both The Green Party, and most other green organizations is that they only concentrate on per capita consumption. I appreciate your point that you may not want to put an exact number on what you think Australia’s population growth should be but you say nothing about the clear need to reduce immigration on this you are silent, both in terms of your policies and your actions. I would like Bob Brown to stand up in parliament and argue for a reduction in the immigration quota just like he (correctly) argues that we must look at reducing per capita consumption.

All the fuss seems to have been on the population issue which is good because it is so important but where is The Green response to my accusation of hypocrisy on Aboriginal killing of endangered species, and the folly of some bio-fuels.

And finally, to those who accuse me and the AEF as being a front for the timber industry and other supposedly pro-growth right wing organizations, read my penultimate paragraph. Here I say that greens too often resort to questioning motives rather than arguing the point. So here we go again. As I have mentioned before on OLO, I am a minor academic from a small university somewhere north of the tropic with no financial interest in any industry save what my super fund might own. I ride my bike to work for environmental grounds and have been in the conservation movement from when I was a teenager. It just happens that I feel that the conservation movement, including The Green Party, has taken a wrong turn over the last decade.

Peter Ridd

Bernie Masters

Six generations of mine have inhabited these lands.

I have as much right as anyone to publicly object to the failed policies of successive governments in Australia and their impotence in correcting those failures.

Despite those failures, my ancestors have always had the capacity to look after themselves through work hard where they have never sought assistance from the public purse.

I have no intention of migrating anywhere, despite your attempts to gag me.

I reiterate, why criticise a Party which has never been in power and which can not take responsibility for the ethics-free system which now prevails?

Dickie,
The reason why I criticise the Greens is two-fold. First, on several occasions, they've helped put the ALP into power at state and federal level. Yet, in spite of this king-making power they hold, they've failed to truly represent green issues when Labor has been the government. As king makers, they have the ability to negotiate with the people to whom they've directed preferences in order to achieve some positive environmental outcomes, yet they've chosen not to negotiate.
Second, in spite of many of the items on your list of stuff-ups being serious and deserving urgent action, the Greens continue to focus on issues often unrelated or irrelevant to the environment. Even when John Howard handed them the opportunity to negotiate over the GST, the Greens chose to do nothing. So now we have a Greens-supported Labor government that wants to ban or tax plastic bags, while our biodiversity continues to be lost and decisions on climate change are left in the 'too hard' basket.
The bottom line is that the Greens have to take a considerable amount of responsibility for the state we're in. In my view, they prefer to have environmental catastrophes afflict us as a way of getting people to vote for them, rather than see serious action taken to resolve those disasters.

Right on Bernie!

Peter

Maybe we all jumped out of the blocks too quickly - in order to put our favourite hobby horses on show.

Maybe you were really challenging Greens to get their excrement together, for everyone's good.

Maybe your article was a call to arms.

Ah well, pity the discussion tends to slip off the radar just as it begins to get more interesting.

Enjoy the bike riding BTW. Winter is coming to Vic, so I must dig out the mittens.

- another article perhaps?

Peter,

You mention "your policies and your actions" in reference to my comments. You seem to be under the erroneous opinion that I am a member of the Greens. I am not; I am a member of the ALP and have been for several years, and have been fairly involved in the past, especially in policy development.

Ultimately you say you want the Greens to argue for a reduction in immigration. They're not going to do that, and nor do I think they should. I do not see the "clear need" to which you raise as the requirement. Indeed, one could argue that Australia would benefit enormously economically, given our ratio of productivity to population, with a significant increase in population. Although I would want that matched with a equivalent reduction in resource use per capita, which can easily changed by altering incentive structures (for example; as I've written many times here before, more taxes on land and resources, less on labour and capital).

Back to the Greens however they are arguing for a reduction in environmental impact - and that is the important issue from a purely environmental perspective. Sure, all other things being equal, reducing immigration is one way to achieve that goal but under the current incentives, resource use per capita will constantly increase.

You may also take the opportunity to look at the Green's immigration policy. Again it makes no precise comment about numbers. But there does seem to be proposals that (a) they're treated like human beings and (b) they're well integrated into our society.

http://greens.org.au/about/policy/policy.php?policy_id=28

All this aside, I do appreciate that you have taken the time to respond to my comments.

Lev,

The growthist ideology that our leaders seem to subscribe to, that population and economic growth, and thus consumption, can increase without limit on a finite earth is as nutty and dangerous as Communist ideas about the elimination of self-interest, Nazi ideas about the Master Race, or fundamentalist Christian ideas that the environment doesn't matter because Jesus is coming soon. Mantras about reducing per capita consumption don't help. China has now passed the US as the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter. If population is big enough, it doesn't matter if per capita consumption is low. We have a lot of waste in our society, so could probably cut our average environmental footprint in half. Below that point people are really going to hurt:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Highlight_Findings_of_the_WA_S0E_2007_report_.gif

No country is giving its people wonderful lives on less than a European level of consumption.

Given the mass migration and pronatalist incentives the major parties have imposed on us, population is growing at 1.5% a year (a 46 year doubling time). This means that cuts to consumption will simply be used to accommodate a bigger population, not to fix our large existing environmental problems or help poorer countries. Once the population has doubled, what then? How will you prevent a revolt as living standards fall or prevent people from turning on each other a la Rwanda? What about mass extinctions because "people are more important than wildlife", as John Howard said last year? What about future risk from such things as peak oil, the exhaustion of other key resources, such as phosphorus and potash (essential for fertiliser), shortages of fresh water (which exist now), possible adverse climate change, etc.?

The growthist ideology of people like you is such a threat to my children that, far from supporting a party, I just put all growthist politicians at the bottom of the ballot paper and any incumbents last of all. If enough of us did it, it might even help.

Lev,

You floored me with this: "I do not see the "clear need" to which you raise as the requirement. Indeed, one could argue that Australia would benefit enormously economically, given our ratio of productivity to population, with a significant increase in population. Although I would want that matched with a equivalent reduction in resource use per capita, ..."

You seem to be saying we can reduce our resource use by 50% and sustainably increase our standard of living. Is that indeed what you are saying? Do you have links that can justify that?

Peter Ridd,

You noted the fuss has been around the population issue. Its the focus because that is where the focus belongs.

There is no technical reason why we shouldn't engage in sustainable whaling. Done at the right level it wouldn't hurt the whale populations and would help us. Similarly allowing the Aboriginals to hunt endangered animals is a furphy. The animals were fine when there were a lot more Aboriginals hunting them, would recover nicely if we gave them some of their environment back, and will die out if we keep taking it away.

The biofuels thing just blows the mind - but it seemed to afflict politicians of all colours. Sometimes they can't see the obvious, I swear. But the in Greens defence they were the first to come to their collective senses.

Which leaves population. Reduce the population, while eating the whales and letting the Aboriginals hunt would be a sustainable solution.

Divergence,

I do not have what you call a "growthist" ideology. I do hope you realise that by proposing, that population density should have some relevance to productivity, not only I am suggesting a reduction in transaction costs, but also in environmental impact. More people in Australia increases our wealth *and* reduces the global enviromental impact.

RStuart,

Please read the response I have given to Divergence above. If you want Australia to be an high-productivity, export-orientated economy with a low population then you are encouraging environmental damage.

If you want a simple case of reducing resouce use and increasing a standard of living, apply the knowledge of environmental economics and change the incentive structures: Increase the cost of using resources (e.g., through land taxes, site-value rating systems, carbon taxes etc) and reduce those taxes on productivity activity. The net effect is incentive to produce more good and services and use less resources. If you start thinking of what that can do to the urban landscape you'll see how it works.

At the moment we have the reverse; we tax productivity and we encourage the misuse of resources. It is little wonder that Australia suffers terrible urban sprawl, high infrastructure costs and carbon emissions per capita.

Lev,

I have seen you argue for a change in tax regimes before. If you think that would encourage a reduction in our ecological footprint that I am all for it. But that isn't my issue.

Looking at the ecological footprints graph Divergence helpfully posted, you see we are currently have around twice the footprint of Japan. To me, optimistically that means we could reduce our footprint by 1/2, if we set our minds to it.

But that is only if our population remains the same. If the population doubled, then according your I = P * R, we would have to drop our ecological footprint to a 1/4 of what it is to achieve the same effect. On the graph that is somewhat below Argentina. We are entering 3 world country living standards at that point. I can't see the Australian population stomaching it - certainly I would have a problem with it.

To me, that back-of-the-envelope calculation shows to have a sustainable future we have to keep the population stable. That assumes of course you view our current issues with hitting resource limits on things like water, oil and CO2 as a hint that we are approaching the sustainability limit.

Lev,

Take a look at the country statistics at the CIA World Factbook. If population growth were as good as you think, then this would be blindingly obvious in economic studies and international comparisons. In fact, there is no link between population size, growth rate, or density and GNP per capita among the developed countries. (There is a link between population growth rate and prosperity in the Third World, but it is negative.) Apart from the US and Singapore (a city state), all of the top 10 countries on the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Index either have no population growth or have growth rates less than half of ours. We don't even rate. Some of these countries have much smaller populations than we do, as well.

There have been a number of economic studies showing that mass migration (an important source of growth) has no significant economic benefits. See the US 1997 Academy of Sciences report, "The New Americans", Australia's own Productivity Commission report last year, and this year's report of the Select Committee on Economic Affairs of the British House of Lords. Some of the studies in the US (see www.cis.org) even find negative effects, because the savings on the cost of goods or services are much less for ordinary people than the extra taxes to pay for the health care, education, etc. of low paid immigrant workers and because the migrants depress wages.

We get a lot of pro-growth propaganda in the media, because folk at the top do benefit. Unless collapse is staring them in the face, as was the case in China, elites like population growth, because it increases their wealth, power, and influence. They get bigger markets, high real estate prices, and a cheap, compliant work force. Total GNP can go on growing, giving them more to skim, long after the environment, GNP per capita, and quality of life have started deteriorating for ordinary people.

Divergence, RStuart

Basically, you're looking at the data in the wrong way. Comparison between growth rates of specific countries and prosperity within a country does not provide information of how that state was reached in the first place or the global results of migration of a population to a source of high productivity.

The more logical approach is measure the correlations between population density, ecological footprint and economic wealth. I suspect you will discover that it is quite possible to have high economic wealth, high population density and a low ecological footprint.

Lev,

Of course it is possible to combine all of those things. China is doing it. Their one child policy shows, however, that they have seen the growthist fallacy for what it is. It is also the case that despite massive improvements, life still isn't all that wonderful for the average person in terms of consumption or personal freedom. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, your right to swing your fist ends where your neighbour's nose begins. The closer people are jammed together, the smaller the arc that is possible.

Finland is a good example of a low-population-density, low-population-growth, low-immigration, prosperous country with high tech industry. They also rank among the top ten on the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Index and were first last year. (We didn't rate then either.)

Back to the subject of the article, it is worth considering why the Greens have downplayed population. I doubt if Bob Brown is insincere or too stupid to understand the issues. He may feel that he has to pander to the irrational left, but it is more likely that he is acutely aware of just how long a leash he has from Lev's pals in "Labour" or the Coalition. If he seriously started to talk about population rather than plastic bags, he would graduate from minor irritant to genuine threat, and might end up in a jail cell just like Pauline Hanson's on some trumped up charge or other. He may feel that he can at least do at least some good if he self-censors.

Divergence,

Finland is indeed a good example of what we could aspire towards. It has a population density of 15.69 people per sq km. In comparison Australia has a population density of 2.75 people per sq km. So yes, when Australia starts to approach the Finnish level of population density (modified as per the recommendations of environmental scientists) I will agree with you that a low-immigration, low population-growth model is appropriate.

At the moment I do not, and would suggest that much of the cause of our ecological footprint is the lack of population density and (as mentioned) the wrong incentive structures. At the moment it seems to makes much more sense to reduce global emissions by having more people near the points of high productivity, and that includes more people in Australia.

I disagree with your assertion that the Greens have downplayed population. Rather they have analysed the factors that contribute to global environmental damage in a responsible and balanced manner. They seem to far more aware that local consumption is more enviromentally beneficial than exported consumption. In an export-orientated economy, one of the better things that can occur is to increase the rate of local consumption which reduces both environmental and economic costs. In other words, as I initially noted, better for the environment and better for our country's wealth.

Regards,

Lev

But Lev,

You are forgetting that Australia is mostly desert. In 1996 the Australian Yearbook reported that 83% of the people live within 50 km of the coast, so accepting the CIA Factbook value of our coastline (25,270 km) and a population of 21 million, this implies a population density in this area of 16.6 people per square kilometer, including the very sparsely populated coastal areas in northern Australia. Moving lots of people inland is restricted by the lack of water. We already have severe permanent water restrictions in all our major cities, with our existing population, except possibly Hobart, and in Orange, they are restricted to watering with buckets for one hour a week. There may well be even less water in the future. There MIGHT be some room for development in the far North, where there is adequate water, but no one is going there now. We can desalinate and pump water to where it is needed, but that is extremely energy intensive. We get most of our energy from coal.

While there are some terms in the environmental impact equation that don't depend on population - it only took one fool to introduce the rabbit - as a first approximation, impact is proportional to population times impact per person. Twice as many people, all else being equal, means twice as many cars and houses, twice as much pollution and sewage, etc. There is a limit to how far you can cut consumption without hurting people. The earth can sustainably support, with present technology, about 2 billion people at a European standard of living and about 1 billion if they all live like us. (See the graph on p. 10 of the 7/10/07 New Scientist and the short article by Daniele Fanelli.) You are proposing to bring in millions of people to consume at First World levels. They will want cars, lots of meat, air conditioning, etc. Biofuels for First World consumption have already raised food costs to the world's urban poor by about 10%, according to the FAO.

Stop mystifying something that is quite simple.

Divergence,

Thank you for alerting me to the fact that much of Australia is arid or semi-arid (receiving less than 250mm in annual rainfall, Köppen climate classification system, BWh or BWk). I rather suspect that living much of my early childhood in Kambalda and Laverton, Western Australia helped me realise such trivial facts at a deeper level.

The population carrying capacity in Australia has already been studied a great deal, indeed the first issue of the Australian Journal of Politics and History (1955) carries such a discussion. More recently there was the government study, "Australia's Population 'Carrying Capacity', One Nation - Two Ecologies" (1994). That report did not specify a particular population, although at the lifestyle levels when the report was written it did imply a limit of 23 million. Note of course, that this did not touch upon incentive structures at all, which I consider critical to any analysis of optimum population.

Professor Peter Newman's paper "Australia's population carrying capacity: an analysis of eight natural resources' (Institute of Science and Technology Policy, Murdoch University, 1994) is probably one of the more comprehensive studies of this nature. Not only does he look at current use, their vulnerabilities, inappropriate technologies (he's big on that) and including a 'Stupidity Factor' (which does have economic relevance. He also discusses how much resource consumption can be reduced vis-a-vis population increases.

Basically the simplistic policy "eco-nationalist" you are suggesting may put some brakes on the local ecological impact growth, zero local economic growth, perpetual poverty for those in the developing world and increased global environmental impact overall.

You'll excuse me if I am not convinced that it is the best or only path to take.

IMO, there is nothing simple about this problem, but nor is it mystifying either. It's an complex, but empirical problem, with a great number of variables involved.

Lev, population discussions are common on this forum. Most people are of the same mindset as Divergence and myself. It is certainly unusual to have someone putting up an articulate argument against population stabilisation. I welcome it.

But I’ve got to say, having read through this thread, that I don’t understand just where you are coming from. How can any possible advantages of having a much larger population close to basic resources be of a greater importance than the increased demand they place on those resources, and all others in this country?

Could you possibly succinctly outline your argument against population stabilisation.

Thanks

Ludwig,

Both the basic points have been previously explained, but I shall repeat them.

a) To reduce a global environmental impact, the ratio of local consumption of goods to foreign consumption of the same must increase. In an export-orientated economy existing rates of marginal consumption make it impossible to achieve this without an increase in population.

b) Reducing population growth and limiting immigration does not change consumption behaviour, especially when there are systematic incentives to use resources inefficiently and when production is punished rather than resource use.

Thus I think there is an argument for a modest increase in population coupled with serious changes in systematic incentives.

HTH,

Lev

So I take it Lev that you are in favour of population stabilisation then, but just at a somewhat higher level than 23 million. What level do you think is appropriate?

Of course reducing population growth does not in itself change consumption behaviour. Both need to be addressed. No one has said that stabilising our population is the whole answer to achieving sustainability.

It is simply crazy to attempt to address per-capita consumption and technological improvement without addressing population growth. In fact, nothing in our political history seems more obliviously stupid than Rudd’s push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while constantly increasing the number of consumers…and at an even greater rate than his predecessor, or for cities and regions with chronic water shortages to continue to get rapid population growth.

How do these two examples fit with the notion that the ratio of local consumption of goods to export consumption needs to increase in order to reduce environmental impact?

Hi Ludwig,

Frankly I haven't done the total sums. It would require at least a PhD worth and whilst I have studied Population, Resources and the Environment and Resource Economics (both courses in my undergrad days) , it's not my area of concentration. Maybe I will dedicate some time to it, but not yet.

Rudd's policy isn't as bad as it sounds. Increasing our population means reducing the population from elsewhere. As I have already pointed out, this can cause a net reduction in global greenhouse emissions and reduce our country's expenses.

Regards,

Lev I think Rudd’s policies of boosting immigration and increasing the baby bonus are absolutely atrocious.

Firstly, increasing our population doesn’t mean reducing population elsewhere. It barely affects the population size or rate of growth in any countries from which migrants are drawn.

Secondly, greenhouse gas emissions and overall resource consumption increase for most migrants, compared to what they were emitting and consuming in their home countries.

Thirdly, while it might improve economies of scale for some resources if they are consumed close to their origin, continuous population growth places greater demand on those resources and all sorts of other resources. The demand for both domestic consumption and export income increases as the population grows. Higher domestic consumption doesn’t necessarily mean a lower rate of export. And for many resources, economies of scale are not improved by local consumption, because overseas consumers are often more frugal per capita and more efficient than us in their consumption of what we provide.

Fourthly, the imperative is for us to achieve a sustainable society, quickly…both for our own sake and as the best thing we can do as a player on the world stage, in order to set an example for bringing the rest of the world into the age of sustainability. Continuous population growth is completely at odds with this.

Fifthly, there is something inherently wrong with drawing skilled migrants from countries that need those skills more than we do or which are better at training people to develop those skills for the good of their own societies than we are.

Could you please elaborate on what you mean by population growth reducing our country’s expenses. Thanks

Lev,

I am not sure it requires a PhD to figure out whether its possible to reduce the ecological impact of humans on Australia by increasing its population. It boils down to this: can you conceive of a situation were adding one more human would reduce the total impact? I can't. If you can't, then no matter how many you add the total impact will always increase, even if the ecological footprint per person is decreasing.

I did spend an hour or so trying to find support for your statement on the web that "I suspect you will discover that it is quite possible to have high economic wealth, high population density and a low ecological footprint." I didn't succeed. It would be good if you could post a link that does demonstrate this. If you can't I am inclined to not dismiss it.

And when you say immigration in Australia might reduce the total impact of humans on earth - clearly that can't be the case. Australian's have one of the highest ecological footprints on the planet. That means an immigrant will always increase his footprint when he adopts the Australian lifestyle.

RStuart,

I have provided some very simple and obvious examples that anyone can understand. The consumption of any good produced in Melbourne, for example, has a lower environmental impact that the same good produced in Melbourne then exported to Svalbard.

I am very sorry that you spent an hour trying to discover a places with high economic wealth, high population density and low ecological footprint. The graph provided by Divergence on the 14th of May provides such examples - Japan and Ireland are clearly indicated in that evaluation as countries with high population densities, high HDI values, and an ecological footprint of approximately half of that of Australia.

Finally it is utterly erroneous to assume that (a) all immigrants will increase their ecological footprint if they move to Australia and (b) that the Australian lifestyle is static. As a trivial (and rather contrived) example if a consumer of Australian imported goods in the United States moves to Australia and consumes the same goods, their ecological impact will be dramatically reduced.

Lev,

The Australia Institute has done the calculations on the environmental impact due to increased consumption among migrants and worked out that 2 net migrants are approximately equal to one extra Australian baby. Even if we took all our migrants from rich First World countries, there is still the issue that they would have to be supplied with desalinated water ("bottled electricity"!) or recycled water that is almost as energy intensive to make safe, and more energy would have to used to pump the water uphill to where they would use it. There isn't enough water for the existing population. That is why the Queensland government is building dams on endangered species habitat and why white government cars cruise our neighbourhood hoping to nab some poor devil who is hosing the detergent off his car or some confused old lady who is watering her garden on the "wrong" day.

Commodities can be shipped around the world very cheaply by water, possibly even by computer controlled sailing ships, if necessary.

Peter Newman is popular with the growthists because he says what they want to hear, much like Bob Carter and the coal industry or, in the past, Peter Dusenberg and Thabo Mbeki (the head of the South African government, which didn't want to have to supply anti-retrovirals to its people). There are plenty of scientists (not town planners like Peter Newman) on the other side. The president and vice-president of Sustainable Population Australia are both biologists. No amount of spin can hide the fact that there isn't enough water, and the situation may well become worse.

Lev, "The consumption of any good produced in Melbourne, for example, has a lower environmental impact that the same good produced in Melbourne then exported to Svalbard.".

For the life of me I can't see what relevance that has to do with your proposition that "increasing Australians population could reduce out total ecological impact on Australia". That is your proposition, isn't it?

I didn't say I was trying to find "examples". As you managed to demonstrate, one off examples can be misleading. You selected Ireland and Japan, which support your point, but choose ignore the US which is an example of the reverse. Its was disappointing to see you resort to such tactics. The graph does illustrate one clear overall trend - but it isn't related to population density. What I was looking for was someone other than you who believes increasing the population on a land mass could reduce that populations ecological impact on that same land mass. Despite an hour or so of looking, not a single hit.

And finally your example of a US immigrant is clutching at straws. Again, look at the graph. Count the number of countries with a higher ecological footprint than Australia. It isn't hard - there are 3, which together hold around 5% of the wolds population. As you full well know, the vast majority of Australia's immigrants don't come from those countries. They come from the remaining 95% of the worlds population. So my original point stands - our immigration policy does indeed increase humanities impact on the planet.

I think you believe that increasing the population density will increase everyone's living standards. Unlike your claims about ecological impact, there is lots of evidence out there supporting that view point. This means the "growthist" tag Divergence gave you is appropriate. Why not wear it with pride?

I and I expect Divergence argue the population density to living standard correlation you are championing only holds true while we aren't hitting resource limits. I think once those limits are hit the reverse will apply - increasing the population will decrease the living standards.

Why is so much of the current debate about this concept of 'ecological footprint' when it is a flawed and false concept. If you go to the websites that try to explain the concept, you'll see that, by all measures except energy, the world is living within its finite constraints. With energy, we are living outside our constraints because the assumption is made that all carbon emissions are only capable of being reversed by planting trees, and we simply don't have enough spare land on which to plant trees.
Our ecological footprint is an artificial concept which assumes we will make no technological improvements to the way in which we use energy or try to deal with the issue of high global CO2 emissions. The concept doesn't even take into account energy efficiency which can reduce energy consumption by 30% or more quickly and cost efficiently.
At the end of the day, most of the posts to this OLO article focus on resource consumption and Australians are incredibly wasteful of just about every natural resource, especially water. We can and should be more efficient in the resources we use and I'm not sure why we are having this debate about population size and immigration when the far easier goal is to reduce consumption, in particular, by economic means, i.e., double the price of water and electricity and see how quickly people start taking an interest in reducing their usage of these two products.

Bernie Masters,

No one claims that environmental footprints are more than a rough guide. That doesn't mean that they are worthless. Sydney University does them at its Centre for Sustainability Studies. They do leave out some factors, but they also allow reasonable comparisons to be made, for example about levels of consumption between countries. The graph I linked to earlier shows a wide spread in consumption (within limits) for First World countries, with no apparent effect on human welfare. I agree with you that we could probably cut consumption in half without doing any real damage to people, as there is a lot of waste and inefficiency in Australia. This does not mean that an 80% or 90% cut in consumption would not really hurt human well-being.

What do we do with the savings? Do we fix up some of the environmental damage we have done and extend some (evidence based) help to the world's poor, or just use the extra capacity to pack in more people? Are people to be treated as battery chickens who can't complain so long as they have enough to sustain life, or are they entitled to some freedom, dignity, and room to move? What is "enough water"? People can get by on one shower a week or a pretty much unalloyed diet of beans, cabbage and potatoes. But how far do you want to go? Is it OK to force an old man to let his garden die, because you want to use the water for population growth? What about forcing people to live cheek by jowl with neighbours, regardless of their own preferences, and denying them a garden altogether? Is it a good thing that the supply of land has been restricted? You can pack more people into the same area, but the cost of land and hence housing has skyrocketed, putting an intolerable burden on people. No one is dealing with such questions.

Technology isn't magic. Lets develop it first, then decide what to do with it.

I agree wholeheartedly with Peter's article, and have long wondered about (worldwide) Aboriginal peoples' "hunting rights" when those rights do not include utilise enforced traditional methods. Dugongs (or Bow Whales, but then Inuit have a government imposed "bag limit") obviously have a far reduced chance of survival when hunted with a speedboat and rifles compared to spears and dugout canoes. This is so obvious, when talking about endangered species, that Peter's "illogical" tag for the Greens is most apt.

Does any major Australian political party have a Population policy, as opposed to an Immigration policy? In my view this continent and country is fast approaching, if not already exceeding, carrying capacity. It seems few politicians have the guts to suggest an upper limit on population.

RStuart,

I am sorry you cannot see how immigration-based population is necessary to increase local consumption in an export-orientated economy and thus reduce both the country's expenses and the global environmental impact at the same time. I honestly cannot explain it any simpler than I have done.

It is also unfortunate that you seem to be suggesting I was not proposing examples in the first instance. Perhaps if I repeat the quotation it will become clear that it was actually examples I was suggesting in the first instance: "I suspect you will discover that it is quite possible to have high economic wealth, high population density and a low ecological footprint." By stating that there are possible examples where 'x' is the case it also means that there will be examples where it is not the case.

At that point it is worth looking at issues like urban design and incentive structures.

Divergence,

Actually I'll admit my bias here. I like Peter Newman's work, probably because some twenty years ago I studied his course in Population, Resources and the Environment at Murdoch University and was the student representative on the Institute of Science and Technology Policy Board which he chaired. The particular interest in promoting mass transit seemed to be extremely sensible in the Australian context which suffers much from personal car dependence and urban blight appealed to me, especially living in the inner city region and travelling to what was then an outer suburb of Murdoch.

Contrary however to your claim, he is not a Town Planner, although he does make a great deal of use of planning knowledge. His PhD is in chemistry (UWA) and his post-doctoral studies are in environmental science (Delft).

You want people to reduce their use of water? Fine, have city planning which uses water resources more sensibly and charge more for it. Neither of us use are using the absolute biological minimum, so let's not pretend they are the figures are in actual use.

“I am sorry you cannot see how immigration-based population is necessary to increase local consumption in an export-orientated economy and thus reduce both the country's expenses and the global environmental impact at the same time.”

Lev, I cannot see it either.

What about this from my last post;

‘…while it might improve economies of scale for some resources if they are consumed close to their origin, continuous population growth places greater demand on those resources and all sorts of other resources. The demand for both domestic consumption and export income increases as the population grows. Higher domestic consumption doesn’t necessarily mean a lower rate of export. And for many resources, economies of scale are not improved by local consumption, because overseas consumers are often more frugal per capita and more efficient than us in their consumption of what we provide.’

Lev, "I am sorry you cannot see ...". What you are proposing would be remarkable if it were true. I actually would like it to be true, but remarkable claims require remarkable evidence. I don't find your explanations convincing, but in other threads you often provide links to background information and I was hoping you would do so in this case.

Bernie Masters, the idea of an "Ecological Footprint" is taken from other disciplines. Biologists often refer to the population density an environment can support, farmers often describe the quality of land in terms of its carrying capacity in animals per hectare. People have no trouble understanding these terms, and that makes it useful to apply to humans as well. I'll grant you its a dammed site more difficult to calculate for us humans right now because of rapidly changing technology, and because it is difficult to determine how much we depend on no-renewable resources - or at least will be depending on them they run out.

I was a bit surprised at your statement that "you'll see that, by all measures except energy the world is living within its finite constraints". That is not the case for fish stocks, for example. And as you point out it isn't the case for water. An recent article here on OLO pointed out we are running out of easily available phosphorous. Its clear by the end of this century it won't be the case for just about anything you care to name, as by then the population will of grown to 18 billion at current growth rates (1.2%).

It won't reach 18 billion of course. There is no way we can produce enough food for 18 billion people. So the problem will look after itself, or rather the four horseman and the apocalypse will look after it for us. This discussion is really about whether we want those nice horseman to look after it for us here in Australia, or if we think we can do a better job of it ourselves.

Ludwig, Rstuart,

Australia has a very strong export sector, more than a 1/5 of nominal GDP (Reserve Bank of Australia, "Trends in Australian Exports, 2002). The largest markets are Japan (1st), U.S.A. (2nd), with particular growth to China (3rd) and Korea (4th).

Our export items are usually primary products. Foodstuffs (especially meat and dairy), coal, petroleum, and metal ores, although there is some significant exports of road vehicles to the U.S. (and New Zeland) and, perhaps oddly, textiles to China.

Exporting such goods contributes significantly to our environmental impact. A kilogram of Australian meat consumed in Japan involves more environmental costs - and financial costs - than the same kilogram consumed in Melbourne.

Due to the reduced aggregate marginal propensity to consume such products, it is simply not possible for this environmental impact to be reduced without immigration. There is a local market for our fish, beef, dairy, grain cotton and so forth. However, our supply vastly exceeds local demand. (cf., Australia Now, DFAT, 2004-2005 figures). Two thirds of our beef is exported. Fifty percent of our dairy. Almost seventy-five percent of our seafood. Fourteen percent of the world's total wheat is provided by Australia. We're the world's largest supplier of wool... and so on.

What is your weekly demand for a kilo of wheat? How about two kilos? Five? Ten?

Now you're looking at the problem of trying to provide our vast supply to a limited local market with a marginal propensity to consume. There simply isn't the demand. There isn't enough people.

Either you place a ban on the production of our primary products, utterly destroying the lives of millions of Australians in the process, or you change the market.

I am not discounting the fact that extra immigration puts challenges to our local fixed natural resources. As I have said throughout this thread (and nobody has disputed), lowering our use of such resources is necessary and can be achieved through planning and incentive mechanisms. However, in our particular context one means to reduce our global enviromental impact is carefully selected increases in local population.

Lev,

The impact of shipping beef to Japan is trivial compared to the extra consumption of migrants in Australia, and it would be even less for commodities that do not require refrigeration.

Now about your suggestions for water. Your first is rationing by price. This would help to conceal the real shortage and shut up the richer people, who wouldn't even notice the extra costs. I think that they aren't doing it because the main determinant of how much water a household uses is the number of people and not the household income. A family with two babies in nappies or an incontinent elderly person can have the washing machine going all the time. There is also severe social inequality. In Finland, where they haven't been undercutting lower income people with population growth (and haven't noticed the dire effects you predict from not having it), the ratio between the share of income going to the top 10% of the population and that going to the bottom 10% is 5.7. It is 12.7 in Australia (figures from CIA World Factbook). There are public health implications if poor people can't afford enough water for proper hygiene.

As for forcing us down near the biological minimum, any politician who tried it would be lynched before he had to worry about being voted out. I don't think our elite is ready to peel off the veneer of democracy just yet. If we wanted migrants we would have to send out squads to kidnap them like North Korea.

Desalination is very expensive. Do you think the premiers would even be considering it if there were a cheap, easy solution?

Lev,

I see my earlier summary of your argument was wrong. Is this what you are arguing?

"All things being equal, it is ecologically better to consume goods where they are produced. Since Australia is a nett food exported of the world would be ecologically better off if some of the population moved to Australia. This would be good for Australia economically as an increased population density typically raises the standard of living."

I hope I have got it right this time. Unlike what I thought you were saying earlier, this makes some sense to me.

However, it still doesn't persuade me that increasing Australia's population is a good thing for several reasons:

- While it would improve the worlds overall ecological footprint, it would increase the ecological impact on Australia. The nasty things we associate with that would increase: water pressures, water way degradation, species extinction. Call me selfish, but I don't like the idea.

- The positive effect would be minuscule. Doubling our population to 40 million would move 0.3% of the worlds population to Australia. The effect on Australia's ecology would be major.

- Finally, the risk is huge, so the upside must be huge as well. You are assuming Australia can easily handle the increased population. What if you are wrong? The media sometimes shows us what happens when a human population overshoot's the environments capacity. It happens often enough in third world countries. Images of flys buzzing around living corpses spring to mind. So what is this wonderful upside?

The final point is the most convincing to me. Lets say living standards are projected to increase by 100% by the doubling population. If the downside was something like the great depression, it wouldn't worry me. But no country on the planet has double the standard of living of Australia. The downside of a exponential population overshoot isn't "just" a great depression. Its a "correction" of the type the roo's in Canberra are facing.

ps. Isn't it nice to have a quiet discussion now the peanut gallery has moved onto other threads?

rstuart,

That was a good post.

There is growing controversy about the concept of food miles, and some evidence that air freighting fresh vegetables from Kenya to the UK actually can have less total impact than growing them in Britain.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/23/food.ethicalliving

In the long run there are concerns about exporting nutrients with food, but currently sewage tends to be dumped in the ocean anyway. These concerns don't apply to minerals.

There also seems to be no association between GNP per capita and population density. The figure for Finland is much better than for a number of other, far more density populated European countries.