Rhian, I’ll address the second half of your post now and try to find time to delve into the detail of those ABS figures later.

“I don’t believe in population level or growth targets.”

So you do believe that populations can continue to grow until they are physically prevented from further growth by one or more life-supporting factors, or by sheer lack of space?

Even if you do believe that our current population growth has real net benefits, you have surely got to believe that there is a point at which benefits and negative effects balance each other out. Surely then, it should be the role of governments to strive to stop the growth at that point or thereabouts, if not well before.

So then, shouldn't the federal, state and many local governments be planning for limits to physical growth now?

I guess you can see that Sydney is overcrowded and that further growth is pretty silly. Presumably you can appreciate some of the problems being caused by rapid pop growth in southeast Queensland, or at least you can see that the same rate of growth is bound to lead to lots of problems before too long.

So, aren’t limits to growth, whatever limits you might think appropriate, in order? Surely sooner or later we have to have limits. Hasn't it has been shown around the world that if the limits are generated directly via resource stress from too many people, ie approaching the ability for the life-support systems to be maintained, then peoples’ quality of life is going to suffer big-time.

Ludwig

You say “sooner or later we have to have limits”, but there is nothing near consensus on when that might be (one literature review found that estimates of Australia’s carrying capacity ranged from 10 million to 600 million – see Chisholm, A. “Resources and The Idea of Carrying Capacity” BCA Papers Vol. 1 No.2, October 1999).

There’s a very good chance we’ll never get to a point where we need to set a limit. We have already noted that Australia’s birth rate is below replacement, and without net immigration the population will start to fall within a few years. Most developed countries are in a similar position or already have static or falling populations.

The 20th century saw very rapid expansion of the world’s population, as death rates fell because of better health care, sewerage services and clean water, and improved nutrition. The birth rate also fell sharply, but less sharply than the death rate, so the world’s population rose rapidly. Even to optimists like me, who celebrate the falling death rate and rising life expectancy as marvellous developments, the resulting rate of global population growth appeared unsustainable.

But it won’t be sustained. A natural “demographic transition” from a world with high death rates and high birth rates, to one with longer life expectancy and low birth and death rates, is already under way. The world average birth rate is falling, and many projections now suggest global population will peak in the 2nd half of the century (e.g. http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/9B-World-Population-2070.htm).

Australia will still need to manage migration issues according to economic, environmental and social priorities, but I don’t see national or global demography providing the imperatives for government-mandated population targets.

Philosophically, I suspect we approach this issue from different poles. I’m uncomfortable with command-and-control approaches to social issues, particularly affecting something so intimate and important as fertility. I enjoy living in a multicultural society, I’m proud that Australia takes a relatively large share of refugees and other humanitarian migrants, and I’m convinced that a sensibly proportioned economic immigration program benefits Australians.

Ludwig

I think you have hit a wall with "Go forth and multiply.". You can only hope that one day growth proponents will apply a fraction of the evidence based policy standard that they seem to demand of climate change projections. The thought that policy might be formulated by a "Bible" standard is quite scary.

‘Lies, damn lies and statistics’, rubbery figures and wrongly implied causality! Just some of the things I suspect are awry with the figures you presented, Rhian.

As much as I would like to fully respect the figures that a reputable organisation such the Australian Bureau of Statistics puts out, I have to question a lot of them.

Your figure of 43% real per capita consumption increase in the last 15 years seems totally over the top.

I am not and expert in this area and I’m not willing to put a huge amount of time delving into the nitty gritty of how these stats are derived, but I will express a number of concerns;

Firstly, I have no doubt that our per-capita consumption has increased, but whether that translates into a higher quality of life is highly doubtful.

Secondly, as you allude to, part of this is “accounted for by the super-rich”. Well, I think that the ‘ordinary’ rich probably also account for a great deal of it, to the extent that the average person has only seen a very small increase or as I suspect, a decline.

Thirdly, “household consumption rose by 71%, while the population rose by less than 20%” implies that population growth is not a causal factor. If the two figures were more closely aligned we might assume, rightly or wrongly, that there was cause and effect, but with them being so disparate, we really have to doubt it. In fact, it could well be that population growth has worked against the trend, and that the increase would have been greater with a stable population.

Fourthly, these figures are based on dodgy economic principles, where economic activity generated by things such as smoking-related illness and traffic accidents is added to the positive side of the ledger, and where stuff doesn’t have a value unless it is being exploited, which means that the size of resource reserves and the ability for them to last well into the future or to be sustainable doesn’t enter the picture.

continued

Fifthly, I wonder how much of this mooted 43% is expenditure beyond our means, that is placing us in personal and national debt.

For one thing, the Consumer Price Index doesn’t take into account a lot of housing costs. House prices have increased by an enormous amount – in the order of 300% in real terms and much higher in some areas. So how does this sit with the mooted 43% figure?

In fact, I reckon that if this whole arena was thoroughly explored, we would find some absolutely glaring problems with it.

“Other measures of our quality of life are also improving – life expectancy is rising, more people are going to university or experiencing foreign travel.”

Yes, but do they have anything to do with population growth, or are they happening in spite of it?

What about all the QOL factors that are declining, such as increased obesity, increased congestion, more restrictions on fishing and other recreational activities, increasing resource-supply issues, especially water, and so on….some of which have strong connections to, and at least partial causality from, population growth

RHIAN , interesting that you are quite happy with "command and control"in society .
I think the ONE CHILD POLICY in China is a sensible one ,but with their rising wealth no doubt you would think that it needs changing?