‘The way ahead, or why we should all waste water’.

This is the title of the final chapter in the book; Overloading Australia, by Mark O’Çonnor and William Lines.

I quote;

“We believe in public spiritedness and wish we could endorse appeals to conserve water. Yet, our analysis shows that until we get restraint in population, there is no point in citizens saving water. If they do, this will not mean that their neighbours get more water for their gardens, or that tougher restrictions will be postponed. Rather, it means that politicians will be able to continue their irresponsible dream of putting over a million extra people in each of our three biggest cities over the next 25 years (and proportionately even more into Perth). So long as we have such misguided leaders, any water restraint shown by the individual citizen will only allow our politicians to persist further in their folly, and will lead – quite soon – to irreversible shortages of water, plus many other environmental disasters.”

The authors “urge citizens to defy water restrictions.”

Sounds eminently sensible to me, What do others think?

Ludwig,

I have read the book and I absolutely agree with it and you but I just can't bring myself to do it. The same argument goes for all the other limited resources at Australia's disposal. I just cannot force myself to be wasteful of anything.

Besides the strategy might very well backfire and and provide ammunition for the vested interests and religious fundamentalists, or whatever the mob are called, to use against those who understand the danger of continued population growth and speak out on the issue.

mate you seen the price of the stuff..[who can afford to simply pour it down the drain?...its time we stopped pizzing/shi tting in it [dont you think..[we going to have to drink it in time]..

wasting water is a great idea[not]..its time it was treated as sacred..[any polutors of it should get jail...by your nmeasure we would need to build bigger processing plants[more bulk to clean up]..

its simply insane..[if you dont want migrants simply lobby them to not come here...[this wasting water campain is simply a new sceme for racism]...some people are just dumb enough to open the taps and try to achieve it...[yet still not achieve your aim]

if you want no more migrants say enough,no more imagrants[but there is room for all]think we will need to put in bigger pipes..[needing imagrant workers to build the pipeline and re processing facilities]..sorry buddy its a dumb idea

I have not read the book, but I agree with the sentiment in the chapter quoted by Ludwig.

Funnily enough, just before the dentist started to drill one of my teeth a couple of weeks ago, he and I were discussing SA government's plan to double the capacity of the new desal plant that has just been started. I opined that they were doing something useful for the first time in their 8 years of control (or, rather, lack of control).

The dentist curbed by enthusiasm by saying that when they have the water, they will tout it around to undustries to come to SA; the industries will use all of it, and we will be back where we are now with water shortages.

Having read Ludwig's post, that now makes sense to me.

It would also mean that Rann could go ahead with his threat to double the population of Adelaide.

Acutally, I have written to MP's about the stupidity of increasing SA's population when we have barely enough water for the current population. I've been told that it is possible to have more people AND enough water.

This makes me think that the water restrictions are, perhaps, totally unwarranted: there is water, but they are conning us into saving it so that they can carry out their populating lunacy.

Waste not, but hide the water from the government, place it in secret tanks in backyards and underground, then use it again once the government gets the message...

Ludwig this dude is suggesting we all waste water as some form of collective Sulk against the government?

Because they want to let humans come live on land?

I read a long time ago that Australia had no water problem, never has had a lack. What it doesn’t have is good distribution of the available water and good water management..?

Why even stop with water, why don’t you all go full Anarchy on the gov’s arse. Get out there and break things, kill someone.

Chop trees down randomly, surely along with water the whole carbon credit thing will go up in smoke.

Light fires people!

Blow up your local Dam OI OI OI!

There is certainly a flagrant contradiction within governments that impose significant water restrictions while continuing to encourage rapid population growth.

Surely if restrictions are necessary to the point where the supply capability is precarious for the existing demand, then one of the first things that has to happen is a halt to any significant increase in demand.

So in this situation, which is the case in all cities that have experienced stressed water supplies and resultant restrictions, it is surely the duty of citizens to cry foul, and demand that a moratorium be placed on population growth.

If their government refuses, which has always been the case, then the citizenry should refuse to observe water restrictions.

As a matter of principle, we should all refuse to be placed under a regime that effectively allows our leaders to keep importing people that will be supported under already precarious basic resource supply infrastructure and reserves and which would just continue to make the whole situation more precarious.

But of course, refusal to observe water restrictions always needs to go hand in hand with a very strong protest about continuous expansionism. Those who use water with profligacy in this situation but who do not lobby their governments to stop or at least slow the growth rate are being highly irresponsible. They need to do both.

ludwig the whole thing is absurd[and certainly by itself wasting water will achieve little,and if poeople are going to complain/lobby govt it would help to know more of the facts,so any lobby gets fullsome reply

see that state govts sold off water rights[or at least leveraged their future income to get advance credit]you cannot but have noticed the cost of it has gone from pennies into pounds[from unmetered to metered]gone from low presure to high presure]

see the whole point is income flow[they do this by forcing mnore to come out of the tap, buy putting more presure into the pipe[so the voilume comming from the tap raises more income]...

electricity been doing it for years...as witnessed by our electrical appliances burning out[were the electricity suply constant instead of conastantly high we would know because they would last like the good old days[pre govts revenue raising..by forcing us to use more[so we spend more,

so that we become more regular consumers both of water amd electricity[but also of plumbers/electritions strvices....to fix leaky taps and melted down applyances...its all deliberated policy..hopefully only being done to force us to pay more for using more[as well as feeling guilt for doing so]...

but the stories revealing this..get suppressed by our media...not because its not news worthy,but because we just might wake up to some other things going down...you may call it conspiricy theory...

till you burn out your next applyance[or fix your next leaky tap or hear the pipes are leaking massive ammounts from the lines of supply...at least know why,...aint it funny that the tilt train never went any faster than the old one...

mainly because govt didnt spend on upgrading the rails[even the old trains couyld have gone faster..[had the money been spent of maintaining the rails...[same re the pipes been fixed instead of putting in water meters

posts script to jewel
sent email last night[must have gone to spam
johan

In SA, very few people have been fined for breaching water regulations and, after only a few months, the brand new Mitsubishi 380's, with SA WATER covering their entire sides, seen whizzing aroung suburban streets, disappeared, never to be seen again. They had appeared at least twice a week in my little cul de sac of 17 houses in the beginning.

During the first summer, the 'policing' was handed over to local councils on weekends (what a joke). Since then, nothing.

The government buy up of an ostentatious fleet of marked Mitsubishi vehicles did nothing to help that company from going broke, and people are still ingoring water restrictions.

Unlike our pollies O'Connor and Lines show perfect logic .
Anyone in doubt should read the feature article in the latest 'National Geographic' titled 'The end of Plenty'.
The water stress is totally caused by overpopulation [world wide].The government should take action to massively cut immigration ; remove the baby bonus and strongly encourage family planning to allow our unsustainably high numbers to slowly decline to a manageable level .
The NG article clearly illustrates the futility of measures as taken in the 'green revolution'to prevent world wide starvation. Increased agricultural activities,no matter how high tech,require more of our limited water and other nonrenewable resources to provide for an increased population which is a consequence of a temporary food surplus. Our government should immediately desist from their obsession of infinite growth which cannot work

Mr Leichardt (aka Ludwig)

like your name sake you've lost the plot and wandering off into the unknown.

Somewhere along the line cause and effect has been derailed.
If S/E Qld runs out of water it won't be the 'future millions' that will go dry it will be current residents.
If a resource a limited source is used up....Everyone goes go thirsty.
Qlds will stop all the water down the Murray Darling and take the life blood of everyone else. Seems a bit like cutting off noses despite everyones' faces.

Perhaps something got lost in translation but it all sounds half baked to me. The idea sounds a bit like suggesting if we all drink the milk in Qld less babies will be born!
Capitalism's supply and demand only works on an even playing field. Even evolution works if left to its self. The problems are both attitudinal, physical and temporal. No water means no industry, no jobs no people...at all. Where do the current people go when there is no water? South? to Darwin? how do we stop people from breeding.

Change the people attitude and numbers,you change the outcome...The question is how? 'A bit difficult" isn't an answer. it's either very naive or arrogant take your pick

Ludwig,
Go for it and I hope it gets enough support to succeed in getting the feds to reduce immigration to some reasonable level.
What OUG, Jewely and Examinator do not understand is that both the coalition and labor want high immigration simply to appease those that bribe the parties for that purpose. They have no concern about what is good for Australia. We suffer water restrictions and they keep dumping more people here that use more water.

One would think it should attract support from the Greens as they oppose the building of any more dams and on paper, if not in practice, claim to be low immigration advocates.

The idea of wasting water is just bizare enough that it may work. Pity we just can't turn off the water to parliament house.

Examintor, it seems we are all on this post looking desperately for ways to attract the attention of the governments and the people who vote them in so that we can somehow get the message through that population growth and indeed the current level of population are the ultimate cause of the environmental and social problems we all face including Australia, the lucky country.

What are we to do? Sit back and wait for these audiences to wake up and respond? No amount of evidence or pleading or appeals to rationality have worked so far and scientists and activists have been trying at least since the late sixties with Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" bringing the issue to the forefront.

More and more natural and social scientists of all persuasions, although population dynamics is not their particular interest, draw the link between planetary stresses and population and more and more within the audience draw attention to it too. But still the juggernaut rolls on. What are we to do?

Xammy, I can’t work out what you are objecting to!

In the interests of a healthy debate, can I ask you to quote from my posts the statement/s that you most strongly disagree with, followed by an explanation of why you disagree. Thanks.

Ludwig and others,

I thought I made my self clear but apparently not.

I haven't read the book hence I said “Perhaps something got lost in translation but it all sounds half baked to me. “ I followed it by a criticism of the implied 'strategy' not the principal.

Firstly I was a member of the original Australia Party in the late 60's.
One of their key platforms then was Zero Population Growth (ZPG) , there were movies etc.
NB I am well aware of the issue and I agree that there is a WORLD WIDE problem of catastrophic proportions coming. I haven't changed that much over the time just a little older with a wider perspective/understanding.

The issue was unsaleable to the masses then and still is. This is largely so because the public is emotional/irrational on the issue. The tabloids/TV incl.(primary sources of info.) are reactionary because they're prisoners of the 'more profit ethic'. The consequences are reinforcement of our base emotions. (Objectivity is harder to control and not profitable )

Fact. There is sufficient food produced today to more than adequately feed everyone.
Wastage, transportation, excessive consumption by the west and EXCESSIVE profits aside.

Given the problem of population is a WORLD issue not just Aus.
Focusing on migration is a bit like taking an analgesic for a brain tumour. We're simply avoiding the issue by scapegoating others...those that are different to us.

Stopping migration dead ( incl NZ) won't change anything, the world will still bring us down.
If we can't stop OVER fishing, pollution, Climate Change or our system of economics what hope ZPG without a clear SET of strategies.

I choose to address the deeper 'root cause' and say that it is US/We that need to change too excluding that, the futility of 'deck chairs....' come to mind.

Simply raising the same issue under different guises only entrenches prejudices resentments not solutions. That does not imply we therefore do nothing.
Surly with the combined brain power on OLO we can get beyond the political prejudices etc. and think up alternative ideas/solutions

examinator (what a great pen name!)

Logically: if world population is to come down, all countries in the world need first to stabilise their populations (i.e. stop the car), then select reverse gear and slowly start to reduce population (gradually is best, so as to make the landing as soft as possible).

This means ALL nations (not some galloping ahead while others reduce), Australia included. To show leadership on this issue, Australia should start now to stabilise. As our birth rate is still below replacement level - around 1.9 children per woman - it would seem churlish to harange Australian women about having smaller families (though reasonable to abolish all incentives like baby bonus, childcare allowances, maternity leave after the 2nd child - perhaps on a means test basis) ...

This leaves immigration, which is currently absurdly high because Australia is sucking in skills from the rest of the world instead of actually training and educating its own people.

Australia now has population growth running at seven times the average for industrialised nations - twice as high as the nearest 'competitor' (Canada).

In short Australia should cut its skilled immigration to almost nothing, increase its refugee intake by a factor of 2 or 3 (it's only 13,500 at the moment) and massively increase its foreign aid aimed at helping developing countries in family planning, education of women etc.

ZPG would be a good first step. They were right in the 70s when you came up against the idea, and they're still right today. Australia cannot help developing countries (e.g. New Guinea, East Timor) to bring their population growth under control while at the same time having one of the world's highest rates itself.

There are many insightful comments in this discussion but I do recommend that those who haven’t read Overloading Australia do so. It answers most of the questions raised here.

But one point that hasn’t been raised is what voters want. No pollster has asked us if want population growth (or at least not since an Irving Saulwick poll did so indirectly in 1977 and found that 50% of voters would “not be concerned if growth slows down”).

But we do know that most voters do not support the current extraordinarily high rates of immigration: in the post-election survey held just after the 2007 election 46% of voters wanted immigration to be reduced, 38% wanted it to remain about the same and only 15% wanted it to increase.

Despite this, and also despite the fact that they had made no mention of immigration in the election campaign, the Rudd Government almost immediately increased the immigration program (which was already very large).

In 2008 we added 253,400 extra people through net overseas migration (and 152,700 through natural increase). Both figures are a record. We have never added so many new people in one year before.

There is a growth lobby making money out of population growth but it is not clear that such growth is in the best interests of either Australia or the rest of the world.

Examinator has a couple of points that need clearing up .
It is very debatable that we are producing plenty of food for all and it is just efficiency and distribution costs which are the problem . With rapid world [and local]population expansion together with degradation of arable land and scarcity of water and spiralling energy costs our food production must plummet .
The claim that overpopulation is a world problem and not just OUR problem does not mean that we lie back and do nothing .
The "root cause"is principally overpopulation which has been addressed for years to a largely deaf audience .
Any other PRACTICAL suggestions of how to address the problem would be valuable .

Anyone on here willing to give Pauline Hanson the slightest nod of recognition?
Why does it take an ordinary person to say it as it is?
Pick holes in these questions, then ask yourself if you are any closer to a solution!

ps re overpopulation. Simple. Move out of your state capital of fear, and live where you can grow and catch your own food and water. You don't bring the mountain to mohhammed.

Yes Pauline would be a better bet than either major party or the Christian fundamentalists.

She did not get the votes she did by not addressing some vary serious issues of importance to Australians.

While I do not condone the waste of any resource the message is clear that by solving the symptom we are not addressing the problem.
But please do not suggest a water trading credit scheme.

Thermoman et al
The pen name was 'given' to me for my on going Letters to the Editor in which I examined the local council actions and kept asking uncomfortable questions of them.

the problem is not defining the problem it's bleeding obvious (note the wording)
'Too many people to sustain extravagant life styles' of a minority of the world population.

The average African father when told that only one/two of his six children will survive to mature age answered that he therefore needed more children. (to help support him in his old age) so I pose the question *'what is the issue too many people or not enough wealth to go around?*

If you consider 20% or there abouts consumes between 50/65% of the worlds resources one can wonder.

Add to this The UN agencies have calculated that there is enough food produced to feed the world now. The issue is can the bottom 40% afford to make it profitable for the major producers? The answer is clearly no. Millions of Tonnes of food is wasted daily to prop up prices, not worth harvesting. Then the supreme/premier quality is sold to super markets etc. the rest?

The most abstract commodity is to blame i.e. 'Enough Profit' (what ever that is) and everyone in the chain has to get their EP .

Notwithstanding this there are too many people ...somebody has to cut their population back but whose....yours if you have more than 1.9. Mind you at times beheading (.1)one of my sons at times appears to have it's upside...as for that bogan next door ( he wouldn't be missed...(apologies to G&S 'Mikado'). :-).

Seriously though we DO have too many people in the world. We need more people to pay for the baby boomer bubble. The US is in big do do over this one.
Can you imagine the scream that would go up if businesses exec, stars, rock singers/groups , arms manufacturers were deemed surplus to requirements.....

All those countless Quadrillions of $ to spend no need for 'sons' superannuation. Unrealistic probably but......