Dear Yabby,

You are quite within your rights to ask for an oranges to oranges comparison although I do think Australia will have to get a little more smarter about its water use in industry and agriculture.

Lets just look purely at domestic use. In Australia we use 176 m3/person/year. The UK it is 43 m3/p/y and in Germany it is 57m3/p/y. So if we learned to use water as wisely as either of these two countries we could easily manage 35 million with water to spare. Simplistic I know but telling none the less.

As to China there are now cities there where over 95% of the houses have solar hot water systems. Six months ago we installed such a system and coupled with the new lightglobes have reduced our electricity bill by a third. All easy stuff but they are beating us hands down.

Dear socratease,

Always happy to oblige; you are a racist! There happy?

Actually I think you are more scared about the unknown, confused about what the future may hold, and more than likely being hanging around with the wrong crowd. It doesn't make you bad, just in need of a reality check.

When you talked about occupation I thought you were talking about the type represented by Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, or the US' occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The type you are referring to I have not come across and unless I'm mistaken it doesn't exist otherwise we could say Australia is occupied by Asians when it clearly isn't.

You might need another word for it because in Belgium 7% of a group with only one member in parliament does not make an occupation.

Islam makes up 3.5% of the religious beliefs of its citizens.

The high levels of Turkish immigration into Belgium you seem to be referring to are not delivering fertility rates of 6 to 7. Turkey itself is now below replacement rates at 2.2. Only 4% of Belgians are of non-European origin.

Might I kindly suggest more facts and less fear would ease your mind.

Dear Bazz,

I am sorry because I should have made myself clearer. I was referring to your statement;

“Some of the undeveloped countries had a head start of up to one or two thousand years on us, some quite a bit less. If we could pull ourselves up by hard work why should we compensate
them for muddling around for some hundreds of years? It is not a matter of resources either. We made the best of ours, why didn't they do the same?”

I would have thought the answers in most cases was self evident but I wanted to hear of some examples from yourself that best illustrated your position.

Thank you for the other information regardless.

Csteele,
Take China as an extreme example.
Three thousand years ago they had a well developed civilisation
compared to say Europe and perhaps India.
Then they just fell away in their government processes and countries
management until now they are considered an undeveloped country and
they are one of the countries we will have to make donations under
the Copenhagen treaty.
India also was a major civilisation under the Moguls.
Africa has never been able to get its act together until colonialism.
Since colonialism went away it has not been a pretty picture.
Nth Africa made some noticeable progress after the moslems invaded.
However they now seem to be stuck in the middle ages.

I am sure if you think about it you can find plenty of others.
If these countries cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps
why should we subsidise them ?

Bazz,

I think you are looking at this the wrong way around. Chinese and Indian civilisations probably suffered due to contact with a technologically advanced civilisation from Europe. The same is true for the Mayan civilisation.

It would be more accurate to say that North Africa made notable progress BEFORE the Muslims invaded. Over time Islam killed off a pre-existing scientific culture.

To me the real mystery is this.

Why did Europe ALONE achieve scientific "lift-off"?

What was it that propelled European civilisation into such a commanding technological lead that it took the rest of the world centuries to catch up?

Those infected with the virus of political correctness may rail at my putting it this bluntly. They will produce examples of this "Muslim scientist" or that Hindu philosopher or such and such a Chinese invention. But the plain fact is that between 1200 and 1950 ALMOST all advances in science and technology were made by men who traced their ancestry to Europe.

Not all.

But almost all. Especially during the latter part of the period.

Was scientific lift-off something that was bound to happen somewhere and Europe just happened to be lucky enough to be first? That explanation would give comfort to people addicted to political correctness but I doubt it's correct.

Was there something qualitatively different about European civilisation compared to the rest? As I have pointed out elsewhere, between the 11th and 15th centuries Europe built a well-funded network of institutions of learning that was superior to any that existed outside the continent. In effect, Europe start building the foundation of what today we call the "knowledge economy" during a period that is usually dismissed, sneeringly, as the "medieval" era.

Perhaps it was a combination of luck and a qualitatively different civilisation. I doubt we'll ever know.

In fact I doubt we ever CAN know. In this sort of research ideology trumps scholarship every time. The questions are simply too loaded for most people to look at the picture objectively.

Fascinating as this is, I have no idea what it has to do with Australian immigration.

*Six months ago we installed such a system and coupled with the new lightglobes have reduced our electricity bill by a third.*

That's wonderful Csteele, I installed my first solar hot water system
on this house in 1984, which is 25 years ago! In fact I think it
was two WA companies at the time, Solarhart and Solar Edwards, which
pioneered these systems.

They make perfect sense, but I remind you that as fast as people
are installing them, they are also installing airconditioners and
LCD screens, plus other electronic gadgets like computers, so power
consumption is going up.

People in Germany and Britain commonly live in apartments, temps
don't hit 40 degree plus too often. So yes, they will use less
water then Australian households. When its snowing outside,
water consumption drops dramatically, I can assure you. I lived in
Europe long enough to understand the difference.

Yes Steven, Csteele & others, we have drifted off thread but came as
a result of thoughts that we owe something to the "undeveloped" countries.

Steven, the enlightenment came with dissatisfaction in scientific
circles with the Catholic Church's dogma and with the discovery of
the sea routes to the east and to the Americas.
Then in the 18th century the start of the steam age launched Europe
into 100 years of plentiful energy to power industry and science.
This was then followed from the end of the 19th century with the
development of the oil industry and away it went again.

However all other countries could make use of these same discoveries
and develop their economies. Some did under the label of colonialism
but they don't seem to have been able to keep up the momentum.

These are the ones we now call underdeveloped.
Why have they not developed their legal and governmental processes
so as to be similar to western countries.
Why should we take their millions looking for a short cut ?
(That gets us back on thread)
Why should we give $Billions under the proposed ETS scheme to the
undeveloped countries ?
I think there is a list of the undeveloped countries in the
Copenhagen treaty, I saw it recently and may even have saved it.
China is on that list and for a country with such a large army and
Navy, a full scale space program etc etc I object to them being
classed as undeveloped and I will object to them being subsidised
under the Copenhagen ETS scheme.