No Foxy, it is the defence against insects, 2, 4 & 8 legged, where ever they try to infiltrate.

You've got to be kidding Aidan, time to come out of that ivory tower you must live in, & have a look at national parks.

That fool Goss gazetted hundreds of national parks, as a pay back to the greenies for their vote. Just like his school teacher pay raises, this increase was totally unfunded. They did not have the money or manpower to service the parks they had. All we got was an increasing feral catastrophe.

They closed off park access in much of my area, claimed to stop poachers getting native birds, but actually to hide the fact that the things were going to rack & ruin.

I watched one war with amusement. They dragged a log across the access to the Burrum River national park. It was popular with families, as it had a picnic area no the river, with a huge sandbank, very safe for kids to splash around, out of the strong tidal currents down at the heads.

When 4X4 owners dragged it out of the way, the rangers dragged a bigger one. When that went, they hired a back hoe to dig a ditch across the track. That was filled in with in days, so the rangers dug a bigger one.

That's when the locals got serious. They cleared 6 new access points into the park, linking up with the river track.

After a few more futile attempts to deny us access to OUR park, they gave up. It was much cheaper to service the picnic area, than to try to deny us it's use.

As a boatie, I accessed the thing from the river, as did many others, but it was heart warming to see the locals beat that fool Goss.

Continued.

Continued

Come out here some time, & I'll show you the negative effect most parks have on wild life. I'll show you greater infestations of feral weeds, trees & animals in parks, than you will be able to find on private property.

It would be a real plus for the country & it's wild life, if we could replace some of the ideology of our greenies with a few hard facts.

Good link, Foxy

It very clearly summarises a lot of the environmental issues.

Aidan,

<the unemployment and underemployment problem is down to economic policy not immigration.>

Sure, if we had a command economy like the old Soviet Union, we could find a way to put everyone to work, but you probably wouldn't like the results very much. The fact is that we are taking in people faster than our economy can accommodate them. The House of Lords report I linked to earlier also talks about wage depression and denial of apprenticeships and other training opportunities.

<Improvements are needed, and the increasing population strengthens the incentive to fix things and provides the opportunity to fund them. Though I'm a bit puzzled as to how you arrived at that $200 000 figure?>

If population growth spurs on improvements, why isn't everything absolutely rosy in India and Nigeria? With rapid growth, money has to go into providing the same things for more people, more houses, roads, schools, etc. to the same or a lesser standard. Not much left over for improvements. Compare infrastructure and public services in European countries that aren't growing much. The $200,000 is from this paper by Jane O'Sullivan, unfortunately, now behind a paywall.

http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:283037

She includes housing in this, though, and has estimated government infrastructure costs per person, excluding housing, at $100,000 to $120,000. See also this paper from the UK, which estimates 30,000 pounds per person for non-housing costs (in 2008)

http://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/6869.html

<More national parks are needed to protect the animals>

See Hasbeen's post on this. These problems are well known and go far beyond his local park. That is why I donate to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. And what will you do about the problem that ideal koala habitat is ideal developer habitat? Declaring more of Australia's deserts national parks won't help.

cont'd

cont'd

<I am familiar with I=PAT. But T could be greatly improved just by hastening the uptake of existing technology. When scientific advances are also factored in, T's contribution becomes multiple orders of magnitude.>

Science is not the same thing as magic. A lot of the people on our side are scientists. See my previous links. Why not wait until those marvelous new technologies are proven and then increase the population if it still seems a good idea after we have made the Sahara bloom or whatever? Otherwise, it is just like diving into a pool without checking how deep it is.

<The nice thing about soil is it's a renewable resource, and the next green revolution is likely to be based on soil microbiology.>

Our soil is being rapidly degraded (see Foxy's link). Growth in grain yields has stalled in developed countries

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131217/ncomms3918/full/ncomms3918.html

The average electricity bill has approximately doubled since 2007, even though we are using less. This is mostly due to "poles and wires".

Dear Hasbeen,

Ants will remain on this earth long after the human race is gone. The earth does not belong to humans and this continent does not belong to you and your culture.

You may now regret allowing me into "your" country, but at the time your leaders welcomed me in because they were too greedy to gain economically from my presence, which they did and still do. Now wouldn't you consider this greed a cultural weakness? Every species has weaknesses, thus sooner or later every species falls.

Last but not least, I hope that Graham removes your post for irrelevance (forget about the death-threat) along with this my reply, as well as my previous conversations with ConservativeHippie and Shockadelic: we are simply disrupting the good people here who started this thread in order to have a decent ecological and economic discussion.

Hasbeen, regardless of the immigration rate there's absolutely no reason why full employment would require a command economy. All it requires is a government willing to prioritise the economy's real needs over the imaginary need to run a surplus!

"If population growth spurs on improvements, why isn't everything absolutely rosy in India and Nigeria?"
Because they had a lower starting point, corruption is rife, the crime rate is high in Nigeria, and the Indian government is incompetent and India's economy is overregulated, among other things. And most importantly, spurring on isn't the same as success.

Population growth by immigration doesn't require as much investment in schools etc as population growth by natural increase.

"Science is not the same thing as magic."
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff300/fv00255.htm

"See my previous links. Why not wait until those marvelous new technologies are proven and then increase the population if it still seems a good idea after we have made the Sahara bloom or whatever? "
Because the barriers are as much economic as they are technical. And "making the Sahara bloom or whatever" before demand increases would depress crop prices everywhere, harming the interests of farmers. And most importantly of all, global population is not easily controlled, despite the lack of immigration on a planetary scale.

"Our soil is being rapidly degraded (see Foxy's link). "
And we are only just starting to turn this around, so I stand by my claim.
"The average electricity bill has approximately doubled since 2007, even though we are using less. This is mostly due to 'poles and wires'."
And the inefficient way they're funded. Another example of barriers being economic not technical.