“It is clear we will have growth in population want it or not.”

Belly, I’m not going to resign myself to Australia having a significantly larger population. I dearly hope that our populace and pollies will see the light, what with climate change, peak oil, the water crisis, etc, etc….and will very soon embrace the need for genuine sustainability and population stability.

If we want to hold on to this country, then the first prerequisite is to keep our society healthy and coherent. The biggest threat is large-scale resource stress.

We are about to learn a huge lesson from becoming overdependent on cheap oil. The lessons from overallocation of water are already highly evident, with much talk about the merit of pulling back or downgrading our demand in the Murray/Darling and other agricultural areas. So now we just need to fully develop the concept of matching the demand with the ability for the land to provide a secure level of supply.

Building huge new water schemes will attract more people to new areas and provide food for more people in urban areas, and perhaps some extra export income. For as long as we uphold this absurd continuous growth paradigm, it is not going to help us at all, except perhaps initially for a short period. It is just going to struggle to provide the same level of food and income for more and more people.

Now, if we were to genuinely embrace the need for a stable population, then and only then could I consider the possibility of some large-scale expansion of water resources and agriculture, if the economics add up, if the long-term environmental factors are ok and if it can be shown to provide a genuine improvement for current citizens.

continued

“While reluctant to divert the discussion can we be assured it will always be us who occupies this country?”

This is not really diverting the discussion; it is thinking about the issue in the bigger picture.

To reiterate; if we want to hold on to this country, the first thing we need to do is uphold a strong and coherent society. The essential element of this is to develop harmony with our resource base. This means stabilising our level of activity, NOT massively expanding it!

Some people might worry about Australia looking very empty and thus inviting to our northern neighbours. But if we massively developed the north, with huge dams, agricultural areas and towns, it would still look very empty in terms of population compared to Indonesia or China, but it could look a whole lot more inviting with established infrastructure.

Ludwig I find nothing to disagree with in your post, but my ideas may not be explained as well as I wish.
For a start my wish includes plantation trees a lot of them grown to replace the endless victims of wood chips and needless waste.
That wast includes water ,we just do not use it with real planning .
I strongly hold the view we are wasting time and that future generations will re use water many times and that includes some flood water.
It includes sewage and not always just to grow more food, surely it must happen we are blind in our relation to drought, once it breaks we forget the pain it bought.

I would prefer we made rivers run uphill?
Perhaps using big Ram pumps, that use water energy? or Off-peak coal power?

The cost of the little Wyong to Mardi dam pipeline is 60Mil.

I would love us to fill up the Murry-Darling Basin in Qld. anyway we can.I am sure it would be economic in the long run.

I live on the Central Coast of NSW surrounded by power stations that use salt water to cool the plants.

I have often wondered (with 16% (+ now) water in the dam) why the power stations can't also desalinate water

I talked to a Guy at a recent conference who worked for a big power Station up north.
I ran the "de-sal at power plant" idea by him and he thought it was a good idea.
Power Stations, as you know, need to keep a base load going.
At night, he said, they need to gradually "step down" their massive generators. CO2 wise, this is not very efficient use of the energy produced by burning the coal. A lot of energy is wasted gradually stepping down the massive generators over a period of hours.
Sometimes they need to expend a lot of energy going to get an extra power station on line to cope with peak demand.

He also said that seawater used for cooling is warmed to 50C anyway, so it is not a lot more to get to 101C.

I suppose it is a matter of economics, perhaps of perception, perhaps of conservative thinking;
but
the Professor's new technology (below) looks good.
What do you think?

ScienceDaily: Professor Discovers Better Way To Desalinate Water
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060211134405.htm
On desalination and putting back the salt
http://www.abc.net.au/science/expert/realexpert/desalination/01.htm