26 December 2007
VicRoads, the force behind Melbourne's LA-style freeway growth has urged motorists to use other means to get around as congestion on the city's roads grows due to population growth. Research undertaken by the organisation showed that the city's freeway and tollway systems are getting worse and that drivers are being forced to crawl at less than 40 km/h along many of our major roads. "A minor crash, someone pulled up on the side of the road or any roadworks can play havoc" RACV chief engineer Peter Daly said. According to VicRoads spokesman Mr Freemantle, Melbourne's booming population is the problem.
The population in and around the outer suburbs of Melbourne is growing. Centres of housing are popping up and sprawling out all over the map with little placement and planning. Development is not being restricted to key 'activity centres', i.e., the larger towns that are services by trains. Thus, no wonder we need LA style freeway growth: inhabitants of quarter acre blocks of land sprawled accross the map in such a de-centralised and fragmented mannor are forced to drive to get both to the shops, because they don't live near any, and also to work, because they don't live near stations. Our present leaders need at least to plan for our increasing numbers of people properly if they are going to champion their econonomic idea of population growth.
26 December 2007
Massive vegetation loss is the cause of dangerously low levels of biological diversity and health that have been discovered in the natural environment of Melbourne and its surrounding areas, a report published by the PPWCMA has found. A whopping 70 per cent of the city and surrounding region's native plant life has been destroyed. "Numerous classes of vegetation are heavily depleted and various species of wildlife are therefore threatened because they have no habitat to live and breed" PPWCMA chief executive David Buntine said.
While climate change receives nearly all the environmental media attention in Australia at the moment, another and yet older and typically human environmental problem looms: the human destruction of plant and animal life. According the Australian Wilderness Society, more than 80 per cent of temperate woodlands in southern regions of the continent have been cleared (http://www.wilderness.org.au/campaigns/landclearing/woodlands_overview/). According to Greenpeace international the current extinction rate of plant and animal species worldwide is around 1,000 times faster than in pre-human times and scientists predict that the planet is entering its sixth major extinction event in history - where around 50 per cent of current living species perish (http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/forests/our-disappearing-forests). The difference with the extinction event that many scientists think we are currently entering, in contrast with previous major extinction events in the planet's history like the one that killed the dinosaurs for example, is that we humans and our increasing toll on the environmental are to blame.
Environmental advocate Rob Gell, who's thoughts were included in the aforementioned PPWCMA's report, states why this trend of vegetation and thus habitat loss may simply continue under our noses as has been the case for the last number of decades. "Today we face major global issues around energy consumption and conservation, our current economic models, population demographics, the condition of our environment and climate shift. The reality is that our western democracies are currently ill-equipped to deal with these issues".
Looking at the bigger picture, multitudes (millions and billions) of human beings require multitudes of space and resources on this earth, and a way of obtaining both this space and these resources is too often deforestation of natural forests and more general instances of land clearing. Basically our western democracies are ill-equipped to deal with issues such as widespread vegetation loss because western democracies (the masses) are not going to assess the hypothesis that there are simply too many of us on this plant wanting a resource-rich lifestyle for it to be the case that we live in harmony with the planet's flora or in other words in a manor that can realistically be said to continue for any significant time into the future.
15 December 2007
Environmentalism has become quite the trend of late. Purchase some energy-saving light bulbs, sign a few petitions and suddenly you're saving the earth. And so the procession continues, albeit with a green tag used for all manner of ends. "Vote for us - we take shorter showers:". "Buy our tacky useless products - we advertise them on recycled paper". Not long ago environmentalists were ratty lefties taking 8 years to fail their undergrad. Now our saviour
Al Gore has a Nobel Peace prize thrown at him.
Through all of this, however, there is a rule: don't dare question liberalism. Sure an obsession with unbridled growth and individual (conditioned) liberty makes it a little more difficult to curb the destruction, but this it who we are. And as we know, you cannot question an identity and expect to leave with all your teeth. As the offspring of a liberal regime, even Australia's environmental "movement" largely fails to consider the taboo, and perhaps the most taboo issue is that of population growth. As nihilists we're more concerned with fixing problems (which includes acknowledging
dirty truths than being inoffensive to those who perpetuate them.
No matter what way it gets spun, population increase is directly linked to environmental degradation. Intensive agriculture, urban and industrial expansion and unbridled consumerism have radical implications for Australia's soils, coasts, waterways, and natural habitats, while greenhouse gas emissions have global consequences. Overseas migration now accounts for more than half of the population increase in Australia, with 162,600 persons migrating in the year ended 31 March 2007, an increase of 13.6% on the previous year.(1) Then there are the tens of thousands of New Zealanders arriving each year under the Trans-Tasman agreement, and the million or so Australian citizens currently living overseas who have the right to return should they choose.(2) Although the birth-rate is now below replacement level for an industrialised country, demographic drag coupled with a generational ripple from the baby boomers means deaths won't outnumber births for another three decades.
When immigration is mentioned with regards to the environment liberal reflexes mean harassment for the source, stifling any genuine consideration. Instead, there is a focus on resource depletion and pollution coupled with humanitarian and internationalist agendas. While no less important, this article will neglect the social, cultural, economic, and quality of life issues relating to mass migration and focus on the inconsistencies between environmentalism and the environment.
Australia is immense, rich in non-renewable resources, characterised by old, nutrient-poor soils and erratic and low rainfall. Some two thirds of the country is arid or semi-arid, and periodic droughts plague the rest.(3) Increasing salinity jeopardizes tens of millions of hectares of agricultural land in the near future, with the water in some rivers becoming undrinkable and unfit for irrigation.(4) Thus the size of the continent is misleading when considering ecological carrying capacity (the extent of feasible human accommodation). The State of the Environment Report, the Ecologically Sustainable Development Committee on Population and the Australian Academy of Science all agree that the decline of the Australian environment can be linked to population size and the high rate of growth attributable to immigration.
Environmental impact can be formulated as follows:
Number of humans X their consumption X their technology = environmental impact and destruction
Furthermore, there is correlation between these, in that increased demand tends to lead to more environmentally destructive ways of attaining things like water, grain, fish, wood and minerals. Our border is particularly vulnerable.
Around 85 per cent of the populace lives within 50 kilometres of the sea. With expanding population coastal environments are exposed to further modification. The cities are overflowing. They must accommodate hordes of new citizens, and many are fleeing in search of some space.
Residents establishing themselves in new locations require land, roads, water supplies and sewage systems. The creeping environmental impact was recorded in the State of the Environment 2001 report, which acknowledged that light human settlement on the coast generally left the environment in 'excellent condition', but observed that with increased population the:
"...effects of human activity cause the loss or degradation of specific habitat types, alter tidal water flows in wetlands and streams, cause erosion to beaches and dunes, and degrade water quality through stormwater runoff, sewage and litter".(5)
Waters receive pathogens, industrial wastes, oils and litter from stormwater discharges. Sewage outlets cause seabed modification and nutrient load. Seagrass beds are disappearing around our main cities. Deforestation along agricultural regions causes run-off from denuded hills and fertiliser and chemical leaching. Some migratory birds find their roosting places replaced by rubbish tips or apartment complexes.(6)
In the present political climate, and, well, the present climate, global warming can't escape without a mention. The ABS scenarios until 2020 indicate that the high and low prospects for population growth mean a 62 per cent and a 37 per cent increase on 1990 levels of energy-related emissions respectively.(7) According to these estimates each additional net 70,000 migrants annually (less than half the current rate) will bring about further emissions of 20Mt CO2 per year by 2020.
Of course, speaking of a global issue such as greenhouse gas emissions only makes sense if we can compare the before and after, so to speak, of migrants. Per capita emissions of residents in countries that supply migrants to Australia are, on average, less that half of Australia's per capita emissions (around 42 per cent). Therefore, if these migrants adapt to Australian habits once here they will effectively more than double their contribution to global emissions. And this is precisely what happens, as the ABS Household Expenditure Survey confirms: 'Immigrants to Australia do adopt Australian consumption patterns over time so that their greenhouse gas emissions rise from the levels in their countries of origin to Australian levels'.(8)
Many respond with "Cleary we need to change our conduct in Australia, not scrap immigration". That approach gets off to a good start, but then ignores the reality that any restrictions on growth will relieve pressures placed on the environment. In justifying the lenient emissions target awarded Australia under the Kyoto Protocol, even the government implicitly acknowledged the influence of population increase on greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile immigration, defined by government policy and therefore able to be altered, is the major determinant of population growth in Australia.
Yet immigration has received relatively little attention from the environmental scene (can we be frank?). The main reasons they fail to engage with immigration include: the fear that to do so would be interpreted as racially insensitive; the transformation of population and environmental issues into global issues accompanied by global ethics; and the influence of human rights organisations.
Certainly, there is a tendency in Australia to equate immigration restriction with bigotry. International humanitarianism is viewed as outweighing national sovereignty. This can be associated with 'global thinking', whereby people are considered citizens of earth and local problems are viewed as small compared to 'global problems'. This parallels similar trends in the United States.
For example, when in 1990 some Americans complained that the environment was being threatened by population growth, they were told by Sierra Club (an American environmental organization) leaders that immigration-driven population growth in the United States was environmentally acceptable because it was not making the global environmental problem worse. But this is clearly incorrect. 'Transferring large numbers of people from low-consumption, poor countries to the richest, highest-consuming country in the world [is] unequivocally worse for the global environment'.(9) Thus the wasteful, environmentally devastating lifestyles of industrialised countries are criticised, yet not vast numbers of migrants establishing themselves in these countries in order to join in this consumption binge while it lasts.
Entrenched in a political dichotomy, there is a close relationship between the human rights and environmental movements, as both consider themselves on the 'left'. The former promotes the short-term protection of individual rights and freedoms, while the latter is essentially based on limiting individual freedom for the good of people's surroundings. With this inconsistency the anthropocentric nature of the environmental scene prevails, and immediate individual human interests head the sequential ordering of these concerns.(10)
Australia is in need of a lifestyle change independent of population size. Shifting away from energy-reliant routines and away from fossil fuels, however, is challenging enough without the additional stress of a rapidly growing population. Curbing population growth is the easiest and most considerable way to relieve pressure on the Australian environment, and regulating immigration is the most straightforward way of curbing population growth. Environmentalists cannot coherently support mass migration. With most people claiming to be environmentalists nowadays, a change of consciousness is in order.
By Hut
Reference list:
(1) Australian Bureau of Statistics 2007, Australian Demographic Statistics, Cat no. 3101.0, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra,
.
(2) DIMIA. 2002-03 Migration and Humanitarian Programs - discussion paper (revised January 2002): 11; Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee, "They still call Australia home: report on Australian expatriates". Chap 3. March 2005.
(3) French, J. (1984), 'Renewable Resources', in Birrell, R, Hill, D. & Nevill, J. (eds.) Populate and Perish?, Sydney: Fontana/ Australian Conservation Foundation: 148
(4) ;
(5) Australian State of the Environment Committee, State of the Environment 2001, Department of the Environment and Water Resources, Canberra, 2002.
: 38
(6) Paul, E. C. (2001), Australia: Too Many People?: The Population Question, Hampshire: Ashgate: 107
(7) Hamilton, C. (2002), 'Population Growth and Environmental Quality: Are They Compatible?', People and Place, 10 (2): 1-5: 2
(8) Hamilton, C. & Turton, H. (1999), 'Population Policy and Environmental Degradation: Sources and Trends in Greenhouse Gas Emissions', People and Place, 7 (4): 42-62.: 55
(9) Kolankiewicz, L. & Beck, R. (2000), 'Forsaking Fundamentals: The Environmental Establishment Abandons U.S. Population Stabilization', Centre for Immigration Studies:
(10) The argument that international humanitarian obligations are best met by letting some people from poor countries into affluent Australia doesn't hold up. Policy very infrequently accords with this; the most 'needy' are seldom supported by Australia's immigration policies. Policy focuses on skilled migrants, who often come from poor countries that cannot afford to lose them, only to work in unskilled professions. Moreover, there are quite considerable costs associated with immigration, for example in transport and infrastructural support. This money could alternatively be invested at the source, should you support aid in some form (neutering?).
hink of it all - of the life that is! Study your friends and foes!
Study the past! And answer this: "Are these times better than those?" The life-long quarrel, the paltry spite, the sting of your poisoned pride! No matter who fell it were better to fight as they did when the world was wide.