The Great Suburban Walk

SUNDAY, 15 AUGUST 2010

Walk Against Warming 2010.

The Great Suburban Walk

There’s a federal election on its way, yet our political leaders continue to backflip, delay and deny on climate change. With so much at stake, it’s time for the community to put climate action back on the election agenda.

On Sunday 15 August Environment Victoria, our national partners and the Victorian climate movement is holding the 2010 Walk Against Warming to demand that our political leaders face up to their responsibility on climate change. We’ll remind them that to secure our votes, they must ‘Walk with the People, Not the Big Polluters’.

This election be part of the call for climate action. Please register for The Walk Against Warming at www.walkagainstwarming.org.au

A major article carried over 3 pages in the Sunday Age published 24 July 2010, (http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/the-shadow-side-of-a-cardboard-king-20100724-10pr5.html ) establishes what many of us believed, and what Sheila Newman's and James Sinnamon's web site candobetter.org/  had largely documented: the population booster Richard Pratt was not just a "complex man" but a racketeer.

Download and listen to the full article at ABC Radio National, "Background Briefing" at 

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2010/2959674.htm
 

One reason why students find the study of economics difficult is that it is a very multi-variate discipline.  Many economic problems contain such a complex set of inter-related variables that the only way to analyse them is to reduce the number of variables to manageable proportions - by omitting those which are trivial, excessively complex and/or difficult to quantify.  But too often key variables are omitted, with grossly misleading results; for example, the exclusion of environmental effects from economic growth prediction and measurement; the exclusion of population growth from climate change policy solutions; and the exclusion of income growth from analysis of the effects of an ageing population.

Julia Gillard , Tony Abbot and Bob Brown have all at various times argued that the actual immigration or population numbers are of less concern than the problem presented by our high consumption lifestyle.That is to say, I suppose, that as long as we become more modest in our consumption of everything, we can gradually increase our numbers providing the infrastructure can be upgraded and thus avoid the stigma of being regarded as racist or greedy or in conflict with religious morality or international law.
 

Lateline last night ( http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2961791.htm )staged an informative debate on population between Sustainable Population Minister Tony Burke and Shadow Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. At last a real debate about population?

By Attila Kisbenedek, AFP Mar 25, 2010

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/03/curb-population-growth-to-fight-climate-change-jane-goddall-says-yes/1

Humans should have fewer babies to help mitigate climate change, argue scientists including well-known conservationist Jane Goodall.

"It's our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we've inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn't really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it -- but there are so many of us," the 75-year-old English scientist told Agence France-Press in an interview.

"We should be talking about somehow curtailing human population growth," said Goodall, a United Nations Messenger of Peace, whose 1960s research on chimpanzees altered views on the relationships between humans and animals. "It's very frustrating as people don't want to address this topic."

The controversial topic was not addressed at the United Nations' climate summit in Copenhagen in December. Powerful groups such as the Catholic Church oppose contraception, and others see population control efforts such as China's one-child policy as totalitarian. Even some climate scientists see limited value in it, because most greenhouse gas emissions come from developed countries with small growth rates.

First Published in the Canberra Times - July 21, 2010 - Opinion, page 11.

One of the first actions of our new Prime Minister Julia Gillard was to reject the notion of a ‘big Australia’. She added the word ‘Sustainable’ to the title of the Population Minister.  For many of us - environmentalists concerned about habitat loss or greenhouse gas emissions, or ordinary people unable to afford a home - it was sweet relief.

But the backlash is already on, with the likes of Ziggy Switkowski and Bernard Salt dominating the Opinion pages, claiming the economic benefits of a big Australia. Even that well-known environmentalist and friend of the northern hairy-nosed wombat, Treasury Secretary Ken Henry, has extolled the virtues of population growth for the sake of the economy.  To his credit, however, Henry does not pull out the spurious argument about densities: that a big continent must be able to support a bigger population. His excursions to inland Queensland to save the endangered wombat would have shown him how little water there is. Space is one resource but it is by no means the only resource necessary for supporting a larger human, or even wombat, population.

Edition 1, July 2010 

The US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) estimates that between 450,000 and 500,000 illegal immigrants settle in the US annually. About 300,000 more come in and go home every year. They are mainly from Mexico and Mexico's neighbors to the south. Those who settle in the US contribute to US population growth of about 2.9 million per year. Economist Lester Thurow estimates the cost of the infrastructure expansion needed to accommodate population growth at one eighth of the GDP for each one percent growth in population.

The cost of accommodating a 450,000 increase in population in the US is therefore about $250 billion per year to provide the added infrastructure needed to accommodate these migrants. The cost of providing health care adds some unknown amount to this $250 billion. This explains why states near the Mexican border, such as California, are becoming economic basket cases relative to states further north. Since the number of Latin American who want to move north is far greater than the number that already have, there is a risk that the US states near the Mexican border could ultimately have Latin American standards of living.

 From the theGlobalist at http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=8577

Population aging is an impressive achievement that has greatly improved the quality and length of human life. However, it will require sometimes-painful social and economic adjustments to the expected future demographic realities, as Joseph Chamie, former director of the UN Population Division, explains.