Letters to the editor
Letters to the editor from SPA members, supporters and others are a rich source of community insights and concerns about population issues. The SPA web site maintains an archive of published letters.
Attenborough the best
As Douglas Mackenzie writes (Letters, October 4) David Attenborough is the world’s most experienced and valued naturalist.
I urge everyone to see his latest documentary A Life on our Planet on Netflix or at movie theatres. It is a witness statement of his outrage at what humans have done and what will happen to our children and grandchildren if we do not act wisely.
But he also has optimism if we do things right: stabilise population growth; stop fossil fuel use; re-wild the planet; and decrease animal protein consumption.
He concludes: “nature is our biggest ally; if we take care of nature, nature will take care of us; it’s about saving ourselves; with or without us, nature will survive”.
Prosperity via population growth is a political fallacy
Our planet is choking with too many people, yet politicians and economists mourn the fact that population growth will fall because of COVID-19 and that ‘‘net migration to Australia will be negative for the first time since 1946’’ (‘‘Budget set to reveal migration, birth rate blow’’, October 3-4).
Fantastic, I say! We need politicians and economists to think outside the square. We need a robust, functioning economy that doesn’t depend on population growth (think Japan). Continued population growth is unsustainable and is having devastating consequences. So, Mr Morrison and Mr Frydenberg, stop banging on about jobs and growth, move away from your myopic thinking and start moving towards a plan that will benefit all, not just the wealthy.
It’s time to end canberra’s absurd ‘endless growth’ policy
“We should be planning for a more sustainable and enjoyable future” writes Clive Williams (“Don’t let the past ruin your future”, September 30, p18).
Unfortunately that is hard to reconcile with current planning direction: growth forever and the ever increasing rate of consumption and numbers of human consumers in Canberra and the rest of the country.
I arrived here in January 1960 and could write a similar length opinion piece to that of Clive’s on Canberra’s change and heritage from a different perspective.
It is enough to note the current path of growth for growth’s sake forever will totally destroy the very things which, in the past and presently, have made Canberra a special place to live.
The current model is unsustainable
I am one of those “Greenie good guys” (GGGs) that Ross Gittins (3/10) criticises for opposing endless growth. Yes, I worry deeply about the impact of our growth obsession on the environment. But, like Gittins, I also worry about the impact of the pandemic on job losses.
Gittins suggests that GGGs target their opposition to growth more specifically. Wise advice. But so too, should our governments target the post-pandemic recovery.
Let’s focus all the job-boosting efforts on sectors that are environmentally benign, such as education, healthcare, the arts, hospitality, renewables, and recycling, and cease promoting the current unsustainable economic model based largely on boosting population, housing construction and land clearing.
Prosperity missing from treasurer’s triple-p plan
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has codified his economic strategy as PPP – population, participation and productivity. This is a poor piece of policy. I would change the first objective to prosperity. Population is a foolish objective. Increasing our population by migration increases gross economic activity but does nothing for individual wealth. Governments have to spend vast sums of our money on unproductive ‘‘congestion-busting’’ projects. The quality of life goes down as our population expands and becomes unmanageable. Surely the pandemic has shown Mr Frydenberg this much.
Liberal ponzi scheme
The ACT Liberals were fast out of the blocks in this election campaign offering all things to all people including crowd-pleasers such as car registration cost cuts and a rates freeze, along with a simultaneous promise to maintain services and to fund a whole lot of great new projects.
Who could fail to be seduced? We were also assured there won’t be the standard Liberal resort to attacking social and environmental programs ad cutting public service jobs It was hard to shake the sense this was classic Magic Pudding budgeting.
But then all was revealed. We would have government by Ponzi scheme as official policy in the form of massive population growth to fund everything! Canberra is to be Big Australia in miniature, even though we’ve seen how this large population growth model has been a debacle for communities elsewhere.
Unfortunately there was no mention of where all these extra many thousands tens of are to live and which landscapes are to be chewed up to house them. There seemed to be no grasping that all these extra people would themselves require new government expenditure and ever more people to fund that. I’m not sure whether it’s the most irresponsible and boneheaded budgetary strategy I’ve ever heard, or he most cynical.
Curb the growth
Crispin Hull is able to put big issues in perspective (“Affordable housing may be an economic upside to the pandemic”, canberratimes.com.au, September 26).
But he did not link it to emissions and global warming. Before the pandemic Australia’s population growth rate (1.6 per cent) was much higher than comparable countries.
The rising population has contributed to rising emissions through more buildings, energy use, transport and food.
Ongoing population growth makes it even more urgent to transition away from fossil fuels to renewables.
Future no mystery
Had I not known one of its members I would never have heard of the Commission for the Human Future (CHF) until I read the report “Australia’s current crises warning of what’s to come” (September 20, p10). The CHF has an (extremely) low profile despite any one of the 10 listed threats to the welfare or survival of humanity being a globally important, if not existential issue.
Perhaps there should be an addition to threat number five (pollution): the solid waste that threatens to engulf our cities and physically pollute large nearby areas of arable land. I would decline to nominate just one of the 10 listed threats as being the most important, partly because they are all important and partly because many are interrelated. However, as I see it, item four (global warming, etc.) and item three (population growth and demand) together represent the greatest and most pervasive threat to humanity.
Our governments should act accordingly.
Overstocked
CHRISTOPHER Pyne’s call for population increase for SA (The Advertiser, yesterday) reminds me of a farmer I once knew.
This chap was very successful; he used to run 800 ewes on his lush pastures and they thrived, producing a good wool clip and great lambs for market. The grass was so plentiful, he rarely needed to provide supplementary feed.
A farm adviser managed to get his ear one day and with the encouragement of the farmer’s son who had returned from higher education, they agreed to increase the ewe numbers to 1000.
The next year they had more lambs to sell and even though they lacked a bit of bloom the net income was a bit higher. Wool production per head slipped but overall there was a meagre gain.
The next year the ewe numbers went to 1100, which led to unfortunate results.
The pastures were very short; more drenching was needed to combat intestinal worms; lambing percentage dropped as did the growth of the lambs – some didn’t make it to market.
The dams could not provide adequate water for the sheep and as the pastures turned to a dust bowl, causing erosion.
The farmer had to resort to buying fodder to sustain his flock.
The once-profitable farm became a burdensome loss.
The old farmer explained to his son that there is a natural limit to most things and ignoring it leads to disaster.
I wonder whether there is a lesson here for the future SA?
Way to go Crispin
Congratulations to Crispin Hull who referred to “… high immigration and high population growth, which enriches the few at the expense of the many, and at the expense of the natural environment and its nonhuman inhabitants” (“Scaremongering on population doesn’t help anyone“, canberratimes.com.au, August 29).
Hull’s comments are a welcome antidote to the considerable nonsense served up recently about cuts to immigration, and thus population growth, made necessary by the COVID-19 crisis. What riles me most are those about loss in property values, as though home owners and investors were the only ones who mattered.
How many times does it have to be said that every new person added to the population costs at least $100,000 in public money? KPMG seems to ignore this. By all means maintain, and even extend, the refugee program, but apart from some spouse reunion, the only migrants the country needs are those with high skills that can help with the economic recovery, particularly in the renewable energy sector so that it can be an integral part of the recovery when it comes.