Population pressure on the environment will lead to catastrophe

21 May 2015

Media Releases 2015

Media release: Earth Day – 21st April, 2015: for immediate release

Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) urges people everywhere to mark Earth Day on April 22 by focusing on the role that overpopulation plays in environmental degradation.

SPA national president Sandra Kanck says the evidence is overwhelming that the world’s natural environment is trending towards a catastrophe and that population pressure is a primary cause.

‘There are limits to what the natural environment can tolerate in terms of resource consumption and the production of wastes and humans went way beyond those limits – sometimes called “planetary boundaries” – a long time ago,’ Ms Kanck said.

‘The situation now is nothing less than an environmental crisis that will inevitably lead to collapse as explained by numerous academics working in ecology, prominent among them Professor Will Steffen from the Australian National University, Dr Graham Turner from the University of Melbourne, and Dr Haydn Washington from the University of NSW. But these warnings keep falling on deaf ears in parliaments, and Australia is no exception.’

Ms Kanck said it was a myth that population growth in Australia was inevitable and that it was good for the economy – in fact the economy was totally reliant on a healthy environment and we were losing that rapidly due to insane population growth.

‘Australia’s population has been growing by almost 400,000 a year in recent times and about 60 per cent of this growth is from net migration, ramped up by deluded federal governments. This means we have one of the fastest-growing populations in the developed world – but with a decreasing standard of living and a natural environment rapidly going down the toilet.’

Media contact: Sandra Kanck ph. 08 8336 4114 (or 0417882143)

PDF version of release

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