Comment by Col Friel
Lisa Macdonald (GLW, November 27) is correct when she says that any opposition to immigration on any grounds strengthens the hands of those who oppose immigration on other grounds, but to jump from that to the conclusion that "In every instance, immigrants are used as scapegoats ..." does not add to the quality of the debate, a debate characterised more by hysteria than by rationality or logic.
To refer to Phillip Ruthven as an authority on population is a rather weak reed — wasn't he recently on an ABC program asserting that Australia could absorb 100 million immigrants in 10 years?
Lisa Macdonald implies that much of Australia's arid zone could have a technological fix and consequently Australia's "carrying capacity" could be improved. She overlooks the fact, as do other pro-development enthusiasts, that our arid zones are already populated, by other forms of life. What gives humans any superior right to expropriate other habitats?
Even if, in some ideal world, we were able to remove the profit motive from production and had a sensible electrically powered public transport system, it must be obvious that if the world population continues to increase, the demand for greater productivity of the land will increase and the demand for more electric power will increase, reduced per capita consumption or not.
And that power is produced mainly by fossil fuel-powered power stations.
It is not a fact that "production and the environmental damage it causes are largely independent of the consumption patterns of the populations in the advanced capitalist countries". It is a fact that those consumption patterns are a major factor, and so are greater productivity and increased overseas demand, the latter soaking up the surplus. That demand is driven by population increase and higher per capita consumption for some sections of foreign populations. It is not just the Australian population that drives production.
I do not point "the finger of blame at the poor and powerless" nor do I use overpopulation as a euphemism for "the pressing surplus of the non-white poor". Apart from rabid insults, Lisa Macdonald continues the GLW practice of putting up straw men.
For instance, who uses the argument that "immigration ... is responsible for environmentally devastating production levels and methods"? As she is aware, it is the profit motive that is the driving force for all production in Australia. This does not detract from the argument that further immigration will increase local consumption.
The rate of immigration per capita in other countries has no relation to Australia. Another straw man. So is her argument that there is no evidence that a reduced rate of immigration impacted to reduce either the gross domestic product or the rate of environmental destruction in this country. Why should it? The population was still increasing.
The AESP [Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population] is probably capable of answering for itself, but the charge of racism levelled at environmentalists is typical of the hysteria being indulged in by the pro-immigration lobby.
A substantial drop in the population may not repair the environmental damage but it could reduce the rate at which it is occurring, if we had a socially responsible political system that made it unattractive for people to pursue environmentally destructive production methods.
What Lisa Macdonald fails to consider, and all those theorists of perpetual population growth fail to consider, is that our present per capita consumption is underpinned by our use of fossil energy, in the main.
How long will that energy last?
Petroleum supplies — perhaps 30 to 40 years at an economical price. Uranium supplies — about 70 years at the present annual rate of consumption of some 30,000 tonnes per year if John Hallam's estimate of world reserves of 2.3 million tonnes is correct. Coal supplies — who knows, given its effect on the atmosphere. Can renewable energy replace that in the foreseeable future? All our renewable energy comes from the sun.
What was the population of Australia before the advent of European technology? About 500,000 at best estimate. With a very much lower standard of living than ours.
But there was no pollution. Whether there was an ecological balance or whether the original environment had been almost entirely degraded and was on its last legs we do not know.
And it does not matter, except academically. What does matter is to extrapolate the results of our present and past activities into the future.
Our major cities, and some minor ones, already have a waste disposal problem. It can only be exacerbated by increased population. A recent estimate gave the world's grain stores as about 70 days' supply. That is the amount of grain in hand at the beginning of the next harvest. Irrespective of the glaring inequities in the distribution and availability of grain in the world, one or two major crop failures would be a human disaster.
We continue to deplete our energy supplies, we continue to deplete our mineral resources, we continue to deplete our agricultural lands and their productivity. We deplete our biodiversity, the other forms of life which we need to survive. Lisa Macdonald ignores the fact that to increase the human habitat we decrease the habitat of other life forms.
But there are some things which we do not decrease. One of these is human population and the other is our waste stream.
If the 80% of the world's population who under-consume are to consume at the same rate as the 20% who overconsume, our waste stream will increase to four times its present volume. And if the world's population doubles every 30 years for the next 120 years, say, that is 64 times today's rate for everything.
No population problem?