Growth idealogues celebrate as Australia's population tops 23 million

Growth ideologues should be smiling now that Australia’s population has topped 23 million.

Prof Tim Flannery posits
 Australia's ideal population
 carrying capacity is
between eight and 12
million.

More people, in corporate talk, equates with more profits.

Behind that shiny corporate facade, is a paradigm that encourages endless expansion; a tumour-like growth of which any talk about control is taboo.

Beyond that, any discussion about limiting population growth is equally distasteful for almost immediately reason and logic is abandoned and emotion hogs the spotlight.

The 2007 Australian of the Year, Professor Tim Flannery, presently a member of the Australian Climate Commission, has calculated that Australia’s long-term carrying capacity was between eight and 12 million.

He points out that Australia’s population had reached those marks in 1950 and 1968 respectively.

Considering Prof Flannery’s observation we have either, in the first instance, more than doubled Australia’s population carrying capacity or nearly doubled the second number.

The idea of a “big” Australia is out of step with what Australian’s actually need; rather than bigger, we need better.

Shepparton is bound for “bigger” with statistics on the City of Greater Shepparton website suggesting that by 2031 a further 16 500 people will live here, producing a population nearing 80 000.

Arguments that bigger is always better and more beautiful are riddled with fallacies; unintended consequences that are assembling on the horizon now, poised to disable humanity.

Questions about the cause of climate change, an undeniable scientific and practical reality, attract varied answers, most of which are in themselves correct, but rarely do they focus on the reality that there is simply too many of us.

Any suggestion that we somehow humanely control our numbers produces an almost immediate and sharp passionate response loaded with accusations of Nazi-like eugenics and a big brother-like forced abandonment of our responsibility to pro-create.

That “responsibility” is many faceted, yes, we do have a responsibility to pro-create, but at replacement level or less, but we also have an intergenerational obligation, a responsibility to those that follow to live with restraint, care for the planet and so leave the earth healthier than it was then when we arrived.

Population growth is exponential and the likelihood of us leaving the earth in better shape than we found it is becoming more remote as each day passes.

Education is the first, the last and beyond birth control, restraint and good sense, the only ally upon which we can call to slow the world’s burgeoning population growth.

Modern life is loaded with endless distractions and the corporate world, aided by myriad problematic institutions, would have us believe all is well.

It is unfair however, to blame upon the world’s corporations and our institutions as the real responsibility rests with us for we have failed to educate ourselves and so do not understand the limits to growth.

Libertarian beliefs, bushfires and ideologies - what a conflagration!

A friend recently described himself as a 19^th century libertarian.

Such an observation demanded some research for this fellow is a sociable, likeable, community minded, not at all individualistic as success in the modern seems to demand and so does not equate at all with the popular conception of someone who has such beliefs.

Tasmania's fires.

As an incredibly reasonable, thoughtful and generous man, who always exhibits fairness and concern for the social equality of his fellows, my friend’s values appeared at odds with the popular understanding of a libertarian.

However, and interestingly, the traits he exhibits sit comfortably with those who align themselves with libertarianism, at least libertarianism of the classic variety.

Libertarians of all stripes are somewhat uncomfortable with government intervention and yet, strangely, they see something of a limited role for such an authority provided it does not impinge upon the liberty of individuals, either intentionally or through an unintended consequence.

Those who claim the title of “libertarian” are as different in content as they are in action, but broadly they are “classic libertarians” (such as my friend), “hard” and “neo-libertarians”.

They are suspicious of governments and yet they are equally wary of the behaviour or market, and yet they argue for a truly free market, one that is not influenced or favoured by governmental decisions.

Interestingly, some libertarians find a certain comfort in several anarchical ideals for while anarchy has a fearfully bad reputation it really means, historically, “without government” an idea that meshes with many endorsed by libertarians.

Critics of libertarians might argue that philosophies they pursue and endorse concern only the “big-end of town”, but for someone truly aligned to the libertarian cause would deny that and argue for equality and fairness, both in social and hierarchical terms, and in economic dealings.

However, the troubles of life are frequently beyond tightly held political and religious beliefs as exampled by the recent bushfires that engulfed parts of Tasmania.

As many eyeballed tragedy with homes, property, and their lives, in the path of the advancing blaze, it is unlikely anyone questioned their political or religious beliefs as they negotiated themselves around that difficulty.

Some may have found comfort in religious beliefs later, but it seems improbable they would have been would have been front of mind at the height of the fires, when the needs of sheer survival would have clearly supplanted those interests, just as political fancies would have been equally remote.

Unfolding dilemmas facing the earth; the collision of burgeoning population, energy scarcity and a worsening climate, demand we re-consider the status of personal ideologies.

The politics of tomorrow just simply has to be different from what exists for what we have is more about answering wants, rather than peoples’ true needs.

From darkness to walking on the moon

Inspired by Dick Smith’s “Population Crisis – the dangers of unsustainable growth for Australia”, I wrote the following and it was subsequently published in the Shepparton weekly publication, SN Weekly, which is a newspaper affiliated with the Shepparton News.

Newspapers around the world
told of the 1969 adventure
that took man to the moon.

My grandmother was born before we could casually flick on the electric light; she died long after man walked on the moon.

When “Ma”, as she was colloquially known to all in the family, turned 90 my mother encouraged me to be at her birthday “as it could be her last” – 15 years later I attended what was her “last” birthday.

Ma, as you would suspect, was married to “Pa” and about a decade of my life had passed before I discovered, or realised, that “Ma” was actually Ellen and “Pa” was in fact John.

There was nothing intentionally deceptive or wicked about what was a whole-of-family evolving institution, but it has had its legacies and is a small, but integral piece of a sweeping and far more sinister human dilemma.

Becoming a grandfather about four years ago, the question arose as to what I would like to be known? – “Granddad”, “Grandpa”, “Gramps” or maybe “Pa” - the idea of being called “Pa” unearthed memories of childhood confusion and being convinced that life is sufficiently loaded with deceptions without adding the misunderstandings of one’s linage, I suggested  “Robert”.

Beleaguered by emotional responses from family and friends, I am now “Pa” and it feels comfortable, but on hearing it, I immediately feel about 20 years older.

That, however, is incidental, rather what worries me is the fact that the unintentional and imagined friendly emotional intrigue of families shapes us, from a young age, to be unable, or less able, to confront or deal with the intrigues of adulthood.

Beyond having their rapidly expanding minds confused by the identity of the forebears, the natural inquisitiveness of children is exciting, but I suggest confused, when confronted with an array of myths from some mystical gift-bearing soul to super natural beings controlling their fate and that their wellbeing is to be found in the stars to the fact that the good life is simply there for the taking.

Childhood is for most a
wonderful experience.

Approaching adulthood armed with those myths most people, damagingly, are soundly disconnected from reality and frequently align themselves with one or several of those celebrated falsities.

Childhood is for most a wonderful experience, particularly for those fortunate enough to live in such a peaceful and bountiful place as Australia, and although it is not readily apparent, those are the years in which the foundations are laid down for the superstructure that is become a purposeful adulthood.

However, a life built upon, and maligned, by myths, misinformation and misguided “facts”, can often be tragic, leaving that same person unable to confront life’s brutal realities and consequently unable to accept or deal with them.

Being “Pa” to two grandsons, it is discomforting to be a part of an oblique identity fraud, for as seemingly unimportant as it is, it is one which could have, and will have, I believe, a significant impact on the lives of those two small boys.

In and of itself, that deception, if I can boldly call it that, is of little significance, but multiplied by the millions of occurrences around the world each day, it becomes an insurmountable difficulty for humanity.

We are born as a blank slate, except for the knowledge and experience of our forebears that is embedded in our DNA and, beyond that, not in isolation from our environment and the cultural norms that surround us to impact on every aspect of our being making us whom and what we are.

We are what we are because of nature, but the person we become is a measurable outcome of by whom and how we are nurtured.

The past 200 years has been particularly kind to humanity, we have learnt much and through the exercise of powerful brains, homo-sapiens have become the pre-eminent species on earth, changing it in a host of ways to make it more applicable and useful to their survival.

Our endeavours have not come, however, without a cost, particularly to many of the earth’s other species; species without which we would not survive.

That same cost, of which many are ignorant or simply unaccepted by others and particularly those who benefit from the maintenance of the status quo, is unfolding in a conflation of difficulties that individually or, even more pressingly, in a combined sense have the capacity to decimate mankind.

Minds polluted by living a life of so called fun and friendly myths underlined by adherence to baseless fantasies are ill-prepared to confront and deal with realities that have never before been imposed upon the human experiment.

Fundamental to the difficulties is the exponential growth of human population rising from just one billion in 1800 to more than seven billion late last year and in my 65 years our numbers have about tripled. Predictions are for those numbers to reach nine billion by 2050.

Other than for the concerns voiced by a few individuals and some groups, the world’s burgeoning population goes pretty much unnoticed, except by those who celebrate it for it brings for them short-term profits.

Our swelling numbers, and the inordinate growth they bring, are eroding the earth’s finite resources; filling up our natural sinks, the oceans and atmosphere, with carbon dioxide; making it near impossible to sate the thirsts of many and ease their hunger; and simply find space for everyone to live.

It is pointless to illustrate to many people the difficulties they face for in harking back to fun-like emotional deceptions of youth and the nurture surrounding them as they arrived at adulthood they are unable to understand the reason for gloom about the future.

Dick Smith's
 thoughts
about the
 "Population Crisis".

Even the production of facts, results in a contrariness that sees them react with a certain stubbornness that frequently has them reassert beliefs that careful science supported examination shows, clearly, they are wrong.

Writing in “Population Crisis – thedangers of unsustainable growth for Australia” Australian multimillionaire philanthropist and adventurer, who originally made his fortune retailing electronics and then founded Australian Geographic magazine, Dick Smith, discussed solutions to avoid what he described as “potential disasters”.

“Firstly,” he wrote, “we have to change the way we measure progress; then we must stop the wasteful use of non-renewable resources; and finally, as population growth begins to stabilise, we must completely re-program the global economy to avoid growth altogether”.

So, considering Dick’s advice, rather than concern ourselves about exploring the moon, or anywhere in outer-space, we should be exploring earth and along with that, human nature.