Chalmers’ babies and Dutton’s migrants: Australia’s population debate
What kind of population does Australia need? Jim Chalmers recently informed us that Australian citizens ought to have more babies. Commentators on various blogs and fora have returned to dwelling on Australia’s “carrying capacity” as though this is a farm and we are grazing cattle. Peter Dutton, in his Budget Reply, stated his intent to cut immigration.
All these questions tease at a tricky problem: Western nations are struggling to find people to do the low-paying jobs that the citizenry won’t undertake, at least at such paltry wages.
In Australia, we face skill shortages in critical areas. Without immigrants we cannot fill the roles.
Jobs we refer to as “low-skilled” are crucial for the wellbeing of our nation and their absence has a material impact on citizens’ standard of living – or even lifespan.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the 8th of May that the elderly of West Virginia are learning to their cost what it means when there is nobody available to care for them, dying younger than they might have if their state wasn’t so racist. Virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy means that they have far too few to care for them as they age.
Britain is facing a similar crisis. Bigotry drove much of the Brexit vote that sent so many low-paid workers back to central Europe. The jobs are still being done, but many more of the immigrants filling those roles are coming from the Indian subcontinent. It is ironic that the Brexiteers must now choose to age unsupported in their unchanged diapers or accept help from the Brown people that they voted, so unsuccessfully, to exclude
Peter Dutton appeared to be pandering to the Australian equivalents of those Brexit voters when he claimed last week that Australian immigration must be cut. Apparently now he is in opposition, he cares about Australians’ standard of living, and Dutton blamed the discomforts of inadequate infrastructure investment over decades on the existence of migrants in the country.
Of course, Dutton’s speech included a cut to Australia’s humanitarian visa numbers that he labelled “generous.” Australia’s humanitarian intake is only “generous” in that we have somewhat higher numbers than other countries of people cherry-picked from the hundreds of millions trapped in indefinite “warehousing” in refugee camps around the world. In fact, most countries count their substantially higher humanitarian intakes from people who arrive irregularly, seeking asylum.
The Albanese government had merely returned our stingy intake of refugees closer to what it had been pre-Abbott. We remain one of the international laggards in doing our share in accommodating the displaced, as with so many of our international responsibilities.
The number of displaced around the world is, of course, only set to multiply as Australia helps industrialised nations to continue to depend on our fossil fuel exports. Every 1/10th of a degree of warming means that an additional 140 million people will live enduring “dangerous heat” – or die, or flee.
By the end of the century, 2 billion people are projected to dwell in the unsustainable zones created by 2.7 degrees warming. Almost half of climate scientists recently surveyed believe that our global failure to cooperate means we are more likely to hit 3 degrees.
When even nighttime temperatures remain over human body temperature at 38 degrees or more, our bodies struggle to function. As science writer Gaia Vince explained, “This extreme heat literally cooks your body. We’re made of animal cells. It starts to denature the proteins of our cell membranes. It’s a horrible way to die.”
So it is not only in the context of our failing infrastructure (and prohibitive cost of living) that Treasurer Chalmers’ exhortation to have more babies is foolish. Plagiarising Peter Costello’s “have one for mum, one for dad, and one for the country” is a recipe for additional burden on climate systems that are beginning to fail.
Not only does population in industrialised nations add disproportionately to carbon emissions, but each additional child will create financial stress on families as food shortages and resultant price hikes become the norm rather than the exception.
Right-wing parties in Western nations are becoming ever more nativist. Some of these politicians are blatantly ethnonationalist. Others speak the bigotry in dogwhistle codes. “Sustainability” is one of the codes used by such figures. “Carrying capacity” is another. Both mask the bigotry in this greenwashed cypher. The fortress-mentality policies that result have been labelled “border fascism.”
One of Donald Trump’s primary goals is to deport 11 million non-White people from America. His team has just announced a group of “Gun-owners for Trump” who need their guns because “no American is safe from a [mythical] violent migrant crime-wave” provoking the shooting of non-White people.
Australians have seen the difference in Peter Dutton’s attitude to White au pairs compared to people from non-White backgrounds. His success in targeting First Peoples through the dirty referendum campaign, it appears, has emboldened him to begin once again targeting (non-White) migrants as the supposed cause of our discomforts.
The actual cause has long been the tax-strike being executed by the richest. The neoliberal project driving it has stripped our countries of the resources needed for infrastructure. Indeed the taxed common wealth of the masses is being funnelled into the pockets of the rich through sector subsidies and gifts such as shrugging off the repayment of Jobkeeper by highly profitably corporations.
It is crucial that governments and thought leaders begin the big discussions that scientists and policy researchers are demanding. We need transparency from politicians that claim to act in our interests. They must explain our workforce requirements in realistic terms. They must address the policies that keep “low-skilled” jobs an intolerable prospect.
They must discuss what continuing to foster fossil fuel industry demands means for Australians and for the world. Governments need to inform the public clearly what climate heating will look like here and in the zones that will be decimated by the climate catastrophe.
They must explain the codes the “border fascists” use to distract the electorate from the true culprits for our discomforts, fighting the inherent bigotry.
They must discuss the impact of influence networks which work to promote continued fossil fuel consumption, growing inequality, and ethnonationalist goals.
Allowing the bigotry of the Right to dictate policy, for example by calling on Australians to have more unaffordable children, destroys our chances to discuss the shape of our nation. It is only in having honest discussions that our politicians and journalists can enable the nation to address our needs and responsibilities.
If the Albanese government wants to be re-elected, it must become more honest.
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Return to home pageLucy has referred to the fortress-mentality policies of the Right in Western nations being labelled “border fascism.”
That mentality is not confined to The Right.
With migrants being “cherry-picked” as she says from “warehouse” refugee camps, and with Australia and others not fulfilling their obligations to asylum seekers, having in fact, a fortress mentality, what does this tell us?
That fascism is not the exclusive province of The Right. That liberal democracies are into fascism right up to their eyeballs.
The liberal democracies are so fearful of the power of the financial system that no-one confronts the elephant in the room — who or what is causing the displacement of so many asylum seekers?
Liberals have created a monster, a system that is now undermining the gravy train they love. It’s the need to protect the gravy train that produces the ruthlessness, the fascist outlook. The overthrow of unfriendly governments and the displacement of refugees that results, is all about control — protecting the system from rival models.
What can be done?
Back to the article.
The following issues from the article are very real, and have a common thread apart from the focus of the article.
“We face skill shortages in critical areas. Without immigrants we cannot fill the roles.”
“Jobs we refer to as “low-skilled” are crucial for the well-being of our nation”
“ industrialised nations continue to depend on our fossil fuel exports.”
“population in industrialised nations add disproportionately to carbon emissions,”
“ We need transparency from politicians that claim to act in our interests. They must explain our workforce requirements in realistic terms. They must address the policies that keep “low-skilled” jobs an intolerable prospect. They must discuss what continuing to foster fossil fuel industry demands means for Australians and for the world. Governments need to inform the public clearly what climate heating will look like…”
All of these important issues are either created by, or facilitated by, our financial system.
And so powerful is the financial system, so entrenched, so willing to use force at an extraordinary level as we see in conflicts raging right now across the globe, that no amount of discussion will bring about a change in direction.
The system will only change if weakened.
So the only weapon ordinary folk have at their disposal is to disengage.
While we rely on the system, it controls us.
Start thinking about how we walk away.
This essay is dedicated to Andrew Smith who has been doing so much to educate us all about the Tanton network and influence. I didn’t dare encroach on his territory since he does it so well, but hope my references to it will be considered appropriate by Andrew.
Agree, Phil, although the neo-feudal project (which I am going to deploy to avoid triggering Steve) has been working to make sure that even the most intellectual hubs are constrained and shackled by their donations, and that all debates are framed to delight the plutocrats. Unfortunately our petrostate/vassal state identity hobbles us further.
… the discomforts of inadequate infrastructure investment over decades …
And who was in government for most of that period, Dutts?
Sustainability and population levels are genuine issues that need to be addressed, but there’s no reason we can’t also do our fair share when it comes to refugees, particularly the ones we help create (Afghanistan, climate, etc).
Lucy:
I like the term “neo-feudal”. That really is what the capitalist system is leading to – global corporate feudalism.
Leefe. Thanks. I think the term brings some clarity. Whatever they call themselves, that’s the world these people are engineering.
Agree about sustainability being a real question. We need to have that discussion with an eye to real issues including our obligation to take some of the people soon to be fleeing unsurvivable heat – partly because of our luxurious living standards. Ethnostate politicking is going to be very dangerous with that in the mix.
Thanks Lucy 🙂
we haven’t enough homes for the population as it is, families are struggling to afford one child let alone 3. It’s about time the world as a whole tried to find solutions to several disasters – climate change number 1 and how to help all those refugees return to their homes. We have a United Nations which is great at talking, not so much at doing. Countries from which people are streaming in their millions to the hope of a better life MUST be helped/persuaded to stop people leaving by creating a better life for them at home. The West has the power to do this – help with finding water, better health services, transportation, communication. For those already displaces we must allow them to settle. We need doctors, aged care workers, child carers. Many of these refugees are skilled, trained, we need to identify those people and use their skills – providing us with the help we need and them with a home and a future.
The world as we have known it has changed dramatically, we have to go with the change or perish.
Related, he has archived papers (now locked) at the University of Michigan, but large part are not accessible till 2035:
https://findingaids.lib.umich.edu/catalog/umich-bhl-861056
SPLC’s then Heidi Beirich got to them before they were locked up ‘Correspondence reveals how racism and eugenics motivate the founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform’ (2008)
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2008/john-tanton%E2%80%99s-private-papers-expose-more-20-years-hate
There has been ongoing legal action for access, but according to US academic Dr. Brendan O’Connor, mostly just contains papers about the Pioneer Fund (and eugenics). However, that’s a PR issue for people outside of US e.g. at a related NGO in UK (Tufton St. with Atlas- Koch outlets behind Brexit, where else?) and the ‘intellectual dark web’ (Pinkerites, Koch et al), nudging against the centre, woke, women, LGBT etc.
There has been legal success by immigration attorney Hassan Ahmad, last year, but suggests that the University of Michigan can redact etc.
Michigan Court Orders UM to Release Tanton Papers
https://olcplc.com/public/media?1694871756
A smile at the bright person who discussed “lie on your back and think of the nation” the comment on the politician whinging about not enough women having babies.
Rewarding this conversation involving andrew smith, dr hamilton et al. Just before bed, cheered me up so..
As for Chalmers’ populate or perish gaffe, why not follow up with a Sermon for Salvation at St Mary’s Cathedral?
Maybe the squillionaire tykes from Advance could throw their money behind it…
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/white-mans-dark-money-meet-the-no-campaign-bankrollers,18043
‘Sustainability is a dogwhistle’
A purely anthropocentric attitude entirely appropriate for the onset of the Anthropocene Age (aka 6th mass extinction).
According to a credible (peer-reviewed) global ‘bio-audit’ of the biomass breakdown of existent mammals,
Homo sapiens comprise 34%
Human domesticates (20 species) comprise 62%
Wild mammals (inc cetaceans) comprise the remaining 4%.
I support an increase in Australia’s refugee quota (especially if it prioritises women & children), but, unless it is balanced with a decline in voluntary influx, such increase will inevitably add to the already onerous burden on Australia’s natural environment and resources, this hastening the rate of extinction of irreplaceable native species.
Furthermore, if, as author & various contributors acknowledge, accelerated climate destabilisation (& human conflict) will likely cause drastically increased human displacement, wouldn’t it be prudent to cut back on voluntary migration to conserve room & resource for the predicted mass-influx of the truly desperate & needy?
Or am I just being racist?
A funny coincidence;
Human population (1950-2020)
https://images.app.goo.gl/R2JzzLAcryHjh11h7
Wild animal populations (1970-2020)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-living-planet-index
Sustainability has to be a worldwide population issue, not an issue specific to Australia. Immigration takes a person or people from Country A to Country B, and it impacts the populations of the two countries but not the world. Natural increase adds to the world population figure. We don’t need to go down the path of a two-child policy per family.
I completely agree that “sustainability” used with integrity is a crucial consideration for the planet and the country. Paul Ehrlich displays the other use. He begins his book on the population crisis with a portrait of a teeming Indian city that freaks him out. The big population of the Indian city, however, is far less detrimental to the planet than his middle class American suburbs where he values the green sprawl and comfort of his life that is so carbon-generating.
We need to be honest with what we are talking about. The climate-displaced are already on the move. This is not a future problem but a current one that will escalate. Western nations are trying to forge fortresses where the populations that mass around the equator won’t be able to penetrate our comfortable little sanctuaries.
We need to discuss our energy policy with this in mind. How many millions of people are we intending to displace with our reckless commitment to carbon-based energy? What are we intending to do when our own northern reaches, and lands across the hotter regions, are uninhabitable? Are we intending to leave the outsiders to die? Will we have armed troops keeping the desperate at bay in an intensification of the current program? Will our armies bomb boats approaching our shores?
Our energy consumption created this crisis, not the Global South’s.
Planning is crucial.
Australia needs people to carry out work that Australians aren’t prepared to do. (Certainly addressing neofeudal political economies could be some help.) There are people already able to do the work we’re not prepared to pay enough for. Listen to the interview with Vince linked in the article for an exploration of this. The one thing nobody can afford as we enter the climate catastrophe permacrisis is allow populist nativists to control the discussion, but they are doing so. Chalmer’s call to breed proves that point. It is possible to choose “identities” that embrace humanity’s variety. It is also possible to create hateful and violent identities that define themselves against an “other.” We see how much blood that latter process is creating in the world right now.
I am not saying “sustainability” isn’t crucial. I’m just saying we must expose the people who use it to protect their own little patch of green against the people whose homes we’re making uninhabitable.
Lucy, you were spot on with “Our energy consumption created this crisis, not the Global South’s. Planning is crucial.”
But then you followed that with “Australia needs people to carry out work that Australians aren’t prepared to do… There are people already able to do the work we’re not prepared to pay enough for… The one thing nobody can afford as we enter the climate catastrophe permacrisis is allow populist nativists to control the discussion, but they are doing so… I am not saying “sustainability” isn’t crucial. I’m just saying we must expose the people who use it to protect their own little patch of green against the people whose homes we’re making uninhabitable.”
I cannot see the connection. Having a fair and balanced immigration system will not solve the energy consumption crisis as your follow-up comment suggests.
Our excessive energy consumption is to a large extent due to the unrealistic expectations that liberalism has instilled into our thinking. Conspicuous consumption. Keeping up with the Joneses. Young people buying their first house expecting a standard that was only enjoyed by the wealthy professional class when I was young.
All of this warped thinking is being facilitated by the system. Getting a loan to buy a house was not easy when I started out. Now the bank manager almost yanks you in from off the street. Just sign here.
We now have a system that runs on, that is sustained by, huge personal debt.
Selfishness and lack of consideration is built into our economic system. Those who in your words, (and I support you completely in this) are determined to “protect their own little patch of green against the people whose homes we’re making uninhabitable” are merely products of the system.
We are dealing globally with the consequences of an economic system based on selfishness, for now we find that such a system is not only not sustainable, but those who believe in it (making a killing from it) will fight to preserve it. Most of the current global chaos is due to this conflict of economic expectations.
The current economic system will work against any efforts to solve the crisis caused by energy consumption.
Thanks for this review of our Western-led global cluster-fuck of issues. I peg the beginning of the awareness that these problems and issues are building, need to be addressed, and yet have remained essentially unresolved, to the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 – barely one year after I was born. Long time ago.
The Limits To Growth came out in 1972. They had a huge conference in Rio in 1992, on that subject complex, and quite a number of follow-up-up ones since … but to no great avail.
The problem seems to be that those at the top of society, the movers and shakers, the well-remunerated senior decision-makers, those with the greatest power and influence, those on whom we rely to change things, are at the very same time those with most to loose by changing the very system that made them influential and well-off.
That, too, is a rather old and worn-out complaint. Speaking from personal experience: there’s no way I could keep a family fed, clothed and housed at a level commensurate with living in a wealthy industrial “very high HDI” nation like Australia on the wages of a lowly truckie or chippie. That requires crawling up the slippery pole of corporate advancement to managerial positions.
But what, pray tell, do those managerial activities contribute to the general well-being and the “common wealth”, on which all our individual fortunes ultimately depend.
“Not fucking much”, was the conclusion I saw myself forced to accept, some three decades ago. Hence my decidedly non-hierarchical anarchist outlook on all aspects of the Human Condition.
In case you are reluctant to accept the resentful assertions of an obscure and frustrated aging self-employed white male carpenter, A Bit Rich provides a more closely reasoned and academically perhaps more acceptable analysis. And let’s not forget David Graeber’s variations on the subject of Bullshit Jobs … – except that I strongly contend that a) Graeber failed to scale the true depth of modern-day bullshit (but is that even possible); and (in my frustrated opinion) also did not arrive at the insights that would have enabled him to make still more incisive contributions to the public debate. As did, coincidentally, Thomas Piketty with his Capital in the 21st Century.
Lay back and think of Canberra???
Firstly pro-natal policies are simply nativist PR, as they merely bring family plans forward, then followed by a slump…
Australia’s population discourse is dumbed down and nativist masking proxy white Australia, and following the debunked ‘limits to growth’ PR constructs, masquerading as science that were promoted by the fossil fuel Club of Rome, hosted on Rockefeller (Standard Oil/Exxon) estate, sponsored by Fiat (Agnelli) and VW (Porsche); promoting the ‘population bomb’, Gaia and ‘steady state economy (or ‘degrowth’).
Locally the NOM net OS migration numbers are not a program, just border movements, and in 2006 was inflated from 12/12 month residency test to 12/16+ (informed by the UNPD, only used UK & NZ too), capturing more temporary student ‘churn’ and increasing mobility, spiking NOM, then the estimated population, then dog whistled by media as an environmental hygiene issue and ‘the great replacement’ wedges; too easy…..
This replicates Koch Network (shares donors in US with Tanton) think tanks’ and RW MSM climate science denial techniques, focus on short term noise of NOM like weather events, but ignore the long term permanent population decline like rising temperatures; both act as foils with many in Australia linking ‘sustainable population’ as an antidote to global warming.
In fact most media egregiously ignore and bypass our permanent population base’ future issues emerging, that are ameliorated like elsewhere by high NOM churn of temporary residents who are ‘net financial (budget) contributors’ privately insured, multiplier of friends and families visiting, adding up to $billions in GST.
In other words, we have 7+ million oldies already and the boomer ‘bomb’ is transitioning to or through retirement, but increasing the ‘old age dependency ratios’ i.e. more retirees but fewer working age in the permanent cohort as less fertility after the boomers; requires budget management, or e.g. increase taxes for working age PAYE or decrease services/delivery?
This tracks globally what is happening i.e. population growth we observe is more to do with historical fertility as fertility rates are falling everywhere, but nativist media narratives suggest everyone is still breeding like rabbits, not true.
Canadian researchers Bricker & Ibbitson confirm what others have found or suggested, UNPD global population forecast data is inflated (via future fertility projections)*, in fact population peak is coming mid century then decline (they suggest precipitous) and rebalance.
*’@darrellbricker 11 Jul 2022
Today UN released new population projections to 2100. 800M lower than 2017. In just 5 years of pop estimates equivalent of 2 countries size of US removed from humanity less than 80 years in the future. Consequences enormous. What @JohnIbbitson and I wrote about in Empty Planet.’
And John Tanton:
‘In His Own Words
“I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”
– Dec. 10, 1993, letter to the late Garrett Hardin, a controversial ecology professor’
Lucy,
You have addressed little to nothing regarding any of the main points I raised, but thank you for acknowledging that applied respect for the definitional principles of ‘sustainability’ (especially in an environmental sense) doesn’t automatically mean cleaving to a belief in racism based eugenics.
I won’t bother contributing anything more on the article topic of immigration, whether it be borne of needfull desperation (+20k) or economic opportunism (+190k), my main interest is in preserving some semblance of the unique ecosystemic biodiversity of this island, and that seems to be a subject of little to no interest in the context of this discussion.
Corvus out.
Corvus, I know you’ve opted out, but in case you are interested. I am desperately sad about the impact upon the environment that we are having in Australia.
I am much sadder about the unique habitats being lost to a warming climate. Richard Flanagan’s essay about the extraordinary zones being lost as Tasmania warms faster than the mainland is heartbreaking. The stories about the GBR and the forested zones dying out rips me apart. These are global factors at play. I have to function in dinosaur-time to have hope that when we’ll be mostly gone, a new biodiversity will replace us, at least while only a smaller percentage of humanity survives.
So while our precious habitats are dying because of Western luxurious lives, people towards the equator and in island and low-lying territory are being killed now. I just heard about a Bangladeshi-Australian who’d been visiting relatives and was appalled at the number of people dying in the heatwave there right now. If you read Ministry of the Future, even just the first chapter, you can see what we have sentenced people in the Global South to endure in the not-too-distant future. The planning that needs to take place now has to weigh up who and what can be saved.
While that planning refuses to take into account the human communities and fragile habitats being destroyed by global heating, while it fails to tackle the food bowls that will be devastated too often by drought, we need to look at how we look after our community needs (eg food), environmental responsibilities at home and our human responsibilities more broadly. Do we really get to be an island of relative comfort as tens of millions die in a fatal wet-bulb temperature heatwave in India? If that is where we are leaning, we need a general strike or some kind of massive interruption to the neoliberal machine to cause a halt to the profit-motives driving us towards no habitat being safe from devastation.
Lucy,
Our precious wildlife is dying because the world is so over populated with people who all demand food, shelter and energy. Some people in the West live luxurious lives, but they are a privileged minority. China and India account for at least a third of the world’s population. They used to account for half the world’s population not so many years ago when it was only around 4 billion people.
Paul Erlich used to ask this question. If it takes 50 days for a pond to be completely covered by water lilies that double in area every day, how many days does it take to cover half of the pond? The answer is 49 days. He would then point out that we were living in the 49th day of the population explosion thinking that there was loads of time available before we had to deal with it.
The earth has an amazing abiltity to regenerate its resources but the exploitation of it that is required to satistify the needs, never mind the wants, of 9 billion people has exceed the rate at which resources can be renewed.
You’ve probably heard of the Green Revolution in agriculture, that temporarily have averted the mass famines that Erlich was so worried about. It wasn’t what we would call Green these days. Instead of dealing with the obvious problem of too many people, the latest science and technology was used to make formerly unproductive land arable. Forests were cleared, swamps were drained, rivers were dammed to create productive agriculture land drenched with chemical fertilisers and pesticides, resulting in the massive loss whose habitats were destroyed. This is where the belief that science and technology will always save us eventually seems to have arisen.
It amazes me how over population denial has become as much of a threat to the world as climate change denial has been, but all the present attempts to associate racism with over-population concerns is particularly disgusting. Is David Attenborough a racist for pointing out that all the problems that threaten humanity’s existence are all exacerbated by over population? He probably also knows the genetic science that reveals that there is no evidence at all to support the false belief that humanity is separated into races.
B. Sullivan, there are plenty of experts out there versus what Australians follow.
What is former Rockefeller (Standard Oil/Exxon) ZPG Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich’s actual academic expertise, ornithologist or entymologist?
Why do his predictions of catastrophe never eventuate?
A Smith,
Why didn’t Erlich the Prophet of Doom’s predictions eventuate.
I’ve already told you.
The so-called Green Revolution. The natural habitat that was formerly unsuitable for agriculture was massively destroyed to grow the food necessary to avert global famine. Mangrove swamps were ‘reclaimed’ and made arable with the latest technology. Rainforests were cleared to grow cattle and plantations. Some of the poorest soils in the world are in rainforests where nutrients are leached out but the daily rains. Not problem if you import chemical fertiliser. Just strip places like Christmas Island of its bird guano, which has all run out now because the birds can’t replenish it fast enough to meet the demand of so many humans. Rivers had their waters diverted to grow food in in drought areas. Australian wheat farmers were paid phosphate bounties to encourage them to clear ever more marginal land. Trawling the seas with high tech sonar to catch more fish. There was so much global effort put into this Revolution that the famines were avoided. However the cost to the natural wildlife that used to occupy these habitats has been catastrophically immense. The predicted catastrophes are still inevitable as the planet now faces ecological collapse because of the overwhelming demand being put on it by the needs of one rapacious species of hominids.
Lucy,
Your comment to me shows some actual awareness and interest in environmental issues and warrants a considered response (thank you).
Firstly, for context, I have not only been employed working in fields of ecosystem preservation and restoration for nearly a quarter century, but also devote both volunteer and recreational time to the cause (my bushwalks and paddles double as contributory biodiversity surveys).
I acknowledge that human population growth is not necessarily the single-most intrusive factor that is astripping away natural resource, biodiversity and ecological resilience at aore than alarming rate, but would also add that (methinks) to disregard it is entirely blinkered and foolish non-thinking.
In my just over 1/2 century of life, human population (domestic & global) has more than doubled (‘NOM churn’ notwithstanding), whilst the area of canopy vegetation has been halved.
I watch the depredation caused by industrial mining and logging (for both domestic and commercial markets).
I witness existent bushland being destroyed to cater to the demands of corporate agribusiness (+ supermarket cartels).
I also observe coastal remnants being fragmented and levelled for new residential developments catering to rapid population increase.
All are contributing factures to ecosystemic decline and species extinctions, and all need urgent redress.
I deal in the immediately achievable, and the easiest immediate remediation to environmental depletion is a reduction in voluntary immigration intake (concurrent with chipping away at the structural systems that enable completely unsustainable models of resource extraction & primary production).
As an aside, legislative deterrence against designed obsolescence in manufacture would also be an invaluable tool.
On the global front, as you say, involuntary displacements due to the escalating climate cook-off are already occuring, and this trend is already locked in to undergo an exponential increase due to myriad factors including oceanic carbonic acidification, increased destabilisation of existent land-ice shelves and the imminent transition towards another waxing in the 19 yr lunar nodal cycle.
By 2050, many.millions of people will probably be fleeing from suddenly untenable existences.
Given this near-guaranteed future outcome, I believe we should, whilst reducing overall migrational influx, be increasingly transitioning towards prioritising refugee asylum over voluntary migration (needs over desires), increasing humanitarian intake whilst scaling back pay-per-place quotas.
Note that this stance runs counter to the concept of ‘anglospheric racism’, as the majority of current refuge seekers are people of the ‘not-pale’ persuasion (Ukrainian outliers noted).
I also believe that we should, in the overall refugee equation, be prioritising women (and children) over post-pubescent males, partially because of the existent societal disadvantages faced by females in the tribalistic/theocratic societies from where such flight mainly originates, partly because, statistically speaking, males aged between 15 & 50 account for about 95% of violent acts (eg terrorism), and partially because “women & children first” is a traditional principle that can transcend the progressive/conservative divide.
Meanwhile, Andrew from marketing continues to claim that all environmental concerns about the rampant growth of human population (which has doubled in 50 years) are purely racist propaganda, and decries aid programmes (beit UN or private NGOs) seeking to offer female education and reproductive choices in high-birthrate/low resource areas as nothing but ‘racist eugenics’.
Andrew has been regurgitating the exact same ‘rockefeller-tranton-erlich-zpg’ spiel for about 5 years now, although I will admit that he no longer links to sites claiming that the ‘green agenda’ is based on a cabal of conspiracy aiming to kill off the darkest skinned 66% of the population [David Attenborough is genocidal xenophobe!].
Andrew has, in all that time of repetitious writing, demonstrated exactly zero interest or knowledge regarding any existent environmental concerns.
Such ideological intransigence tends to foster oppositional false dichotomies that defy and deny any attempt at finding practical solution, whilst simultaneously alienating people seeking rational discussion, leaving the extremes to shout at each other across the divide.
I choose to opt out of further discussion or debate amidst such environs.
Banging my head against an impermeable wall of repetitious bullshit is a far less productive and rewarding activity than interacting with remnant nature, or actively engaging with people of convergent concerns and formulating strategies in an attempt to preserve something of what remains, whilst actively preparing basic resilience strategies (eg fostering localised food-surplus trade networks) against the worst of the coming harvest of dire seeds that we have already sown.
Anyway Lucy, I appreciate your courteous reach-out, and hope that my response helps clarify some of my viewpoint.
Corvy, you’ve given an excellent summary of the issues regarding environmental threats, of immigration problems, and also of what has been going on here for some time.
You implied correctly I believe, with your “myriad factors” that the ecology and immigration problems are not just connected, but systemic.
So when “Andrew from marketing” (I wish I’d thought of that) continually draws attention to Atlas, Koch, and the rest of the motley crew, he’s actually contributing to the problem. He’s diverting attention away from the source to the periphery, where no amount of activism will achieve real progress. If we closed down Atlas, Koch, Tanton etc today, we would still have the same problems tomorrow.
Anyone can make a mistake in emphasis in a comment or two, but as you point out, Andrew has been consistent with his message for years. He has had time to reflect, to gather more info, to do more analysis. But the message is the same. So we have to ask — why would he contribute to the problem?
Interesting how commenters here are deflecting using the same techniques as fossil fueled Atlas- Koch think tanks, faux environmental Tanton linked NGOs, informing RW MSM and commentators?
Using subjective talking points or opinions that have no formal source or reference behind them, but based on nativist tropes since 18thC, to shoot or denigrate messengers or critics and allow the status quo to prevail; too easy.
As Tanton and Koch share donors in the US (see Binkowski in UniCorn Riot), they coincidentally (not) use similar presentation techniques on population and climate science denial focus on short term noise and avoid future trends.
According to SPLC Tanton’s TSCP (to which some SPA types have contributed):
‘The Social Contract Press (TSCP) routinely publishes race-baiting articles penned by white nationalists. The press is a program of U.S. Inc, the foundation created by John Tanton, the racist founder and principal ideologue of the modern nativist movement. TSCP puts an academic veneer of legitimacy over what are essentially racist arguments about the inferiority of today’s immigrants’
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/social-contract-press
Finally, on the related Ehrlich from Noah Smith (writer and economist) in ‘Why Paul Ehrlich got everything wrong
And why we should still listen to warnings about environmental catastrophes.
Biologist Paul Ehrlich is one of the most discredited popular intellectuals in America. He’s so discredited that his Wikipedia page starts the second paragraph with “Ehrlich became well known for the discredited 1968 book The Population Bomb”.’
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-paul-ehrlich-got-everything-wrong
StD,
Since you vehemently reject any linked assertion that president Vlad Putin’s habit of initiating slaughterhouse invasions of his neighbouring states was motivated by imperialist legacy ambition, why the phuq do you think I would have any credibly conclusive amateur pop-psych insights into the motivations behind Andrew Smith formulating his singular pro exponential population growth viewpoint?
PS, you still owe me a photo of you humping a Hoop Pine.
As much as I enjoy and admire the intellectual and intelligent arguments here,how is this going to change the catastrophe we are hurtling towards?I agree with much of what is being proffered,but we have no power to alter the certain result.The political duopoly here,as it is elsewhere, is merely the instrument of the capitalist/financial/corporatist/filthy rich egotist bastards/despotic dickheads,and other assorted halfwits.I’ve said it before,and I’ll say it again..nothing is going to change until we are swept away in a gigantic cataclysm.
On a lighter note…Gina the Hutt has donated her portrait to the National Portrait Gallery….with certain conditions.The sorry arsed bitch is determined for us to appreciate her contributions to our wonderful country…she of the loving and close family might start by paying some fucking tax.
Fat chance.
Harry Lime,
So your message is basically just that we should accept the helpless despair of the situation & surrender to the inevitability of mass extinctions?
Yeah, thanks but no thanks.
Even if my on-ground efforts fork no lightning in terms of efficacious preservation & remediation of irreplaceable natural communities at least in committing to participation in activities like documentation through citizen science, I will have the comparatively rare privilege of witnessing the transient beauty of unique phenomenon destined for doom.
Corvusboreus,do you think that anyone wants to accept the inevitable?I’ve been observing the foolishness of mankind for the last sixty years,and I detest it.For what it’s worth,I’ve just spent the last two weeks in the mountains of east central Queensland,enjoying the unique flora and fauna of the region,not to mention the myriad feral introduced species.But thanks for your comment….
corvy, corvy, corvy, you’ve cut me to the quick !
Whew!
That’s what I call hanging on to a grudge. 🙂
How does Andrew Smith defend himself when accused of diverting attention away from the source of the problem to the periphery?
He diverts attention away from the source of the problem to the periphery.
You couldn’t make this up.
If we consider almost any major problem facing us globally or nationally, it’s not some individual, or a collection of think tanks. There’s no bad guys causing all this. It’s the economic system at the heart of everything. A system that not only facilitates the problems, it actively encourages them.
The impoverishment of the Global South did not end with the end of colonialism. The theft, the plunder, the impoverishment continues with assistance to the South being conditional — open your economy to Western corporations. We will tell you how to run things, and you have no alternative.
Those who resist feel the full force of Western military power.
And then we wonder why there’s a refugee problem.
We consume like crazy and then wonder why we have global warming and environmental degradation.
We refuse to look at the source. The system is the source.
Liberalism’s great gift to mankind — a system that we consider too big to fail, even as it collapses around us.
Harry Lime,
Apologies for the sharpness in my initial response.
The situational despair in your post triggered an overy harsh reaction, partially because I (‘Comrade doomsday’) am striving against continuing to express such sentiments myself.
I do not disagree with the fatalism within your statements (in the end, noone gets out alive), and acknowledge that anyone engaged in meaningfull & arduous struggle needs to indulge in some ‘downtime’.
Please try to retain your strength of resilience when and where you can, so that you can offer a supporting shoulder when others falter.
Peace out, brother,
corvus.
The beat goes on. Nothing will change until we, each of us, change. This is a fundamental of humankind’s history. Whether Gaia crashes, or we see the Anthropocene’s impact in our lifetime, or something else… not that there’s much evidence of any outcome apart from the inevitable consequences of global warming and the flow-on effects of the disturbances and perturbations to the homeostatic conditions that have enabled life to flourish on this little planet – itself a minor phenomenon within the macro-phenonemon of the greater universe – the beat goes on. What will be, will be. Weep, gnash, wail, rage against the failing of the light… or work to develop something that will survive after death. Choices aren’t endless.
I never dreamed that I would ever approvingly quote the US conservative commentator David Brooks, but I could not let this opportunity pass by.
Brooks, a regular contributor to the New York Times, who would be better known to readers for his regular appearances on the PBS Newshour on SBS, recently said the following in a couple of articles for the New York Times. “Liberalism is ailing and in retreat… The ‘liberal zeitgeist’ … avoids the big questions like: Why are we here? What is the meaning to it all?”
Brooks, in a separate piece, argues that “by putting so much emphasis on individual choice, pure liberalism attenuates social bonds. In a purely liberal ethos, an invisible question lurks behind every relationship: Is this person good for me? Every social connection becomes temporary and contingent. When societies become liberal all the way down, they neglect Victor Frankl’s core truth that “Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life”.
Is it any wonder that the world is beset by problems without number, when our system of global governance and financial dealing is controlled by those whose view of life, of values, of aspirations and meaning, recognises only the superficial in every aspect of human endeavour. And further, who are so intoxicated by the exercise of power that they impose their short-term thinking by the use of brutal force against those who resist.
It’s important to note that the description given by David Brooks of the undermining of social bonds by liberalism, and the spiritual wasteland that results, is consistent with that given by Karl Marx 170 or so years ago in his analysis of the human alienation that is built into the liberal economy.
This tells us that despite the best efforts of Mill, Hobhouse and others to apply the necessary correction, liberalism has not changed, will not change , and cannot change.
Liberalism has been a cancer on society from the beginning and will destroy us.
This link is for corvusboreus, from today’s The Saturday Paper. I suspect none of it will come as a surprise to you, nonetheless, it was, to this seasoned observer of human behaviour, a disturbing essay.
Link here… Combative nature.
Canguro,
Your link demanded subscription, but I am well aware of Dr Graham and his legal proceedings regarding the documented assault upon his person inflicted by forestry-corp employees.
On similar theme, i posted some info regarding another piece of serious forestry-corp sh!t-phuqqery (this time involving fire🔥 rather than fists) below an AIMN article posted last year.
Positive; I took a walk the weekend before last guiding a coupla friends to help document some rare/pretty to help augment a preservation submission. Photopost attempt;
https://photos.app.goo.gl/nrNaBe6tF6T6gSNj7
https://photos.app.goo.gl/hqsn6NcE3shxs2Sr6
https://photos.app.goo.gl/zzQSue6mizqnoePg7
Corvus, I embedded the link on the basis of ‘shared’, and have bench-tested it both here in Mozilla and in Opera, it works in both cases, without asking for any subscription detail etc. Anyways, as you say and as I suspected, you’ll well aware of the ordeal endured by Mark Graham; if nothing else the eye opener for me was how complicit government agencies were in his harassment and stitching up; both the NSW police – Coffs Harbour – and Forestry NSW aiding and abetting criminal behaviour towards this man. Outrageous doesn’t even begin to describe that degree of lawlessness on behalf of protecting contractors and their illegal logging activities.
In my opinion the human race will not go extinct. We may lose 1/3 to 1/2 and still survive as a species. That doesn’t excuse the enormous suffering that will be felt. Evolution at work……one way or another.
As far as australian population goes, we have a choice. We can plan and manage the growth or we will be over run. If the world blows up due to a climate crisis, you wont have an ecology at all. The arguments are always presented as if we live in a bubble and can hold back the tide. Its better to do our global bit than sit back and gloat.
I am not advising to just abandon the environment, i just want some perspective in the debate.
Steve, there are many things i dont like about your ideas but on this ideology of the individual, i agree.
Hey Andy, it would be a boring old place if we all thought the same ! 🙂
Thanks for your thoughts.