Thank you so much for writing this Vivienne.
This is so much a consequence of industrialisation, big populations and being distanced from farming and other means of getting food.
Humans need to try to make our social systems more localised so that we can have more power over the way that food is produced or produce our own, and so that we can choose whether to avoid these intolerable cruelties. Government standards at the moment are no standards at all. They are absence of standards and presence of unspeakable cruelty.
Cruelty has been industrialised and our societies are depraved by it.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Comments
Socialism's claimed efficiency won't overcome natural limits
Briefly for now:
As one who disputes that the former USSR and China were true socialist nations, I argue that it has neither been proven nor disproven that socialism can make possible the more efficient use of resources than the abysmally inefficient and iniquitous capitalist system. Nevertheless, if we assume that socialism can offer at least significant efficiencies over capitalism as I argue, we still should still accept that there are limitations to what the increases in efficiencies are possibilities are possible. Throughout most of the 20th and 21st centuries, most socialists have altogether denied that there are limits or have been vague and obfuscatory about what those limits are. They would have had us believe that everything, including overpopulation and rampant environmental destruction could be fixed once the attainment of socialism unleashed the claimed almost limitless creativity of humankind. What they have failed to acknowledge is that most of the apparent increase in human creativity of human history in recent centuries has directly correlated with the exploitation of non-renewable finite natural resources, particularly fossil fuels. When they are exhausted, even under a socialist system, we will, at best be struggling very hard to attain the productivity of even this capitalist society.
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Immigration and Australia's current account deficit
More on the effect of immigration on Australia's current account deficit:
According to the Former Minister for Finance, Senator Peter Walsh, Australia's immigration program during the late 1980s was dramatically expanded - primarily because of pressure on the Federal Government by ethnic leaders. By the late 1980s, immigration had imposed massive economic costs on Australia. High levels of immigration increased annual population growth to over 1.5 per cent, the highest in the developed world. According to Mr. Stephen Joske, an economist with the Australian Parliamentary Library, immigration increased demand for basic infrastructure - such as housing, hospitals, roads, and schooling. Because of Australia's low levels of domestic savings, investment capital for such infrastructure had to be imported from overseas, adding up to A$8.0 billion each year to Australia's current account deficit.
By the early 1990s, Australia - with a population of only 17 million - had accumulated a foreign debt of over A$140 billion, equal to 40 percent of GDP and exceeding other major 'debtor' countries such as the former Soviet Union. A key cause of this debt 'blowout' was the high and unsustainable levels of immigration during the late 1980s.
Stephen Rimmer, The Cost of Multiculturalism, The Social Contract, Volume 3, Number 1 (Fall 1992).
Australia's foreign debt has ballooned since the 1980s, topping more than A$600 billion. Our current account deficit continues to exceed the "Banana Republic" levels experienced during the Hawke-Keating era.
Yet, even in the face of this impending Argentina-like disaster, immigration is being ramped up to record high levels.
Snowy privatisation would serve global energy monopolists
Certainly the 'boys' network kicks in strongly with the Labor Party. They forget they are elected to represent people in the electorate, not further party goals.
However, privatisation of the energy sector and introduction of smart metering is all part of a global energy market where the really big players move to monopolise the sector and fix the price. Better option is to enable all households and business to have a high level of energy self sufficiency including energy efficiency where major power generators are back up and not main options.
The 'market' paradigm delivers for wholesale purchasers of energy and usually households will pay the highest costs again, small players supporting the big players.
I think the focus is wrong. We need to work towards reducing energy consumption and increasing efficiencies and enabling micro or local solutions.
Chris Peters, no spring chicken, could emigrate
Chris Peters might be happier himself, relocating to a third world country with a very high ratio of young to old. Perhaps the ACT Branch of Sustainable Population Australia could start a fund to pay for his passage to Africa or the Middle East or South America. Chris Peters is no spring chicken himself and his departure would therefore decrease the risk of the scenario he fears will befall Canberra.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Is Australia nothing but an economy?
"In Canada, the implications of social and demographic change have not been the subject of much political or public discussion and little effort has been expended considering what Canada will look like 20, 50 or 100 years in the future. Basically, a commitment to a high flow rate constitutes the sum total of Canada's ‘population policy’. The situation is so unmanaged that studies of new census reports are greeted with careful media review and even amazement as if demographic change was some uncontrollable natural process as opposed to the result of an identifiable public policy."
The same problem exists in Australia. The Rudd Labor Government's recent decision to lift immigration to record high levels received little media attention, aside from approbation from the open-borders crowd at The Australian and other like-minded publications. Afflicted with a severe case of tunnel vision, Australian politicians and media commentators seem unable to look beyond the solely the economic aspects of immigration, as though our country were nothing but an economy. This bizarre inability or unwillingness to consider what sustained mass immigration means for Australian society, for Australian culture, for the Australian people and their quality of life essentially means that Australia is flying blind into an uncertain future. Our country is on the verge of a profound demographic transformation, but we lack a plan to cope with the massive changes that mass immigration will inflict on every aspect of our society. Our policymakers refuse to even recognise that such immigration-driven changes are occurring!
Parliament - Burgess SEITA Bypass speech cut by Yan Yean member
It was sad to see the reception in Parliament on 16 April 2008 of an attempt by Neil Burgess, Member for Hastings, to represent the community's objections to SEITA's option 1. Burgess began to speak on the issue, in a parliament session known as "Matter of Public Importance." He was cut off in mid speech on a point of order. Parliament then allowed the member for Yan Yean, Ms Green, to pass for a Matter of Public Importance: "That this house congratulates the Brumby government for ensuring Victoria is the best place to live, work and raise a family for a million more Victorians."
The Brumby Government is notorious for using every strategy available to stifle opposition to it, both inside and outside of the Parliament.
In the transcript below, the Member for Warrandyte is supporting Burgess, arguing that the Speaker should not have interrupted a speech to take a Point of Order. By doing so, the Speaker allowed time to run out on Burgess's speech and effectively prevented him making the points he wanted to make.
"Neil Burgess, Member for Hastings, Victorian Hansard, MATTER OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE, ASSEMBLY Wednesday, 16 April 2008, p.1274.
"Frankston bypass: route Mr BURGESS (Hastings) –
The state government modelling underpinning the need for the Frankston bypass is flawed, and therefore the preferred option chosen by the Southern and Eastern Integrated Transport Authority is also flawed. For the section of the proposed bypass between Baxter and the point where Balnarring Road meets the Moorooduc Highway, SEITA has chosen to promote option 1, the route that follows the existing freeway reserve through the heart of pristine Moorooduc.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER - Order! I apologise for interrupting the member for Hastings. I thought the list I had was ongoing, but the time for members statements has expired.
Mr R. Smith - On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, there has been a previous ruling that points of order taken against members during members statements should be taken and dealt with at the end of the time set aside for members statements, and I ask the Chair why this was not done on this occasion.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER - Order! I understand the point of order being raised by the member for Warrandyte. However, as Chair I was also concerned about the members statement that was raised in relation to the standing order regarding the impugning of other members. That is why I chose to take a point of order at the same time as asking for the clock to be stopped to ensure that members' time was not taken up in that respect. I agree that normally points of order would not be taken during members statements. However, the member for Warrandyte needs to be aware that there are times when the Chair has to make a decision regarding something that has been raised in the chamber, and that was what I did today.
MATTER OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE Government: performance The DEPUTY SPEAKER - Order! The Speaker has accepted a statement from the member for Yan Yean proposing the following matter of public importance for discussion:
'That this house congratulates the Brumby government for ensuring Victoria is the best place to live, work and raise a family for a million more Victorians'."
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Public transport woes - parliament - Mr Mulder, MP (Polwarth)
Mr MULDER (Polwarth) — (...)The government is on the defensive here today with the latest revelations about the public transport woes of the Brumby government. Here they are rolling them out one after another, trying to defend what is an absolutely appalling record in public transport delivery in the state of Victoria over the last nine years.
The fact of the matter is that when the current Premier, who was formerly the Treasurer, turned up here in 1999 he had the money courtesy of the former government — and he has had the time. All of the predictions have been there in relation to public transport growth. What has the current Premier and former Treasurer done in relation to improving the public transport network throughout metropolitan Melbourne? He has done absolutely nothing in the last nine years.
The Premier, the disgraced former Minister for Transport and member for Thomastown, and the struggling Minister for Public Transport who never wanted the job in the first place, share the blame collectively for what public transport users are putting up with as we speak. The Premier and former Treasurer has his fingerprints all over this disaster, from fast trains through to the myki smart card. These are projects that were signed off by the former Treasurer, who is now the Premier of this state. The Premier knew how to stitch up the ambitious member for Altona. He was right — she was not up to it, she was out of her comfort zone and out of her depth when she was rolled into the role of being the Minister for Public Transport in Victoria.
What are we facing? There is predicted patronage growth of 28 per cent for trains, predicted patronage growth of 13 per cent for trams, all by 2011, which is just around the corner. That is the type of patronage growth that we are expecting here in Melbourne — and the government has known this all along and has chosen to do absolutely nothing about it.
Yesterday’s Melbourne mX newspaper states:
… Brumby’s admission today that almost one in five passengers risked being stranded by overcrowded trains, trams and buses by 2011.One in five passengers risked being stranded at a railway station, at a tram stop or at a bus stop by 2011. What has the government done about it? It has done absolutely nothing. The article goes on further to say: Under the government’s predicted passenger growth figures, added services will fail to absorb even half the extra travellers. What is the government doing about it? The government knows the situation we are facing by 2011 and yet the government, the Premier and the Minister for Public Transport simply put their heads in the sand and do nothing about it whatsoever. The article continues: Brumby told 3AW the answer was to squeeze in commuters. The government wants to squeeze them in: The government will cram a predicted 28 per cent growth in passengers into an 11 per cent growth in capacity, he said. I think that is what you would call an insertion. That is what is going to happen to our public transport system and those people who take up the offer to travel on public transport in Victoria. The article further quotes the Premier and states:
‘Our goal is to make it fit’, Brumby said, ‘The objective is to carry the increased number of passengers’.How on earth are you going to carry the increased number of passengers when you simply do not have the rolling stock to carry them — and that is the position that we are facing here in Victoria. All this is supposed to be fixed with 18 trains and a handful of trams on loan courtesy of the Yarra Trams parent company. The so-called early bird free train travel is up for review in two years and there is every chance that it will be declared a dead duck. As Bernie Carolan from Metlink said, it has not set the world on fire. We then have the Premier’s brainchild known as Flex in the City, and it would appear that Melbourne commuters are going to suffer the same fate as some of the actors in the Premier’s take of that tacky television show, because there is no joy for public transport commuters out of the Premier’s Flex in the City. It seems to have almost died a natural death. We have heard almost nothing much of that particular project since it was announced. There just does not appear to have been any planning at all. Government members are in their offices hoping like hell that fuel prices are going to fall overnight, sitting alongside the Minister for Water, who is staring at the sky hoping it is going to start to rain. That is exactly what this government is all about in relation to planning for the public transport network and services generally right across the state of Victoria. There is interest in the Sydenham line, which runs out to Kororoit. It will reach capacity in a year’s time — in a year’s time there will not be room to squeeze in any more passengers commuting on that Sydenham line. Connex did a presentation recently that appeared on its website, but the page that referred to this impending disaster somehow or other seems to have disappeared. It was within the presentation made by Connex, but when it was put onto its website somehow or other this particular page, which embarrassed the government in the lead-up to the Kororoit by-election, appears to have disappeared. You have to think about the poor people in the Kororoit electorate having to put up with a rail service that is going to be at capacity within 12 months, having to face death-trap level crossings and rail lines that are at capacity, and — as was revealed from an examination of yesterday’s leaked expression-of-interest document for the franchising of Melbourne’s train and tram network — having to deal with an admission that public transport in areas such as Kororoit are ‘deficient’. Yet we have member after member from the Labor side rising to their feet and trying to talk up the government’s commitment to and involvement in public transport in the Kororoit area. Looking at the report about the leaked document, it is the state secret that is not really a secret, the expression of interest that is not really an expression of interest but a draft that is not a stamped draft, and that can change. This is a leaked document that the Liberal Party released yesterday. The document talks about the capacity of Melbourne’s train and tram network and how the contracts will be run in the future. There will be capped fines for operators, with no incentive for an incoming operator to improve services for 15 years, and the ability for tenderers to factor in the capped fine amount when preparing their tenders by simply including that amount as a cost of doing business on the public transport network in Melbourne. Patronage growth for trains will go up 28 per cent and on trams it will go up 13 per cent, but there will only be an increase of 11 per cent in the capacity of trains to cope with this growth. As I pointed out before, public transport services in the outer metropolitan and regional areas are deficient. The government will have to fork out up to $5 million to assist each tram network tenderer, including the current operator, Yarra Trams. The free lunch the minister had with transport operators in Paris has come at a very high cost to taxpayers. It was a very expensive feed of escargot in Paris for the minister. Potential bidders who have seen this very close and cosy relationship unfold between Yarra Trams and the Minister for Public Transport have been frightened away from tendering for tram contracts in Victoria. The government is now offering each potential bidder for the tram contracts up to $5 million to help prepare their bids, and of course this $5 million also flows on to Yarra Trams. It is not being extended to the train contracts but is simply for the tram contracts. It is an appalling situation. The relationship that has formed between the minister and this company has grown to such an extent that it has turned potential bidders away from what should be a very lucrative business in Victoria. It has them in a state of fear, and they are not prepared to tender." An honourable member — "Labor mates." "Mr MULDER — Labor mates — you can smell it coming a mile away. The situation is that $5 million is on offer. If you go to the contract site, you find the current contracts are there. If you went and had a look at the Yarra Trams annual reports and all the other information that is published in relation to train and tram patronage rates and service delivery rates in Victoria, I do not think it would be all that hard to put together a tender — and $5 million jumps into your hip pocket simply because of this situation and the perception that the government has created out there in the general and business communities that this is already a done deal. The trams are on loan from the Yarra Trams parent company. How convenient and what great timing that is — they arrived just prior to the tenders closing! Why did we not buy new trams? Why do we have to go through the situation of drip-feed, hire-purchase arrangements? This is an absolute disgrace." VICTORIAN HANSARD, JUNE, REVISED BOOK 9, MATTER OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE ASSEMBLY Wednesday, 25 June 2008, pp. 2482-2484
Scrap the pipeline - Mr Weller MP (Rodney)
"Water: north–south pipeline Mr WELLER (Rodney)"
"— I wish to raise a matter for the attention of the Minister for Water concerning the ongoing issues surrounding the north–south pipeline. The action I seek from the minister is that he halt and abandon plans for the north–south pipeline. In simple terms, I ask that these flawed plans be scrapped.
It is time for the government to concede defeat and all parties concerned to be consulted on much more realistic, fair and achievable options for water distribution.
Melbourne has other sources of water it can utilise, and it makes no sense either to the people of Rodney or in applying the laws of basic logic that abundant stormwater supplies in urban areas are being ignored at such a time. If a child poured a full glass of water down the sink, turned around and demanded a refill from their sibling who was scraping the last drops from a smaller cup, would we not reprimand them? So why is it okay for anyone, let alone the authorities, to endorse this sort of behaviour?
The merits of taking 75 000 megalitres from north of the Great Dividing Range is bordering on insanity when the world is screaming out for food and the Murray River needs water for its own survival. With the focus on energy and carbon trading and when there are more efficient options in Melbourne itself, why would we pump water over a mountain range? The government should let Melbourne Water invest its proposed $1 billion contribution to the plan into stormwater and recycling projects for Melbourne. The government should then allocate the extra $300 million Melbourne Water contribution to fully fund the state’s commitment to the $2 billion food bowl modernisation project. It is now a well-established fact that resistance to the north–south pipeline plan is broad, fierce and unwavering. The people of the Goulburn-Murray region will simply not relinquish their water supplies and support this project.
The government has tried to pull the proverbial wool over our eyes with its clandestine planning process and misleading — frankly fraudulent — public statements, but it has not worked. I am sure I speak for many in rural electorates when I point out that on a daily basis we are inundated with inaccurate figures designed to confuse the public and justify the pipeline project.
Surely the government cannot expect us to accept these untruths, mismeasured figures and blatant lies?
As a representative from the north, I confirm that our waterways are in a distressed state. We are some of the biggest food producers in the state, and the pipeline plans are putting industry in jeopardy. I appeal to the minister for support on this issue. It is a matter of life and death for the river, and I say that without a trace of insincerity. It is time the government swallowed its pride, scrapped the pipeline plans and reassessed the much more sensible and ecologically realistic options in Melbourne."
VICHANSARD ASSEMBLY CURRENT
PARLIAMENT OF VICTORIA HANSARD, Revised Book 9, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 ASSEMBLY p.2453
Bass desalination plant - comments in Parliament by K. Smith
"Water: desalination plant Mr K. SMITH (Bass)
"— I wish to raise the hypocrisy of the Brumby socialist government which seems to think it can run roughshod over the people in the Bass electorate. First it forced six wind towers to be built in a pristine foreshore area, and they are hardly ever in use. Then the government told us it was going to supply a third of Melbourne’s water supply from a desalination plant, on which it never consulted with the local council or the community. Now we find this government is going to supply power to the desalination plant by a 75-kilometre-long,
120-megawatt powerline through a 500-metre-wide easement in some of Victoria’s best farming and grazing land, again without any consultation with the local councils or communities.
This proposal has devastated many families who live along the proposed route, and it shows this government has no care or concern for the local community. If it has to go in, the powerline should be put underground and not above ground. The water minister has said that the government has consulted widely. That is a lie. He and his Premier have lost the confidence of the councillors and the community in the electorate of Bass. They do not care what they do down there, but I can tell them that this farce, on top of suing the Your Water Your Say group, has amalgamated the community against them. The powerline must go underground; and this government will go underground at the next election — dead and buried!"
From Members Statements, Hansard, February - June, 2008, revised book 9, 2408.
Awarding of costs against Blue Wedges threatens all of us
I have just posted the following to Marvellous Melbourne:
Sheila Newman has reproduced on our site candobetter.org the media release of Greens MLA Sue Pennicuik concerning the awarding of court costs against Blue Wedges. They were awarded reluctantly by the Judge because the Victorian Government insisted. This represents a dire threat to our democracy when a group such as Blue Wedges acting with the best interests of the public and our environment at is left, as a result of a blatantly rigged environmental impact assessment process, with no choice but to challenge the government in court.
I think we must all get behind Blue Wedges and help them in what ever way we can to overcome the terrible predicament they now find themselves in and we must raise our voices so that all those responsible for this outrage are held to account for what they have done.
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Blue Wedges - Sue Pennicuik
As the Victorian government assures us the economy will boom if only we trust them on channel-deepening, it looks like "economic hit men" are thriving somewhere in Melbourne. We are expected to trust in the planning for Melbourne 2030, roadways, desalination and more. In the meantime courts effectively fine community groups who dare to question any of these matters.
What's ahead? With Sue and the Greens holding legitimate political positions, I feel encouraged. Knowing the dedication of community leaders and their supporters, I feel encouraged. Knowing that I've experienced major shifts in community attitudes over 30-40 years*, I feel encouraged. (*eg smoking, premarital sex and single parenting are vastly different to the 1960's)
Bold, vocal, steadfast leaders do make a positive difference. Speak up and speak out! The snowball effect is unstoppable.
The "collateral damage" of live exports
The mortality statistics for 2007, for animals who died at loading, on ships, or during "discharge" are available at LiveCorp's website. At the DAFF Animal Welfare/Live Exports site, the true "collateral damage" is revealed: a rise in mortality rates for sheep and goats; and the total "damage" for the year 2007 was more than 38,000 animals (despite an overall drop in sheep exports). Emanuel Exports, who faced cruelty charges in Western Australia this year was responsible for the deaths of about 4,500 sheep in just four voyages between June and December, a six month period. These people still have a licence, and no sanctions were ever imposed. Another exporter managed to kill 12.5% of the goats on board - but was able to continue exporting other animals.
This is, of course, the story of the "lucky" ones. The survivors face the most egregious cruelty to have been shown on Australian television. Furthermore, Middle Eastern countries are now "onforwarding" Australian animals to other countries, in conditions of unspeakable cruelty.
Who is laughing all the way to the bank? The exporters, and the importing countries, in which all the jobs have been created.
The Australian government now says it is investing funds in importing countries. This we have seen before, with facilities funded substantially by Australian taxpayers to prop up this obscene trade in cruelty not even being used.
If you believe this is unacceptable - that Australian animals destined for food deserve at the very least a humane life and a humane death, TAKE ACTION with the politicians who are actively supporting this trade in wretched animal misery.
Pandora's Box
Hi Denis,
It's me again.
Did you know that I too have a candidate for Pandora's Box? At dematerialism.net/Chapter%209.html I provide a system of formal logic by means of logical sentences and diagrams to establish that the manifold social evils listed at dematerialism.net/Appendix%20II.html stem from Materialism, which has a technical definition given at dematerialism.net/Chapter%205.html#_Toc80397869.
We, both of us, are after the fundamental social forces in play in the world; so, we are competitors in the same business. We are not likely to see eye to eye, however we should continue to be allies, I still have links to your essays on my website. Where is the link to http://dematerialism.net/ on yours?
Tom Wayburn
Houston, Texas
twayburn [AT] yahoo.com
Online Opinion on Greens avoidance of population question
A discussion over at OnlineOpinion.com.au that may interest CanDoBetter contributors:
forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1970
I notice that the former federal senator and notorious immigration enthusiast, Andrew Bartlett, is still recycling the same old open-borders bromides.
Socialism = anti-religion = promiscuity
I wondered why I see so many UN "studies" touting how great Icelandic life is, giving it the highest marks in the world on liveability, based on health care, crime, air quality, and wealth.
The studies are always used as a battering ram against capitalistic countries, particularly the United States. It's as if you could compare a small homogeneous WHITE country of 300,000 with our 300 MILLION racially diverse people living in climatically diverse America.
It's sad Iceland has abandoned religion, but lo. The fucking UN views that as a positive.
Premarital sex? No problem for the U.N. Christian people view that as a big problem.
I guess it's all in the values
Me? I'll take America and George W. Bush any day of the week
Very few so-called "senior public servants" worth their salary
Judy e-mailed me this further comment:
I've consulted to several government departments (mostly IT groups), and I've found VERY FEW so-called "senior public servants" worth their salary! Most I know are there to add to their portfolio - references and financial, both - and to prepare themselves for that next move. Or riding it out until they can take early retirement (at 54 years, 9 months).
Immigration, defence, health, communication ... I have little faith in our senior public servants; I cannot watch Yes Minister cuz it's so tragically sad how true it seems!
Was NZ's 80's anti-nuke stance also a decoy?
It is striking that at almost at the same time that New Zealand was supposedly an international symbol of defiance of US imperialism because Labor Prime Minister David Lange had insisted that visiting US warships reveal to them whether or not they were nuclear armed, thereby causing the US to cancel visits and the ANZUS alliance with NZ as well. NZ was at the same time the world leader in the implementation of right wing neo-liberal economic 'reforms'. They were even ahead of Margaret Thatcher in the UK at the time.
Given that Lange was only half-hearted in his opposition to visits of US nuclear armed warships, as well as to French nuclear testing in the Pacific and that it should have been easy for the US to arrive at a workable face-saving compromise, I have often wondered whether the whole dispute was deliberately staged in order to throw the rest of us off the scent. If it was, then it certainly worked brilliantly, as almost the the whole of the left bought it hook, line and sinker, and the NZ Labour Government and the ensuing government of Jim Bolger, which was even further to the right, were left free to implement their reactionary economic policies without any perceptible opposition from the left.
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Identity groups used a decoy for rightward shift since the 70's
Trendy candidates with their $40 haircuts jumped out of sportscars with their tennis rackets to announce their support of legalized marijuana and no-fault divorces and expanded daycare for women to great applause on the sidewalks, then won the acclaim of business editorialists by telling them that public ownership was a relic of the past no longer necessary in this fast-paced age of global competition and government regulation.
Dave's analysis above was exactly what I was trying to say in the mid seventies. To camoflauge their shift to the right on economic issues, the left became militantly "left" on social issues, and the newly emerging identity groups bought the decoy. Trendy candidates with their $40 haircuts jumped out of sportscars with their tennis rackets to announce their support of legalized marijuana and no-fault divorces and expanded daycare for women to great applause on the sidewalks, then won the acclaim of business editorialists by telling them that public ownership was a relic of the past no longer necessary in this fast-paced age of global competition and government regulation. Staid, honest, socially conservative men like the man I campaigned for, Frank Howard, however, were cast aside for their reactionary opposition to those measures. Mr. Howard anticipated medical evidence about marijuana's impact on young brain chemistry by 30 years. Nevertheless he was vilified for his famous remark,,"marijuana is not a candy bar." He insisted that women be paid a salary by the state to stay home and raise children. That is, for every dollar that goes into daycare, one dollar at least should go into encouraging mothers to rear pre-school children at home. In other words, he proposed that British Columbia adopt Swedish social policy. For that he was damned and cursed by feminists and was till he died. But in conjunction with this attitude toward social issues, Frank was a hard line socialist. He believed, as I did, on the retention of the existing proportion of British Columbia's public sector, but its extension. And of course, a regime of progressive income taxes and steep capital gains taxes. As I said at the time, utopia would be a 100% capital gains tax.
What was the problem? Our problem was the zeitgeist. Then as now. It was and is, an unholy mixture of economic liberalism and social conservatism. Right wing economics and left wing social values. Exactly the wrong blend.
PS chiefs keeping up with the Jones's (or trying to..)
As reported by the ABC, the pay rise granted to Departmental Secretaries (the top level of management in a PS Department under the Minister) consists of a 4.3% pay rise, plus a one off payment of about 14% to compensate for the loss of performance based bonuses. The ALP says this is a good thing because it tends to de-politicise the public service, the Libs say it's bad because it takes away the incentive to perform.
I say it's a pity that the public service has to compete with skyrocketing private sector salaries to attract and retain decent top managers.
But compete it does.
An interesting aspect of the recent reports around this rise is how little attention's been given to corresponding salaries in the private sector. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics released earlier this year, pay for full-time private sector workers increased 5.3% over the year to February to an average weekly wage of $1098.20. By contrast, full-time public service wages rose by just 2.8% over the same period, well behind both the private sector and the all-sectors average rise of 4.8%. These figures indicate that across all levels, PS wage growth has fallen behind that of the private sector. (See Private sector pay leaps ahead)
Far more dramatic is the comparison of upper management and average employee wages in Australia. In 2006, John Garnaut at the Herald said that ..
"In 1992 the salaries of chief executives were 25 times the average worker's salary - but by 2002 they were 100 times the average." I shudder to think what they are now.
Faced with such phenomenal growth in salaries, the PS has simply aped the private sector in raising the salaries of its top managers.
Meanwhile, those in the lower orders of both the public and private sectors are being offered pay rises that are less than CPI. They're effectively pay cuts.
The rich get richer - the poor get the picture.
And the middle class is squeezed out of existence.
Asian focus
Interesting point that you make about Canada's turn towards Asia, Tim.
A few weeks ago I attended a meeting where Australia/Europe business opportunities were considered. Frankly I wasn't much interested in the topic but what was illuminating was the attitude taken by Simon Crean, Australia's current Minister for Trade. Mr Crean delivered a speech in which he spoke glowingly of Australia's prospects - as a 'gateway to Asia' for European business!! There was no discussion of any direct business relationship with Europe; at least not from Mr Crean.
What was surprising is that plenty of the business-minded people present obviously had ideas about getting some trade going direct with Europe but that Mr Crean is still stuck in the 'We-are-part-of-Asia' view popularised by former PM's Hawke & Keating. Surely such a view is myopic at best.
Even if you prefer a free trade kinda view of the world (and frankly most of the attendees at this function did) you'd think that Australia's trade interests would be best served by pursuing opportunities wherever they arose. One guy I spoke to was fired up about doing business in Romania - another was looking at doing something in South America.
To my mind, the Australia-as-part-of-Asia is partly straight opportunism based on China's fast (and unsustainable) economic growth and partly just the latest in a series of dependencies which started with Britain as the mother country and continued post WW2 with the USA.
.
Trust between neighbours and between farmers and consumers
Takeshi, thank you for your comment!
This seems strange - maybe we should be doing this in Japanese!
About your first point: I know for a fact that one of the big fears that exists in WA farming communities now is that the non-GM/GM crop issue is going to cause severe strains in the communities. Everybody is hoping it won't, but it is not hard to see that there are quite serious differences of opinion. One farmer said to me, "If we do go down the GM road, the whole community is going to have to walk down that road together." He may be right. Or they will have to come to a collective decision to remain GM-free.
You obviously know a lot more Shakespeare than I do, but I agree with you about the producers and consumers. In Japan (I think you'll agree), the best producer-consumer arrangements (which often take place in the co-operative sector) are those where the producer and the consumer know each other personally and are committed to helping each other out. Producers do their best to produce the food the consumer wants to eat, and the consumers spend the occasional weekend helping the producer in the fields. Our 'modern' farming methods ("food comes from supermarkets, doesn't it?") are not very conducive to this kind of behaviour, and to think that this could take place with GM crops seems to me to be totally laughable.
Your third point about the four large food-producing countries - sure, but why (or how) has this happened? The 'problem' seems to be with maize and soybeans. So, the really tough issue we face now (as well as canola) is the possible introduction of GM varieties of *wheat* and *rice*??
Canada the dumping ground for the world's right wing refugees
James, what angered me most about Canadian refugee policy was that from my vantage point Canada was becoming the dumping ground for all the right wing refugees of the world. Some of the most virulent reactionary people I ever met fled Hungary, Cuba and Vietnam. A lot of Hong Kong immigrants were in fact refugees from mainland China. They were welcomed with open arms and no restrictions were placed on their activities. By contrast, victims of Pinochet who found refuge here were often subjected to humiliating political scrutiny. The freedom fighters from Hungary, Cuba and Vietnam were fighting for a kind of freedom to the government's liking. Freedom of enterprise. The freedom that the Chileans were fighting for, the freedom of workers to organize into unions, to fight for a fair wage, to fight for decent housing, for medical care, for education—that kind of freedom the Canadian government did not like so much.
Now the accent is on multiculturalism. But behind that is a hidden agenda. The Big Five, that is the banks who run our economy and manipulate our politics, want to almost double our annual immigration take, already the highest of G8 countries, but more than that, they hope to draw those numbers from Asian countries under the noble cloak of multiculturalism. Why? Asians make better clients. They save money like demons and take out big mortgages. The banks in turn chase them by promoting diversity in their ranks, celebrating various religious holidays, having mulitilingual calendars, ATMS, diversity awareness and sensitivity courses, and the latest, Scotia bank has made a deal with an Indian bank. Canadians travelling in India who deal with Scotia are sent to this Indian bank and the India Bank in turn refers Indians to Scotia Bank if they go to Canada. Canadian banks recognize that the Asian market is huge and that Multiculturalism paves the way. This Yellow Canada policy is de facto just as exclusive as the White Australia policy was. The Asian orientation of our immigration policy is now set in stone. Off the tangent from refugee policy but an illustration, I think, that Canadian immigration and refugee policy has always been marred by ideological or commercial bias.
Monsanto makes coexistence between GM and non-GM impossible
It is impossible for GM and non-GM crops to co-exist. Farmers will not be neighbours anymore, they will be enemies, aided and abetted by Monsanto's lawyers. Allowing GM farming means the guy next door who wants to stay non-GM will be in constant fear of contamination. So please keep the ban.
As a consumer in Japan, who likes Australia a lot, I wish Australian farmers would respond to the nonsense in the article. "Much ado about nothing" is the wrong quote, and shows that author's ignorance of the trust needed for farmers and consumers to continue making markets work. How about "To be or not to be" or "Something is rotten in the state of Monsanto" …
"Much ado about nothing" is the wrong quote, and shows that author's ignorance of the trust needed for farmers and consumers to continue making markets work. How about "To be or not to be" or "Something is rotten in the state of Monsanto" …Only four countries (US 53%, Argentine 18%, Brazil 11.5% and Canada 6.1%) currently farm 90% of the GM crops. The rest of the world continues to say NO THANK YOU.
I hope Australia will continue to ban GM farming.
Australia's own epitome of enlightened Political Correctness
Tim,
Philip Adams, Australia's own epitome of 'enlightened' Political Correctness
You raise an important question. In Australia, an archetypal politically correct supposed dissident is Phillip Adams who hosts Late Night Live on the ABC's Radio National. I recall similar sanctimonious words of denunciation of the South African rioters coming from the lips of both Adams and his featured guest from South African academia shortly after the riots commenced. (Will endeavour to transcribe at some later point.)
Adams has for years succeeded in giving me, as one member of his audience who has never completely embraced his over-the-top celebration of multiculturalism and high immigration, the impression that the difference is due to his superior degree of enlightenment and his greater capacity for compassion to fellow human beings.
It has since become apparent to me that for many such people, that, in fact, they either have vested interests in maintianing populatin growth or are not as personally as threatened by immigration as many other members of the Australian community. I would like to see how the likes of Adams would behave if they were put in the shoes of South African blacks who face economic hardship and insecurity as a result of both the uncontrolled immigration across their borders and the economic neoliberal policies that they were saddled with by their African National Congress misleaders at the point when they were supposedly liberated from Apartheid (as chronicled in Democracy Born in Chains, Chapter 10 of The Shock Doctrine (2007) pp194-217 by Naomi Klein).
Should sanctuary be granted to all who come from countries ruled by oppressive regimes?
I don't believe that offering sanctuary from fugitives oppressive regimes is a black and white issue. Where someone is in fear for their life, it would normally be wrong to turn them back. However, in western democracies and in South Africa, offering sanctuary seems to have become a substitute to helping people from these countries remove oppressive dictatorships. If we give unlimited right to absolutely everyone in the world who has reason to fear persecution from these regimes, then we will ultimately only create the same conditions in our own countries that would allow similar regimes to came to power.
I distinctly recall hearing a news item in 2002 (or possibly 2003) in which the Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Reform complained that many economic migrants from Zimbabwe were fraudulently claiming to be political refugees. The generosity of countries like the UK in granting these people asylum was actually undermining the struggle of the MDR.
Obviously, since then the Zimbabwean opposition has not succeeded, and it is difficult to know for certain whether a more careful scrutiny of the claims of Zimbabweans for asylum would have made the critical difference. My heart goes out to those who, unlike the phoney political refugees, have taken serious personal risks in order to stand up to Mugabe and they are worthy of being granted asylum. However, I still feel that people in every country have some responsibility to rectify unsatisfactory political and economic circumstances in their own country, as we do in our own.
Thanks again for another comment from the Japanese group!
Dear Canola,
Thank you very much for your comment - it is very good to hear from the Japanese representatives who actually took part in the mission to WA.
Canola, you are quite right. If everyone (farmers and consumers) is going to lose their right to choose how and what they plant or what they eat because of the introduction of this new technology, then it should not be introduced. Peter seems to think that coexistence of non-GM and GM crops are possible, but the evidence appears to be overwhelmingly against that.
We should also bear in mind, as pointed out above by sheila in "GM Foods and Loss of Control over the Land, we may stand to lose much more than simply our right to choose what we eat or plant. All our basic freedoms may be at stake. Perhaps Peter would like to write another article reassuring us that that is not going to happen...
Only 4000 tonnes canola per year, but ZERO contamination
I am also a member of the group which visited WA to ask the government and the farmers to extend the moratorium on GM crops (see section in main article Visit of the Japanese consumer group reps).
After returning home, I had a chance to listen to a talk by one American farmer who grew non-GM corn and GM corn. He said that he used to grow non-GM soybeans, but he gave up growing. Because the risk of contamination by GM- genes is too high to prove the level is lower than 5%. He and we can't get reliable non-GM soybean seeds almost anywhere in America. Choice is being denied to us.
As Yuki pointed out in his comments, GM technology
can
cause an irreversible change. For the last few decades, the change has occurred in one country.
Now I want to say again to farmers in WA,
Please! continue to grow non-GM canola, not only for overseas consumers but also for your right to continue your agriculture.Japanese grain consumer
The writer, Peter Lee says “ ~it only accounts for 4000t of WA canola per year~”. That's true at this time and I know those are very small amount for total production in WA. But once WA farmers start to grow GM canola, the same thing will happen as
happened with
American soy beans. It would mean that WA would not be able to produce non-GM canola any more, not even as little as 4000t per year
Now I want to say again to farmers in WA, “Please! continue to grow non-GM canola, not only for
overseas
consumer
s
but also for your right to continue your agriculture.”
Population growth
Brian,
Thanks for your article. I do not find much to complain about and almost completely agree with you. A few points:
1) We must now begin thinking about what was formerly unthinkable and off-limits. For about a dozen years now (since I "woke up") I have been telling people that calls for higher agricultural production to feed the rising population are downright nonsense, since it's a good bet that one of the drivers of population increase is increased availability of food. However, to say that the world should cap food production in order to try to stabilise population levels would very quickly be branded as "inhumane", "racist" and so on. So what's the answer if you cannot "legally" request that people hold down birth rates? Did "It's good to have just one child" work in China? How about India? Thailand's family planning campaign (since about the mid-70s) seems to have been quite effective in both bringing down the birth rate and containing AIDS.
2) 2008 looks like being the year things start to go wrong. Sorry about the bad news. Energy and food problems are not going to go away. Look at North Korea. Still stuck in famine 15 years after the problems began there!! The growthists are in for some rude shocks very soon. I VERY much doubt that the world population is going to reach 8 billion.
3) Japan's experience is interesting. Now the population is falling. Immigration is virtually non-existent. Talking to a friend of mine a few days ago, his 40-year-old daughter is unmarried and has a very nice job. She has five girlfriends. All unmarried, all with nice jobs and very happy. The population is aging fast. The Ministry of Labour, Health and Welfare wants to raise birthrates, but they don't have a hope in hell. Socially, Japan is falling apart at the seams in many ways. The prices of oil and food don't make things any easier AND have you any ideas on how to feed 127 million people on 4.7 million hectares of farmland, because if you do, the Japanese would like to know about it. Population 1870: a little over 30 million. People still remember famines in the 17th and 18th centuries. Most of the population is asleep in front of their TVs.
You're right, Brian. We need to figure out how to get from here to there pretty quickly!
Yuki
Why "far left" parties are not part of the solution
Thanks, Dave, for another of your typically informative and incisive posts.
I think your two points may help explain explaining the abandonment of macro-economic issues by relatively honest and sincere members, but thereis a third over-riding cause, that better explains the behaviour by those who guide those groups. That explanation is simply that those who controlled those groups were (and remain) essentially corrupt and, notwithstanding their loud seeming indignation at the injustices of capitalism, are, in fact, on the whole, quite happy with the niche they have found for themselves within the society they profess to abhor.
IMO, they operate in a fashion little different from religious cults and fulfil a similar role in our society. They deliberately make new recruits dependent upon the organisation for their social interaction and, sometimes, for their livelihoods. During my relatively brief membership of one organisation I witnessed or heard testimony of many instances of the leaders cynically and recklessly playing with the lives of its members. Committed loyal members would be forced to leave jobs, prematurely terminate tertiary education sometimes only months from graduation in order to supposedly meet more urgent needs of the cause. The also demanded that new and committed members, move away from home to other cities. Almost inevitably, no sooner had they gained any credibility and started to became to be effective wherever they had moved to, they would be asked to move again.
Had this party been at all sincere in its stated aims, then it could fairly have been said that some of the sacrifices made my some of its members would have been worthwhile. I still believe, even with their idiotic cornucopian 'open borders' baggage and other silliness, they could have still made a worthwhile difference in Australian politics in the 1970's and 1980's when I was a member.
However, instead, they just used their members as pawns. Notwithstanding their professed union militancy, they acted, on every occasion that I observed closely, to undermine incipient trade union struggles. The same is the case for many other non-macroeconomic political struggles.
As a consequence, the sacrifices made came to nothing other than the fact that many members for years filled the coffers of the party with generous weekly pledges, and other generous donations made during various fund drives obtained under moral duress, in order to support the extravagant lifestyles of its leaders.
The above only touches the surface of the corruption I witnessed. Whilst this may all seem a long time ago now, from anecdotal evidence I have heard in more recent years these organisations have not changed, even though they have undergone splits and regroupments. They have certainly never undergone any honest self-reflection as far as I can tell.
Afterthoughts: Having looked at my earlier post, I have realised the above doesn't pay full regard to what I wrote earlier. I should make it clear that I believe that many members of far left organisations have the best motivations. It is also possible that a number of far left organisations are not corrupt, even if I know of some which definitely are. However, every single far left organisation of which I am aware is fatally flawed and of no real worth in the necessary struggle to prevent humankind heading over the abyss.
It is a sad fact of life that the society we live in tends to corrupt almost everything within it. It is extremely hard for individuals and organisations, even with the best of motivations, to resist that influence for long periods of time. Nevertheless, I don't think we should give up the task as hopeless. If enough of us stay on course long enough, we may be able to make the necessary difference. 3 jul 08
GM Foods and loss of control over the land
The outstanding threat from GM food technology is the way it has entangled itself in the ownership of organism genes. If we allow our government to hand over control of our food and land then Australians will lose personal, local and regional economic and political independence. Once our food supply and our ability to farm is corporatised, we are only corporate serfs with no control over what we eat or what we grow. The whole concept is so inequitable and shockingly mad that it keeps me awake at night. I would have far greater respect for a politician or a scientist who abandoned parliament and research labs to protest that this domination by gene technocrats.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Thank you for the comment from one of the Japanese group!
Dear Raichoh,
Thank you so much for taking the time to post your response in English to my article and to Peter Lee's article in the Farm Weekly. It is very good hear from a member of the Japanese group that visited in October and again last month to request that the moratorium on the planting of GM crops be extended.
It is indeed very sad that the media has allowed itself to be used for pro-GM propaganda in order to try to convince us that GM technology is safe and good for us when it may very well (on the basis of current evidence) in the future result in human and animal health disasters, agricultural disasters, and political disasters that will be extremely difficult to resolve, if at all. Let's all hope sanity will prevail and that things will not come to that...
The media's responsibility and duty to report the truth about GM
I am a member of the group which visited WA to ask the government and the farmers to extend the moratorium on GM crops (see section in main article Visit of the Japanese consumer group reps). I met a lot of wonderful farmers in Williams and realised that we, Japanese consumers, had to keep supporting the non-GM farmers.
When I read the article written by Mr Peter Lee, I was shocked and surprised very much. Because there are many factual errors and one-sided information in it. I will point up only one thing.
As Yuki pointed out, we were not be sponsored by the Conservation Council of Western Australia. When our representatives visited Australia last October and handed over the petition, which is the letter of request to extend the state bans on commercial GM food crops, the media distorted the truth in their report that Greenpeace sponsored our visit. The same thing happened again.
Why did Mr Lee write this glaring lie? For what?
Additionally, I can not understand that the editor of Farm Weekly adopted the opinion in the paper. I think that the editor abdicated the responsibility and duty as a news organisation.
Thank you!
Dear Julie,
Thank you very much for your comment, which shows in more detail why and how GM crops are being promoted despite very valid concerns about health and coexistence with conventional and organic farming. It seems that despite the claims of no scientific basis for possible health problems with GM food when compared with conventionally-grown food, Monsanto already has in its own hands evidence that should lead us to be extemely cautious about long-term, large-volume consumption of GM foods.
Drive behind GM crops
This kind of misleading pro-GM propaganda that Yuki Otoko mentions is very common and is backed by government and the research sector because they have a massive vested interest in promoting GM crops.
The research sector was previously public and relied on government funding. Research is now more expensive due to the patents and intellectual property rights that replaced "common good" research incentives. The Australian government owns a lot of these patents and has strong alliances with companies such as Monsanto as the public institutes use Monsanto's patented technologies free of charge in exchange for confidential deals. GM crops are an incentive to attract corporate investment to plant breeding and for government research institutes to capitalize on their research.
That is why government and research institutes are trying to push GM crops and foods onto a reluctant population.
The public is told that GM canola has been rigorously tested and proven to be "safe" for human consumption. This is an untruth promoted by governments as the regulatory process is self regulated by the GM companies that submit the testing data to FSANZ. No testing data on canola oil was submitted which is the product that is used for human consumption. The only feeding trials submitted was for the remaining meal which is used for stock food and Monsanto found a rapid increase in liver weights of 17% after only a few weeks. This problem was ignored because stock feed escapes regulation because FSANZ has no authority over stock food. So how can canola be proven safe for human consumption when oil is not tested and meal is not regulated?
The coexistence protocols are also self regulated and the GM company makes the rules. They have decided that all the costs and liabilities should rest with the non-GM grower to try to keep GM out rather than the GM grower to keep it contained. As a result coexistence is not possible which means giving consumers a choice is not possible.
See also: www.non-gm-farmers.com
Privatisation, Polish food queues and the left in Australia
My own view is that the left's failure on these issues can be initially traced back to attitudes that developed out of the counter-culture of the 60's and 70's.
While it aped many of the left's revolutionary ideas and images, the counter-culture popularised ideas about self-actualisation and a distatste for authority that sit uneasily with a collective outlook or State power/ownership. In his excellent book 'One Market Under God', Thomas Frank describes how anti-authority attitudes from this era have been used over time to support arguments for smaller Government. The irony of course is that as state ownership and authority were reduced, the market moved in and filled the void. And while Governments may act badly at times, they are at least publicly accountable through being elected (or not) at regular intervals. Unlike private corporations.
I also believe that with the visible decline of the Soviet Union's economic performance through the 70's and 80's, many on the left quietly came to think that the command economy, and indeed the whole concept of state ownership, was indefensible. While some still believed in the concepts on a theoretical level, more thought you just couldn't win an argument supporting them. So rather than try to explain the causes of Polish food queues, or think about how to improve productivity within a framework of collective ownership (or even sustainability), a swag of left groups just abandoned the idea altogether.
In 1978 the Police released a song which I came to associate with these groups.. the chorus went 'I can't, I can't, can't stand losing'. And to my mind, during the late 70's and through the 80's this attitude pervaded the left's attitude to macro-economic issues.
They could never have supported St Kilda.
To be fair, the New Right was in the box seat on economic matters during the 80's. Even the H.R. Nicholls Society was commonly cited in the media as though it was a credible authority. Bob Hawke was busy de-regulating and the economic pendulum was swinging wildly to the right. It was a hard time to be arguing for anything that could be associated (even vaguely) with the crumbling remnants of the USSR. Business lobby groups and think-tanks were quick to exploit the situation; urging Government to avoid the fate of the Commies by driving economic 'reform'.
So faced with this situation, many on the left simply fled the macro-economic field altogether and concentrated on social issues exactly like the one Tim describes - solidarity with imprisoned Cubans or some such. 'Defend Multiculturalism'. 'End exploitation in the Phillipines'. Even 'Yes to International Socialism, No to Tariffs'. Given that such matters were grist to the mill of the 60/70's counter culture, the increasing focus that they were given continued the trend that had already started; away from public ownership and towards hip social causes.
A few - including John Carroll and Ted Wheelwright - wrote books and articles critical of privatisation and economic rationalism in general, but a hefty section of the left found that social issues provided more wins than economic ones could.
To this day, headlines like 'End the Gaza siege' are more likely to adorn Trot newspapers than 'End Tax Cuts and Build Public Infrastructure'.
In the Socialist Party of Australia (the 71-mid 90's version founded by Pat Clancy et al) there was no doubt that all this was going on. But even there, there wasn't a lot of interest in defending public ownership. Trade Union action was the order of the day and frankly, as the effects of economic 'reform' kicked in, plenty of that was needed. Wages stalled and conditions were going backwards. Support for individual unions was prioritised over any wider defence of public services and infrastructure.
So in my opinion, the left's abandonment of macro-economic issues can be largely attributed to two things:
1. The effect of counter-cultural attitudes towards authority (including the State) and,
2. The perceived difficulty of defending left economics following the decline of the Soviet Union.
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Extraordinary photo-docs and novel about the Karen people
Yuki Otako,
Those photographs (Adobe Flash Player required) are journalism in its highest state. Who took them? They made me cry - of course - and, still more poignantly, because I feel that I have come to know the Karen from a distance, over the past year. One of the contributors to Sheila Newman (ed.) The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto, 2nd edition (due out September 2008) A. Boys, who writes about Japan and North Korea, in relation to peak oil and agriculture, knows a lot about swidden agriculture as practised by the Karen. He put me onto a book by Francis Ferguson - a novel with very close anthropological detail - about a musician who travels into the jungle of North Thailand and meets with the Karen practitioners of swidden agriculture (which seems to be a truly sustainable way of living with forests.) Ferguson describes the matriarchal culture of the Karen, where the women manage the land and the incomes. He opens up an exotic, self-sufficient and happy world, which is being destroyed by the privatisation and commercialisation of land, and the institution of money in its place (always a very poor bargain.) The story tells of how the Thai Army is attempting to colonise for capitalist trade purposes, the forest and forcing the Karen to become Thais and lose their land, so that the Thai government may engage in short term profit. The treatment of the forest by the Thais is nothing short of totally stupid and destructive, very similar to the treatment of forests in Australia. I can well believe that the Thai army would allow the Karen to die, because Thailand wants their land. The title of the book, Look down, see the women cry, evokes the situation of the Karen women, totally in charge, very learned, of high status and authority, who are fighting to retain their position vis a vis the land, because the entire future of the tribes depend on them. As a land-use planning sociologist I see the Karen as an example of the best practise in land-use and the truest kind of land-tenure. I intend to write a review of this book when I have finished reading it, but am moved to point people to it now, where it is available via these pages: http://tonbo80.spaces.live.com/
Sheila Newman, population sociologist.
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Duffy opens gate to trojan horseman Bracks on population policy
Except that Duffy falls for the trojan horse of having Steve Bracks broker a 'population policy'! See my comments at Melbourne 2008: Life in a destruction zone
"The 2002 Bracks Population Summit …
…was largely auspiced by Property Developers, in APop (The Australian Population Institute) and mortgage financiers. As well as Australia’s mainstream Press – Fairfax and Murdoch - which own www.realestate.com.au and www.domain.com.au, Mr Richard Pratt and Mr Steve Vizard, both involved in criminal activities for financial gain, were very prominent in this event."
Perhaps I should have added that Bracks was right in there spruiking for population growth himself. I would label Bracks one of the 'bad guys' on digging Australia into a hole for infrastructure that it never had to have. He did this by assisting property developers to push open-ended population growth down Victorians' throats. Thwaites went along with this and Brumby was presumably part of it from the onset, and remains its crudest surviving government advocate. Every talking head in Victorian Government spruiks for growthism (whilst pretending it's all - ha ha - to cope with climate change. No-one in the ALP to my knowledge appears to dare to think for themselves. There is a culture in the Victorian Labor government which is even worse than it was in the Liberal government, whereby, not only is democracy suppressed at the level of public debate, but there seems to be no debate at all within the members of parliament.
It astounds me that so few people grasped what was happening at the time and or they have completely forgotten.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Mark O'Connor's articles at The Social Contract
Mark O'Connor's articles at The Social Contract:
When Is a Country Overpopulated? of Fall 1992 issue.
Immigrationism, Racism And Moral Monopoly of fall Winter 1993-1994 issue
Where Does the PC Line on Immigration Come From? of Winter 1997-1998) issue
"Time for a national conversation about immigration numbers."
Sick of the congestion? Time to talk about immigration of 28 Sep 08 by Michael Duffy in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Fake enviro-groups protect corporate sector from democracy
The Sierra Club in the US and Canada is like the Australian Conservation Foundation here. They serve as roadblocks to input from really committed groups. The ACF here always gets asked to forums on population numbers because it is well-known that they will go along with the government, from which they get hand-outs.
You've heard of the corporatisation of government? Well, the corporatisation of so-called environment groups is part of the same process Tim.
Daisy Uriad
Iceland article should be judged in light of author's intention
Thank you, Anna, for for taking the trouble to post your thoughts..
Firstly, I should point out it was published at my initiative and not Tim's. I published it on Tim's behalf after the news of Iceland being rated the most peaceful country on earth had broken some months after Tim had e-mailed the letter to me. Tim was reluctant to have it publishe because he was worried that the article would be misunderstood, as it seems it might have been in this case. Nevertheless, I believe it was right to have published the article.
I think the article needs to be judged in the light of what Tim's intentions were. Also, while it is true that Tim may have been careless in some respects, it seems to me that it was intended to be tongue-in-cheek and he was using some artistic license.
Clearly the essential thrust of Tim's article was to defend the rights of national communities, whatever may be their flaws (whether real or invented) to control their own destiny, particularly in regard to immigration.
If Tim said some apparently uncharitable things of Icelanders, as he did also of New Zealanders, and Newfoundlanders, it seemed clear to me that he was still sympathetic to them and understood the necessity of adopting measures that some might consider over-the-top in order to preserve their culture.
This question in regard to Iceland is a vitally important for many people around the globe, who are facing cultural extermination: Tibetans, West Papuans, and various tribal cultures in the remaining rainforests of the world.
Many of us choose, politically incorrectly, to follow this argument to its conclusion concerning the Anglo-European cultures of North America, Australia, New Zealand and even the British Isles where local communities are threatened with record high levels of immigration.
If you still, nevertheless, dispute the appropriateness of this article, I would encourage you to send us a more complete article to explain why you still feel this to be the case. We would also appreciate it if you stated your own thoughts on whether or not you believe that Icelanders are entitled to adopt measures they do (or at least those you don't dispute they do) to prevent their culture from being overwhelmed. If you send us an article, we undertake to publish it with a link and teaser displayed on the front page.
Alternatively, you may wish to simply post further comments in response to this.
Copyright notice: Reproduction of this material is encouraged as long as the source is acknowledged
The left's failure to challenge privatisation in the 80's & 90's
Thanks, Tim for publishing this.
Whilst I take issue with some of what I read on Alistair McConnachie's web-site, he is spot on here. As one who still wears the label 'leftist' It is uncanny how the far-left has, in the last three decades, at least in industrialised nations been ineffective in its opposition to the neo-liberal counter-revolution or, worse, seemingly colluded with it. Whether this happened as a result of their stupidity, their short-term self-interest or because of outright corruption by provocateurs within their ranks, I may never know.
On another issue on the neo-liberal agenda, namely privatisation, it is notable, how in Australia, far left-parties never attempted to seriously oppose the Hawke and Keating 'Labor' governments' privatisations of QANTAS, and the Commonwealth Bank, as far as I could tell. Had they done so, even given their relatively small numbers, I believe it could have been stopped, because the case for privatisation was so obviously deeply flawed, that the broader public would have not tolerated it, had any serious effort been made to point this out, even by Martians, let alone by them.
I distinctly remember reading in the late 1980's an article by one left-wing intellectual Brian Toohey, whose views I respected at the time, in the now discontinued National Times weekly newspaper that it was of no great consequence whether or not these enterprises were owned by the public. It was these kind of views that probably convinced many who would have otherwise tried to do something to stop it to remain complacent. As a member of one far left party, I recall being told on a number of occasions of how the 'exploitation' of British coal miners was allegedly increased following the post-Second-World-War nationalisations of the coal mines. The implication I assume I was meant to draw was that nationalisation (except when the working class is about to take power from the capitalists) was either inconsequential or bad. On other occasions I was told by members of this organisation that privatisation was not of any great consequence, rather, whether or not workers were 'exploited' was the only issue with which socialists need be concerned.
Earlier this year I put this to a left-winger in an Online Opinion (www.onlineopinion.com.au) discussion and he did not dispute it. (In fact, he completely ignored everything I wrote.)
It seems to me that virtually all of the Australian far left went missing in action on that question since at least before the downfall of the Whitlam Government.
In my view, this made it far easier for the neo-liberal counter-revolution to achieve its sociopathic goals in manners not altogether dissimilar to what has been described in parts of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" (e.g. the subversion of parliamentary democracy Bolivia in 1985 under the guidance of shock doctor Jeffrey Sachs).
If, instead, the left had vigorously defended the worthwhile achievements of the Whitlam era and the institutions of Parliamentary democracy that have been largely gutted by successive neo-liberal governments of both the Labor and Liberal variety (read "Silencing Dissent"(2007) edited by Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison), then we might well stopped the neo-liberal counter-revolution in its tracks …
Whilst it would be difficult to obtain the evidence to definitively prove this hypothesis, my experience seem to have been borne out by the circumstantial evidence.
Copyright notice: Reproduction of this material is encouraged as long as the source is acknowledged.
Depiction of Icelanders challenged
This article is just so wrong and outdated that I wonder who told you this stuff. Having an Icelandic background doesn't seem to have encouraged you to learn about the country from reliable sources. It is not perfect, no country is but Vigdis (the woman president you saw a decade ago) hasn't been the president for about a decade. "Women go on a strike once a year"? What? There was this one strike (decades ago) where women did that and again in remembrance of that day a few years ago but it is not a yearly event. People who move there are not forced to take a new name, that was years ago that they removed that rule. "stress that makes young people and everyone turn to alcoholism big time" This is such bullshit. Alcoholism doesn't have a stronger connection with Iceland than any other country. But yes I could go on and on about how inaccurate this piece is but I'll leave it here. What is the point of writing something like this when you have absolutely no facts excepts tales of a grandmother of drank her coffee strangely which means all Icelanders drink it strangely, or a tale of a slutty cousin who got so overstressed over having to own everything that she turned to alcohol and sex. Try to find the facts next time, it would save people the trouble of reading bullshit like this.
Our 10,000 year misunderstanding of soil, energy and population
Sheila
You have said in your 'Romanticism and fossil-fuel societies' piece, posted posted June 24th, 2008 that:
"I think there is a conflict in the anti-population movement between those who have not sufficiently explored the fossil-fuel connection between wealth, technology and mass propaganda and those who look at thermodynamic underpinnings of culture and social systems."
Well I think there is a problem in realistically assessing the human condition for "those who have not sufficiently explored" .... the connection between wealth, technology, overshot ecosystems, excessive human numbers and the excess food production that has been carried out by the soil degrading practice of cultivation agricultue for the last 10,000 yeras --- read on through this LONG serial email and its various attachments:
Peter Salonius
Research Scientist
Natural Resources Canada
email psaloniu@nrcan.gc.ca
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
-----Original Message-----
From: Salonius, Peter
Sent: Sat 6/21/2008 6:00 AM
To: fpletters@CarnegieEndowment.org
Subject: 10,000 YEAR MISUNDERSTANDING /soil fertility, energy and population
I have just read the article entitled 'Can the World Afford a Middle Class' by Moises Naim in the March/April issue of Foreign Policy, wherein he writes:
"The debate about the Earth's limits to growth is as old as Thomas Malthus's alarm about a world where the population outstrips its ability to feed itself. In the past, pessimists have been proven wrong. Higher prices and new technologies, like the green revolution, always came to the rescue, boosting supplies and allowing the world to continue to grow. That may happen again."
I hope Moises Naim will have time to read my LONG serial message (below) and having read it, perhaps respond by return email as to whether he still believes that there is any chance that "new technologies, like the green revolution" will come "to the rescue" in the 21st century.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
-----Original Message-----
From: Salonius, Peter
Sent: Wed 6/18/2008 10:13 AM
To: contactinfo@growthcommission.org
Subject: 10,000 YEAR MISUNDERSTANDING /soil fertility, energy and population
PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO EACH OF:
The Commissioners of the World Bank's Commission on Growth and Development.
I have just read the recent Overview report from the Commission at:
http://www.growthcommission.org/storage/cgdev/documents/Report/Overview.pdf
-that ends with these words:
"We do not know if limits to growth exist, or how generous those limits
will be. The answer will depend on our ingenuity and technology, on finding
new ways to create goods and services that people value on a finite
foundation of natural resources. This is likely to be the ultimate challenge
of the coming century. Growth and poverty reduction in the future will
depend on our ability to meet it."
As I read the report's concluding statement (above), I must conclude that the Commission has not been introduced to the increasingly accepted thesis
that the lack of sustainability of the 'cultivation agriculture', that sustains most of the people on the planet, has been sidestepped and not evident for millennia.
I have been a research scientist for 42 years and I thought the commissioners may be interested to read my essay/rant positing
that soil resources have been used so unsustainably since the
advent of cultivation agriculture as to have been as non renewable
as fossil fuels, and as it is the unsustainable mining of soil mass
(erosion) and soil nutrients (by leaching and export in harvested crops)
by cultivation agriculture that has allowed human numbers to
reach the current 6.7 billion ---
THE WORLD HAS LIMITS, AND CONSTANTLY SEEKING TO MEET THE NEEDS OF
THE EXPONENTIALLY BREEDING HORDE IS JUST NOT A RESPONSIBLE TACTIC.
I have left several introductory notes to people to whom I have sent this
material that includes:
- videos from Albert Bartlett
- a slide show from Russ Hopfenberg
- a couple of web sites featuring my ideas AND
- a journal paper and 3 relevant book reviews attached to the RELOCALIZATION one from the Post Carbon Institute.
Happy reading ---- comments are welcome.
Peter Salonius
Research Scientist
NRCan, Fredericton, NB
============================================================================
-----Original Message-----
From: Salonius, Peter
Sent: Wed 5/7/2008 8:07 PM
To: bsundquist1@alltel.net
Cc: ryerson@populationmedia.org; Salonius, Peter
Subject: 10,000 YEAR MISUNDERSTANDING /soil fertility, energy and population
Hello Bruce
I recall writing to you about how thrilled I was some time ago to have discovered your fine synopsis/review entitled:
'Topsoil Loss and Degradation - Causes, Effects and Implications: A Global Perspective'.
I have just had a look at your more recent work entitled:
'Sustainability of the World's Outputs of Food, Wood and Freshwater for Human Consumption' -at:
http://home.alltel.net/bsundquist1/su0.html#A1,
--- in which you give some credence to the concept that present food production systems could be modified to render them sustainable and to the thesis that basic carrying capacity as limited by the photosynthesis that can be achieved by CULTIVATION AGRICULTURE.
Since I wrote to you about your 'topsoil loss' work I have arrived at the conclusion that most CULTIVATION AGRICULTURE is unsustainable and I have posited that IF INDEED ------- most CULTIVATION AGRICULTURE is unsustainable, then our goal must be to decrease the global human population (by attrition) to a few hundred million during the next few centuries in order to achieve some semblance of long-term sustainability.
I hope you will have time to read the smattering of recent messages I have sent to various pundits who have pronounced on sustainability issues and to examine the presentation of my thesis that includes videos, web articles, attached book reviews and published papers.
Peter Salonius
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
-----Original Message-----
From: Salonius, Peter
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2008 21:57
To: jlarsen@earthpolicy.org
Subject: 10,000 YEAR MISUNDERSTANDING /soil fertility, energy and population
Hello Janet Larsen, PLEASE FORWARD TO LESTER BROWN
In Lester Brown's April 16,2008 EPI Plan B Update entitled:
'World Facing Huge New Challenge on Food Front: Business-as-Usual Not a Viable Option'
----- he writes about the necessity of "stabilizing population", while "stabilizing population" at presently levels that FAR OUTSTRIP long-term carrying capacity is simply not good enough --read on:
I have believed, for the last 40 or so years, that population pressure cancels almost all conservation/green/recycling activities that we can adopt and that our only salvation will come by intentionally shrinking human numbers before geological depletions force the shrinkage upon us.
As I know you are interested in the global population issue, it occurred to me that you might find some interest in reading my current rant/essay that calls for a program of shrinking the total human enterprise on the planet -- in opposition to the neoclassical economics recommendation for continued GROWTH. It tries to identify the historical antecedents of the present global human dilemma and suggests a long-term path toward the ultimate goal of sustainability.
I am sure you have noticed the news of food price escalation that is bringing the global carrying capacity 'front and center'- with food riots all over the world.
This is being precipitated by food-to-ethanol programs, although with constantly rising populations fed by the increased food produced by various AGRICULTURAL revolutions (the Green Revolution being the latest) -- these riots would have eventually happened, the speed of these developments is awe inspiring.
On Monday, April 14, we had Robert Zoellick, head of the WORLD BANK calling for a crash program of food production increases to stave off the approach of famine //?? I wonder how many times he thinks we can pull new RABBITS OUT OF THE HAT when soil resources of the planet continue to be degraded to produce MORE FOOD FOR THE IRRESPONSIBLY BREEDING HORDE ??
I am leaving, attached, to the LONG essay/rant (below), my note to Branko Milanovic, another officer of the WORLD BANK -- for your interest.
Peter Salonius
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
-----Original Message-----
From: Salonius, Peter
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2008 10:55
To: bmilanovic@worldbank.org; director@ei.columbia.edu
Cc: Salonius, Peter
Subject: 10,000 YEAR MISUNDERSTANDING /soil fertility, energy and population
To Branko Milanovic and Jeffrey D. Sachs
Gentlemen
I have just read Branko Milanovic's review of Jeffrey Sachs' new book entitled:
'COMMON WEALTH: Economics for a Crowded Planet'
in the Saturday, April 5, 2008 issue of the Toronto Globe and Mail's BOOKS.
Milanovic says that "Sachs argues ......... the identification of the problems and the technological solutions for them are already available." / AND that Sachs correctly identifies the key issue as:
"At the core of our problems today has been the collapse of faith in global problem-solving and a widespread cynical disbelief in global co-operation itself."
Meanwhile I have concluded based, on lifetime of studying, that ---
-- At the core of our problems today has been the unwillingness to see the relationship between the unsustainable population numbers, that we have built up since the advent of cultivation agriculture, and the global problematique.
I hope you both have time to skim the material I have pasted below. Since 1969 my approach - to the problems faced by the global human experiment - has concentrated on the way population growth has continually made them worse. I now have developed a long-term (several centuries) plan to begin to move the global human family back toward a sustainable relationship with its supporting ecosystems.
I have recently been moving away from the reductionist research that I have carried on in soil science for over 40 years and I have finally started to marry my soil dynamics knowledge with my interest in the cultural history of the human race -AND- I have reached some startling conclusions concerning the human overshoot dilemma, and its depletion of essential resources that began long before we started using fossil fuels in the last few centuries ---- read on:
++++++++++++++
Many keen thinkers have understood that the driver that has enabled our numbers to shoot so far over long-term carrying capacity is the planet's one-time gift of fossil fuels and this overshoot has resulted in our rampant destruction of the biosphere. The global human population before the start of the Fossil-Fuel Revolution was about 1-billion, while it is now about 6.6 billion and rising. These holistic thinkers suggest that without oil, the earth will only support about 2-3 billion.
Their forward thinking has not yet included an understanding of the thesis that:
THE OTHER MAJOR FACTOR THAT HAS ENABLED OUR NUMBERS TO SHOOT SO FAR OVER LONG-TERM CARRYING CAPACITY IS THE ONE-TIME GIFT OF ERODABLE SOILS AND THE VAST STORE OF PLANT NUTRIENTS THEY CONTAINED - UNTIL WE BEGAN TO IRREVERSIBLY MINE THEM ABOUT 10,000 YEARS AGO WITH CULTIVATION AGRICULTURE.
I suggest that without petroleum, AND AFTER WE STOP MINING THE PLANET'S SOILS, the Earth will only support about 100-300 million.
The global imbalance between humans and their supporting environments is much more serious than most people on Earth realize.
Recent prognostications about the possibility of SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT in the context of further population and economic growth, are in direct opposition to a growing understanding among ecological economists that all economic and population growth, since the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago, has effectively lowered the basic long-term carrying capacity (food productivity potential) of the Earth's soil resources.
William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel have developed the ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT ANALYSIS and they appear (many publications) to believe that humanity overshot global carrying capacity sometime in the 20th century, while I have been circulating the thesis that the human family has been in overshoot for the last 10,000 years // Rees agrees that I am on the right track.
I hope the material presented below in a series of video clips, a slide show and a couple of essays will help you in the presentation of your ideas ---------- or at least help you to consider giving those ideas a very long historical perspective.
Peter Salonius
Research Scientist
Canadian Wood Fibre Centre
Natural Resources Canada
Canadian Forest Service
P. O. Box 4000, 1350 Regent Street South Fredericton, New Brunswick, E3B 5P7, Canada
Tel.:(506) 452-3548, Fax: (506) 452-3525
Email: psaloniu@nrcan.gc.ca
Chercheur scientifique
Centre canadien sur la fibre de bois
Ressources naturelles Canada
Service canadien des forêts
C. P. 4000, 1350, rue Regent sud
Fredericton (Nouveau-Brunswick) E3B 5P7, Canada Tél. :(506) 452-3548, Téléc. : (506) 452-3525 Courriel : psaloniu@nrcan.gc.ca
http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/directory/psaloniu
============================================================================-----Original Message-----
From: Salonius, Peter
Sent: Sat 2/23/2008 8:49 AM
To: RussH100@aol.com
Cc: Salonius, Peter
Subject: Population, Environment & the Future of Human Society
Good Morning Dr. Hopfenberg
I am ecstatic: I have been looking for a VISUAL presentation on the relationship between food availability and population to growth go along with a 20 minute video by Albert Bartlett on the subject of THE EXPONENTIAL FUNCTION that I found at:
http://tinyurl.com/2gfyla
( ONE HOUR VERSION: http://tinyurl.com/yr3crr )
I have just watched your excellent slide show entitled:
'WORLD FOOD AND HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH' at:
www.panearth.org
I will circulate this slide show to the widest audience possible.
I hope you will find some interest in the two URL web sites that I have been circulating for the last couple of weeks. I will paste (below) the MESSAGE I have been circulating to various recipients.
Comments, suggestions and/or criticisms of my ideas are most welcome.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
CIRCULATED MESSAGE BEGINS
Please forward this message and its attached PDF to the electronic mail boxes of members of your organization who may be interested in dealing with the basic cause of the imbalance between humans and their supporting ecosystems -- as opposed to concentrating on the symptoms of this imbalance.
-----------------
I encourage you to read the material below - including the two (2) URL web sites provided, and I encourage you to make use of the ideas present as you see fit. Please contact me by return email if you are confused by anything I have written and/or if you wish to have further clarification of the ideas presented.
NOTE that the CULTURE CHANGE web site leads to a second essay based on a peer reviewed journal paper -
AND NOTE ALSO that the 'Relocalize' web site, operated by the POST CARBON INSTITUTE has the original journal paper and three (3) relevant book reviews attached to it.
The material presented deals with the novel thesis that most cultivation AGRICULTURE, not just modern industrial fossil-fuelled agriculture, has been unsustainable since its adoption 10,000 years ago --- and that it follows that:
IF "AGRICULTURE, not just modern industrial fossil fuelled agriculture, has been unsustainable since its adoption 10,000 years ago" then the global human population has been in overshoot of the carrying capacity of its supporting ecosystems since the abandonment of hunter gathering and the adoption of farming.
Many of us have finally understood the dilemma faced by humanity in the context of the depletion of the fossil fuel energy subsidies upon which modern complex societies are dependent, however I have finally come to understand a more serious and basic resource depletion that has been looming over us during most of the run up to the present global human population of 6.7 billion ---- please see the development of this thesis in the two essays that have been posted on the CULTURE CHANGE web site at:
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1...
Also you may find some interest in the following email message I been sending to various creative colleagues.
The message entitled 'SCIENCE AND MEDIA AVOID THE MAIN ISSUE'(below) features another version of the same ideas at another URL web site operated by the POST CARBON INSTITUTE.
Peter Salonius
Research Scientist
Natural Resources Canada
Fredericton, New Brunswick
Day time (WORK) Phone (506) 452-3548
Home phone (506) 459-6663
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
SCIENCE AND MEDIA AVOID THE MAIN ISSUE
My reason for sending this email has to do with your authorship on articles/papers/films/letters to editors concerning (usually unsustainable) aspects of interactions between our species and the ecosystems upon which we rely for life support. In most of the items I have read/seen the issue of remedial measures, to relieve the environmental pressure/damage caused by human numbers, is given short shrift --- and in some cases we see writers and thinkers actually interested in further demographic and economic expansion, in apparent denial of the finite nature of the planet Earth and its resources.
We have generally concerned ourselves with individual aspects/areas of the imbalance between humans and their supporting ecosystems -
- however we very seldom stand back and assess the major drivers of this imbalance // and in the few instances that we do stand back to assess these drivers, we resist the temptation to suggest remedies to policy makers that involve reshaping the direction of human society -or- we are told by peers, employers, reviewers or editors to stick to individual issues and leave social organization to policy makers and politicians. The enormity of required solutions usually makes it less stressful to get back to picking away at the easier digested symptoms of the global human dilemma that can be addressed by reductionism.
In 1999 I published an appeal (CONSERVATION BIOLOGY 13(6): 1518-1519)that scientists consider spending a considerable portion of their efforts to educate policy makers "about the diminishing ability of the biosphere to withstand the onslaught of exponential human population and economic growth."
In 1999 I thought that measures "to stabilize or slowly reduce population numbers" would suffice. I am now convinced that we will have to orchestrate Rapid Population Decline -or- have such a decline imposed upon us by resource depletion realities.
Most of us agree that the human experiment, which is now the size of the Earth, has gone terribly wrong. At issue is the point at which humanity took the unsustainable fork in the road -and- what we must do to get back on track. There is a growing realization that human numbers will decrease, either by planned contraction or by the development of various scarcities.
My recommendation for the necessary decrease of the global human footprint includes allowing the functional integrity of terrestrial (and aquatic) communities to begin to re-establish by ceasing to stage manage ecosystems. A reliance on self-organizing/self managing systems, that evolution has already created, would feed a very small number of humans sustainably - if they regulated their exploitation/harvesting activities to fall within the (now better understood) capacity of their supporting ecosystems to maintain critical breeding populations, species and structural diversity, to replace soil lost by erosion and to replace soluble plant nutrients lost by harvest export or leaching.
In fisheries, because they represent such as small fraction of the global human diet, a return to sustainably harvesting wild populations would not cause widespread starvation.
In forestry a shift, to alternate harvesting systems that accommodate the time requirement for full species and structural restoration, and that approximate natural disturbance dynamics - as opposed to creating ecosystem-simplifying, product- driven species assemblages - could be initiated very quickly.
The abandonment of agriculture in favour of the re-establishment of self-managing, native, nutrient conservative forest and grassland/prairie ecosystems would require much more time because these unmanaged systems can not produce enough food for humans -- until population numbers have fallen to a fraction of present levels.
I have said, in the recommendation I have for the sustainable future of the global human experiment, that agriculture must be relied upon to feed us until we have reduced our numbers to a level that can be supported by regulated exploitation/harvesting activities that fall within the (now better understood) capacity of supporting ecosystems to maintain diversity, to restore soil mass lost by erosion and to replace soluble plant nutrients lost by harvest export or leaching.
This recommendation is outlined in an essay entitled:
'POPULATION AND INTENSIVE CROP CULTURE ARE UNSUSTAINABLE' -------- that can be read at:
http://www.relocalize.net/population_and_intensive_crop_culture_are_unsu...
------ to which is attached one journal paper and 3 book reviews.
The attractive aspect of moving toward sustainable co-existence with self-managing ecosystems is that the hit-and-miss process of evolution has our numbers have fallen to sustainable levels) will be to learn to live within the regeneration capacity of restored self-managing natural ecosystems. The penalty for exceeding their regeneration capacity will be hunger and privation, as it was for our hunter gatherer ancestors.
Please forward this email to your colleagues if you think its message may be of interest to them.
Peter Salonius
Need to unlegislate immigration 'pull' factors in the US
In the U.S. the "pull" factors have been legislated and thus can be unlegislated. Incentivizing illegal and legal immigration is the driving force behind this country's unprecedentedly rapid population growth exacerbating all resource depletion, ecological degradation and industrial unsustainability problems. Arizona recently began experiencing an exodus of illegals after it passed a law enforcing employer penalties. What must also be addressed is federal and many states's providing generous education, and welfare programs while not allowing police to even ask about immigration status. These factors incentivize ever-more illegal and legal immigration. This pull factor results in gaining millions who consume up to ten times what they did in their native countries.
Wither Victoria?
Apalling. An appalling government. Thank you for this.
Ghastly growth
Migrants, births fuel rise in numbers
David Uren, Economics correspondent | June 25, 2008
A FLOOD of migrants and a continuing rise in the birth rate gave Australia its fastest population growth in almost two decades last year.
Queensland is leading the population boom, attracting migrants from overseas and across the border in NSW.
The number of Queenslanders rose by just under 100,000 last year, almost a third of the national population increase of 331,000.
The 1.6 per cent increase in the population lifted the national total to 21.2 million.
Australian National University demographer Peter McDonald said the rise made Australia the fastest-growing nation in the developed world.
"The United States has a slightly higher fertility rate but our migration rate is much higher," he said.
The population was boosted by an extraordinary influx of 410,900 migrants and long-term visitors from overseas, far in excess of the 226,400 long-term visitors returning and Australian residents leaving the country.
Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia were thebig magnets for overseas migrants.
Western Australia lifted its migrant intake by 24.6per cent last year to 28,880 people, while Queensland attracted 35,800, an increase of 19.1 per cent.
Professor McDonald said NSW was the big loser, as a result of efforts by former premier Bob Carr to close the state to migration.
"Over the last seven years, NSW's share of international migration has dropped from 42per cent to 29 per cent," Professor McDonald said.
NSW still accounted for 42 per cent of the people leaving the country, he said.
Western Australia was the biggest destination for British migrants, while Queensland attracted the most New Zealanders.
Victoria and NSW appealed more to Chinese and Indian migrants.
"South Australia has also achieved a remarkable increase in its migrant intake from 2000 five years ago to 13,000 in the last year," Professor McDonald said.
With about 24,000 people leaving NSW, mostly for Queensland last year, NSW had lower population growth than Queensland and Victoria.
Despite the resources boom, Western Australia failed to attract a significant flow of migrants from the eastern states, with only 3775 people making the trek across the Nullarbor last year. Queensland lured 25,650 people.
The fertility rate continued to climb, reaching 1.85 births per woman, up from a level of 1.72 four years ago.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics said this number might have been exaggerated by the new requirement that births be registered before parents can claim the baby bonus.
However, Professor McDonald said even accounting for that change, the fertility rate was above 1.8 births per woman.
The death rate also declined, from 6.6 deaths per 1000 people in 2002-3 to 5.9, the lowest on record, last year.
Natural population increase added 147,400 people last year, an 11.3 per cent increase from 2006, while migration added 184,400, a 16.2 per cent increase.
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23918355-5013169,00.html
Observe how NSW is described as the "big loser" in the frenetic race towards overpopulation and lower living standards. As premier, Bob Carr came to the conclusion that rapid immigration-fuelled population growth was unwise, unhealthy and unsustainable and would only come to an end by either conscious control or by catastrophe. He prudently chose the former. Yet he is maligned and condemned for placing the interests of the existing population of NSW above those of big business and other pro-immigrationists.
Live exports shows low animal welfare standards
There is no way a vet can supervise multiple thousand of animals on board these death ships, …
Tens of thousands of cattle from Australia sent there will suffer the terror of being slaughtered whilst fully conscious.So many local jobs are being lost due to not exporting frozen meat. Australia's reputation is being degraded by allowing ánimal cruelty.
Is the task hopeless?
Superb criticisms. I am definitely not for relaxing immigration controls. I am for tightening them. I am merely arguing that the dam will not hold unless we try and relieve the pressure that is coming at us and will come at us in waves. We can triple our navy and arm the coast guard, build electronic fences, turn our coast lines into what our version of Hitler's Atlantic Wall but history tells me that all fortresses have limited capabilities. So then, while we are strenghtening our defences, forcing employers to pay decent wages etc. We ought to work on ways to reduce the push factors.
Now you introduce the dark view. These regions are so devastated by overpopulation that to "raise" their living standards by more consumption is environmentally untenable. But some would say that they had a living that was agreeable until the corporations and the trade agreements messed with it. That scrapping those agreements and giving the boot to the multinationals would be a step toward restitution rather than profligate consumerist bingng. Just to return to the level of living they had forty years ago would be an achievement for many Third World victims of free trade. But this process of reparations would indeed, take decades, and I certainly wouldn't leave our front door unlocked.
One point to remember in passing. First world countries, Canada, the United States, the UK and Australia, are also ecological basket cases from over population. When the oil runs out, analysts like Dale Pfeiffer speculate that fully one-third of North America's population will starve to death, as modern agriculture is utterly dependent on oil. Microbiologist Peter Salonious puts the figure at 95%, as intensive agriculture has completely depleted our soils.
One need not talk about water. Dark views, in other words, are not confined to developing countries.
Re: Western views of the noble savage
Tim wrote:
Worldwide, in fact, one has few examples of people becoming conservationists until their way of life is utterly threatened and conservation becomes a matter of survival.
No examples or simply no academically documented examples?
I wonder why the latter might be? Might it be the near complete decimation of local culture and landscape by the time we bothered to look with something like an objective eye?
How many tribes exist across the planet that you simply cannot make your statement about with any accuracy at all let alone the comprehensive certainty that you have done? Short of peer reviewed detail, do we instead have to rely on simple deduction from eco-systems around the planet that remained full and well-balanced until recently even though they’d been inhabited by native peoples for centuries?
Indeed, in abolishing slavery and founding societies for the Protection of Animals they have gone farther, extending a level of compassion for all humans other species, that seems unique in world history.
Unique?
Perhaps because:
- our sytemic growth found effective technological and economic proxies for slavery, and,
- the inequitous privilege accrued via a heirarchical and then privatised land tenure system lead to the development of huge private hunting reserves. With the democracy that welled uncontrollably from an escalating energy supply, the same cultural aspiration lead, in turn, to more public and more widely functional forms of conservation reserves. Inherently altruistic to other humans and other species? That draws an overly naive bow, I think.
Michael Crichton spoke of environmentalists requiring a belief in an unspoiled “Eden” that existed before we corrupted it and will again exist once we have had our comeuppance. My thought is that the belief that Aboriginals were noble eco-savages falls into this same category. The Platonic need to believe in perfection.
As with all things there is some truth in this. However to see it as the whole truth builds a wall that obscures much more than it observes.
I agree that instances of overshoot and ecological impropriety are found in non-western and non-modern societies around the planet. And that some modern people indulge in blind, self-indulgent romanticism. But it is also true that history and evident natural inheritances clearly indicate human societies can and have lived in long enduring (AKA sustainable) balance with surrounding ecology.
To ignore this and rest solely upon the much more narrowly expressed, but much more spectacular (and culturally familiar) ledge of proven human suicidal destruction is miserable at best and a deceptive cop-out at worst. It renders us into a deterministic corridor along which we can only fail. It declares that trying to do better is futile as humans have and can only ever wreck stuff. It is as much a flawed and systemically expedient meme as is the notion that immigration can’t or shouldn’t be stopped.
Ecological balance will ensue from stabiity
Tim wrote:
Were "Intact Aboriginal Cultures" really good "environmental custodians"? Not in North America Mate
james wrote:
Whilst I agree with nearly everything written by Tim, I have to take some exception to what has been said of First Nations. Whilst one shouldn't overly romanticise aboriginal cultures, it needs to be acknowledged that, on the whole, these societies, where they have been left intact, have been good custodians of the environment. The fact that many North American Inuit, whose societies have been corrupted by our rampant 21st century free market growth capitalism, are now also engaging in ecological vandalism, does not negate this fact. James S. 18 June 08
Some myths just won't lie down and die. It doesn't matter how many facts are thrown at them. Facts like:
List of American Indian eco-crimes follows
Tim,
I find the detail and purpose of your post quite curious.
James makes a disclaimer acknowledging fallibility across the full range of indigenous performance. He then proposes that on balance these cultures have performed well. He goes on to cite Inuit culture as an example of a generally good model for sustainability whose performance has been degraded by western influence.
Without contending James' particular example you and the next writer focus on North American Indian performance and conflate those (selective?) aspects as proof that Indigenous stewardship everywhere is a myth.
However, even if as poor as you suppose, North American Indians were:
- just one of a myriad global examples.
- not an homogeneous entity or even remotely similar in culture or background across their range. At least three separate waves of immigration came from the north at widely separate time frames. The last wave arrived not all that long before the Europeans. The destabilising, destructive pressures of adaptation and territory establishment were still raw and volatile in many places by the time Europeans arrived to throw their inimitably disruptive hat into the ring.
More generally, examples of agricultural and territorially competitive cultures are more likely to be in ecological imbalance than long-settled, spatially inter-related hunter gatherer clans.
The arena and peoples you present is entirely unlike the stability exhibited by many other indigenous folk, such as the Inuit. Thousands of years of stable secure occupancy of a territory demonstrates that an ecological balance had been struck, even if that balance is a different one to that which was in place prior to arrival. Many say Australian Aboriginals are ecological vandals for changing the Australian ecology. Any new species will change an ecology, and ecology is always changing. How securely a new balance is struck from that change is the real measure of the process.
Which is the vitally relevant point. Unlike those cultures which did redefine and enjoy a local ecological harmony, our culture has no hope of finding any such balance. When we run out of the oil which keeps our carnival of mitigation initiatives rolling, we are dust.
Thus a view of the North American situation is not really relevant as a contention to what James proposes. It is a view to be explored in extension to it. Further out on the same relatively narrow limb are the Aztecs.
Under siege
Same thing happening in my suburb (Bentleigh) like many others - seems to be a house demolished every week. One of those enormous 2-storeyed duplex houses is going up near my parents' home, and an ugly monstrosity it is (I could provide a photo). The modest and pleasant older suburban homes with their gardens are gradually disappearing; the new houses reflect the greed, selfishness and extravagance of current times. They loom over the streets menacingly; they make me feel claustrophobic and hemmed-in. They block the view of the sky.
Bentleigh used to be a nice place to live, but it is becoming unbearable (I don't have an option to move, and it's the same everywhere).
What's happened to the "Save our Suburbs" protest movement - has it died out, and does no one care anymore?
The push factor
Tim wrote:
"But I am also frustrated by the blindness of the red neck wing of the American anti immigration movement that takes no responsibility for the factors which PUSH migrants out of their third world countries.
"These countries have been ravished by decades of iniquitous trade agreements that have extorted resources from them at bargain basement prices, causing them to forfeit self-sufficiency, destroy natural capital, and strip social services to pay off debt charges that the IMF dictates must be paid."
This may hold true in some cases, but it's certainly not correct that everyone attached to the "red neck wing of the American anti immigration movement" supports the globalist "free" trade agenda. Patrick Buchanan, for example, has railed extensively against "free" trade and remains an ardent advocate of economic nationalism.
As for mitigating the immigration "push" factor, American immigration reform advocate Roy Beck noted in his book, Re-Charting America's Future (PDF 1.3MB), that:
Any serious assessment of the world situation will show that even under the very best of scenarios and the most extravagant aid possible, standards of living in underdeveloped nations cannot become competitive with advanced nations for many decades, according to professor Antonio Golini of the Institute for Population Research in Italy. Thus, the immigration push factors will remain in place. If the advanced nations were to relax immigration controls until the push factors disappeared, their populations likely would multiply several times over.
The prognosis is even more dismal, according to Professor H.J. Hoffman-Novotny of Zurich: If living conditions by some miracle did rise high enough in underdeveloped nations so that their residents would stop fleeing, the world environment would be devastated by the additional resource consumption and pollution.
Prospects for such economic success, however, are unlikely, in the dark view of New York Times correspondent Malcolm Browne: Anybody who actually thinks foreign aid [or in this case, fairer trade] can soon eliminate "push" factors in the third world doesn't know the hopelessness overpopulation has created. "The third world is not a 'developing' culture. It is a putrefying 'state' of existence perpetually in the grip of a plague deadlier than anthrax: the burgeoning human race... For the past dozen years, I have devoted most of my reporting to science... I have become convinced that until population growth can be controlled, all other environmental problems will remain insoluble."
Canberra's population
You know, each night as I head home on the bus I pass by one of those electronic signs that shows Canberra's current water status. Lately we've been at about 45% capacity and achieving close to the target consumption of 97MLitres a day.
Which has come about (to some degree) as a result of people rallying to the call to conserve water and use it more wisely. A call that the ACT Government has spent lots of money on promoting.
Money well spent? I think not.
Jon Stanhope supports the construction of a whole new housing division at Molonglo, ostensibly to address the housing crisis in Canberra.
And yet, I heard him say on the TV news last week that the priorities for his Government were "economic growth, skills and population".
And I don't think he was talking about promoting sustainability for any of them either, just quietly.
So we have a shortage of water. Stanhope's solution is to call for restraint with water use. But to increase the number of water users as fast as possible.
We have a housing affordability crisis. Stanhope's solution is to build new suburbs. But to increase the number of buyers and renters by attracting more people to the area.
Is it any wonder that our dams are at 45% and falling and that our housing affordability is the third worst in the country?
It'd be nice to see some candidates stand on a sustainable population policy in the upcoming ACT elections.
.
Transport trouble
A well considered comment, James.
It's easy to see how a lot of owner-drivers, in particular, would be feeling squeezed right now. Rising fuel prices and high interest rates (many owner drivers have substantial loans on their trucks) will have added to their already stressful existence. An owner driver friend of mine told me last week that in the space of 12 months, fuel has gone from one third to one half of his cost of doing business.
But, like you, I can't help feeling that most of the demands formulated at Townsville are poorly targetted and will not address the long term issues. The underlying theme seems to be de-regulation and many of the points have serious implications for road safety.
Libertarian inspired calls for less Government intervention are bound to strike a chord with drivers operating under increasing pressure. But if they result in cowboy drivers working longer hours and causing serious accidents then the resulting public backlash will lead to more restrictive legislation, not less.
Instead of looking at cutting costs by cutting standards, perhaps transport charges just have to rise? Yes, it'll be inflationary. But what's the alternative? A race to the bottom in terms of income, conditions and safety for drivers.
The formation of an owner drivers guild would provide a framework for collective action to improve the lot of the owner driver, but unfortunately Owners Drivers Australia (ODA) looks like the only candidate for such a role at present. ODA embraces the outlook of rugged individualism, to the point of being like the mutant love child of Horatio Alger and Ayn Rand. Which is understandable to a point because owner drivers are self-employed and thus in competition with each other.
But which also kind of compromises its message about collective action.
The formation of an Australian Owner Drivers Guild, that worked cooperatively with the TWU (instead of bagging it relentlessly as ODA does) to achieve fair rates of pay AND safe conditions for owner drivers would be a step in the right direction.
.
Immigration and the housing crisis
Chairman Rudd’s Secret Weapon
Much has been written about the effect of the Budget on inflation. The general consensus of opinion seems to be that if the ALP were going to honour their election promises, the Budget would be more or less neutral. However the Government and the Reserve Bank are clearly worried about inflation in view of the rise in commodity prices, which are determined overseas.
Where are all the immigrants to live? Housing starts have fallen, rental accommodation vacancy is at the lowest in living history. Desperate seekers are bribing estate agents. In the middle of all this we have touching features about Chairman Rudd cuddling up to the homeless. Concern is no substitute for action.Their solution is to flood the country with a record number of immigrants (up nearly 40,000 to nearly 200,000) and temporary work visas, increasing the competition for jobs, forcing up unemployment and hence deterring workers from seeking higher wages. The Budget papers allow for an increase in unemployment and for a decrease in the wage share of GDP from 47.9% to 45.9%.
The media in general has not drawn attention to the significance of the policy, but there has been strong approbation from big business. A few unionists on the Left have expressed alarm. Most of them are silent, supporting the party ahead of the best interests of their members.
The social effects are of no concern to Chairman Rudd, headline interest rises are his major worry. Where are all the immigrants to live? Housing starts have fallen, rental accommodation vacancy is at the lowest in living history. Desperate seekers are bribing estate agents. In the middle of all this we have touching features about Chairman Rudd cuddling up to the homeless. Concern is no substitute for action. The main reason for homelessness is lack of accommodation for them at anything resembling affordability. Older houses in around the city that used to provide rooms for the homeless are being pulled down for blocks of units to house all the newcomers.
The Infrastructure Fund will allegedly help with the transport and other bottlenecks that Australia is experiencing. But it won’t start spending for a year or so and capital works like these take time to implement. In the meantime ordinary Australians will have to put up with crowded public transport choked roads and clogged health services.
Now is the time to buy a rental property. With housing starts in decline and record immigration, rental rates must go up further. Tough on long standing Australians who can’t afford a house, but when did the ALP ever care about them? Uppermost in the minds of ALP long term planning is that immigrants tend to favour the ALP.
How to maintan to momentum of the protests?
Typically, the story of this protest has been largely ignored by the newsmedia. The only story which gives the protest any substantial coverage is the story QLD Labor stung by protests in the free glossy Brisbane Times magazine. There's nothing yet on the (bandwidth intensive) Courier Mail web site. We can expect, if we're lucky, half a page in the Sunday Mail and after that it will be forgotten completely, and Bligh will be left alone by the Queensland newsmedia to get on with the job of trashing Queensland's environment as if these protests had never occurred, in order to line the pockets of developer backers.
If the Courier Mail does decide in any way to try to make life difficult for Anna Bligh, it will no doubt attempt to channel any consequent public indignation against her government towards the equally pro-development pro-big-business National/Liberal opposition.
For what it's what here's some of what a google news search with the terms "Queensland Labor" (quotes omitted) turned up:
Queensland the great state, says PM from the Melbourne Age of 21 Jun 08. This report made the following bizarre of Electrical Trades Union protesters at the conference:
Electricity, rail workers to picket Labor conference from Brisbane Times of 17 Jun 08.
Protesters set to greet Rudd in Qld from the Sydney Morning Herald of 20 Jun 08
Dam protesters to rally against 'scrubber bull' Bligh in ABC online news of 20 Jun 08
Qld union threatens to dump Labor from the Melbourne Age of 21 Jun 08. This report made the following bizarre of Electrical Trades Union protesters at the conference:
They were also forced to compete for attention with a variety of other protesters, including those against the state government's $1.7 billion Traveston Crossing Dam project and those against recycled water, who all came to capitalise on the appearance of the high-profile Labor attendees.
… as if, somehow, having others protesting against the Queensland Government's policies would weaken their cause.
Other news items found in this google search focussed on how the Queensland Coalition is gaining on Labor in opinion polls.
Let's hope that the organisers of this rally gave some thought to keeping people who attended in touch after the day in order to maintain the momentum. If this happens then these campaigns can hope to begin making traction and start forcing politicians to sit up and listen.
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Way forward may not be as straightforward as we would wish
Thank you for your comment and for your link back to your site.
I expect your sentiment will resonate with Tim Murray, who contributes prolifically to this site.
I am inclined to largely agree.
However, the path to get from the very unsatisfactory circumstances in which we find ourselves to where we need to be is not going to be straightforward.
There is no political force, which is not seriously flawed, and which is large enough to make the decisive and necessary difference. Until such a force emerges, it will be necessary to work with whatever exists, warts and all, as long as they have anything of positive significance to offer. One such force is the Greens, in spite of their grave deficiency in regard t population and immigration.
I agree that we need to be harshly and unambiguously critical of the Australian Greens, Canadian Greens and NZ Greens for this, but we must, nevertheless, still acknowledge that other stances the Australian Greens take can help us move forward to a point where population, immigration and all other critical environmental, social and economic problems can be confronted.
These include: Opposition to the Privatisation of NSW's electricity, opposition to increasing Australia's coal exports, Opposition to the Australia-China Free Trade Agreement, Opposition to anti-democratic laws enacted by the NSW government which allow it to disregard objections by local communities and local governments to planned developments
.
The achievement of these goals, by helping to reverse the erosion of democracy in recent years, could help shift the political climate to a point where population stability is also achievable.
This is not the more direct route I would prefer. Also, we have to also understand that if we don't get a lot of other things right we can still wreck our environment even if we achieve zero net immigration and and population stability. Even with vastly fewer numbers than we have today, we have done terrible ecological damage to this continent in the past as William Lines in Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia (1991) has shown.
This is why, we still continue to give publicity to parties like the Greens and even the Australian Democrats on this site in spite of such their serious shortcomings that Tim and The Realists rightly point out.
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The Greens have lost the plot
Sadly, the Australian Greens are no better than their Canadian counterparts on the issues of immigration and population growth.
Greens lose the plot on Population
by TheRealists ~ June 14th, 2008
The Greens have abandoned any pretence that they are a party that cares for the environment with their continued failure to engage in any debate about Australia’s future population.
Instead, The Greens use obfuscation to hide the fact that they don’t have a population policy at all. The Greens use phrases such as “our environmental impact is not determined by population numbers alone, but by the way that people live” in their population policy in a clear affront to the reality that Australia has the highest per capita carbon footprint in the world.
Judging by the media releases found on the party’s website, The Greens appear to be more concerned with Work Choices, Guantanamo Bay and the Dalai Lama than campaigning for a sustainable population policy that that will benefit all Australians, as well as the environment.
With current immigration trends, Australia’s population will double by the year 2050 and then double again to 100 million people by 2100. This is a serious issue not only for the environment but also for Australian society which will face tumultuous changes.
The Greens should stop trying to be a party of the extreme left, and instead engage the Australian public and the federal government in a sensible debate about the serious issues of immigration and population.
Can truck drivers remain viable?
The truck drivers are to be congratulated for taking political action against the hardships caused by fuel price increases and compounded by what they see as petty interfering bureaucracy.
Nevertheless, it would seem that some of the regulations they object to would seem to be intended to prevent driver fatigue.
It would be better if the underlying causes which cause so many to drive for dangerously long periods of time could be addressed and the focus was less on drivers trying to make ends meet by breaking the regualtions. However, I am not convinced that relaxing the rules would actually help drivers. I could easily see this causing more drivers to feel compelled to drive longer and thereby make our roads less safe.
With fuel prices only likely to continue to go up as stocks become ever more scarce, it is hard to see a solution that will enable all those currently driving trucks to continue to work and to work for decent pay and conditions.
It seems to me that if, in future, large volumes of freight continue to be carried over long distances in this country it will have to be done far more by rail and not road.
Our governments and business leaders, who have failed abysmally to anticipate the problems which are now threatening many drivers with bankruptcy, should be made to do their utmost to either rectify the problem or else find them suitable alternative means to obtain their livelihoods.
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Gov playing for the profiteers from pop growth
Note the qualifier at the end, 'invest in services'. I read this as mainstream news code for 'divert money to property developers, engineers and finance'. There is no intention to stop growth; just to profit from it.
As for not detecting the costs of growth, there are plenty of complaints if government were only interested in looking at them, but it is more interested in diverting our money to the so-called 'service providers'.
The folly of high immigration
Even some within the immigration industry are concerned about the impacts of ever-increasing mass immigration on the country's environment and quality of life:
Australian Immigration Could Harm Resources Down the Line
02/06/2008 by Tamar Blieden
The Australian government is constantly calling for skilled immigrants, but with an estimated growth of nearly 1 million in the next 13 years many question if Australia's infrastructure can cope.
These concerns have come to the fore today on the eve of the state budget where billions are thought to be given to building Australia's infrastructure. But will this be enough to deal with the mass of immigrants flooding in to Australia on a yearly basis?
"Australia is one of the most popular immigrant destinations and it is now easier for skilled foreigners to start a new life," says Erin Ryan of www.globalvisas.com, specialists in global mobility. She adds that this is great for the Australian economy but if overpopulation occurs it could turn into a disaster, with not enough water, housing or food.
The influx of immigrants, particularly to Sydney, could cause major stress to resources, but because the effects are thought to take years to be felt, the government still open the doors to immigrants through an increased migration programme.
Last month Rudd increased the amount of immigrants by over 30 000 a year, with growth like this it is important for the government to invest in services in order for Australia to ultimately cope with the growth.
www.globalvisas.com/news/australian_immigration_could_harm_resources_down_the_line181.html
Quick, sick dollars
And we are intensifying domestic animal farming here in Australia, with new laws passed to make it worse for pigs. And with spurious notions of efficiency pushing for feedlot farming and the quick, sick dollar.
Australia's economy is out of control in more ways than one.
Good writing, Stoptac. Keep it up. We are a wussy lot and have to start coping with the truth.
Daisy U
Dear Minister Templeman - we need heroes to save fauna
----- Original Message -----
From: Gillian Collins
To: david-templeman[AT]dpc.wa.gov.au
Cc: Sheila Newman ; Maryland Wilson
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 6:54 AM
Subject: Black Cockatoo
Dear Minister Templeman;
I understand that The University of Western Australia wants to bulldoze rare bushland in the middle of your city for future property development.
The first time I ever saw a Black Cockatoo on Wilson's Promontory here in Victoria, I was overwhelmed by their beauty. All of our children and grandchildren deserve to know that feeling, whether they live in town or country. We need to learn to design our cities to live with wild things, not to destroy them.
We in Australia need some heroes in our struggle to support our native flora and fauna in every State. Will you please be that hero and enact legislation to prevent this senseless destruction?
Gillian Collins
(Victoria - other details withheld from internet)
Update: Appeal bad decision by WA Enviro-'protection' authority
Subject: RE: Saving Underwood Avenue bushland
Clearly government engineered population growth is causing species extinctions.
It seems completely ridiculous but the West Australian Environment Protection Authority has actually recommended that UWA's proposal to destroy the Underwood Avenue bushland for housing be approved.
What people should be asking now is that Minister Templeman uphold appeals against the EPA's recommendation and that he direct that all the bushland be protected.
We need all the help we can get to save Underwood Avenue bushland, which is vital cockatoo habitat.
And it would be a help if departments actually lived up to their names. I think that the WAEP should be renamed more suitably. If it cannot protect black cockatoos, what use is it?
Population growth in this country needs to STOP.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Intact aboriginal cultures good environmental custodians
Whilst I agree with nearly everything written by Tim, I have to take some exception to what has been said of First Nations. Whilst one shouldn't overly romanticise aboriginal cultures, it needs to be acknowledged that, on the whole, these societies, where they have been left intact, have been good custodians of the environment. The fact that many North American Inuit, whose societies have been corrupted by our rampant 21st century free market growth capitalism, are now also engaging in ecological vandalism, does not negate this fact.
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threatened species need more that tokenism to survive
While we bemoan the invasive and threatening behaviours of cane toads and other feral animals destroying native animals and our pristine environment, it is humans that are the worst species! We are supposed to be intelligent and aware of what we are doing! Taking away the habitat of endangered animals is nothing less that predation and extermination! If economic growth depends on continual human population numbers, where does that leave us as a supposedly "green" nation? Our biodiversity is NOT a service, but an ecological system. If we keep wiping out species that are part of the system, and we all depend on the ecology, then it is the way of destruction and no life can survive. Even for people not concerned about Black Cockatoos, and of course they exist, they still have an ethical duty to acknowledge that this land, Australia, is occupied by non-indigenous people and natives should be protected and not made extinct or redundant. Rampant human growth is destroying so much of our land, and even native animals get called "pests" when it is human and their livestock that cause the main environmental problems. The Black Cockatoos need to stay!
How to kill a country - the Australia-US free trade agreement
This article, based on a book of the same name, gives a good overview of what processes are bringing us to this loss of democracy and fairness which is manifesting a lot in agriculture lately. How to kill a country, The Australia-US free trade agreement, by Linda Weiss, Elizabeth Thurbon & John Mathews
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Diet for a dead planet video may be viewed here
James posted a reference to Christopher D. Cook's Diet for a dead planet: Big business and the coming food crisis,New Press, 2006. I think James should write a review of it for candobetter, but pending this, you can see an excellent interview with Chris Cook here.
There are lots of reviews of this formidably well-researched and solidly theory-based book on the net, which you may as well google. If anyone else wants to write a review of this book, please do. See also Orwellian waterworks on this site.
I will also just do a plug for my upcoming book, The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd ed., Pluto Press, UK, 2008, due out in September, which contains very solid articles about the impact of agribusiness in the US (biofuels) and Japan, among other articles on Australia, North Korea and a variety of different technologies.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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US farmers screwed by lack of single desk system
A very useful and timely article.
Murdoch's Australian newspaper can claim some credit for having uncovered the AWB scandal, and never miss an opportunituy to remind us of this. However, if they never engaged in serious investigative journalism, then more people would see The Australian for what it is and be less affected by their usual right-wing anti-democratic propaganda, so, I consider their occasional practice by The Australian of serious investigative journalism to serve as a fig leaf.
In any case, the spin that The Australian put on the AWB scandal was cynical and illogical. They accepted the scapegoating of the AWB board members and accepted unquestioningly the preposterous notion that Howard Government ministers could not have been aware of what was happening. Moreover they attributed the fault entirely to the existence of the single desk wheat export system.
If anyone wants to know how badly screwed Australian wheat farmers will be if the single desk system is abolished, they should read Christopher Cook's Diet for a Dead Planet(2002(?)) which describes the whole (unbelievably appalling) US food production including agriculture. (You can also watch a videoed interview with Christopher Cook here.)
The way that Murdoch's Australian newspaper put its own spin on the AWB disgrace was unbelieveable cynical.
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earless dragon
These little creatures are not threatened by kangaroos! It was just "green" stuff to confuse the public! The real reason for the kangaroo massacre was that the ACT did not want the kangaroos anywhere else, and NSW is kangaroo "management" areas so they would likely be killed anyway! The area used to be grazed by sheep, and it is livestock that are endangering native grasses, insects and these lizards, not wildlife. Our native animals and their habitat have been co-existing and evolving together for millions of years. This scape-goating is just totally for the non-intellectuals and red-neck public who hate kangaroos anyway.
Apply the precautionary principle
James
I read about the proposal for global dimming some years ago. It was made by a scientist with expertise in the subject. I read some comments by other scientists who recognized the dangers involved. The view appeared to me to be that there was so much uncertainty about what would happen that it would be wise to apply the precautionary principle. I have not attempted to follow developments on that issue because, being a physical scientist, I had some appreciation of how doubtful it would be. I would be extremely surprised if the idea was being pursued by serious scientists now. It did not surprise me to read that Flannery was supporting the idea as he has said much that erodes his credibility, in my opinion. It did surprise me that Nossal did. I suppose there are many scientists striving to come up with ideas that will help to mitigate climate change as they see it as an emerging field and they are keen to see whether they can make a contribution. That should not be interpreted as being belief that they will be successful. Most scientists who have looked into the subject know that the GHG emissions from fossil fuel burning has instigated irreversible atmospheric global warming and ocean acidification, with the help of de-forestation.
Denis
Suggestions are non-starters
James,
> > In order to arrive at a truly informed choice in regard to this issue we need
> > to be able to work out as far as science will predict, what will happen if,
> > from this point on, or from some point in the very near future
> >
> > (a) we do all the right things in regard to population, consumption of
> > resources and we don't use global dimming, or
> >
> > (b) we do all the right things in regard to population, consumption of
> > resources and we do use global dimming.
If we failed to realise that these were two problems that both needed to
be solved, and if we ended up only solving one of them, we'd probably
make things worse. Less pollution lets the sunlight in, from which we
trap the heat in greenhouse gases. More pollution means less sunlight
for photosynthesis and further altered weather patterns, and we'd all
get sick from the sulphur oxides in the air anyway.
It seems to have escaped people that both global warming and global
dimming are already happening and are already causing problems.
> > In any case, how much worse would the consequences of global dimming be than,
> > for example, the eruption of Krakatoa late in the 19th Century, or other less
> > serious eruptions in more recent years?
I've actually heard that suggested. IIRC, we'd probably need a volcanic
eruption the size of Krakatoa about once every year or two - or whatever
equivalent that would be in smaller, strategically-spaced volcanic
eruptions.
Personally, I think all of these suggests are non-starters.
Cheers,
AN
Global Dim-sums: check basic details & quality of comparisons
We need to check some 'details' first as well:
What are the timelines actually projected for water to engulf 40 million people in Shanghai?
Given those timelines, what is the population trajectory for that date: are we talking 40 million people who inhabit Shanghai now, or are we assuming there will still be that number in 2050, for instance?
And, I think that the comparison between the fate of millions of human beings over a relatively short period of time, and the fate of the planet's atmosphere and the planetary future, is getting things out of proportion.
It is like a giant cutting off his nose to spite his face, or an idiot cutting off his head to get rid of a headache.
Or it is like borrowing in order to keep gambling when we know that the game is rigged.
The planet is in charge of us, not we in charge of it. It knows its business and systems better than we do. Your and my perspective is different here; it seems to me that you see the planet as having a role to support humans, whereas I see humans as needing to support the planet.
I would also suggest that one half of the planet, approximately, isn't engaging in this ridiculous economic and population growth race to the bottom. It is almost only the States that were colonised by the British that are really recklessly pursuing this race. I guess I have to include China there, and of course many states of India, Australia, some Pacific Islands, the USA, New Zealand, many African States, and the United Kingdom.
Much of the rest of the world isn't all that bad. Do they really deserve to suffer these measures some of us want to take in order to avoid catastrophy via global warming whilst seeking catastrophy via overpopulation, loss of freedom to commercial regimentation, desertification, peak soil, peak oil and massive coal-induced air pollution?
But, we still have not even elaborated here what is involved in physics and chemistry terms by this proposal to send soot up into the atmosphere. To answer one of your questions, James, an earlier eruption of a giant volcano probably brought the human population down to ten million well before agriculture became a phenomenon.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Choices before us need to be known
I concur with Sheila's approach even thought she stands against me in the debate so far.
In order to arrive at a truly informed choice in regard to this issue we need to be able to work out as far as science will predict, what will happen if, from this point on, or from some point in the very near future
(a) we do all the right things in regard to population, consumption of resources and we don't use global dimming, or
(b) we do all the right things in regard to population, consumption of resources and we do use global dimming.
In the former case, it seems to me that we still stand to see large areas of land mass near the sea inundated with sea water, including Shanghai, with its 40 million residents.
Before I completely give up on the idea of human-engineered global dimming I need to be convinced that the side effects of using global dimming are likely to leave us worse off. Can we know for certain that the extra soot in the atmosphere will cause catastrophic increases in the acidity of the oceans?
What is the range of views amongst marine biologists on this question?
Is it possible that there may be some threshold level of dimming that would reduce global warming to a worthwhile extent without causing a catastrophic increases in acidity, or which would not catastrophically alter weather patterns in some parts of the world?
Even if some parts of the world were to lose out, why wouldn't it be to our overall benefit if people from other parts of the world, who have been spared inundation from rising sea levels and other adverse consequences of global warming agree to do something, in return, to help people who will be worse of as a result of global dimming?
In any case, how much worse would the consequences of global dimming be than, for example, the eruption of Krakatoa late in the 19th Century, or other less serious eruptions in more recent years?
I would like to see all such questions discussed as calmly and completely as we can so that we can know as far as is possible what choices lie before us, and not needlessly deny ourselves whatever opportunities may still exist to improve our future prospects.
Blocking solar radiation is stupid
Re any attempt to block incoming solar radiation: this is a stupid idea as:
1. It will simply allow a continuation of business as usual with even higher levels of GHGs and
2. It ignores the acidifying effects of CO2 in the oceans and other water bodies that could easily wipe out all species with calcareous shells. Global warming is not the only effect of increased GHGs. I thought we now had enough experience to realise that looking for solutions to single problems in isolation was a sure fire recipe for making other problems worse. Only when we see and analyse each problem in the context of all others can we hope to come up with workable solutions.
John
"We thought it was safe ..." Famous last words
We thought Chloro-Fluoro-Carbons (CFCs) were completely benign - they were put in inhalers for asthmatics, and aerosol cans for air freshener. But it turned out that when they get high up in the atmosphere, they attack the ozone layer, leaving us open to increased Ultra-Violet radiation that causes skin cancers.
We thought Carbon dioxide was never going to be a problem, but it turned out to cause Global Warming.
We thought Thalidomide was so safe we could give it to pregnant women, but it turned out to produce terrible malformations in their babies.
We thought DDT was safe, then when it turned out that it wasn't, we switched to Dieldrin, Endrin, Chlordane and Heptachlor. Each one was supposed to be absolutely safe - not like those old chemicals. Now all are banned and the old sheep and cattle dipping sites are off limits to stock. No one knows why so many people get cancer these days.
We thought Agent Orange was safe. Really. There were court cases where experts lined up to say how safe it was.
We thought cigarettes were safe.
And don't forget Asbestos - we built whole houses out of it.
And now Tim Flannery, a museum curator specialising in fossils, reckons we should put pollution, that we know is part of cigarette smoke and vehicle exhaust fumes, into the upper atmosphere in unimaginable quantities so that we can continue with the lifestyle that causes Global Warming.
Tim Flannery should be burnt at the stake "pour encourager les autres".
Minippi Park
I am saddened by the proposed development of Minnippi Parklands. As a child my family often celebrated birthdays there. It was free, easily accessible, and had space enough for extended families to congregate without crowding into someone's dining room. I remember that on long weekends or mother's day it was often difficult to get a table or bbq, that is how popular the park is.
I thought That Minnippi was a landfill (read dump) before it was turned into a useful and pretty park. If that's the case, how can the council approve building on land that may be of questionable quality? What are the risks of subsidence, flooding and any chemicals that may lie buried? What about future residents? Logan City Council had a problem when they approved development in Kingston, over the site of an old gold mine. Over time toxic chemicals found their way to the surface and residents had to be relocated. The Brisbane city council needs to really think about this!
Another point worth bringing up: There are not many places for children to get out and enjoy themselves for free. Bike riding, football and just running around to let off steam, require space, and lots of it. We no longer have a back paddock to send the kids off to, and in many cases, the backyard is little more than a courtyard with patch of brown stubble. It isn't safe for kids to play in the street, so where can they go? Magnificent parks just like Minnippi, are the answer. The council could 'spin' it as targeting 'the obesity epidemic' or something.
Why sell off the park? Because at the moment no one is making money from it, so true to capitalist economic ir-rationalism it must be developed so that one or two fatcats can charge admission, in the form of golf membership fees, to the few who can afford the luxury.
Iceland Immigration
James, sorry for the delay. I went collecting info on Iceland's immigration and found too much. I will post it to my blog shortly, hopefully. I don't disagree with anything in your comments. Thanks for the tip on blogs that I link to: whilst some of them are a bit gung-ho the main reason I link to them is their info on Islam, immigration, Left-liberal lunacy, etc.
Peak oil and the transport/food crisis.
oziz4oz
Gidday Mike
I intuit that you have researched your subject thoroughly and drawn conclusions accordingly. This makes a wholesome change; because most people don't.
However, extrapolatory logic only works if you have all the data. This is a mathematical fact of life. As you yourself point out, empirical data is incomplete.
My background ranges from research and negotiation in industry, between cultures, and even in urban battlegrounds; as well as for governments. This has taught me much about the games people (corporations and banks) play, and where to look to sniff out the truth. Horribly unscientific, this is true, but I have been doing this successfully for some decades now.
Consequently, to demand credibility would be absurd. I do not attempt to persuade anyone towards anything. What I do is identify decent and intelligent people who are on the same page, and chuck templates their way which may well speed up the process of joining the dots. For others, who have already joined the dots, I try to save them time by drawing the lines.
Invariably, they all correct me on details, major and obscure, and then we all move on to action. Action is the bottom line.
Now back to your post...
Abiotic oil? Sure, I just wondered how far you had ranged.
The impact of speculators? Merkel has just demanded that this accounts for 25% of the cost per barrel, and that this market must be made illegal. Knowing her backers, I suspect she is well aware that this accounts for 70%, but is preempting with weak remedies that give the bankers and investors strategic breathing space. With typical lack of subtlety, the US Congress has been advised it is in fact 70%, but no action is proposed that I know of. Typical.
Diesel? Let me say first, that oil companies lie on principle. The only criterion is profits. So who cares what they say? And Oil Drum? It has a drum to beat alright. Peak oil. But back to Bass Strait Oil. I discussed this with men who worked on that job. They used the diesel straight from the ground on the company plant and machinery. The only problem with it was that it would eventually clog the fuel filters and obstruct injectors; but this took a long time to occur. 'Clean' diesel does this anyway, which is why all diesels have filters. There was also a small problem with bacterial build-up. In the big glass tank they used you could see this black shape "moving like an ET"; but bacterial infection is common to all diesel tanks, and additives stop this. On thinness? They mentioned nothing of this and used the diesel in their own private vehicles. Anyway, I don't see the relevance of thinness. If anything, this means less work on the fuel pump and injectors, and higher revs. Peformance should be enhanced and higher speeds achieved. In other words, our diesel must be more energy-efficient, and with higher operating temperatures, would be less polluting.
As to the reason why diesel is more expensive than petrol, I have no idea. I suspect it is to discourage use of diesel motors and force motorists on to petrol.
On the rest? I merely report what people tell me, but some of those drillers had been known to me for some years and had earned my respect.
Whereas logic says oil, like any other earthly resource is finite, this does not meant it is running out now. I think the oil companies are forcing optimising of profits so that shareholders will be satiated, whilst capital is still available for research and development into other technologies and energies. In fact, the Rockefellers have just split their board governor and CEO positions to ensure both objectives are advanced objectively. I hear whispers other oil companies are doing likewise.
This is all very well, but it does not address the billion or so people who will die of starvation or malnutrition-sourced diseases over the coming year. The price of fuel must come down and I argue it can be done. If Rudd commands it, how can the oil companies refuse. But then I also argue that Rudd is a clone of Howard and is working for the enemy.
I am aware of other greater factors in the food shortage; eleven in fact, and I will write about these in other threads. But thanks for your engagement in this debate, Mike. Your points have been absorbed. Now what?
credibility of data
Tony, rest assured I have a very robust bullshit filter. You have brought up so many issues to reply to it's hard to work out where to start, however, here goes.....
The empirical data may be neither complete nor accurate, but there is more than enough to allow one to draw serious conclusions. Like the fact the year the most oil ever was discovered was 1964...
Regarding the Russian Abiotic Oil, it really doesn't matter whether it's for real or not, it's plainly obvious the Earth is NOT creating 85 million barrels of the stuff every day to feed our habit.
Re speculation, to be sure there is plenty of that, but I put it to you that were it not for the fact oil supplies are ultra tight, there would be none. Remember the days of $20 oil? Speculators were buying and gambling on oil futures back then.... so why didn't the oil skyrocket way back then?
Do you have a source for your Bass Straight 'filtered diesel' statement? MY understanding is that this oil was actually too thin to make diesel with but was perfect for making cheap petrol (hence we export it!) but that we need thicker oil to make diesel, and import both that and finished fuel. I was told this a very long time ago as an explanation as to why diesel here is more expensive than petrol, which at the time was the complete opposite to everywhere else. One thing I don't understand properly is why diesel now seems to be dearer than petrol everywhere..... unless of course demand is skyrocketing because so many cars now run on it due to these vehicles being so much more economical than petrol ones.
After giving us a lecture on the credibility of sources you have the nerve to write "I am aware of literally hundreds of wells sunk in and around Australia that were qualified by geophysicists prior to shafting, and simply capped without testing. I got this from several individual drillers. I believe them; I do not believe the corporations or government."
I hear stories like this all the time too when I broach this subject. I have a source. My father worked for TOTAL FINA way back in 1963/64 - interestingly, the years the most oil was ever discovered globally - and you know what? They didn't find a single drop of oil..... NOT ONE. If all this oil was just sitting out there waiting for us to exploit, don't you think the time is ripe to pull some out at $100+ a barrel? Don't you think oil companies would be falling over themselves to sell us the stuff? I put it to you there may well be at least three factors at play here: no oil, crap oil, or very slow flow rates. It's a well known fact in the industry that currently 90% of drillings are wildcats, ie duds..... even in Saudi Arabia. I read this on the Oil Drum which I think is a pretty good source.
And finally, we probably signed the Oil Parity Agreement so we could get a high price (for then!) for the oil we were exporting. I think it's called Capitalism/Globalisation. Don't worry though, both are on the verge of collapse.
A pessimist is a well informed optimist
Cause for alarm - Australia's population growth
I sent the following letters to The Age and to the Herald Sun on 6 Jun 08 in response to the 2 articles on this bad news re population growth in Australia and particularly Victoria (since they are Victorian rags.) I don't think either was published but I'm not completely sure.
Tim Colebatch's article "Population grows at record rate" The Age 6.6.08 is a smorgasbord of depressing numbers - no less for Victoria than other states. Whereas we used add one million to our national population about every 4 years - now we do it in 3. Victoria's population used to grow by some 60+ thousand per year and now it's over 80,000 in the last year recorded.
Population growth, especially at this rapid rate is self evidently and logically unsustainable. Even at this stage much of the country is water-stressed. Our current Federal Government appears as unlikely as its predecessor to curb this trajectory and alleviating population pressure on largely arid Australia will be left for governments of the future to deal with as crisis management - if they can.
This one went the The Herald Sun on the same day
The Victorian Treasurer's self congratulation in claiming credit to his government for Victoria's attributes as a great place to live and raise a family (H.S. 6.6.08 "Victoria's population booming") seems ingenuous given the well known existing and anticipated problems that population growth is causing in Victoria and the proposed controversial, environment threatening infrastructure projects resulting from this. e.g. desalination plant in Wonthaggi, road tunnels in inner Melbourne suburbs, and dredging in Port Phillip Bay to accommodate larger ships for increased cargo.
Mr Lenders, it is not much fun for families now spending so much time trying to protect their local environment when once they could just enjoy it.
Whalers fear Sea Shepherd but not Greenpeace
Thanks so much for posting Captain Watson’s plea to Greenpeace (GP) to help save the Whales from being slaughtered by the Japanese Whalers. It would be a History-making event if the two organizations would finally work together for the same cause at last. As you can see, Captain Watson has repeatedly in the past asked for GP to help and has been refused any cooperation from them. Thus, causing the death of more Whales while GP holds up Banners or rides on the backs of dead harpooned whales for photo-opportunities, until Sea Shepherd’s ship arrives to chase the Whalers away.
When the Whalers spy Sea Shepherd’s Ships, they run!They do not run from Greenpeace because they know that no action is taken to actually stop them …This past season 2007-2008, the Japanese Whalers even resorted to having military onboard hurling exploding flash grenades at our SSCS Crewmembers in retaliation to our harmless stink-bombs thrown onto the empty Flencing Deck where they cut up Whales on the Factory Ship, Nisshin Maru. One of the Japanese SWAT team (no doubt it had to be a crack marksman) shot Captain Watson in the left side of his chest exactly in the heart area. Fortunately, he was wearing a Kevlar Bullet-proof vest or he would have surely died. See www.seashepherd.org for the pictures of ships’s Doctor
digging out bullet from the Vest.
And our own Australian Government finally got around to sending a ship to ‘Document’ the Whale killing. Why would they need more pictures when there are decades of Documentation already? Surely more pictures still have not stopped Japan’s plans to continue Whale killing in the Antarctic, where again they will be adding Endangered Fin Whales to their list of nearly 1,000 Minke (Piked) Whales to be slaughtered. But will they leave our Humpbacks alone this year?
Barrier reef shark fishing could cause their extinction
Just because an activity has been going on for a long time, does not mean that it is presently sustainable or correct especially with the World's Shark population at a 90% decline.
The Shark along the area of the Great Barrier Reef do not “wander” or migrate, only living in that area. To continually remove shark for any reason now that there are only 10% of the number of Sharks on the Planet is foolhardy. So to state that there are millions of Shark, and if you take one another appears, is not correct and a false assumption. Because these creatures live in this area and take many years to mature, having only have one pup at a time, replenishing a supply of Sharks takes many decades. If shark fishing of any kind continues on the Great Barrier Reef and is expanded, these creatures will be wiped off the Planet. Sharks are vitally needed for the health of the Reefs.
Your statement that the Shark Fishery is well managed, is a point of view of the Fisheries Dept, and with the loss of 90% of the World's Sharks gone and many Species on the brink of extinction within the next few years due to Shark Fishing/Finning and Poaching, we cannot continue to allow any Sharks to be taken. The Fishery must be abolished to save the Sharks. We do not want to see any Sharks killed in Australia for any reason. There is an abundance of other foods to eat, and with Shark poaching rife, all Shark killing must be stopped.
The Coral Sea Marine Park must be established to save all marine life.
Barrier Reef a well managed (shark) fishery
Perhaps the permits are a way of managing the fishery which currently requires no special permits?
Shark fishing has been happening for a long time on the great barrier reef, a well managed fishery.
Recent laws require each fin to be accompanied by the rest of the shark, which is a huge positive.
I feel the attachment makes no distinction between shark species (more than 125 on the great barrier reef) and different shark habitats.
nor bases it's conclusions on any actual study.
Shark fishing IS sustainable, there are millions of them, when you kill one, another takes it's place.
The fact that many species are in decline is due to over-fishing, poor management and human population growth.
Maybe this media release, like the movie mentioned, focuses on the cruel slaughter of individual sharks (which is just like a dolphin with big teeth), rather than the problem: over fishing, over population.
Reduce immigration.
Loveless couples too broke to split
The Sunday Mail, in a story “Loveless couples too broke to split” with the by-line Sharing bills but trapped in ‘non-divorce’ by Hannah Davies reports:
A growing number of couples are choosing to stay in loveless relationships because they can’t afford to go it alone in the worsening economic climate.
The trend, dubbed the “non-divorce”, has resulted in married and de facto couples living together like passionless room-mates rather than spouses, ….
As mortgage and loan interest rates continue to rise, purse strings are tightening across the state. The average mortgage is now $300,000, carrying monthly repayments of $2168, and average rent is $260 a week for a modest unit on the Gold Coast, or $350-$400 for a house in Brisbane or on the Sunshine Coast. Add to this petrol surging past $1.50 a litre, and the weekly grocery bill going through the roof.
…
Relationships Australia counsellor Fiona Hawkins said … “I know a woman in her 50s who has a low-paying job, who feels she is going through the motions of a relationship, but will stay with her husband because the alternative is renting on her own.
“She feels sharing the house makes good financial sense because then the overheads burden is shared. Repairs, rates, and rents are usually the same no matter how many people live there.
… Dr Brian Sullivan, from the University of Queensland, said financial concerns could cause a couple to stay together even when the relationship was hostile.
“If a woman has children and she leaves her husband, she suddenly becomes the breadwinner,” he said. “When faced with this, a woman will often decide to stay in the relationship because if she was to leave she would be on the streets, with no viable means of support.”
Relationships Australia offers counselling to couples (in marriages of financial convenience). Phone 1300 364 277 for an appointment.
Speculation not major cause of oil price hikes
Hi Tony,
King Hubbert's calculations on oil peaks are proving more and more on the nose as time goes by. His calculations and others are explored by Seppo Korpela in the first edition of The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Press, 2005. In the second edition, coming out in September, and edited by myself, he has updated his calculations, retesting the Hubbert theory, and this confirms that we are probably in or around the peak at the moment, using the best knowledge and opinions available. There are also two articles by Colin Campbell, who is an expert in reserve estimations and discovery trends. In the first chapter of The Final Energy Crisis, Ed.2, 2008, which I wrote, I have looked at other indicators of trends, including measures of economic growth, and I write about the per capita oil production trend. I also look at the theory of energy decoupling of the economy and find it wanting. Speculation must account for some of the dollar price, but not for the failure to make large new accessible discoveries sufficient to keep our overpopulated world in oil in the style to which it has been accustomed. There are numerous other indicators, but you will have to buy the book.
:-)
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Copyright to the author. Please contact sheila [AT] candobetter org or the editor if you wish to make substantial reproduction or republish.
Should the NZ Greens not have been disqualified?
So it appears as if the New Zealand Green Party should not have been disqualified from Tim Murray's “most idiotic Green Party in the world” competition, after all. I was unable to locate any meaningful information about population and immigration on the NZ Greens web site www.greens.org.nz, so I would be interested in looking at the document referred to by Tim Murray.
Giving credit where credit is due and why the lesser evil should sometimes be chosen
I would take one issue with Kevin's informative contribution. I think in politics one should give credit where credit is due. One should also choose the lesser evil over the greater evil when there is no other choice. So, if I was in NZ, I think it is possible that I would still vote for the Greens before Labour and Labour before the Nationals (that is, assuming NZ's electoral system allows for preferential voting). One of a number of reasons I would choose to vote Labour is because the NZ Labour Government has recently renationalised NZ's rail and Ferry services (whilst their 'Labor' counterparts across the Tasman are moving in the opposite direction). That doesn't mean one should for a minute try to either conceal or excuse corruption and other flaws of 'lesser evil' political forces (although possibly, in the heat of an election campaign such as the 2007 Australian Federal elections, where we were trying to rid this country of the truly loathsome and incompetent Government of John Howard, we would not seek to dwell on the shortcomings of the opposition Labor Party.)
The NZ Greed Party
We regarded the Greed Party of New Zealand as one of the biggest bunch of hypocrites, liars and clowns on the planet until we read how useless other Green parties around the world are. Let me elaborate: Party leader Jeanette Fitzsimon (JF) has known about the peak oil issue as a defining issue of our time in considerable detail since around 2000, and in general terms for at least 20 years. She remained silent on the issue for years, then quite suddenly decided it merited public airing. At the 2005 election, having announced ‘peak oil’ banners from one end of the country to the other the Greed Party actually managed to produce election posters that had no mention of peak oil. and most people could not decypher any clear message at all from them. The party's literature over those months had virtually no mention of peak oil and was focused on peripheral matters, such as water quality of mountain streams and food labelling.
I was a guest speaker at a Sustainable Living Fair in April and took great exception to Jeanette Fitzsimon (many people refer to her a Genetic Fizzer etc., that's how low her rating now are) being a speaker, since just a few months earlier (Now 2006) she had given a speech about tourism being a sustainable industry with huge potential for growth — she was of course referring to people flying to NZ and taking bus and motor boat trips, not arriving by canoe and cycling round the country.
In April 2008 JF was pushing furiously to have the NZ government enact a totally unworkable bio-fuel policy by July of 2008. Now we all know that bio-fuels are nothing other than a scam (see Evo Morales re-nationalises energy and telecommunications companies, denounces biofuel-driven starvation - admin), and that the majority have marginally positive or negative EROEI. That's if any land can be found to grown them of course. Or fertiliser to promote growth — we are almost certainly at peak phosphorus as well as peak oil.
I vividly remember Sue Kedgley (a senior Greed Party MP) showing a film about industrial agriculture in 2005, but being more or less totally oblivious of the effect that peak oil would have on agriculture: indeed, I had the distinct impression she did not even know what peak oil was, and certainly was unaware it was supposed to be a major component of Greed Party policy.
More recently we have witnessed various rorts and wheeling and dealing amongst senior Greed Party members (Ron knows more than I do about that) including junket trips that consume nonrenewable resources and generate pollution in the worse place possible — the atmosphere. (Robert knows more details that I do on that one).
We usually refer the Green Party of New Zealand as the Greed Party because:
- the leadership is more interested in political gainsmanship and jockeying for position than in tackling issues;
- Greed MPs are notorious for taking junket trips here, there and everywhere;
- they pretend they can bring about revolution in thinking by making minimal tweeks to the present system — in other words they are quite prepared to sacrifice the future of young New Zealanders in order that they can continue to live the high life;
- the leadership is totally unprincipled and will bend policy in any direction if they think it politically expedient. We call it sleeping with the enemy; in the early years of this century the Greeds formed a loose coalition with Labour — a party that promotes global corporate agendas, globalisation, Genetically Engineered food etc. After having been stabbed in the back by Labour, the Greeds hang around looking for someone new to sleep with, like prostitutes hanging around street corners outside bars and pubs.
Oz oil - beware of suspect information sources
As long as we press our noses up against intensely selective and highly suspect sources of information, we will continue to fail to engage with the wider picture.
I have read fairly widely about peak oil and associated issues and my conclusion is that you guys are over-focused and, therefore, easily manipulated. You are in good company; about 6 billion people are doing likewise; that is, when three of those billions can take their minds off hunger long enough to think at all.
A word of warning, which I am sure you all know, but never apply… never believe anything said to you by the mass media, corporations, banking interests, the UN, academia or scientific institutions. In case you haven't noticed, all of these are now controlled by the same banker conglomerates who fund and administer the WTO, the WB, the IMF and the BIS. They are not your friend; and in fact that sector of the population that I would describe as wide awake, would identify this group as humanity's number one enemy. I refer, of course, to the Hills Samuel/Rothschild/Rockefeller led groups.
Peak Oil Alarmism?
Back to oil:
Sources I am more inclined to take seriously are individuals who are non-aligned, and who slip their esoteric knowledge out to those prepared to search for it. However, these people have widely divergent views. At one end of this spectrum we have peak oil alarmists (who may or may not be right). At the other we have the 'she'll be right' brigade. The reality is, there is not enough empirical data available to draw a firm conclusion. The whole issue is just not as simple as most would portray. For example, four of Russia's top geo-scientists joined others around the world to argue that oil is not fossil-based, but magma-based; and therefore, renewable. I must admit this leaves me incredulous, but I have learned to keep an open mind; especially as I am not aware of a single credible report on oil that correlates with others.
Meanwhile, there are more urgent matters at stake. If I recall the figures correctly, 70% of the current oil price is set by the NY futures market. This is insane, and has nothing to do with supply or other quantitative issues. Secondly, I am aware of literally hundreds of wells sunk in and around Australia that were qualified by geophysicists prior to shafting, and simply capped without testing. I got this from several individual drillers. I believe them; I do not believe the corporations or government. Moreover, 70% of the world's current oil is not pumped by the great oil companies, but by national interests; often government-owned. Their prices are low. In other words, the oil prices we hear quoted are first world globalised nations only.
Thirdly, our bass Strait diesel requires only filtering. It is high quality and cheap. Why is it higher priced than petrol?
Official figures show only one third of our oil is imported. My challenge to you guys is to identify the tankers that bring this here; and their manifests. The word I got from inside is that most imports are on paper only.
The necessisity for the resoration of tariffs
Finally, and most significantly, why did we ever sign the Oil Price Parity Agreement; wherein we have paid foreign prices for Australian oil. And of course, why do we not revoke this criminal piece of nonsense now?
By calculating our actual production costs, relative to Venezuelan, I estimate that our bowser price (sans tax) should be 12 cents per litre (Venezuela is equivalent to 6 cents). The savings generated by such a rationalisation would quickly pay for a pan-Australian standard rail system and saturation public transport. Our oil requirements would then fall dramatically. A second tier of savings could then finance alternative energy and technology research and development.
This, I believe is the direction we should be headed. In terms of current knowledge, it is feasible, economically viable and self-regulating, and addresses economic realities.
However, there is one exception. This will not be implementable, not will it be realistically utilisable, if we do not first restore tariffs. This is because the prime regenerative beneficiaries will be the manufacturing and family farming sectors. Tariff removal destroyed two thirds of our family farms and almost half of our manufacturing over a period of two and a half decades. This also cost three million full time jobs. Simply put, tariff restoration would regenerate all of these, and it would also cause a massive decline in imports, which would make UN/US-generated trade reprisals ineffective.
A bonus would be the creation of a firewall against imported recession. Incidentally, we need to do this anyway because Australia's imports are around 30% higher in value than our exports; which means we are already bankrupt and almost in the clutches of a foreclosing World Bank.
A final thought, to inspire urgency; the US has been reducing imports from China now for a year. This means our exports to China have been falling in tandem (as they must). Our politicians have been lying to us. We are now looking down the barrel of depression; especially if you consider government still has liabilities of 500 billion in unsecured/uncovered public service superannuation liabilities. Only the proposals I outlined can save us from that. So it is really just Hobson's choice.
I know nix about oil, so if any of you can proved evidence-based reasons why I should alter the above, I will be eternally grateful.
Green party
The New Zealand Greed politicians have had something like 3 children in the past 6 years, and they think nothing of flying around the world on junkets ....... and they help promote a retirement scam that relies on continued growth for the next 40 years
Robert
Choice has been removed
Darren,
Thanks for your article. You may not be aware of it, but the choice of living in the country is no longer there for many because big agribusiness and modern enclosures for so-called efficiency are forcing people off the land. One of the ways this has been done most recently is by disaggregating water from the land and forcing people to try to make unsustainable profits from farming or get out.
Have a look at two articles on this site:
Orwellian Waterworks: big-agribusiness and Victorian Gov, John Locke in Ellen Meiksins Wood's The Origin of Capitalism.
It is common to mistake a trend for a desire. In the industrial revolution people flocked to the cities as well, because they were chased from the land.
These trends are a feature of Anglo-capitalism and they will end when oil and coal run out.
You are right about power needing to be local, but the population growth is both unsustainable and democratically unmanagable. It is destroying our democracy, in my view. Good luck with your attempts to reestablish democracy locally.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Population growth drives development too fast to control
I have the same problem with these problems that are not problems, also with the people-centric thinking. Until/if we manage water shortage, it is a terrible problem with terrible repercussions. Also, none of the proposed solutions pay heed to the rest of the natural world and other animals; all our 'solutions' just take more for humans. The idea of Brisbane competing with Barcelona for the 'best people' conceives of a city as some kind of exchange house for manic enterprise. What about the other 99% of people who have to live there? What about the elderly people and children who need gardens, quiet and stability? What about the large number of people in dull jobs, who want to work fewer hours and have more time peacefully relaxing in a calm, pleasant natural environment?
I agree with the need to empower people locally, but if you have big business maniacly building all over the place, no-one local can stop them and residents would have to give up work and pleasure and spend all their waking hours making submissions to government and lobbying to stop the roads from being torn up and rebuilt and the subdivision to microscopic proportions of every neighbourhood. The reason for the impossible pace of development is the population growth. Without population growth developers would just go away. (God, I wish they would GO AWAY!)
And what about those of us who despair at what is happening to the birds and trees and other wildlife? What does the city hold for us, except more heartache. And the country is being torn up as well. So there is no-where for us to go.
people chose to live in cities
Thanks, Mike for reading the short article. I think your comment is about as long as the original op ed piece, obviously a poor reflection on the way I presented my concepts. People have chosen and are continuing to move into cities to live their lives -thankfully for the Sunshine Coast I might add. But that doesn't help the millions of Australians that live in our cities. Accordingly, I was seeking to take the experiences of urban life into relevant illustrations. Sadly, when living in the city you don't get too many opportunities to garden & farm - but that's a choice people make. Its my hope that by having a closer look at some of these lived experiences surrounding urban realities we might be able to move people to a better future. A future that is more sustainable. A future that does know its limits and bounds. And a future that enables more people to take more a lead over leading better lives. Mike, at present our State government is dependent upon 'growth' for 41% of its current tax revenues some $4.2billion, how do you think we should restructure our state economy & revenues to take the need for growth out of the need for government?
Brisbane, Livable?
Goodness me Darren, I have a problem with your non-problems...
The drought isn't a problem? Did you REALLY mean to say that? The "failure to have water management" is just part of the issue. It's much much more complex than that. Wivenhoe Dam is in the wrong place (if you want water storage). It's a flood mitigation dam. It was built post 1974 flood to catch the 1 in 100 year flood that comes down the Brisbane. Other than that, it almost never rains there. So you start plugging houses into this dam, and you'll empty it, FOR SURE! I know, I was involved in its design when I worked for the then Irrigation and Water Supply Commission.
Being creative with 'management' will only work if you stop the growth. Twice as many houses consuming half the current water each STILL consumes the same amount. What then? Halve the consumption again? Besides, this drought, whilst not caused specifically by climate change, is certainly worsened by it, and cities are greatly responsible for elevated levels of consumption which cause elevated levels of greenhouse emissions.
"The skyrocketing price of petrol isn't a problem, the failure to unhitch our city economy from car dependency is the problem." Oh really? Do you realise we pour more petrol into our refrigerators than our cars? Even if we all gave up our cars (like I did) Peak Oil (and the resulting price hikes) will cause us all sorts of pain. I've left Brisbane because it's a terrible place to grow your own food. The soil's crap, the allotments are too small, and there's not enough water..... we thumb our noses at water restrictions here on the Sunny Coast..... we have nearly 50,000 litres in our water tanks, and they fill up at the sight of clouds!
The problems, Darren, really come when we ignore that we are living on a finite planet with finite resources, and then consume everything at an exponentially growing rate.
A pessimist is a well informed optimist
supply and demand reality
Oil is an exhaustible natural resource. The easy to extract and process half has already been burnt in a short period of time. There is plenty of talk about 'supply and demand' but little mention of the fact that geophysical factors have an increasingly strong influence on supply. There is plenty of speculation on why the price of oil has risen so strongly but little on the fact that exploration and extraction costs have also risen very rapidly. The industry have to face that supply reality, though, of course, they say little about this in case it depresses their shareholders. The days of 'cheap oil' are over. That is the reality even though our leaders are not prepared to face it - publicly.
Petrol: It's the law of supply and demand, stupid!
This was posted by Judy Bamberger (bamberg[AT]eaglet.rain.com 02 62476220) to her local newspaper.
While our politicians contest who can spit the dummy further over petrol-related taxes, they drive and fly, fly and drive, burning oil at unsustainable rates. Australians consume nearly 50% more oil than the average, nearly 10-times than our nearest neighbour, Indonesians, 50% more than Brits.
While we whinge about the price of petrol, we consume oil excessively. Price-per/L is a miniscule percent of per-capita income, far less than about 80% of other nations, six times less than Indonesia, about 50% less than the UK.
Our politicians waste energy, media, time, and oil arguing and blaming each other, concocting tax-saving stunts. And the price of oil (and petrol) rises. The GST on the excise tax (3.8-cents/L), the excise tax (38-cents/L), GST entirely (16-cents/L) - even if we cut all these, barely 50-cents, economists predict the price of petrol will exceed AU$2.00/L by year-end.
Since 2001, oil increased five-fold (US$25/bbl to US$130/bbl); at the bowser, prices have barely doubled.
Wake up, Australia: The price of petrol is high, and it will go only higher. As much as it pains our pocket books, we pay the average world-wide price; half what many Europeans pay.
"It's the law of supply and demand, stupid," as the saying goes. You want to spend less on petrol? STOP DRIVING.
If kangaroos are pests, why are they on our coat of arms?
Kangaroos should be taken off our Coat of Arms and their symbolic use as emblems of Australia for sporting clubs and businesses should be banned. They are considered by our government and land-owners as a pest to be wiped out. Canberra's mascots were systematically executed by bureaucratic "experts" as a form of population control. They are constantly blamed for the damage actually done by livestock industries and feral animals. They are being vilified and hated by so many otherwise patriotic and kind-hearted Australians. They have been hounded and relentlessly hunted for their meagre amount of flesh, and for their skins, for over 170 years.
Over 3.5 million are ambushed and shot each year across Australia in a so-called humane and sustainable industry, and overall their numbers are crashing. The killed ones are getting younger as prime males are being eradicated and now are more likely to be females. These gentle, proud and fascinating animals are being treated as a plague, and disease, to be hunted out of existence due to the pure hatred aimed at them! Joeys are just bashed until dead, or left to die slowly.
Kangaroos are ancient animals that actually help soils and grasses, and they have learned to live in perfect harmony on frugal and seasonal food and water supplies. If they are dying of starvation in their own habitat then it speaks volumes of the damage we humans have inflicted on our country since Colonial times!
Instead of believing this industry's claims and at the same time condemning Japan for atrocities against whales, we should stop our hypocrisy and fix up the mess in our own back-yards! Our ancient and iconic animals are unwelcome and unwanted in their own land! We have betrayed them and so morally we should not use their profile to represent Australia.
Gross animal abuse - intensive farming