Comments

I hope that the people responsible for making the policies that force growth on Victorians (and Australians) will one day be put on trial for the great harm they have done to our society and ecology. There will be a lot of consequences - including homelessness and starvation - for which their policies will clearly be responsible. Candobetter.net has an important function of putting on record the people responsible for our suffering and the abrogation of our rights to self-government. These people who profit so opportunistically in power and wealth from their positions as growth facilitators occupy positions in the media, in corporations, including banks, in universities, and in all levels of government.

The ANF has documented unsafe conditions for nurses and patients in Victorian hospitals, yet Fairwork Australia has suspended nurses industrial action, claiming that it threatens safety. Why didn't Fairwork find the employers guilty of causing the unsafe conditions that caused the industrial action in the first place? What threatens safety in Victorian hospitals is the ridiculously low staffing levels in the wards and the top-heavy 'project' oriented self-aggrandizing management above the people who have significant patient contact. Really, you could get rid of a lot of the management - notably the people with little or no medical or nursing background - and run hospitals more leanly and efficiently with a greater compliment of hands-on staff. The reason this isn't being done is that management and the government prevent hands-on staff from communicating directly with the public about deteriorating conditions in hospitals. In that way money continues to be diverted away from nurses and patients and into paper projects. One of the growing burdens which nurses and doctors carry in addition to their patient load is the paperwork imposed on them in order to justify the employment of managers with briefs to measure and justify in pseudo scientific and accounting terms the processing of patients through the system. Here's how to be more efficient: reduce the paperwork The other day I heard a psychiatric nurse say, "It would be so much easier if we only had four patients each, instead of five or six, but, if we didn't have to do all this paperwork, I could easily look after ten." She added that she spent most of the day in the office writing about her patients rather than outside the office with them. A nurse who was trained in India said that they had a much higher ratio of patients to nurses there, but almost no paperwork. There should be a happy medium, but you can be sure that, if hospitals keep such a huge totem-pole of middle and upper management and their administrators, nurses will never reach it and our conditions will continue to go down. In psychiatry the patient load and the bed situation is made so much worse by paperwork that it is really hard to attract nurses or doctors. Then on top of this the cost of training has become prohibitive. You have to work almost full time while doing expensive post grad courses from which you emerge with a colossal debt and then you have to work in these rotten conditions where stress, writers' cramp and repetitive strain injury are growing hazards - largely unrecognised. These conditions make it inevitable that hospitals will seek foreign-qualified workers, but many of those workers cannot handle the rotten conditions either, and so the turnover is huge.

After that earlier comment I had to undertake a long car trip. Along the way you notice the price of petrol, generally $1.50 a litre (I'm sure that figure will seem quaint soon). But at one stop it was $1.60 a litre, which provoked expressions of outrage. I tried to point out that viewed objectivally even at 1000 times that price it would be cheap. One of the most perfect fuels known to man, hundreds of man hours of hard physical labor per litre, priced cheaper than bottled water? Go into the service stations and $3 might buy you a can of cola, $4.50 a small salad sandwich. Viewed objectivally, can you really say a litre of this marvellous fuel is worth half a can of cola or a third of a salad sandwich? When I mentioned this insight, the topic was turned to the advances in renewable energy. I'm sorry, but from what I've read wind or solar or biofuels won't be enough to power even a small sedan at a price the average Australian could afford, probably ever. I don't own a car myself, but it hasn't escaped my notice how most people get a car when they turn 18 or 20. Its seen as unremarkable, expected almost. Can you imagine what would happen if private car ownership became the preserve of the rich? I can't, it doesn't bear thinking about given how dependent our culture is on private car ownership (which you'll admit is a great convenience). Of course this is old news to anyone who has read up on peak oil, but the average Australian (or Canadian, or American) hasn't really thought about this at all.

Perhaps we need to beware of 'the brightest and the best' playing stupid and remaining electively mute in the face of what could somehow be simple, obvious and real regarding both the nature of the human species and the finite, frangible planetary home we inhabit. We face a culture of silence with regard to the growth of the human population on Earth. As a consequence, a colossal, human-induced tragedy is being precipitated in our time. But this is not the whole problem being utterly avoided. Even among top-rank scientists with appropriate expertise, extant scientific research of human population dynamics and overpopulation is being willfully ignored. Attractive preternatural thought and specious ideologically-driven theory by non-scientists, namely demographers and economists, about the nature of the human population have been widely shared and consensually validated in the mainstream media during my lifetime. This unscientific thought and theory is not only misleading but also directly contradicted by scientific evidence toward which first-class scientists have “turned a blind eye” for way too long. That is to say we have two challenges to confront and overcome. The first is the culture of silence. The second is the deliberate collusion within a sub-culture of experts who have determined not to acknowledge, examine and report on vital scientific research. Some scientists have referred to “the first challenge” as revealing the facts of “the last taboo”. What I am asking scientists to do is address “the last of the last taboos” by reviewing and reporting findings of unchallenged scientific research of human population dynamics from two outstanding scientists, Hopfenberg and Pimentel(2001), Hopfenberg(2003, 2009). At least to me, it appears the denial of the population issue by people everywhere and the denial of scientific research of human population dynamics/overpopulation by scientists with adequate expertise have resulted in a betrayal of humanity and science itself. This failure of intellectual honesty and moral courage among so many so-called experts with unaccepted responsibilities to assume and unfulfilled duties to perform is as unfortunate as it is unprecedented. A good enough future for children everywhere appears to be at risk on our watch and we are bearing witness now and here, I suppose, to the way silence ‘kills’ the world.

Everything within me makes one thing crystal clear: among the species of Earth only human beings with feet of clay possess the capability to honestly, consciously, courageously and deliberately behave in ways that run counter to their strongest drives. Evidence for this statement has been occurring ubiquitously since of the first days of Homo sapiens on Earth, I suppose. As we know, our species has exploded to seven billion in the 'blink of an eye'. Is it not inconceivable that at least some small percentage of human beings have always been acting and continue to act in ways that provide evidence of the subjugation of the most powerful of their instincts to their even more formidable capacity to think, judge and will. I would go so far as to guess that not one day in human history has passed without a human being overcoming what is instinctual.

Our instincts to survive individually and to propagate the human species globally are the most potent instincts. But in our time these instincts, that have served humankind so well from our earliest days on Earth, appear to reached a point in space-time when they are pernicious and dangerous to future human well being, life as we know it, and the planet as a fit place for the children to inhabit. Among the species in our planetary home, perhaps human beings are the first species ever to be in the position of precipitating a massive extinction event. So gifted, well-endowed and unique a species as Homo sapiens, one that appears to be potentiating some sort of unimaginable global ecological wreckage, can surely begin making necessary changes in behavior for the sake of the future human well being.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
established 2001
Chapel Hill, NC
www.panearth.org

Hi I have just finished watching on Nat Geo..... (Foxtel) a documentary called Kangarro Kaos... And i Have been watching the great Job the team in Anglesea , Melbourne have been doing... please may you send them my blessings for a job very well done... i am an animal lover, who would love to work with animals and rescue them... I wish there were more people like the couple i had just watched, yourself and your work collegues, who care for animals and go out of there way to rescue them... More power to u all... i live in Campbellfield and have a larg creek that is home to many Kangaroos who have been trapped in that space because of all the construction that has been built in the area.... And everytime i see a Kangaroo that has been hurt by a vehicle on one of the road... It breaks my heart... Cos this is there land just as much as ours...i wish i lived on acreage,,, cos the kangaroos would of been more than welcome to make my land there home.... HOW anyone could hurt and animal intentionally iwill never and could never understand.... Please once again send my blessing to the team at Anglesea, cos they touch my heart while watching the show with there great work.... And please don't forget the rest of your collegues and ur self....i wish you all great health to continue helping and saving the kangaroos, and i'm sure other injured animals u may cum accross. All the best Mr Dion Cassar

"If it were waterways and coastal areas directly threatened by population growth we would see no action." They are directly affected, and we don't see any action. The blatant and extreme horror now underway in Gladstone Harbour is a classic example. One thing approximating action that we do see is the public funding of community groups for the purpose of 'monitoring' and 'recording' cumulative effects of development AFTER it is given un-retractable entitlement regardless of its operational effects. Such essentially pointless process is often one of the 'sustainability' conditions attached to the approval. Those 'stewardship' groups then effectively become grassroots allies of the development process as a reflex, and often as a necessity, of protecting their funding streams. Without access to these skinny piss-streams of public money their ongoing existence, ersatz sense of identity and grotesquely meaningless internal power structures cease to exist. Within this disturbed reality they've come to know the helpless witnessing of the death of a needlessly doomed eco-system as a 'positive contribution'. Naysaying the process with notions of simple reality is not tolerated. It's all too awful to be co-incidental isn't it?

We are but a miniscule factor in an immense equation. Quite remarkably though, we actually do have some choice toward factoring ourselves in or out of that equation. Somehow we have come to construe this remarkable capacity as a central power and an inalienable right toward our permanence. This is a bizarrely petulant, arrogant and profoundly wrong estimation of things. It effectively directs what little choice we do have in the matter toward us being ejected from the play. If, as an un-attached entity, you'd paid to see this little production over its millennia long development, would you view this cumulative aspect as a highlight of comedy or of tragedy? I guess that would depend upon how we, collectively, might present as being intrinsically likeable or worthwhile. Are we worthy of being liked, or thought valuable, by an entity that has no attachment to us? I think that perhaps we once we may have been. However time has come to pass such that few of us even know or like ourselves any more. God knows how we might appear to an alien sensibility. It's hard to perceive just where the necessary redemption might come from. A lot of baggage needs to stripped away before anything of true value can again be reliably understood. This stripping back will make an endless pulling of bandaids from hair seem like a luxurious experience.

The US Foreign Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act requires details of all foreign purchases of farm land to be notified and registered. China itself prohibits private foreign ownership of farm land as does the Philippines. The Federal Government should more closely scrutinise foreign purchases, such as landmark Victorian property Larundel, which was recently sold to Chinese investors. Sales are shrouded in secrecy and subject to strict confidentiality agreements. Potential investors don't have to apply for permission to invest in land sales of less than $231 million - in stark contrast to other countries. Particularly as food security becomes more of a focus, it is foolish not to establish a register of foreign purchases to track the level of ownership. A register does nothing to actually protect our land. It's just journaling the sales. Australia is not a nation any more but is being down-graded to an international land and natural resource repository for over-populated countries. Our pioneers worked hard for naught, and our Anzac fore-bearers fought, and died, in vain! All that matters now is short-term profits at the expense of long term sustainability. Our government is simply an agent for the benefit of the global community, and their survival. Australia is the sacrificial lamb to the slaughter - and political correctness ensures that we don't mention it! It's more than a conspiracy theory. It's becoming a clear reality. We are to conglomerated with China and India, and we will become another part of the Asia Pacific region - not a sovereignty. Our land, the substance of our national and natural heritage, is being sold off under our feet. What about the traditional owners of the land? Are they concerned the land of their forebearers is going overseas? It's not just about the money, jobs or profits. Land has intrinsic value, and is our "home" - along with the biodiversity it supports. Our government is guilty of betrayal of Australia's interests. Hardly anything we eat or wear or use is made here now. We are just a land of consumers, of parasites, an international resource. Our government is trying fast to globalize our resources, and Australia will then be abandoned as a generic, nondescript part of Asia's economic growth. What other reason for allowing an iconic property to be sold?

Climate change surprise: High carbon dioxide levels can retard plant growth, study reveals at http://news.stanford.edu/pr/02/jasperplots124.html also at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/12/021206075233.htm

"Writing in the journal Science, researchers concluded that elevated atmospheric CO2 actually reduces plant growth when combined with other likely consequences of climate change – namely, higher temperatures, increased precipitation or increased nitrogen deposits in the soil".

"A small but growing body of research is finding that elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, while increasing crop yield, decrease the nutritional value of plants. More than a hundred studies, for example, have found that when CO2 from fossil-fuel burning builds up in plant tissues, nitrogen (essential for making protein) declines. A smaller number of studies hint at another troubling impact: As atmospheric CO2 levels go up, trace elements in plants (such as zinc and iron, which are vital to animal and human life) go down, potentially malnourishing all those that subsist on the plants. "

The Food, the Bad, and the Ugly
at http://eartheasy.com/article_food_bad_ugly.htm

If we have massive and chronic skills shortages, why are so many foreign students lured here? Surely it means we have a world class standard of education, in TAFES and universities? If our educational standards are so high and attractive, why do we have "skills shortages"? It's not lack of universities, but lack of support and high costs of study. Institutions have become dependent on foreign income, and the ideals of education have been corrupted by fees. Surely it's an irony that we have "skills shortages" yet at the same we time attract students from all over the world for our presumably high standard of education? It's a contradiction due to having our resources globalized.

This article is in depth and covers the neglect as well as the aid that overseas students receive, where applicable. Bandicoot, you're right about the media not mentioning enough about international students - now that the numbers of them are so high and the industry is so big, there might be less in the news about them, which is suspect... But go back say five years ago, there were features in the paper(s) about how they might feel targeting and items about how oh, they're really not that rich at all and with a bit of bias, how they're 'good for our economy'. But to be more to the point - the immigration 'debate' and mentions in the media ONLY cover re: asylum seekers and the immigration department's dealings in that area. It is a perfect and strategic SMOKESCREEN for the REAL immigration coming into the state and the country, which is of the overseas students! Ha! Yep. One would have to be daft as well as dumb to believe that immigration numbers are coming from 'boat people'... No way. Economic migrants make up the unnatural population growth that is causing stress to so many aspects of our lives i.e childcare places, school places, parking spots, our human right to housing. If anything pop' growth is broken down and reported like it's a good thing while, yeah, students who later apply for residence pass easily through the immigration application. But the frightening facts of their visa fine print - which might cause some relief for some foreign students - of not being encouraged to hold onto their supposed AU$75,000 their meant to have on them when they apply for the visa and not even having to present a return air ticket has and can, as you've experienced, backfire - big time - to the point where the Imm' Dept and even hospitals wash their hands of a foreign visa holder, and so does an Embassy or Consulate! There could be a lot of this happening, what with agencies here and abroad promoting the work hours they're allowed to have while enrolled in a full-time course, implying that it's easy to earn money here, but for those not used to even working, let alone managing grocery shopping and cooking and dealing with housemates, all this could be super super stressful. How many say Asian nationals end up completely destitute and vagrant, while still being 'legal', in the country, while too 'sick' or even too homeless to contribute labour in the workforce... We don't need more homeless in Australia, especially any that are still legals in the country with student visas that don't have much tied to studying or to the course institution itself, if one hasn't paid the fees they need to pay. Of course, the media don't relay these facts and figures to its audience. It might be charities/groups like the one you've listed that would have experience with foreign visa holders as they encounter huge financial stresses and other, stresses. A lot comes down to the support to our own universities and State-run Tafes which has had funds denied to them. The overseas student industry should be 90% canned and where they are allowed here, they should be expected to return home and not allowed to work here, meaning they are genuine about the course they are studying while the visas given to them being harder to get, requiring a ticket home and sufficient funds in an Australian bank account. The main scam, I suppose, is that the industry goes hand in hand with the immigration State governments rely upon, as we have the highest immigration rate in the developed world! We don't need either (or the same) group in this country. We have enough people who want qualifications and people in general here; we in Vic just need to have other viable industries, and not property development and the lust for cheap labour across many sectors that new residents bring. Our hospitals aren't being expanded and more resources being offered to them to even keep up with the demand on them, so we do have enough work just with our own young people and their needs in terms of health, accomodation and social support, let alone foreigners with family problems! It's not for us to be helping them here, really, but they are being scammed.

The theme you hear from the green left is that more people is good, but we can reduce our environmental footprint at the same time as increasing the population if we keep cutting back our consumption. I've spoken to some people who remember the post-WWII rationing in Britain. Very mild austerity measures, nobody was denied the essentials. Yet they caused immense resentment and people could hardly wait to get rid of them. People will not tolerate any kind of voluntary austerity measures, it seems to go against human nature. They will not voluntarily cut back their consumption. And do you see the trendy green left making anything more than token measures to reduce their consumption? Involuntary austerity though is another matter, and may be coming as resource depletion kicks in.

Well said Tim. Suzuki has been MIA on the subject of how the livestock industry impacts climate and the environment as well. For sure he would lose followers and donors if he dared tell the truth for a change. Instead he promotes the scam that carbon dioxide causes climate change, when there is a plethora of proof that it has not the slightest impact on climate compared to the Sun, the biggest driver. Besides 97% of all GHG is water vapour, do you think that the 3% of the remaining 3% GHG is such a big deal? Without carbon there would be no life and the more carbon the more life flourishes, especially flora. Overpopulation AND unsustainable consumption are massive problems we need to deal with but he fails to acknowledge the former, which is the pink elephant in the room. Menkit

Agent Provocateur says:

Yes the really inconvenient truth is that a biological urge prevents the commonsense necessary for humanity to rectify matters.

It would take a huge shift in consciousness - a grand marketing scheme - to get women to see a bigger picture - one of survival of a species - not just the 'Jones' Genes'.

I implore everyone to listen to the sound file linked below from the most recent program of Hindsight on Radio National: Malthus and the New World at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight/stories/2011/3349279.htm

In it, historian Alison Bashford reveals the full breadth of Malthus' work. Pertinent to the quote above is his deep interest toward the population constraints traditionally employed by various cultures, and his recognition of the vital nexus between these population constraints and the maintenance of a viable balance between local human demand and local subsistence yields.

Furthermore, Malthus articulated very detailed concerns regarding the aggressive application of colonial population growth toward the rapid increase of colonial economic output as well as toward the displacement of traditional owners.

It appears it was these profoundly spectacular rates of colonial population growth that stimulated the base of his concern for future maintenance of adequate land and food supply. However it would also appear that these huge growth rates very soon found their way back to the homelands in concert with the bounteous importation of natural resources and the escalation of urbanised industrial process.

It is imperative to note that Malthus saw rampant population growth as a concern that was NEW to his time, and thus one that urgently needed to be newly understood, lest starvation and pestilence possibly soon follow. He did not perceive it as a natural or an historical legacy. Neither should we.

Accounts of this 'modernity', and historical peculiarity, of widespread population growth by Malthus, and by various others, have been broadly obscured and distorted. In this and other ways we have been led into the belief that human population growth is, and always has been, a completely normal, inevitable function of society. This view is fatally debilitating to the effective pursuit of necessary and achievable reform.

Widespread misunderstanding of Malthus sees him largely as a misanthrope and an ideologue rather than as a person of fundamental goodwill and incisive perception and insight. This is most directly a product of the huge size of his comprehensive 1803 published work. Due to the sheer costs of its production, this work has most often been re-published in abbreviated form. Even 'complete' versions have commonly had 10 chapters abridged. The full work is extremely rare.

Many scholars, let alone lay commentators, are unaware that they've never fully read nor considered the extent of what Malthus was actually on about. The 'Malthus was wrong!' acolytes that shallowly overpopulate most internet forums suddenly take on an even more vacantly derivative appearance.

Hi again Richard It might be useful at this point to say that my concerns on this particular matter cause me immensely deep frustration. Public discourse upon base reality, to the extent it occurs at all, is fraught with conceptual disconnects. The opportunity cost of this, at this stage of global 'progress', is absolutely unaffordable. Monbiot's contribution to this state of disconnect is simply not tolerable. A desperate need exists for him, and other similarly prominent people, to boldly join the dots regarding the true nature of events underway. We do not need him to help maintain a pointillised and misleading view of its image. Relatively very few prominent identities actively speak on behalf of sustainability, in its genuine rather than its corporate construct. Those who do, or who might seem to, attract the disaffected to their broadcast views like moths to a sentinel streetlight. Those thus attracted most often simply accept and reflect the illuminations provided by the popular identity. They tend not to investigate or challenge the underlying wavelengths. They are content to congregate, somewhat faithfully, in the 'light' provided. Accordingly, if these sentinel speakers do sincerely care for ecologically viable outcomes, they have a grave responsibility to seek, and to duly account for, ALL of the vitally applicable facts. Monbiot presents himself within this field as a genuine thinker, not a cult leader or an apologist. It is terribly disheartening then when he fails to connect elements that are utterly basic to the argument, and then also maintains an advantaged offensive toward those who do. Thereby he assists ongoing refraction within the debate and the attendant marginalisation of those few who are able to challenge their personal 'reality' with the application of very simple arithmetic. Whether intentional or not, he helps to preserve the status quo by wrongly refracting its opposition and their arguments. Monbiot's statements reveal a stunning, and apparently a stubborn, ignorance toward the vital relationship between energy, population and consumption. These are the base elements of the primary sustainability equation. His discordant summations upon these factors, which he obtusely keeps in separation from each other, serve directly to support continuing growth in both population and consumption. Your quote of Monbiot ("Yes, population growth contributes to environmental problems. No, it is not the decisive factor. etc.") displays this disconnection perfectly. Quite evidently grain availability drives population increase, which must then drive consumption and the demand for more livestock and thus more grain, and so on. Economic growth. Hallelujah! Monbiot's dismemberment of such basic reality sequencing is astonishingly stupid, if it is not disingenuous. His nuclear advocacy is an expansion of this basic stupidity, which must be borne of wilful ignorance as Monbiot is essentially not stupid. The actual nature of this will is unknown. This advocacy for power 'generation' to be pursued via 'clean' nuclear rather than 'dirty' fossil means is premised upon current demand being too great to be plausibly transitioned to renewables. So Monbiot is underwriting current consumption levels. Without an explicit disclaimer, which I've not heard him make as he spouts this line, his deference to the status quo also implies an expansion of 'generation'. Continuing, let alone expanding, current levels of energy consumption is a destructive nonsense. It is grossly debilitating in terms of any critical indicator one might choose - consumption, population, natural system depletion, deployment of renewable production systems etc. - no matter what the means of its provision. To be ecologically credible he should in fact be arguing strenuously and unequivocally FOR system wide powerdown. Socio-economic powerdown can be easily construed to fit in neatly with Monbiot's recognised need for better economic re-distribution, and with his attendant concerns regarding over-consumption. No discernible conflict exists except against the currently over-riding political weight of a status quo that is largely informed and directed by elite resource owners and their highly paid managers. However undue concern for this elite interest creates an ultimately worthless dilemma. No successful revolution has ever been endorsed by the outgoing elite. Why bother with any activism if this endorsement is a benchmark for identifying necessary change? To predicate necessary change upon its support by elites, one must be either feeble-minded, frightened or fed by them. As an aside, Monbiot's position on nuclear power is an evident example of how people's minds are addled by the climate change issue. It occupies their consciousness as a discrete and predominate monster to be shot dead with specially fabricated silver bullets. In fact it is a pervasive symptom of our dysfunctional socio-economic structure. The enemy is us and we must fundamentally change what we do and how much we do of it. We cannot continue to do these exact same things even faster, whilst merely seeking to execute them in notionally 'cleaner' ways. Campaigning for 'clean', 'sustainable' energy futures devoid of any meaningful power-down is akin to calling for rape to be legitimised on the condition that perpetrators must wear condoms. It supposes that our generally violent and degrading acts of energetic excess are permissable, just as long as our carbon ejaculates are, more or less, contained. This is errant bunkum. We have to acknowledge the the landscape and cultural rape inherent within our socio-economic form, and attend diligently to the necessary elements of reform. Our excess energy consumption is probably THE key element. It drives the growth process. More essentially it upsets our metaphysical health and balance. Excessive power makes us overly full of ourselves and thence fatally self-indulgent. No evidence exists anywhere that we can respond otherwise. Accordingly I find Monbiot's commentary maddeningly facile. In the very considerable time that he has to think about things, he could do much better. I have to wonder why he doesn't.

Michael Ball and his business partner sold their property in NSW, but they never suspected a South Korean steel giant was buying it. The firm that bought the farm was registered less than two months ago as Aurelius Rural, which has also bought a property of about 90ha. After the settlement, they found out the vendors were acting on behalf of a coal firm more than 70 per cent owned by South Korea's POSCO. Land, housing, industries, businesses, manufacturing, mining, and prime agricultural properties are all up for grabs! There's a conspiracy theory that Australia is to be denuded as a global resource. That's why there's no long-term planning, and "sustainable" is just a throw-away word with no meaning. We as a nation are disposable, with a use-by-date. If our population blows out to unsustainable numbers, the fall will be dismissed as unfortunate, due to "natural" disasters. There's no future in Australia as it has been known. We are becoming international land, and a global natural resource to plunder and eventually be abandoned. The "winners" will be the economic giants of China, Arabic nations and India. It's about global predation on weak governments like we have in Australia. Our sovereignty and food chains are being dissolved by foreign investors. Patriotism doesn't exist now, except in small (but retro) pockets of the older population.

The program available at the link below is an absolute must for anyone interested in the population debate. Podcast Historian Alison Bashford reveals that Malthus' very large 1803 work has most often been published with about 10 chapters deleted to minimise production costs. This has caused his work, and his concerns generally, to be very substantively misunderstood. The negative scorn so regularly, and often so conveniently, heaped upon him is a direct product of this incomplete view of his work.

Maribyrnong City Council is the only one in Australia that has a peak oil contingency plan. See Maribyrnong Oeak Oil Contingency Plan "Our team worked closely with council staff to assess council’s operations and vulnerability to oil supply constraints. This process led to the identification of ten service areas considered most vulnerable to either a short or long term reduction in available fuel supplies". With local councils being forced to accommodate population growth rather that any real future planning, they are preoccupied with ensuring profits for developers and bankers, not with the "inconvenience truths" of reality. On a Federal level, there is more concern about "skills shortages" than food, fertilizer and oil shortages. Releasing land for housing, over fertile land in the driest continent on the planet, is being given priority. The Occupy Wall Street movement is also part of the great denialist movement. Businesses and corporations are running our government, for ransom. The warped and fatalistic policies and ignorance coming from our governments is mind-boggling and they are prepared to sacrifice our long term welfare for short-term profits and economic benefits.

I supported the Greens last election but unfortunately I think this was a mistake now. Has the green party ever been in favor of population stabilization? There's a 1998 policy statement in which they proudly stated they rejected the concept of zero net immigration. Their latest policy statements on the subject have backed away from that a little, but nowhere can I find any serious consideration of population stabilization. The greens, labor and liberals may make vague allusions to the end of population growth, but none of them actually believe its ever going to happen.

Hi Richard sorry I've not yet replied to your initial comment. I've had insufficient time to do so which remains the case. A short summary response in lieu of a longer one which will hopefully be possible before too long. You will note that my article stated, "Monbiot's view (on Nuclear power) reeks similarly of evidence that he is, in fact, a closet growthist." I'm suggesting that a case can be made for him being, somewhat covertly but very effectively, a growthist. I did not say that he definitely is one. The basic problem I have with him is that the fundamental contradictions apparent within his published viewpoints are simply too great to be easily accepted from someone as intelligent as he quite clearly is. However it may be that he isn't so smart after all. I'm willing to accept that possibility. It is also likely that, as smart as he is, he doesn't think all that deeply about things. Perhaps the very considerable pressures of media market-place convention and critical popularity keep him overly close to the conceptual surface. Neither should we ever underestimate the intellect's subliminal action toward constructing rational supports for those things we take for granted within our lives. Social and physical mobility are held as sacramental rights by the 'green ' intelligentsia. They are energy intensive sacred cows to be preserved at nearly any cost. Sorry that this is not as definitive or as illustrative as it could/should be. Hopefully I can manage that better a bit later.

Link for list of charities including some that contribute to population control: http://nonprofit.about.com/od/fordonors/tp/globalpovertygiving.htm

"nothing can be gained by denying it as part of any equation of human impact on the environment or on humans themselves." - I don't think Monbiot does that Quark, in his article he states ; "Yes, population growth contributes to environmental problems. No, it is not the decisive factor. Even the availability of grain is affected more by rising livestock numbers and the use of biofuels – driven, again by consumption – than by human population growth." Whilst he agrees that population causes environmental problems I think he is being very politically correct, too politically correct. Whereas he has in the past advocated a Steady State Economy, he has never elucidated one of the core factors of SSE, which Herman Daly has no problems doing. Daly's article in "Solutions" magazine of Feb 2010 (http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/556) - called "From a Failed-Growth Economy to a Steady-State Economy sets out 10 principles to gradually move towards SSE. "The goal of a steady state is to sustain a constant, sufficient stock of real wealth and people for a long time." There is a very basic flaw in the Ecological Footprint method - it does not allow 1 square metre of land anywhere on the planet for species other than human beings. So even that "formula" is destined to fail, other growthist reasoning destined to fail are explained by Daly ; "Without growth, the only way to cure poverty is through sharing. But redistribution is anathema. Without growth to push the hoped-for demographic transition, the only way to cure overpopulation is by population control. A second anathema. And without growth, the only way to increase funds to invest in environmental repair is by reducing current consumption. Anathema number three. Three anathemas and you’re out!" Monbiot's recent acceptance of a Steady State appears to show a big gap in his usual flawless analysis, because perhaps, as Daly states, they are mainly regarded as anathema, and as he opens his article ; "The level of physical wealth that the biosphere can sustain in a steady state may well be below the present level.", somewhat contradicting Dick Cheney and his famous quote that "The American way of life is non negotiable". However, as many people have since stated, nature does not negotiate, perhaps another issue Monbiot has not "absorbed". I have no way of knowing this, and in no way want to be an apologist for Monbiot, but his stance could be taken from a point of view of what is acceptable to the masses, and accepting of the fact that people will want to take their "trinkets" into any future that is proposed, i.e. we must provide nuclear energy so that we can still watch our flatscreens. I fully agree that population is being manipulated as a "lever" to allow rising GDP to continue, being pushed by lobbyists from the growth industry, this is where I think Monbiot is naive and he is overcautious by blanking his otherwise energetic mind to perhaps some politically incorrect solutions and proposing democratically popular (at this time) answers. To me it is no surprise that those countries who maintained high migration levels, U.S.A. U.K. and Europe are now economic basket cases, based as they are on growth and energy consumption. This growth lobby is, as Daly states in his article, merely advocating for more of the same, more bubbles, more environmental destruction, more economic collapse. It is not viable for humanity to consider themselves, in biblical terms, masters of all they see. In fact we are just one of millions of species who all have a sacred, if you like, right to occupy this Earth. For too long this "equity" has been totally ignored, whilst concerning ourselves with only financial equity. I would offer Daly's response on population as a reasonable response to the global population issue, and yes, if birth control is to be included then the Catholic Church has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the issue. "9/ Stabilize Population. We should be working toward a balance in which births plus in-migrants equals deaths plus out-migrants. This is controversial and difficult, but, as a start, contraception should be made available for voluntary use everywhere. And while each nation can debate whether it should accept many or few immigrants, and who should get priority, such a debate is rendered moot if immigration laws are not enforced. We should support voluntary family planning and enforcement of reasonable immigration laws, democratically enacted. A lot of the pro-natalist and open-borders rhetoric claims to be motivated by generosity, but it is “generosity” at the expense of the U.S. working class—a cheap labor policy. Progressives have been slow to understand this. The environmental movement began with a focus on population but has frequently given in to political correctness."

Yes zero population growth (or very, very slow growth) has actually been the norm throughout history. You would think from the growthist propaganda that rapid population growth is normal but this isn't so. My eyes were opened to this when I read that when Napoleon invaded Egypt the estimated population was 3 million. The estimated population during Roman times was about the same. For almost two thousand years the population of Egypt had remained essentially unchanged, despite a culture emphasizing early marriage and despite being staunchly Muslim for much of that time. After some more reading the main reason for this stability was not due to very high mortality. It was certainly higher than the average now, but not that high. The main reason was that every culture evolved a set of cultural practices to regulate fertility. Later marriage in some cases, strict taboos against extra-marital sex, sexual taboos inside marriage, rudimentary contraception, and I must mention the unfortunate but apparently widespread practice of infanticide (female infanticide in particular). Humans intrinsically tend towards ZPG. After all the disruptions of the past two centuries it seems things are finally returning to normal. Hopefully not too late.

Save Hays Paddock - Meeting at 2 pm Saturday 29 October 2011 at Hays Paddock Pavilion Time: Gather at 2 pm Date: Saturday 29 October 2011 Place: At main Pavilion near carpark Hays Paddock East Kew (Melways Map 45 J 1) Why Meet: The City of Boroondara threatens to destroy this magnificent park with open woodland, creek and billabong used by people from all over Melbourne chiefly for passive recreation, dog walking and bird watching plus by some sports groups. The natural playground for children fits with the Park. Council plans to "develop" the Park i.e. load it up with infrastructure (1) Construct a new Pavilion more than double the size of the existing building apparently for use as club rooms - obviously the liquor licence will follow - for sports groups mainly an old boys soccer club (2) Construction of a commuter cycle path (3) Fencing of the billabong (4) Construction of a new toilet block - no one has requested this. (5) Provision of more carparking. We plan to discuss action plans Council Fast-tracking Development: Last week Council pulled a "swifty" on us. Over the last year, Council staff stated that construction of the redeveloped Pavilion would come to $1.55 million. (Projects over $1 million are subject to a planning permit.) We discovered, however, that unbeknown to us the Project Officer had revised the cost of the Pavilion down to $1 million and had advertised the tenders. Submissions closed on 25 October 2011. Thus the public's rights to object to the Pavilion development has been removed. We are extremely concerned that the take over of parkland for expensive sports facilities for special interests groups including private schools is proceeding in Boroondara, not only in Hays Paddock in East Kew but in the Gordon Barnard Reserve in Balwyn and possibly in the HG Smith Reserve in Hawthorn (opposite Scotch College.) Contact: : Ian Hundley Mobile: 0466 977 957 Email: ianhundley[AT]hotmail.com and Julianne Bell Mobile: 0408022408 Email: jbell5[AT]bigpond.com

Nimby's original post on this page

This was originally posted at 6:12PM on 24 October and was unpublished at nimby's request after she learnt that her post on Occupy Melbourne have been published after all. Now that nimby's post on Occupy Melbourne has been removed again, I am now republishing nimby's original post. - Ed, 26 Oct

I put up a comment on population growth displacing young people and causing financial woes, but it was not published. Unless the Occupy Melbourne face up to the un-politically correct but obvious, courageously, ie the fallout from our boosted population growth rate, then they will be another ineffectual group, tinkering around the edges of issues. Developers and other influential big businesses have access to governments due to political donations, and economic power.