The Government continues to emphasise the importance of migration, multiculturalism and population growth in Victoria. This contributes to our diversity and flexible skills base, giving us an economy that is more innovative and competitive.
Perhaps Mr. Reece would like to explain why the Government believes that immigration and multiculturalism make an economy more competitive and innovative. All the evidence seems to point to the contrary. Indeed, the world's most innovative and competitive economies are all notable for their lack of immigration and diversity, e.g. Japan, South Korea, Finland, Sweden, etc.
Comments
Mornington Peninsula is an example of whole of Victoria
Our biodiversity losses in Victoria are illustrated by Mornington Peninsula's. With most of the land privately owned, and most of it cleared, where are wildlife to go? Fragmented areas do not help the overall gene pool or overcome the practicalities of long-term survival. We had DSE's green paper to address biodiversity losses in Victoria with public consultation, however, nothing changes. If there is a choice between human economic limitations and the consequential "need" to clear native vegetation, owners can always apply one of the many exceptions, or "compensate" with dubious offsets! Even endangered trees, and birds, get second or third consideration. So much tokenism, and they want to be able to quantify the value of biodiversity "services" but when they can't, due to their intrinsic nature, they see no value! Our high immigration rate, and spreading growth corridors, have not allowed for wildlife corridors or connecting parklands. For all our taxes and charges, there is a total lack of planning at a senior level for growth, and there is no wholistic vision to include native species at all. Only 16% of Victoria is protected, and this is not enough.
Killing kangaroos cannot be justified
Support for the kangaroo "harvest" in the Hunter Valley is hardly "overwhelming", according to the poll. The only people who would benefit are those with interests in their deaths, such as the shooters or land-owners who want sterile land for production. Such is the hatred of our indigenous animals that so many people can't tolerate seeing them and claim they must be in "plague proportions" so need to be shot! They are denigrated to the level of feral animals! They are actually part of our ecology, and they eat grass to keep down the dangers of bushfires, till the soil with their claws and their tails. This all helps native seed propagation. People do not understand that kangaroos have a long period of dependency and strong bonds between the mob members. So much mis-understandings exist, and so much distorted information from our government and the killing industry means that they are hounded and hunted in their own habitat. Killing them cannot be justified environmentally. It is all about exploiting them as a "harvest", for money.
live animal exports is exporting animal abuse
The litany of disasters is nothing to what animals have to endure when they arrive at their distinations. We hear that farmers care for their animals, and we have "best practices" in animal care, but while live exports continue we are exporting cruelty overseas. There are NO laws to protect animals in the Middle East, and even avoiding all the deaths on board the ships would not alleviate the suffering and sadism they can endure in foreign countries. We already have the evidence from Animals Australia. The only way to ease this pain is to stop this trade. Profits cannot turn what is evil into something ethical and acceptable.
Kirin holdings, a Japanese company, has bought Dairy Farmers
Kirin holdings, a Japanese company, has bought Dairy Farmers for $910 million. This includes iconic brands such as Ski yoghurt, OAK and Coon cheese. National Foods also owns Pura and Yoplait. What does Australia own any more? They didn't have to sell! This company intends to boost sales overseas. Australia is the world's third largest exporter of dairy milk while we are one of the driest countries. This will bring with it the troubles of a less competitive market and fewer options for farmers looking to sell their product, and higher prices at the supermarket.
At about 600 litres of water per litre of milk, about a half of it is going overseas! How is this sustainable while we are in the throes of our river systems collapsing? Our government should continue to buy back water from irrigation farmers and let the rivers run free again! Too much water is being used for making overseas export profits and not enough for ecological survival. Water should be used for domestic and essential food items, and to support our environment, not for luxury Western-indulgences such as cheeses, ice-creams and iced-coffees!
Australian food exports and Japanese food self-sufficency
Thanks Yuki,
Queensland's own dairy industry has been similarly largely destroyed some years ago as a consequence of similar 'restructuring'. We now have to import most of our milk from Victoria by road (and not rail - thanks to another favourite past policy of economic 'rationalists', that is, running down rail infrastructure).
I think in the difficult times ahead, we do have to plan to help countries like Japan until such time as they are able to achieve self-sufficiency.
We should certainly desist from this country's past reckless policies of demanding of other countries that they reduce protection of their own agricultural sector so that Australian Farmers can have grater access to those markets, at least until such time as they are able to achieved food self-sufficiency, as Japan clearly has not. I was alarmed when then opposition leader Kevin Rudd was critical of the the Prime Minister John Howard for not taking a harder line in trade negotiations with Japan in not insisting that protection for domestic Japanese farmers be reduced.
As I wrote in an unpublised letter to the Courier Mail newspaper (and CC'd to Kevin Rudd, Greens Senator Bob Brown and my local federal Labor member Arch Bevis) on 13 December 2006:
Dear editor,
... Kevin Rudd is wrong to insist that tariff protection for its farmers be ended as part of any "Free Trade agreement" with Japan.
An Island nation like Japan has a right to safeguard supplies of a basic necessity such as food and should not have to depend upon imported food supplies in a world which is becoming increasingly unstable and which faces very serious environmental threats.
Copyright notice: Reproduction of this material is encouraged as long as the source is acknowledged.
Gov and Big Business seriously support pyramid scheme
Believe it or not, this pyramid scheme is actually supported by big business. I think that they initially relied on a Joseph Chamie's ridiculous Replacement Migration, a UN (New York) document, which was never anything more than a draft, but has been marketed as if it had some status by the Economist, (a propaganda rag in my view), then taken up by other anglophone news outlets. It is generally only taken seriously by dimwitted politicians who take advice from newspaper moguls and developers in Australia, the US and Britain, although Marisa in her articles on Italy in candobetter has shown that the anglophone influence, via the Vatican in part, is growing in Italy, and spreading. It has no scientific status and has been lampooned by French, demographers and press. Chamie is now working for the US linked immigrationist organisation, "Center for Migration Studies." I believe that this organisation funds writers and researchers to influence for population growth in the EU. Chamie is now also Editor of the International Migration Review, with links to the Yale Center for the Study of Globalisation. I have recently noticed a fund raising organisation - http://www.globalenvision.org/library/8/1776 - full of links to the Herald Tribune and Wall street journal, carrying Chamie's articles as well.
If, from reading this, you get the impression that there is some kind of internationally organised ideologically based economic policy conspiracy to keep world population growing, I would agree with you that it looks like this. Others might just say that these are lobby groups with a lot of money. And, of course, it is the lavish spending of money on friends which reinforces the whole thing.
It is indeed frightening to realise that our politicians are so naive or corrupt as to proceed as if the Chamie course were serious policy. Frightening, but true. We have a serious problem with Anglophone population politics; it has become divorced from democratic or environmental concerns and it is seeking to influence other cultures to abandon their roots and embrace economic hard-core for the benefit of corporate profits, at the cost of democracy. Governments under such advice place total trust in any scheme or trend which will give a rapid dollar return, even if it obviously increases misery. Our governments are also completely ignoring the growing problems with energy and pollution. It is a case of head in the sand government and if we allow this thinking, and overpopulation policy to prevail, things will rapidly deteriorate beyond the capacity of any government to rescue our society, soil, water and biodiversity. We have to combat in every way we can think of, this looney religion of economic and population growth. One way to do this is to support those countries which have managed to remain aloof from this crazy, inhuman policy so far.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Editor of The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Press, UK, 2008, which is a 10 author book on energy, technology, politics, environment and economics
Dairy farming, Japan and Australia
I find it hard to resist making a comment whenever someone says something about Japan... Vivienne, yes I basically agree. I did not know that "much of" your dairy industry was owned by Japan, or Japanese companies. There is a dairy industry in Japan, of course, but it has been plagued in the last year or two with several problems. 1) The MAFF did a 'restructuring' (cattle slaughter) due to an excess of milk and ended up causing a butter shortage here! 2) The price of feed and to some extent oil products, as everywhere, has sent production costs through the roof while prices at the retail end have changed hardly at all. Dairy farmers here are really struggling to keep their necks above water. However, I see very little "Australian" cheese or butter in the supermarkets in Japan. Am I missing it because of "creative" labelling? Or is most of the dairy produce being consumed in Australia and not coming to Japan, or is it being exported elsewhere?
Having said that, does Japan really need that dairy produce that you say the Japanese companies want for Japan? If we (in the well-fed countries) are going to have to retreat from animal protien consumption in the future, and if Japan's diet in 1960 was a fairly reasonable and healthy one (which I think it was), then Japanese people, on average, can reduce their consumption of milk and dairy products by about 80% and not experience any particular health problem. Japan's problem is that our food self-sufficiency is 40% on a calorie basis. If there is a serious global food and energy crisis, Japan will look more like a very desperate North Korea on a large scale than the nation of happy supermarket goers we have now.
Are there food crops that Australia could grow on her large areas of farmland that do not require large amounts of irrigation, but could be produced in sufficient surplus (over domestic consumption) for significant amounts to be exported to Japan in such a time of crisis? You might then be doing Japan a huge favour at a time when we really need it, and solving the problem you mention above at the same time.
Govt research contradicts Evans' "aging population" argument
Subject originally was "The aging population argument for more immigration".
One of the things I would point to is the changing demographics of the nation. We know that over the period 2010 to 2020 more people will retire than will join the workforce. If you like, 2010 marks the tipping point in the retirement of the baby boomers, and that will exceed the numbers of young people entering the workforce. That is not a temporary thing; this is a longterm demographic shift. It will not rectify itself. We will have a shrinking native-born labour force to supply a growing economy and an ageing population. So there are big challenges in the demographics area, and part of the solution to that will be an increase in migration and, I think, an increase in the overall population, because we will need more workers to support the population and we will need more workers to provide services to those ageing as the cohort of those ageing increases.
So Chris Evans is advocating an unsustainable pyramid scheme as the "solution" to our aging population problem?
?Talk about idiotic.
As the Federal Government's own research notes: "It is demographic nonsense to believe that immigration can help to keep our population young. No reasonable population policy can keep our population young." Source
If immigration enthusiasts had half a brain amongst them, they’d realise that immigrants age too. In fact, by bringing in so many immigrants, we are increasing the size of the dependent elderly population of the future, which will make it necessary to keep importing an ever-increasing number of immigrants just to maintain the same dependency ratios. Hardly a sustainable solution.
For an example of just how absurd the aging population argument for high immigration is, consider the following from Immigration Watch Canada:
Readers might recall an IWC press release on Sept. 28, 2006 of a C.D. Howe report that revealed that if immigration were used by Canada to keep its old age citizens at no more than 20 % of its total population, immigration levels would eventually have to rise to 28 times their present level, bringing Canada's population to a staggering level of 165.4 million in 2050. Another release summarized a study done by the U.S. Centre for Immigration Studies which revealed that the average immigrant to the U.S. was actually four years older than the average American and that immigration would therefore be of little help in changing the national age structure.
To keep the support ratio of workers to dependents constant, for example, the U.K. would have to grow from 60 million to 136 million and all of Europe from 322 million to 1.2 billion over 50 years to maintain their current age structures.
To keep the support ratio of workers to dependents constant, South Korea, for example, would need 94 million immigrants per year, almost twice its current population. If South Korea followed this path, its population would reach 5.1 billion by 2050. (See "Oz Ideas and Innovations" on the web.)
Newcastle Herald poll on Kangaroo Culling in Hunter Valley
A recent article "Hunter cull to harvest roos" in the Newcastle Herald says that there is overwhelming support for culling in the Hunter. Show them that this is not the case by participating in the public poll attached to the article.
Ruses employed by Murdoch newsmedia
The following comment has been cross-posted to WebDiary
Although its pro-privatisation propaganda is often unsubtle, the Murdoch press employs other ruses to create a facade that it is a fearless and independent campaigner for truth against secretive and complacent government and bureacracy and thereby throw us off the trail.
One such ruse is to adopt radical stances on issues, which, while they might have merit are generally peripheral as far as the daily lives of most ordinary people are concerned. So, in Queensland the Courier Mail will take a seemingly radical civil libertarian stance, for example, against Police Minister Judy Spence's overly hasty approval of tasar guns for police, demanding that the police officer responsible for the death of the Palm Island Aboriginal be put on trial, exposure of the Haneef miscarriage of justice, etc. They have even reported very well on less peripheral issues, like the AWB scandal, or even the Howard Government's mismanagement of the first two Telstra tranches, but, it would appear, as long as they can find a way to twist this reporting to suit their own agenda.
Thus, the cause of the AWB scandal was found by the Murdoch journalists to be, absurdly, the single desk wheat marketing system that prevented farmers from being screwed by the open competitive market. Recently, the Murdoch Press got what they wanted when the Rudd government abolished the single desk system.
In regard to the both first and second Telstra tranches, the Murdoch press's solution was - you guessed it - privatisation of the rest of Telstra.
Massive civil uprising?
You say that in the case that we're hoping for of a "soft landing" to all our current problems...
...the hope is that all of us, through large scale grass roots political action, will establish more sustainable lifestyles, with stable populations consuming far less of our natural resouces in relocalised economies.
I definitely agree, but cannot see where this large-scale grassroots political action is going to come from. Most of the people I know are either incredibly ignorant about what is happening in the world, or sneer and say things like, "Well, actually, I was hoping the collapse of the world wasn't going to happen this evening as I want to watch the soccer."
The imaginable social alternatives to the sustainable communities soft landing scenario are all complete horror stories, but, realistically, what actions can we take to avoid them? (The Liberals appear to have won the election in Western Australia, by the way, if that's any indication of the direction the voting population are headed.)
Population growth has to be limited!
The planet has more than 6.5 BILLION people, not millions. Animals are "culled" (massacred) when they over-breed their habitat's carrying capacity, and this only happens when their ecology has been interferred with! Humans can't just multiply and multipy - the days of "go forth and multiply" are well and truly over! Our economy is tied to population growth, and with humans as greedly and short-sighted as they are, they will choose short-term gains over long-term sustainability and consideration for future generations. Our numbers now are critical, with peak oil, water, and food shortage. Higher populations will encourage wars and conflict, and more wildlife will suffer as they compete for resources.
Unsworth's double standards
Unsworth expressed his indignation that threats were made by the NSW Labor Party to disendorse Labor politicians who failed to uphold Labor Party policy against privatisation:
Well, I have been able to confirm that Parliamentary members in marginal seats have been brought to head office and, in effect, told that their preselections would be at risk if they didn't support support the directives of head office.
However, he had nothing to say about the fact that earlier on threats of expulsion had been made against other Labor Politicians if they voted for Labor Policy on privatisation on the floor of Parliament.
The Sydney Morning Herald article Electricity dissidents face expulsion from party: Iemma of 16 May reported:
MORRIS IEMMA has issued a veiled threat to caucus members who might consider crossing the floor on electricity legislation.
The Premier warns they could face expulsion from the party. And, just before leaving for China on a trade mission, he opened the door for the sale of power stations - not just long-term leases as he first promised.
...
Asked to rule out seeking disciplinary action at the national executive for MPs who cross the floor, Mr Iemma said: "I'm not going into the business of speculating on hypotheticals of what may or may not happen."
Mr Iemma's move to push the legislation through the caucus came amid claims that Mr Obeid was pressuring upper house MPs not to cross.
Mr Obeid confirmed to the Herald that he had warned the upper house MP Mick Veitch he could be taken to the national executive to be expelled if he opposed power privatisation. But he denied using strong language to Mr Veitch.
...
There have also been claims that the upper house MP Linda Volz was threatened by Mr Obeid, but Mr Iemma yesterday said both had denied this.
NSW state Labor officials had every right to act against Labor politicians who voted for privatisation
It is extraordinary that only days after the NSW Labor Party conference voted against privatisation 702 to 107, in accord with the views of the broader NSW public that state MPs who wanted to uphold that policy on the floor of NSW Parliament were threatened with expulsion form the Labor Party.
It is fashionable to regard all political parties as necessarily corrupt, as Alan Moir seemed to imply in a cartoon of 6 June in the Sydney Morning Herald (see below). However this case shows where political parties can act as they should and stand up to, rather than defend powerful vested interests. In point of fact the attempt by the NSW Labor Party administration to force the Labor Party MP's to abide by the decision of the conference was one of the rare instances in modern Australian politics where political parties have functioned as they should.
The Labor Party officials had every right, and, indeed a duty, to disendorse state Labor politicians who threatened to vote for privatisation, and for having done so, they should have been applauded. However, the unions and the state Labor Party officials were predictably vilified by the newsmedia, even, surprisingly, by the often very good cartoonist Alan Moir who, on 8 June depicted the NSW state Labor Party and unions as having seized from Iemma the driving wheel of the car of the state of NSW. Had the cartoon also also put somewhere into the picture the corporate sector from whom Costa and Iemma were taking their orders, then the cartoon would have been a fairer depiction of reality.
If anything, the NSW Labor Party should be criticised for not having taking an even stronger stance against those in control of the NSW government. They should have acted without hesitation to expel Iemma and Costa and made it clear that any other state MP who voted for privatisation would face disendorsemant as Labor candidates at the very least.
However, they failed to act as decisively as the circumstances demanded and it had to be left, ironically, to state Liberal and National MP's, rather than the majority of state Labor MP's to uphold Labor policy, as well as basic principles of democracy, accountability and morality.
Immigration to Australia
The mentality of immigration, without audit, is to compete economically with the size of our trading partners such as India and China. The global commercial forces that are driving our population increases are totally contrary to any climate change adjustments, and warnings are being ignored. It is assumed that a large economy will protect us from ecological disasters. Humans are a herd species, and a large herd gives assurance to them that they are protected. This herd logic is causing the dilemna for us humans - it is the herd size that is breaking down our defence against the dire warnings of climate change catastrophies. What other species (unless feral) continues to increase their population until their habitat is destroyed? Adding more people to Australia now is akin to adding more passengers to the Titanic - it adds more profits to the owners, but the end comes sooner!
Self storage corollary
The decreasing space and increasing need to change domicile highlighted in James Sinnamon's article on the prospering self storage industry is consistent with the push in Melbourne for the building of more apartments for the increasing population. According to John Masanauskas in the Herald Sun September 10th 2008, former Victorian Premier John Thwaites , now chairman of the Monash Sustainability Institute after the Urban Futures Symposium in Melbourne September 9th advocated that more apartments be constructed in Melbourne to house the the current large influx of migrants (which the former deputy premier advocates)
Obviously if apartments are built then that is what people will live in despite the traditional preference in Australia for detached housing.This makes me wonder......
If our economy runs on the acquisition of "stuff' yet people don't actually have room for much "stuff"- the consumer economy will have to turn more towards selling intangibles such as events and experiences. It may partially explain the push for such experiences as the recent (quashed) proposal to turn Werribee Zoo near Melbourne into a theme park. Alternatively, will "stuff" have to be miniaturised?. Will it mean more money proportionally will be spent on electronic gadgets as opposed to larger objects such as furniture?
Perhaps these questions could answered by looking at spending patterns in cities that have already taken on the form of small apartment living which we are being persuaded will be our future.
Kangaroo bashing no aberration
I know that the mainstream press is running with this, but it seems to me that little good will come out of it. The public is presented with the notion that the RSPCA will deal with this 'aberration'.
Only recently, also, in WA, a ranger, who had filmed a kangaroo dragged behind his car, was not prosecuted.
This kind of behaviour is not surprising given the cavalier attitude of state governments practically everywhere towards kangaroos' welfare.
Vivienne is right to ask if the kangaroo is stigmatised as a pest and a nuisance like the blowfly, why would not socially immature men hoping to impress their peers take it upon themselves to do a mortein job on a kangaroo?
How can we expect fringe dwelling youth to love and respect their natural surroundings when the media daily lionises a race of highly destructive developers who, together with the corrupt politicians who serve them, trash everything nurturing around us?
Land developers are greedy
Land developers are getting so much support from our governments! With our high population growth rate, they are able to grabble for each square metre that comes available. Of course, more people means more taxes and charges, and coffers get filled up more, and more bureaucrats are paid healthy pay-packets! However, population growth is threatening the livability, and in this case too, the cultural icons of the past. We will have wall-to-wall people! This greed is like adding more passengers to the sinking Titanic! Money is the root of all evil!
Dairy and meat cattle exports even bigger water guzzlers
Cotton and rice are water-consuming crops, unsuitable for our dry continent. However, the real water guzzlers are actually dairy and beef cattle and their crops. Japan has brought out a majority of our dairy companies, and the majority of it is going overseas for profits. More red meat is exported than consumed. The Murray Darling has been used for providing economic benefits for Australia despite it being one of the driest continents on Earth. We should shift from agricultural exports and focus on climate-change technologies.
This is a brilliant article.
This is a brilliant article. I totally agree.
I am impressed by this paragraph and very pleased to read a sensible statement about how forests store water. The role of transpiration in water table control and local climate is greatly neglected as well. To say the least. Also the observation that Britain unleashed industrialism is very true.
Here is the para that impressed me most:
Britain's Prince Charles called yesterday for the world to act with a "sense of wartime urgency" to protect the rainforests, warning they were "umbilically connected" to the phenomenon of climate change. The heir to the British throne says rainforests "are the world's lifebelt", acting as the "world's air conditioning system" and helping store the largest body of flowing water on the planet. Such ambitious, ecologically- based policy is welcome from the nation that unleashed industrialism.""
I am also very disappointed in 'mainstream' environmental bodies. The forest policies of Greenpeace et al strike me as very piecemeal and ineffectual, making me wonder if that and other organisations have adopted policies of least resistance and least real conflict in order to maintain financial buoyancy.
I also agree that the amount of carbon locked up in trees is obviously huge, and, locked up in the fungal mats and soil underlying forests. One of the faulty approaches to climate change mitigation is wanting to soak up carbon gases very quickly (e.g. with new growth) but we have a problem which requires ongoing and additional storage over centuries.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
I would like to know more about these dot coms
Of course that is an article on realestate.com.au about its rival.
I would like to have an analysis or at least comments on Neilson's stats.
I would also like to know how both dot coms differ, and how the differ in their approaches, services in the global, local, regional etc real estate markets, and how this has all varied over the property values dive back towards some form or reality as opposed to realty.
Today, on the French news very interesting about Spanish housing market. Dictator Franco, darling of the Pope of the time but generally thought to be a horror, greatly increased housing ownership among the Spanish. Prior to the nutty US & Aust, UK and anglophone-led international property bubble, the Spanish began selling the houses they had bought off the government.
Then the bubble took them to delusional heights of expectation.
Now, three years after the peak in property prices in Spain, real-estate agents and property speculators are on the dole. So are those who found related work, such as photographers working for realtors.
One guy tried to move his 3 bedroom speculative appartment in a lottery but this was short circuited by legality.
Once pretenders to continuously increasing 'wealth', such people are now living with their parents and unable to get prices above the cost of their constructions. They are lucky that their parents have homes.
Land speculation a stupid evil. Australian and State governments have become completely obsessed by it, and democracy has suffered through this. Many societies do not buy and sell land and are better societies for this.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
domain.com.au versus realestate.com.au
domain.com.au runs a very distant second to realestate.com.au
see:
realestate.com.au Widens Lead Over Second Site to 100%
What about Fairfax Digital?
They own domain.com.au, don't they?
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.
Fairfax dot com failures
Fairfax has always relied on the acres of classifieds for most of their revenue, for whatever reason their management failed to use this advantage when the internet came along. Their classifieds are still number one but this income stream is being seriously eroded by the 3 dot coms: realestate.com.au, seek.com.au and carsales.com.au
Maybe in the future papers such as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age will be transformed into something much smaller and low circulation that focuses on local news with proper analysis that is not coloured by the requirement to fill pages of classifieds.
NSW labor party pulled gov into line: How about it Vic Labor?
Oh, also, it's inspiring that the NSW labor party finally, with a lot of help, we might add, from the Liberal Party and the Greens, stood up on its hind legs and got rid of the terrible people governing in its name - Iemma and Costa.
This gives one hope for Victoria and other states. Anonymous observes that the Property Council is applying pressure to the vulnerable Victorian government, but why aren't the members of the Labor Party as well?
Is there no-one decent left in the party?
I am waiting for an article about this. There is one in the pipeline. I wish James would finish it.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Good article, Anonymous
Thanks, Anonymous, for this article.
I would like to read more from you.
I didn't know that www.domain.com.au wasn't doing as well as realestate.com.au, as you seem to imply here.
I cut out the full quote of the article because of copyright.
Please keep posting.
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.
Christ I am an idiot
To that person who posted the comment "Christ you are an idiot," at 3:08PM (+10:00) on Monday 8 September, I would have published your comment (not necessarily including the abuse), if you had explained why you thought I was an idiot. As it was, you did not, so, I have declined to approve the publishing of your comment. Whilst it is possible to call this censorship, I think most site users will acknowledge from the already published comments which are critical of ourselves and extensive links to web pages which contain views contrary to our own, that we don't fear the exposure of our site visitors to contrary views.
No more glossy paper
I heard most of the high-quality, glossy fashion magazine paper comes from this kind of forest. I hope you can tell me about this. Many magazines and books in Japan are using recycled paper now. But fashion magazines like Vogue, GQ still use very glossy paper.
So, we have to educate people about paper.
Not with seawater up to my knees!
Yes, I like to have cooked dinners. I like to have them without seawater up to my knees. I think it's possible... if we try to reduce unnecessarily large carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But business-as-usual won't do this, so people have to protest.
I DO agree with you that it begins at home. I try to turn off lights I'm not using, cycle to places whenever possible, use fossil fuelled transport as little as possible (I work at home and so travel very little), grow quite a bit of my own food (saves on petrochemicals and food miles) and so on. The problem is that everyone around me is not doing most of this stuff, so my little bit of foregone emissions does not make a lot of difference.
What we really need is for governments to seriously put some effort into reducing GHG emissions, and doing it fairly so that everyone is happy with the system and doesn't feel they are being disadvantaged while others are allowed to cruise around in their gas-guzzling SUVs, and so on.
Telling people to make a good example of themselves, and to remember all the benefits we get every day from fossil fuels is a good place to start people thinking about the problem in a personal way, but until the governments really get seriously behind this problem instead of paying it lip-service and then allowing things to go on in a business-as-usual kind of way is going to result in many of us enjoying the equivalent of hot dinners with seawater up to our knees (or necks), don't you think?
Palin's cruelty to animals even against Book of Genesis
Sarah Palin is a shameful example of Christianity! How can she believe in a compassionate God and oppose abortion, yet at the same time endorse gross cruelty to His Creation - animals and environment? She should read Genesis where is states that God made the planet and that we humans are custodians and should not kill! The original humans, Adam and Eve, even if mythical, were vegans and were prohibited from shedding blood. Eating some animals was only a concession to Sin, and limited food sources. There was never a license to plunder and destroy the planet and kill native animals. The days of "go forth and multiply" are well and truly over! Sarah Palin is an anachronism and she should go home and read her Bible, and maybe pray for insight!
Climate change begins at home
This website talks plenty about global warming and the nasty coal miners and governments that support them.
But ask yourself this...
Did you have a cooked dinner last night?
Did you have electric lights to see what you were eating?
During the recent winter did you use electric heating, or gas burning heater or wood burning heater?
When you drove your car did you fill up with petro-chemicals (Diesel, petrol, LPG)?
When you caught public transport did you see them filling up with diesel fuel or if electric then the coal power stations that generate the electricity.
For you international warriors, did you catch a plane to the city of your global warming protest?
If you want to reduce global warming then make an example yourself.
Protect Wielangta Forest
Wielangta Forest has to be protected, not logged. The idea of turning the trees in the forest into paper is hideous. Tasmania has an unique wildlife, which is characteristic for Tasmania only, and it has to be protected. If this ecosystem is damaged, there will not be any chances healing the injury.
Palin as... American President ?
Well, counting the health record of Mr McCain, what if he just popped off sooner rather than later ?
The prospect of this deranged woman ascending the most prestigious office of the USA and the leader of the so-called free world- scares me. ALL her records point to ALL what is wrong in morality, not just the turpitude of her behaviour towards wildlife. She brings back civilisation to most primitive era and all our efforts to build a better society will be trampled under her foot. If I say "our" is because Carlo Fuentes, the mexican author, said that the American elections have a significance which goes beyond the interests of the USA, and that everybody should be allowed to vote for the American president. It sounds like a good joke, but I wish we could, because the foreign policy of the USA has a ripercussion on world affairs which could be positive or dangerous. How to oppose the triumph of the GOP should be ... an international duty .
I shall, on my part, send the article to my American friends, pity that they wouldn't dream of voting Repubblican!
Marisa
Lucky, wealthy, democratic countries
I'm really amazed! I thought "lucky, wealthy, democratic countries" had passed the stage of cynical, rip-off capitalism a long time ago. Pass a few laws to keep the "greenies" off balance and then slurp up a windfall profit by clear-cut raping a forest while everyone's looking the wrong way? Are we still stuck in the latter half of the 20th century, or do we think, please, we might just wake up to the fact that the world changed somewhat by the time we all made it into the 21st century?
I do NOT like to hear the name of my country being used in a context like this. If this is how you are going to supply us materials for paper, then thanks, but no thanks. If there aren't better ways of doing it, then let's not bother. I think a lot of people here will agree with me. Let's see if some of my friends will join me in adding a little note here for the logging company.
It really should be a bit passe these days to say something like, "Don't you know that every time we do something to reduce biodiversity, little by little we undermine our own ability to survive on this planet?" Someone once said it's a bit like hearing the rivets pop out fom the fuselage of the plane you're flying in. It's serious and it's scary. But some people do not yet see it and have not yet made the transition into the 21st century. Call us "treehuggers" if you like, but we do know that everything mankind does for survival comes with an environmental or ecological price, sometimes large, sometimes negligible. But "survival" is not a money value. Those who engage in the destruction of nature for money profits (or their children or their grandchildren) will later come to know that selling off the life opportunities of your descendants and those of other species is a highly immoral and hazardous thing to do. Please rethink and join us in a saner 21st century.
Liberals also want population growth for Victoria
The fact that Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu has declared himself in favour of continued strong population growth in Victoria shows that our leaders need to have a strong scientific and/or environmental background. Neither Labor or Liberal have the leadership to ensure a safe environment for future generations. A strong population growth is, no doubt, good for keeping up the demands of goods and services, but how is it to help climate change? How does rampant population growth make it easier to maintain our rivers, soils and food production? Maybe they are under the illusion that money will be able to buy our way out of climate change? A strong economy does not mean an infallible ecosystem. There has to be a limit to growth and surely the warning signals are already here. With more than 10 years of drought, Victoria is on track for the worst-case climate change scenario. Instead of blaming migrants our leaders should be planning for a stable economy and zero population growth.
Self-fulfilling prophecies and pro-immigration propaganda
"It is all complete fabrication. The government could turn off the population growth now and the corporations would just have to put up with reality."
I am also deeply frustrated by the way the media portrays the current immigration-fuelled population explosion as if it were some uncontrollable natural phenomenon rather than being a direct result of Federal Government policy. Duped by the pro-immigration lobby and its media mouthpieces into believing that mass immigration is an inevitable force that cannot be stopped, it seems that many Australians have resigned themselves to accepting ever-increasing levels of immigration, along with the adverse economic, social, and environmental effects that go with it.
Of course, ongoing immigration-driven population growth is not inevitable; Australia could reduce immigration to saner levels tomorrow with the stroke of the Immigration Minister's pen. All that is needed is the political pressure.
"Age" propaganda fails to tell readers 8 million not predictive
Re the Age article, "City of 8 million 'unliveable'" by Cameron Houston and Royce Millar on September 5, 2008: Who does this ridiculous, pretentious rag believe it is fooling?
Presumably primary school children, if well taught, would recognise the difference between projections based on past trends and predictions.
Nowhere is it written (except between the lines by the corporate sponsors of the Age) that we HAVE to have 8 million.
We don't even have to have one million more.
It is all complete fabrication. The government could turn off the population growth now and the corporations would just have to put up with reality.
And the government SHOULD stop the high immigration and the baby bonuses now. Otherwise the overpopulation problem is going to make the 'aging population' so-called problem look like the mere bump in the python it is.
We do not need population growth. Moreover, population growth is endangering our most basic securities. Population growth is bad for Australia. Fairfax media's really stupid article here is also dangerous propaganda because it fails to inform the readers that 8 million in no way has to happen and it is dangerous to imply that it will.
Shame on the Age.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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National Water Commission an organisation for stalling
How hopeless! How disingenuous: "the National Water Commission is responsible for driving progress towards the sustainable management and use of Australia's water resources under our blueprint for water reform - the National Water Initiative"
We have known about these problems since the first world war.
"Driving progress towards..." is just jargon for stalling.
How dare our self-appointed masters cripple the country and needlessly deprive other creatures and trees of water! How dare they allow everything they do to be dictated by the corporate sector.
Fair Water Use is quite right; we need a state of emergency and a national enquiry.
Unfortunately national enquiries are usually conducted within ridiculously narrow terms. We have to avoid yet another allocation of water towards short-term dollars.
Fair Water Use would do well to define the terms and parameters and then hopefully candobetter and others can engage enough real environmentalists and voters to force a relevant enquiry. In the mean time, how does Fair Water Use think that the national emergency should be managed? With the army? With what kinds of processes to ensure transparency? I hope to read more.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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population growth
Our government seems to think that more people, a rising population, is a way to prosperity. There are many countries where there is a high population but no prosperity. If we overload our ecology it will be a struggle to find the resources for everybody. It creates more friction, wars and lack of equalities.
Would Hillary have been the right choice after all?
In the choice of the lesser evil amongst the leading pro-population-growth pro-big-business Democratic Party contenders, I had accepted the judgement that Obama was the right candidate on the grounds that he had, at least, opposed the Iraq war at the outset whilst Hillary Clinton had voted for it. However, Obama since appears to have moved closer to acceptance of the continuation of the U.S.'s involvement in the conflict, so the difference in this regard is no longer as pronounced as it once was.
However, an article by Naomi Klein written shortly after Clinton conceded to Obama, I learnt that Obama had employed Chicago School trained Friedmanite economists and had proclaimed: "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market." (See Obama's Chicago Boys of 13 June 2008). That Obama would do this after the catastrophic consequences of the Bush administration's embrace of economic neo-liberalism does not sit well with his claim to represent a decisive break from the past. In contrast Hillary Clinton's article No Crisis Is Immune From Exploitation Under Bush of 6 Aug 08, which I found linked to from Naomi Klein's web site, does demonstrate that Hillary at least still pays lip service to the traditional Keynesian Government interventionist policies that had once been the policies of the Democratic Party.
Unfair to single out Obama
Just passing on another comment from a reader who doesn't post:
"I don't disagree with your assumptions, nowhere is it more apparent than in Victoria at this time [that it's the money that talks]
I just thought that you were unfairly singling out Barak Obama. We have had enough of George and the Republicans. Ask any teenager in South America what they think of George and his merry men."
Sheila Newman, population sociologist for Frank H.
Capitalism started in
Capitalism started in Britain from a
Confluence of:
male primogeniture inheritance (product of Salic then Norman invaders)
large landless population (due to inherited dispossession)
bullion from South America created unentailed capital
dissolution of monasteries creates unentailed land
commodification of land and wood
over-exploitation of woodlands
presence of coal and iron in close proximity create "Capital"
Massive changes to land-use and land tenure driven by motive of extreme wealth
landless population was forced to work for the landed and for factories as whole cities were subsumed to iron production
Population fanned out and took over lands in other places
Slavery has existed just about everywhere; Africa was not the only place.
Throughout Britain there were slaves, even in the monasteries.
Slavery only stopped in the 19th C in Georgia and Russia.
Large family sizes are an artefact of disorganisation. First there is a die off, then, if you have intensification of settlement then the invaded peoples lose their lands and are educated to have many children because the economy needs workers and that is how they may survive.
All the rest is propaganda, IMHO. Including the black/white stuff. It covers up the land-stealing.
Coal and oil have made us unaware of how similar all economies once were. In the 16th Century the character Othello had the same status as any other king.
It is easier to steal from a country if you stigmatise its peoples and say that you are developing them or educating them or cultivating them, which presupposes superiority. The British did exactly the same to the Irish as they did to the Africans, Indians and Australians. You didn't have to be black to be stigmatised. The British did it to their own poor.
Just because it started in Britain is not to say that it was an intrinsically British attribute, that of exploitation under the pressure cooker of unentailed capital. But the British acquired system of land commodification and of overpopulation made the exploitation and settlement by massive numbers of people in foreign lands possible.
Unfortunately for the rest of the world. Unfortunately for everyone but a small minority of people who derive the ultimate profits today.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Small businesses also harmed by rent gouging
Thanks for this useful, if disturbing, news. It is not only people seeking accommodation who are threatened. In Paddington an inner West suburb of Brisbane, a community of retail businesses were hit by sudden rent hikes in February. Alt least had to close as a result. For Further information, read Rent gouging threatens Brisbane inner city retail community.
rent gouging
Does anyone really need proof that rent gouging exists? Well I have two examples...I used to live in Eagleby on Brisbanes southside, the 2 bedroom flat I rented in 2002 was $95 a week, it now rents for $230 a week.
I had a friend that lived in units in Eagleby that used to be leased by a church group and rented out to low income earners for $120 a week. In April 2007 the owner put them on the market and the real estate evicted all the tenants. Now they rent for $240 a week.... a $120 increase in 12 months? If thats not gouging I dont know what is.
U.S. voters must repudiate legacy of Bush
I cam in agreement with what Tim has written, except that I don't think it acknowledges that we can't forward unless we make choices between what is on offer today, however unpalatable those choices may seem. If U.S. electors don't consciously make a considered choice on the spurious grounds that both sides are seriously flawed, then they are effectively giving away what little choice they have left to the U.S.'s wealthy elites through their corporate newsmedia. It would be far more simple if there were a choice between a candidate that was clearly good on the one hand and another that was bad.
Because of the stupid, U.S. first-past-the-post voting system, voters can't even register protest votes, such as, for example, for the far more preferable Ralph Nader in 2000, without risking the catastrophe of the 8 years of Bush which did, in fact, occur as a result of votes that would otherwise have gotten Al Gore over the line, being effectively lost (as well as the outright rort of votes in Miami). The other catastrophe, of course was the election of Nixon in 1968, because many U.S. anti-war activists refused to acknowledge that, for all the serious faults of the Democrats, Nixon posed a far greater threat. Of course, in 2000, Gore would have been a very long way from perfect as Tim has shown elsewhere, but it is inconceivable that he would have mismanaged the economy to the same extent that Bush has or, invaded Iraq. Even if he had, it is inconceivable that he could have mismanaged the invasion as badly as Bush did.
Whatever can rightly be critically written of Barack Obama, I think it is essential that U.S. voters at least emphatically repudiate Bush's legacy by electing the only possible alternative to John McCain, Bush's heir that is Barack Obama.
Still, there are good reasons to be concerned about Obama. More evidence, on top of what Tim has written, can be found in Naomi Klein's Obama's Chicago Boys (and this doesn't even include his failure to confront the problem of U.S. population growth):
Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market." Demonstrating that this is no mere spring fling, he has appointed 37-year-old Jason Furman to head his economic policy team. Furman is one of Wal-Mart's most prominent defenders, anointing the company a "progressive success story." On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, "I won't shop there." For Furman, however, it's Wal-Mart's critics who are the real threat: the "efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits" are creating "collateral damage" that is "way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing 'Kum-Ba-Ya' in the interests of progressive harmony." Obama's love of markets and his desire for "change" are not inherently incompatible. "The market has gotten out of balance," he says, and it most certainly has. Many trace this profound imbalance back to the ideas of Milton Friedman, who launched a counterrevolution against the New Deal from his perch at the University of Chicago economics department. And here there are more problems, because Obama--who taught law at the University of Chicago for a decade--is thoroughly embedded in the mind-set known as the Chicago School.
Article by Rachel Siewart against GM
An article False dawn, GM future by Western Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert against GM may be of interest. I have just posted a comment there which points back to this article. At the moment it is awaiting moderation.
Download Maude Barlowe interview about water scarcity
Maude Barlow, founder of the Blue Planet Project may be heard in a fantastic interview on abc net's rural telegraph here:
The global water crisis - the Blue Covenant.
J.E. Caldecott: Market Privatisation of the Murray-Darling
Hard to do better than this article on Australia's water problems. This is a beautifully written, short and comprehensive page about what has gone wrong with the management of water in Australia, notably the Murray Darling. It succinctly spots what's wrong with COAG. It is systemically relevant. Absolute breath of fresh air. It is part of the Fair Water Use site. Most impressive site.
Kangaroo trail
Well done! And not a moment too soon. The latest report from Australian Society for Kangaroos contains information gathered from government departments pointing to the quasi-extinct status of over half the hunting states of NSW, Qld and SA. Combined with the fact that the average age of kangaroo killed is only 2 (barely at reproducing age for females and not reproducing age for males) and the fact that over half those killed are females does not bode well for the future of our national icon. And where is the allowance in the quota for crashed numbers due to the drought? Up to 70% populations across the nation have crashed from 2001-2006.
See full report at www.stopkangarookilling.org
Electricity privatisation
Iemma's claiming that because the Auditor General didn't slam dunk the whole idea, it's received a 'stunning endorsement'.
But as Unions NSW secretary John Robertson has pointed out, the report made no reference as to whether it was "a good or bad thing" for the state's residents. Not quite a stunning endorsement after all, then,
I'm hoping that history will repeat and that public opinion will halt the process, as it did with the proposal to privatise Snowy Hydro. Many of the arguments made against that proposal are as relevant with this one.
.
Tarrifs to protect loyal, sociable Oz industries
You are right, Dave. Tariffs stand out as the only logical way to cope with this problem.
So the push by the US to dismantle all our trade barriers and social and enviro protection must be combatted.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Externalising costs
So, alternatively, what would the BCA propose doing? Probably nothing. The invisible hand of The Market will fix the problem.. have faith. Yeah, right.
The concept expressed here by the BCA is the same as the perennial threat by business to move offshore to low wage countries whenever pay rises are mooted for Australian workers.
What they're saying is - in effect - 'We don't want to pay the costs associated with the pollution we generate (or in the case of wages, the social problems associated with poverty). If you try to make us pay, we'll take our bat and ball and go offshore to some place that lets us externalise these costs."
Which, to my mind, is fine if you only want to sell your products into those same places.
But you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you produce goods cheaply by externalising social and environmental costs in unregulated countries, you can't then expect to be allowed to undercut producers who do all the right things in more developed countries with more lucrative markets.
It's fundamentally unfair and makes a mockery of the neo-liberal concept of a 'level playing field'. The social tariff proposed by Doug Cameron (former National Secretary of the AMWU), if implemented, would have gone some way to protecting producers who pay decent wages and adhere to environmental laws. Unfortunately, Mr Cameron's proposal for such a tariff was defeated at the 2000 ALP conference.
The Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme may place Australian producers at a disadvantage compared to countries that allow industry to externalise the cost of pollution. Which is exactly why the Government should now move to protect Australian producers - by way of a tariff - from competitors who are effectively being subsisdised by not being charged for dealing with their wastes.
Not doing so will see Australia further de-industrialised and may - as Professor Garnaut suggests - actually result in increased levels of global emissions.
It will also worsen Australia's balance of trade, which is already in a parlous state as pointed out by Evan Jones in his submission to the review of strategies to enhance Australia’s trade performance, established by Simon Crean earlier this year. Jones, in his usual direct and prescient fashion says..
"Meanwhile, Australia sits on its fat lazy polluting bum enjoying its comparative advantage in coal, sending its best and brightest solar power experts elsewhere to generate beneficiaries and benefits on the other side of the current account. It is not inconsequential that the much-feted "Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy" of the estimable Professor Garnaut heralded one of Australia’s comparative advantages to be a polluting industry tolerance capacity (with the subsidised electricity-guzzling aluminium industry especially in mind). We are now reaping the wind of that particular comparative advantage."
Exactly.
.
Why waste energy 'convincing' an already sympathetic public?
Thanks, Sir John Lydon. Apologies for my errors. They would have been fixed very soon after you posted.
You raise a good point. See the article in the Sydney Morning Herald of 16 August:
Unions NSW step up electricity campaign
Unions NSW has stepped up its campaign against electricity privatisation.
More than 55 union stalls have been set up at shopping centres and fairs across the state, urging communities to contact local MPs and sign a petition against the proposed sale.
...
Unions NSW spokesman Matt Thistlewaite said on Saturday that electricity privatisation would be the primary consideration when the state parliament resumes.
"We've got six weeks to convince local MPs that this proposal is not in the interests of the people of NSW and remind them of the promise that they gave in the lead up to the last election to maintain public ownership of electricity assets in NSW," Mr Thistlewaite told reporters.
...
If local MP's are not yet "convinced" that privatisation is "not in the interests of the people of NSW", with 79% of the NSW public opposed, then when will they be?
The Unions need to decide whether or not they are serious in their stated opposition to privatisation. If they are they should be prepared to do all tath is necessary within their power, up to and including carrying out industrial action in order to change the Government's. If not, then they should stop wasting the time and energy of their membership and supporters in the broader public.
If they had been prepared to act decisively months ago, privatisation have have been buried long ago and those who have been spending their Saturday mornings trying to put their case to the NSW public, who have, in any case, said over and over again that they agree with them, could have got on with their lives.
Japan's not quite sacred forests
Hi vivienne,
Thanks for the comment. People do often wonder why Japan imports so much timber and forest products when forests cover about 66% of the land area. SOME forests are considered sacred (around temples and shrines, for example) and are protected (there are National Parks), but the 'real' reason for the imports is, of course, economics. Imported timber is much cheaper, making it uneconomic for Japan to work the forests. This has upsides and downsides. The upside is, naturally, that they still have their forests, but the downside is that the forests are now not maintained or managed, and so their condition is not good. Fortunately, forest fires are few and localised, due to plentiful rainfall, I suppose. However, large areas of forests are completely unmanaged and therefore overgrown. Storm and typhoon damage make the situation worse.
I do not think it quite true to say that the Japanese do not regard their forests as resources. There have been famous cases in the past, the campaign to prevent logging in the Shirakami Sanchi (northeastern Japan, Akita and Aomori Prefectures) in the 1980s is one of the most famous, of huge public opposition to logging in virgin forests. If it were not for cheap imports, however, Japan's forests might look quite different from what they are today.
[There are lumber merchants in the city who cut Cryptomeria for housing contruction]
The forests mentioned in the article, in the city where I live, are Cryptomeria Japonica. That's not because they naturally grow there, but because they were planted in the 1950s to help sustain the post-war construction boom - they are a great construction tree, but not much else. (I am told that animals will not live in these forests, but only where there are deciduous trees.) In the long-term it would be better for the city if the forests were slowly returned to deciduous trees, which would then provide a better balance for sustainable use after fossil fuels become unavailable.
And that's the bottom line, really - sustainable use and management. Anything else these days is truly asking for trouble. Profits can be made from sustainable use of forests, but probably not on the scale that businesses expect. Unsustainable management of forests, however, will nearly always result in big losses, which the companies try to 'externalize'. It's time they were made to see that these things have a tendency to snap back in your face further down the line.
The good guy has the least zoning
Which country has the least zoning? the kind that limits housing density and workplaces on land as practiced by western local governments? Because whichever side has the least zoning, that is the side I am on in any conflict since I care about little else including such irrelevent details as who started it.
I also care about overpopulation, but from that standpoint Russia and Georgia should be allies since they both have abortion rights and very low fertility rates, so we should be on the side of both, though Russia does edge out Georgia with a lower and thus more environmental fertility rate by a little bit.
The Ossetian ethnic patchwork could just swap houses and sort themselves out peacefully too, just like the USian Big Sort.
Why won't the ETU take on Iemma?
Very good, article, James, but, as is often the case, there is a bucketload of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Hopefully this will be rectified before too much longer.
On the Electrical Trades Union, I have to wonder why they won't simply issue the ultimatum as you suggest: either the government agrees to postpone all plans for privatisation until they have been put to and accepted by the NSW public, or the ETU will commence industrial action. With at least 79% opposed to the sale, if they can't win public support for their action now, then when can they ever hope to win it?
One can see by looking at how Telstra is attempting to destroy the union, what future lies in store for the ETU should it not act now to prevent privatisation.
Furthermore, an awful lot of time and energy has been put by grass roots activists into opposing the sale. The ETU acts as if it takes that activism for granted and behaves as if the activism will always be there. Instead of standing on the sidelines as these activists burn themselves out for what may, in the end, be a waste of effort should the ETU not act, the ETU should now move to the centre stage and take on Iemma, Costa and the thieving investment bankers who stand behind them.
Japan's forests
Apparently forests in Japan are protected and are considered sacred. That's why we send woodchips there. We in Australia see native forests as a resource and our leaders allow them to be chopped down for profits. That our Environment minister, Peter Garrett, supports Tasmania's forestry industries is ironic, considering the recent reports of how they are valuable carbon sinks! It is a "sustainable" industry, of course!
Sadistic koala killings in Queensland
The horrific and sadistic crimes against the slow and loveable koalas in Queensland is gut-wrenching and speaks volumes about the moral depths humans can descend to! Feral animals are quite capable of killing for entertainment, but we should be able to assume that as humans we are more intelligent and sensitive to other creatures! About 3.5 million kangaroos are slaughtered each year in a so-called "humane" and "sustainable harvest". Over one million joeys are bashed or left to die. Wildlife are routinely "culled" to please land-owners who claim they are a "pest".
With the little status our wildlife are given, it is no wonder we have sick individuals who assume killing for entertainment is acceptable! We already have a global reputation as the greatest wildlife exterminators in the world! Premier Bligh is correct - there needs to be much greater penalties for killing and maiming wildlife, but also our legislators need to give our fauna a much higher status of protection and stop giving permits for massacres too!
Wonderful article
What a delightful, interesting and instructive article!
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
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Solar hydrogen
Hi Sheila,
There's no denying that solar hydrogen has a way to go before it will even come close to replacing fossil fuels. The point of my article was not so much to suggest that it could - currently- but rather that it was promising technology that warranted greater investment than at present.
Having said that, there are concrete, working right-now examples of hydrogen being generated renewably around the world.
The Treehugger website reported last year on a solar powered home hydrogen fuelling station that had been developed by CSIRO. Treehugger said..
"We at TreeHugger have never been fond of the hydrogen economy, with its problems of sourcing the hydrogen (really a form of gaseous battery storing energy) and transport. However, this addresses both of these formerly intractable problems."
Likewise, the case of Mike Strizki's solar hydrogen powered house in the US demonstrates that renewably generated energy can be stored as hydrogen.
In Strizki's case particularly, the system isn't overly elegant. It's big, costly and not particularly efficient. But so were computers in 1978.
Problems with storage and transport can't be denied, but without investment into R&D, they won't be solved either.
Cheers :)
hydrogen hyperbole?
With all due respect, Dave, this press release sounds like a lot of hyperbole with very few specifics. They talk about 'when the technology matures', but hydrogen storage and transport of the fuel are very problematic. Despite a great deal of money and hype, so far, no-one has come up with any technology that would have hydrogen provide 'limitless amounts of energy'.
Maybe you know more about this than I do, in which case, please, details, details, details :-)
Sheila N
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Affordable housing and decentralisation
Some very positive ideas here, Tristan. The concept of shared facilities is one that should be seriously considered as a way of providing a high standard of living to people at lower cost - and with a reduced environmental footprint.
Another strategy worth considering is that of decentralisation. Many rural towns have been in decline for years, leaving empty houses that can't be sold. In addition, lots of these towns have vacant blocks that have been cleared and serviced - but never built on.
Providing incentives for businesses to move to towns in decline would protect them from becoming ghost towns and take some of the pressure off housing in the metro areas. Moving Public Service Departments to rural centres would have the same effect. The NSW Dept of Agriculture moved from Sydney to Orange in 1991, benefiting Orange and a number of the small villages in the area.
Of course, in the long run we can't have affordable housing if demand keeps outstripping supply and we can't sustainably keep building more new housing. There's no substitute for a relatively stable, sustainable population; but until that's achieved the kinds of ideas you propose would help to provide affordable housing in an ecologically sensitive way.
.
Owning a dwelling that another needs to live in is exploitiative
As I demonstrated in the article Brisbane's housing unaffordability crisis spun by ABC to promote property lobby interests, also linked to above, the ABC has concealed from the Australian public how the property lobby brought about the current housing unaffordabilty crisis in the first place. I agree with the author and with Dave that for them to now turn around and blame one group for this human tragedy is contemptible.
Nevertheless, I think it does need to be acknowledged that some baby boomers have been able to gain massively from housing hyper-inflation at the expense of their fellow Australians, including, it should be also be acknowledged, other baby boomers. As result of economic growth and, more so, population growth, properties brought on the North Coast of NSW for example, for as little as hundreds of dollars back in the 60's and 70's and 80's are now worth millions.
In general, I consider any relationship where someone owns a dwelling that someone else needs to live in to be exploitative. Of course, this is a simplification as I know of landlords, who have worked hard to buy properties that others are able to rent from them comparatively cheaply. Nevertheless, notwithstanding these exceptions and the fact that many elderly people are now dependent upon rental properties for their retirement income, as the author has pointed out, I still think this situation should be actively discouraged, if not altogether outlawed by the Australian government.
A good start to ending this exploitative situation would be to remove the negative gearing concession granted to property investors, or, alternatively, to extend that concession to owner occupiers.
We have to find means other than property investment to provide for elderly people.
Housing crisis - blame it on the boomers?
A thought provoking article, quark.
It's a pity that Australia's national broadcaster has fallen into the mode of superficial analysis that formerly characterised the Murdoch press, in particular. But let's face it, anything divisive is sensational. And journalism just isn't sexy unless it's sensational.
That Australia has a housing affordability crisis is beyond doubt.
But is it fair to lay the blame on baby boomers? I don't think so. If we're fair dinkum about attributing responsibility for the current situation we could do worse than to examine the activities of the Property Council of Australia, for starters.
While on the one hand urging rapid population growth and immigration, the Property Council simultaneously argues for a retention of negative gearing on investment properties.
Now I'm not against people investing in property if they want to. But allowing the interest payments on multiple investment properties as a tax deduction, while not giving the same deduction to people buying a single residence to live in, seems unfair to me. A bit like Robin Hood in reverse..
In addition, allowing tax deductions for property diverts investment away from more socially useful investment, in areas such as renewable energy.
At the same time, the PCA (consistent with most business lobby groups) sees population growth fuelled by mass immigration as an imperative to address Australia's so-called skills crisis. Coincidentally - no doubt - it's also a wonderful way to push up demand for property.
Taken together, what you get is demand outstripping supply and property prices inexorably rising.
Over the past 20 years, the Financial Services sector has been all over property investment like a rash. Books with titles like "Own 20 properties within 20 years" have sold like hotcakes and people have flocked to investment seminars run by property gurus. So it's no surprise that people have wanted to secure their financial futures through investing in property.
But blaming those same people now for unaffordable housing is unfair and divisive. A responsible approach to the housing affordability situation would be to examine immigration/population, financial incentives like negative gearing and strategies like decentralisation in a coordinated way. But of course that's not nearly as sensational as blaming the boomers.
.
Australia's technological edge lost thanks to privatisation
Thanks for your comment, Andrew. Back in October 2006, on the occasion of the launch of the 3G network, Sol Trujillo, the imported lavishly-paid Telstra CEO had the effrontery to make the claim that as a result of the 3G wireless network (meaning thanks to him personally) Australia was now a world leader in telecommunications, rather than a 'follower'.
In fact, Australia had been a world leader in telecommunications since at least the 1940's. In the 1970's they had adopted a plan to give every Australian access to fibre optic broadband before the turn of the century. That lead has been largely lost thanks to government imperatives, beginning at least with the Hawke and Keating Labor governments to turn telecommunications into a milk cow for corporations, investment bankers and CEO's such as Trujillo, rather than as a service to the Australian public.
For molr information, see citizensagainstsellingtelstra.com
Snowy privatisation
Australians have not got the expertise to run these vast infrastructure assets, Australians have not got the guts to run them either, just because we designed , built and operated these assets , assets such as Australia's dams, power generators, telephone network, roads, bridges, trains, national airline (our old QANTAS), banks our old Commonwealth Bank) our airports, Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL) , etc etc, all in the national interest, no we cannot do it, we need to hand them over to a few to control them and pay them enormous amounts of money to do what we have been doing for generations, Sorry Australians, you have not got what it takes anymore, hand over your family jewels and go away quietly and let the chosen few take control. off you go....
Assimilation into what?
Thanks Tim.
The thing with shopping mall consumer culture is that it's trans-national. If I slip down to the local hyper-mall I could just as easily be in Vancouver or Los Angeles as in Canberra. And why would it be any different? Business is increasingly multi-national. Starbucks in every city etc. The media reflects this and reinforces a feedback loop that progressively divorces people from the social and ecological environments that they live in.
Internationalists of 'left' and 'right' persuasion either see this as no cause for alarm, or even as a positive thing. But is it?
The environmental effects of not "thinking ourselves into the landscape" are patently obvious. On environmental grounds alone, we should encourage people to build appropriate houses and commercial structures, plant native gardens and make appropriate use of native species for agriculture and as companion animals. But instead, we see broadacre developments of faux-Tuscan style houses with no eaves, black tiled roofs and gargantuan air conditioning systems. No space for clotheslines, but electric tumble driers in every dwelling. This in parts of Australia where 40 degree + days are a regular occurence through summer! Planning laws do nothing to limit the madness, even though there are some great examples around of buildings designed to work with the environment to provide superior accommodation, with a much reduced footprint.
Anyone can own a cat or dog - despite the obvious effect that feral cats and dogs have on native species - but you risk prosecution if you feed the blue tongue lizard that lives under your stairs.
Agriculture is still often carried out in ways that just don't suit the climate, soils and landscape in Australia. At the risk of repetition, I'd urge Australian readers to have a look at Michael Archer and Bob Beale's 'Going Native' for a more thorough examination of these issues.
So some aspects of Australian culture are - or should be - shaped by our environment. But others are shaped by social factors and these are sometimes harder to quantify. Australians share a language and other ways of life that largely reflect a historically European heritage. English is the official language. Christianity is nominally the predominant form of religion. Our legal structures are descended from English systems. But over time, we've evolved some cultural elements that are uniquely Australian. Not British-Australian, not anything-Australian - just Australian.
Examples include a culture of mateship and association with the 'underdog' that derives from the conditions prevalent in the convict period (see, for instance, Russel Ward's The Australian Legend). A fondness for sport and other outdoors activity reflects a climate conducive to these things; we've even derived a unique form of football (AFL). There have been some excellent films made that utilise the unique light and landscapes here. I could go on for ever, but..
The thing with all of these cultural aspects is that none of them are in any way exclusive to one racial group or another. They are - in fact - inclusive rather than divisive in nature. So in a country as diverse as Australia, these things should surely be encouraged.
A single, modern national culture will go some way to building true harmony. Encouraging people to cling to the cultures of their homelands, while at the same time preaching tolerance at them, will not.
Australian culture's squeezed between the Californiculture of TV on one hand and the tribalism of official multicultural policies on the other. We should be building a modern Australian culture that's unique, inclusive and environmentally appropriate. The foundations are there. To do so in a comprehensive way would involve all levels of Government and include the broadest scope of activity. Assimilation to such a culture would be something that all Australians could work on together, over time. It's as different from the 'Fit In or F*** Off' model as multiculturalism, and infinitely better than either.
Or at least I think so.. :)
Cheers
.
Er... Interest, not debts?
Mike,
You said, "If the economy does not grow, then interest on debts incurred to finance this growth cannot be repaid."
So then is it not the interest that we have to forgive and forego and not the debts? In a steady state economy, people can lend each other money and expect to get it back, but there will be no interest. I'm not an expert. If I'm wrong, please show me why.
Housing limits without population stability cause homelessness
Subject was: Lip service - JS
Before you go thinking this is a major step, the environment commission is not city council and these statements are not binding policy and do not represent any real commitment on the part of anyone with real power. What's more, there is no mention of contraception or fertility rates making this basically a statement in the interests of real estate speculators who want to limit the housing supply so that prices will explode with population. This is not an effort to actually reduce population in a way that would reduce housing demand and prices but merely a way to make Bloomington more elite.
Limiting housing units does nothing to limit population or help the environment. It only causes homelessness.
Immigration, assimilation
Once again Dave shocks me with another of his typically astute comments. I don't believe anyone has discussed assimilation in these terms before. Certainly not in Canada. It has always been framed in terms of "these people should learn to speak OUR language and learn OUR customs". I think Dave is saying that it is WE who should learn the "language" of the environment where we actually live rather than the environment our grandparents emigrated from. The New Canadians from Asia and southern Europe who live in urban colonies in the five major Canadian cities are not really connected to the land to which they emigrated to. But the native born white yahoos who wreck the landscape with ATVs and snowmobiles and work it as industrial loggers have no spiritual affinity to it either. And most aboriginals, according to my observation, have been corrupted by this crass culture.
So the question, Dave, then, is, assimilation, by all means. But assimilation into what? Assimilation into mindless shopping mall consumerism? Assimilation into insensitivity toward the natural word by a rainbow coalition of Caucasian, Asian, African and Aboriginal spenders, recreationists and workers? All knit together by a common language and harmony and tolerance? If this is the case, I am for anarchy. Nihilism. Let it all fly apart. Let all hell break loose.
Tim
Steady state economy not possible without debt forgiveness
Subject was: steady state economics - JS
This is good news. HOWEVER, I wonder if any of the authors of this statement remotely understand what enormous change this would entail. I have to say I had no understanding of it until recently myself, but to change from a growth economy to a steady state one means forgiving all debts, because a growth economy is a debt economy. If the economy does not grow, then interest on debts incurred to finance this growth cannot be repaid.
At this stage, one has two choices: bankrupt everyone (which is more or less what happened to most of the poor in the Great Depression), or forgive all the debts and start with a blank slate, my preferred option.
This last option is in any case the only possible outcome of the collapse of the financial sector which is currently unraveling. We can either do this in a civilised manner, OR do the usual, fight wars over all of the remaining scraps.
Time will tell which way we as a civilisation decide to go, but there is no doubt we all live in interesting times!
Take the crash course at www.chrismartenson.com while we're at it... better have a strong cuppa in your hands!
Mike.
A pessimist is a well informed optimist
You're not the only one
Increasingly I get the feeling of being surrounded by cosmetically-enhanced consumers, all dancing to the new world order beat, and a smattering of misfits often diagnosed with newfangled psychiatric disorders. We've been conditioned to want more of everything, more consumer gadgets, more people, more politically correct rhetoric, more lip service to green issues. Sometimes less is better.
So we're all just naturally greedy?
Hi Tim,
"But realize that [it] is not external forces that are making you run so quickly on a treadmill."
Wouldn't it be nice if..., but if whatever you're dreaming of, like taking a trip to Pluto, isn't a possibility, are you still going to get worked up over not having it? You can only really desire what is realistically within your grasp.
"There she stood in the doorway, I heard the mission bells,
I was thinking to myself, 'This could be heaven or this could be hell.'
Then she lit up a candle, and she showed me the way,
There were voices down the corridor, I thought I heard them say..."
I think people are led to consumerism and greediness. They have a choice, but only just about. Most people are not aware they have that choice.
Like Pahom in Tolstoy's story, most people want to live a little more comfortably, "conveniently" as we say in Japan, and so they work hard to improve their lives. Some people, unlike Pahom, unlike most people who live in the advanced industrial nations today, do know when they have enough - that just enough when life is fairly comfortable, and your possessions are not much of a burden on you.
But I think what we have today, and it is very clear in many young Japanese people, is a sheer, crass consumerism that blinds people to the realities of life and living. This, one can say, is the result of the energy revolution of the past 250 years or so. But did it really have to be like this?
How DID it get like this? Why do we have this culture of greed that validates addiction to all this stuff? Did it just happen because everyone is naturally greedy?
I don't think so.
"Just wait until the oil economy is done. You’re going to get a crash course in Amish living and I am going back to the future.. You’ll have lots of time to slow down then and get re-connected with the people around you."
That would be nice. I think a lot of people are hoping that this will be the end result of "Peak Oil". If it were true. Tim, please spare me about 20 minutes to read my G8 biofuelling biofeudalism, because I think it's much scarier than that. Enjoy a cup of (Japanese green) tea while you read it, if you like.
Italy, the gatekeeper of the EU
Dear Tim,
Thanks so much for your comments.
No need to feel guilty, though. Italian society is not united to combat its ills. Right and Left are tearing society apart. The criminals, of whatever origin or affiliation , profit from this state of affairs.
There are voices, for example, that call for opening the gates even further, because it is our fault if the Africans (Indians, Rumanians, Romas, etcetera) are poor. Frankly, with this type of logic there will be no more space to accommodate the Third World, because of the immense guilt of the White Man.
These people who recommend such open door policies don't explain why Zimbabwe, who used to be a rich country, is now one of the poorest in the world. Is this our fault too? And if I say that Mugabe is a monster, should I be accused of being a racist?
Some friends of mine went to Canada for a vacation and didn't want to come back! ( do not fear, they are back) They felt in Paradise, They couldn't believe what they saw: inexplored wilderness, peace, beautiful unspoiled landscape, and kind and law-abiding people to go with it.
How do you manage to preserve all this?
Low population density?
Intelligent governments?
Cooperative people?
Low immigration rates?
Good luck
Marisa
Assimilation and the environment
It's clear that assimilation is important from an environmental perspective.
Agriculture in Australia has historically been about farming European species in European ways. Many farmers continue to do so, even though salinity problems, the impact on native species, loss of topsoil and water stress all indicate that such practices are far from sustainable. Aside from mainstream agriculture, previous generations have imported plant and animal species that reminded them of 'home'. Foxes and rabbits, introduced for sport, have had a huge impact on our native species as well as reducing agricultural productivity. Lantana now degrades over 4 million hectares of Australia's environment.
Of course, all this is well known to most year 6 students, but what's less well considered is the role that assimilation - or the lack of it - played in making it all possible.
Consider the early British colonists. Were they committed to Australia, our land, plants and animals? Did they feel any connection to Australia? Was it 'home' for them?
Of course not. They were English (or Scottish or Irish or...) plain and simple. And to our eternal cost, succesive generations were actively encouraged to feel the same. Despite the good work of people like those in the Jindyworobak movement, many Australians still related to Menzies 'British-to-the-bootstraps' outlook as late as the 1950's. So the early colonists - and their heirs - proceded to replace all this weird native flora and fauna with more familiar species. Make it more like home. And their children and grandchildren, inheriting their farm, inherited their attitudes too. This was 'British-Australian' culture in action. Bugger the consequences.
Had there been greater awareness of - and respect for - Australia's environment, the early colonists and their descendants might have found that native species provided answers to some of their problems. Bob Beale and Michael Archer have explored these themes in 'Going Native', a book I'd strongly recommend. Indeed, if the development of a modern Australian native culture had been more actively fostered in the past, many of the environmental problems of today could have been mitigated.
Now, I think it's natural for immigrants to feel an attachment to their homelands. It's also right for Australians to take up ways of living that originated elsewhere, if those practices are environmentally and culturally appropriate. No one's too worried about being able to get a good gelatto.
But over time, it's also natural for later generations to adapt to the cultural norms of their new homes. Having official policies that work against this trend is like Canute trying to hold back the tide. Pointless and - in the meantime - divisive and damaging.
.
Feedback for open letter to John Brumby
I received this e-mail on Friday 1 August.
Hi James,
This is a fantastic and informative warning for the premier. I hope he takes it to heart. Could you please let me know his response.
Many thanks for all you are doing.
Hans Brunner
Move to a childfree town for no school tax
Tax funded schools and childcare destroy the environment and raise rents and oil prices by exploiting the childless of all colors and classes, especially sports programs which also encourage bullies.
Parents would stop moving in and polluting if we quit luring them here with public schools.
Many local employers and landlords already do it secretly, but they need to openly discriminate against heterosexuals(1), which is still legal in North Carolina, because they use too much parental leave and childcare benefits.
Footnotes
1. North Carolina (NC), in the South East of the United States, has not yet banned hiring discrimination on the basis of sexual preference. - JS.
Bioethanol production a danger even when not on cropland
Please also see the short article Biofuels threaten to turn Kenya's Tana Delta into ecological wasteland, which shows how the production of bioethanol can be an ecological danger even when not carried out on cropland. Bioethanol can, and I think will be, an important energy source in the future, but only if it is produced and used in a responsible way. Corporations will not do this. Small-scale producers might.
RE: Coalwater Bay
Hi d.j. hunt!
I'm assuming you live in the Rockhampton/Yeppoon area. Is there much local support for a coal terminal at Port Clinton? Is local opposition strong enough for the Bligh government to abandon these ridiculous plans?
Coalwater Bay
I attended this meeting and the organisers did a fantastic job. It was very fair and very balanced and I was able to find out facts I did not know. This proposal really scares me as I said on the night in relation to the threat to an endangered species, being the dugong, that live in this area.
Everybody needs to let the govt. know the risk to these dugongs is not acceptable and support the Capricorn Conservation Council
Plug the pipe video here
Plug the pipeline rally video
Quotable quote: "Brumby will be remembered as the man who made the foodbowl into the dustbowl."
North South Pipeline This video follows the route of the pipeline. It is very clear and informative.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
... but London voters have rejected the congestion tax
Whilst the stupidity of the policies of the Brisbane City Council and the Queensland Government's policy of making us all dependent upon the private motor vehicle is all too obvious to deny, I don't agree with congestion tax as a solution. I consider it regressive and hurts the poor the hardest and I can't see how it is fundamentally different from road tolls.
In any case the voters of London have recently voted Ken Livingstone out in favor of the Conservative Party candidate Boris Johnson. At the time it was reported in the news principle reason for Boris Johnson's victory was the rejection by Londoners of the congestion tax.
So, Ken Livingstone's confidence that opposition to the congestion tax would diminish over time has been shown to have been misplaced.
I think we have to advocate polices which remove any need for a congestion tax. These would include, obviously more public transport, and greater decentralisation so that the need for regular travel into Brisbane's CBD would be removed. The most critical change of all, of course, would be to end the reckless encouragement of population growth by all three levels of Government in Brisbane. Whatever gains are to be made from such a regressive charge will only be negated as they surely would have been in London by population growth (see How mass migration has devastated the social fabric of Britain of 7 Jul 08).
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Courier Mail's irresponsible support for Hale Street Bridge, etc
Thanks for this Tristan. Here's a post (comment 60 of 132 of 15 Jul 08) I made to the Courier Mail discussion you referred to:
As I wrote in an unpublished letter on 23 May:
"Could the Courier Mail's editorial writers please remind us why they supported these white elephants (the Hale Street Bridge, the NSBT, etc.) when every informed person was predicting that the cost of petroleum was going to go through the roof as it now has?"
If the Courier Mail had done the job it is supposed to do and subjected these stupid projects to normally acceptable standards journalistic scrutiny and had given the case against these projects the coverage they deserved, Brisbane would not be in the mess it is in today.
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The ULDA is progressing
The ULDA is progressing development in the northside Brisbane suburb of Fitzgibbon.
A community group has formed and share the concerns expressed in this article.
www.frag4018.org
Min Thomson unresponsive to crisis: Wildlife activist & artist
On July 29th, 2008 Brigitte Charron wrote
Kelvin Thomson MP
Labor Shadow Minister for Environment
and Heritage Matters
3 Munro Street, Coburg 3058
Sunday, 6 October 2002
Dear Mr Kelvin Thomson MP,
I recently received your Electorate Report and I am pleased to know that you are campaigning to stop land clearing as part of your environmental portfolio. I want to congratulate you and let you know that you have my full support.
I would like to bring to your attention an issue that concerns me greatly. As the Shadow Minister for Environment in the Labor Party, you may be aware that the kangaroo industry in Australia kills kangaroos at the rate of 6 million a year with the full approval of our Federal Department of Primary Industry. The kangaroo industry promotes the wholesale slaughter of kangaroos as a sustainable harvest¹. How can it be sustainable when the strong males are the first casualties of a commercial slaughter?. In a cynical kilo for dollars exercise which leaves many writhing in agony from misfired bullet wounds, the alpha males offer the best yield to the shooters. Killing the biggest and best out of a mob is a threat to the future survival of the species because even though there is an increase in populations, the animals are not healthy, not fit, and the populations are unsustainable. The kangaroo and the Federal Government have not taken into consideration the depletion of the gene pool.
The kangaroo has become a resource after decades of ignorant perception as pests. Proper public education has not been undertaken; Australians should have been deprogrammed from that sorry state of thinking Most Australians think that kangaroo numbers are far higher than they actually are and it is in the interest of Governments and the kangaroo industry to uphold this myth. Australia has approximately 230 million sheep and 37 million cattle, which is the plague? What animals cause the most destruction?
Another disturbing fact to consider is the cruelty inflicted on kangaroos by the kangaroo industry. The cruelty comes in two forms. Shooting is not an exact science because of the many variables and the result does cause horrific non-fatal injuries. To quantify the wounding rate is near impossible. It is not acceptable to a civilisation like Australia, who prides itself on how it regards other creatures and which goes so far as to give a mandate to the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals to stop such excesses. Apart from the wounding rate, the other form of cruelty is so extreme that the publication, The Commercial Harvest of Kangaroos in Australia, steers well away from anything but mere mention. Females of breeding age killed usually have a joey at foot and a joey in the pouch. When the mother is killed, this joey at foot is left to fend for itself. Panic, fear, starvation or being preyed upon by the hundreds of foxes that keep tabs on kangaroo shooting will end its life in a state of terror. Also, too small to be lucrative, more than a million joeys are removed from their mother¹s pouch and tossed aside to die from predation or beaten to death by the shooters. This is not acceptable to reasonable thinking people The fate of the joeys is the cruelest of all.
The commercial exploitation of any wildlife leads inevitably to their near extinction. The kangaroo is no exception. The kangaroo industry is responsible for the worst massacre of wild animals in history. We have already lost six kangaroo and wallaby species from the genetic pool and there a re a number of other species on the endangered list and nearing extinction. If we do not stop the exploitation of kangaroos, our national icon will be no more than a museum exhibits for future generations.
We are harvesting our future. We are doing it with such momentum and conviction that we have swept aside the knowledge and wisdom that exists to show us how it might be done, for us all. For the animals. For the plants. For ourselves to find the harmony in an all-sustaining planet.
The commercial harvesting of kangaroos must stop, with non-comsumptive use of wildlife for tourism introduced.
I thank you for taking the time to read my letter and look forward to hearing from you in regards to your opinion on this matter. I hope you will support the protection of our wildlife, not its exploitation.
Sincerely
Brigitte Charron
Iemma a virus in the political system
I wouldn't call it a fantasy. Remember Telstra. They chipped away over successive governments and eventually got their evil undemocrtic way. Don't let up for a minute on Iemma; he is bad news. He is a dinosaur capitalist.
Wildlife activist thinks Min Thomson speech just rhetoric
"I was flabberghasted to read Kelvin Thompson statement that he cares about nature. Pat O'Brien and I met with his advisor and we tried for months to get an appointment to see him about kangaroos and he did not give us the time of day and failed to answer any correspondencce about the plight of kangaroos."
Maryland Wilson
(Maryland Wilson is the President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC). Pat O'Brien, is the President of Wildlife Protection Association of Australia and Co-ordinator of the National Kangaroo Protection Coalition)
Kelvin Thomson fails to live up to words in speech?
Uh-oh. I did wonder about publishing Kelvin Thomson's speech. It did seem too good to be true. I immediately received two comments about how the Minister has seemingly failed to live up to his words here, which you may read below.
I would like to hear from anyone who is able to show that Mr Thomson actually puts his money where his mouth is with regard to standing up for Australian species.
Human productivity advances correlate with resource consumption
(This post is also a response to Passy's posts on an Online Opinion discussion forum in response to the article 'Populate or perish'? of 24 Jul 08.)
In the very broadest sense, Passy may be correct, when he wrote:
Is there any evidence we have passed our so called optimal population level? Just because it is blindingly obvious to you doesn't make it so, or correct.No-one can definitively prove, that is, until it is too late, that the planet is over-populated to the point, where some theoretically better society than the one we have now, cannot rise to overcome all the problems that now seem intractable - exhaustion of fossil fuel reserves, exhaustion of stocks of rare metals, global warming, destruction of rainforests, extinction of other species, destruction of agricultural land, destruction of river systems, the lowering of underground water tables upon which much of the world's agriculture depends, the destruction of fish stocks, etc, etc. However, on the basis of overwhelming data, it seems to me intuitively unlikely that even the most perfect, equitable and democratic possible form of social organisation would be sufficiently superior to capitalism as to enable to easily solution all of these problems, particularly if they were to be compounded by the addition of over two billion more to the global human population. As I pointed out earlier, all the advances in human productivity in recent centuries have correlated very closely to our unsustainable and accelerated rate of consumption of finite non-renewable natural resources, particularly fossil fuel energy, so it seems far more likely that that, rather than advances in human knowledge, is the major driver of seemingly improved human productivity. So, as Divergence, Ludwig, ozideas and others have suggested, it would be extremely reckless not to assume that humanity's numbers have overshot the carrying capacity of our biosphere, regardless of what form of social system we eventually adopt and and it would be extremely reckless not to begin, as a matter of utmost urgency, to stabilise human numbers without any further delay. As I have made clear elsewhere, I agree with Passy think we can do a lot better than we are we are with the rapacious, inefficient and grotesquely iniquitous globalised system of capitalism that we now live under, but unlike Passy, I won't be placing my faith in claims of the virtually unlimited capacity of human intelligence made by most socialists as well as by neo-liberal apologists for our current economic system.
Mum may recover figure but Earth will be the worse off
Bizarrely sexist comment by the truckie husband. Makes his wife sound like a cross between a productive breeding animal and a sex-toy. And might just as well be, by being so out of touch with the world around as it is impacted by population growth and the industrial expansion which serves it. Then again, the mainstream press has this way of seeking out the yuk factor in the daily affairs of people who just do what they think is okay; this family is obviously responding to religious and economic propaganda. The news reports are glorifying this for some purpose of their own - to sell papers and to sell population growth, which will enhance their many corporate capital investments by increasing inflation.
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.
Disillusion with Labor no reason to turn back to the Liberals
Thanks, 'duped'.
Even though many of us rightly feel badly let down in many regards by the Rudd Government, I still think it would be wrong to draw the conclusion that we should not have chosen them over the Liberal Government last year. If nothing else, at least those who want something better than the astonishingly abysmal Government of John Howard can claim a lot more legitimacy than would otherwise be the case. Furthermore, if Howard had won, the process of disillusionment that we are now going through would have only been put back yet another three years, after which Labor could well have been even more right-wing than it now is.
If Labor does not prove equal to the task before it, then we need to find better alternatives and not merely allow the pendulum to swing back, once again, to the Liberal Party. If we allow that to happen, then we will only back to where we are now in 10 or 15 years time, if we are lucky.
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"giving us an economy that is more innovative and competitive"