Education

Most people lack the basic education in arithmetic, geography and logistics to judge whether they are overpopulated, to compare population densities between regions, to factor in import and export, and, most importantly, to understand how waste-disposal requires natural 'services' or to understand that they are themselves, microbiologically, a part of nature, but that each one of us now is extended into a kind of per capita earth moving and processing factory for creating dead stuff. This article evolved from a response to a quora question and appears in its original form here: [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-cause-of-illiteracy-on-overpopulation/answer/Astrid-Nova]

The importance of different land-tenure systems which do or do not promote growth lobbies

My research tells me that illiteracy on overpopulation is mainly due to the fact that the financial beneficiaries of overpopulation also control the mainstream/corporate press, which constantly tells people that population growth causes economic growth and that the problem is not ‘overpopulation’ but ‘lack of infrastructure’. This cause of illiteracy is most prevalent in the Anglosphere where the system does not penalise land-speculation and does not see population growth as a cost to the state, but as a way of profiting in the private sector - notably in the property development and upstream and downstream industries, including land-sales, mining for materials, construction materials sales, development and construction finance, real-estate, housing construction and sales, furnishing etc.

Non-Anglosphere systems (typically Roman Law ones with Napoleonic Civil Codes in continental Europe) tend to penalise this kind of ‘growth’ (really wealth transfer) because it represents a cost to the state, because there the state subsidises finance for and carries out most land development and construction, keeping prices relatively low in a smaller private sector. Therefore, in those Roman Law systems, you don’t have much of a ‘growth lobby’ because there is a lack of focused beneficiaries. In the 2008 financial crash, for instance, France suddenly got a big debt because its banks invested in the US subprime system, which did not exist in France itself due to the nature of France’s property development and housing system.

In the Anglosphere settler states with strong property development growth lobbies and mass immigration, the government members, public servants and the opposition members and political parties, tend themselves to have accumulated huge land-banks and property finance interests. Usually these are concealed in shell companies that donate to an intermediary company that donates to the political party. These beneficiaries of the growth lobby make laws to promote their investment interests. Corporations also invest in the property development and population growth lobby. The corporate press has property dot coms, so they promote these private interests and constantly tell the public that population growth is a great thing for the economy. Public broadcasting also promotes this. Although observant people can tell that the cost of living is going up all the time and that mortgages are out of reach for many wage earners and nature is being paved over, it is hard for those of us who pay for this population growth, rather than profiting from it, to organise. That is because the propaganda is so effective that people simply look away from the obvious, having been told that that is not the problem.

Education and information fail to provide necessary skills for charity or politicians to judge what is happening

Most people have come to accept the idea that population grows out of control everywhere because this has been taught to them at school, in the media, by churches, and by demographers, who are not really population theory experts, but just accept the numbers and calculate on trends. The growth lobby beneficiaries are so wealthy and organised that they are able to place people on charity and welfare boards and on public broadcasting boards and behave as if they are doing a charitable act by offering advice to invest in property and not to criticise high immigration.

My references are Sheila Newman: The Growth Lobby in Australia and its Absence in France, Swinburne University, Australia or academia.edu. Also Demography Territory Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations Countershock Press, and, Demography Territory Law 2: Land-Tenure and the Rise of Capitalism in Britain, Countershock Press.

Doubling times

Another reason that people cannot make sense of what is happening is that they cannot understand population sizes or population doublings arithmetically. See Albert Bartlett videos or find online a doubling rate calculator. This is a deficiency of the education and information system.

Population density and environment

People also tend to fall for questionable comparisons between population densities in places with radically different environments, such as comparing the low population density per sq km of Australia with the high density per sq km of Holland. This kind of comparison ignores differences in land fertility, climate and terrain, such as the fact that Australia is quite densely settled in the fertile parts but that 35% is hot, sandy, salty desert and another 30% is arid range land.

Food production logistics

People also are not taught to look at the logistics of food production: They would otherwise factor in the role of importation of food and materials from colonies or poor countries, which can make a big population viable in a small tertiary economy with little land. This problem is well-modeled in the Ecological Footprint diagram which you could find by search-engining the term.

Dangerous ignorance: Waste processing logistics and addiction

The logistics of waste remain inaccessible to governments, business and citizens, to our peril: A large proportion of the world has to be left for food and materials production; you cannot cover this with cities. There are two very important arguments for preserving a very large part of the world for biodiverse nature, both quality and quantity.

The first reason is that nature is our heritage and wonderful and valuable in its own right.

The second reason is thermodynamic. Life is the only thing that reorganises diffuse energy into systems. It does this when it consumes food and then reorganises it to fuel and replace living cells and to create new organisms, via reproduction. Although waste is created in this process, according to the laws of thermodynamics, it is biological waste.

Unlike other life-forms, human life, unfortunately, creates more dead and disorganised (non-living) stuff per person than its own total biomass. So, we need a large, functioning natural world to process our disorganised material and toxic waste.

This excellent slide-show analyses medical waste, but the components of medical waste are the same as for most waste.

We should not forget that we are a part of nature; we are composed of systematised cells and viruses that function as our cells and organs. No wonder that when we think about losing nature, we feel terrible. Except where we have become obsessed with the idea of power and wealth, which are forms of addiction. And all creatures can become addicted to substances and rewards that feed the sensation that they are increasing their power or territory to a magical degree that will make them capable of overcoming reality. Currently our global economic systems reward this kind of delusion.

Activism at Universities has declined as a direct result of 'reforms' to Australia's tertiary sector since the ousting of the Whitlam Government in 1975. Ordinary Australians have suffered considerably as Governments have been able to impose unpopular policies harmful to Australians' interests, far more easily.

The following has been adapted from my comment in response to a recent lecture by Professor Glynn Davis, broadcast on ABC Radio National. (This whole article has also been modified since it was first published on 21 December.

) Professor Glynn Davis maintained that Indian student demonstrations in Australia showed that activism was alive and well here. But he failed to comment on an immense vacuum in political comment and grass-roots activity as the civil rights of Australians have been continually eroded. It is surely very convenient for those who profit from this erosion that student preoccupation with issues of minority discrimination prevents agitation in the face of a more general decline in civil rights and quality of life.

How can supposedly 'left wing' academics of Professor Glyn Davis's generation remain so quiet about the fact that vast layers of Australians, once able to enjoy comfortable and financially secure lives, have become impoverished under the social 'reforms' that Australia has endured since the late 1970s.

The agent of this silence is the anti-scientific dogma of so-called 'economic rationalism' with which almost all government decisions- and, it seems, academic theories - have to comply these days.

As a consequence, the cost of University courses has climbed (almost without protest) beyond the means of many ordinary Australians. Higher education costs plus other massive rises in the cost of living, particularly of housing, have made it impossible for people not from privileged backgrounds to spend time engaging in political activism as students once did. So many are forced to spend much of their free time working to pay rent and other living expenses. I also did this when I attended University full time until 2001, but the situation has become even worse since then. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, I know for a fact that it was possible for students to live in share accommodation, comfortably, if modestly, on government Austudy payments alone, without them needing to work. This was true even in inner Sydney suburbs.

Today's lack of free time in the lives of students prevents them from engaging effectively in social activism. The same can be said for unemployed people, who are required to spend much of their time fulfilling pointless obligations to seek work even where it doesn't exist. This political situation has made it far easier for governments to undemocratically impose many other policies that have also greatly harmed ordinary Australians.

There are many examples of such polices: privatisations (including the privatisation of retirement income (aka 'superannuation'), which even Bush could not impose upon the US), although the Chilean dictator Pinochet achieved this in the 1970s; the emasculation of the Whitlam government's Medibank and the public health system, the GST, reduction in employment opportunities; destruction of worker protection whilst importing foreign workers; and the overall decline in government services.

Among bad policies, we should also include the two invasions (1991 and 2003) of Iraq and the Afghan War, which began in 2001. The protests against war in Iraq were the biggest protests in Australian history since those against the Vietnam war, yet our governments went ahead with the Iraq invasion. There was little protest against the Afghanistan war, of course, because of what happened on September 11 of 2001. The situations Australian soldiers currently risk life and limb for in Iraq and Afghanistan are based upon pretexts since proven to be lies. The discovery of the lies which led to the invasion of Iraq is particularly well documented (and dramatised), by the way, in the recent movie "Fair Game", starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, about the 2003 Iraq war.

What happened to protests against war in Australia? I know the answer. It is too complicated to go into in this article. Suffice to say here, that we no longer hear much against wars. The last person to raise a profile on this issue was dissed by Jon Faine and the Prime Minister herself before disappearing from mainstream media view. I refer, of course, to Kevin Bracken.

What underlies the Australian establishment's antipathy to and ignorance of nature? The conflict between religion and science, and the roles played by 'colonial rationalists', the Catholic Church, and the State in the suppression of flourishing scientific debate and celebration of Australia's unique ecology. How controversy preceding the passage of the Victorian Education Act 1872 (which was intended to secularise education) derived from a rearguard defence against the growing influence of Darwin, to the lasting demotion of natural science and respect for environment and other creatures in mass media and government. This article was published in response to "Anglican Church Australia Overpopulated discussion paper - entire," and comments by Vivienne Ortega and John Marlowe

This article was originally written as background research for an as yet unpublished theory on the politics of natural science and environmentalism in Australia. I dusted it off in response to the comments above. Hope people will find it interesting.

Paradise revealed

Colin Finney in Paradise Revealed, Natural History in Nineteenth-Century Australia [1], writes that science gained ground in school curriculums during the 1890s. He attributes this trend to the role in its encouragement played by a group of liberal and influential schoolmasters associated with the council of the University of Melbourne. He names the Reverend Dr John Bromby, ex-headmaster of Melbourne Grammar School, and Dr Charles Pearson, royal commissioner, former lecturer in history at the University, and headmaster of the Presbyterian Ladies College, as important in this group. The group’s efforts were supported by friendly University professors who did duty as matriculation examiners. Not surprisingly, he notes that the teacher group was “often more sympathetic to science than were University professors such as Frederick McCoy…”

A Pageant of conflict between religion and science

A G Austin, author of Australian Education, 1788-1900,[2] describes the conflict between religion and science, and the roles played by 'colonial rationalists', the Catholic Church, and the State. He attributes much of the controversy preceding the passage of the Victorian Education Act 1872 (which was intended to secularise education) to a rearguard defence against the growing influence of Lyell, Darwin, Huxley and Spencer. He writes of a 'spate of lectures and sermons on the topic' delivered by such as Professor Frederick McCoy. Dr John Bromby (mentioned above, for the other side) delivered a competing lecture at the same venue:

"This procession of learned divines and professors across the stage of the Princess Theatre in the winter of 1869 seems somewhat ludicrous until we realize that these men were not engaged in any academic reconstruction of the English debate, but were doing serious battle against a potent force at work in their own midst, for rationalism had been an active and vocal movement in Victoria for a number of years."[3]

"In ever-hardening opposition to the rise of secularism stood the Roman Catholic Church which, almost alone, made up that group of denominationalists who were prepared to reject the secularists' claims as a matter of principle… Irish English and Spanish as they were, the bishops had had to adapt their European outlook to the concerns of the impoverished minority group which made up their flock."

Establishment of Catholic School system

But money and power were also at stake. The cost of renouncing State aid was too great for most religions and they did not seriously pursue the notion of establishing separate religious schools. But the Catholic Church stood its ground and set about establishing its own school system.

"This restatement of Catholic ideals, dogma and discipline could not help but collide, head-on with the whole liberal ethos of the late nineteenth century. Worse, this collision of ideologies would inevitably expose and inflame the sectarian bitterness and bigotry which has always formed an ugly scar across the Australian mind…"[4]

"It had always been there … but in the closing stages of this struggle between Church and State it assumed a dimension which these three writers have not fully appreciated. It produced the form in which the secular Actis finally passed into law - designed, not to drive religion out of the State schools, but to prevent the Roman Catholic Church from continuing its assault upon the liberal, secular State with the aid of the State's own resources."[5]

The question that arises in my mind is whether this historic situation has prevailed and the Catholic education system has continued to reject Darwinism at all but a superficial level. It certainly seems to be the case that the Catholic Church, at least in Australia and America, plays a special role in discouraging effective population policies to restrain growth by encouraging high migration, discouraging contraception and maintaining a weak and superficial line on ecology and the environment. [6] If my observation is true, then here is a further explanation of the extreme sensitivity and poor viability of debating and designing effective population policy in Australia and other countries with similar histories.

Secularists vs Sectarians in 19th Century Australia

In his fascinating history, A. G. Austin, Australian Education 1788-1900, Church, State and Public Education in Colonial Australia,[7], writes that, in the 19th Century, apart from Edward Cohen's contribution, the secularist agenda to remove religion from education came from a small 'heterogenous' group. Cohen was a leading member of the Victorian Jewish community and a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, who said:

"This being a new and free country, let us leave behind us all the superstitious nonsense of the old world. Let us meet here on common ground. Let us send all our children to the same schools, irrespective of creed or country; and let them there be brought up in that creed of kindliness and friendliness which will make them forget that their other creeds divide them."

Austin asserts that historical study of the development in English thought through Lyell, Darwin, Huxley and Spencer, that focuses on New South Wales to the exclusion of Victoria, would fail to note the much earlier and vigorous manifestation of Darwinian secular thought in that State.

Victoria's rationalist movement, the press and popular debate

"Controversy was very lively in Victoria in the 1860s; to postpone its arrival until the 1870s is to miss the point of many of the arguments which preceded the passage of the Victorian [secular] Education Act of 1872." [8]

In support of this he cites the "spate of lectures and sermons which were delivered on this topic towards the end of the 1860s." Once again the name of Professor Frederick McCoy is raised, with reference to his lengthy condemnations of Huxley and Darwin's theories. Apparently McCoy and the pro-Darwinist Reverend Dr J E Bromby both appeared before a large audience at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne on 28 June 1869. Two weeks later Bromby's bishop, Bishop Perry appeared at the same venue to retrieve the church's reputation. He delivered a two hour lecture on the theme that "the Bible has nothing to fear from Science."[9]

Austin makes the point that "the procession of learned divines and professors across the stage of the Princess Theatre in the winter of 1869" was not just part of a debating festival. These men were seriously engaged in defending their positions as the rationalist movement steadily gained ground.

Austin cites E.W. Cole, owner of the "famous" Bourke Street Book Arcade," as renowned for "daily suffering Persecution for his heretical writings, which the boldest Melbourne papers are afraid to advertise."[10] Cole’s publications Religions of the World, (1866); The Real Place in History of Jesus and Paul (1867) and Essay on the Deluge (1869) were all published in Melbourne. A.G. Austin also mentions Henry Keylock Rusden, "renegade son of the vicar of East Maitland and radical brother of George William Rusden", who was a pro-Christian but non-sectarian agent of the National [Education] Board for the whole of eastern Australia.[11]

In 1871 Henry Keylock Rusden said this to Bishop Perry during a public encounter:

"...education is most valuable in so far as it is moral ... Morality is based - not upon religion - but upon men's social nature and necessities ... That very religious fervour which formerly prompted our ancestors to incremate each other for being conscientious - to subordinate real and natural to imaginary and supernatural duty - is precisely that which now interposes the principal obstacle to the establishment here of an effective (or secular) system of education ... The suppression of the broad distinction between moral and religious needs and objects is so general, that I grieve to say that I know no school in Melbourne much superior to the streets for acquiring moral training. [12]

Austin thinks Victoria was most influenced by the rationalist movement of all the colonies in Australia. Major Victorian newspapers, including The Age and the Argus, supported the rationalists' position on secularisation of education, if not their arguments. At the national level the Sydney Morning Herald, the Queensland Guardian, the Brisbane Courier, the South Australian Register, and the West Australian all eventually came to the same point of view.

George Higinbothom, editor of the Argus, lawyer, Member of Parliament, Minister of the Crown, Royal Commissioner and Chief Justice)[13] stood somewhere between the rationalists and the more conservative non-sectarianists. The latter believed that education should be Christian, but not sectarian. As chairman of the Royal Commission into the Common Schools Act, he delivered a report denouncing a system that left more than half the colony's children completely unschooled. He introduced a bill for compulsory elementary school education. In the belief that religion was an essential part of education, the bill also sought to allow clergy to give non-sectarian religious instruction in schools at allotted periods.

The Age and the Argus both urged Higinbotham to go the whole hog and support the "absolutely secular" position.

Giving his reasons as due to the "ecclesiastical rivalry and dissension and ... the unpatriotic policy pursued by the leading Christian sects" he gave his support to a completely sectarian system.

The famous politician, Henry Parkes, who spent five terms as Premier of Victoria, and was a major legislator on educational issues, came out in defence of non-sectarian religious instruction, apparently in the spirit of ecumenicism. [14]

The Roman Catholic Church was by far the most discountenanced by the secular education movement. It was the only one to stand its ground. In the face of the threat of withdrawal of government grants for school salaries from denominational schools, all the other religions demurred to the secularist non-sectarian option.[15]

Austin describes the Roman Catholic hierarchy as "Irish, English and Spanish ... the bishops had had to adapt their European outlook to the concerns of the impoverished minority group which made up their flock." This meant that they had become increasingly reliant on government handouts.

"By the [eighteen] sixties and seventies the ultimate result of this process [of concentrating power in the new secular school boards] was becoming clear: the Roman Catholic schools were gradually being squeezed out of the government system..."

[16]

Pope Pius IX, papal infallibility, and Darwin

The Catholic stance was bolstered by the publication of Pope Pius IX's encyclical Quanta Cura, which included the famous Syllabus of Errors. Darwinism historian, David L Hull, "Darwinism and Historiography" in The Comparative Reception of Darwinism[17], describes Pius IX as having put his stamp on one of the most scurrilous anti-Darwinian attacks to appear in the French language. Paul Collins in God's Earth, Religion as if Matter Really Mattered, p.32 attributes moves toward papal centralism and the declaration of papal primacy and infallibility in 1870 as in part reactions to Darwin's Origin of Species. He writes that in the Syllabus Pius IX stated his intention not to "reconcile himself with progress, liberalism and with modern civilization."[18] Austin writes that this restatement of Catholic ideals, dogma and discipline could not help but collide, head-on, with the whole liberal ethos of the late nineteenth century.[19]

In Australia as in Europe, this new statement of Papal infallibility and inflexible opposition to liberalism was experienced as a political threat by non-Catholics (and doubtless by Catholics as well.) In response to the Vatican decisions of 1870, Gladstone wrote:

"For the first time in my life I shall be obliged to talk about popery; for it would be a scandal to call the religion they are manufacturing at Rome by the same name as that of Pascal ... The truth is that ultramontanism is an anti-social power, and never has it more un-disguisedly assumed that character than in the Syllabus... The proclamation of Infallibility I must own I look upon as the most portentous (taking them singly), of all events in the history of the Christian church." (A.G. Austin, citing John Morely, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone.) [20]

Interestingly, the Australian environmentalist Catholic priest, Paul Collins, author of God's Earth, Religion as if Matter really mattered, later wrote a book called Papal Power challenging these very foundations of modern papal authority. (He then quit the priesthood before he was pushed.)

Catholic and Protestant jockeying for political power

A G Austin writes of such a sense of danger to liberalism as being all the stronger in Australia because they felt that "the enemy was so much more numerous".

"Never less than one-fifth of the population, and by 1870 close to one-third, the Catholics in Australia had always represented to the Protestant mind a very real political danger. Victoria's Registrar-General was not exaggerating when he told an audience at St. Patrick's College that he had 'seen it stated in broad print ... that Catholics are striving with all their might to obtain more than their due share of influence in the Legislature, and interest in the patronage of the Government." (A.G. Austin citing W.H. Archer, Noctes Catholicae)[21]

Sixteen years later a Ministry under Irish patriot Gavan Duffy had lost government over a scandal where the Premier was charged as having abused privilege by preferring to appoint Irish Catholics for official appointments.

That same year, 1872, some voices, including that of the Protestant Rev. F.B. Bryce of Orange, suggested some sort of funding compromise in order to avoid totally alienating Catholics and giving rise to a dual system. But it was Parkes, the once persistent defender of non-sectarian religious instruction in schools, who finally drafted and sponsored the Bill to abolish all financial aid to denominational schools in 1879. All other States followed suit in time.[22]

The Victorian State elections in 1872 degenerated into a sectarian struggle between Catholics and non-Catholics. The Argus came out in defence of the government. In Sydney the scenario was repeated in the 1880s. In Western Australia, where Sir John Forrest had a very good relationship with the influential Bishop Gibney, the abolishing of State aid to denominational schools did not occur until 1895. The protestant majority in that State had become increasingly vocal about its desire for this to happen and the elections of 1894 focused on the issue. [23]

A.G. Austin comments on the number of

"gold-seekers [who] came swarming into the colony [of Western Australia] from the depression-ridden colonies in the east. Overnight Western Australia was confronted with the eastern influences from which it had been so effectively insulated ..." "With every increase in eastern migration [Forrest's Catholic pacifying] policies became less acceptable, and his opposition more formidable."[24],

And so the Australia-wide independent Catholic education system was established on a basis of historic bitterness and alienation from the rest of the Australian community and within a strongly anti-Darwinian culture. Providing a lower cost private education, it continues to service a growing part of the Australian community, many of whom are not Catholics. It seems likely that these beginnings may have created barriers for the Australian Catholic Church to formulate a system for understanding Australia's ecological uniqueness. The Church's stance on birth control is well known to be prejudiced against artificial methods of contraception and abortion, although its policy on population control could be said, at least at an interpersonal level, to be Malthusian. However the Catholic Church, in Australia and elsewhere, has become an ardent advocate of open borders and high migration. Naturally Catholic migrants and refugees are more likely to receive assistance to migrate from the Church than others. The demographic impact of this on political processes affecting population policies has to be considered.

On the question of the Church's treatment of ecological imperatives Collins, writing as a priest:

"This [Cartesian-Newtonian] mechanistic view of nature has achieved a great deal for science and it still predominates in contemporary scientific thinking. But the mechanistic approach sees nature as a vast, inanimate storehouse of useable 'resources' that are there to be exploited for the short-term advantage of humankind. It is this attitude that has brought us to the tragic and disastrous environmental impasse that we face today. ... Up until the latter part of the nineteenth century, when the revival of the philosophy of Aquinas was mandated for the training of priests by the Vatican, it was largely the philosophy of Descartes that was taught to student priests in European seminaries. Theology easily embraced the Cartesian notion of the mind in the machine because for so long the Christian tradition had been subverted by Neo-Platonic dualism. Descartes was simply the tag end of Platonism.

"In the Christian communities, such issues [as ecology] are usually swept aside by seemingly more anthropocentric issues, such as social justice and the liberation and development of the third world. ... Muscle-flexing by churches from developing countries led to a highlighting of the centrality of human liberation that largely pushed ecological theology into the background.... I mention the fate of ecology at the WCC Assembly because it is typical of the way the churches deal with this topic. It is good as window dressing, but it is not really taken seriously. ..."[25]

Perhaps in fact the problem for the Catholic Church and for much of the non-Catholic population as well, lies in the lack of a Darwinian or equivalent concept of or aesthetic appreciation for our biosphere. How widespread is the Cartesian view of a mechanistic universe of soul-less animal servants and incidental flora and fauna peripheral to the human system in contributing to educated as well as unsophisticated [by which I don't mean hunter-gatherer] peoples' world views?

NOTES

[1] Colin Finney, Paradise Revealed, Natural History in Nineteenth-Century Australia, Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, 1993, p 123
[2] A G Austin, Australian Education, 1788-1900, Church, State and Public Education in colonial Australia, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd, Melbourne, 1961, pp 181-204
[3] A G Austin, Australian Education, 1788-1900, Church, State and Public Education in colonial Australia, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd, Melbourne, 1961, p 183
[4] A G Austin, Australian Education, 1788-1900, Church, State and Public Education in colonial Australia, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd, Melbourne, 1961, p 196
[5] A G Austin, Australian Education, 1788-1900, Church, State and Public Education in colonial Australia, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd, Melbourne, 1961, p 197
[6] Paul Collins, God's Earth, Religion as if matter really mattered, Dove, Harper Collins, 1995, pp140-141, "In the Christian communities such issues are usually swept aside by seemingly more pressing anthropocentric issues, such as social justice and the liberation and development of the third world. … Muscle flexing by churches from developing countries led to a highlighting of the centrality of human liberation that largely pushed ecological theology into the background. .. [Ecology] is good as window dressing, but it is not really taken seriously. The seemingly incurable anthropocentrism of the churches means that the call to protect nature is soon swamped by the pressing reality of human needs. Human development quickly takes over from ecological conservation."
[7] A. G. Austin, Australian Education 1788-1900, Church, State and Public Education in Colonial Australia, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd, 1961) p. 181.

[8] Ibid

[9] A.G. Austin, Op. Cit., p. 182 citing C. Perry, Science and the Bible, Melbourne 1869, p.3.

[10] A.G. Austin Op. Cit., p 183, note 38, (citing B.S. Nayler), Cole's, The Battle of Science, Melbourne, 1869, p.12.

[11] A.G. Austin, Op. Cit., p.49 and p.183.

[12] A.G. Austin, Op. Cit., p.184, note 41, citing 'Hoker' (H.K. Rusden), The Bishop of Melbourne's Theory of Education, Melbourne 1871, pp.4, 6.

[13] A.G. Austin, Ibid. p.184)

[14] A.G. Austin, Op. Cit., pp. 189-190)

[15] A.G. Austin, Op. Cit., p. 190 and p.197.

[16] A.G. Austin p. 194, note 72, citing T.P. Fogarty, The Principles, Origins and Development of Catholic Education in Australia, unpublished PHD Thesis, Univ. Melbourne, 1956, p.45.

[17] David L Hull, "Darwinism and Historiography" in Thomas F. Glick, (Ed.), The Comparative Reception of Darwinism, University of Chicago Press, 1988, p.392

[18] Collins, God’s Earth, Op.Cit. p.32, citing Colman T Barry (ed.), Readings in Church History, Vol III, Paramus, N.J.: Newman Press, p.74.)

[19] A.G. Austin, Op. Cit., p.196

[20] A.G. Austin, Op. Cit., p.198, citing John Morely, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol II, pp.508, 510-12.

[21] A.G. Austin Op. Cit., p. 198, note 82, citing W.H. Archer, Noctes Catholicae, p.2.

[22] A.G. Austin Op. Cit., p 203-204.

[23] A.G. Austin Op. Cit., pp 206-216

[24] A.G. Austin Op. Cit., pp 214 -217.

[25] Paul Collins, God’s Earth Religion as if matter really mattered, Dove, Harper Collins, 1995, page number not available here.

The Red Kangaroo and Emu that support the shield are the official animal emblems of the nation. They owe this recognition to the fact that they are native Australian fauna (found only on this continent).

...and then we go and massacre them.

The 2008 Belconnen Massacre - lest we forget

We are reminded of the brutal belconnen massacre of 500 kangaroos yesterday two years ago on 19th May 2008, followed shortly afterwards with another 4000 or so kangaroos massacred at the Majura Army training area. "Kevin Rudd or Environment Minister Peter Garrett declined to stop the killings. It was supported by the RSPCA's Micheal Linke." ['Two years since the shameful Belconnen slaughter in Canberra']

Then around this time last year Australia's Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon MP, approved a similar kangaroo massacre at the same place on Saturday, 9th May 2009. [Fitzgibbon's Massacre - 9th May 2009]

These wildlife massacres reflect a prevaling backward colonial attitude by our government towards native animals. Native animals were regarded as vermin by early colonists. This attitude prevails.

Labor's Big Ecological Lie

At the time, outright propaganda lies were told by government officials and politicians that the kangaroos were starving and the kangaroos threatening native grassland and three threatened species on the site, the striped legless lizards, golden sun moths and Ginninderra peppercress. Read More

Such propaganda is right out of Joseph Goebbles "Big Lie" technique based on the principle that a lie, if audacious enough and repeated enough times, will be believed by the masses. Goebbles' propaganda attacks on the Jewish population culminated in the Kristallnacht assault of 1938, an open and unrestrained pogrom unleashed by the Nazis all across Germany, in which scores of synagogues were burned and hundreds of Jews were assaulted and murdered. [Source]

The truth at Belconnen is that the government wanted new housing estates to go up where the kangaroos lived, so they slaughtered the kangaroos. Simple and brutal as that.

The Truth about the 2008 Belconnen Massacre

Colonist Australia - a history of slaughtering native Australians

The truth across all of Australia through its colonial history right up to recent times, is the government wanted the land where Aborigines lived, so they slaughtered the Aborigines. Simple and brutal as that. Today's 21st century official slaughter of Australian native animals is no different to the official slaughter of Australian native people by European colonists, who treated Aboriginal people as vermin.

The following massacres are shocking testament. Such truths of Australian history remains excluded from the Australian school curriculum. Such truths of Australian ecological present remain excluded from the Australian school curriculum.

[List_of_massacres_of_Indigenous_Australians]

1790 Botany Bay Genocide In December, Governor Arthur Phillip issued an order for "a party...of two captains, two subalterns and forty privates, with a proper number of non-commissioned officers from the garrison...to bring in six of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay; or, if that number shall be found impracticable, to put that number to death".

1824 Bathurst Massacre Following the killing of seven Europeans by Aboriginal people around Bathurst, New South Wales, martial law was declared and many Aboriginal people were killed.

1828 Cape Grim Massacre On 10th February in the North west of Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania, four shepherds with musket guns ambushed over 30 Tasmanian Aborigines from the Pennemukeer band from Cape Grim, killing 30 and throwing their bodies over a 60 metre cliff into the sea.

1830 Fremantle Punishment Raid The first official 'punishment raid' on Aboriginal people in Western Australia, led by Captain Irwin took place in May 1830. A detachment of soldiers led by Irwin attacked an Aboriginal encampment north of Fremantle in the belief that it contained men who had 'broken into and plundered the house of a man called Paton' and killed some poultry. Paton had called together a number of settlers who, armed with muskets, set after the Aborigines and came upon them not far from the home. 'The tall savage who appeared the Chief showed unequivocal gestures of defiance and contempt' and was accordingly shot. Irwin stated, "This daring and hostile conduct of the natives induced me to seize the opportunity to make them sensible to our superiority, by showing how severely we could retaliate their aggression." In actions that followed over the next few days, more Aborigines were killed and wounded.

1833-34 Convincing Ground Massacre of Gunditjmara On the shore near Portland, Victoria was one of the largest recorded massacres in Victoria. Whalers and the local Kilcarer Gunditjmara people disputed rights to a beached whale carcass.

1834: Battle of Pinjarra In Pinjarra Western Australia, official records state 14 Aboriginal people were killed, but other accounts put the figure much higher.

1838 Myall Creek Massacre 10 June: 28 people killed at Myall Creek near Inverell, New South Wales. This was the first Aboriginal massacre for which European settlers were successfully convicted. Several colonists had previously been found not guilty by juries despite the weight of evidence and one colonist found guilty had been pardoned when his case was referred to Britain for sentencing. Eleven men were charged with murder but were initially acquitted by a jury. On the orders of the Governor, a new trial was held using the same evidence and seven of the eleven men were found guilty of the murder of one Aboriginal child and hanged. The successful prosecutions resulted in pacts of silence becoming a common practice to avoid sufficient evidence becoming available for future prosecutions. Many large scale massacres were to go unpunished due to this practice.

1838 Waterloo Creek Massacre A Sydney mounted police detachment attacked an encampment of Kamilaroi people at a place called Waterloo Creek in remote bushland.

1838 Faithfull Massacre Benalla -In April of that year a party of some 18 men, in the employ of George Faithful and William Faithfull, were searching out new land to the south of Wangaratta. Then, in the vicinity of, or possibly on, the present townsite of Benalla, it is alleged that a large number of Aborigines attacked the party's camp. At least one Koori and somewhere between eight and thirteen Europeans died in what became known as the Faithfull Massacre. Local reprisals lasted a number of years, resulting in the deaths of up to 100 Aborigines. The reason for the attack is unclear although some sources claim that the men took shots at local Aborigines and generally provoked them.[15] It also seems they were camping on a hunting ground

Additional murders of these people occurred at Warangaratta on the Ovens River, at Murchison (led by the native police under Dana and in the company of the young Edward Curr, who could not bring himself to discuss what he witnessed there other than to say he took issue with the official reports) Other incidents were recorded Mitchelton and Toolamba.

This "hunting ground" would have been a ceremonial ground probably called a 'Kangaroo ground'. Hunting grounds were all over so not something that would instigate an attack. The colonial government decided to "open up" the lands south of Yass after the Faithful Massacre and bring them under British rule. This was as much to try and protect the Aboriginal people from reprisals as to open up new lands for the colonists. The Aboriginal people were (supposedly) protected under British law.

1839 Campaspe Plains Massacre At Campaspe Creek, Central Victoria in May-June saw the genocidal slaughter of the Daung Wurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung people.

Mid 1839 Murdering Gully Massacre Near Camperdown, Victoria saw the genocidal "wiping out" of the Tarnbeere Gundidj clan of the Djargurd Wurrung people.

1830s—1840s Wiradjuri Wars Clashes between European settlers and Wiradjuri were very violent, particularly around the Murrumbidgee. The loss of fishing grounds and significant sites and the killing of Aboriginal people was retaliated through attacks with spears on cattle and stockmen. In the 1850s there were still corroborees around Mudgee but there were fewer clashes. Known ceremony continued at the Murrumbidgee into the 1890s. European settlement had taken hold and the Aboriginal population was in temporary decline.

1865 The La Grange Expedition was a search expedition carried out in the vicinity of La Grange Bay in the Kimberley region of Western Australia led by Maitland Brown that led to the death of up to 20 Aboriginal people. The expedition has been celebrated with the Explorers' Monument in Fremantle, Western Australia.

1868 Flying Foam Massacre - Dampier Archipelago, Western Australia. Following the killing of two police and two settlers by local Yaburara people, two parties of settlers from the Roebourne area, led by prominent pastoralists Alexander McRae and John Withnell, killed an unknown number of Yaburara. Estimates of the number of dead range from 20 to 150.

1874 Barrow Creek Massacre - February (NT): Mounted Constable Samuel Gason arrived at Barrow Creek and a police station was opened. Eight days later a group of Kaytetye men attacked the station, either in retaliation for treatment of Kaytetye women, the closing off of their only water source, or both. Two white men were killed and one wounded. Samuel Gason mounted a large police hunt against the Kaytetye resulting in the killing of many Aboriginal men, women and children - some say up to 90. Skull Creek takes its name from the bleached bones found there long after.

1876 Goulbolba Hill Massacre In Central Queensland thre was a large massacre involving men, women and children. This was the result of settlers pushing Aboriginal people out of their hunting grounds and the Aboriginals being forced to hunt livestock for food. A party of Native Police was sent to "disperse" this group of Aboriginals. This led to the deaths of over 200 Aboriginal people including all the women and children.

1880s-90s Florida Station Massacre In Arnhem Land a series of skirmishes and "wars" between Yolngu and whites occurred. There were several reported massacres at Florida Station. Richard Trudgen also writes of several massacres in this area, including an incident where Yolngu were fed poisoned horsemeat after they killed and ate some cattle (under their law, it was their land and they had an inalienable right to eat animals on their land). Many people died as a result of that incident. Trudgen also talks of a massacre ten years later after some Yolngu took a small amount of barbed wire from a huge roll to build fishing spears. Men, women and children were chased by mounted police and men from the Eastern and African Cold Storage Company and shot.

1884 Battle Mountain Massacre 200 Kalkadoon people killed near Mount Isa, Queensland after a Chinese shepherd had been murdered.

1887 Halls Creek Genocides In the Kimberly, colonist Mary Durack suggests there was a conspiracy of silence about the massacres of Djara, Konejandi and Walmadjari peoples about attacks on Aborigines by white gold-miners, Aboriginal reprisals and consequent massacres at this time. John Durack was speared, which led to a local massacre in the Kimberley.

1890 Speewah Massacre In Queensland early settler, John Atherton, took revenge on the Djabugay by sending in native troopers to avenge the killing of a bullock. Other unconfirmed reports of similar atrocities occurred locally.

1890-1920 'The Killing Times' - East Kimberleys: About half of the Kimberley Aboriginal people massacred as a result of a number of reprisals for cattle spearing, and payback killings of European settlers.

1906-7 Canning Stock Route Massacre : an unrecorded number of Aboriginal men and women were raped and massacred when Mardu people were captured and tortured to serve as 'guides' and reveal the sources of water in the area after being 'run down' by men on horseback, restrained by heavy chains 24 hours a day, and tied to trees at night. In retaliation for this treatment, plus the party's interference with traditional wells, and the theft of cultural artefacts, Aborigines destroyed some of Canning's wells, and stole from and occasionally killed white travellers. A Royal Commission in 1908, exonerated Canning, after an appearance by Kimberley Explorer and Lord Mayor of Perth, Alexander Forrest claimed that all explorers had acted in such a fashion.

1915 Mistake Creek Masacre Seven Kija people were alleged to have been killed by men under the control of a Constable Rhatigan, at Mistake Creek, East Kimberley. The massacre is supposed to be in reprisal for allegedly killing Rhatigan's cow, however the cow is claimed to have been found alive after the massacre had already taken place. Rhatigan was arrested for wilful murder apparently due to the fact that the killers were riding horses which belonged to him, but the charges were dropped, for lack of evidence that he was personally involved.

1918 Bentinck Island Massacre In 1918 part of the Mornington Island group, Bentinck Island was home to the Kaiadilt clan of just over 100 people. In 1911 a man by the name of McKenzie (other names unknown) was given a government lease for nearby Sweers Island that also covered the eastern portion of the much larger Bentinck Island. Arriving on Bentinck with an Aboriginal woman and a flock of sheep, he built a hut near the Kurumbali estuary. Although the Kaiadilt avoided contact and refrained from approaching McKenzie's property he is alleged to have often explored the island, shooting any males he found while raping the women.

In 1918 McKenzie organised a hunt with an unknown number of settlers from the mainland and beginning from the northern tip of the island herded the Indigenous inhabitants to the beach on its southern shore. The majority of the Kaiadilt fled into the sea where those that were not shot from the shore drowned. Those that tried to escape along the beach were hunted down and shot with the exception of a small number who reached nearby mangroves where the settlers horses could not follow. Several young women were raped on the beach, then held prisoner in McKenzie's hut for three days before being released.

1924 Bedford Downs Massacre a group of Kija or Gija men were jailed for spearing a bullock. On release from jail they had to walk the 200 kilometres back to Bedford Downs, where they were set to work to cut the wood that was later used to burn their bodies. Once the work was finished they were fed Strychnine, and the bodies were burned.

1926 Forrest River Massacre In the East Kimberleys in May 1926, Fred Hay, a pastoralist, was speared and killed by an Aboriginal man, Lumbia. A police patrol led by Constables James St Jack and Denis Regan left Wyndham on June 1, to hunt for the killer, and in the first week of July, Lumbia, the accused man, was brought into Wyndham. In the months that followed rumours circulated of a massacre by the police party. The Rev. Ernest Gribble of Forrest River Mission (later Oombulgurri) alleged that 30 people had been killed by the police party. A Royal Commission, conducted by G. T. Wood sent an evidence-gathering party and heard evidence regarding Gribble's allegations. The Royal Commission found that 11 people had been massacred and the bodies burned.

1928 Coniston Massacre - A WW1 veteran shot 32 Aborigines at Coniston in the Northern Territory after a white dingo trapper and station owner were attacked by Aborigines.

Lest we forget.

The Emperor Julian codified the land-tenure laws which Napoleon later consolidated. The substitution of the Napoleonic code for the British inheritance system could help overpopulation and poverty.

July 11 was World Population Day, marking the day in 1987 when the world’s population passed five billion. This year’s theme in the UN is ‘Fight Poverty: Educate Girls.’

Here are some things that the UN does not talk about and which Bill Gates probably doesn't realise.

The third world countries that have natural increase problems began by their steady-state communities being disorganised through massive immigration - then called colonisation, now called industrialisation. The problems began with loss of land-tenure as entire peoples were disorganised and disoriented by having their traditional land removed from their control. Africa and India, for instance, had many stable populations for centuries, as testified by their high biodiversity and healthy natural systems at time of colonisation. The degradation of their natural systems has accompanied the destabilising of their human social organisation and overpopulation.

It was not until the 18th and 19th Century, with the imposition of the English political systems that these populations blew out. Polynesia, micronesia and Australia, colonised later, are succumbing later to the same failure of practical democracy.

The people of the original steady state societies lost their land to the colonisers and were encouraged to become wage-earners instead of self-sufficient. The new economy was initially agricultural and then manufacturing. Large landless families benefited both agriculturalists and manufacturers. Those without land were totally dependent on wages for their labour to survive and could not opt out of the labour market. Thus, people who for thousands of years had been self-sufficient and free, became servants.

Like the Americas and Canada, Australia is still being 'colonised'. The landless people who were forced to come here or who came voluntarily and displaced the aboriginal population are now losing their own access to land here, just like the Aboriginals. At the same time women here are being conned into having more children. It is becoming harder to get a decent education as well.

There is every reason to anticipate that this difficulty will increase.

The Importance of Child Labour Laws in preventing overpopulation:

Once the rot has set in, next thing to go are effective child labour laws. This is because if there is no ban enforced on children labouring, then large families are preferred to educated wives. Once children are a major source of income, mass-education withers away.

Child Labour Laws as a variable in fertility rates[i]

Here are some explanations for changes in human fertility since the beginning of agriculture.

In countries where effective labour laws prohibit the employment of children, those children become costly rather than income-beneficial.[ii] In those countries where working for wages is the main option for survival for many but where child labour is prohibited, then people who rely mainly or uniquely on wages will have fewer children.

Similarly, a woman who has education will be more valuable as an income-earner than as a child-producing wife in a society that prohibits child-labour. Where women earn less than men for doing the same job, in a society which needs skilled workers and prohibits child-labour, then this will be a disincentive for taking such women out of the workforce to have children. It will also be an obstacle to marriage because men's capacity to find work will be undermined by the cheaper but still skilled labour of women. In societies where monogamous marriage is the model for raising children, there are implications for marriage frequency. With children a high cost, only men with high incomes will be able to afford to take a wife out of the workforce to nurture children.

Inheritance Laws as a variable in average wealth differentials

In countries where men can own and inherit land, but women cannot, (England from the 12th century until the 1920s) then lack of land is an incentive for women to marry for material survival, but women who can own land and earn a salary may experience their ability to earn as a disincentive to marriage due to the status and power of running their own lives.

A disincentive also operates in countries where, in divorce, either partner may acquire rights to the assets that the other brought to the marriage.

Some countries have facilitated the ability of women to work, raise and educate children outside marriage -- e.g. France. To this should be added the fact that French women also benefit from equal inheritance rights to men.

Although French women only recently (in the 1970s) regained the right to manage their affairs, this right, coupled with the government's duty to house, educate and assure an income to its citizens, enhances women's security and independence.

France also, through its inheritance system, makes French women more likely to inherit wealth than British women and many British men, who had almost no land inheritance rights until primogeniture was revoked in 1926.[iii] Even though all children may now inherit in societies based on British law, because there is no legal requirement that they inherit, there is still a profound tendency to disinherit children in those societies, through second marriages or due to their being the product of casual union, or based on ideology or a whim. (I often think of how the very rich Australian, Reg Ansett, disinherited his son, Bob, apparently excusing the inexcusable with an ideology that everyone should make their own way in the world, failing to take into account that different generations have very different prospects according to resource depletion and other changes.)

The legally enforceable inheritance rights of any French child, legitimate, illegitimate, issue of first or subsequent marriages is almost certainly a major factor in the lesser disparities between rich and poor in France and those other countries in Europe which benefited from the Napoleonic Code (a Roman law based system). It is noteworthy that Pacific Islands which have inherited the French system do not have the same rates of overpopulation, homelessness and economic poverty as the ones that were colonised with the English system. (Neither do those in Japanese waters, with the exception of those which passed into US ownership after the Second World War. The Japanese inheritance system also preserves land in families.)

Unfortunately the French situation of equity will be affected by changes to the Napoleonic Code introduced by President Sarkozi in 2008. Now it becomes possible for a spouse to make a serious claim on part of a deceased's estate where that estate previously went entirely to blood relatives.

The recent ability of technological societies to prove paternity is a new factor that could be exploited to access additional income for children whose mothers might otherwise be their sole providers. This could act to increase the fertility rate, but men might become more careful about impregnating women under these new circumstances.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i] Excerpt from my book in progress below on this subject.
[ii] Doepke, M., Growth and Fertility in the Long Run, Mimeo, University of Chicago, 2000, available in reduced form in Doepke, M. "Accounting for Fertility Decline During the Transition to Growth", Journal of Economic Growth, 9(3), 347-383, September 2004. The speed of the fertility transition depends on policies that affect the opportunity cost of education, namely education subsidies and child-labor restrictions. Doepke considered the case of two countries that started to grow at roughly the same time, but which had experienced very different government policies: (South) Korea and Brazil. Korea had a strong public education system, and child-labor restrictions were strictly enforced, while Brazil had an ineffective public education system, with little systematic enforcement of child labour restrictions. Doepke found, as his model predicted, that the fertility decline associated with development proceeded much faster in Korea than in Brazil.

[iii] The rule of primogeniture in England was not changed until the Administration of Estates Act of 1926.

Australians are losing their human rights to power, water, affordable housing, agricultural land, wild healthy biodiverse landscapes, self-government, education, and sustainable population very very fast.

Do you all know about the current Human Rights Consultation in Australia? You can register your concerns. Deadline is 15 June. Format is not limited to filling out the form; you may express yourself freely.

Please strongly consider writing your concerns about what is happening to human rights in Australia through commercially driven population growth, development, media and government. Circulate this article as widely as you can. Print it out and help elderly people, homeless people and others not able to access the internet to contribute to this consultation. The mailing address is lower down in this article.

This consultation provides avenues for people to record their concerns about the government's big population policy and its effect on human rights.

Examples of rights impacted and diminished by government policy and its coalition with the commercial Growth Lobby include:

- safe clean natural affordable water
- healthy river and soil and forest systems
- beautiful natural landscapes
- a healthy wild biodiverse envelope
- a kind and respectful treatment of farm animals and wildlife, with land-use planning for their welfare
- functioning democracy not overwhelmed by commercial interests fed by population growth
- the right to local self-government
- affordable housing

Towards protecting or retrieving these rights, we suggest that you demand:
- an end to the tendency towards monopoly of ownership, outlets and delivery by the mainstream press
- an end to commercial representation on the boards of the ABC and other public media
- the right to demand that the owners of the commercial press daily declare their commercial and corporate interests and associations to the public in an accessible manner
- public ownership of institutions and assets
- proper consultation about privatisation
- limitation of corporate rights
- add your own (The highlighted areas above may give you some ideas and material.)

The National Human Rights Consultation is seeking views about human rights in Australia on the following, but not limited to the following:

1. Which human rights and responsibilities should be protected and promoted?
2. Are these human rights currently sufficiently protected and promoted?
3. How could Australia better protect and promote human rights?

You can send an electronic submission via the submissions page or send it by mail to
National Human Rights Consultation Secretariat
Attorney-General's Department
Central Office
Robert Garran Offices
National Circuit
BARTON ACT 2600

or register to attend a community roundtable discussion in your state. The Consultation will run from 10 December 2008 until August 2009. The last date submissions can be accepted is 15 June 2009. After listening to the views and ideas of the Australian people, the Consultation Committee has been asked to report to Government on what they have heard by 31 August 2009.

Help http://candobetter.org to amplify your concerns and help you organise

We here at candobetter.org would also appreciate your contributing your submissions or to discussion at http://candobetter.org where we can amplify any ideas. There is no guarantee that the people appointed to represent the submissions will do this adequately without public pressure. Please help us to stimulate and organise this public pressure by sending your submissions to us as well, via the comments section, so that we can keep a public record and promote your concerns, show where others shared your concerns, and publish your views.

Sheila Newman
Population, Environment and Energy Sociologist
Sheila Newman (Ed.) The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, UK, 2008