It’s been a couple of weeks since Ken Henry’s speech at QUT kicked off something of a debate about Australia’s future population. Henry – noting carefully that he was speaking only for himself, not Treasury – raised concerns about the effects of projections of a population increase to 35 million people by 2050, notably on our large cities, and the broader Australian environment. Kevin Rudd stated – in a rather revealing off-the-cuff response in an interview with Kerry O’Brien – that he is unambiguously in favour of a “Big Australia”:
KERRY O’BRIEN…Does that suggest to you, when you think of all of the associated problems about trying to plan for that, in terms of urban … he talks about Sydney with a population of seven million, Melbourne a population of seven million, Brisbane four million. Is this going to be a time for national leader to come well and truly to the fore across the whole spectrum of problems thrown up by that?
KEVIN RUDD: Well first of all Kerry, let me just say: I actually believe in a big Australia. I make no apology for that. I actually think it’s good news that our population is growing.
Contrast that with many countries in Europe where in fact it’s heading in the reverse direction. I think it’s good for us, it’s good for our national security long term, it’s good in terms of what we can sustain as a nation.
Secondly, on the specific national leadership questions that you point to, I agree with you 110 per cent. Why do you think that we are now, for the first time in this country’s history taking national leadership for the roll-out of national infrastructure, and new national broadband network. For the first time the Australian Government investing directly in urban rail projects across Australia, for the first time the Australian Government taking a direct engagement with the planning of our cities, and also with, for example, the housing approval processes and land supply arrangements of the states and territories and local government. Why? National leadership is necessary to plan for the future of our population, a challenge which has left languished before.
An explicit population policy is something that Australian governments have ducked for decades. The Rudd government has been little different, taking the opportunity to duck the recommendation for such from the 2020 summit. If I had to guess, it’s because, like Rudd, they are collectively in favour of a “big Australia” but aren’t prepared to say so publicly for fear of voter backlash, and the immigration program is quietly delivering what they want anyway. At least Rudd and Henry have put their views out there for consideration.
Personally, I think both “camps”, such as they exist, have severely flawed arguments. Most flabbergasting of all, it seems Rudd still identifies with an echo of “populate or perish”. But, beyond that, the economic case for immigration is, as I understand it, rather more ambiguous than its boosters would have us believe, with much of the economic benefits from migration ending up with migrants themselves, with economic gains to the broader population fairly limited. On the other hand, the environmental issues surrounding migration often ignore the fact that an increased Australian population will probably in large part result in a change to net agricultural exports, rather than changing agricultural land use all that much.
Oh, and one last thing. Henry’s concerns about four overcrowded cities and endless pressure on the urban fringe assume that population growth will continue to concentrate almost exclusively in Sydney, Melbourne, south-east Queensland, and Perth. But why is this set in stone?
Because that’s where the jobs are, that’s where the existing migrant populations are and they already have a pretty good head-start on the rest of the country.
It’s probably not an assumption, most statistical projections will likely tell you the same thing.
Big Australia frightens me
1. Do we plan for more populous cities or let the inhabitants fend for themselves? I fear the inhabitants of Casey who currently experience high rates of unemployment and welfare dependence aren’t going to be more employable as Melbourne grows.
2. There are no employment creation schemes
3. The rhetoric is about an education revolution but the reality is that its harder for teachers to earn a living, more are employed on contract, and technical teachers – surely the backbone of an apprenticeship system can only get sessional work. As technical teachers have a trade qualification why not continue to work for $120,000 pa and let another mug teach for $60 per hour.
4. Food – as the population increases our export food industry will stop in part because we are building housing on the market gardens of Werribbee, Cranbourne, Kellyville and Logan Valley and partly because there is less water for irrigating food crops grown in the Murray Darling Basin.
5. The clever country rhetoric is not supported by money for research or good working conditions for our scientists
The population debate has unfortunately the danger of being tainted with the scourge of xenophobia, and that is why many governments don’t want to talk about it. Also I remember when the environmental consequences of high population (through immigration) were first raised in the 1990’s in some fora there was an opinion that migrants were somehow ‘blamed’ for environmental impacts, the same way they were ‘blamed’ for higher unemployment.
This is a pity, because it is an important debate and should be dealt rationally.
Of course the issue of a sustainable population for Australia isn’t new. I would draw attention to the work of Thomas Griffith Taylor, who was was appointed associate professor and foundation head of Australia’s first university geography department, in Sydney in 1920.
I quote from The Australian Dictionary of Biography
I’m beginnning to sense that whenever Tintin says that he “makes no apology”, some degree of inherent dodginess must follow in what he says. He is about to wilfully ignore some salient thing which might not play well with some of the punters.
Robert the reason why he talks about big cities is that that is where immigrants overwhelmingly end up. Indeed – it’s been a few years, but off the top of my head – something like 75-80% of Australia’s immigrants end up in Sydney, so talk of Melbourne or Brisbane or Perth is really over-stating it. Most migrants to those cities come from other states (typically also Sydney). The data is out there, many really good studies from ABS, DIAC or whatever the shit it’s called now, and I think Sydney Uni (I think).
It would take a policy of almost staggeringly broad prescriptions to change that pattern, for some of the reasons alluded to above. Rudd’s comments strike me as almost comically ignorant – this is not to say big australia is a great or terrible idea – just that the things he mentions about it are irrelevant.
Furthermore, overpopulation is the monster feeding some very potent issues right now. It’s a global problem and Australia should play a part in addressing that. Knowing, however, that immigrants from developing countries have far fewer children than their brethren back home, the most efficient way of dealing with the problem may not be as obvious as it seems.
Growth or no growth, the idea that we can simply shout “hurrah” and watch the numbers shoot up implies a disturbing simplicity and short-sightedness.
“… with much of the economic benefits from migration ending up with migrants themselves, with economic gains to the broader population fairly limited.” This, on its own, should be reason enough for most readers of this blog to encourage migration. How can we say that simply by virtue of where we happen to be born, we have an exclusive right to this continent’s wealth?
I refuse to believe that if we could put humans on the moon 50 years ago, we can’t today figure out how to accommodate a large population. Almost certainly, those that think otherwise are closet xenophobes.
The PM explains: “we are now, for the first time in this country’s history taking national leadership for the roll-out of national infrastructure”
Ummmm, I’ve got two words for you Mr Rudd: Snowy Mountains Scheme; Canberra; national highways; irrigation schemes; ports & docks, MCG, some stadium in Sydney; bridges in Hobart, Melbourne, Brisbane; Sydney Harbour Bridge, Sydney Opera House, National Library; QANTAS; phone networks; national TV and radio networks; etc.
Infrastructure? We’re knee-deep in the stuff. Have been for years.
Lose the hubris, please.
It is not where the money is though. I live in regional QLD where the money actually is made and feel we should seperate from Australia as the benefits of our regions are not apparent. For years the area has been plundered by outsiders and no real investment put back into the community. I do not see why regional Australia should feel shunned like this. We pay taxes for what? Goat tracks and third world medicine? If the people want to live where the climate is cool rather than where the quarry is then I think they should find another source of income because I doubt regional Australia would reject any takeover bid.
Ah, so the Left still treads softly softly around the issue of population growth for fear of appearing xenophobic.
You cannot be in favour of both a reduction in Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and a big increase in our population. The two positions are incompatible.
Whenever a migrant comes here from a poor country their greenhouse gas emissions go up enormously.
Deep down you all know it will be very difficult to reduce our emissions even with a static population – with a rapidly growing population, impossible.
Can anyone offer a reasonable scenario for how we sustain an extra 15 million people given A. carbon constraints in our electricity supply, B. loss of agricultural land due to drought, bad farming practices and urban encroachment C. Limitations in our transportation system of choice ie oil for cars and D.severely stressed water supplies. While you’re at it maybe you can describe the workings of a flying pig…anyone?
As I see it, the main rationale for the migration program is to pay for all of the people collecting the pension in 20 years time. I’m not sure if migration is going to solve that problem or just push it down the line to the next generation. I haven’t heard anyone say who will cover the cost of the pension for the next generation, do we need to bump the population up to 60 million to pay for pensions for all these workers? Obviously if we follow this silly logic to it’s conclusion then we are just going to create a scenario of exponential population growth which will swallow the entire planet and then leave the poor suckers at the end of the line pensionless. Not much of a solution.
Only if you’re planning to use fossil fuels into the never-never.
Jane people live where the climate is cool because that’s where most of the jobs are. I know people who migrated to the Gold and Sunshine Coasts for work in the 1970s and returned to the south for work as there was limited demand for educated labour. They returned in the 1990s when these areas could generate demand for their skills.
How many people does your mine actually employ? I heard that 4000 people applied for 30 jobs in a mine intake, and I think mining companies can chose their workforce.
Provision of state services outside metropolitan areas is dismal and will get worse as state governments seek to cut costs by centralising services in capital cities. I was shocked to see an 80 year old farmer in Fletcher Jones grey fannels, Arkubra sit down at a computer in the internet cafe in Coonabarbran to complete his wife’s Medicare claim.
PaulW said:
As Robert correctly noted, this largely depends on the extent of our combustion of fossil fuels and one might add, the number of vehicle miles we travel, how much meat we eat and livestock we raise, whether we protect and extend our forests and those in other countries and so forth.
Also it is misleading to focus purely on Australia. If Australia grows through immigration from countries with high birth rates and their birth rate drops when they come here from the 6 or 7 they might have had to the two that is typical then the net effect is to lower world emissions. If the growth in their living standards is low carbon here but would have been high carbon some place else, then again, world emissions drop when they come here, relative to what they would have been.
This is generally a step forward than having to have offices everywhere that people queue up at? Though even better is the move towards no paperwork for patients – when I go to the GP now they automatically submit the claim to Medicare electronically when I pay them and the rebate money just appears in my bank account a few days later.
I’m with you Sean on Rudd being full of it, and am just amazed the gallery lets him get away with it. I thought it revealing on last Sunday’s Insiders when Bolt made an aside to Cassidy (just after they showed footage of Kev kicking the cat, following Tessie protesting too much that he’d never ever ever, couldn’t possibly, do such a thing) “Barry Barry barry , (says Andrew)… He’s already banned your program, he’s not gonna lift the ban for another year now”. So that’s how it works: anyone has the temerity to send anything but lollipops to Hiss Ruddship, and he takes his bat and ball home, game over. Maybe it was all those years marking Downer, the puffery was contagious. What a pair.
Meanwhile, the measured thoughts of people of real gravitas, like Ken Henry, with real responsibilities, not just passing thru, en route to a mates-bestowed sinecures, are allowed to pass barely noted, let alone heeded:
“Are Australia’s natural resource endowments, including water, capable of sustaining a population of 35 million?…Our record has been poor and in my view we are not well placed to deal effectively with the environmental challenges posed by a population of 35 million.
Just what does Kev suggest his Big Australia does with it’s inevitable Big Thirst? Suck on an empty sauce bottle?
Fran: it’s also slightly inaccurate to look at average per-capita emissions between countries.
Migrants coming to Australia from third-world countries are often from relatively wealthy backgrounds within that country, and would often have been well-placed to benefit from further economic growth within those countries had they chosen to stay (even if, ultimately, they will be better off from coming here). So their per-capita emissions may have been well above the country average if they’d chosen to stay in (for example) China or India.
Natural endowments more generally, open question.
Water, without a doubt – at least in terms of the direct needs of urban populations.
As a backstop, desalination may be relatively expensive, but it can churn out as much tap water as we could ever possibly demand.
I can easily imagine any number of these anti-population increase arguments raised in this thread being applied to other times in our history. Say, from the 1940s to the present day, any of the arguments about the supply of services, the loss of agricultural land, the problems with overpopulation, the damage to the environment, could sound just as convincing.
They have of course been proved wrong – Australia has been able to sustain an increasing population with an increasing quality of life, due to a number of factors (increases in productivity, technological innovation, economic and trade reforms, etc).
Why won’t the same factors continue to operate in the same fashion in the future? I suspect they will. It’s both pessimistic and self-centred to believe that this generation of Australians are different, and exceptional, and therefore those factors will not work in our favour as they have, without exception, in the past.
And surely a declining population would be difficult to manage as well: services for the elderly, the unemployed, and others who depend on the redistribution of resources through taxation/government services would clearly suffer. A declining economy would also probably follow a declining population, and this would have serious implications for any number of things – employment, private services, etc.
On the balance of things I’d favour an increasing Australian population. We have plenty of land; and technology, economic productivity will continue to work in our favour.
I’d say it is philosophically/morally desirably to have an increasing population, too – because people are creative. We need more cities, more towns, different communities; we need to grow our culture and communities; and they need to be enriched with more people, not less. Growing our communities, our cities, and our culture is good for our soul.
Robert @ 12, we’re actually caught in a rather unpleasant Malthusian cleft stick. The technology thatmakes our farmers so productive is largely fossil-fuel driven: minimum till agriculture is only possible with chemical herbicides, and broadacre monoculture depends on diesel-powered equipment (just off the top of my head).
I hate to admit it, but we’re going to struggle to feed the current population of Australia with sustainable agriculture in a drier, hotter climate. The thought of trying to feed 35 million makes my blood run cold.
I’m shocked that Coona has an internet cafe!
Though admittedly I haven’t been there for over a decade.
OT, an interesting read is Joel Cohen’s How Many People Can the Earth Support? (1996). A great dig through the various assumptions and pitfalls encountered when trying to answer questions about maximum supportable populations. It has a few pages on Australia, including a table of estimates up to the early 1970s. The one which most beggars belief is 280 million, made in 1973, based purely on the availability of water with no other constraints. I mean — water! Even leaving aside our current parched state that must have seemed a little on the high end.
All these ponzi/pyramid schemes are outlawed in business. And yet, that is the very model we use for structuring our society.
And we all know what happens to ponzi schemes.
A few of the arguments against Rudd’s position are particularly strange.
F’rinstance:
Infrastructure? We’re knee-deep in the stuff. Have been for years.
Lots of infrastructure in the major cities. But there’s under ten of them scattered over a vast continent. In the countryside? Not so mmuch.
There are no employment creation schemes
The assumption here seems to be that new immigrants/children of current Australians should just sit around until the government ‘creates’ a job for them, and then go and do it. (Another version of this is the old unionist/White Australia catchcry, ‘them foreigners is taking our jobs!’) Actually, people make jobs for themselves, and there’s no place better for doing this than in a growing, creative nation, that encourages new entrants into the national economy, and the ideas that come with it.
Not so mmuch.
I apologisse for the sspelling misstakess. That iss, apart from the intentional oness.
And we have a winner, 23 posts in before White Australia policy comes up.
35 million is not that big a deal. It’s the population Canada has now, and they just about all live on a thin strip adjacent to the US border, with the rest of the county uninhabitable.
We don’t want all these people living in Sydney, Melbourne and SE Queensland though. The traffic congestion is bad enough as it is.
And we will need to make a lot of water with desal, or else do something sensible like close down the cotton and rice industries.
Pleased to be of assistance PDAA.
We don’t want all these people living in Sydney, Melbourne and SE Queensland though
Bendigo! The place to go!
Bendigo’s lovely, TimT. I spent 5 happy years there when I was in the Army, and my middle son was born there (so he’s technically a Victorian, poor lad).
I don’t think it’ll support the numbers to take us up to 35 million, though. I believe they’ve already got water constraints with, what, about 60,000?
Bendigo is a nice place (a lot nicer than Ballarat).
Thanks TimT – Reading this thread I was about to cut to my wrists before your comments. I despair at times about the likelihood of Copenhagen consensus and commitment to constructive and timely global change, mainly because so much space is given in the MSM to political argybargying and sectional lobbying. And then one hears of so many brilliant local re-cycling initiatives inspired by individuals, water saving technologies invented, windpower farms up and running, clean car design adopted by major companies, and universities beavering away encouraging research to meet the challenges of climate change. That’s in today’s Australia.
Replicate that globally, or perhaps compound it, since contrary to our denialist lobby claims the rest of the world has been busy getting things done and not timidly hesitant to act first, or second or even fiftieth, and there is huge international impetus for change, not least in China and India For Australia to contribute to that in our region, let alone globally, we need to be on a growth trajectory. Controlled population growth is a must for that.
Currently our numbers are puny in comparision with most advanced economies and miniscule in relation to our neighbours, and even 35 million will still be small. Our current above weight impact on the world stage is primarily about our resources which could become so vulnerable should our population shrink. So it’s good to read someone who believes we can, as we must, support population growth on our island continent. As a grandparent I trust TimT is right.
“Oh, and one last thing. Henry’s concerns about four overcrowded cities and endless pressure on the urban fringe assume that population growth will continue to concentrate almost exclusively in Sydney, Melbourne, south-east Queensland, and Perth. But why is this set in stone?”
“Robert the reason why he talks about big cities is that that is where immigrants overwhelmingly end up. Indeed – it’s been a few years, but off the top of my head – something like 75-80% of Australia’s immigrants end up in Sydney, so talk of Melbourne or Brisbane or Perth is really over-stating it. Most migrants to those cities come from other states (typically also Sydney). The data is out there, many really good studies from ABS, DIAC or whatever the shit it’s called now, and I think Sydney Uni (I think).”
The isssue is significantly more complicated than this.
First, although it is correct that the major cities are the most popular entry points for immigrants, that does not necessarily imply that that is where the most rapid population growth will be. For example, existing domestic residents can migrate to other parts of the country. In fact, it is that process of internal migration that has been responsible for much of the change in the distribution of Australia’s population over the past couple of decades. Take Queensland and WA, the most rapidly growing states over the past decade. It is not foreign migration or natural population growth driving that higher than average population growth. And although Sydney is a major port for incoming migrants, Sydney has been experiencing a significant net out-migration of domestic residents for some time. Thus, Sydney’s population growth has not been particularly rapid over the past two decades (much slower than SE Queensland, Melbourne and Perth).
As for predicting how the 35 million will be distributed across the country in the longer term, that is very difficult. It will depend on a range of factors, including government policies (some immigrant visas now are already conditional on that person settling in regional areas and government infrastructure spending will affect location decisions), future economic shocks (the commodity boom and the China effect have been driving people internally toward those areas benefiting most directly from those forces), house price trends (high house prices in Sydney are one of the forces driving domestic residents out of the city), congestion, amenity (one of the key factors driving the move to Queensland in recent decades, etc.
Here is a recent quote from an ABS release:
“Population growth in Australia’s capital city SDs occurred at an average rate of 1.8% in 2007-08, slightly faster than that in the remainder of Australia (1.6%). Darwin SD and Perth SD, were the fastest growing capital city SDs, both recording population growth at a rate of 2.8% in 2007-08, followed by Brisbane SD (2.3%) and Melbourne SD (2.0%). The Greater Hobart SD had the lowest growth rate at 0.9%.”
So, the capital cities increased their share of the Australian population, but Sydney’s share of the population decreased. In Queensland, Brisbane’s share of the total Australian population has increased, but the balance of the rest of the state has increased its share even more, continuing a longer term trend. Australia’s population centre has been shifting north-west for some time.
An important thing to note here is that a city like Melbourne, which experienced very slow population growth in the decade surrounding the early 1990s recession (which hit Melbourne and Victoria generally very hard) has experienced an extraordinary turn around over the past decade. Sydney’s relative experience has been quite different. This would not have been projected in say 1990.
Sam said:
I agree that we don’t want them all living in the places you nominate, nor is that remotely likely. Of course, that’s not to say (if we count the whole Sydney, Melbourne/Geelong and Brisbane/GC conurbations that we couldn’t comfortably house 22 million of them there without serious traffic jams.
Robert @ 12:
Which we show every sign of doing.
Come on Rob, if we’re planning on doubling the population by 2050 then we have to be far more aggressive about emissions reductions than we otherwise would have been. Plainly we’re not, so quit defending the indefensible.
TimT #19 “They have of course been proved wrong – Australia has been able to sustain an increasing population with an increasing quality of life”
How have they been proved wrong? I look around and see major ecological damage. I see a severely damaged and depleted Murray Darling Basin with blue green algae outbreaks, acid soils, silts laden with pesticides, decreasing rain and snow falls, and dying wetlands. I see most other rivers and creeks polluted with farm or city run-off, dammed every few km and full of feral species. I see we are one of the leading nations for extinguishing our native species.
I curse our ancestors for the rabbit, fox, sparrow, cane toad etc, do you think our descendents will thank us for severely depleting and drawing down the natural wealth we should have left for them to enjoy?
I see numerous marine species around our coast under threat and subject to protection and reduced quotas. Our cities pour all sorts of poisonous filth into the ocean which is often taken up by the survivors which we eat.
I see more and more rocks in the paddocks around here. Do you seriously believe that all the topsoil being blown over the cities and out to sea is being replaced by a touch of Pandora’s wand?
I see increasingly congested roads, higher property prices, more pressure on schools and medical services, less family time, lower quality of life (as opposed to quantity) as government struggles to cope with population growth AND an aging populaton.
Have you heard of terms like Peak Oil, Peak Phosphorous and EROEI?
I have to stop this short, it’s dinnertime. If anyone wants to argue that population growth is nto stupidity, I’ll come out fighting after.
patrick @5 – I’m pretty sure Melbourne – specifically the north west growth areas is the destination of choice for most arrivals now. Not Sydney.
I’d have to dig the figures up if you really need them.
Problem is the state and local government have to provide the services and infrastructure while the feds set immigration numbers and no one stops anyone going where they want.
(not that I’d try and stop people going where they want – just pointing out the funding issues for growth areas)
“I see increasingly congested roads, higher property prices, more pressure on schools and medical services, less family time, lower quality of life (as opposed to quantity) as government struggles to cope with population growth AND an aging populaton.”
All of that is conjecture and will be influenced by policy choices. The impact on congestion will depend on, inter alia, whether infrastructure development matches needs, whether governments introduce congestion charging to ensure the social costs of congestion are internalised by motorists, how government zoning and other land use regulations respond to population changes, etc.
I’m puzzled by why you think that pressure on medical and education services will increase. Do you really think that the quality of education is inversely related to the rate of population growth? Do you think that higher population growth will slow the rate of growth of per capita incomes? I’d like to see what evidence that is based on for developed countries.
Much of the negative impact on the land and environment could also be dealt with by more effective management and better use of price signals. A great start would involve ensuring that the end-cost of water for all users reflected its social cost. Just that would have an enormous impact on the nature of Australia’s agricultural production (where and what).
I broadly agree with Robert. Both the benefits and costs of higher population tend to be overstated by the various sides proponents.
Salient Green – perhaps we should all leave now? Where should we go?
The argument that population growth is necessary to support an aging population has been thoroughly discredited and is nothing but a ponzi scheme.
http://www.population.org.au/files/Betts4_2008%5B5%5D%20V2.pdf
Measures needed to support an aging population are already being done such as superannuation and increasing the working age. Another is tax re-distribution. That should give you an indication as to the type of forces against a stable or reducing population.
whitefrankblack #6 shows the level of ignorance in some people as to the limits of the natural world. It also shows how offensive some people can be. I am deeply committed to taking larger numbers of genuine refugees into Australia, and in a much more humane manner, as well as vastly increasing overseas aid for developing countries. In light of this, to have some fucknuckle suggest I am xenophobic for wanting less immigrants overall as a strategy for reducing and reversing population growth brings out my spurs and nunchucks, metaphorically speaking.
Some data:
In 2008, Australia’s population increased by 400,000.
Of this, 98k was in NSW, 102k was in VIC, and 106k was in QLD.
If we break this down by source (I am rounding here):
In NSW: natural increase was 46k; net overseas migration was 74k; and net interstate migration was -22k.
In VIC: NI 36k; NOM 68k; and NIM -1k.
In QLD: NI 36k; NOM 50k; and NIM 22k
So, that pretty much tells the story. QLD growing faster than VIC, which is growing faster than NSW.
The largest number of overseas migrants (net) go to NSW, then VIC, then QLD.
Net interstate migration massively favours QLD at the expense of NSW.
Also note that WA’s population increased by 68k in 2008 with 41k coming from net overseas migration. Given how much smaller WA’s population is than NSW, VIC and QLD, the proportionate increase in population from that source was the largest of any state in 2008. I think that highlights the importance of economic factors (in this case the shift in economic resources to WA related to commodity production) in shaping population movements.
TimT
I was merely objecting to Mr Rudd’s claiming to lead the first Govt to roll out infrastructure. Either he is iggerant of history or iggetistical to a worrying degree.
It was a minor point.
I was reflecting on David Mackay’s Without Hot Air e-book the other day. He makes the point that Europeans including British consume about 125KwH per person per day (not including energy in imports) and Americans twice as much.
Apparently, the Brits can optimistically prodece about 27KwH per person per day from renewables. If this holds true across the planet we can calculate that if everyone wants to live sustainably and live like an American we can have about 700 million people. If like Europeans, perhaps 1.4 billion.
Hmmm …
LO I agree with your points entirely re: population movements; I was referring only to OS migration in response to Robert’s questions etc.
Francis, I’m glad to see LO has borne me out with the quoted figures. Back when I was looking at migration, the embedded Sydney trend was so incredibly strong I would have argued than it would take more than a decade to shift – glad to see it’s still there (though weakening).
Picking up on LO’s point about migrants being a net benefit (economically speaking), this is irrefutably the case. People like to talk about migrants ‘ghettoes’ but the truth is that migrants work up their career ladders and disseminate into broader geographies very quickly, and so far as welfare vs. tax dollars, they unambiguously fall into the latter side.
Economically speaking, every migrant really is a plus for Australia, and I won’t, but you could definitely make the argument they are in fact better ‘contributors’ than Australian-born citizens.
Environmentally, the question is more ambiguous, but only slightly I believe. As LO highlights, the problem is one of policy, the numbers have more flexibility in them than usually implied.
LO #36, I’m puzzled as to why you think those pressures will NOT increase. It also appears that you think those pressures aren’t excessive already and if that’s the case, you are in the small minority. You are one of those who say “this could be done or that could be done” but people have been saying that for decades and nothing is done to relieve the problems of overpopulation in a real sense.
A hospital is built to great fanfare and the rest that aren’t squeaking loudly get worse. A bridge is built to carry 40,000 vehicles a day and is now carrying 160,000, has no emergency lanes and is still a carpark. The government buys 40GL of water license while a single property fills it’s dams with 500GL depriving all downstream users. A council releases 500 house lots per year while there’s a waiting list growing by 750 year.
#37 I judge that as a particularly sleazy comment but thanks for the opportunity it gives me. I think you know full well that no one needs to go anywhere to reduce and reverse population growth but I will say anyway that it is about moderation, when enough is enough, that there is no need to increase population further and we can achieve this without imposing unduly on people’s rights. It is about the realization that the consequences of population growth on the natural world are well past acceptable, not only in terms of handing a severely damaged world over to our children, but in terms of the quality of our own lives.
And heaven forbid that anyone believes the natural world actually has a moral right to a place on this planet.
There is a limit to Australia’s carrying capacity and I suspect we’ve already exceeded it. Australia is the driest continent on the planet (except Antarctica) and the chickens have come home to roost. All these futuristic solutions to accommodate a burgeoning population are just that – futuristic, sprinkled with fairy dust.
WA’s population is by comparison, small, yet the Swan River Trust recently advised that the Swan and Canning rivers are polluted with toxic levels of cancer-causing heavy metals, pesticides and hydrocarbons. Poisons including zinc, lead, copper, mercury and dieldrin were found to exceed safe guidelines at seven sites across Perth. The rivers are on life support so is the fishing industry in WA which is suffering a serious decline in fish species.
Adding to Australia’s ecological burden (according to Professor Ravi Naidu Managing Director of CRC CARE), Australia already has an estimated 100,000 contaminated sites across the nation.
Australia has a grave problem with salinity and has suffered serious economic impacts from loss of productivity of land.
In WA, salinity currently affects about two million hectares of agricultural land. It is expected that within 50 years it will affect some six million hectares. This is one third of WA’s agricultural land. The EPA State of the Environment report advised in 2007 that currently salinity is engulfing the equivalent of 19 footy fields a day in WA.
Dryland salinity is occurring in all of the agricultural districts in South Australia. What’s happening further east?
Dryland salinity has significant effects on our biodiversity, particularly in low lying areas. Salinity is directly contributing to species extinction and a decline in ecosystem health, and is a critical issue for biodiversity in Australia.
Soil erosion by water is a major issue for Australian agriculture and catchment management. It has caused unsustainable losses of soil for agriculture that far exceed rates of soil development.
As a direct result of inappropriate drainage and excavation for urban development and agriculture along the coast of NSW, enough actual acid sulfate soil has been created to generate 50,000 tonnes of sulfuric acid every year. This causes up to $23 million dollars worth of damage to the state’s fishing industry each year.
Most citzens believe the simplest way out to address our water shortage is to build more desalination plants because we eco-vandals can dump the descaling chemicals, chlorine and a host of other pollutants (including the brine) back into the oceans – just like the Gulf states have been doing – no problem there with sea levels rising!:
http://www.al-shorfa.com/en/article/090907_desalination_nws/
Australia’s arable land cover just 6.25% of its land mass though we already feed some 40 million people. Mr Rudd has grand plans to increase Australia’s population but I think the deserts will win.
“I believe they’ve already got water constraints with, what, about 60,000?”
Ballarat has 80,OOO. Bendigo already hit 100,000. Both have severe water probs.
Well, at least if Rudd is in favour of a more populous Australia, this explains his pro-climate change policies. We’ll end up with several million Bengalis and Polynesians showing up on our doorstep whether we like it or not.
But hang on, he wants to lock out foreigners unless they have a degree and a wad of cash. Hmmm, could it be that he does not have a coherent set of policies? Surely not.
“where should we go”
Iceland: McDonalds has abandoned the joint, can there be a clearer sign from the Gods?
labor outsider: can you point me to where you got those figures on popn.? I’m not seeking to query you – I just want get get some more for something
danny, iceland’s quite a nice place (or so my friends tell me) not too crowded and anywhere where maccers isn’t has to have something going for it.
Sure – they are directly from the ABS release: 3101 – Australian Demographic Statistics – Table 2. Note that in the last quarter, net overseas migration to Victoria exceeded NSW, but the quarterly numbers can be volatile.
Thanks LO – I thought that probably.
I can’t access it sensible on this small screen thingo I’m fiddling with.
I think I was thinking about projections out a few year saying Melbourne was favoured over sydney. I wonder perhaps if NSW is not the same as Sydney and Melb with Vic
Labor Outsider:
Just wondering how we’re going to reduce Australia’s emissions to (say) 50% of current emissions by 2050 with roughly twice as many people? How do you see that happening exactly, or do you think Australia should be allowed a less ambitious target due to our projected population growth? If so, how would that play out politically in the developing world?
This is crap, seriously LO
Its the sort of bureaucratic market economics that has absolutely no relationship to what’s happening in the real world, the one that exists west of the great dividing range.
According to the MDBA there is still less than 20% of capacity (usable water) in storage, an the situation is particularly dire in NSW where there’s about 10% of capacity with useable water. None of this is news, its been like this for years (really) but my point is that no amount of fancy pricing schemes or taxpayer incentives brings rain. The same problem applied to other aspects of the real world, such as dry land salinity and pest infestations which are equally oblivious to market forces. Until a higher intelligence actually acknowledges the practical limitations to market solutions then how can we have any confidence that doubling our populations isn’t just a recipe for disaster.
And this view has to be straight out the KRudd New Testament for Fence Sitting Chapter 1.
David
It is not crap at all. Where water availability is scarce, prices should rise. As Robert pointed out, there is also the capacity to build infrastructure (desalinisation plants) that can increase the amount of fresh water available, as long as we are willing to pay for it. The population increase does not have to occur west of the great dividing range, or where the desalinisation problems are greatest. I didn’t suggest that all environmental problems could be solved by proper pricing. But it would undoubtedly help in making sure water goes to those uses where it is most productive. A larger population will reduce the net exports of agricultural products from Australia and for some products increase imports – we do not have to grow our food domestically, so that doesn’t have to be a significant constraint on population growth.
So, I’d suggest that rather than be rude, you have a bit more of a think about whether water availability might be more elastic than rainfall patterns, and also give consideration to the fact that some parts of Australia have greater water availability and could potentially carry larger numbers of people.
Carbon, I envisage that, in the long-run, the global carbon budget will be allocated on a per-capita basis. In my view, that is the fairest way to distribute things. Of course, Australia’s per capita emissions will have to fall dramatically, but population growth itself won’t be the problem…
“I think I was thinking about projections out a few year saying Melbourne was favoured over sydney. I wonder perhaps if NSW is not the same as Sydney and Melb with Vic”
It is true that if you were to look at longer run trends, Victoria’s share of overseas migrants might be projected to rise above that of NSW over the next decade or so. Also, you are right, Sydney is not the same as NSW and Melbourne, not the same as Victoria, so it is possible that in 2008 Melbourne exceeded Sydney. But I don’t have that data to hand…
LO I’ve just released Salient green’s comment from moderation, now @ 44, which comments on some of your points. (Why it was in moderation mystifies me.)
LO, you say:
No we don’t have to produce all our own food, but it would be smart if we did. There is good opinion that food is going to become very scarce in the decades ahead with global warming and world population increase. Of course it will then become very expensive, which means we will be able to produce more here.
I understand we now import more than half the pig meat we eat and horticulture is heading in the same direction. The reason for this has more to do with trade policy and the state of the dollar that our capacity to produce.
Millions will be hungry in the UK within a couple of decades because of rising food prices.
I suspect we are going to get more stories like this.
Really? It would be smart if we produced ALL of our own food? All countries are net-importers of at least some types of food products, including Australia. Indeed, given the massive global variation in the cost of producing different types of agricultural products, it would be silly in the extreme for any country to practice autarky in agricultural production. The import share of food consumption has been increasing in Europe for some time and will continue to do so, even if environmental externalities are taken into account. That has been a beneficial development as they have reduced protection for local industry and benefited from lower prices for many types of food products. If food becomes more expensive over time, then so be it. The share of basic food in total Australian consumer expenditure isn’t particularly high, and even a significant change in relative prices will be able to be absorbed without it affecting the popoulation carrying capacity of Australia.
Well, not all food, but food security is going to be an increasing concern. What policies would be required is a bit more difficult.
We had a hint of the future last year when some rice exporting countries insisted on feeding their own populations first, for some unknown reason.
I agree that food security is likely to be an even greater concern…
Brian (57) “horticulture is heading in the same direction” …
from DAFF Oct 08 AUSTRALIAN HORTICULTURE FACT SHEET (latest data in tables 06/07)
‘Horticulture imports (fresh and processed) have been rising faster than exports, resulting in Australia becoming a net-importer of horticulture produce’
carbonsink: as I was trying to point out:
a) the future Australians under discussions – the overwhelming majority of that increase will be net immigration, not natural increase – aren’t generally coming from the villages anyway; their personal emissions aren’t going to be anywhere near zero if they stay in their countries of origin.
b) Australia will be forced to act sooner or later as part of a global arrangement. Probably too late to avoid rather unpleasant geoengineering, but we will act nonetheless.
LO, if by capacity you mean potential then your claim is just that and any other bit of idle guesswork is just as good. Sure I agree we could do lots of things, we could replace all of our coal fired power station with something, after all, on that view, anything’s possible.
But that view completely misses the point. Our potential is constrained by the real world, putting market forces before environmental considerations simply condemns us,one way or another, to a more difficult and potentially hostile planet.
Your comments about self-sufficiency in food production suggest more market based thinking. Our ability to be self sufficient in the past and our capacity to be a net exporter of basic food stuffs has meant a lot of countries with less productive capacity have been able to eat. But like market forces and rain, you can’t argue with collapsing biospheres. It seems the logical extension of market economics to food production takes us here.
Food production is only part of the equation. People need to be clothed which means destruction of the natural world to grow animal or plant fibres. They need rainforest timbers, minerals from all over the world are required for a modern lifestyle, condiments beverages and spices not grown easily here.
A city or town’s ecological footprint is vast compared with it’s geographical footprint. Some simple souls who argue for a big Australia say that there is plenty of room or that we can increase the density of our cities. Cities are far from self sufficient, you put a transport blockade around one and see how long it lasts.
And who wants to go live in the outback? Roxby Downs anyone, with it’s lowered life expectancy, 50C temp and dust storms? Speaking of which, I wonder how many Sydneyites thought about what was in that dust, how many actually realized that Roxby Downs has a lot of heavy and radioactive metals laying around the place able to be lifted by wind, and that there may soon be a wacking great mountain such stuff laying around.
Robert, thanks for posting on a topic which I promised to post on, started to write a post on, but didn’t finish. Sorry, folks!
In 2002 I put forward my views on Australia’s population futures in an article at Online Opinion which was based on the then current projections of Australia’s population trends to 2050. My views on the issue remain broadly what they were then, although the last couple of pars need reworking in the light of revised population trends.
Labor Outsider:
I would agree with that, but there is very little chance of that happening because the developed countries know it implies massive per capita emissions reductions for their citizens. Given that negotiations will continue on a total emissions basis Australia is making the task ahead monumentally difficult if we allow a doubling of population. As far as I’m aware, Australia is the only developed country that is anticipating large population increases.
Robert:
Overwhelming majority, but not the total. What is the projected breakdown? 70% immigration / 30% natural increase? That’s still a lot of very carbon-intensive babies.
Regarding immigrants:
a) I was unaware that any climate negotiations takes in to consideration emissions reduced by citizens leaving one country and moving to another. Can Australia claim emissions credits from other countries by taking their citizens?
b) No, they’re not villagers, but even the middle-class in developing countries emit nowhere near the 20 tonnes each us Aussies produce. Lets face it, just flying them here would probably exceed their annual emissions!
I presume that you are referring to this article, Paul.
When I was a kid, we were told the cautionary tale of the Gwydir Line. (looking threough some of the historey books I have here, I couldn’t find it in the indexes. Maybe it was something old fogies like Ernest Scott only worried about.) I think the story goes something like this:
Farmers in South Australia had a prosperous wheat belt. A knowladgeable surveyor named Gwydir who had worked out South Australian climatic cycles said it would be most unwise to establish wheat farms above a certain line as, in bad seasons they would be wiped out by drought. These flourishing wheat farmers ignored his very good advice, and went ahead and established farms beyond the Gwydir Line. The drought came, as Gwydir predicted. The farmers were wiped out, bankruptcies everywhere. That, was, I think, in the 19C.
Hope I got it right.
Yes, Robert, thanks. The link in my comment works now.
I think it also needs to be recognised that Rudd’s Big Australia soundbite and other benign views of a larger Australian population have quite a pedigree in Labor and left-of-centre discourse in Australia. A discourse analysis would point to the following elements:
* social-democratic nation-building discourse;
* left-liberal libertarian/humanitarian/multiculturalist/anti-racist discourse;
* eco-socialist and eco-radical discourses which emphasise a combination of technological and social-structural factors (e.g. the mode of production) rather than simple human numbers as the principal driver of ecological damage.
LO, you need to examine your logic.
Which is already making large areas of our foodbowl significantly less productive. I agree that the pricing mechanism is therefore working as intended, but we have lost actual food production capacity.
The environmental price has to come into that equation as well as the monetary cost to build.
It ensures that the water goes where it will produce the greatest monetary benefit to the water licence owner that irrigation season. That is “productive” (of wealth) from the owner’s point of view but not necessarily that of the wider commonwealth. For example, we could see more & more water used to make something that is then expensive on the world market (eg cotton). The owners of that operation get wealthier. The rest of us pay more for food as we MUST then pay either the increased value of the local water or the transport cost to import.
The reason it has been (for a relatively short historical time) more economical to import food that could be produced locally has been the availability of very cheap transport energy (oil). It appears that we are going to have to be very budget conscious about energy use in future. So not only are we being forced to face the environmental cost of shipping bananas to Coffs Harbour, the monetary price is likely to rise.
The multiplier isn’t the problem???? Dude.
The results of everything you’re advocating as solutions above are necessarily more expensive food, further environmental damage, more damage to fisheries, concentration of the ownership of the means of getting a drink*, etc.
The earth is a sphere. It’s surface is limited (4pr2). There is a photosynthetic capacity. Of late we have been able partly to raid the photosynthetic capacity of past aeons (oil) but that isn’t limitless.
We must also consider that we are one of the most complex creatures sitting atop an ecology. We need the lower layers of the ecology much more than they need us.
Personally I’m coming to the population control position reluctantly and late, but it seems necessary at least for the time being. There are other ways to “grow”. The most profitable (in the widest sense) for now would seem to be growth in collective wisdom.
*If Marx Had Been An Aussie 2009, Sean Press.
There are six billion people in the world producing carbon emissions in varying degrees. Shifting a few hundred thousand from low emissions countries to a high emissions country (Australia) is going to make next to no difference to total world emissions.
Some simple numbers are:
we take in 150000 migrants per year. Assume they all create the Australian average of 20 tonnes. Assume they come from countries with half our per capita emissions. We produce 600 million tonnes which is 2% of the world total. Immigration to Australia then increases world emissions by 0.005% per year.
“Hope I got it right.”
Everything but the name, you did.
Goyder, it was.
The grammar of Yoda, I have.
Sam @ 73 said
“Some simple numbers are:
we take in 150000 migrants per year”
Well actually that’s not really correct, there are currently 800,000+ people in Australia on migrant, student, temporary work and other visas, so migration figures are understated
Sean: intercontinental shipping is incredibly efficient.
Furthermore, of all transport options it’s the easiest to adapt to alternative fuels.
Billie #75, quite a few of those 800,000+ people are paying my wages, and those of others like me.
And also Robert, there are ways in which you can modify the ships to further reduce drag. I’ve even seen prototypes of cargo ships with giant spinnakers! Improvement of port movement could also significantly reduce the energy intensity of shipping.
Robert,
apart from nuclear, what else are they talking about? Bearing in mind that the speed of your current boats is an important part of the equation.
Personally, a fleet of nuclear cargo boats owned by the current industry seems a bit worrying. I mean obviously they can’t be made of cardboard but still
No, but its going to make a large difference to Australia’s ability to reduce its total emissions, and AFAIK, the world is not offering us carbon credits for immigration.
Sean @ 72: I think you’ll find that exponential growth on a finite world can be addressed with appropriate price signals
Sean @ 79: Robert is right about shipping. Unless your food is flown here from the other side of the world, I’d stop worrying about “food miles”. You can make a far larger contribution to emissions reductions by becoming a vegetarian, or restricting your meat intake to battery farmed chooks.
Sean
Fairly obviously, apart from nuclear, you could have them run on biodiesel from a TDP process or from biomass waste. Equally you could run them on any other hydrocarbon fuel from syngas using F-T also from biomass waste, or biogas directly.
Not to mention coal, either liquified, gasified, or just pulverized. Yes, CO2 and all that, but the claim was specifically that Peak Oil represented a barrier to international shipping. In any case, use fewer, bigger ships and the extra efficiency easily compensates for the dirtier fuel (not that ship-quality diesel is particularly clean, mind you).
If you want something more exotic, use something like boron as an energy carrier…but that’s a topic for another day
Personally I’d be Ok with a fleet of UH3-reactor powered ships … If one of them goes down in a storm, the damage from the fuel source is going to be zero and the recovery and salvage very simple.
I’m not sure of the economics of the idea. It could be a lot more expensive. Hell of a lot cleaner though.
Paul @ 69, it’s spelt Goyder. He was the Surveyor-General of SA, and Goyder’s Line is still a useful way of distinguishing between marginal and productive farmland. My future doomstead is still on the right side of Goyder’s Line, but that won’t be true forever. I expect it’ll be running along Melbourne St in North Adelaide by the end of the century.
When he publicised his prediction, SA was in the middle of an unusually wet period. The farmers poo-poohed him, believing that “rain would follow the plough”, so cornucopian thinking is not new. Goyder had the last (hollow) laugh. You can still see the abandined ruined homesteads all over the mid-north.
As an aside, I’m going to really miss coffee and black pepper.
Sean @ 72, LO is actually a cornucopian, although he denies it.
Paul B @ 69, FDB is right. Google is your friend.
There’s even been an LP post.
Here’s the map.
I was actually talking about there being an energy cost to shipping rather than a peak oil “barrier” per se, in the context of me overall post. Eg, aren’t we likely to be paying **some form of** carbon tax in the future to give a “price signal” to global warming? So there’s a dollar figure to coal’s environmental cost and really, it seems a silly thing to propose in the current climate (boom tish), unless the boat geo-sequesters it’s emissions as it goes or something. Which sounds expensive.
The bio-fuel proposal brings us back to the problem of maximum photosynthetic capacity, INCLUDING what portion of that capacity we can use directly for ourselves without stuffing the ecology we depend on. You need to grow even more crops in order to move the crops.
I’m also going to assume that all these proposals are more expensive than petrol since they’re not being used now. As we know, “peak oil” is not so much about “Oh sugar THERE’S NO OIL AT ALL!”, but rather “Man that oil is very expensive now that it’s rare and/or very hard to mine”.
Carbonsink, I say NO to factory farming AND vegetarianism!
Billie @75,
there is nothing inconsistent about taking in 150000 migrants per year and the total number of people on various visas being 800,000. The 800,000 arrived over several years.
There’s actually been two LP posts. Here’s the second one.
#55 Labor Outsider:
“we do not have to grow our food domestically, so that doesn’t have to be a significant constraint on population growth.”
Labor Outsider – Nearly a third of the world’s farmland has been abandoned in the past 40 years because overuse has made it unproductive.
Every year, an additional 200,000 square kilometres of arable soil or forest becomes a wasteland. Scientists suggest that in the not too distant future, the lives of over 1.2 billion people in 110 countries could be affected.
In Africa and South America, overpopulation is driving farmers into semi-arid regions or former forestland that cannot sustain intensive agriculture.
Rajeb Boulharouf of the UN’s Secretariat for the Convention To Combat Desertification said “Desertification as we are seeing it today and more particularly [as we have seen it] in the past 30 years is essentially a man-induced activity.”
“We are losing the biological productivity of the earth,” Boulharouf says. For that, he blames unsustainable human settlement, unsustainable agricultural practices and unsustainable water management.
Yet in Australia, the first clear evidence of the link between humans clearing native vegetation and the appearance of dryland salinity was gathered in 1924 and published in the journal of the Royal Society of WA, by a West Australian railway engineer, Walter Ernest Wood. Government ignorance could have once been sustained but certainly not in at least, the past fifty years.
So I’ll bite LO. When the biosolids hit the fan and the human population, (breeding like rabbits), expands to some 9 billion, which countries do you believe will be capable of feeding >35 million Australians?
just on the international shipping issue
Sorry don’t have time to dig up a better link.
#76 Robert Merkel
“Sean: intercontinental shipping is incredibly efficient.” Huh?
“Furthermore, of all transport options it’s the easiest to adapt to alternative fuels.”
I sincerely hope so Robert. When do you think this might happen given the shenanigans of the influential deny and delay brigade?:
http://www.newstin.co.uk/rel/uk/en-010-012956907
The thing is, Robert, even if most shipping goes back to sail (which has no fuel costs at all), international trade is going to be a much more expensive business than it is now.
Only the extremely wealthy will be able to afford currently cheap commodities like black pepper, coffee, tea, and other things that are pretty fussy about where they grow.
Myriad … the DET regards your link as “spam” … Oh dear …
Sean Said:
I guess it depends on how much actual fuel we need each year to do the shipping too. It’s currently a tiny fraction of total demand for liquid fuels. We here in Australia burn enormous quantities of ground fule to reduce fire hazard. We have more invasive plants and exotic pests we’d like to eliminate than we can hope to eliminate even with very aggressive programs. Each of us Aussies on average produces about 1 tonne per year of putrescible waste not including sewage.
And then there is plastic waste which is also a petroleum derivative. And sugar, which serves no useful purpose as a food at all — at least, not in the quantities it is produced. Bear in mind also the land used to raise livestock — especially ruminant livestock and the crops that support “convenience” foods which are taxing the health of westerners.
We’re a very long way from nearing the bottom and we haven’t mentioned dedicated crops we might use like panicum or miscanthus or mallee or algae …
Probably. But so what? Really, it isn’t going to make a huge difference and where it does somewhat prejudice the competitiveness of a product all that might mean is more localised production. The biggest impacts might be on meat, since this is costly to ship (requiring refigeration or, when live, other energy-intensive provision) but as these contribute little that can’t be had easily from plant protein (B12 maybe) so what. Someone who consumes 1 Kg of highly bioavailable protein from plant soruces will still pay a fraction of the existing meat price.
Interestingly, a really high protein algal source is spirulina, and you can grow that most anywhere in sub-potable water.
Robert Merkel@#12 Nov 5th, 2009 at 3:03 pm quotes
Robert, you are ignoring the political costs of a larger population pushing up the national and sectoral price of carbon.
Assuming fixed quotas for national carbon emissions, the greater the immigration-fuelled population increases the greater the per capita cost for finding non-fossil fuel energy substitutes. More people bidding for a national quota of carbon is only going to drive up the local cost of carbon. The more sacrifice you call for, the harder the political sell. The Gippsland by-election shows that higher fuel costs do not come cheap politically speaking.
Furthermore, you are ignoring the jurisdiction swapping effects of higher immigration. Most source countries for immigration to AUS tend to have low per capita carbon emissions. AUS is of course a high per capita carbon emitter. Immigrants invariably adopt the carbon footprint of their destination country. Therefore immigration from low to high-carbon emitting countries tends to drive up total global carbon emissions.
Dunno what the DET is Fran, but here’s another link
I believe that the DAnish have moved well on from concept design to a built ship that’s been doing some test runs but my googling powers are failing me. Although you can certainly see that people are serious about it.
DET = Department of Education & Training (the employer of state school teachers in NSW)
I think this might be the most attractive cargo vessel I’ve ever seen!
Jack, I don’t accept your reasoning here. While it is true that if more people bid for a fixed supply of carbon certificates (or for a greater value in such) then the price should go up, all else being equal, all else is not equal.
The demand for the extra goods creates economies of scale which can cut prices. Equally, as prices for carbon rise and demand for the goods rises, the cost of new lower carbon emitting technology can be spread across more demand, so some players would choose to lower emissions rather than buy more certificates.
“For example, we could see more & more water used to make something that is then expensive on the world market (eg cotton).”
Proper water rights allocation and pricing would make cotton production in Australia UNPROFITABLE not more profitable. So, you have it almost excactly the wrong way round!!
And losing food production capacity is exactly the point. Think about it this way. Australia’s food producing areas have been farmed too intensively, with often the wrong production mix, and the wrong input mix. The failure to allocate water rights properly (taking into account the need for environmental flows) and price it efficiently has made this situation worse. Under a more efficient system the mix of what is produced would almost certainly change and food production may well fall (or its long run rate of growth slow)…You just don’t seem to understand that environmental externalities can be best (or at least helped) by pricing that takes into account all social costs in production!
Bringing up the cost of importing food just highlights my point. Relative prices (domestic production through less productive land and higher water prices, imports through higher transport costs and less productive land in some places) will change over time. Often in difficult to predict ways. The balance of those changes will determine the change in the mix of what we produce, how much, and hence trends in net-exports of agricultural goods.
DUDE!! As I said, Australia’s higher population is goving to be driven by immigration, not a massive increase in fertility. The world’s population will peak in 40 years. As long as we get the global carbon budget right, and determine a fair per capita distribution of emissions, in the long-run it will not matter WHERE somebody lives.
I just cannot understand how anybody that purports to care for the environment cannot see how inefficiently low prices for things like water have helped to contribute to the mess we are in. Take a course in economics and you might see how the ideas I have will help the problems you care about, not harm them.
Flower
Yes, I think we will be capable of feeding 35 million people!! In a world of 9 billion, where we make up just over 0.3% of the total, and are among the world’s richest countries, I doubt it will be Australians that cannot feed themselves either through domestic production or imports. The world is not breeding like rabbits. In many developing countries fertility rates have fallen dramatically in recent decades, which is why the world’s population is projected to PEAK in 40 years time. My optimisim is conditioned on an expectation that we will find the global will to tackle global warming comprehensively, and hence many of the most dire predictions of some on this forum will not become reality.
Correct me if I am wrong but the biggest factor in the differential has been the appallingly low labour costs in countries supplying Australia. We have been living high on the hog while the agrarian class in these countries have been living at subsistence level.
Low labour costs in poor countries primarily reflect MUCH lower productivity levels in those countries.
Firstly, If Australia’s population is to grow it must be decentralised. The big cities should not expand further. In Queensland for example expanding Brisbane is just stupid. Grow regional centres into vibrant places. Toowoomba for example could be a great regional city.
Secondly, migrants should be settled outside of cities. Migrants could be given provisional citizenship for five years and full citizenship once they have lived regionally for those five years. Some urban centres are simply not coping with the huge influx of migrants and refugees being concentrated in Australia’s big cities. These migrants would bring vibrant new life to regional centres and it would make sure that many of the settlement problems in low socio economic urban areas are avoided.
I think that Rudd’s comments about a ‘big Australia’ make his position in regard to refugees totaly incoherent. He has literally blown himself out of the water on this. ‘Big Australia’ will depend on population movement towards Australia. So he believes in a grossly enlarged population but at the same time wants a so called ‘orderly process’ by which particular sections of the global population are welcomed while others are treated as persona non grata. The most desparate people need not come even think about it while those who have the time and whose circumstances are not so pressing are welcome. Huh?
As to the issue of population size – well, who wants to live in overcrowded cities with collapsing infrastructure. If I wanted to live like that there are any number of S-E Asian capitals I could reside in.
Spana, I believe their reservoirs are currently down to 8.6%. They were due to be connected to the Wivenhoe Dam today, but the final connection was delayed because it rained – not enough to make any difference to the water supply, though.
I don’t know how much Wivenhoe water is going to cost but I’d be surprised if they were paying the full cost. I understand it is the highest lift of a water supply in the world.
“I think that Rudd’s comments about a ‘big Australia’ make his position in regard to refugees totaly incoherent.”
Perhaps the position is heartless, but it isn’t incoherent. Australia’s immigration program is primarily based on skilled migration. Achieving a larger population doesn’t require a larger refugee intake…
Perhaps it’s asking too much for true believers in whatever optimistic faith reassures them to overcome cognitive dissonance, and examine their pet core beliefs too carefully, but here’s hoping two triangles may help them.
TRIANGLE ONE sits on its base — /\.
TRIANGLE TWO sits on its apex — \/.
Were I more computer literate, I could possibly produce better triangles, but I’m from the crayon/slate era, so forgive my shortcomings.
Triangle one represents the planet’s available resources (of all kinds). As we consume them, there’s less and less remaining — and we’re consuming them at ever-increasing rates.
Triangle two represents the planet’s increasing population — and we’re exhibiting amazing progress in speeding up that increase.
Eventually triangle two collapses in disaster, even if the resources in triangle one weren’t running out — but hey, let’s be optimistic and pretend we’ll receive latter day equivalents of the mediaeval perpetual motion machine, and the philosopher’s stone as a bonus?
Immigration increases will, of course, help boost current economic growth, and remove the need for hard decisions being taken now — so let’s enjoy the moment? Why, we can even make ourselves feel better with such fatuous suggestions that (say) migrants from poor countries will have only five children here rather than the ten they’d have ‘back there”. Even if this stereotype were true, it carefully avoids the issue of one family member here consuming far more non-renewable resources ‘here’ than was the case ‘back there’.
Still, one mustn’t be too harsh on the optimists, because the only way they can maintain their optimism is by not analysing their positions too carefully. And they do so want to maintain that optimism, whatever the damage it may do to their logic — or their beloved planet?
Back in the 1970s the Club of Rome issued a gloomy report that is now commonly derided.
Perhaps the detail was wrong but I note that Ronald Wright in his Massey Lectures reckoned that during the 1970s we started using more resources than one planet could sustainably provide.
“Triangle two represents the planet’s increasing population — and we’re exhibiting amazing progress in speeding up that increase.”
At least get your facts rate mate.
Take a look at this link:
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldgrgraph.php
The world’s population is growing at its SLOWEST rate in over 50 years. And the trend is DOWN….
What an optimist might say is that as non-renewable resources deplete, their relative price will increase. This will encourage substution toward and innovations in, technologies that rely on renewable rather than non-renewable resources. Remember also, there is a great variation in the years of supply of different non-renewable resources.
Perhaps the position is heartless, but it isn’t incoherent. Australia’s immigration program is primarily based on skilled migration. Achieving a larger population doesn’t require a larger refugee intake…
That completely ignores the fact that many refugees have got skills and qualifications that we need, and the rest are willing to work in unskilled jobs that many Australians won’t.
It also ignores the fact that our ’skilled’ migration has for many years incuded farcical skils shortages such as hairdressers – because clearly it would be impossible to train refugees in such an enterprise! Much better to let international students pay enormous fees to attend bogus colleges and not get such critical skils and then grant PR.
In short that’s a furphy LO.
LO #109 Norman is essentially correct. This from Wiki.
“The actual annual growth in the number of humans fell from its peak of 87.8 million per annum in 1989, to a low of 74.6 million per annum in 2003, after which it has been rising again, to 76.6 million per annum in 2007, and 77.0 million per annum in 2009. The growth rate is expected to peak in 2010 at 77.2 million per annum”.
Hmmm, 77 million more humans per annum. That pretty much satisfies me that we are ‘breeding like rabbits’. Every year, nearly four times the population of Australia needs to be fed, clothed, housed, transported, educated and entertained, as well as those here already.
77 million more people every year cutting down forests, draining wetlands, extinguishing species, dumping trash into oceans, overfishing the oceans, digging heavy metals out of the ground to later pollute our soils and water, making chemicals which linger in our food and water supplies making strange looking or wheezing kids and weird tissue growth in our bodies, emitting gases which change our weather faster than the natural world can adapt to.
I could go on but this is most likely more reality than you are prepared to take on anyway.
Of course. Has anyone told the American negotiators at Copenhagen that they’ll have to bring their per capita emissions down to the global average?
I don’t think anyone here believes that higher prices for water (or any other limited resource) would not be helpful. Personally I’d like to see the price of water, oil, gas, electricity etc much, much higher than it is today. Not popular politically though.
Show me even the slightest glimmer of hope on this and I might agree with you. I consider it a certainty that carbon emissions will be higher in 2020 than they are today, and the science tells us early action will be far more effective.
Thanks everyone for bringing me up to date on the Goyder Line.
No wonder I couldn’t find it in my history books!
Silly me.
[Gets out whip for self-flaggelation again.]
Don’t be too hard on yourself, Paul. It’s not your fault that you weren’t born and educated in South Australia. Those of us who were have the advantage of having had a deep knowledge of Goyder and his Line thrashed into us by the time we were 8 years old.
More seriously, Norman @ 107 and Salient @111, as you’ve spotted, LO is a cornucopian. He believes that a combination of market forces and [handwaving]some magical new technology[/handwaving] will get us out of trouble. As it turns out, both Malthus and the Club of Rome were correct, it’s just that their timing was a bit off.
I’ve just checked out the links to the cargo ship, myriad. It’s beautiful, but there’s a certain irony in a renewable-powered ship being used as a car carrier.
I remember a mate of mine, 45-odd years ago when we were still at high school, talking about and designing modern sailing ships. (He was mainly concentrating on the sails, a kind of rigid wing-like structure. 15 year old boys aren’t particularly skilled naval architects as a rule, but they do understand Bournelli’s principle.) Even then we suspected the oil would run out at some stage.
David Irving #114 the trouble is I can’t tell if a cornucopian has failed to educate himself into reality or has rationalised himself out of reality. I live in hope for the former.
After reading Paul Norton’s article, it has crystallized for me that we first and foremost need to become sustainable. Even though I strongly believe we could not ever be sustainable at our present population, I would be satisfied with a major committment to achieving sustainability as a first step. Like that’s going to happen before a disaster.
Thanks for your response Labor Outsider but you failed to answer my question and I note that you remain indifferent to the concepts of a carrying capacity which are based on the assumption that there are certain environmental thresholds that when exceeded, can cause serious and irreversible damage to the natural environment (glaringly obvious in Australia). Approaches concerning carrying capacity are very useful when thresholds are identified ahead of time.
I daresay LO that you would have found an ally in Mao Zedong who proclaimed in 1949, “Of all things in the world, people are the most precious.” The nation then breeding like rabbits went on to suffer a massive famine causing some 30 million deaths.
In July, this year, China’s state press reported that the National government will encourage couples in Shanghai – the country’s most populous city, to have two kids if the parents are themselves, only children. This could be due to China’s many thousands of citizens now employed offshore where China has taken over food crops in many nations – trashing the environment – from Africa to the Amazon!
Meanwhile Western Australia had the highest percentage of new settlers for the year. The South West of WA is officially ranked as one of the planet’s thirty four “Ecological Hotspots.” To be considered as a “hotspot”, 70 percent of the habitat in the area must be lost, meaning that most of the living species have disappeared.
Luckily for Australia, Labor Outsider, I doubt that the more enlightened would take your omnicidal diatribe seriously. Fertility rates are not relevant to a projected population explosion of 9 billion humans. And daydreaming into the future merely supports the “delay, deny and divide” brigade. Urgent action and sustainable policies are required *now* – not 20 or 40 years into the dreamtime.
Fuck! I’ve just noticed I misspelt Bernoulli – really badly.
The questions we should be asking is not whether population growth is a good or bad thing. That argument has been long since resolved conclusively in any discussion forum where opponents of population growth have been allowed freely to argue their case.
Any examination of the evidence has confirmed, exactly as our intuition and common sense would have told us, beyond doubt that population growth, particularly rapid population growth, is gravely harmful to this country[1] as a whole and even more so to its current inhabitants.
Clearly someone is gaining at the expense of the rest of us by necessarily making each of us on average poorer, by forcing us to pay, through higher electricity, gas and water charges, council rates, road tolls, registration, and, above all, massively higher housing costs, for the diseconomies of scale necessitated by population growth well beyond what was Australia’s optimimum population level. A good start to working out who it is that is gaining from population growth may be my Online Opinion article “How the growth lobby threatens Australia’s future” of 24 Jan 09.
By definition, this group who have undemocratically seized control of this country’s destiny through their political glove puppets including Rudd, Howard, Keating, Hawke, Bligh, Beattie, Brumby, Bracks and Fraser to name only a few, are totally antithetical to the interests of the rest of us.
They are demonstrably unable, or unwilling to harness the existing resources and existing population of this country in order to earn an honest living and allow the needs of all of this society to be met. Instead, they have imposed a Ponzi scheme on all of us that has impoverished many of us already and is driving our society, our economy and our environment, as a whole, to ruin.
That it is a Ponzi scheme is totally confirmed by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh’s principle supposed justifications for her anti-democratic $15billion fire sale of publicly owned assets that she did not have the decency to inform Queensland electors about during the March State elections (in spite of my own tireless efforts as an INdpenednt candidate to get her to do so). Her excuse is:
The question should no longer be about whether or not population growth is harmful, rather the question should be, given this, why anyone in this country would want to see this happen, and, in particular, why Rudd would even contemplate, let alone begin to bring about his insane and reckless plan to increase our population to 35 million by 2050 and what we can do to stop it.
Footnotes:
1. Most environmental scientists argue that Australia has well and truly exceeded its carrying capacity. I hold out hope that if we properly fix up the environment, for example, by adopting Peter Andrews’ Natural Sequence and removing all the stupid inefficiencies imposed upon us by free market extremist economic dogma that our leaders are willing captives of and all lived materially more modestly, it’s conceivably possible, but very far from guaranteed that Australia could sustainably support its curent population and maybe two or three million more. But none of this will happen if the same people shoving population growht down our throats continue to have their way.
No, Salient, he was wrong, because the premise of his argument was that humans had a greater propensity to breed than was previously the case. That is clearly wrong as human fertility rates are now far lower than they have ever been, and are falling. And Flower, carrying capacity is not immutable, it is endogenous to a range of physical, technological, and policy induced factors that mean it can change over time. Indeed, the failure to understand that endogeneity helps to explain why David’s friend Malthus was so far off the mark. I have taken no firm view in this debate as to what Australia’s current carrying capacity is (holding the above factors constant), merely identified the more ridiculous assertions that have been made by some commentators.
And Salient, I hope you saw the irony in suggesting that somebody else was detached from reality!
“carrying capacity is not immutable”
Until we invent the tech to wean ourselves off carbon, LO – carrying capacity is very immutable, and it is something south of where we are already.
Growthers are as behind the times as a Piers Ackerman cardie.
(As for those suggesting desal will make up for the shortfall in water, they completely ignores the self-defeating downside of the extra carbon pollution.)
IMNSHO, Malthus and Ehrlich weren’t “wrong” just early. Civilisations can hit resource constraints suddenly with rapid and unexpected consequences. Things were going just swimmingly on Easter Island until they cut down the last tree.
There’s only one thing worse than a smug Simonite, and that’s a smug Libertarian. I suspect LO is both.
Unfortunately their nutty
religionideology will lead us to the edge of the cliff and over. The commonsense view (encapsulated by Kenneth Boulding’s famous quote below) will fall on deaf ears as Kevin and his ilk put the pedal to the metal and launch us towards the precipice.- Kenneth E. Boulding, Economist.
LO, like most other cornucopian economists, clearly regards the real world as a special case (not accounted for adequately by theory, as it happens).
LO,
Well perhaps. OTOH, having taken my view from empirical reality, perhaps not. “Proper” and “would” are probably the key flaws in your comment. How do you envisage allocation & pricing being done properly? Why “would” this stop water licence owners from seeking to maximise their return?
QIC boss: $15billion Qld fire sale to pay for population growth
The following has been crossposted as a comment to the article
Melbourne’s skyrocketing population: Kelvin Thomson speaks out in Melbourne November 11
I just heard Brisbane local ABC radio’s Madonna King interview Doug McTaggart the former (I think) boss of the Government owned Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC).
He talked of 20,000 (I think) people moving up to Queensland each quarter.
I am not sure how this topic came into it, but Madonna King asked if that would cause property prices to go up and he unsurprisingly confirmed that it would. Then Madonna King suggested that property would be a good investment.
In other words, Madonna King sees profiting others’ needs for such a basic necessity as shelter is a good thing and, presumably, allowing (or deliberately casuing) population growth to drive up property values is also a good thing, although se didn’t state that explicitly.
A regular feature of her program is a discussion of property values with a real estate investment adviser. In those sessions she talks as if its inherently good if property prices go up and bad if they remain the same or go down
Then, on other occasions, Madonna King rails with seeming passion against housing unaffordability and the plight of the homeless. At least one of her Saturday Courier-Mail columns was devoted to this issue, However, she seems inexplicably incapable of understanding the obvious, as I put in a media release as Lord Mayoral candidate on 4 March 2008 in response to one of Prime Minister Rudd’s similar pretences at concern about housing unaffordability:
Naturally my media release was not published.
Doug McTaggart als went on to explain how population growth necessitated the Queensland Government’s fire sale. The argument he put was, the Queensland faced 3 choices:
1. Not build the infrastructure necessary to provide jobs for and meet the needs of the new arrivals;
2. Raise taxes; or
3. Sell off assets (“Rearrange the balance sheet” as he put it at one point.
Interestingly, both Kevin Rudd and Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspaper neglected to tell the Australian public that selling off public assets was part of the price they would have to pay for the population growth that they insist is so much in our interests. (See, for example “Population is destiny” in the Australian of 19 September.)
Somehow, it apparently occurred to neither King nor McTaggart that another choice should be offered to the Australian public:
4. Reduce immigration and stablise our population.
For those who may be interested, I have written more of Madonna King’s method of journalism, which many of her listeners mistake for properly holding to account our political and business leaders here on John Quiggin’s web site as well as in the article “Brisbane ABC suppresses alternative candidates in state elections despite listener dismay with major parties” of 30 Apr 09 on this web site.
“Why “would” this stop water licence owners from seeking to maximise their return?”
Nothing, except, cotton farming would no longer be the most profitible use for holders of water licenses in those areas that currently produce cotton if the price of water reflected its scarcity…
If you want to read about how allocation should be done and how pricing would ensure that end-prices to consumers reflected environmental externalities, how about reading the Wentworth Group’s Blueprint for a National Water Plan and their follow-up work. On pricing, check out Quiggin’s CEDA paper for a start….
“In July, this year, China’s state press reported that the National government will encourage couples in Shanghai – the country’s most populous city, to have two kids if the parents are themselves, only children. This could be due to China’s many thousands of citizens now employed offshore where China has taken over food crops in many nations – trashing the environment – from Africa to the Amazon!”
.
Why mention that these people are chinese?Is it that their being chinese is part of the problem you see ? All sorts of people can trash the environment.
” taken over food crops…” ?? source please.
.
“I daresay LO that you would have found an ally in Mao Zedong who proclaimed in 1949, “Of all things in the world, people are the most precious.” The nation then breeding like rabbits went on to suffer a massive famine causing some 30 million deaths.” Dear oh dear – this is the most bizarre interpretation of the Great Leap Forward I’ve ever seen – apart from being 10 years out of date – obviously you are sympathetic to the Liu clique and a sparrow lover.
It is worth looking at the worlds population stats here. Makes you wonder what difference 20 million is going to really make to our security/
David Irving post 114 (and others eg Carbonsink 122 ) “As it turns out, both Malthus and the Club of Rome were correct, it’s just that their timing was a bit off.”
Do you mean they may yet be proven correct?
I remember the certainty with which the CoR forecast our fate, but last time I checked the world hadn’t ended, now I seem likely to outlive it.
It’s odd that those who still think humans succesfully negotiating a future are accused of religosity, rather it’s the counter argument all sounds like a much older fanaticism about the nature of humanity and certainty about good and evil.
Flower, I’ve just been in the South West of WA, it had a good winter and looks great and there are plenty of species not facing extinction, bar, apparently, beef farmers, who can’t get sufficient prices for their offput – an odd thing given the malthusian equation!
And poor LO being called a smug (Saint- (give us our due)) Simonite and libertarian – both! bought back memories of campus life in the early ’70s – What! has the Tardis landed and the doctor’s latest avatar a fanatical trotskite, stepped out!
murph the surf @ 127, I think they mean this. China and South Korea are the main actors. Whether they are trashing the environment or not the activity is regularly described as a “land grab”.
LFW, you’re a cornucopian as well, aren’t you?
Of course Malthus and the CoR will be proved correct. In fact some of the CoR’s predictions are starting to come in. From memory they were predicting shortages of various commodities from around about now. Since we’ve already hit peak oil, and peak phosphorous is looming, their predictions look pretty good (although perhaps a bit conservative).