Populate and perish
by Professor Ian Lowe
Professor Ian Lowe
I urge everyone to get involved with the public population/growth forums taking place in Brisbane and on the Sunshine Coast in the lead-up to Anna Bligh’s ‘Growth Management Summit’ at the end of March.
The decisions being taken in the next few months will literally shape our future. If we want to protect and improve our quality of life, we have to get serious about the population debate.
There are real questions about our capacity to supply services to a rapidly growing population. Serious analysis of the economic issues shows that an increasing population causes the overall size of the economy to grow, but wealth per capita does not increase much at all or might even decline.
So the rapid growth might not even be producing economic benefits to offset the social strains and the environmental costs.
The issue has been forced onto the political agenda by the increasing problems of Australian cities.
Already, there is a voter backlash as transport, water and power infrastructure struggle to keep pace with growing populations. Federal MP Kelvin Thompson has tapped into the public mood with speeches urging a goal of stabilising the population.
At the same time as Bligh’s summit, the Australian Davos Connection will be convening a two-day meeting in Melbourne to consider sustainable cities.
For years, our politicians have actively encouraged an unusually high rate of population growth, seeing it in simplistic terms as good for the economy.
Howard and Costello introduced financial incentives for women to have more children; Rudd and Swan retained and then increased the ‘baby bonus’.
Costello encouraged us to reproduce by urging couples to have “one for the husband, one for the wife and one for the country”, while Rudd was equally facile with his statement that he believes in “a Big Australia”.
Howard increased immigration to unprecedented levels and allowed the expansion of low-level training courses as a back-door migration path.
The Rudd government expanded immigration still further at a time when we struggle to find work for young Australians, but finally cracked down on the training racket.
Here in southeast Queensland there is genuine concern about the erosion of our quality of life. When the community have been consulted, they have made their feelings clear.
But the the State Government’s ill-conceived Regional Plan, will impose further rapid population growth on the whole of southeast Queensland, including the Sunshine Coast.
We should be particularly concerned about the loss of natural areas, the continuing spread of housing onto good agricultural land and the improbability of meeting responsible targets to slow climate change if the population keeps growing rapidly.
More people means more houses, more services, probably more roads and certainly more clearing of native vegetation. In terms of our quality of life, it means that the beaches and bush tracks will be more crowded.
If we continue to provide inadequate public transport, the roads will become more congested, creating pressure to build still more roads or widen the existing transport corridors.
The really big issue is the impact on climate change. The Bali Roadmap, agreed in 2007 shortly after Australia finally ratified the Kyoto Protocol and rejoined the international community, set out targets for industrialised countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
It said we should aim to be 25 to 40 per cent below the 1990 level by 2020. More recent science suggests that the targets should probably be strengthened to more like 50 per cent.
In fact, we are well above the 1990 level and our emissions are still growing. The Rudd government’s proposed Emissions Trading Scheme has been seriously compromised by concessions to the big polluters, while the Coalition are critical of even those modest charges that survived, branding it as a “great big tax” when it provides almost no economic incentives for change.
Successive governments have even said that it is particularly hard for us to reduce our greenhouse pollution because of our growing population.
If the population of southeast Queensland doubles, all other things being equal, our energy use will double and our greenhouse gas production will double.
A responsible target of 50 per cent reduction if the population doubles means reducing per capita pollution to a quarter of the present level. It is difficult to see how that could be done in a decade. It would be difficult enough with a stable population. It looks impossible if we start by encouraging rapid growth.
The slogan used to be ‘Populate or perish’. We can now see that it is more like ‘Populate and perish’. A sustainable future has to be based on stabilisation of both population and consumption.
Are you listening, Premier?
Related articles:
- Koalas squeezed out by population growth
- Population: perpetual growth is not the answer
- Population: looking at the numbers with Bob Abbot
- Tim Flannery: time to deepen our democracy
- Jamming us in
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