Eco online: environmental news, features and opinion from the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia
Environmental news from Eco online, Sunshine Coast and Queensland environmental news, with indepth sections including interviews, sustainable business, eco adventures, green living and wildlife
Earlier editions of the print version of Eco have highlighted the very significant social, economic and environmental values of Pumicestone Passage and identified various threats to those values. The Passage has values of international and national environmental significance under the Federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation … [Read more...]
By Simon Baltais Southeast Queensland is one of Australia’s biological hotspots. It is an area where the sub-tropical and temperate regions known as the McPherson/MacLeay Overlap Zone are a region of diverse landscapes from mountain rainforest to open woodland and wallum wetlands to huge sand islands, mangroves forest, seagrass meadows and … [Read more...]
By Professor Tor Hundloe From an economic perspective the population debate is all about scale -- economies of scale and the opposite, diseconomies of scale are, the key concepts. From the day ex-Treasurer, Peter Costello, made the extraordinary plea “to have one for the country”, we have politicians on both sides, business leaders … [Read more...]
Paul Summers is a jolly sort of bloke – laidback, big smile, dressed for a barbie but with a brain as sharp as a tack. Immediately, you’d hazard a guess that Paul isn’t your normal stereotypical urban planner hunched over a drawing board on level 33 of a shiny office block in the heart of Brisbane. Yet a planner he is, and with an … [Read more...]
ECO talks with former Australian of the Year, author, scientist and renowned conservationist, Tim Flannery. ECO: As far back as 1995 you were advocating a population policy by 2005 with an ultimate target looking out two centuries. Nothing has been done – in fact we seem to be heading to unsustainability at a much faster pace. What do … [Read more...]
Lois Levy argues that governments should be considering a steady-state economy rather than blindly promoting unsustainable growth. Martin Rasini talks to this environmental warrior of the Gold Coast. Veteran environmental campaigner Lois Levy views the upcoming population forums as an opportunity to highlight the unwanted social impacts of … [Read more...]
When Debra Henry stands up to speak at the Brisbane population forum she will be well-armed with knowledge and confident she has the unequivocal backing of her community. Martin Rasini talks to a woman on a mission. Redland City Councillor Debra Henry is committed to challenging the growth paradigm and plans to make her personal views known … [Read more...]
In her office at the Nambour headquarters of the Sunshine Coast Regional Council, Cr Vivien Griffin pulls out the super-duper plan for the Mooloolah River Interchange and by the look in her eyes asks silently, ‘What do you think of that?’. It’s then that you realise that projected population growth is sending people loopy, including … [Read more...]
Martin Rasini gets a little tutorial help on the population issue from one of Queensland's sharpest academic and research minds Growing crops in a more sustainable way is easier than growing the human population in a sustainable way. In fact, the latter is nigh on impossible – and a sentiment embraced by Dr Jane O’Sullivan, an … [Read more...]
Sunshine Coast mayor Bob Abbot sees uncontrolled population growth as an insanity We’re looking at 98,000 dwellings that the State Government has told us we have to build in the next 20 to 25 years Charismatic Sunshine Coast mayor Bob Abbot says he can see a light at the end of the tunnel in the population-growth debate. He is … [Read more...]
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