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Development Watch

The Sunshine Coast Environmental Council (SCEC) is the umbrella organisation of more than 50 community groups. In this issue of ECO, we feature a group and its role in resisting the tsunami of development that threatens the Sunshine Coast.

Survey after survey has confirmed the sentiment of most Sunshine Coast residents — “We don’t want another [...]

Koalas squeezed out by population growth

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 coral reefs.
It’s not surprising then [...]

The real cost of population growth

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 and media commentators calling [...]

Paul Summers: population distribution, size and sustainability

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. [...]

Simon Baltais: soldiering on for the environment

Simon Baltais’s rise to one of the top branches of the environment movement tree is a result of hard work, persistence and absolute dedication.  Not bad for an ex-cop and soldier, who is now the Queensland president of the Wildlife Preservation Society and the secretary of Queensland Conservation.
There has been a series of important stepping [...]

Tim Flannery: time to deepen our democracy

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 [...]

Time for a steady-state economy

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 population growth and expose the thinking behind it.
Ms [...]

South East Queensland Regional Plan: a ‘scary blueprint’

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 [...]

Bigger road networks or better public transport?

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 road [...]

Population: perpetual growth is not the answer

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 agricultural [...]