I caught some of Kevin Rudd's launch of Australia's white paper on climate change on Monday, and this really caught my attention:
Australia's population is projected to grow by around 45 per cent over the 1990-2020 period,so Australia's target range translates to a 34-41 per cent reduction in the per capita emissions of every Australian over this period. Page 20, Volume 1Is it time to curb immigration and for a one child policy down under?
45% population growth isn't really sustainable, predominately, because we are running out of water!
Thankfully, Nuclear power is off the table down under but like coal, they both require a lot of water which Australia, the driest continent, doesn't have much of.
More wind and Solar, now, pretty please!
A while back, Peter 'Smirk' Costello with his baby bonus was encouraging families to have have three kids, one for mum, one for dad and one for the country.
In Melbourne, we are under advanced stages of water restrictions with the water storages something like 100 Billion litres lower than this time last year.
Isn't it obvious, that dramatically growing our population at the moment is like sowing seeds in the desert? This is just plainly environmentally unsustainable.
Malcolm 'Truffles' Turnbull is MIA on this again, don't forget Rudd has shaped this policy to fit the political reality he has to deal with in the Senate. 2010 v 2012 is the best you can come up with? pffff...
The Green Lobby is also involved in some pretty ridiculous grand standing when it comes to claims that Rudd has given up on saving the Murray and the Great Barrier reef.
I hate to be a realist, but we could stop all Australian CO2 emission's today and they would still be doomed. I'm not a climate change denier and I am really disappointed in the Government's response.
Alas, I don't have the answers, but I see the problems.
The main problem is that the CPRS doesn't inflict much pain, quite simply it needs to, it needs to provide incentive for people and industry to change, excessive compensation negates the whole point of an ETS.
Regardless, except for the excessive compensation, the most important thing at the moment is to get the damn thing in place, the policy will change (and improve) over time.
The compensation is the problem, because it's sooo hard to claw back handouts.
PS: the white paper shouldn't be in PDF's but as plain old web pages, IMHO!
4 comments:
Massive immigration is driving Australia's population growth, not domestic births.
If it weren't for ongoing mass immigration, Australia's population would have stabilized by now.
All the Rudd Government needs to do is reduce immigration. Unfortunately, neither Labor nor the Coalition have the courage to defy big business, which is dependent on an ever-growing population to drive consumption.
So, Australia in the future is going to be a drier, more overpopulated country. We can kiss goodbye to our quality of life.
For more on the immigration/population problem facing Australia, the below articles are good places to start:
"Zero immigration and sustainable populations"
"Cultural diversity at what cost?"
"Danger in growth for growth's sake"
thanks for the post. have been working on this for years up north, suggest spreading this short video around when you get a chance. best of luck with life in Australia!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXyyCY5IM6Q
Albert Kaufman
Portland, Oregon
thanks for the links Anonymous :)
Interesting video Albert, times are a changing pretty fast at the moment, everything which once seemed set in stone is seemingly suddenly up for review!
An old work mate of mine, who's political beliefs lie on the other side of the fence to mine once said to me, "Mother nature has a wonderful way of correcting imbalances"
The Global Economic Crisis is natures own war on extreme capitalism.
There was a great story on the BBC World service last night, as part of the regular analysis segments, about the bonus culture.
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