[Green-Activist] overpopulation and environment

[Roy Garner]

How true, Boris.  Our land use since colonisation/invasion has not been 
subsistence-based.  We have some of the world's oldest and least 
fertile soils (Flannery), and our agriculture has been artificially 
sustained by imported fertilizers.  The Aborigines learnt over 
millennia how to relate to our fragile ecology, but more than 200 years 
of European land use has seen massive landclearing, leaching of the 
soil and destruction/degradation of ecological systems and species, and 
now, with the effects of prolonged drought and predictions of 
climate-change water shortages for the foreseeable future, it is 
reasonable to suspect that we will also witness agricultural collapse, 
unless solutions are quickly found.  And yet, impossible optimists 
still see only pots of gold from the continuing spread of suburbia 
along (especially) the eastern seaboard.
When I lived on the Central Coast (north of Sydney) several years ago, 
not one local newspaper would print my letters to the editor, in which 
I expressed my concern at the unbridled project housing developments 
with no guarantee of increased water supply, ahead of the State 
government's commitment to uncork the overpopulation of the Sydney 
basin.  No surprise, seeing the papers are largely funded by real 
estate and related advertising.  Now we are hearing (pre-election) that 
new dams will be built and owners encouraged to harvest their 
rainwater.  But for the environment, this has come rather late, 
following in the wake of recent landclearing and loss of habitat for 
Central Coast wildlife.  It is a sad irony that the very qualities that 
attract people to new areas—the virgin bush, the wildlife, the idyllic 
sunsets etc.—are the very things degraded or lost when humans begin the 
settle in those areas.
But we are challenged (correctly so) by our international humanitarian 
commitments to respond to the needs of refugees, and to share the 
burden of their resettlement, even if this seems to fly in the face of 
our growing ecological crisis.
We can still honour these commitments if we elect representatives who 
are genuinely committed to reversing the damage done to our 
environment; protecting biodiversity; implementing alternative energy 
strategies; harvesting rainwater; energy-efficient and sensitively 
sited housing; sustainable land use; and the promotion of the benefits 
of public over private transport, among other things.
The goals of population control, I believe, should properly be 
addressed through education and birth control, rather than panicky 
political scaremongering made on the run.

On 11/03/2007, at 10:45 AM, Boris Branwhite wrote:

> i would be very interested in seeing the data that leads to the 
> conclusion
> that australia is not overpopulated --
> the eco footprint of this countries human inhabitants currently require
> somewhere between 4 and six planets to sustain the demands of its 
> consuming
> population.
> ecological sustainability could be achieved here -- if the current 
> consumers
> reduce their footprint by a factor of 6, or if the population is 
> reduced
> severely.
> extinction is permanent -- i am watching and recording the path to
> extinction of 20 species that occur locally, and no other place on 
> earth --
> and the cause?
> population growth, and its demands to be housed, employed, and fed.
>
> boris branwhite
> www.whalecall.org
>
> "every drop of rain that falls ends up in the mouths of whales - it is 
> up to
> humans to control what substances enter that raindrop during its 
> journey to
> the ocean."
>
>
>> Actually Frank,
>>
>> Australia is not overpopulated. We are killing our land and
>> environment and using up all our resources because of the animal
>> farming industry, which uses about 70% of our grain 30% of our farm
>> able land and rui9ns a whole lot of water, soil and air.
>>
>> It is reprehensible for far more climate changing gasses than
>> transport. The UN has said that this is the issue that should be on
>> top.
>>
>> I'm not ideological, but communism is not the cause of the trouble in
>> china and Russia. the communist ideal was never ever implemented in
>> those countries, because it requires a good deal of good-will
>> alongside with it, which is only something we can evolve.
>>
>> Thus we exist in a series of terrible social situations like feudalism
>> and liberalism according to how materialistic we are. Thus things are
>> getting better. Perhaps the future will resemble socialism.
>>
>> -- 
>> Alistair Dark
>> www.the-defender.org
>> (00 61) 0406 963 407
>>
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