Population explosion
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• Reporter: Bryan Seymour
• Broadcast Date: September 18, 2009
Australia's population is soaring. Experts are predicting that by 2050 there'll be at least 35 million of us competing for food, land and whatever's left. Now, a member of Kevin Rudd's government is calling for, among other things, massive cuts to immigration before its too late, and the world's top expert on population agrees with him.
Kelvin Thompson, the federal Labor member for Wills in Victoria (where the population is growing faster than anywhere else in the country), fears the outcome of population growth in Melbourne and other major cities around the country.
"I don't want to see Melbourne become a city like Mumbai or Shanghai or Mexico City," Thompson said.
"I believe Melbourne is a beautiful city and the population projections for Melbourne are Melbourne at five million in a relatively short time, and I don't think that is the right thing for Melbourne... I also these things in Sydney and Brisbane," Thompson said.
The federal member sees migration and birth rate as the two major factors influencing population growth in Australia.
"Our migration rate has skyrocketed in recent timesâ?¦ since the 1990's we had a net migration rate of around 82,000 that has since doubled, our temporary entry permits have also skyrocketed, over 4 million temporary entry permits issued in 2006/7," he said.
These are the cold, hard numbers.
In 1998, Australia welcomed 85,120 new settlers. In 2008/09, we welcomed 232,098, nearly triple. On top of that, we've seen 629,000 temporary residents come here on work and study visas - with many hoping to transfer those into permanent residency.
That's a total of nearly 900,000 in the year to July 31, 2009. Those numbers affect everything from transport, to waste management, to housing affordability. The question is - are we still within our limits... or do we need to act now?
Professor Ehrlich, Stanford University, California: "What's crystal clear is Australia should have a shrinking population. Australia's already in deep trouble, way beyond it's carrying capacity and Iâ??m afraid that not only are we not going to see 40 million or 100 million Australians, we are likely to see many fewer than 20 million and many may have to evacuate."
Professor Ehrlich's seminal book 'The Population Bomb', published in 1968, predicted the sudden, massive increase in people over the last century would quickly cause mass hunger, environmental destruction and the end of humanity.
"In the US media and in the roughly three years watching the media that I've spent in Australia, I have yet to see anybody point out that the rate of climate change is directly connected with the size of the population," Professor Ehrlich said.
Over the last century, humans have multiplied from two billion to more than 6.7 billion. Professor Ehrlich believes Australia's mostly dry, arid landscape is already at tipping point.
"If you took every river in Australia and piped it through the Mississippi, people downstream wouldn't notice any difference at all. if everybody in the world had just a tiny coop and was given slop to eat and couldn't move or do anything else, you might manage to keep 6.8billlion people alive but who would want to live that way? Not Australians, I'll tell you that," Professor Ehrlich said.
Professor Ehrlich and Kelvin Thompson argue Australia should scrap the baby bonus (more than $5,000 for having a child), introduced under Howard and Costello and continued under Kevin Rudd. If anything, Prime Minister Rudd has built on the population-boosting measures started by his predecessor, with immigration now at its highest-ever level.
Now that communist China is moving towards scrapping its one child policy what does the world's ever-expanding population mean for us here? How much will more will we pay for food, power, services... will we go hungry?
Food Scientist Dr David Tribe is certain technology will allow us to comfortably feed 10 billion humans. In the meantime, he urges Australia to keep its immigration numbers up and increase foreign aid.
"If you're going to make any impact on the big issue of population, you're going to have to solve the poverty problem first," Dr Tribe said.
Dr Tribe, Kelvin Thompson and Professor Ehrlich all agree that improving the living standards in poor countries will mean they have fewer children and ease global populations problems.
"I think we should be responsible, if we've got good living standards, we should be devoting, those people who care, and I hope there's a fair number, should get off their backsides and work at helping people overseas who are less fortunate," Dr Tribe said.
For Kelvin Thompson, slashing immigration by more than half would reduce the threat of terrorism and immediately, and massively, reduce our impact on climate change.
"Food shortages, water shortages, housing affordability, overcrowded cities, transport congestion, loss of species, waste, terrorism... all of these things we can only tackle if we are prepared to confront population."
"If we were to reduce our migration rate from the levels it's got to, of the order of 170,000 back to 82,000, that would give our immigration authorities more time in which to better assess applicants for entry in Australia."
"If we're not prepared to address the issue of population, we simply will not be able to discharge our obligation to pass on to our children a world in as good a condition as the one left to us," Thompson said.
According to Professor Peter McDonald, population growth is no problem. He's the Director of the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute.
"It's a very simple thing to say that all our problems in Australia are due to population... and that's essentially what Mr Thompson is saying there."
"The change that's happened in world population in the last 40 years is absolutely remarkable!"
"Immigration in Australia is driven very largely by labour demand and it's going to be what it's going to be... migration is likely to be around 160,000 to 200,000 into the future, about twice what Kelvin Thompson is talking about."
Thompson fired back: "There are lots of people who are either resigned to population growth and think that it's inevitable or who advocate population growth and think that it's good for us... I think they're completely wrong, I think that many of the problems that we are now facing can be sourced back to population growth."
In our favour, Australia is one of the least-populated and wealthiest countries in the world... but, asks Professor Ehrlich, for how long?
"But both China and India are trying to catch up and when they catch up then it's really going to be bad."
! What`s up ?
