Thanks to Andrew Bolt for promoting this diary on his blog,
even though it led to my first-ever hate emails. Also thanks to The
Australian, who likened me to Adrian Mole. I hope some readers who were
introduced to my work through these fundamentally anti-science sites will
reflect on their contribution to earth poisoning; though in South Australia, 26% of electrical power is already generated from the wind
(averaged over a year - not just at times of peak wind).
A book to
which I contributed two chapters (one on health and population, and another on
scenarios) was released by the Australian Academy of Science. This led to a discussion with
Mark O'Connor, co-author of Overloading
Australia, about Australia's future population trajectory. We agree
that the current level of migration to Australia is too high, that the world is
seriously over-populated, that Limits to Growth and Planetary Boundaries are very close. We also
agree that the per capita Australian environmental footprint needs to be greatly
reduced.
But we
disagree over the desirable level of migration to Australia. I agree with Mark
that a sharp contraction in migration to Australia will help protect our
quality of life, perhaps for several decades. As climate change worsens,
bringing with it more extreme weather events (not just heat waves and fires but heavier rainfall and more floods), as sea level
rises then food prices will continue to rise, increasing the chance of civil unrest, open conflict and large-scale migration. This is prospect is likely
to even worse if energy prices remain as high (or even higher).
I argue
that unless we reverse this trajectory, the difference between our quality of
life and that of our future neighboursis likely to motivate resentment and
eventually invasion. If we take the rapid population stabilisation route then
regional inequality will ratchet higher and we will feel ever more threatened
and xenophobic, in a positive feedback that could lead to us being the Israel
of the South Pacific. Already most Australians tolerate the diversion of government supplied foreign aid
(very stingy by Scandinavian standards) to fund detention centres in which asylum seekers sew their lips together. This is no long-term
solution, but an intensification of Fortress Australia.
This is a
dilemma. Yes, slower population growth through migration (say, half of what we
currently have) still creates challenges for infrastructure provision,
especially in cities, and worsens the physical quality of life of most people
already living here. But human well-being also has psychological and moral
dimensions, and closing the drawbridge in order to protect our physical
conditions does not feel nice to me. And, in the long run, those physical
conditions risk erosion, in any case.
We thus
need modest migration to keep us engaged regionally, to lessen xenophobia, but
most fundamentally as an issue of planetary fairness. More importantly
Australia needs to contribute to solutions, especially ways to generate and
export clean energy rather than Earth poison. Coal
exports are madness over a long period because they worsen climate change,
create ghost infrastructure (e.g. railways to nowhere) and inhibit us from thinking
of long-term solutions (consider the power of the coal mining industry.)
While renewables are declining in price, the cost of Earth poisons keep rising
even without accounting for their hidden social, environmental and
inter-generational costs. We should switch subsidies from Earth poison to
renewables; Bloomberg states that additional power in Australia will be cheaper if derived from clean sources
than from coal.
Through
the week I watched Stephen Spielberg's film Lincoln, which shows the way a great human being
was able to deliver revolutionary change — ending slavery — despite
powerful and hostile vested interests. If they have their way (then, now and in
future), these interests might outlaw free speech and thought. The film
did not mention Lincoln's criticism of corporations, as former
Senator Bob Brown foreshadowed in his Krebs
Lecture last week at the University of Canberra.
Finally,
the heading in The Australian complained that I am "sucking on the taxpayer teat". I am
extremely grateful to the Australian tax payer for the chance my Fellowship
gives me to think, speak and and write, including for a recent WHO
Technical Report about environmental change, agriculture and
infectious diseases of poverty. Would the anonymous headline writer in The
Australian like to publicise how some tax payer's money has been used to
prepare this report? That would be nice.
