THE CANBERRA TIMES | High cost of #population growth SPP: Canberrans on fire with an excellent community letters campaign re population and sustainability... High cost of population growth The relationships between immigration, population growth, economic growth and environmental sustainability are more complex than Bob Salmond suggests (Letters, December 26). True, immigration provides 60per cent of Australias population growth, and without immigration, the government predicts that labour force growth will almost cease within the next decade. As Salmond suggests, the circular argument is that we need more people to provide the things that more people need. The Australia Institute has estimated every extra 400,000 Australians require an additional 61 public primary schools, two public hospitals, 25 residential aged-care homes, and 145,000 homes. The argument from those such as Chris Richardson from Deloitte Access Economics is more people, including skilled migrants, will drive jobs and prosperity at a national level. At a local level, there are those, including pro-big Canberra politicians, who argue a larger local population is necessary to support more environmentally sustainable infrastructure. These claims should be questioned, for reasons which go beyond issues of immigration. The perils of unfettered economic growth were highlighted 40 years ago by The Club of Rome (Limits to Growth) and by British economist E. F. Schumacher (Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered). Both were critical of the more is better philosophy and warned that the pursuit of unlimited growth in population, material goods, etc. would impose significant costs on the Earths resources, eco-systems and economic systems. Schumacher proposed that, rather than measuring well-being by gross national product, we should try to achieve the maximum well-being with the minimum consumption. The simple fact is that an expanding population, whether due to natural increases or immigration, creates more pressures on resources and the environment. And greater use of resources often results in more problems whose solutions demand more services and infrastructure (for example, obesity related to the increased availability of high-kilojoule foods). Population growth is unsustainable and we should question the self-important and profit-seeking claims by politicians and the property industry about the need for larger cities – cities where quality of life will be defined by an economy driven by more people who consume more stuff whose production requires the use of more and more resources, whose storage requires larger and larger houses and whose disposal requires more energy use and landfill. Karina Morris, Weetangera
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 21:47:07 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015