sustainable population australia - march newsletter...

Sustainable Population Australia - Newsletter

No. 131, March 2018

Patrons: The Hon Bob Carr Professor Ian Lowe Professor Tim Flannery Dr Mary White Dr Paul Collins Youth Ambassador: Bindi Irwin

Humans areblind toimminentenvironmentalcollapse

By William Rees

martins and fly-catchers are down by up to 75%; Greater Vancouver's barn and bank swallows have plummeted by 98% since 1970. Heard much about these things in the mainstream news?

Too bad. Biodiversity loss may turn out to be the sleeper issue of the century. It is caused by many individual but interacting factors – habitat loss, climate change, intensive pesticide use and various forms of industrial pollution, for example, suppress both insect and bird populations. But the overall driver is what an ecologist might call the 'competitive displacement' o f non -human l i f e by the inexorable growth of the human enterprise.

On a finite planet where millions of species share the same space and depend on the same finite products of photosynthesis, the continuous expansion of one species necessarily drives the contraction and extinction of others. (Politicians take note – there is always a conflict between human population/ economic expansion and 'protection of the environment.)

Remember the 40 to 60 million bison that used to roam the great plains of North America? They – along with the millions of deer, pronghorns, wolves and lesser beasts that once animated prairie e c o s y s t e m s – h a v e b e e n ‘competitively displaced', their

habitats taken over by a much greater biomass of humans, cattle, pigs and sheep. And not just North Americans – Great Plains sunshine also supports millions of other people-with-livestock around the world who depend, in part, on North American grain, oil-seed, pulse and meat exports.

Competitive displacement has been going on for a long time. Scientists estimate that at the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago, H. sapiens comprised less than 1% of the total weight of mammals on the planet. (There were probably only 2 to 4 million people on Earth at the time.) Since then, humans have grown to represent 35% of a much larger total biomass; toss in domestic pets and livestock, and human dominat ion o f the wor ld 's mammalian biomass rises to 98.5%!

One needs look no further to explain why wildlife populations globally have plunged by nearly 60% in the past half century. Wild tigers have been driven from 93% of their historic range and are down to fewer than 4,000

A curious thing about H. sapiens is that we are clever enough to document – in exquisite detail – various trends that portend the collapse of modern civilisation, yet not nearly smart enough to extricate ourselves from our self-induced predicament.

This was underscored once again in October when scientists reported that f lying insect populations in Germany have declined by an alarming 75% in the past three decades accompanied, in the past dozen years, by a 15% drop in bird populations. Trends are similar in other parts of Europe where data are available. Even in Canada, everything from casual windshield 'surveys' to formal scientific assessments show a d r o p i n i n s e c t n u m b e r s . Meanwhile, domestic populations of many insect-eating birds are in freefall. Ontario has lost half its whip-poor-wills in the past 20 years; across the nation, such species as nighthawks, swallows,

Contents

P4: TAPRI on surveys

P5: SPA's April AGM

P6: Obituary: Paddy Weaver

P8: Book reviews

P10: Branch reports

P12: President's snippets

ballooned even more – global GDP has increased by over 100-fold since 1800; average per capita incomes by a factor of 13 (rising to 25-fold in the richest countries). Consumption has exploded accordingly – half the fossil fuels and many other resources ever used by humans have been consumed in just the past 40 years. (See graphs in: Steffen, W et al. 2015. The trajectory of the A n t h r o p o c e n e : T h e G r e a t Acceleration. The Anthropocene Review, Volume: 2 Issue: 1, page(s): 81-98.)

Why does any of this matter, even to those who don't really give a damn about nature per se? Apart from the moral stain associated with extinguishing thousands of other life-forms, there are purely selfish reasons to be concerned. For example, depending on climate zone, 78 to 94% of flowering plants, including many human food species, are pollinated by insects, birds and even bats. (Bats – also in trouble in many places – are the major or exclusive pollinators of 500 species in at least 67 families of plants.) As much as 35% of the world's crop production is more or less dependent on animal pollination, which ensures or increases the production of 87 leading food crops worldwide.

But there is a deeper reason to fear the depletion and depopulation of nature. Absent life, planet earth is

just an inconsequential wet rock with a poisonous atmosphere revolving pointlessly around an ordinary star on the outer fringes of an undistinguished galaxy. It is life itself, beginning with countless species of microbes, that gradually created the 'environment' suitable for life on Earth as we know it. B i o l o g i c a l p r o c e s s e s a r e responsible for the life-friendly chemical balance of the oceans; photosynthetic bacteria and green plants have stocked and maintain Earth's atmosphere with the oxygen necessary for the evolution o f a n i m a l s ; t h e s a m e p h o t o s y n t h e s i s g r a d u a l l y extracted billions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere, storing it in chalk, limestone and fossil fuel deposits, so that Earth's average temperature (currently about 15 C) has remained for geological ages in the narrow range that makes water-based life possible, even as the sun has been warming (i.e. stable climate is partially a biological phenomenon); countless species of bacteria, fungi and a veritable menagerie of m i c r o - f a u n a c o n t i n u o u s l y regenerate the soils that grow our food. (Unfortunately, depletion-by-agriculture is even faster – by some accounts we have only just over a half-century's worth of arable soils left.)

In short, H. sapiens depends utterly on a rich diversity of life-forms to provide various life-support funct ions essent ia l to the existence and continued survival of human civilisation. With an unprecedented human-induced great global die-off well under way, what are the chances the funct ional integr i ty of the ecosphere will survive the next doubling of material consumption that everyone expects before mid-century?

i n d i v i d u a l s g l o b a l l y ; t h e population of African elephants has imploded by as much as 95% to only 500,000 today; poaching drove black rhino numbers from an already much reduced 70,000 in 1960 to only 2,500 individuals in the ear ly 1990s. (With intense conservation effort, they have since rebounded to about 5,000). And those who still think Canada is still a mostly pristine and under-populated wilderness should think again – half the wildlife species regularly monitored in this country are in decline, with an average population drop of 83% since 1970. Did I mention that B.C.'s southern resident killer whale population is down to only 76 animals? That's in part because human fishers have displaced the orcas from their favoured food, Chinook salmon, even as we simultaneously displace the salmon from their spawning streams through hydro dams, pollution and urbanisation.

The story is similar for familiar species everywhere and likely worse for non-charismatic fauna. Scientists estimate that the 'modern' species extinction rate is 1,000 to as much as 10,000 times the natural background rate.The g l o b a l e c o n o m y i s b u s i l y converting living nature into human bodies and domestic livestock largely unnoticed by our increasingly urban populations. Urbanisation distances people psychologically as well as spatially from the ecosystems that support them.

The human band-wagon may really have started rolling 10 millennia ago but the past two centuries of exponential growth greatly have accelerated the pace of change. It took all of human history – let's say 200,000 years – for our population to reach 1 billion in the early 1800s, but only 200 years, 1/1000th as much time, to hit today's 7.6 billion! Meanwhile, material demand on the planet has

- Newsletter No 131 March 2018

Opinion

William Rees

be equal to the task but lie dormant – there is little hint of political willingness to acknowledge the problem let alone elaborate genuine solutions (which the Paris climate accord is not).

Bottom line? The world seems in denial of looming disaster; the 'C' w o r d r e m a i n s u n v o i c e d . G o v e r n m e n t s e v e r y w h e r e dismissed the 1992 scientists' Warning to Humanity that “… a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided” and will similarly ignore the scientists' “second notice.” (Published on Nov. 13, this warning states that most negative trends identified 25 years earlier “are getting far worse.”) Despite cascading evidence and detailed analysis to the contrary, the world community trumpets 'growth-is-us' as its contemporary holy grail. E v e n t h e U n i t e d N a t i o n s ' Sustainable Development Goals are fixed on economic expansion as the only hammer for every problematic nail. Meanwhile, greenhouse gases are at an all-time high, marine dead-zones proliferate, tropical forests fall and extinctions accelerate.

Just what is going on here? The full explanation of this potentially fatal human enigma is no doubt complicated, but Herman Melville summed it up well enough in Moby Dick: “There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”

William Rees is a bio-ecologist and p r o f e s s o r e m e r i t u s a t t h e University of British Columbia, Canada. This article was originally published at The Tyee.

Here's the thing: climate change is not the only shadow darkening humanity's doorstep. While you wouldn't know it from the mainstream media, biodiversity loss arguably poses an equivalent existential threat to civilised existence. While we're at it, let's toss soil/landscape degradation, potential food or energy shortages and other resource limits into the mix. And if you think we'll probably be able to 'handle' four out of five such environmental problems, it doesn't matter. The relevant version of Liebig's Law states that any complex system dependent on several essential inputs can be taken down by that single factor in least supply (and we haven't yet touched upon the additional risks posed by the geopolitical turmoil that would inevitably follow ecological destabilisation).

Which raises questions of more than mere academic interest. Why are we not collectively terrified or at least alarmed? If our best science suggests we are en route to systems collapse, why are collapse – and collapse avoidance – not the primary subjects of international political discourse? Why is the world community not engaged in vigorous debate of available initiatives and trans-national institutional mechanisms that could help restore equilibrium to the relationship between humans and the rest of nature?

There are many policy options, from simple full-cost pricing and consumption taxes; through p o p u l a t i o n i n i t i a t i v e s a n d comprehensive planning for a steady-state economy; to general education for voluntary (and beneficial) lifestyle changes, all of which would enhance global society's prospects for long-term survival. Unique human qualities, from high intelligence (e.g., reasoning from the evidence), through the capacity to plan ahead to moral consciousness, may well


Opinion

SPA trustee ishonouredWe were delighted to hear that one of the three trustees of the Sustainable Population Fund, Dr Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe, was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Australia Day honours list. His award was “for significant service to science in the field of marsupial reproductive biology and ecology, as a researcher and mentor, and to professional societies”. Hugh was director of the Cooperative Research Centre for Biological Control of Vertebrate Pest Populations and, while there, his research included looking for new methods of controlling rabbits and foxes. He has been a long-standing member of SPA and helped organise our successful 2013 Fenner Conference in C a n b e r r a o n “ Po p u l a t i o n , Resources and Climate Change”. Congratulations Hugh!

James Ward, national president

Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe

Scanlon reports that only 37% thought immigration levels should be reduced (up just 3 percentage points from 2016).

When interviewed by David Marr on these findings, the author of the report, Professor Andrew Markus, said: “On one level, we're doing really well as a society … There are a l l t h e s e s t o r i e s a b o u t overcrowding, public transport, housing and everything. That could have gone negative on immigration and so on, but it hasn't”.

Who is right? The answer is of major consequence for Australia's political class. In Western Europe concern about immigration levels has manifested in anti-migration parties gaining 15 to 20% of the total vote. Is Australia an outlier, immune to sentiment of this sort?

Australian political elites appear to believe that they have little to fear on this front. This is because their main source of information about public opinion on the issue has been the Scanlon Foundation.

For instance, Labor's shadow deputy treasurer, Andrew Leigh, has recently asserted that Australian attitudes to migrants are warm and “becoming warmer over time” (Choosing Openness). According to David Marr, “more than almost any people on earth, we are happy for migrants to come in big numbers” (The White Queen). Both sources draw these conclusions from successive Scanlon reports.

This remarkable outcome, at least by comparison with the anti-immigration protests across Europe, has prompted a special report in The Economist magazine.

The report notes recent efforts, as by Dick Smith, to sound the alarm about Australian migration levels. Yet, so the magazine judges, relatively few Australians seem to be concerned. The authors' main source, once again, is the Scanlon Foundation. The Economist states that:

“Regular surveys conducted by the Scanlon Foundation, which works to integrate immigrants, show that the sense that immigration is too high has fallen substantially since the 1990s.”

Why the difference in results?The TAPRI survey was completed online by a random sample of 2057 voters, (with quotas set with a 10% l e e w a y, i n l i n e w i t h A B S distributions for age, gender and location). The sample was drawn from a panel of 300,000. Thus T A P R I u s e d t h e s a m e methodology as is now employed by Newspoll and by Essential Media.

It is true that, despite the demographic weighting, the panels in question may not be representative of the overall population of voters. For example, the TAPRI sample had a higher representation of graduates than that of the voting population as a whole. This means it probably underestimated the opposition to migration since we found that only 41% of the graduates amongst our respondents favoured a reduction in migration levels, compared with 61% of non-graduates.

However, there are at least as many problems with probability samples done by telephone. The Scanlon poll was based on a telephone sample of 1,500 Australian

Opinion

Australian voters' views on immigration:TAPRI and Scanlon surveys comparedBy Katharine Betts andBob Birrell

T h e r e h a s b e e n g r o w i n g controversy about Australia's level of overseas immigration. In the year to March 2017 Australia's population is estimated to have grown by a massive 389,100 – some 231,000, or 60% of which was due to net overseas migration. For the past few years around two-thirds of the net growth in migrants have been locating in Sydney and Melbourne.

The consequences are becoming obvious and are being reflected in increased public concern about urban congestion and other quality of life issues.

But are these consequences resulting in increased opposition to high migration? In order to explore this issue The Australian Population Research Institute (TAPRI) commissioned a national online survey of Australian voters in August 2017 ('Australian voters' views on immigration policy'.)

The survey found that 74% of voters thought that Australia does not need more people. Furthermore, 54% wanted a reduction in the migrant intake. TAPRI also found that big majorities think that population growth is putting 'a lot of pressure' on hospitals, roads, affordable housing and jobs. Thus it seemed reasonable to conclude t h a t t h e s e c o n c e r n s w e r e manifesting in concern about migration levels.

Th is conc lus ion has been challenged by the 2017 Mapping Social Cohesion report from the Scanlon Foundation, which surveyed Australians at about the same time as the TAPRI survey.


This result is almost identical to the TAPRI finding. It may well be t h a t b e c a u s e a t t i t u d e s t o immigrat ion numbers , l ike attitudes to Muslims, are sensitive, voters responding online feel freer to express negative opinions.

If TAPRI's and Scanlon's findings when using panel methodology are reliable they have great political significance. The TAPRI report found that 57% of Liberal voters and 46% of Labor voters thought that the immigration intake should be reduced.

If the immigration issue were to be contested at the next federal election, both parties would be vulnerable. One Nation or any other party with a fierce low-migration agenda could draw voters from both the Liberal and Labor parties. Alternatively, should the Liberal party stake out a low-migration agenda, it could draw votes from the Labor party.

Dr Katharine Betts and Dr Bob Birrell are with the Australian Population Research Institute, a non-profit think tank. This article was first published on the website Pearls and Irr itations on 8 December 2017.


Opinion & AGM

residents drawn from the entire populat ion of residents. I t t h e r e f o r e i n c l u d e d m a n y respondents who were not citizens and therefore not eligible to vote.

Citizenship requires a four-year stay in Australia, at least one year of which must be as a permanent resident and, of course, the desire to make the application. As the TA P R I s u r v e y c o n f i r m e d , Australian-born persons are much more likely to take a tough line on immigration numbers than are overseas-born persons (unless they are UK-born).

There are also significant issues concerning the reliability of telephone inter views when probing sensitive issues. As the highly credible Pew Research polling organisation has indicated, respondents may be more likely to provide socially undesirable r e s p o n s e s i n t h e r e l a t i v e anonymity of the internet.

Research by Scanlon supports this point. The 2017 report got quite different answers to the question, “Is your personal attitude positive, negative or neutral towards Muslims?” when the question was asked in its telephone survey and when asked in a separate online survey that Scanlon funded. In the telephone sur vey 25% said “negative or very negative”, while 41% responded this way in the online survey.

Similarly, Scanlon found a much larger share of respondents f a v o u r e d a r e d u c t i o n i n immigration numbers in a different online survey that it funded which used methodology similar to that used by TAPRI. In the telephone survey 37% said that immigration was too high. In contrast, 50% of this online sample agreed that the immigration intake was too high, rising to 53% when the findings were limited to those who were Australian citizens.

SPA's 30thAnniversaryAGMSPA was founded in 1988 in Canber ra under the name Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population. It is appropriate that we celebrate our 30th birthday in the same city!

Date: 14 April, 2018.

AGM begins: 11am (come at 10.30am for morning tea).

Venue: Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, 15 Blackall Street, Barton, ACT.

Afternoon seminar: 'Population Pressures in the Pacific' (1.30pm to 5pm), including afternoon tea, featuring a number of speakers including Senator Claire Moore.

Senator Moore is the shadow m i n i s t e r f o r I n t e r n a t i o n a l Development and the Pacific and vice-chair of the Parliamentary G r o u p o n Po p u l a t i o n a n d Development.

All welcome. Please bring friends. $5 donation at the door.

Senator Claire Moore

Patr ic ia Kate Weaver (nee Pottinger) died on 19 November, 2017. Paddy was passionate about the natural world: about the plants, insects and other animals that lived with us in this beautiful, p r i v i l e g e d a n d u n i q u e environment; in the sea, the land and the Australian bush, and how we can and should look after it. She believed in the idea of Gaia and felt we had responsibilities toward our fellow inhabitants and in maintaining the supporting biological systems for future generations. Her greatest disappointment expressed to me, was in our politicians and their lack of understanding of the natural world, our impact on it, regretting the loss of politicians capable of that understanding and able and willing to listen and act. People like Philip Ruddock and Mal Washer rated highly with her.Even so, Paddy always focused on the good in people. She recognised the bad, the failings and faults an individual carried with them, but never once, in the 45 years I was privileged to know her, did she let these persuade her judgment. Everyone got the bene?t of the doubt. She would focus on the good, and always saw more in the individual than they could see themselves – the potential, the opportunities and the capacity to do and be more. She never bore grudges, and constantly 'teased' the potential out of everyone she came in contact with.Paddy was born in Aramac, QLD, on 27 January, 1939, the daughter of George Pottinger, a surgeon, and Gwenyth Church, a nurse. She was educated by everything she touched, heard, felt and saw in her life but received her formal education at the Presbyterian Ladies College in Peppermint Grove; and in the sciences at the University of WA. She achieved the lofty heights of a PhD working on

the potato. She left WA for the 'compulsory' overseas postdoctoral posting at Oxford University, working on the eye. While in Britain she was offered the opportunity to repeat her PhD thesis work at a 'real' university but refused; once was enough and UWA was 'real' enough! Paddy took up an editing job with one of London's largest scientific abstracting services and while she learnt much from this experience, her legacy was that in future the organisation gave preference to Australian graduates as supervisory editors. Her love and understanding of nature, plants and animals in the Australian bush and the extent and diversity with which they exist led Paddy to realise the impact a burgeoning human population was having on the Australian landscape and its plants and animals. Thus developed her passion for environmental issues and the population cause. In the late 1960s, she worked tirelessly for the group 'New Heart for Perth' w h i c h e v e n t u a l l y b e c a m e 'Environment 2000'. This group fought issues such as air pollution at Kwinana in Perth's south, and was instrumental in stopping the establishment of the Paxminex oil refinery to the north-east of Perth; the mining of scree iron deposits in the Hamersley Range National Park (now called the Karijini National Park); the preservation of Tomato and Herdsmans lakes in Perth and many more. Paddy was

Obituary


Paddy Weaver(1939 – 2017)

also instrumental in establishing Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population in WA. This later became the WA branch of SPA and she was a driving force behind the organisation, both at the national level as well as the state level for more than 30 years.When Paddy returned from the UK, she had the opportunity to go east and work in a medical institute to continue her eye work, but chose i n s t e a d t o j o i n t h e U WA Department of Biochemistry to be near her mother. Her early research was in the metamorphosis of tadpoles, preferring to work with the living rather than killing and dissecting small animals. Paddy was able to recount many tales collecting tadpoles from pools around Perth with students from her classes, many of whom went on to distinguished careers in teaching or government agencies.Paddy had the knack of being able to explain really complex concepts simply, and students from different faculties and departments would attend her lectures to review their work in other disciplines; and where she could help, Paddy never refused. She worked with the PLATO computer groups around the UWA campus, introducing and developing computerised learning modules into courses. She introduced and developed self-managed learning and teaching programs into her lab classes at the 3rd-year level, and worked tirelessly to improve the safety aspects of her teaching and classes. Paddy believed deeply in the great potential in every individual. I'm sure that her favourite legacy would be the achievements of those who struggled with academic work, with life events, with self belief, but who found in her the support and encouragement they needed to help them reach their dreams. She will be sorely missed.

John Weaver

Obituary

Liberals at sea on migrationThe immigration issue heated up around mid February when new Liberal senator, Jim Molan, delivered his maiden speech to parliament by saying, among other things, that Australia should cut back its migrant intake because we w e r e r e a c h i n g c a p a c i t y. Immigration minister Peter Dutton then made some comments that seemed to support Molan, saying Australia should be ready to adjust migrant numbers if the national interest demanded it. A day or two later, former PM Tony Abbott also agreed with Molan, saying we should cut migration by about 80,000. This in turn led the treasurer, Scott Morrison, to pour scorn on the idea of reducing immigration, because it would allegedly cost the economy $4-5 billion over four years. Dutton then chimed in to contradict his initial enthusiasm for Molan's remarks. How Morrison arrived at his figure, a n d w h e t h e r h e f a c t o r e d environmental damage into the equation, is unknown to me.

Howard's migration legacyWhen Tony Abbott made his remarks about cutting migration, he said he wanted migration numbers to return to what they were during the John Howard years. But what were the migration numbers during the Howard years? ABC produced an online article with a number of interesting graphs showing changes to Australia's migration program (including some visa classes) before, during, and after the Howard years. In short, Howard was a population booster. Those useful graphs can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-20/migration-figures-under-p r i m e - m i n i s t e r - j o h n -howard/9465114

ABC visits population Following the Molan-Dutton-Abbott comments, ABC TV's ‘National Wrap' program on 18


F e b r u a r y i n t e r v i e w e d MacroBusiness' Leith van Onselen who is a well-known critic of the population ponzi. He was up against someone from the Migration Council. You can watch the program on iView. The fo l lowing day, Sustainable Australia party president, William Bourke, was featured on ABC RN 'Drive' to discuss the same issues. (Sustainable Australia is the only party I know of with a sensible population policy.) http://www.abc.net.au/radionationa l /p rograms/dr ive /should -australia-cut-its-immigration-rate/9462592

Back to the economyMost population boosters focus their arguments on alleged advantages to the Australian economy of more people, with s o m e v a g u e i d e a s a b o u t 'dynamism' thrown in for good measure. (Of course they ignore environmental costs.) A good example is treasurer Scott Morrison's comments, mentioned above. However, according to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), such economic arguments are largely garbage. I will have more to say about MMT next issue. In a nutshell, it says governments like Australia that issue their own currency have unlimited funds and therefore do not need to 'balance the budget' like a household or business. Therefore federal taxes do not fund government spending. The true limits to government spending are the amount of goods and services for sale, including labour. The main purpose of federal taxes is to destroy some private spending, which leaves room for government spending without excessive inflation. MMT is a movement of the left and has grown out of post-Keynesian thinking. In Austral ia , key proponents are Dr Bill Mitchell, Dr Martin Watts, Dr Philip Lawn, and Dr Steven Hail.

Stephen Williams

SPA joins our USA friends at Population Media Center (PMC) in mourning the loss of David Poindexter who died of a stroke on 8 February. He was 89.

David championed the use of entertainment as a powerful way to change social norms, particularly focusing on gender equality and family planning. Before Bill Ryerson founded PMC, he worked w i t h D a v i d a t Po p u l a t i o n Communications International to develop long-running entertaining shows in numerous countries, including Brazil, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Tanzania.

David was instrumental in establishing new PMC programs in Ethiopia and Nigeria, and he continued to support and guide PMC as honorary chair until his death.

A more detailed obituary can be found athttps://www.populationmedia.org/2018/02/10/david-poindexter/

Jenny Goldie

DavidPoindexter(1929 – 2018)

Editor’s snippets

many crops and how climate change is forcing 24,000 people to leave the Mekong delta every year. Make no mistake: people are already affected by sea-level rise.

But back to Goodell who spent a lot of time in Miami Beach with officials who are already dealing with flooding from king tides. One of them, geologist Henry Briceno, tested the floodwaters of the 2014 and 2015 king tides and found faecal levels at all sites tested were above state limits for safety – even up to 630 times higher than allowed. In other words, sea-level rise 'ain't gonna be pretty' as Goodell writes. The rising waters will not be luminous but rather 'dark, smelly, and contaminated by o r g a n i c a n d i n o r g a n i c compounds, including, in some places, viruses and human shit'. The implications for public health and liveability are enormous.

And let's not forget tourism, especially for a place like Miami where the entire tourist economy depends on the quality of the water. It provides the money to raise the streets and sea-walls and keep the place habitable for a while. And while they temporarily keep the seas at bay, the residents can use the time to plan 'how we are going to get the hell out of here'.

This is a fine and important book though I would have liked more information on the actual numbers of people who are likely to be displaced in the coming decades and consideration of where they will go. Australia? And given all the information about the cataclysmic nature of sea-level rise, it needed a much stronger call to arms to mitigate climate change through a rapid move away from fossil fuels.

Jenny Goldie is a life member of SPA.

Book review


If you want to know what this book is about, look no further than the sub-title. So why review a book about sea-level rise in a newsletter devoted to population issues? Because sea-level rise, one of the manifestations of climate change, w i l l c a u s e m a s s h u m a n migrations, particularly if current trends continue and we get 1.8 metres or more of sea-level rise by the end of the century.

Goodell emulates the style of Elizabeth Kolbert in her Pulitzer Prize winning The Sixth Extinction. Just as Kolbert travelled to places where the current mass extinction of species is already evident, so too Goodell travelled to those cities already affected by rising seas: notably Miami Beach, Lagos, Venice, and Rotterdam. Because these cities will be inundated partly by water from melting glaciers in Greenland, Goodell flies there to see the Jakobshavn glacier on the west coast, the fastest-moving glacier on earth. Greenland is melting fast (both glaciers and surface ice) and currently contributes twice as much water to sea-level rise as does Antarctica, though that may change. Indeed, a recent paper by Rob deConto and David Pollard argues that rapid calving and retreat of big glaciers such as Thwaites and Pine Island in West Antarctica could alone contribute one metre of sea-level rise by 2100.

This is a critical point. The International Panel on Climate Change has predicted up to one metre of sea-level rise by 2100,

from thermal expansion as well as melting glaciers, but, as Goodell notes, another metre on top of that will be the difference between a wet but liveable city and a submerged one. It will not only be the loss of coastal real estate, but the lives of many of the 145 million people who live less than a metre above sea-level – notably in Bangladesh and Indonesia. It will mean extinction of many Pacific atolls and the forced migration of their inhabitants.While reading this book over the summer, a couple of articles appeared in my daily climate briefings. One was by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times (Swallowed by the Sea, Jan 19, 2018) about the island Kutubdia off Bangladesh's coast that houses 100,000 people. Much of it has already 'disappeared into the sea'. The other article (Climate change is driving migration from Vietnam's Mekong delta, Jan 19, Climate Home News) describes how seawater infiltration is wrecking

The Water Will Come: rising seas,sinking cities, and the remakingof the civilized worldby Jeff GoodellLittle, Brown and Co., New York, 2017. 341pp.

Review by Jenny Goldie

This is a book describing and a d v o c a t i n g s u s t a i n a b l e agriculture – what Massy calls 'regenerative' agriculture. Massy has a good story to tell, and he knows what he is talking about.

Massy grew up on his family's farm in the Monaro district of NSW, a few hours south of Canberra. Having left high school he went to university to do a science degree, but had to take over the farm with the early death of his father. As a young farmer he fo l lowed mainstream advice and the farm gradually went from bad to worse. Some 30-odd years later he completed a PhD in Human Ecology at the Australian National University. Much of this book is based on that research.

In essence, Massy realised from first-hand experience that there was something seriously wrong with mainstream farming. The good news is that there are now many proven alternatives that both heal the land and improve farmers' bank accounts.

Massy has stories – mostly first-hand accounts – about the who's who of sustainable farming: P.A. Yeomans, Allan Savory and Stan Parsons (holistic management); Peter Andrews (natural sequence farming); Colin Seis (pasture cropping); Bruce Maynard (no-kill cropping); Rowan Reid (farm forestry); Wes Jackson (The Land Institute, USA), Christine Jones (carbon sequestration); and others. The common denominator in most of the stories is the success of 'holistic management'.

In a nutshell, holistic management and similar farming techniques tryto replicate natural ecological

processes as much as possible. So there is a preference for perennial native grass and perennial crops over annuals; grazing animals are kept in tight herds and moved continually onto fresh pasture; bare ground is avoided at all costs; organic matter is built up in soils; microorganisms are encouraged in soils; farms are revegetated so as to have about 25% tree cover; and synthetic chemicals are drastically reduced and preferably eliminated.

The result tends to be that farming costs are dramatically reduced (fewer inputs) while production is maintained or improved; soils soak up water much better (less runoff); topsoil is built with higher carbon levels; biodiversity is improved (both in soils and above soils); and salinity problems are improved. And the farmers are much, much happier.

Massy is at his most interesting when he is describing actual case studies where he has visited farms and I would have preferred more emphasis on these. They are inherently fascinating and they describe how regenerative farming provably works. He travelled all over Australia to seek out the best examples, and also travelled abroad, notably to meet Savory and other farmers in southern Africa. Importantly, his examples are not just smaller family farms of a few thousand acres, but massive rangeland farms such as you find in outback Queensland and the Northern Territory. In other words, and surprisingly to me, size is no barrier to regenerative techniques.

So thrilled is Massy in what he discovered with Savory-style

Book review

Call of the Reed WarblerBy Charles MassyUniversity of Queensland Press, 592pp, $39.95

techniques, especially compared t o h i s o w n d e m o r a l i s i n g experience as a farmer, that for me he occasionally tends to be a bit too credulous with anything coming under the banner of 'regenerative'. This is not to say that he rejects rigorous scientific approaches – although applied agricultural science comes in for plenty of deserved criticism – but he seems loath to criticise some of the humbug around biodynamics, dowsing, or anything that talks about mysterious 'energy' fields. Ultimately, I fear many readers won't finish the book because of its s o m e t i m e s l o n g - w i n d e d , repetitious and philosophical musings, when a book that rooted itself more in the case studies would be more appreciated, especially by farmers. Even so, I can appreciate Massy's broad research and therefore broad coverage of the topic – a topic that needs more expert coverage by those with practical experience. Food security is obviously a central issue in a world with runaway population growth. Massy mostly avoids d i rect re ference to population growth, although he punctuates his book with regular criticisms of perpetual-growth economics.

Make no mistake – Massy is one of the good guys – and if you have an interest in agriculture then, in my opinion, this book is a must.

Stephen Williams is the editor of this newsletter.

Review by Stephen Williams


Branch reports


Victoria-TasmaniaAs this report is being written, the Vic-Tas branch is busy preparing the SPA stall for the Melbourne Sustainable Living Festival. In what is turning out to be a yearly tradition, this event has become very popular with our branch members and we have a record number of volunteers for the stall this year. Our volunteers have been meeting beforehand to ensure that everyone is confident around the facts to do with population sustainability and that a unified marketing message is presented with visitors to the stall. I look forward to sharing with readers in the next newsletter information on how the stall goes (photos will be posted on our Facebook and Twitter pages). I will be hosting a workshop at the festival titled 'Town planning responses to climate change' on 23 February, joined by SPA member and town planner Mark Allen. Speaking of town planning, website Independent Australia has just published an article I have written titled 'Why town planning is a social justice issue'. Both the article and the workshop are d e s i g n e d t o e x p l a i n w h y populat ion changes a f fect planning outcomes.On 9 February I was invited to participate in a public hearing with the federal Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport and Cities. This was following my written submission on behalf of S P A o n t h e A u s t r a l i a n government 's role into the development of cit ies. The response to the submission has so far been positive. I am please to report that Joack Roach, consul tant fo r the Boroondara Residents ActionGroup and speaker at the 2017

Vic-Tas AGM, has been busy advocating for direct action from resident groups against economic-driven population growth. A recent article from him quoted from the book Growing for Broke, authored by the late SPA member Peter North.Protectors of Public Lands president, Earnest Healy, had a letter published in the print media about population. It has been great to see other community groups in Victoria being active and public on the population issue. Speaking of letters to the editor, I wish to thank John Glazebrook and John Bentley for their recent contributions that were published.

Michael Bayliss, branch president

Australian Capital TerritoryOur Christmas BBQ was held on Sunday, 3 December. Thirty members took part and were rewarded with a sunny break in the stormy weather. Caroline le Couteur MLA (Greens) was the guest speaker. Previously, on 23 August 2017, the ACT Legislative Assembly debated the ACT's population growth (Hansard 3207-3223 and 3248-3253) and Caroline highlighted the disadvantages of p o p u l a t i o n g r o w t h i n h e r comprehensive speech proposing amendments to the pro-growth motion. Her amendments were defeated 20 to two and the speeches by the other MLAs revealed what we were up against. We had a lengthy discussion with Caroline and came away better informed as to the workings of the ACT Assembly and thinking within the Greens.

Nick Ware, branch president

New South WalesThe branch meets on an ad hoc basis, for example when speakers become available. The committee meets on an as-needs basis, for instance when planning for an event is necessary. NSW members are informed of upcoming events by email, usually well ahead of time, so they can come by themselves or bring others along.The NSW committee at present consists of: Graham Wood (president), Guy White (vice-p r e s i d e n t ) , N e i l L a m b i e ( t r e a s u r e r ) , P e t e r G r e e n (secretar y) , and committee members Rob Child, George Carrard, Brian Thomson, Kay Dunne and myself.At the time of writing, an event with speakers is being planned for 24 February at our usual venue, the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts, 280 Pitt St, Sydney. This is to launch the idea of 'partnering' – a proposal by Graham Wood – where we work with other organisations where there is some overlap or mutual objective. For this to work we anticipate the need to be mindful of boundaries where our aims might differ and, of course, to conduct respectful dialogue at all times.At this event we will hear from Maggie Chen of AIESEC (a youth organisation with an interest in sustainability); and Alice Oppen (a SPA member) of Women's Plans Foundation. This will be followed by a guided discussion so members can contribute ideas on p a r t n e r i n g w i t h o t h e r organisations.We will publish a report on this event as soon as practicable.

Nola Stewart, branch rep

Branch reports

QueenslandThe branch has been supporting Pr o C h o i c e Q u e e n s l a n d ' s campaign to decr iminal ise a b o r t i o n i n Q u e e n s l a n d . Queensland and NSW are among the last jurisdictions in the developed world to have such restrictive legislation, which does not prevent abortion but does stigmatise it, and unfairly limits access for women in poverty and women in regional and remote areas. The Queensland Law Reform Commission published its consultation paper just before Christmas, reviewing options for new legislation. Our branch has made a submission to the commission, which is due to make i t s r e c o m m e n d a t i o n t o government by 30 June.Wildlife Australia magazine invited an article on population growth, which I have provided for their February issue. I'm excited to see it in print. If you're a subscriber, look out for it. The branch continues to meet on the third Monday of the month, at Toowong Library. At the 19 March meeting, we intend to screen the documentary film Women are the Answer. All interested members and non-members are welcome to attend.

Jane O'Sullivan, branch president

S o u t h A u s t r a l i a - N o r t h e rn TerritoryOur final meeting for 2017 was held on 27 November. We recapped the October meet ing when we watched a selection of videos on population from various sources (there are quite a few good ones available on the web) and discussed the latest Deloitte report that calls for Adelaide to increase its population to 2 million as soonas possible. Dario Centrella gave an account of The Perils of Urban Consolidation by Patrick Troy, and suggested that with some

vision Adelaide still has a chance to avoid the worst aspects of this planning now apparent in Sydney. Several group activities were discussed at that meeting, and are still in the planning stage. These include a debate with the 'Committee for Adelaide', a new group representing those in favour of continuing growth as usual. This event now seems likely for March or April following discussions between Professor Ian Lowe (who will chair it) and the committee. The University of the Third Age has expressed interest in SPA delivering a short course on population and sustainability, and we are expecting to hear soon on whether this project will proceed. A third initiative has been the idea that South Australia adopt the Genuine Progress Indicator as a supplement to GDP to better describe the economy and its effects. The Wakefield Futures Group has taken on that advocacy to government, and the idea was well received by government economists at a meeting in early February. A second round of talks is planned for April after our state election (17 March).The first meeting for 2018 was held on 14 February, with a talk from national SPA patron Professor Ian Lowe. Drawing on decades of experience as a policy advisor to g o v e r n m e n t a n d w i t h a n e x c e p t i o n a l k n o w l e d g e o f sustainability and population issues, Lowe gave a typically excellent presentation that summarised the global situation very effectively. His PowerPoint file is available from our branch, and we'll look at getting it up on the SPA website.

Professor of Public Health atFlinders University, Fran Baum, and the leader of the Greens in our state parliament, Mark Parnell, have also agreed to address SPA meetings in 2018, and the dates of

those will be finalised shortly. Parnell has been asked to speak on the topic 'Why the Greens won't talk about population'. We think we know, but we want to hear it from them and engage them on it.Our next meetings will be held on 28 March and 25 April (Anzac Day) at 7.30pm, CCSA rooms, 111 Franklin St, Adelaide.

Peter Martin, branch president

Western AustraliaThe WA branch has had some trauma over the past year. Our previous president, Harry Cohen, has retired after a considerable time as an inspiring president; our vice-president, Paddy Weaver, also inspirational, has passed away; her hard-working husband and very exper ienced, e f fect ive and k n o w l e d g e a b l e c o m m i t t e e member, John, has also retired. Our secretary, Noni Atkinson, has had unexpected personal matters to deal with and has retired from that position. In their place we have Judith Odgaard as president; Robin Collin as vice-president; myself as acting secretary, treasurer and membership officer; with John Massam and Greg Brennan as committee members. We are in the process of formulating possible action plans after a survey of members and lapsed members. Warwick Boardman, acting branch secretary


Website: www.population.org.au

The SPA newsletter is published quarterly: in March, June, September and December. Members are welcome to submit material to the editor, to be published at the editor's discretion.

Membership applications and renewals should be done via the SPA website or sent to the national office. General inquiries should also go to the national office.

SPA national officePhone: 0434 962 305Email: [email protected]

Newsletter editor and publications officerStephen Williams, [email protected]

SPA national office bearers (until April)President: James Ward, [email protected]: Sandra Kanck, (08) 8336 4114Correspondence secretary: Jenny GoldieMeetings secretary: Nola Stewart, (02) 9686 [email protected] Treasurer: Rob Taylor, [email protected]: Alex [email protected] officer: Andrew [email protected]

Committee: John Coulter, Jane O'Sullivan, Martin Ryan.

Trustees of the Population FundRoss Kingsland, Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe, Denis Saunders

BranchesNSW: President: Graham [email protected]: President: Judith Odgaard, 0477 002 [email protected]: President: Michael [email protected]: President: Nick Ware, (02) 6262 [email protected]: President: Jane O'Sullivan, (07) 3379 [email protected]: President: Peter Martin [email protected]

Disclaimer While every effort has been made to ensure the reliability of the information contained in this newsletter, the opinions expressed are those of the various authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of either SPA or the editor.

Stepping downThis is my final newsletter column as president of SPA (see election information below). I wish Sandra all the very best in carrying forward the important work of this organisation, and I am sorry I could not carry the baton for longer than a year. Please understand that the reason I have had to step down is not due to any conflict with the mission of this organisation, but due to simple competition for my time. I would also like to thank Sandra for her tireless work as vice-president supporting me during my brief stint as president; I'm not convinced it was any less work for her than if she had remained president for the past year! Thank you all for having me at the helm and I'm sorry I could not achieve more.

Administrative activitiesFor the past eight years, SPA's admin services (processing member payments and donations, etc.) have been provided by a third party, Successful Alliances. Due to some internal re-structuring of that company, our contract has now come to an end and we are taking the opportunity – perhaps overdue – to streamline some of the processes. If things go well, most members will not notice anything different about how our systems work (online payments via the website as per normal), but behind the scenes it becomes simpler and cheaper to administer. This will hopefully mean less financial investment in the running of SPA and more money for outreach and advocacy for our cause.

Communications managerVictorian member Michael Bayliss has begun in his new role and is spending a lot of time writing letters and drafting proposals to seek funding from donors, as well as managing much of SPA's Facebook and Twitter. I am excited by the possible new projects that might come from his work, and the ability to raise the profile of SPA.

SPA executive committee: 2018 electionsThere is no need for elections at the forthcoming AGM in Canberra in April since, at the close of nominations on 19 January, none of the executive positions received more than one nomination, i.e. one for each of the named positions plus four committee members (three to five required). A position remains open for a correspondence secretary, which was done in 2017 by Jenny Goldie. The executive committee for 2018, to take office at the April AGM is:

President: Sandra KanckVice-president: Jenny GoldieTreasurer: Rob TaylorMeetings secretary: Nola StewartCommittee: John Coulter, Jane O'Sullivan, Martin Ryan and Alan Jones.

James Ward, national president

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