Figures
I often must step outside my everyday existence and project my concerns from an astral plain — there the better to observe the goings on down below. This week, while at my stellar post, I was joined by that highly esteemed commentator on matters ecological, Ian Lowe.
The topic the good prof chose to raise with me, via page 17 of the local daily, was that of population. It was his contention that we "should aim to stabilize the Australian population at a level that allows sustainable living standards and protects our environment". To that end, he recommends holding migration intake down to around 50,000 per year.
I cannot go into all of the figures that graced his article. Suffice to say he distanced his views from those of One Nation by emphasising that it was the quantity of migrants, rather than their ethnic quality, that should concern us.
On reading this argument I was struck by the narrow hypothesis that Lowe chose to explore. What does he mean by "living standards"?
My standard of living has been deteriorating for years, but it's got nothing to do with new arrivals. That my income has gone down and my costs of living have gone up I choose to blame on folk who very definitely didn't come down under via the last shower.
But Lowe would have it that to achieve "sustainability" we need to stabilise the local population at around 23 million.
Twenty-three million what? Lowe may think we're all equal here, but I submit that some folk are more sustainable than others. Indeed, there are some in our midst — and I'm not naming names, not yet! — who are downright unbearable.
But do we find a mention of these in Lowe's article? Not a word. Instead, he wants me (of all people) to cop an equal share of the blame just because I'm me — a breathing, procreating, defecating digit in that mighty sum of zeros which make up his 23,000,000 human beings occupying terra australis.
What about the other locals? What about the 126 million baa lambs and the 26 million moo cows? What's their magical sustainable number?
And what's the number of uranium mines we can sustain, or motor vehicles? If Lowe can give us a figure for one thing why not for others?
By Dave Riley