Carrying capacity
The letters on immigration by Friel, Evans and Kault (GLW #69) only help to discredit the environmental movement. Arguments about "unsustainable Australian population growth", and about a country's "carrying capacity" are unscientific.
There is no such thing as a carrying capacity for a nation state, or even for a set area of territory, separate and apart from the technological capacity and ecological awareness available to its human population. There are limits to population growth. But these have as much to do with the technical capacity of a human population as they do with the ecological quality of a set territory.
The main ecological problems facing Australia have nothing to do with population. They are the result of continuing destruction of our native forests, pollution resulting from industry avoiding alternatives, and lack of planning and spending on rural environmental problems.
No-one is arguing to relocate the entire suffering Third World in Australia. The key issue facing environmental and left activists is whether they are for cuts to immigration or for more flexible immigration entry, including with regard to refugees.
The fact is that with a democratic government that prioritised social and environmental need over private profit, Australia would have the technological capacity and ecological ability to maintain double, triple, or perhaps even ten times its current population. You get an indication of this from the UN's documentation that with the current resources and a more rational attitude to production the world could easily maintain double its current population.
Those who oppose immigration are allowing their ignorance to push them into the camp of Australian racists. Ironic as this is, most of the people in that camp are there out of the same reason.
Jorge Jorquera
Dulwich Hill, NSW
Immigration threat
I don't think the critics of Peter Boyle go far enough (Write On, GLW 69). I think the Australian mainland is a lost cause. Opponents of an immigration program should instead work to preserve the remaining biodiversity of Tasmania.
From Wilsons Promontory to the Kimberleys unsustainable population growth is being worsened by an open door policy offering a goodly slice of our carrying capacity to any Johnny or Phan come-lately, who go feral as soon as they're off the boat. Need I remind you how much the myxomatosis program costs the Australian tax payer annually! That, Mr Boyle, is where immigration leads!
Only in Tasmania have we any chance of emulating Aboriginal land management practices. To do that we need to keep fecund invaders on Strait.
Social injustice in Australia — regrettable as it may be — is not addressed through immigration to Tasmania. So called "economic refugees" are best reminded that acting locally in Footscray, Marrickville or Inala is a far better way to think globally than moving upmarket or to a more southerly latitude.
As Tasmania addresses its own problems of overpopulation and employment, it can then maybe extend its foreign aid subsidy by greatly increasing the quality and quantity of French fries it ships to the mainland.
In his recent book Don't Do It (Fallopia Press, Hobart), Professor Epididymis Monk persuasively argues that Tasmania has the potential to be a world leader in negative population technologies. Its proven record in culling its own indigenous human overgrowth stands it in good stead to curtail the baby boom mentality that prevails in its northern neighbour.
To call this position racist is a slur and an insult. Boyle, sadly, lacks a definitive program that can keep Tasmania verdant.
My only wish is that they would let me migrate there.
Dave Riley
Brisbane
Green Party
So, the mainly middle class activists in the Bob Brown/Drew Hutton push have finally got around to declaring themselves the Green Party. That's okay, but whatever happened to unity in diversity, an idea that has to be more than just a slogan if there is to be an effective Green Party in this country.
The British Green Party is learning, to its cost and more importantly the cost of the planet, the pitfalls of trying to build a party around a small, elitist clique fronted by a couple of media stars. It is in ruins, with its members deserting in droves.
Bob Brown, Drew Hutton et al no doubt have their place, but it looks like they've narrowed the Green Party down to the point that it will struggle to be an effective force. No party aspiring to present a real alternative, and to attract the many environmental and social activists repelled by elitist, anti-democratic attitudes can be organised around small cliques.
Is this "party" open to anyone who wants to work for social justice and environmental sustainability, and wishes to contribute to the process of its formation, or is it an exclusive club until such time as a constitution etc is set in place by a self-appointed green elite?
Ed Lewis
Glebe NSW
Third world
C.M. Friel's letter (GL #69) asserting that the high rate of population growth in the third world has nothing to do with poverty and an absence of social justice but is a direct result of improved food , religious practices and "irresponsible attitudes" is an outrage.
Most third world countries have experienced increased infant mortality rates since the domination of imperialist powers, and where is the "improved food supply" for the 500 million grossly malnourished people across the globe?
Among the vast majority of third world people surveyed in the seventies on why they have large families, an important factor was the lack of social security in old age. This is not a "furphy" but an admission from people whose countries have been deliberately kept poverty stricken by imperialist powers, and unable to provide security for the non-workers.
But perhaps the most important factor influencing population growth in the third world is the almost total lack of contraception, an aspect of the improved 20th century medical care Friel thinks has arrived for these people. A 1990 World Fertility Survey conducted by the World Watch Committee showed that 50% of the world's women don't want any more children, and half of these have no access whatever to contraception. The vast majority of these women live in the third world.
To paint third world people as "irresponsible" (or stupid) is racist, and further, sexist, because it ignores social conditions and seeks to blame the individual.
Friel's letter can only be described as a right wing attempt to absolve a repressive, inequitable and grossly irrational social order from responsibility for the dire conditions in the third world, and the environmental crisis in general.
No-one is saying that the population rate is indefinitely sustainable. The point is that no population is sustainable until we change the international social order to one that produces for need and social good.
Teresa Dowding
Hobart
[Edited for length.]