Download Coulter, Dr John R (PDF

Submission to Sustainable Population Strategy:
Dr John R. Coulter
February 2011
1. There are a large number of indicators that Australia’s population is not living in an
environmentally sustainable manner at present.
This submission is but a brief
2. It is axiomatic that the impact which a population has synopsis of the case for stopping
on its supporting environment is a product of the growth and for Government(s) to give
numbers in that population and the average per capita their highest priority to environmental sustainability which is
environmental demand.
defined below. If there is an
3. There is thus a reciprocal relationship between opportunity to appear in person to
population size and per capita environmental demand expand on this submission that would
within a sustainable bound. This being the case a be most welcome.
population target, in terms of an actual number by a
given date, is silly and inconsistent with aiming for environmental sustainability.
4. Population growth and economic growth are both measured as an annual percentage. Thus
both are exponential processes. Recently, Australia’s population growth hit 2% pa. At that rate
the population would double in 35 years. Fortunately the rate is now slightly lower; even at
1.8% our population would double in 39 years.
5. National and state governments aim for an economic growth of around 3%, meaning
environmental demand doubles every 23 years. What is generally not realised about exponential
processes is that in each doubling more resource is consumed than in all previous history.
6. Exponential growth of either population or the
economy cannot continue. We live on a finite planet.
In the life time of the writer Australia’s population has
trebled and per capita economic growth has quadrupled.
Human impact on the Australian and global
environment, as a consequence, has increased twelvefold. This is clearly not sustainable, cannot and will
not continue.
7. Attempting ‘Business as Usual’, i.e., continuation of
exponential growth of both population and GDP is
inimical to sustainability. The longer the attempt
continues the harder a transition to sustainability will
be.
8. This increase in human environmental impact is not
unique to Australia. Professor Will Steffen of the ANU
has shown that since the start of the industrial age
human impact has increased about 50-fold: a 7-fold
increase in population and a 7-fold increase in average
per capita environmental demand.
Page 2
9. On a Finite Planet population and economic growth will stop. The issues are not whether they
will stop but when and how! Will they be stopped by intelligent humans (including wellinformed and dedicated governments) deciding to stop while there is still some wiggle room
between human demand and environmental capacity or will Nature stop growth when the
environment has been exhausted? For ‘Nature will bat last’ whether we like it or not.
10. Population size and growth can not be considered in isolation. They must be seen in the context
of all other factors affecting the present and future welfare of the people and environment of
Australia and the world.
11. Population size and changes in size must be considered over a very long time scale. Humans
have lives approaching a century and there is an immense inertia in changes in the size of a
population. In the context of sustainability setting a target number by a certain date can have no
meaning unless, at that date, the population is no longer growing, i.e. is stable. For example, it
has become popular to hypothesize about how much food, water, phosphorus and energy a
global population of 9.2 billion in 2050 will require, as though that should be our target, while
ignoring the obvious fact that global population will still be growing if these necessities have
been found by 2050 and the growth paradigm still persists.
12. Population size and growth impacts on every aspect of environmental sustainability:
a) Population increase correlates strongly with increases in demand for energy. Most of
Australia’s and the world’s energy is derived from fossil fuels, especially petroleum
and these energy sources are non-renewable.
b) Population increase correlates
strongly with increases in
greenhouse gas emissions and
therefore impacts climate
change.
Government policy is to reduce
GHG emissions by 5% by 2020.
In a stable, non-growing
population this would entail per
capita reductions of 5%. But at
present rates of population
growth Australia’s population
will be almost 20% larger and
per capita reductions will need
to approach 21% - a much harder
target.
c) While improvements in efficiency of use of many resources can reduce per capita
environmental demand there are limits to the extent of efficiency improvements and
further population increase can easily negate any per capita reductions.
13. Increasing population in order to extract non-renewable resources (part of the ‘skills migration’
push) at an ever faster rate moves Australia further away from environmental sustainability. It
increases both numbers and per capita impact.
14. When all OECD countries are statistically compared it is found that there is no statistically
significant correlation between population size or population growth, on the one hand and
Page 3
growth in per capita GDP on the other.
The same lack of correlation can be seen
when the Australian states and territories
are statistically compared. For example,
South Australia has performed rather
better than other states in terms of growth
of per capita GSP while its population
growth rate has been lower. While the
adjacent table is for one year, analysis of
other years shows that over time there is
no statistically significant correlation
between population growth and growth
of per capita GSP.
15. Population growth makes it harder, not easier to meet the obvious backlog in the provision of
a wide range of infrastructure. It is self evident that no person added to the population, either
by birth or immigration, immediately provides their needed infrastructure. But much of it is
needed immediately. Thus the existing population must either provide it up front of the new
arrival or suffer a reduction in per capita availability.
One estimate of the backlog of needed infrastructure is $770 billion. Population increase
must necessarily worsen this situation and impact most heavily on the existing population.
16. A slower rate of population growth, or even no growth at all, does not lead to an unmanageable
increase in dependency. (see box and graph next page)
17. Higher rates of immigration cannot permanently make any change to ageing or dependency
and can only make minimal short-term changes, even with very high rates of immigration.
18. Population growth relates directly to increased food consumption but at the same time is leading
to the loss of high quality, well watered food production land. This is evident on the urban
fringe of every capital city in Australia as well as many provincial cities. In South Australia,
over the years, population growth has led to the loss of highly productive alluvial market
garden land along the Torrens Valley and just recently the alienation of 1300 Ha of extremely
productive, well-watered land around Mt Barker in the Adelaide Hills.
19. Food production in Australia, as in the rest of the world, is heavily dependent on fossil fuels,
especially petroleum, as well as phosphorus. Both these substances have peaked globally and
Page 4
Graph based on data contained in Science
article referenced in box below
It is frequently claimed, most vociferously by sections of industry, that the Australian
population will age and consequently there will be too many dependent people for the
‘working age’ population to support. A paper recently published in Science shows a serious
flaw in this claim. Economists and demographers have traditionally and arbitrarily taken
everyone over the age of 65 as being dependent. However, when real dependence is measured
the dependency ratio will not rise much at all between now and 2050. (Remeasuring Aging.
Sanderson W.C.& Scherbov S. Science 329:1287 10 September 2010)
The Science paper also reminds us that the young are also dependent and as fertility rates fall
the ‘burden’ of the young, often over 20 years, will decline.
A second flaw in the claim is that it uses GDP as the measure of production/dependence. But
GDP does not measure those ‘works’ which are not reimbursed for money. So in this narrow
economic measure most of those over 65 are dependent. If a broader measure of total
contribution to the welfare of society is used we all know that those over the age of 65 make
very large contributions in a wide variety of ways. So the fallacy of an aging dependent
population rests on two flaws in our assumptions:
•
We arbitrarily take age as a measure of dependence and
•
We ignore the contribution that those over the age of 65 make because we arbitrarily (and
in some cases conveniently) assume that that for which no money is paid is worthless.
There is a third, and in the context of this submission, deeper defect in the aging/dependence
claim and that is, it assumes that not only does the economy have to provide support for these
supposedly dependent people, it must also produce 3% growth in output every year. When that
condition is relaxed, as it must be to attain a sustainable future, there is more than enough
productive capacity to meet the modest increase in need.
Finally, although people are living longer they are also, on average leading much healthier lives
into old age. For most the period of extreme and expensive dependence has not been
lengthened but simply translated from the 60s to the 70s, then the 80s and for an increasing
number, the 90s.
Page 5
demand will progressively
exceed supply. Food costs
will rise and food security
will fall. This will also be
impacted by climate
change. Indeed the extreme
weather conditions of an
extended drought and now
persistent heavy rain are
precisely the conditions
that have been, for several
decades predicted by
climate scientists. These
conditions can be expected
to worsen.
20. The issues paper speaks of
the large agricultural production of Australia and the amount of food we export. It seems to
ignore that this production has been bought at a heavy price to the Australian environment and
would not be possible on our shallow, old, weathered soils without the use of phosphorus.
Indeed, the soils of West Australia could produce no grain at all if phosphorus was not applied
and grain production across the country will be much less as phosphorus becomes harder and
more expensive to use.
21. The issues paper assumes that population growth is inevitable and that governments can do
little to limit it. It mentions a number of things we can do to mitigate the effects of this growth,
mostly things that most Australians would rather not do but does not address the issue that
recent Australian governments have encouraged population growth by providing baby bonuses
and raising the immigration rate. Both these things are within the capacity of the Federal
Government to change.
22. A population policy for Australia should embrace principles and objectives:
Governments to accept that:
•
Environmental sustainability has the highest priority. Sustainability in every other sense
ultimately rests on a sustainable environment.
•
Australians are not living sustainably either with respect to the Australian environment
or our Global environmental demand
•
•
Environmental demand is a product of per capita demand and population size
Australia should seek to limit both population and per capita demand and through an
iterative process work toward an environmentally sustainable future.
Page 6
Sustainability: what it means:
The concept of sustainability is grounded in recognition that living things have been evolving on Earth
for perhaps four thousand million years, that this evolutionary process has produced many millions of
species of bacteria, fungi, plants and animals living together in highly complex ecological systems,
that H.sapiens is one of these species. Thus sustainability is not conceived in the usual anthropocentric
context, indeed anthropocentrism is antithetical to an understanding of sustainability
Sustainability recognises that humans and human civilisation is dependent on the continuation and
protection of this complex ecological web of which we are a part.
Definition:
A sustainable human society is one that is so structured and organised that the complex processes of
biological evolution will once more resume their inherent and ponderous progress that has been
everywhere so disrupted by human interference.
Corollary:
By this definition the present human civilisation is far from being sustainable and moving ever further
away from becoming sustainable. Although H. sapiens is only one species, through our very large
numbers and our powerful and pervasive technology, we have come to dominate the entire biosphere.
This overwhelming dominance may not have been our intention, it is nonetheless the outcome. Humanity
has now become the determinant of the further course of evolution on planet Earth. Adopting the goal
of sustainability means taking on the awesome responsibility this entails.
For human societies to fulfil the enormous responsibility that our dominance has placed in our hands
we must create societies possessing educational and social properties consistent with this objective.
Educational systems must inculcate knowledge and understanding of the primary function of humanity,
namely to return humanity to be part of a sustainable on-going evolution. Social arrangements must be
fair and equitable so that internal tensions do not interfere with this central function.
This definition and its supporting concepts is in marked contrast to the
anthropocetric and economy dominated definition given in the issues paper:
“In this paper, sustainability refers to the maintenance or improvement of wellbeing now and for
future generations.
Wellbeing is a term aimed at capturing all of the economic, environmental and social aspects of
people’s lives. It is not a single measure, but rather can be viewed through a wide range of
indicators across each or all of the three aspects.
A sustainable population is one where changes in the population’s size, distribution or
composition are managed to provide for positive economic, environmental and social outcomes.”
“A growing population does not have to be an unsustainable
population.” Issues paper
But it makes environmental sustainability harder to achieve
Page 7