Peak Oil News and Message Boards

I stumbled across a link to this article yesterday but didn't actually read it until today.

Sleepwalking to Catastrophe
‘Big Australia’, Immigration, Population Expansion and the Impossibility of Endless Economic Growth in a Finite World
by Fiona Heinrichs

I think Crazy Dad posted the link originally but i can't find where.

http://www.sleepwalking-to-catastrophe.com/index.html

A very thourogh up to date take on the situation in Australia, pretty scarey stuff.

Dear Poster,
I am the author of this piece. Thanks very much for your comments. This is my first work and I'm currently trying to circulate it around the net. If you know of any other forums that would be interested in it, please feel free to attach the link. Thanks once again.

Regards,

Fiona Heinrichs

ex post fiona

just ran some numbers on oz

to get a 80% cut in ghg emissions i had population falling by 50,000/year and emissions dropping by 3 tonnes /person/decade

that had oz population @ 19.5 million by 2071 and emissions @ 4 tonnes /person

emissions dropped to 78 million tonnes ( from 495 currently)

84.25% reduction

however if population kept increasing @ 100,000/year and emissions declined by 2 tonnes/person/decade then the emissions reduction is only 23.6%

ie bend over and kiss your arse goodbye

re other websites

http://populationmatters.org

I find Australia interesting..

You guys have a strong green legislation record, overall green awareness, I think even a green party. Yet even with all that, per capita you're high polluters. What use is it to tax massive open pit mines if more will just be built? I suppose the theory is that this can be "offset" somewhere else. But what does Oz do with the carbon tax money, are you buying any Brazillian rain forest land, anything like that?

If the money goes into green tech that doesn't really solve anything since growth will always overtake efficiency and population will always ride the edge with resources. Grow more food and world population just grows in tandem.

Ultimately, it seems to me Australia (and Canada for that matter) have a contradiction here -- how can you be "green" yet aggressively pro-growth. Those are contradictions, no?

Australians like to think we are a big fish in a small pond. The best that can be said of the present attempt at introduction of a carbon tax is that it shows the ALP is still capable of doing something first.

The worst is that it's a world bank ploy and Australia is going to become the first nation to start paying tax to a global authority previously funded voluntarily. To be sure a hunk of the revenue will go towards prosthelising the rest of the world.

Jevons Paradox here we go again.

To the contrary I think SeaGypsy, Australians know that we are only a small fish in a big pond and therein lies the main reason for opposition to the carbon tax (i.e. what difference can we make as we are only a small nation?) I think personally that even as a small nation we can make a significant difference as we have strong allegiances with the USA and Great Britain (and strong economic ties to China) and the people of those nations will examine at what we have done when forming their own climate change response just like we also look to them for guidance and initiative in other areas.

Australians (like myself) are amongst the biggest polluters and the largest consumers of energy, we have a large carbon footprint as individuals. Some say this is due to the harsh climate and large distances between population centres here and to some extent this is true. But we all need to make changes for the betterment of humanity, starting as individuals. The road ahead will be a tough one but hopefully out of the carbon tax some increased level of innovation will be born. Some industries will fund research in carbon reduction technologies in an effort to beat the tax, the carbon tax is aimed at achieving technological advancement from the greedy, increased profit is a very strong motivation.

I am not in favour of population increase, technology has not advanced enough to allow sustainable existence if our population increases to the levels some groups hope for.

sixstrings

correct

human population has to decline

the chinese realized this over 30 years ago

slowing their population growth is one of the major reasons why their gdp/person is rapidly increasing

for example if australia's population increases @ 200,000/year while reducing emissions by 2 tonnes/person/decade the reduction in total emissions is only 12.5% versus the target of 80% reduction by 2050

@ 50,000 population decline/year and 2 tonnes/person/decade reduction results in a 42% decline by 2051
@ 3 tonnes/person/decade reduction in emissions and 50,000 population decline /year gets us to 84% reduction by 2071

that means for australia emissions/person decline from 22 tonnes/person to 4 tonnes/person

so i would suggest the reduction in emissions necessary will be impossible if population keeps increasing

kiwichick wrote:so i would suggest the reduction in emissions necessary will be impossible if population keeps increasing

Ya, I've never understood these carbon taxes. Carbon taxes can only work if the taxes are high enough to actually put some industry out of business. You could double efficiency and clean air standards but if total factories quadruple then there's no savings.

IMHO, you should forget the carbon taxes and just stick to old school environmentalism -- gradually tighten emissions / energy efficiency standards by law. Tough consumer protections and regulation on industry. These are simple ideas that do good, but they don't bring in tax money and cap and trade skim for banksters so I guess that's why it's not popular anymore.

six

wrong!!!!!

think about tax on cigerettes or petrol

the higher the tax the better the incentive to change behaviour

the carbon tax in australia will mean that the income tax exemption increases from $6000 to $18000/year

good news for low income and part time workers

new zealand has emission trading scheme operating since july 2010

they will add agriculture to the scheme in 2015

south korea is starting ETS january 2015

china to start ETS in 5 or 6 provinces

scotland has announced the goal of going to 100% renwable power

One thing most Aussies would not have a clue about is that eventually it is inevitable that millions will broach our northern border as oil becomes scarce.
We feed 70 million cows. Each cow needs the calories of 10 people.
We feed 200 million sheep in a wet year.
The idea that we need to keep human population down is primarily based on desire keep up our present consumption and economic trends, such as feeding a billion people's worth of food to animals. On top of this we export 70 million human's food.
Australians are mostly ignoramouses when it comes to real economics.
Oil depletion and ELM will both destroy our border security and our economy well before the paper shuffling and money changing hands in Canberra makes the slightest bit of difference to the climate or our ability to have any control over our collective fate: running out of oil in a very highly oil dependent economy.

seagypsy

don't think oil is a problem for australia

there are huge coal resources that can , and in my opinion will, be coverted to oil

the largest coal resource appears to be in central australia

As someone who lived in Central Australia for a decade over 40 years, and have been all over the NT without seeing a coal truck or hearing of a coal mine, please enlighten me. Beetaloo Basin is looking like shale and you can forget fracking up there, the greens won't have a bar of it. (It's also NOT in central Australia).
The only major resource in the center is Uranium, which has just lost exploration permits due to the success of the green lobby.

sea gypsy

i suggest you do some more research

my information says over 15 billion barrels of oil likely

SeaGypsy wrote:We feed 70 million cows. Each cow needs the calories of 10 people.
We feed 200 million sheep in a wet year.

Wow those are massive numbers. The US, with over fifteen times your pop, has a cattle herd of 98 million. I don't think we have many sheep.

I have to wonder why any Aussies are doomers. All that land, not many people, off the beaten path down under.. strong economy.. and to top it all ten times more livestock than people. Only possible future concern may be China appropriating it all. Which is why ultimately you can't restrict pop growth.. you need to grow.. all that land with only 21 million people is dangerous from a national security perspective. You can't defend it, not up against billion plus populations.

kiwichick wrote:sea gypsy

i suggest you do some more research

my information says over 15 billion barrels of oil likely

Link?
(bull)

Sixstrings wrote:

SeaGypsy wrote:We feed 70 million cows. Each cow needs the calories of 10 people.
We feed 200 million sheep in a wet year.

Wow those are massive numbers. The US, with over fifteen times your pop, has a cattle herd of 98 million. I don't think we have many sheep.

I have to wonder why any Aussies are doomers. All that land, not many people, off the beaten path down under.. strong economy.. and to top it all ten times more livestock than people. Only possible future concern may be China appropriating it all. Which is why ultimately you can't restrict pop growth.. you need to grow.. all that land with only 21 million people is dangerous from a national security perspective. You can't defend it, not up against billion plus populations.

You forgot the other billion between here and there. In the long run it won't be defended.

Land etc do not ensure a continuation of 1st world consumption.
We are probably the last place which will starve. Should we give up doom? Our collective dream is based on a madman's nightmare.

You can't make people settle in the semi arid or on the frontier northern savanah. We might double or triple the population, but it will all go to the SE/ Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane.

Seagypgsy,

That people consume 10 times the calories per head/cow is fair logic but comparisons end there ... the land that our 'cattle' occupy is 'in general' not capable of economically or ecologically sustaining the growth of human crops. The yield per hectare is way too low.

Also labelling one race of people as 'ignoramouses when it comes to real economics' when this is generally true of the entire planet could be seen as insulting, racial vilification is unlawful here in Australia. Fair go please Seagypsy.

Sixstrings, although there are plenty of hectares per capita here the vast majority of it is not very useable without massive infrastructure investments, water is the lifeblood of the land and this is what we lack here. We have plentiful energy and iron ore but most of it is owned by foriegn corporations and is exported without much benefit for Australia as a country, we pay more for oil here than you do in the USA, our fuel prices sit around A$1.45/L today. Every boom has an end, natural resources are finite and our economy is inextricably tied to China and the USA .... there's good reason to be concerned.

Yeah I'm living in a land of ignoramous tektards more aware of football and shapely derrier than whether there will or might be a future.

Australia wastes at least 2 billion dollars a year propping up aboriginal townships so the inhabitants can booze and sugar themselves to death somewhere away from prying eyes. (Most of the time)

We prop up oligarkies within our borders as well as our region, besides always taking the Amerikan line even when they don't have a line.

We have a wastefull culture based on xenophobia.

We have the potential to do really great things, but we are stifled by a culture of impudence and stagnation.

We think it says something that we have an unfair share of talent, and maybe it does. But we way too easily swallow the blue pill.

"Don't you worry dear, they pay people far better educated than you or me to worry about those things!"

The 2 times when Government has decided to nationalise the mining industry and super annuation or atleast tax the profits in a quasi nationalisation they "magically" disappeared.
Had we nationalised superannuation and mining in the 70s we would have been 1million x Singapore on steroids.
We would have been the richest "socialist" nation on earth with the highest standard of living,we would have made Norway look poor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Govern ... _of_Norway
Haveing a mining sector that is 80 odd % foriegn owned and still haveing the 3rd or 4 th highest standard of living in the world is testament to that.
But stronger powers (US/UK) have made sure that didnt happen,it wasnt in their interests.