From Tom Gosling
Over the past 50 years, in less than a single human lifetime, the world’s population has grown from 2.5 billion to 6.5 billion. There are now 4 billion more people on the planet than there were half a century ago, and there will almost certainly be a further 3 billion in another 50 years. These facts are central to the world’s environmental crisis.
All countries concerned with environmental sustainability should be aiming to stabilise their populations as quickly as possible (7 May, p 5 and p 8). That is why the Sierra Club is trying to limit immigration – so that the US can show leadership. Developing nations will not accept that they should limit their population growth while wealthy nations continue to gallop ahead.
The urban sprawl of the US is probably the single greatest environmental threat to the world and needs to be stopped in its tracks. Artificially boosting US growth by encouraging huge numbers of immigrants is fine if you don’t give a damn about the kind of world future generations will inherit.
From Jenny Goldie, Sustainable Population Australia
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Calls for cutting immigration carry no underlying message that it is OK to continue polluting. Environmental impact is the product of population, consumption and the technology required to deliver goods to the people. Thus, in order to lower Australia’s total ecological footprint, it is necessary to stabilise and then reduce population, lower consumption and develop technologies that minimise our impact on the Earth. One or two out of three won’t do, it has to be all three.
It is simply irresponsible to ignore population as an environmental issue. Of course, excessive consumption by the developed world is a major cause of pollution. Our per capita footprint needs to come down from over 7 hectares to around 2 if we are to have global equity. But in any country, total footprint is a product of per capita footprint times the number of “capits”, or people, and the more people there are, the bigger the footprint.
The high moral ground about increased immigration, assumes the whole programme is of intrinsic humanitarian worth. Yet in Australia the bulk of immigrants are skilled workers. Unfortunately, many come from poorer countries that can ill afford to lose them. By all means increase the humanitarian stream, especially as climate change bites and many people are displaced by rising sea levels, but only if decreasing the rest of the programme.
Michelago, New South Wales, Australia
Fisher, ACT, Australia
