Famed researcher and author Professor Paul Ehrlich… told the Cairns Post Australia’s population was growing at an unsustainable rate for the continent.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the nation’s population of more than 24 million people is growing at about one person every minute and 29 seconds.
“Any patriotic Australian should not be having any more than one child,” Prof Ehrlich said. “You need to get to the point where your population needs to start shrinking, to a point where it can be long-term sustainable.”
He said Australia was badly overpopulated in its coastal areas and this was threatening ecosystems such as the rainforest and Great Barrier Reef.
“You’ve got fragments of your rainforests left,” he said. “Unless there is change, you’re going to go the way of Nauru, which is now used as one great big concentration camp.
“It had one great natural resource, which was (phosphate) which was mined until it was gone, and then that was basically the end of Nauru except for a little bit of Australia’s help.”
While Professor Ehrlich makes salient points about Australia’s population, his prescription is entirely wrong.
Australia’s population growth is being driven almost entirely by net overseas migration (NOM). Australia’s birthrate of 1.8 is below replacement level and the nation’s population would stablise at 27 million by 2060 under zero NOM, whereas it will hit 40 million assuming historical rates of NOM continue (see next chart).
Therefore, the solution to Australia’s unsustainable population growth is not to force a draconian ‘one child policy’ on Australians, but rather to significantly reduce Australia’s immigration program and abandon plans for a ‘Big Australia’.
Professor Ehrlich’s concerns do, once again, highlight the complete and utter negligence of The Australian Greens. Despite their purported concerns for the environment, The Greens have remained deafly silent on Australia’s world-beating immigration program and have refused to argue the case publicly for a smaller and more sustainable population for Australia.
With the debate over immigration heating-up both in Australia and abroad, it is high time that The Greens entered the fold and advocated on behalf of Australia’s environment.
