Does Australia have a population problem?

Well after having a look at the colour of Australia on this map, I think you would agree that compared to the US and parts of Europe, we're doing pretty well. Ok I apologise that the theme of this blog is becoming heavily weighted toward politics. I promise I will be more varied after the election this weeked. Its just that I keep learning all this stuff that I feel everyone should think about.

Recently I have heard a bit of talk on how population growth is a major cause of climate change. This is already playing out in federal politics, with Prime Minister Gillard dumping Rudds "Big Australia" policy in the name of sustainability. While this policy was far from perfect, we should be very careful in thinking about what Gillards "Little Australia" idea actually means, especially when this idea can justify the undermining of womens reproductive rights and fuel racist migration and border control agendas. We are getting into shakey territory now...

Click to read more...

Population size, growth and movement is not the cause of climate change. Climate change is a complex global issue driven by over-consumption, unbridled economic growth and our dependence on fossil fuels, especially coal. Restricting the flow of people into Australia does not address any of these global root causes of climate change. Australia's coal industry is the single biggest carbon emitter in Australia, not to mention other nasty side effects such as the impact on scarce water resources and the heath of communities across Australia and around the world. Even the most drastic population control policies will not stop climate change, because it won't stop the coal industry.

The main reason some people are calling for a sustainable population, is that when migrants come to Australia they often adopt Australia's carbon-intensive lifestyles, which increases our emissions as a whole. This is a dangerous argument, firstly because restricting the movement of people into Australia does nothing to stop unsustainable levels of consumption by Australians that is the root cause of environmental damage. More importantly, we have to recognise that our way of living in Australia (a rich, "first world" nation) has created the very reason people want to escape poverty, labour exploitation and environmental problems (see previous post) in their "third world" home lands. We cannot turn our backs on the very people we have exploited to build or carbon intensive lifestyles: we must recognise our carbon debt and act in solidarity to stop the global problem of climate change.

What I'm really worried about is that the people in these countries know that it is us in the richer countries causing the turmoil in theirs, and from their point of view us turning our backs on them is worse than rubbing salt in their wounds. Looking back through history books, wars have been started for reasons much smaller.

Because of climate change, have every reason to confront over consumption and share the worlds resources. Instead controlling the movement of people, what we need to talk about is how to share the worlds resources equitably and sustainably.

As a movement, we should reject population control policies, and instead fight for solutions to climate change that are not only effective, but also just for the global community.
Thanks to Friends of the Earth Sydney for their amazingly well put together articles :)

If you think...

With the election on Saturday, there's ads every comercial break telling you to vote Labor or Liberal. It seems a shame to me that the other parties don't have access to funding to get their message out to a wider audience.

This ad got air Wednesday night on ABC's Gruen Nation.

{greens.org.au}

The Story of Cosmetics (2010)

Really interesting short vid on the chemicals we slather onto the biggest organ in our body.

Foreign Aid - Feeding starving kids in Ethiopia? Or the Packer kids?

A month or so ago I signed up for the independent online newspaper Crikey Daily Mail. Almost straight away, they ran a series of articles investigating into where exactly our foreign aid goes to. Now I would have thought most of our $4.3 billion worth of tax dollars for foreign aid funnels through companies such as Oxfam or World Vision to help poor countries. Is that what you would have thought too?

A lot of Australians would be surprised to know that for nearly a decade one of Australia's most successful, although little known, aid companies and it's biggest casino operator were owned by the same company.

Click to read more...

 

 

40 to 50% of this aid budget is spent on "Technical assistance". This is quite clearly a billion-dollar business funded by tax payers, and a small number of Australian firms have done very well from this:

• Coffey International, the Chatswood, Sydney-based "global professional services consultancy", took more than $300 million in contracts in 2009 alone (from AusAid records)
• Cardno ACIL secured at least $270 million, as did GRM, "a leading international development management company"
• Queensland companies GHD and JTA international, both reaped over $100 million.

The idea that most (over 60%) of our "foreign aid" ends up back in Australian's pockets is called "Boomerang Aid", and has long been a basis of criticism of AusAID. But one thing I found quite interesting is the company GRM International Pty Ltd

 

Until December last year, GRM was fully owned by the Bahamas-based company Consolidated Press International Holdings (CPIH)- a key company in the private empire of one of Australia's richest families, the Packers. Many large companies are set up in a similar way to how GRM is linked in with CPIH for tax reasons, but the question is whether this is acceptable for major recipients of Australian government contracts. There are a number of main points Crikey journalists found in their investigations:

• GRM international handles hundreds of millions of dollars worth of government contracts each year, yet according to its most recent financial statements, GRM International pty Ltd doesn't make a profit (it hasn't reported a single cent in over a decade) and hasn't had any employees since 2005.
• These accounts are surprising because according to government records, GRM secured more than a billion dollars worth of AusAID contracts between 2001 and 2010, as well as income from its agribusiness actuvities.
• The contracts are for "technical assistance" in the form of short-term contracts for expert advisers. This form of aid is more common in Australia than in other OECD countries and has been criticised by a recent review of Australian aid to PNG as often ineffective, wasteful and lacking in accountability.
• All these contracts are published on the 'federal government's tender data base' but details are often vague, such as over $350,000 over two years to "strengthen accountability" and another million for "governance and related activity"

Decide for yourself, but this sounds quite sus to me. Stay tuned, I'll let you know what I find out...

Thought for the day

{A disturbing reality}

Just a few days before Federal Parliament rose, the Gillard Government passed new Renewable Energy legislation that counts “waste” from woodchip mills as clean, green renewable energy. The Government refused to close this loophole that gives a huge subsidy to burn our forests for electricity. The Abbott Opposition was even worse; they tried to amend the legislation to make all forests available for power generation, bypassing even the woodchip mills.

Click to read more

In our trip around Aus, we went to these old growth forests that have been so hard hit by the logging companies. The tension between the workers in these towns, and the environmentalists that lobby to save the untouched beauty of south-western Tasmania is hard not to notice.

{Welcome sign to Maydena}

A year or so ago, the logging industry got it's cash from selling woodchips to the Japanese (among others) for very cheap. They didn't need to spend anything to plant or maintain these trees, they just bulldozed their way in and chopchopchopped it all down.

We managed to find trail maps leading us to some of the oldest and biggest trees in the world, that were saved from logging. We traveled along the roads built by the logging companies, freaking out when truckies in their massive semi-trailers overtook us along the narrow dirt roads. A few (very, very few) areas of the forest have been protected from the logging industry. We arrived at one, in the Styx valley, and found this amazingly well maintained trail that meanders past hundred year old ferns and eventually leads to the majestic tree that saved the little area from near destruction.

{Styx valley}

I find it so unbelieveable that the government doesn't protect more of these forests. For such a small amount of money, going to such few people, we are wasting a priceless part of Australia. Of the world. All I can think is that we are so fortunate we have these passionate people litterally putting their lives on the line to save such small areas of untouched, beautiful wilderness.

{the 'big tree' reserve}

{the 'chapel tree'}

The worst part of all is mapped out in the cartoon above. The problem is that more than 80% of all forests logged in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia go straight to the woodchip mill. Officially this is “waste” from sawlog operations but the truth is that the woodchip industry controls native forest logging in Australia. The industry sees a new market for woodchips as their salvation at a time when woodchip exports for paper making are in serious decline because finally the Japanese and other buyers are starting to refuse woodchips from native forests.

As a result of the fall in export woodchips, major companies such as Gunns in Tasmania are now considering whether to abandon forest logging and make the transfer to plantations with the assistance of industry restructure funding from the Federal and State Governments. To make this happen in Tasmania and to extend it to the other States we have to keep up the pressure on the industry and the politicians throughout this election period

8 out of 10 Australians want a stop to logging our forests (Galaxy Poll May 2010). A stop will reduce Australia’s CO2 emissions by nearly 10% (not to mention other benefits) yet our Labor and Liberal politicians tell us it is too hard to even cut 5% without paying billions of dollars of "compensation" to the coal, steel and aluminium industries.

Movement of the people

Our political situation is in a depressing state. Australia watches in amazement as the two major parties bicker and rip into each other about their choice of fashion (getting paid our tax dollars), while the largest issue our generation has ever seen gets pushed aside. Labor's new climate change policy is appaling, and the alternative is an economically-illiterate party whose leader doesn't believe in climate change at all - who insists on wasting $3b on the most expensive possible means of addressing it. Neither of the parties have our best interests at heart.

All we can do is read up on as much as we can. Keep informed and try to make the best choices when it comes time.

Here's something to get us started.

Quick and easy dinners (part 1): Morroccan lamb cutlets

I'm starting this series for my gorgeous friend T who has convinced herself she is domestically challenged from a few traumatic (fiery) kitchen experiences. These chops are easy to prepare when you have a distractingly cute dinner guest, or if you need a quick meal for one after a busy day.

Fresh Ingredients

4 cloves of garlic

6 lamb chops

2 tablespoons Greek yogurt

Cupboard Ingredients

olive oil

2 tablespoon ground cumin

2 tablespoon ground coriander seeds

1 tablespoon chili powder

1.5 cups couscous

2 tsp vegetable stock powder

1/2 cup lemon juice

small handful each of pine nuts and sultanas (optional)

Chop the garlic finely, put into a bowl and mix with with a drizzle of olive oil and half the cumin and coriander seeds. Rub this mixture into the lamb cutlets on both sides. Line your grill tray or an oven tray with a large piece of foil (you want to be able to wrap all the cutlets up in this later). Heat to med-high and put the cutlets on to cook.

Meanwhile, in a saucepan, put 1 cup of water with the lemon juice, stock powder, chili powder and the rest of the cumin and coriander seeds and bring to a boil. Check on the cutlets. Turn them when the first side has gotten nice and brown.

When boiling, turn off the heat add the couscous and cover. Leave for at least 3 minutes. Keep watching the lamb. When both sides are brown, turn off the heat and fold up the foil so the cutlets can stay warm and moist and absorb the roast garlic and the other flavors.

When the 3 minutes is up, take off the lid, drizzle a little olive oil and fluff up all the couscous, adding the sultanas and pine nuts. Put the lid back on to keep it warm.

To serve, spoon the couscous onto the plates, top with the cutlets (making sure you don't waste the juices) and finish with a dollop of Greek yogurt.

Bonn appetite! (or whatever they say in Morocco...)