Australian growth threatens disaster
Wed 19 October 2011
Stephanie McLeay, Bachelor of Journalism
The Australian Government is envisioning a big Australia to make the economy boom, but this stance has a few people questioning the cost of such a move.
Economists have presented increased population as a solution to Australia’s ageing baby boomers, but environmentalists predicted it would create more problems.
Some are even questioning whether a growth economy is the best option.
UN projections predict that the population will reach 7 billion on 31 October, 2011, after only just having made 6 billion in 1999.
This incredible increase can be followed with World Population clocks, where it is possible to see population rising by the second.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported the Australian population to be currently over 22.7 million, with projections of this more than doubling to 50 million by 2050.
The Australian Government acknowledged the need to consider this growth by commissioning an issues paper on developing a sustainable population strategy.
Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) prepared a submission in response to the issues paper.
“I’m very, very disappointed that we went through this process of a consultation about the sustainable population and in the end what we came out with was a pronouncement from the government that we will continue to grow,” it said.
“They said they wouldn’t set a number because it was artificial.
“So we will continue to grow and their solution was we’ll just put people in different parts of the country, what I call the deck chairs on the titanic solution… to think that all we need to do is locate the people in a different part of the country and that’s a solution is a totally unscientific way of thinking and it’s denying reality.”
Ms Kanck said at the current standard of living of Australians, a sustainable figure would be about 17 million, and that increasing density of population can work in Europe, but Australia simply did not have the water capacity or the amount of fertile soil to support a larger population.
Ms Kanck disagreed that the ageing population problem was a “problem” for the Australian economy, and said there was an assumption that all retired people ended up in nursing homes, when in reality only about 5 per cent did.
“There is also an assumption in there that, once you retire, you make no useful contribution to society,” Ms Kanck said.
“…The value they [retirees] give to the economy in unpaid work and volunteer activity is just extraordinary.”
Ms Kanck said the one thing youth gave the economy which older people did not was their level of consumption.
“Children are wonderful consumers via their parents,” Ms Kanck said.
“They have a higher dependency ratio than elderly people.
“Elderly people are dependant maybe for the last five years of their life, young people are dependent in most cases until they are 18.”
Ms Kanck compared the growth economy to a cancer, and said that it was an irresponsible economic system.
“Sustainable profitability is like sustainable acceleration, if you get in your car and sustainably accelerate your car will eventually break down completely, you will blow up the engine,” Ms Kanck said.
Instead, Ms Kanck touted the little-known steady-state theory of economy.
Flinders University senior lecturer Dr Phillip Lawn was one of the few economists teaching this idea in Australia.
“A steady-state economy (SSE) is an economy that no longer grows in a physical sense,” Dr Lawn said.
Dr Lawn said instead, an SSE makes qualitative growth.
For example, not building more roads, but making improvements to the ones that are there so in the end there are better, not more, roads.
This included things like making new products that could be updated rather than being chucked away when a newer model comes along.
Dr Lawn said the better solution was to retrain the current population.
“Reducing the rate at which physical objects must be replaced reduces the need for resources to produce new goods and also reduces the eventual waste when the goods eventually wear out,” Dr Lawn said.
“This reduces the impact of economic activity on the environment.
“…a qualitatively-improving SSE can make our lives better (richer if you want to use that term) in an ecologically sustainable manner.”
Image(s) designed by Sreejith K