Here come the anti-populationists, there go the people

The anti-populationists (anti-pops) say that technology, imagination and creativity cannot alter human destiny and that population, technological progress and capitalism will irreducibly lead us to ruin.

This inchoate movement advocates cutting or halting our population through social engineering. They want to use statistics to measure our carbon output and energy consumption to determine the number of children Australians can have.

This is social biology in action. It posits that we are ruled by biology and, like ants, our society can be deconstructed (as we would a hive) by measuring our chemical processes and our relationship with the environment. Humans are “units” to be measured. All of the anti-pops ideas stem from this premise.

As UK Professor Frank Ferudi says, “These (anti-populationist) environmentalists are fundamentally misanthropic. Their sociobiological stance is arguably more influential today than ever before. It reflects a loss of confidence in human potential and agency and indicates that humanist ideals enjoy little cultural affirmation.”

How do we measure a life and by doing so, place a value on it? It’s not about population. It’s about people - you and me.

Around 2050 our population, Western Europe’s and America’s will decline, as the whole baby boomer generation will have passed on to the Great Gig in the Sky. That’s 7 million people gone in Australia alone. The anti-pops don’t talk about that. Nor do they talk about a global population decline after 2050.

Australia's population grew by 2.1 per cent during the 12 months ended 30 September 2009. Natural increase contributed 34 per cent and net overseas migration contributed 66% to population growth. Net overseas migration now includes international students and "short stayers".

If we cut or curtail migration, which is what the anti-populationists, Senator Cory Bernardi and the Sustainable People Australia lobby want, our population will reel back.

The anti-pops aims in Australia are simple: eliminate maternity leave, the baby bonus, immigration and international students. One direct effect is that women’s reproductive rights would once again come under the policy microscope. Another is that it would massively reduce GDP and the tax base. Our trade position would collapse.

If one reads some of the previous anti-pop contributions in this and other forums, it is hard not to escape the conclusion that this is what they want. Their understanding of modern economic theory, political and parliamentary process, is rudimentary at best. Actually, the anti-pops don’t believe in economics. It’s not, as they say “in their paradigm”. Their focus is on limiting growth or as one critic put it, stunting potential.

They are a curious bunch of people. The more articulate ones are schooled in systems theory (the finite resource argument) while others inhabit the far, far, left of the environment movement where they meet the Hansonite anti-immigrationists and People for a White Australia. Are they racists, misogynists, misanthropes or all three?

The propaganda appeal of the anti-pop argument is simple but powerful and it explains why their emotive appeals have found some favour in the electorate. It requires three elements to work. The first is to create a context where anti-population rhetoric can flourish.

The trigger for this was the release of the last Intergenerational Report by Treasury said the previous report had under estimated Australia’s population projections by 20 per cent, so that by 2050 the nations population will grow to 35 million people. Keep in mind this was a projection and that population will grow in the next 40 years at about the same rate is has in the past forty years before it declines in 2050.

The second element is to attach population to a strong currency issue and there is none stronger at the moment than the environment and climate change (although this is slipping down the agenda). If the rivers flood, it’s climate change. If the rivers fall, it’s climate change. If you have an itchy foot, it’s climate change and the more people we have, the worse climate change will be.

The climate changers have not proved their thesis. Even if one employs the precautionary principle, as I have done, and accept we should cut carbon emissions, we are still a long, long way from saying, by erroneous extension, that climate change is caused by population. If it is caused by anything, it is first world consumption and corporate greed.

Here you’d think the anti-populationists would be on solid ground. Since the early 1990s, considerable progress has been made, especially in Europe and the US, attacking the more rapacious aspects of corporate criminality. The publication of books such as No Logo and others, the fall of Enron and more recently, the sheer audacity of the some in the global finance system to screw the public (and then get bailed out), has created calls for prosecution and regulation of global corporates.

But the anti-pops want none of this. Indeed, they have deflected the anti-corporate agenda on to attacking the victims, in this case, you and me. By changing the agenda, the anti-pops have given succor to the true enemies of capitalism - monopolists and robber barons.

The third element is fear, driven by the coming of the “apocalypse”. They say population growth means that like rabbits, new generations will eat us out of house and home. Yet most of northern Europe, Asia and North America are under food crops capable of feeding billions. In Australia, we export $29 billion of food per year and import $600 million in reciprocal trade agreements. Food we have.

About 90 per cent of the world's population growth has come from less developed regions. Yet foolishly the anti-pops attack the Australian government and say it should implement social and economic measures to reduce population here.

It’s curious that the anti-pops have not achieved any public profile by proposing new urban designs and transport solutions where population pressure is most intense - Sydney and Melbourne. That’s hard work though.

Oddly, because the anti-pops reject technology and modern capitalism, they also reject the invention of synthetics, new alternative energy forms, desalination plants and global recycling research. Apocalyptic visions of the end of the earth are nothing new. They constitute a whole movie genre such as V for Vendetta, ZPG, Soylent Green and Planet of the Apes.

Their rejection of technology is baffling. One of the great crusades in modern times is to find new sources of energy. This scientific and humanitarian task is as exciting as the Apollo moon missions. It should enthuse every young man and woman who ever considered science as a career. Yet the anti-pops rubbish this idea by saying ‘we’re all rooned’.

My favourite anti-pop story is from Barry Walters, an associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia. He was quoted last year in a national newspaper and said:

“Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years not simply by breathing, but by the prolifigate consumption of resources typical of our society. What then should we do as medical practitioners?” Dr Walters asked.

He goes on to say, “Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and thereby rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour, a Baby Levy (his capitals) in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the polluter pays principle.”

Is it not very odd that the anti-pops, who purport to love nature, are the very people who want to halt or reduce the number of people who are part of nature? People are not the problem. It’s this kind of thinking.