Can we trust the Greens on population?

9. reduction of Australia’s use of natural resources to a level that is sustainable and socially just.

But it is ultimately impossible to reduce our use of natural resources if we continue to allow the population to grow. There are limits to the efficiency with which resources can be used! There is also no social justice when resources have been depleted.

10. recognition that use of resources in production for export is as damaging to the environment as production for domestic consumption.

This is obvious. It should also be obvious that the smaller is Australia’s population, the smaller is our need for export income. A smaller Australia would not need to extract and sell its non-renewable and renewable resources so rapidly. This would reduce our impact on the environment. Also, since non-renewable resources are finite, the more slowly we exploit them the longer they will last and the more generations of Australians can benefit from their sale. Increased rates of resource extraction (supply) also tend to reduce commodity prices which means that, over the longer term, the more slowly we extract our resources, the more we can earn from them.

11. human settlements which are:

• designed and built to minimise environmental harm and maximise social well-being; and
• located in areas where their ecological impact is minimised.

But even if you stack humans exclusively in kilometer-high apartment buildings on rocky hilltops leaving agricultural land uncovered you still need more and more food for more and more mouths and that requires more and more land - somewhere. People anywhere have an impact when they need to be fed and per capita food consumption can only be reduced so far - or people starve!

Measures

The Australian Greens will:

12. support, through extensive community consultation, a population policy directed towards ecological sustainability in the context of global social justice.

This appears to be a re-statement that we will absorb the uncontrolled population growth of other nations. Let me put that another way - we would rather destroy our own children’s future if forced to choose between that and “humanitarian migration”.

13. work to achieve a sustainable relationship between humans and the environment by taking action:

• in Australia, including planning, consultation and a whole of government approach, to improve equity in consumption levels and resource and technology use ...