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Category: Population

  • OVERPOPULATION

    GOOGLE WIKIPEDIA FOR MUCH DETAILED INFO ON POPULATION

    Overpopulation

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    Overpopulation means that there are too many organisms of a certain species in a certain habitat. This means that the number of organisms living there is larger than the carrying capacity of the habitat. The habitat cannot support these numbers over time without hurting itself.

    The term “overpopulation” is most often used to refer to the number of humans living on Earth.[1]

    [change] Human overpopulation

    Human population growth rate in percent, with the variables of births, deaths, immigration, and emigration 2006

    The world’s population has greatly increased in the last 50 years, mainly due to medical advances and agricultural productivity.[2] Steve Jones, head of the biology department at University College London, has said,

    “Humans are 10,000 times more common than we should be, according to the rules of the animal kingdom, and we have agriculture to thank for that. Without farming, the world population would probably have reached half a million by now”.[3]

    The recent rapid increase in human population over the past two centuries has raised concerns that humans are beginning to overpopulate the Earth. The planet may not be able to sustain larger numbers of people. The population has been growing since the end of the Black Death, around the year 1400.[4] At the beginning of the 19th century, it had reached roughly 1,000,000,000 (one billion). The industrial revolution and green revolutions led to rapid population growth all over the world. By 1960, the world population had reached 3 billion, and it doubled to 6 billion over the next four decades. As of 2011, the estimated annual growth rate was 1.10%, down from a peak of 2.2% in 1963, and the world population stood at roughly 6.9 billion.

    Current projections show a steady decline in the population growth rate, with the population expected to reach between 8 and 10.5 billion between the year 2040[5][6] and 2050.[7]

    The scientific consensus is that the present population growth and increase in use of resources is a threat to the ecosystem. The InterAcademy Panel Statement on Population Growth called the growth in human numbers “unprecedented”, and stated that many environmental problems, such as rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, global warming, and pollution, were made worse by the population expansion.[8] At the time, the world population stood at 5.5 billion, and optimistic scenarios predicted a peak of 7.8 billion by 2050, a number that current estimates show will be reached around 2030.[9][10]

    [change] Potential solutions

    The solutions usually suggested are better education and widespread free contraception (birth control). Many pregnancies are unplanned (40%) or unwanted.[11]

    There are powerful forces working against birth control. Religious and traditional beliefs often favour large families. Few governments have tackled the problem seriously.

    [change] References

    1. ↑ Overpopulation
    2. ↑ Global food crisis looms Global food crisis looms as climate change and population growth strip fertile land. Guardian.co.uk. 31 August 2007.
    3. ↑ Leading geneticist Steve Jones says human evolution is over, The Times, 7 October 2008.
    4. ↑ World population estimates
    5. ↑ “World Population Clock — Worldometers”. Worldometers.info. http://www.worldometers.info/population/. Retrieved 2010-08-01.
    6. ↑ “International Data Base (IDB) — World Population”. Census.gov. 2010-06-28. http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.php. Retrieved 2010-08-01.
    7. ↑ “World Population Prospects:The 2008 Revision”. Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. June 2009. http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/popnews/Newsltr_87.pdf.
    8. ↑ http://www.interacademies.net/?id=3547
    9. ↑ http://esa.un.org/unpp/p2k0data.asp
    10. ↑ Netherlands Again Number One Donor to United Nations Population Fund. United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
    11. ↑ Population growth driving climate change, poverty: experts. Agence France-Presse, 21 September 2009.
    Retrieved from “http://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Overpopulation&oldid=3585055“

  • Gillard plays the unedifying ‘small Australia’ card

    29 May 2012

    The Mining Jobs Queue is fictional. It doesn't exist (AAP)

    Gillard plays the unedifying ‘small Australia’ card

    119 Comments

    Chris Berg

    Chris Berg

    It’s obvious what Julia Gillard was doing when she claimed Enterprise Migration Agreements for mining projects would not favour foreign workers.

    Talking to the press on Saturday, the Prime Minister said, “I can assure everyone that we will be putting the interests of Australians at the front of the queue and we will be putting Australians looking for work at the front of the queue.”

    Ah, yes. Our old friend The Queue.

    There’s not much more evocative in Australian politics than The Queue. For more than a decade it’s neatly divided asylum seekers into moral categories. The virtuous wait in refugee camps; cheaters hop on boats.

    Even more than most politicians, Gillard thinks carefully about what she says. Her advisors are smart. When she brings up The Queue in the context of immigration, it’s not likely to be a slip of the tongue. Language matters. This language is about those who are deserving and those who aren’t.

    Especially considering that just like the Refugee Queue, the Mining Jobs Queue is fictional. It doesn’t exist. As Peter Martin pointed out in Fairfax papers on Monday, Enterprise Migration Agreements are used for work Australians simply don’t want. There can be no queue if nobody is standing in it.

    Most press about this furious little debate has focused on how it makes Julia Gillard look weak, and her hold on the Lodge look weaker. But the debate reveals something more important than the leadership soap opera.

    Think back to the 2010 federal election. Few things in that campaign were more dispiriting than the “small Australia” doctrine.

    Both the Coalition and the ALP tried to link resentment about asylum seekers to resentment about traffic congestion. The whole thing was farcical. Gillard took Western Sydney MP David Bradbury to Darwin to hunt for refugee boats. And the opposition, trying to demonstrate just how serious they were about slowing immigration, proposed to rename the Productivity Commission the “Productivity and Sustainability Commission”.

    The last few days have made it clear the small Australia doctrine was not a temporary anomaly, confined to a weird election held under weird circumstances. It’s no longer just asylum seekers that are controversial. Bipartisan immigration scepticism now looks like it could be an enduring feature of the Australian political landscape.

    The Enterprise Migration Agreement is going ahead. But the announcement sent the Government into a tailspin. In Parliament on Monday, Gillard didn’t want to say whether she supported the agreement. How extraordinary: it’s her own Government’s policy.

    The unions are opposed to the migration agreements, and Gillard owes her position to them. But unions make all sorts of ambit claims which the Labor government pay no attention to. This one was apparently too big a deal to dismiss.

    So the worst part is that instead of ignoring the unions’ shrill protest, the Prime Minister has all but apologised for thinking about foreign workers.

    From Gillard’s press conference on Saturday:

    My concern here, and the concern of the Labor Government, is always to put Australian jobs first … we put Australian jobs first and now we are putting Aussie jobs first too … we’re working to make sure Aussies get jobs first … we are skilling Australians first and getting them the jobs first … Australians will always come first in getting these job opportunities.

    And with the hastily announced Jobs Board (a mining jobs website with the purpose of favouring domestic workers over foreign ones) the Government is ratifying the union movement’s claim that immigration crowds Australians out of work. This is a staple argument made by opponents of immigration, and it is completely wrong. No Australian Prime Minister should indulge it.

    Yet this time last year it seemed we’d gotten over small Australia.

    The May 2011 budget was a repudiation of the previous year’s excesses. It was then that the Government introduced the Enterprise Migration Agreements policy in the first place. Wayne Swan also announced another 16,000 immigration positions, the majority of which were skilled migrants sent to rural areas.

    Australia’s great project has always been to attract more workers and a bigger population. The 2011 budget resumed that course.

    But at that stage the next election was far in the distance. Now one is closer – with or without the Thomson and Slipper scandals – and the Labor government is much more frail. Gillard knows if she doesn’t play the Aussie-jobs-for-Aussie-workers card in the future campaign, then the Coalition certainly will. If the past is any guide, they probably will anyway.

    The good money says the next election will be played out on the depressing terms of the election of 2010 – a populist, unedifying backlash against population growth and immigration. Australia will not be better off for it.

    Chris Berg is a Research Fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs. His new book is In Defence of Freedom of Speech: from Ancient Greece to Andrew Bolt. Follow him at Twitter.

  • Vertical living is the answer to the world’s population growth

    Very good article for group discussion. This would not suit me.

    Vertical living is the answer to the world’s population growth

    Barangaroo

    TED founder Chris Anderson said population was set to rise to 10 billion within 70 years. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied

    • Founder of TED said population set to rise to 10 billion within 70 years
    • One million people a week are moving to cities
    • He said urbanisation would save humanity

    CITIES will save humans – we just need to lose the family car, have less kids, and move into apartments to achieve a sustainable population.

    The founder of international talkfest TED Chris Anderson told a Sydney audience last night the world’s population was set to rise to 10 billion within the next 70 years, and only cities would stem a population growing too fast to feed and resource itself.

    “I think urbanisation is going to save humanity,’ he said.

    “One million people a week, every week, are moving into cities. That will go on for the next 70 years. There will be seven billion, out of nine or 10 billion people living in cities.

    “The global population is going to stabilise at 10 billion. In a village, an extra kid is an asset, to help work on the farm, but in a crowded city not so much.”


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    He said education, and women being exposed to medical services, would see family sizes reduce from six or seven people, to just two or three.

    “We can get to a sustainable number of people,” he said.

    With two thirds of the population living in cities, the forest could regrow itself where settlements once were, he said.

    Mr Anderson cited New York City as one of the most sustainable on earth – where residents produce half the amount of carbon emissions as Sydneysiders.

    “They walk to work, they settle for smaller living spaces,” he said.

    While nations grew more frustrated at their federal governments floundering on major decisions, Mr Anderson said: “At a city level, things can get done.”

    He said the future would depend on the kind of city that developing nations chose to live in.

    “If they pick suburbia, big houses, lives build around driving a car, we’re screwed,” he said.

    “That is a lifestyle we have chosen in the west.

    “Vertical living has so many of the answers.”

    He said it was important architects realised that people did not want to live in a rat trap, or in a box jammed together.

  • Greek crisis sees new wave of migrants

    Greek crisis sees new wave of migrants

    ABCUpdated May 27, 2012, 10:19 am

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    The face of Australia’s Greek community is rapidly changing because of the economic crisis crippling Greece.

    Immigration statistics show around 280 expatriates – mostly families and skilled migrants – have come back to Australia over the past year but the total number of Greek citizens in Australia is expected to be higher, with many more here on holidays.

    The Honorary Consul for Greece in the Northern Territory, John Anictomatis, says there has been a huge influx of new Greeks in Darwin.

    “For the last six months, the figures show that on average about 10 new arrivals a week are coming back to Darwin, whether it’s family groups or people coming back on their own before they bring their families back to Australia,” he said.

    Drossos Tavlarios, 27, came to Darwin from his home on a Greek island after being unable to get work.

    He says he is one of the lucky ones.

    “Everything is okay, very nice in Darwin,” he said.

    Mr Anictomatis says he gets desperate calls from Greece every week.

    “They’re mainly desperate about employment, their children’s future,” he said.

    The influx to the Top End has prompted Territory Government minister Kon Vatskalis to call on the Federal Government to consider special working visas for Greeks who have been affected by the economic crisis.

    Mr Vatskalis says the Territory is set to face a major skills shortage when a major gas project starts.

    He says it makes sense to bring Greeks over on working visas to help fill the gap.

    “We’re talking about an exodus of people from the industry now because they are going to get well-paid jobs with Inpex,” he said.

    “How are we going to replace these people? We can’t replace them out of nothing.”

    Meanwhile, the British government is drawing up emergency immigration controls to combat any surge in economic migrants from Greece and other European Union countries if the euro collapses.

    Interior minister Theresa May has told a UK newspaper that it is right for Britain to do some contingency planning, but did not say what steps could be applied.

    An increasing perception that Greece or other debt-laden countries might have to leave the eurozone has brought concerns that millions could lose their jobs and go abroad in search of work.

  • The tide of public opinion is turning against immigration

    The tide of public opinion is turning against immigration

    5
    Asylum seekers

    New asylum seeker boats arrive at Christmas Island yesterday. Source: The Daily Telegraph

    MORE than half of Australians want our borders closed and immigration ended.

    New research, provided exclusively to The Daily Telegraph, reveals a dramatic swing against border issues, with 51 per cent in favour of saying no to all migrants – a 10 per cent jump since 2005.

    Fears over falling job security and the burgeoning population putting more strain on infrastructure are two reasons for the shift in attitudes. The federal opposition said yesterday the anti-immigration sentiment was due to rising public anger about the number of asylum seekers attempting to enter the country.

    Just a third of the 2000 people questioned by Quantum Market Research for AustraliaSCAN believed overseas migration made Australia “a more interesting and exciting place”, down from almost half in 1995.

    Results: Today’s poll

    Thanks for voting!

    Do you think immigration should be completely banned?

    • Yes68.34% (12228 votes)
    • No31.66% (5665 votes)

    Total votes: 17893

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    ASYLUM seeker numbers are dwarfing government estimates, leading to speculation of future budget blow-outs.

    Monthly tally now over 1000

    AUSTRALIAN authorities intercepted two more asylum seeker boats yesterday with 82 people on board.

    Almost two thirds said they believed migrants should try to “adopt the Australian way of life” when they arrived.

    The number who believe the country has room to accommodate more people also plunged to less than a third, down from 42 per cent a decade ago.

    Monash University migration expert Bob Birrell said the results showed public opinion about immigration had moved into new territory.

    “I think they are right to be worried, we have record levels of immigration and as a consequence we are allowing 100,000 migrants to enter the workforce at a time when employment growth is at a level lower than that,” Dr Birrell said.

    “People are concerned that the present rate of population growth is not sustainable and is going to make Australia a poorer place to live rather than a better one.”

    The government’s immigration and refugee program for 2012-13 is expected to reach a record 203,000 people, similar to the mass migration intakes of the 1960s.

  • Kelvin Thomson’s budget reply speech

    Kelvin’s Budget Reply Speech

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    		 x

    Hamilton, Tim (K. Thomson, MP) Tim.Hamilton@aph.gov.au
    4:20 PM (32 minutes ago)
    to Tim

    Dear All,
    Please see attached Kelvin’s Budget Reply speech which he delivered to the Parliament on the evening of May 21st.
    In it he speaks of his concerns regarding the increase in our skilled migration intake.
    Regards,
    Tim
    Tim Hamilton
    Electorate Officer
    Office of Kelvin Thomson MP
    Member for Wills
    (P) 9350 5777
    (M) 0424 138 558