[permaculture-oceania] population challenges - Adelaide as one big community garden?

[Russ Grayson]

Hi Graham & Jedd...

On 8/6/06 7:34 PM, "brookman" <brookman at bigpond.com> wrote:

> Thanks Jedd
> Whether Lovelock or Evans are correct we would need, in theory, to shed at
> least half the world's current population

Glad this is in theory. The reality is that it won't happen, so we have to
devise ways to live with the predicted 10 billion by 2050. A pitfall of talk
about how we "have to" shed so many billions of people starts to sound too
much like accepting social Darwinism. It would mean, of course, a fortress
Australia in which the doors on the world are closed as conditions over
there deteoriate sharply and the deterring of a plague of boat peeople that
would make the boat people exodus from Vietnam in the 1980s and the Siex X
and children overboard episodes look totally insignificant.

> AND get them living sustainably in
> the next decade or 2 to avoid Lovelock's Mad Max type scenario. I'll dig out
> Lovelock's interview with Tony Jones......in which he says that we'll have to
> use all the uranium to try to reduce emissions but implies that we are all set
> (anyway) to go over the temperature 'tipping point' which marks the beginning
> of a series of feedback processes that will be virtually irreversible.

The consequences of going over some thermal tipping point could be dire. If
warming alters the flow of the Gulf Stream, the UK and northern Europe faces
a very cold future. The nearest in historical memory would be the Little Ice
Age of the 1500s when the Thames froze. When that cooling started it is
believed to have shut down the movement of people and goods from the Nordic
countries to Iceland and Greenland, both Nordic settlements. They became
isolated and the Greenland settlement died out. The Nordic colonisation of
those land masses was itself due to a period of global warming which opened
the possibility of oceanic navigation in far northern latitudes, then free
of drift ice and bergs and experiencing milder weather.

Because we do not rely on transportation by sailing ship presumably the
consequences of an ice-bound northern Europe for part of the year would not
be as dire, however it does raise questions of the security of the food
supply and the economies of those countries.
 
> Hopefully the state population plan which  calls for 2 million by 2050 can be
> revised downward.......amongst other things!

Two million is only a third of Sydney's population and you have all that
territory down the Florieau Peninsula to sprawl over. Just kidding. How many
are there in the city now?

>> Russ, Graham,
>> 
>> ... there were some interesting
>> predictions coming out of James Lovelock in a recent interview he
>> did with Mark Lawson.
>> 
>> The big one was that world population (sustainable) is around
>> 1 billion, based on the earth as it is now -- the hot earth that
>> we'll have at the end of the century will sustain maybe 500 million.
>> 
>> "They'll die - I don't see any other answer to it."
>> "They'll starve, mostly."

Great argument for Fortress Australia. Keeping the starving masses out.
Border protection will surely come into its own then.

Whether we can actually contribute emergency food supplies to out geographic
neighbours over a long period of time would depend in part on how global
warming affects Australia's agricultural capacity and how the provision of
emergency supplies would affect the economy - farmers, transporters and
emergency personnel have to be paid for one way or another.

Whatever, Lovelock's scenario paints a grim picture that would likely lead
to population migrations and conflict unless the UN - the only agency with
capacity to deal with the impact of global warming - can get massive support
to deal with the crisis. If they can't, then nobody can.
 
>> Talking about some point *in the future*, he says:
>> 
>> JL: We'll have to go back to a world war II situation,
>> where every bit of land is used.
>> 
>> ML: So you're suggesting that everyone will have an allotment
>> and have to grow their own stuff?
>> 
>> JL: Yes, and they may not mind it -- they may even enjoy it, as they
>> did in WWII.
 
>> ML: And Britain is sustainable on that basis?
>> 
>> JL: I think it is, yes.  But we'll be a very desirable bit of real
>> estate, and obviously there'll be a limit to the number we can
>> support by growing our own food.

Fortress Britain.
 
>> Whereas elsewhere during the interview, he asserts:
>> 
>> "We have to drive - like everyone else - it's a civilisation that's
>> built on the use of the car.  You can't stop doing it, especially
>> if you live where we do -- it's about 6 miles to the nearest
>> supermarket."

True for many in this city too, especially the newer urban fringe suburbs
where public transport is limited and a car a necessity to move family
about, go to work, go shopping and so on. Even more true for those who have
chosen rural life. The more-densely populated inner core is where public
transport is financially viable, a bonus point for urban consolidation.
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