Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Beattie pops out his 4 millionth
At one minute to four, on the morning of Friday 9th December 2005, the four millionth Queenslander was born at a hospital in Caboolture.

The mother of the baby girl, weighing a respectable 8lbs, will receive a commemorative certificate to mark the milestone, although as this baby was just the ‘statistical’ four millionth, any child born on that day is eligible to receive a certificate and tee-shirt.

Judging by the gushing self-platitudes emanating from George Street, you’d be inclined to believe that the Premier himself had given birth, or that he was responsible for the growing population.

Not by fathering all the kids himself, of course, but by his careful, omnipotent stewardship of the Queensland economy.

The Premier said “Queensland is growing strong and we are proud to mark this significant milestone today. Hitting the four million mark is just another sign of our State’s growth and it is a symbol of our potential.”

It took over 100 years for the population of Queensland to reach 1 million. It took just 36 years for the population to reach 2 million and 18 years to reach 4 million. By this time growth was motoring; the next million – the fourth - was reached in just 13 years.

From here, population growth is projected to slow quite rapidly, with the fifth million not expected for another 17 years and the sixth for another 18 years.

Australia is one of the few places that consistently views population growth as an unambiguously good thing. Earlier this year, Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, urged Australians to have more children, a girl, a boy and one more ‘for Australia’. He then promptly boosted the cash gift to new parents to $500 per year.

(A subsequent rise in the numbers lottery tickets sold should have suggested to him that money wasn’t the reason why people are not now as fertile.)

That Queenslanders have an ecological footprint five and a half-times that the planet would be able to sustain for everyone, surely should send alarm bells ringing. Despite what Prometheans and optimists might tell you (that agricultural production and yields are up), there is really only one environmental problem – and that is human population growth; too many people consuming too much of the biotic potential of the earth and generating too much waste.

Of course, the population cannot just stop growing; people cannot/will not stop having children. They will have – and are having - fewer and this will be reflected as a demographic bulge, eventually generating ever more older people and less younger (and subsequently less people of child bearing age and less children).

A demographic pyramid too top heavy could be calamitous, but an eventual managed reduction in human numbers is surely essential, particularly if future generations are to experience something like the quality of the natural environment that is in existence (in an already near-catastrophically depleted form) today.

Australia’s and the global human population is now tapering off. Global proportional growth reached its zenith in the 1962 and 1963 when 70m were added. Total growth has been reducing from a high of 88m in 1989 to the current level of 74m. Australia is little behind, but total annual population growth here is now reducing.

But politicians like population growth. It diverts voter’s scrutiny away from other measures of their well being. With high population growth, GDP will always rise, and governments will get re-elected, never having to face up to the reality of managing an economy with zero population growth; something that requires a whole new mindset and economic system.

Global human population at current rates of consumption and waste production is unsustainable. It prospers merely by drawing down on the earth’s capital, oil, minerals etc. But this is just another way of saying we survive by stealing from our children. Until we can achieve sustainablity, any use of population growth for political hyperbole and points scoring seems to me irresponsible, not to mention wholly unwarranted. It is doubtful that growth can be directly attributable to the presence of mind of the Beattie administration.

Debate about living ‘more sustainably’ is nonsense. You cannot live ‘more sustainably’ any more than you can be ‘quite unique’. You either are sustainable or you are not. Perhaps when we have achieved this, we can marvel at the ingenuity of the human race.

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