Jenny Goldie (National secretary, Sustainable Population Australia)

Bob Birrell argues eloquently that, from an ethical perspective, the burden of greenhouse gas abatement should be shouldered by the developed world, including Australia. He notes that, should developed nations take on this obligation, continued population growth in countries such as the United States and Australia will “deepen the task”. Thus, he argues, the obvious way to limit the environmental damage consequent on population growth is to curtail international migration.

From a purely demographic point of view, this is rational. Net migration contributes more to annual growth than does natural increase, that is, births minus deaths. In the 12 months to December 2006, Australia's natural increase contributed 132,100 and net overseas migration 147,700 to annual growth.[1]  On current trends, natural increase will decline to zero and then become negative over the next three decades. Population stabilisation would be achieved the most quickly, somewhat paradoxically, by close to replacement fertility and zero net migration [2].

Taking in the big picture - We are, however, living in a world that faces a number of converging catastrophes and we are forced to look beyond the demographic ideal. Thomas Homer-Dixon, in his recent ground-breaking book ‘The Upside of  Down’ [3], describes five ‘tectonic stresses’ that are accumulating deep underneath the surface of our societies. They are:

• population stresses arising from differences in population growth rates between rich and poor societies, and from spiralling growth of megacities in poor countries
• energy stress – above all from the increasing scarcity of conventional oil
• environmental stress from worsening damage to our land, water, forests and fisheries,
• climate stress from changes in the make-up of our atmosphere, and
• economic stress resulting from instabilities in the global economic system and ever-widening gaps between rich and poor people.

Anticipating synchronous failure - Homer-Dixon is in no doubt that we are heading for breakdown. The challenge is to avoid synchronous failure, that is, ‘catastrophic collapse that cascades across boundaries between technological, social and ecological systems’. He adds two ‘multipliers’ that will make breakdown more likely, widespread and severe. The first is the rising speed and global connectivity of our activities, technologies and societies, and the second is the escalating power of small groups to destroy things and people.

Let us look more closely at the second and fourth tectonic stress in more detail: the increasing scarcity of conventional oil, or the imminence of ‘Peak Oil’ - and climate change.

Energy scarcity - First, the increasing scarcity of conventional, cheap oil. 

The recently released film A Crude Awakening [4]  makes the point that fossil fuels, particularly oil, are infinitely more energy efficient than human labour. So much in our modern world has been affected by oil in some way, from food to manufacturing but particularly transport. Yet supplies of cheap, conventional oil have peaked in countries like the US, Britain and Australia and will shortly peak globally. The main sources of oil are ever more in the hands of rogue or unstable governments such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Nigeria. Oil may well become a catalyst for war, if it has not already as in the case of the Allied invasion of Iraq.

At the beginning of the year, oil analyst James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, explained the stalling of prices in 2006 around $60 a barrel as:   “…the Third World has effectively dropped out of bidding for it♦and using it. They cannot afford it at $60-a-barrel. The Third World has entered an era of energy destitution and it is manifesting in symptoms such as local resource wars, genocides, falling life expectancies, and in many places a near-total unravelling of the socio-political order” [5].
  
Kunstler went on to warn about natural gas peaking. “Natural gas is used for heating in more than half the houses in the US and accounts for just under 20 percent of our total electricity production. Domestic supply is crashing. We are drilling as fast as we can, with more and more rigs each year, just to keep up... we could enter a home heating and electricity production crisis anytime. Massive price increases are likely to be required in order to reduce demand to the level of available supplies.”

Oil, meanwhile, resumed its inexorable price rise through 2007 and by the end of the year was over $US 90 a barrel. Economist Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, noted: “…so let me emphasize ... we’re now in our third year of very high oil prices..., even though there hasn’t been any major disruption in world oil supply.” [6]

It does seem that the world is fast approaching peak production in oil, with natural gas to follow not long after. As demand outstrips supply, prices will inevitably rise with flow-on effects in fertiliser and food production and in a host of other products, not least plastics. To what extent it will cause economic meltdown will depend on how quickly the world can move to alternatives. Jeremy Leggett, petroleum geologist and later Greenpeace activist, says we are unprepared for the transition. In his book Half Gone he writes: “The shortfall between current expectation of oil supply and actual availability will be such that neither gas, not renewables, nor liquids from gas and coal , nor nuclear – nor any combination thereof – will be able to plug the gap in time to head off economic trauma…” [7]

Climate change - Second, let us look at the effect of climate change.

The CSIRO projections for temperature increase over most of Australia is 0.4 to 2.0^oC by 2030 (relative to 1990) and 1 to 6^oC by 2070. While rainfall will decrease – indeed it already has – in the south west corner of the continent, and to a lesser extent in some parts of Queensland and the south east, there may be little change or an increase in rainfall elsewhere. Evaporation, however, will increase with higher temperatures. The difference between potential evaporation and rainfall gives a net atmospheric moisture balance. Decreases in annual moisture balance average between 40 and 120 mm per degree increase in temperature. This represents decreases of 15 to 160mm by 2030 and 40 to 500mm by 2070. This means greater ‘moisture stress’ for Australia. Indeed, with a 4.4^oC rise in temperature, largely because of this moisture stress, Australian agriculture will collapse completely. [8] [9]

Converging changes - What  will the combined effect of climate change and the end of the age of cheap, conventional oil mean for Australia? (For arguments sake, we will assume Homer-Dixon’s other three tectonic stresses do not erupt for the time being.) It will mean a loss of carrying capacity.

In the film A Crude Awakening, the point was made that human populations have been able to swell to over 6.6 billion only because of the ready availability of cheap oil. As the oil runs out, we may be able to support a global population of only 1.5 to 2 billion people, in other words, a quarter to a third of today’s current population. If we extrapolate that to Australia, it means we can only support in the long-term five to seven million people. If this is the case, we would not only have to virtually close the door to potential immigrants but also adopt a population reduction strategy – perhaps a one-child policy similar to that of China for a generation or two. Of course, if agriculture collapses in Australia we may not even be able to support five million unless we can buy food on the world market, but there would be no guarantee of that.

Significant new policy choices are needed now - But how feasible will that be? While climate change lowers our carrying capacity at home, it is likely to generate literally hundreds of millions of environmental refugees [10]. In its May 2007 report Human Aid, Christian Aid estimates there will be one billion refugees or internally displaced people worldwide by 2050. For instance, in Mali, located in the Sahel region south of the Sahara, farmers are already finding it impossible to live off the land in the way they have done for centuries because of erratic and declining levels of rainfall. Closer to Australia, residents of the South Pacific atoll Tuvalu are being forced from their island home because of incursions of seawater into their gardens as sea levels rise.

Australia, surely, must take some of these environmental refugees given our excessive emissions have added to their problems. But where from and how many? To what extent will we be able to help others if rising oil prices have led to economic ‘meltdown’? And how do we balance our responsibilities to our drowning human neighbours with our responsibilities as stewards of this continent? Many other species are threatened from climate change and may even face extinction as ever increasing numbers of humans encroach on their remaining habitat.

The question we must address is: at what point do we close the door? In partial answer, we do have an obligation to our immediate neighbours, such as Tuvalu, to take in those displaced by climate change. But just where do we draw the line?

References:

1. ABS press release June 5, 2007 “New ABS population estimates show births second highest and deaths highest on record.”
2. Professor Peter McDonald, ANU lecture series 2003.
3. Homer-Dixon, T. “The Upside of Down”, Alfred A Knopf, Canada, 2006, p.11, 13, 281.
4. A Crude Awakening. The Oil Crash. Documentary film 2006. Producer/directors Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack.
5. Jim Kunstler’s Forecast 2007.
6. Krugman, P: The Sum of Some Fears. New York Times Commentary. 27 July, 2007.
7. Leggett, J. Half Gone - Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis. Portobello Books Ltd 2005, London. p. 219
8. CSIRO. Climate Change – Projections for Australia
9. Johnson, P and Lee, B. “The Climate Change Journey”. Fire Australia. Autumn 2007.
10. Christian Aid. Human Tide – the real migration crisis. May 2007.