Neo-env Watch - Where the Debate Will Go
Tim Flannery, Paleontologist (Yes....his expertise on fossils of Australian mammals is a great boon to climate change knowledge), Australian of the Year and neo-environmentalist typifies the new type of leftist environmentalist. Over a decade ago, Flannery was peddling the sky is falling rhetoric of over-population. Like most neo-env's though, he doesn't practice what he preaches. You see, even though over-population is a 'major problem', and Australia's 'sustainable' population is 6 to 12 million, yet Flannery has fathered 2 children.

Of course, this touches on the real issue at hand. Neo-env priests like Flannery, think that people are not positive influences. They think of Joe Blogs as a drain, not a producer. This is why they want to decrease this drain. Just as Flannery and his church are working hard to get governments to enforce their war on warm, so to will they leverage off their successful climate change propaganda to push the over-population issue. Taking their beliefs to their logical conclusion however, means that solutions to the over-population issue will have to be enforced. This forced depopulation is already started to become mainstream, for instance, as Dr John Reid said on ABC's ockhams Razar

n the discussion of human impact on the biosphere, two separate but interactive issues are being conflated. These two issues are climate change, due to the emission of greenhouse gases, and the excessive demand for resources, due to overpopulation. (Bear in mind, population and consumption, like mass and energy, are interchangeable qualia.) Unchecked, both climate change and the overuse of resources are at the level of 'catastrophic' on the scale of their impact on the biosphere.

But the problem of climate change is solveable by means we can discuss. We can talk about alternative sources of energy, carbon trading, energy-efficient buildings and a host of other technological fixes, including esoteric notions such as a sunshade-in-the-sky, as discussed recently on The Science Show.

By engaging in this discussion, we can feel at least we are addressing the problem. And as long as we feel we are doing something about climate change, we can relegate to the back-burner having to think about the much more confronting, unmentionable problem of how to reduce the human population.

Notice the link between over-population and climate change. Dr Reid continues

I believe the problem of overconsumption/overpopulation will not be solved by civil means, as the United Nations Millennium Ecosystems Assessment optimistically suggests. By the time there is consensus that drastic action must be taken to reduce over-consumption, it will be too late.

Consider just a few examples of the measures people will have to accept: First and foremost the notion of steady economic growth – every year an increase in the world's GDP, as The Wentworth Group of Scientists and the Stern Review envisage – will have to go into reverse. We in the affluent world will have to accept substantial reductions in our standard of living to allow space for the poor, mainly in Africa, to improve their nutrition and health status.

To achieve this, income and wealth distribution within our societies will have to become much more equal. The higher up the tree one is, the greater the sacrifice one will have to make.[Emphasis added]

Note the socialist ideal of equalising wealth and the reference to 'not being solved by civil means'. I'll come back to that.

Stringent measures will have to be put in place to reduce water consumption, particularly in countries like Australia where water is a scarce commodity. Using potable water to cool industrial processes and as wash-water will have to stop, and this includes air-conditioning equipment in large buildings, power station cooling towers, paper mills, dairying and agriculture, etc, etc.

And forget the idea that water can be used to grow cotton in Australia. I have heard it argued that the return on the cost of the water is higher for cotton than the return on the same water used to grow food. This is the private-benefit-at-the-expense-of-public-cost argument, and it won't wash!

[emphasis added]

Yep. Another socialist alarm just went off. The government will have to step in to enforce these things, because we can't have private industry benefiting from the use of water, even if they pay for it! Obviously other countries will have to grow cotton for clothes etc and push the water problem elsewhere (Of course, importing from overseas will have to be done by sail boat in future). Instead we should use our water in a more inefficient manner by trying to grow food crops.

Contrary to a recent forecast that the world's fleet of fossil-fuel-burning motor vehicles will triple over the next 50 years, the fleet will have to be reduced to no more than about 10% of the present number.

Perhaps water meters that turn off automatically after a household's daily ration of water has been consumed will be fitted to every house.

Meat will be rationed to no more than, say, 200 grams per person per week.

Yep. So if there is an accident in someones place and they lose all their water, they can go thirsty. And everyone has to become a pseduo-vegetarian too, eating all those inefficiently grown food crops instead. But it gets even better.

Municipal authorities will provide allotments so that people can grow their own fruit and vegetables. We could turn some iconic sports arenas into vegie gardens.

And private property rights will be severely curtailed to prevent landowners from engaging in environmentally-damaging behaviours. And many, many more such infringements on what we now regard as our rights will have to be accepted.

More government owned land! Less private property, more government control....the socialist ideologue is coming on strong. All in the name of protecting our environment and future of course! Besides....it is all 'scientific'

If we do not delude ourselves, and if we accept the calculations made by the Global Footprint Network and WWF (and I know of no scientific analysis that refutes the basic validity of the model) there is only one ineluctable conclusion. The population of the world must be very quickly reduced to 5 billion (that is, if 6 billions equals 120% of capacity, then 5 billions equals 100%). And then, as the average level of affluence rises, fairly quickly reduced further to, say, 2 to 3 billion.

You gotta love the 'i know of no scientific analysis' line. Classic rhetoric. Deny there is any opposition, and if called on, either say it isn't 'scientific' or that you merely didn't know about it.

Reid's solution? A virus in the water, targetted at affluent (Burgeoise?) regions, to make a large proportion of the planet infertile. It is the only 'humane' way you know. (I would lay money that he supports abortion because it is a women's right to choose, but here he advocates true government interference in reproduction) But what about the aging population problems this will cause?

Dealing with a healthy aged population would be manageable [Talk about deluded - AG]. If all the world's aged were like the 80- to 90-year-old Okinawans, we could probably manage quite well. But dealing with an ageing population beset by the consequences of over-eating the wrong food and under-exercising will be an order of magnitude more difficult. Societies will not be able to provide the healthcare services needed to keep large numbers of unhealthy old people alive.

A triage approach will be necessary so that scarce medical resources go to those who can contribute most to the long-term viability of the planet. Consequently, many middle-aged-to-elderly people will die uncomfortable deaths. Not every problem is solveable.

So much for 'humane'. 'Uncomfortable'? Pathetic. Of course, the environmentalists obviously will be contributing 'most to the long-term viability of the planet', so they have to get the medical treatment first.

Dr Reid thinkgs over-population is a 'self-evident fact'. From that I guess he really means to say is that it is self-evident to the highly intelligent, well educated, elitist neo-env's like himself, and everyone else is just ignorant, deluded or wicked. He doesn't explain why the dire predictions of 40 years ago by similar chicken little over-population moonbats (It was 'self-evident' then too!) did not come to pass?

Moonbat neo-env's are not new, but now with climate change they have scared the population and some governments into taking their crazed ideas more seriously by foisting unscientific 'evidence' and other rhetoric as unarguable 'scientific' evidence for their position. Watch for more and more rhetoric about population reduction and totalitarian controls using the same climate change rhetoric. it is only a matter of time.

(HT: Tim Blair)
- posted by Alan Grey @ Monday, January 29, 2007