Dear Dick,
I’m the retired cotton farmer, who sat beside your wife at the Mungindi Show in 2010.
Frosty Wooldridge is saying, what I have tried to tell people unsuccessfully for the last twenty odd years. Sadly, the world population has increased another 2 billion since then. While I agree with what you said in your book that education reduces population growth, it is also obvious, that the people who should be educated are not. Religions are still too, powerful teachers.
Education is too slow. Like my son and daughter, both quite smart, one is a doctor in science. They cannot see the urgency. They are used to be stuck in traffic jams. They think the next Apple iPhone will solve all the problems. It doesn’t worry them, that peak Phosphorus (a major nutrient in food production) is said to be only two three decades away. When farmers are expected to grow twice as much produce!
Like Frosty says, the problem has to be addressed globally. The Greens who should be leading the debate are blaming farmers. The Liberals and Labour are stuck in the continuous growth theory. I am worried for my three grandchildren and all the other poor little creatures that are being put in this world, without being asked.
About two years ago I put up a big sign along the Newell Highway, which read on both sides: THINK of your grandchildren, no CSG mining in food growing areas.
Now I painted over one side and it says now: THINK fewer children, it’s not about you, it’s about their future.
That is all I can do about it.
Thanks Dick for still trying.
Such a sobering and disturbing report, it’s the sleeper issue of the moment. But slowly the giant awakes: population made it to the ABC’s Drum show the other day, but was again dismissed as being a purely political issue, and that only racists were opposed to large immigration intakes! Seems like “fake news” (distorted facts) is still sadly in favour at our ABC!
What’s the UN’s muted position on population?
Of course it just music to the ears of the rent seekers: more consumers and tax payers! But as we know, endless growth is impossible and not desirable.
The Treasurer’s (S. Morrison) retort that we’d lose $5 billion in annual growth without high levels of immigration is another straw-man: I’d say we wouldn’t need the extra growth if we had less people to house, feed, employ, etc. Only rent seekers would benefit overall, again, and ‘lose’ if we had less people.
And we’re not talking about no immigration, just less immigration.
The sleeping giant slowly awakens!