Until about five years ago, I had never thought about the population issue. It simply wasn’t in my realm of thinking. However, one thing which gives me a little bit of solace is that most of my friends were the same.

In September 2009, my youngest daughter, Jenny, phoned me and said, “dad, they are all talking about human induced climate change, and they’re all going off to Copenhagen. Why don’t they talk about the ‘elephant in the room’”. I said, “Jenny, what’s that?”. She said, “population!”.

The instant she said the word, it was almost as if a light was turned on in my head. Within seconds I realised how stupid I had been. Here we were talking about problems which are facing our planet, but people weren’t talking about the most obvious problem – too many people. I knew that we had something like 6.7 billion people in the world, and this was predicted to go to over 9 billion by 2050. But I’d never actually linked that with a great many of the problems we have in our world. continue reading

“What do we do about unsustainable perpetual growth, increasing inequality, and declining job opportunities due to robots and automation?

The demographers tell us that in rich nations such as Australia, the next generation will live shorter lives than their parents while levels of unhappiness and mental illness will be rising.

Most of us feel something is wrong but we don’t know what to do about it.

Surely our grand-kids should have as good a life as we have had?  That’s why I’m starting a new group called Dick Smith Fair Go.  Have a look at the new web page Dick Smith Fair Go. The prime aim will be to find ways to stabilise our population and to share the wealth better.”

An interesting article published in The Guardian by Jason Hickel on November 5, 2016 regarding climate change.  See here

Posted: 21.12.16

This article by Michael Bachelard appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on October 9, 2011:

For Australia, nuclear is the power of last resort

The Climate Agenda was a partnership between The Sunday Age and website Oursay.org, which let readers vote for the 10 questions they wanted the paper to answer. The full agenda and previous answers are at  theage.com.au/national/climate-agenda/

QUESTION: ”If the government is so serious about reducing CO2 emissions, why do they keep ignoring the single most effective method for doing so: nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is far cheaper than ‘renewables’ and kills less people per unit of energy produced than even solar or wind. New generation reactors improve safety significantly and render the long-term waste storage issue moot, and thorium fast-breeder reactors cannot melt down accidentally at all. France has shown how easy and effective nuclear is at reducing greenhouse emissions. Why doesn’t the government spend some of it’s enormous ‘clean energy future’ research and advertising budget to help educate Australians about the facts around new forms of clean atomic energy?”

RUSSELL HAMSTEAD

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Here is a link to an article, which News Limited recently wrote in relation to my views on growth and sustainability.

Posted: 12.09.16