CALLS FOR RUPERT MURDOCH TO RETURN TO AUSTRALIA

On 30 May this year, Bindi Irwin launched my new book, “Dick Smith’s Population Crisis” at Dymocks great store in George Street, Sydney. 

The launch was a tremendous success.  Bindi, who represents the present generation and our future, launched my book in front of numerous radio and television media.  In her speech, Bindi used some simple metaphors to illustrate what can happen if we lurch blindly ahead with no clear plan on population. 

Here’s Bindi delivering her fantastic speech ….

Following Bindi’s speech, I gave my address to the media where I called for Rupert Murdoch to return to Australia.

And, for some great post-launch comments from Bob Carr, Professor Garry Egger, Peter FitzSimons, Dr. Anthony Kidman and Mark O’Connor, watch this …..

Linked HERE is an article written by Michael Stutchbury, Economics Editor of The Australian following the launch of the Wilberforce Award and the screening of the Dick Smith’s Population Puzzle documentary on 12 August.

I have therefore decided on a special $5,000 prize for the first young person under the age of thirty who can get definitive coverage of the Wilberforce Award in the Murdoch press, including the fact that you can’t have constant growth of the use of resources and energy in a finite world.

So go for it!  It must be possible.  One day there will be a journalist working for Murdoch who understands the truth and believes responsible journalism means that both sides of an argument should be fairly shown.

Remember, this is not an emotive view – it’s a simple fact.  We can’t always have growth in the use of material resources and energy in a finite world.

Check out what Sydney’s Channel 7 News had to say about the Award, as well as what The Australian and the SMH had to say about Dick, the doco and the award.

Channel 7 News Coverage of Dick’s launch of the Wilberforce Award on 11 August

SMH: Dick’s blonde ambition: $1m cash to save civilisation
The Australian: Dick Smith offers $1m for person who reduces population with Wilberforce Award

The award is designed to give a one million dollar prize to anyone under 30 who can impress Dick by becoming famous through his or her ability to show leadership in communicating an alternative to our population and consumption growth-obsessed economy.

The launch went off without a hitch – although, it was touch and go there for a while as it was unsure whether Dick’s dog was going to relieve himself on the million dollars prize money.

The media were well represented with members from Channel 9, 2UE and the ABC there, amongst others.

Dick took the opportunity to explain the details of the Wilberforce Award and its importance.

He said that he he will be looking for candidates whose actions over the next year show that they have what it takes to be among the next generation of leaders our incredible planet so badly needs.

Similar to the Nobel Prize, candidates will not apply for the Wilberforce Award.

Instead Dick will be following the media throughout the world to see who is the most outstanding individual in not only making a significant contribution to this important issue, but who also becomes famous through his or her contribution to the debate.

One year from now Dick will announce the winner of the $1 Million Wilberforce Award. The Award will go towards advancing the momentum the winner will have already achieved.

Further details on the Wilberforce Award will be provided on the DVD of Dick’s documentary, The Population Puzzle. You can purchase the documentary here.

Dick Smith and his family, including his wife and two daughters were there, as was the Director Simon Nasht, and many members of the crew.

Following the film a lively debate ensued with filmmakers, politicians and members of the Australian Population Party all contributing to the discussion with Dick and Simon.

To see what happened at the event, check out the photos below.

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.

Yes, I knew that our oceans were being over-fished and stocks were reducing. I knew that our Federal Government was paying tens of millions of dollars to our farmers in the Murray Valley to stop farming and to bulldoze their crops because of a lack of water.  But for some reason I’d never linked the two together – population and environmental degradation.

From that day on, I’ve spent my life getting as much information as I can about population and population growth.  Yes, I’ve learned a lot.  I have read over a dozen books on the issue – some claiming that the global warming / climate change story is all a giant hoax instigated by scientists who want more and more “gravy train” money from the government, others claiming that the world’s energy is a bottomless well and there will always be huge surpluses of energy available, and still others which say that there will be extraordinary problems in the future with our environment and quality of life as a result of unsustainable population growth.

However, a most important point is left out.  Even though we may be able to grow to 100 million people in Australia – what would be the advantage in doing this?  The question is why?  Of course, to wealthy people, population growth will generally increase their prosperity and wealth.  I know this, because I have made more money out of owning industrial and commercial buildings in Sydney over the last twenty-five years than I did in owning Dick Smith Electronics and Australian Geographic.  So the wealthy will get more.  But what about the average wage and salary earner and retiree?  Possibly over 80% of our population?

I have a feeling it’s all “down hill” from now for most Australians as the population increases.  I can’t think of any of our present problems in this world which are alleviated by more people.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I think unrestrained population growth will make virtually every problem more difficult.

Yes, we are told that efficiencies of scale will give us greater benefits.  However, let’s look at our country compared with the USA.  The USA has fifteen times our population, ie. fifteen times the efficiency of scale in a roughly similar land mass.  Do the Americans have a higher standard of living?  I don’t think so.  Do they have better medical care?  I don’t think so.  Do they have better roads?  Well, they certainly have more freeways, but their roads seem more gridlocked than ours.  Do they have a better education system? There’s no evidence to suggest that they do.

I believe we in Australia are currently at a very “efficient” number of 22 million.  Our Prime Minister said that he welcomed a “big Australia” of 36 million and at a later date said he didn’t really have a view on population numbers – that it was just going to happen.

But typical Australian families do have a view on population numbers. Believe it or not, an Australian family could have between fifteen and twenty children during their lifetime – few rarely do.  Most Aussie families decide on an optimum number, whether it’s two, four or even more – the number that they know they can properly raise.

Seeing that Aussie families have a plan for population which isn’t the maximum, why doesn’t the same apply to Australia?

I believe it’s exactly the same with the population of a country.  With 22 million, we have the potential to share in the wealth of this country.  Increase the population to 44 million, and each person has the potential to share in half as much.

Now, by going to 44 million are we actually going to produce more?  I doubt it.  We are not a country who makes small gadgets in factories where you need lots of workers. We are, in fact, a country that earns most of its money from exporting minerals and from farming.  Neither of these is labour intensive industries.  I understand the total percentage of our workforce employed in mining in Australia is approximately 1.5%.  Also, more people just means we can dig up our minerals and ship them off to other countries even faster, meaning less for future generations of Australians.

It’s the same with farming.  Farming is highly efficient in Australia because of the broad acres, machinery and a small amount of labour.  In fact, that’s the only way we can compete.

The big decision about a population increase is, “what’s in it for most Australians?”.  I believe the answer is “less and less”.  We would do better to try and curtail our population increase, and then concentrate on being truly sustainable – moving away from fossil fuels which are most likely polluting our environment into energy that is coming every day from the sun and other sustainable sources.

by Professor Garry Egger

Obesity is now the biggest epidemic the world has ever seen – bigger in numbers than the bubonic plague of the 14^th century or the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Yet despite its obvious causes – over-eating, inactivity and an (over-rated) influence of genes – no single country has been able to slow the epidemic down.

Over 15% of the world’s population are now overweight or obese (in Australia the figure is 56%) – and all this only since around 1980!

The question that has to be asked is why? How is it that humans have existed in some form for probably a million years with very few ever asking the question ‘does my bum look too big in this?’, but that obesity has become rampant in the last 30 years? 

Strangely enough, the answer seems to be from being too successful. Progress has been (over the last 200 years) based on economic growth, a measure of the throughput of consumption. Up to a point, this has been great for humanity: we’ve all become more wealthy, longevity has more than doubled, infectious diseases have become just nuisances rather than major killers, and health care is generally the best that money can buy.

 But growth is finite. And as with all investments, there comes a time when further input leads to diminishing returns. As humans though, we’re not content to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labours at this point.  We want more – and more, until the costs start to outweigh the benefits.

Until around 1980, the consumption base of economic growth served to satisfy real needs – food, clothing, housing, health etc. But once these had been satisfied, further consumption became necessary simply to satisfy the growth machine. (If you look up your dictionary, synonyms for ‘consume’ are: ‘eat’, drink’, guzzle’, get through’, ‘devour’, ‘munch through,’ ‘chomp through’ – all good ways to get fat, while co-incidentally adding to economic growth).  This has not only led to a rise in obesity, but also to a rise in greenhouse gas emissions, and hence climate change.

 Another way to look at this comes from the New Economics Foundation in the UK:

 “From birth to maturity a hamster doubles its weight each week. If, then, instead of levelling off in maturity as animals (and all growing systems) do, the hamster continues to double its weight each week, on its first birthday we would be facing a nine billion tonne hamster… there is a reason why in nature things do not grow indefinitely.”

So growth – beyond a point – and obesity, as well as the obesity-related diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease, are related. As pointed out by one analyst: “Growth beyond maturity is either obesity or cancer.” But how, I hear you ask, is population involved in this?

Traditionally, economic growth has been driven by three main factors: resource discovery, technological change and population growth. The latter is the easiest – and ‘laziest’ way of doing this. Increasing the number of people to whom to sell increasingly redundant products is a no-brainer for developers, politicians and unthinking media and big business. The more people, the bigger the market, the more sales of fattening products that are needed to fuel the growth engine, without adding anything to real human needs.

It is important at this point to re-state that this hasn’t always been the case: that increased population and economic growth have been tremendously important for human gains – to a point. But life is dynamic and the need for change is brought on even more rapidly by change itself.

It’s also important to recognise that this doesn’t spell the death knell of entrepreneurship, or even development. In fact, it will be innovation, driven by personal achievement that is likely to be the only way to help us change a system that even the early economists – JS Mill, JM Keynes, Adam Smith etc. – saw would have to be modified to a steady-state system at some stage.

In the first instance however we need a greater awareness of the issue. And this can only happen through increasing public debate, bringing in the economists who currently know that growth can’t continue indefinitely, but who are hiding their heads in the sand so they don’t have to think about the alternatives. We need more with a background in business – and not just academics – to bring this to the public attention. And more people speaking out in support. After sizzling for years, the real debate has only just begun to fire up. Dick Smith’s documentary (‘The Population Puzzle’) will play an dynamic part in this.

 Dr Garry Egger is Professor of Lifestyle Medicine at Southern Cross University and an advisor to the World Health Organisation on chronic disease. He was the originator of the GutBusters, men’s ‘waist loss’ program and is joint author of “Planet Obesity: How we are eating ourselves and our planet to death.” (Allen and Unwin).