Overloading Australia by Mark O’Connor & William.J.Lines

Overloading Australia—How Governments and the Media Dither and Deny on Population,

by Mark O’Connor and William J. Lines;

Envirobooks, 2008, $19.95.

It’s really an old-fashioned pamphlet grown obese, I thought as I read this important but somewhat misguided little book on one of the great issues of our age—the impact on the globe of an enormous human population of big consumers.

Environmental debates—for and against—seem to be ideally made for pamphleteering, with so many matters too complicated for even Quadrant articles, but not worth an expensive, time-consuming book. Pamphlets could also accommodate the typical range from the cranky to the seriously scientific.

The authors’ main point is that the planet cannot absorb a human population now soaring from nearly 7 billion towards 10 billion by 2050, compared to a mere 2.5 billion in 1950, without leaving future generations a severely degraded and depleted Earth, with the best natural resources gone, waterways fouled, severe overcrowding general and many non-human species gone forever. And that is without global warming.

Australia’s obligation here, they say, is to hold population at its present 21.5 million and if possible reduce it, by limiting immigration to around 50,000 a year or less, compared to three or more times as many in recent years. They argue that the transfer of a few million of the world’s billions from more crowded countries to this less crowded one will have little impact on the big picture, but here they will embrace a way of life that will make them much bigger consumers of the earth’s resources and emitters into its atmosphere. Their suggested low migration intake leaves room to continue accepting present refugee numbers, they say.

They add that Australia, despite its vast extent, just does not have sufficient water or arable land for its present population, and with more people would be less and less an exporter of food and other natural bounty to more stressed lands. They make the good point that the real cause of today’s terrorist violence and small wars is often not so much religion or politics, but the frustration of swelling numbers of young men who have no prospect of a job or land.

So far so good. The argument is not as unfamiliar as the authors seem to think, but they express it with passion to the point of haranguing, in the good old pamphleteering style. They are also unsparing of what might seem natural allies on the Left, who they portray as so fearful of being labelled “racist” or “Hansonite” that they steer clear of the central question of reduced immigration.

O’Connor and Lines’s spleen about the “New Class”, the Greens and ABC bias is reminiscent of more assertive writers in Quadrant, but they also have a sharp pen for “natalists”, who favour a higher birth rate, including Cardinal Pell and former Treasurer Peter Costello, and the “business lobby” for promoting more immigration for mere profit.

But clutter spoils a lively and valuable effort. The characteristic zealot’s preoccupation with the enemy takes up about half the space and there is also, to a lesser degree, a superfluity of quotations from friends of the cause. O’Connor acknowledges that he built up a “rat’s nest of clippings” before writing, and the book reads like it. Some of these myriad arguments are worth answering but many are not. Even the long-dead super-natalist Colin Clark is in the gun over comments thirty-six years ago, along with many seemingly uncompre- hending or venal politicians and media commentators over the years.

This clutter flows over into the 344 end notes, which take up thirty-eight of a total of 223 pages. A big proportion of these are even more quotations, with which the authors agree or argumentatively disagree but have tucked away with second-class status, along with a cornucopia of references.

The book also bulges with arguments and statistics about excess population in other countries. The population problems of Africa and the Philippines, for example, seem immense, but the detail intrudes into the main argument and perhaps would have been better treated as a separate pamphlet.

There are some obvious rejoinders to the arguments about Australian overpopulation, for example David F. Smith’s article “Green Myths About Australian Farming” (Quadrant, April 2009), which points to success over the years in improving soil of indifferent fertility and to the potential of Australia being rich in water as desalination techniques develop and become cheaper.

Like many they criticise, the authors avoid their own share of hard questions. They have the common tendency on the fringes to see economics as optional ideology rather than a search, however, flawed, for the truth. To them, economic growth is an “obsession”, not a quest for full employment, without which many people are very unhappy and likely to risk not having roofs over their heads or food on the table.

They seem insensitive to the real political and human problems of low immigration—in essence, which countries and whose friends and relations are to be kept out and at what emotional cost.

Emission-free nuclear energy, including its potential for desalination, is not touched on. There are good arguments against it, as well as for, but it might have been mentioned. Many Quadrant readers and contributors would take erudite issue with the uncritical acceptance of man-made global warming. The authors are also are crass enough to jump on the “denial” bandwagon in hinting that “population denialists” belong in this increasingly crowded category.

A simpler, more relaxed version of this book would have been more enjoyable and effective.