Reply by Francesca Davis
Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population argues that "Australians impact on the environment in two ways: by our numbers and practices". The problem with this argument is that it deals with the issues of population growth, consumption and production outside of the social context of existing power relations. It lays the blame for environmental problems at the feet of the wrong people.
Twice as many people does not automatically mean twice the environmental destruction. Environmental destruction is a consequence of what people consume and how the goods and services they consume are produced.
AESP acknowledge this: we must "abandon our totally unrealistic growth dependent, economic system and the materialistic lifestyles it promotes". Unfortunately, the majority of people do not own or control "our" capitalist economic system, nor do they have a say in the promotion of a "materialistic lifestyle".
The capitalist economy is run by the owners of businesses who produce for maximum profit, not environmental sustainability. If making a large profit means producing in a more environmentally destructive way, they do so without qualms.
Likewise, decisions to produce and market useless products, wasting precious resources in the process, are made by the huge corporations that own the industries, not by ordinary people.
This wasteful lifestyle is created and promoted by a vast advertising and marketing industry, not by consumer demand.
Until society in general can control what is produced and how, environmental destruction will continue, regardless of the size of the population.
AESP does not argue for, or even raise the question of, democratic control over the economy. Instead, it focuses on the number of people living in Australia and argues for a "balanced" population.
AESP states that "international equity" cannot be achieved by moving the world's poor to affluent countries. While this is true, it does not mean the poor have to be abandoned. The poverty most Third World people live in arises directly from the domination of their economies by the First World — north America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
The long-term exploitation of the Third World's labour and resources by First World governments and big business has left these countries devastated — socially and environmentally. One of the consequences is a very high birth rate.
Cancelling the massive debts owed by Third World countries, and redirecting those vast sums to development and education, would be the obvious proposals of an organisation which is informed by compassion and seeks to repair wrongs and really reduce population growth.
Yet AESP, choosing to ignore international power relations, abandons the Third World to its fate. AESP argues that each region must find its own way to ecological sustainability and that only "once we've halted and reversed growth" can we share our experiences and knowledge with other countries.
How can parts Africa, plundered by First World capitalists for their resources and left arid and unproductive "find its own way" to ecological sustainability? Does AESP call on Australian big business to stop exploiting the labour and natural resources of south-east Asia and the Pacific so that those regions have a chance of sustainability?
Third World regions cannot preserve their environments while they are subject to the domination of First World capital.
AESP advocates that we wash our hands of responsibility for the damage done by Australian business in the Third World, and simply worry about ourselves. Once Australia's wealthy — mostly white — population is saved, then we can worry about the poor — mostly coloured — "other people" in our region and the world.
By concentrating on Australia's fragile ecology, is AESP implying that other ecosystems are less valuable than Australia's? On what basis should Australia's be prioritised? Surely, all people have the right to a clean and sustainable environment, not just Australians.
Preserving Australia's environment alone will not save us from global warming, the pollution of air and oceans, the collapse of the world fisheries. These problems do not respect national borders.
Limiting migration simply leaves those people fleeing poverty, war and famine with nowhere to go. It punishes the people of the Third World for the economic and environmental destruction unleashed against them by governments and businesses based in the rich, western countries. It implies that Third World peoples are less deserving of the quality of life Australians have.
While few individual AESP members would consider themselves racist, AESP's policies are racist. In the US, the environmental group the Sierra Club recently rejected a policy of limiting immigration. It concluded that the relationship between population and the use of resources is a global question, not a national one.
I look forward to AESP doing the same so it can focus on the real causes of environmental destruction.