Igniting the Population Bomb
According to my mate Wiki, we are only less crowded than a handful of countries including Namibia, Mongolia and Western Sahara. In comparison, Cairo alone has 31,000 people per square kilometer. That’s dense, man.
This week, Australia had a day of navel gazing on our national holiday, (can you guess what it’s called?) Australia Day: a day of barbeques, sausages and light beer. The ads in between the tennis – the Australian Open has been on the past two weeks – were of close-up shots of sizzling snags (that’s slang for ‘sausages’, for all you non Aussies) and the main news story was of the population forecasts for Australian to the year 2050.
Apparently, if we keep having babies at the current rate, open up our borders to all comers and relax our citizenship and refugee laws, our population could leap from the current level of 22 million to a whopping 35 million in just 40 years. Forecasts say Sydney and Melbourne, both hovering around the 3.5 million mark, would double to 7 million each.
Me? I’m a bit selfish. I like the line from the former politician Bob Carr, who asked: what’s wrong with having open spaces, clean empty beaches and easy access to nature? Why do we have to become a built-up nation like most of the world? That’s what makes us unique. And given my government-issued showerhead already runs at a miserable trickle thanks to our already tight water restrictions, and despite Queensland being flooded yet again, God only knows where the water for all those 35 million daily showers is going to come from…
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Hi Belle, but we really miss you!!
ReplyDeleteI didn't expect you will blog from Australia but it was nice that you did. About Australian population and our population it was interesting to know that huge disparity between them but don't you think it is a serious problem?!... It seems that the Australian youth doesn't care about the family values. Well, most of the young people in the western world don't care of having family; I mean getting married, having children and carrying their responsibilities but I don't know why I expected that the Australians are different!!.
Ha, just in case you didn't know (and I doubt it) Egypt has defeated Algeria 4-0 (imagine!!) in The Africa cup in a very strong match the Egyptian team has ever played. Also they have won the cup for the 3rd time consequently without any defeat but they have defeated all the candidate African teams to the world cup!
Yep, you need to be careful about who you let in - for example, make sure they know how to assemble a snag sarnie on the beach... Keep on bloggin'
ReplyDeleteHa, thanks Adam! You can't be too careful at the immigration desks. To translate, Aladin: he means: Australia should only let in people who know how to make a sausage sandwich on the barbeque ('bbq' or 'barbie' for short). Barbies are a big part of socialising in summer in australia - it's sort of like a national pasttime, and everybody does MASSIVE family barbeques on the beach near my house all summer, regardless of if they're indian, european, arab or asian ...
ReplyDeletePS: Mabrook Misr (Congratulations Egypt), I did know about the Africa Cup, my facebook is full of match replays, but my favourite is this bit of footage http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=448527460093 which was shot after the Algeria defeat. It's in Korba tunnel, just near where I used to live (ohhhhh how depressing saying that!).
ReplyDeleteHi again Aladin, I've been thinking about your comment about young people not wanting to have kids and take that responsibility.
ReplyDeleteNot having large families is only one reason for our small population: historically Australia has always had a tiny population - well, European settlers killed the original inhabitants through violence and illness (no flu in paradise before we came). And the first European settlements were in their hundreds, so from that base, we have bred to the current population of just under 22 million.
Having large families needs to be reviewed across the world: can the globe support the human population if everyone has 10 kids, like they did in the past couple of generations? Obviously not, in China's case, which is why they introduced the drastic one-child family policy.
You know, Egypt is concerned it cannot support its own enormous population, so I don't think Australia suddenly growing enormously is at all desirable: if Australia can balance our natural environment with quality human existence, then surely this is the best possible scenario? For both Australians and our globe.