Creating our Future — Some Concerns of an Environmentalist

Abstract

Australia is often described as having the fastest human population growth in the western world at 1.4 per cent per annum (ABS 1993). Queensland's growth rate in comparison is 2.52 per cent while the Gold Coast is currently experiencing 6.1 per cent which is equivalent to a population doubling time of 11 years. While such rapid growth is lauded in the media and discussed in glowing terms by economists, engineers and entrepreneurs, there are many others who in recent years have queried the wisdom of such rapidly increasing growth. In 1992 a group calling themselves The Union of Concerned Scientists, ‘comprising 1575 scientists from 69 countries, including a majority of Nobel laureates’ (Caswell 1) issued a ‘Warning to Humanity’ regarding the accelerating damage threatening humanity's global support systems. According to this group, ‘no more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished’. They refer specifically to over-consumption, poverty and spiralling populations: all of which we have in south-east Queensland.