A Greater Australia: Population, policies and governance - CEDA

Section 2.5question: can population policy be used to effectively mitigate Australia’s future greenhousegas emissions?To put this question in a more exact form, assume that future government policy restrictsnet migration rates over the next few decades such that our population peaks at a littlehigher than today, and then declines thereafter, reaching a stable population size in2050 of 20 million people (ie, lower than the current size, and only 56 per cent of theforecast upper value of 35.9 million). Under this scenario, if projected rates of per capitaproductivity were to hold, despite the changed demographic assumptions, then, underBAU, Australia’s emissions would still rise to 780 Mt CO 2e by 2050, an increase of 40per cent over 2000 levels. As a result, a transformation of energy generation systemstowards a predominance of low-carbon technologies, improved energy efficiency andconservation, and/or lower economic growth, are still required for emissions cuts.Clearly then, an ambitious population policy, operating in isolation, would prove to beinsufficient to curb our greenhouse gas emissions. Demographic impetus means thathuman population size is slow to change, and therefore not a particularly effective“lever” for mitigating emissions. One reason for this sluggish momentum is that inAustralia today, life expectancy is over 80 years, and almost 55 per cent of today’spopulation – 12.4 million people – are not yet 40 years old 27 . Thus, in 2050, most ofthese people will still be alive. No fertility or migration policy will alter this fact.What matters most: technology transformationThe challenges to achieving a modern Australian society that is able to protect itsnatural environments and mitigate the worst effects of climate change are massive.These problems encompass substantive social, political, and economic issues. Howcan Australia – with 22.7 million people today and a likely larger population in the future– adapt to this changing landscape?One idea, proposed in the early 1970s, is to adopt a “small is beautiful” philosophyand deploy appropriate technologies that are relatively simple and work on only localscales, but might eventually achieve a large bottom-up shift towards sustainability. 28A related approach is to advocate for fundamental behavioural change in society. Yetthis has patently not happened to date, and it remains difficult to envisage how anycollective society would initiate such change, and then pursue it at sufficient pace andon a grand enough scale to make a difference, while at the same time upholding thedemocratic and liberal freedoms that Australians cherish.The alternative is to seek shortcuts that can drive a more rapid transformation, basedon major policy interventions on infrastructure, investment, and promotion of technologicaladvances that result in broad-scale benefits to both human society and theenvironment. 29 The concept of the “techno-fix” – the idea that social problems aremore quickly and efficiently solved via application of technology rather than relying ona multitude of people to act rationally – is alien or anathema to most environmentalists,perhaps because it involves engagement with the neo-classical economic ideas ofcontroversial environmental commentators like Simon 30 and Lomborg 31 .Yet in a way, the recent analysis of Australia’s future carbon emissions abatement pathwaysby the Treasury 32 can be seen as an endorsement of the pursuit of techno-fixes. Inthis case, a pathway for energy transformation was defined, and various technologiesfor low-carbon electricity generation were evaluated on the basis of their fit-for-servicematurity, economic competitiveness and scalability. Indeed, most of the technologiesthat are postulated to be providing energy to a “large Australia” in 2050 are not yetA Greater Australia: Population, Policies and Governance108