Showing posts with label water. Show all posts
Showing posts with label water. Show all posts

Monday, 16 May 2011

Australia can support a MUCH larger population

Name:          Sin Fong Chan
Subject:       Australia can support a MUCH larger population
Visit Time:   16/5/2011 at 4:49 PM

Remark:
Growth for growth sake is definitely pointless. However, Australia is a big country and surrounded by water - one of the biggest island on earth. However, we keep saying that we cannot support a much larger population, and it is not sustainable to have a big population.

Big population has its advantages - economy of scale, in terms of business sales, production, utilisation of assets, etc. Many large cities of the world have population much more than Victoria or New South Wales, and yet these cities prosper and flourish.

Sustainability will be a flop if we don't build more schools, hospitals, houses and infrastructure, or grow more food, capture more rainfall, purified more water, etc. We keep taking from the ground via mining, and not putting back or growing enough to re-nourish the land.

Not all the international students coming to Australia will become citizens of this country. The population growth is not as frightening as 300,000 per year as reported. Statisticians who make such projections are based on incorrect assumption. Properly managed population provides a larger pool of tax revenue. If we are selective to pick just the cream of these students, Australia can only benefit rather than being disadvantaged.

If we are short of food, we grow them from seeds; if we demand more electricity, we build power stations; if we need to travel, we build cars, aeroplanes, boats; if we have to stop swine flu spreading, we develop vaccines.

Why are Australians still sitting on their bums, keep whinging about lack of water? Open the atlas or search on Google and check out what is surrounding Australia? If all the whingers start to use their brains instead of their mouths, water shortage will never be a daily topic!

Many people in the world still do not believe that men landed on the Moon close to 42 years ago; many people in the world can never imagine that the monstrous size computer of the 50’s can be shrunk to the size of a note pad and yet is billions times more powerful; many people still hold the view that Australia vast desert landscape cannot be transformed into productive land one day.

If United States can support 14 times more people than Australia, where is the problem? Australians MUST change their mindset about Australia is going to be overpopulated!

Get real - Australia is not lack of water or lack of rain. Australia lacks “grey matter”, lacks innovation, and worst of all, Australia lacks good leaders!

Read related blogs:
Wake up Australia, Grow up Australia
Australia needs population growth

Thursday, 28 September 2006

Water solution

Name:        CHAN, Sin Fong
Subject:     Water Solution
Visit Time: 28/09/2006 3:48 AM

Remark:
So what, we do live on the driest continent on earth! If we have a problem, then we have to fix it.

When Maxine McKew interviewed Malcolm Turnbull on 26/9/2006 about water initiative, Maxine McKew's question about "there's too little being done on the supply" seemed too difficult for Malcolm Turnbull to comprehend.

If the population of Australia grows from 18 million to 20 million, a mere 10%, then the water supply must grow by 10% as well in order to satisfy normal consumption and irrigation. This has not happened, and with conservative thinking approach, will never happen. Damming more rivers, or building more reservoirs are like taking cookies from a jar of limited capacity and limited number of "cookies".

Many countries are blessed with large and long river systems, and just so happen the rain falls on well-positioned catchment areas. There is a saying, "if Mohamed does not go to the mountain, then brings the mountain to Mohamed" (no offence to all the Mohamed's, and this is not a racist remark). If the rain does not fall on the so-called catchment areas in Australia due to whatever the reasons - global warming, El Nino, etc., then we should consider creating man-made mountains and catchments where rain is abundant.

Building mountains is not a fantasy - if we can build freeways, we can build rivers. The soil from any excavated land and including that from open-cut mines can be piled up to form the mountains. What are the costs? The costs are probably peanuts when we compare that with loss of crops and export income due to draught and bush fires, and in time to come, loss of human lives. With the man-made river system, we can even solve the flood problem experienced in many parts of Australia.

The new river system will be linked to the existing natural rivers. Obviously, there is also a lot of spin-off from a mountain-and-river system - a new environment for aquatic creatures and wildlife, new food chains, increase in tourism and real estate development, just to name a few.

I'm not a futurist. I only consider myself as a spherical thinker.