This image was chosen to put into context claims about Australian public transport being overcrowded (a point made during the episode) rather than to feed into the racist narrative that predominantly blames poorer countries for environmental problems. Image from http://www.shareyouressays.com
You can listen to this episode above and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. You can also listen to this episode on Stitcher, Cyber Ears or download it on Archive.org (74mins, 57MB).
On this one we take on the controversial issue of population, with the help of town planner and environmental activist Mark Allen. We discuss population on both a global and national scale, in light of Australia’s population recently reaching 24 million people. This includes addressing some feedback we got (see the comments on this post) on episodes 115 and 116, which focused on progressive parenting. The episode is a continuation from our discussion with Mark from our previous episode, #127, which focused on addressing urban sprawl.
Image from http://www.theage.com.au
Mark has written about these issues in his article ‘Why The Greens’ Plan For A Liveable Melbourne Will Not Save Melbourne’ and in the zine he has co-written ‘Why We Need to Talk about Population’ – available at New Internationalist bookshop in Melbourne. Mark has also set up the Facebook groups Population, Permaculture and Planning and Sustainable Cruelty-Free Communities.
Image from http://www.un.org
If you’d like to hear other episodes where we have covered population, we spoke about the issue at the end of episodes 15 and 44. It would also be worth checking out episode 10, where we challenged the notion of “legitimate” refugees/migrants, which came up in this episode.
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Clips:
Morrissey ‘End of the Line’, Bad Religion ‘Against the Grain’, The Jam ‘Thick as Thieves’.
You can listen to a short (8 minute) version of this episode, which features a shortened version of our discussion on population in Australia, below. You can subscribe to these short versions of our episodes through Omny.
progressivepodcastaustralia 