Catholic World News
Australian bishop raps Green Party campaign on population fears
August 19, 2010
Bishop Anthony Fisher of Parramatta, Australia, has criticized the country’s Green Party for its negative attitude toward population issues. “Hostility to ‘population is hostility to people,” the bishop argues.
A range of interests, prejudices and genuine arguments collide here: the perennial fear of newcomers; a view of human beings as “pollution” of an ideally people-free environment; fear of a boat-borne “Asian invasion”, complete with people smugglers, queue-hoppers and terrorists; anti-capitalist and anti-development feeling; Malthusian nightmares of people over-breeding and over-consuming resources.
The fears of a population explosion are absurd, Bishop Fisher points out. “Australia has close to the lowest population density in the world. Most of our country by far is uninhabited or barely so.”
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