20 October 2010

How many Canberrans should we have?

| johnboy
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The ACT is a tricky thing to measure in terms of its overall ecological impact.

The Commonwealth taxes the whole of Australia and then spends a lot of money here in Canberra on intellectual capital generated by the Australian Public Service.

That money then buys food and power (with some very small exceptions) from the wider nation.

Without that national impact the city would be a local government area with a population equivalent at best to Gundagai (more likely Cooma).

But that’s not stopping the Standing Committee on Climate Change, Environment and Water (Meredith Hunter, John Hargreaves, Zed Seselja) from investigating the “ecological carrying capacity of the ACT and region”.

The answer is, like any city but more so: “as much as we’re willing to pay for”. Without paying for extra resources: “bugger all”.

That hasn’t stopped them releasing a discussion paper predicated on limiting the population to what can be sustainably produced in the region.

They await your submissions.

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All bar Nohope

Count me in as one of your defecators.
I live in Qbn but work in Canberra.
Thanks to a 36 hour week, 9/14ths of my daily dumps are carried out during working hours in hideous construction site sheds in your fair city.

There’s nothing more satisfying than taking a dump on company time.

You need to work on your timing!

I suspect that a little creativity among primary producers and engineers, along with a blank cheque from the Commonwealth (or anyone else, I’m not fussy) could see the total self-sustaining capacity of the ACT stretched to a billion or two. Of course it wouldn’t be very pleasant after the first half million, but that’s not the question they’re asking, is it?

It’s a stupid idea for a government to attempt to count the infinite.

bitzermaloney2:38 pm 20 Oct 10

5…. me, my mum, Uncle Bob & Aunty Sue and Mully… oh, make that 4.

The original Lower Molongolo Water Quality Control Centre was designed to take the crap from 300,000 Camberrans. At the time, land was set aside to replicate the structure two more times. So we are in theory planned to grow to 900k defecators in this joyful little borough.

Water input, on the other hand, is a different story entirely.

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