Melbourne’s Malthus cuts the power to Victorians

One sure way to get rid of people is to cut off their power. Thus, it is no surprise that it is the “Malthus of Melbourne” himself, ALP Member for Wills, Kelvin Thomson, and his accomplices in the Australian Conservation Foundation, who are behind Victorian Premier John Brumby’s decision to shut down Hazelwood Power Station.

Hazelwood is Victoria’s second biggest power station, and produces up to 25 per cent of the state’s base load electricity.

Under the cover of the fraud of global warming, Thomson and co. have led the campaign to smear Hazelwood as Australia’s “dirtiest” power station due to its carbon dioxide emissions, and have it shut down, as a “direct action” to stop climate change.

But Thomson actually has a more sinister motive—he pushes the idea that we can’t address climate change without addressing the problem of overpopulation, or, as he puts it, we can’t reduce our carbon footprint unless we reduce the number of footprints, i.e. reduce the number of people.

Obviously, Thomson got the idea straight out of the Malthus depopulation handbook: after plagiarising Venetian mathematician Giammaria Ortes’ fraud in his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population, asserting that the geometric growth of the human population will always outstrip the arithmetic growth of the food supply, Parson Malthus said that the only solution was to deny the population adequate infrastructure, in order to create the conditions that could periodically lead to mass-death events—“court the return of the plague”, he said.

Consider what Victorians can expect if Hazelwood is shut down: already, thanks to electricity privatisation and under-investment, Victoria doesn’t have an adequate electricity supply. In January/February 2009 that led directly to a Malthus-style mass-death event, when 374 people, the majority over 75 years of age, are estimated to have died in the heat-wave that preceded the Black Saturday bushfire tragedy, as Melbourne was hit with waves of blackouts and brownouts from privatised power infrastructure which had been deliberately run down in order to extract more profit.

The privatised, deregulated industry is planning to address this inadequate capacity, by introducing new “smart meters” which will discourage consumers from using electricity at the very time they need it most—during heat waves and cold snaps—by forcing them to pay the “market”, i.e. sky high prices during peak times.

That itself is a recipe to kill elderly and vulnerable people, but how many more people will be killed by this decision to cut the power off altogether?

And, for the depopulation lobby, will it be enough?

Kelvin Thomson’s opponent for the election in the seat of Wills, Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood, today declared Thomson a “menace to all Australians”:

“Thomson’s success in shutting Hazelwood affirms that people are at risk while this depopulation fanatic is in parliament and in a position to influence public policy,” he said. “It’s time for Tiny Thommy to go!”

For a list of CEC candidates in the federal election, click here.