Ehrlich warns ‘you are destroying your life support systems here’ and says his prediction of a 90% chance civilisation will collapse in 50 years is based on ‘gut feeling’

Australia is “working to become a third-world country” through its economic dependence on mining natural resources for export and reliance on coalmining, according to doomsday ecologist Paul Ehrlich.

Ehrlich made the prediction on the ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night, after dismissing the views of other panellists on the question of whether Australia was overpopulated as “mostly nonsense, unfortunately,” and before praising the economic theories of electronics retailer Dick Smith.

“Talk to your ecologist,” Ehrlich said. “You are destroying your life support systems here. You are working at it really hard. You are also working to become a third-world country, because your specialisation of course is to take your raw materials, like your coal, which will destroy the world of your grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and ship of as much of it unprocessed as you possibly can out to the rest of the world.”

Ehrlich told host Tony Jones, who seemed to be struggling to manage the octogenarian academic, that his prediction of a 90% chance civilisation would collapse in 50 years was based on a “gut feeling”, and freely admitted that a number of his predictions, such as the prediction the United Kingdom would be a small group of impoverished islands occupied by 70 million hungry people by the year 2000, hadn’t quite borne out.

He suggested the chances of a nuclear war between the US and Russia were greater now than they were during the cold war and the chances of nuclear war between India and Pakistan were greater still.

“Who can guess what the odds are on those, you get scared,” he said. “But on the general trend, I think we will be very, very fortunate to avoid a collapse.”

Ehrlich was joined on the panel by the education minister, Simon Birmingham, opposition finance spokesman, Tony Burke, writer and entertainer Wendy Harmer, and Dai Le, a Liberal councillor for Fairfield in Sydney and founder of the Diverse Australasian Women’s Network.

Neither Burke, a former immigration minister, nor Birmingham agreed Australia was overpopulated.

Morrison chastises 'do-gooders' who let Muslim children not sing anthem Read more

“I don’t think there is any need in Australia to consider small-family policies because in the end we as a country have relatively low birth rates … how you achieve that is you have a prosperous economy with well-educated populations, and particularly well-educated women in the workforce, and that is what tends to keep your population down,” Birmingham said.

He then defended the decision of a Victorian primary school to excuse between 30 and 40 Shia Muslim students from singing the national anthem while they were observing the holy month of Muharram, prompting Jones to observe that cabinet ministers were more moderate since the reshuffle.

Muharram marks the death of the prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein ibn Ali, and those observing the month of mourning must abstain from anything joyous, including singing.

Birmingham said he would hope all Australian schoolchildren were “enthusiastic” about singing Advance Australia Fair. But he added: “If there is a legitimate reason in terms of somebody’s faith, whether it’s of Islamic faith or Jewish faith or Christian faith or anything else, that for a few days or a few weeks of the year it’s not appropriate for them to join in singing or other types of activities, then we should respect that.”

His comments were in stark contrast to those of the treasurer, Scott Morrison, who told talkback radio last week the teachers who allowed it deserved the “muppet of the year awards”.

Burke said those angered at the incident had ignored comments from senior Shia clerics, who said it was not necessary for the students to skip the anthem.

“So, no one should take this as it has infiltrated out through public conversation as somehow this is a broad Islamic principle that they can’t sing the national anthem,” he said.

“And also remember, for the parents who made that particular decision ... they still made the decision on the basis that they viewed our national anthem as something incredibly joyful.”

Dai Le, who immigrated to Australia from Vietnam, said she felt the school had made a mistake in this case but the blame should not fall on the students.

Le said she had always sought to be part of Australian society, but that Australia needed to do more to ensure that cultural and ethnic diversity was reflected in parliament and business circles, including introducing targets for numbers of Asian Australians in leadership positions, just as there are in some companies for gender equality.

“When people give me the argument about merit, I say I can assure you ... especially if you look at our parliaments, a lot of the males that are in there did not get there based on merit, I can guarantee you that,” she said.