Pericles,

You can trash the environment (and reduce the number or humans that can be supported) in two ways, by being very greedy and ignoring the future, or by boosting the population to very large numbers so that people are forced to trash the environment in the interests of immediate survival. There are plenty of examples of collapses due to both in the archaeological and historical records. I have referred you (on another thread) to Steven LeBlanc's book "Constant Battles" (by a Professor of Archaeology at Harvard). Another good source is David Montgomery's "Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations". Collapses also can also occur when population growth makes safety margins too thin, as with the Irish Potato Famine. The deaths and suffering that go with a collapse are horrendous.

You seem to think that we can't stabilise our population, so must begin the downward spiral to extinctions, drastically reduced living standards, and ultimate collapse. This is nonsense. Our fertility rate is slightly below replacement level and has been since 1976 - no problem there.

Countries are no longer at risk of invasion by other states unless they are small and/or very poor because of nuclear weapons. Australia could have these in a matter of months and would have them if there were a serious threat on the horizon, regardless of the posturing of current politicians. No nuclear weapons state has ever been invaded.

Excessive immigration, legal or otherwise, is only a problem if a country's elite has chosen to tolerate or encourage it in their own economic self interest. Chiefs have always been ready to sell out their people for a few strings of beads. Elites can and do change their tune on this, however, when there is sufficient pressure from the bottom up. The US had essentially a zero net immigration policy from 1921 to 1965. See the graphs in the following publication from the Center for Immigration Studies, where you can see that low immigration is often correlated with periods of prosperity.

http://www.cis.org/1965ImmigrationAct-MassImmigration

Pericles

You sometimes display a misanthropic attitude to your fellow humans. Living with our environmental means does not require bunking in with hairy-nose wombats. Your arguments are more than a little hysterical.

We don't have to plunder the environment indefinitely, as others have explained we can (and in some countries have) bring our populations into balance. We also have just started to create technologies that will kick the non-renewable habit. Just recently, in my own home town, in my old alma mater, RMIT, a far more efficient solar panel has been invented, much smaller in size:

"Revolutionary solar panel more than doubles efficiency"

http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2010/03/02/2834502.htm?site=melbourne&program=melbourne_mornings

Lighten up and listen. Get all warm 'n fuzzie and rational.

I am obviously not getting my point across very well.

I am generalizing. Trying to examine our attitudes to cutesy widdle animals in contrast with how we see our relationship with the rest of humanity.

>>Are we really so sad, self obsessed and avaricious as a species that nothing else is allowed to co-exist?<<

Well yes, in a global sense "we" are. As in, the human race is just another animal fighting for survival. If that means competing with the Hairy Nosed Wombat for the resources we need, then it's nothing more than "us 'n' them", really.

Forget about Tasmanian tree-huggers for a moment, an immensely lucky and privileged breed, and think instead of the average Mumbai slum-dweller.

http://artsytime.com/life-in-slums-of-mumbai/

What would they do with a Hairy Nosed Wombat, do you think?

Blue Skies is fairly typical of the Polyannas amongst us.

>>Well I care! We CAN share the world with nature. We can make some small modifications to how we we make money, how we travel and how we farm in order to accommodate nature.<<

No indication of "how" or "who". Just "yes we can".

Just wishful thinking.

Divergence is in the (quite extensive) team that uses the problem to justify an anti-immigration solution. There's really nothing anyone can do for people like that.

And Severin, you are absolutely right as always. (Except for the misanthrope and hysterical bits, of course).

>>Living with our environmental means does not require bunking in with hairy-nose wombats... We don't have to plunder the environment indefinitely<<

Of course we don't "have to".

But there is nothing that we can usefully do unilaterally, either as individuals or as a country, without facing those uncomfortable questions that start "what will be the effect of...[enter your preferred action here] on the people of this village/town/city/country?"

Except, of course, if you were to discover a source of non-polluting renewable energy.

That we then share with the world.

But you would still have to ask that question: "what will be the effect of having an infinite source of clean energy"

Will population still be a problem? If so, why?

Pericles poses the question whether the continuous and relentless increase of population will be a problem for everything else. Well, he didn't quite put it that way but it is worth contemplating the impact of more than 2 billion extra souls over the next 40 years. The F.A.O says 2.3 and the U.N. 2.9 billion, an increase of about one third.

It may not be significant in the Western World but it certainly is a difference in the Third World. Population to our North in Greater S.E.Asia is increasing at the rate of 20 million every 3 months, (F.A.O. figures a year ago) Not only will they breathe oxygen provided by the existing vegetation but they will require some form of shelter that consumes part of the vegetation, plus clean water and food.

As lifestyle of the wealthy nations is beamed to a TV in the open window hutch of the grass hut to the dozens seated on the ground , the wealth displayed by the media is envied to the extent that hitherto a life of stoop labour in the paddy is now not acceptable - the viewer is conditioned for the better life of "Big Max, and bread and butter"

Therein will lie the problem of consumption of the Earth's resources. No more from lands already drained of resources above and below ground but from so far untouched territories, forests and marginal tundra still apparently available. Is this what the boat refugees from Sri Lanka and the Middle East see in Australia?

We broadcast our image to the World. Many have risked,(and lost), their life for the dream of peace and plenty while there are others, currently on trial, hell bent to destroy it. The U.N. has warned of food riots and a modern day exodus from trouble nations of the Middle East and Africa. Will the pressure of another 2 billion souls in such a short period of time allow the natural world to provide and then sustain? or will it be the scientists and farmers finding ways and means to do so ?

Pericles old mate - I'm not going to put the boot in here, but I think you're talking through your arse.

You know next to nothing about wilderness, and quite deliberately it seems. There's much more to it than "cutesy widdle animals", as you put it.

Hate to say it, but sometimes you sound like a prat.

(Yeah, so undoubtedly do I on occasions...)

CJ Morgan

Ditto

Pericles, it is not about "cutsie widdle animals", it is about maintaining and enabling biodiversity, from the smallest microbe to the largest animals (including us). On this topic you appear no better informed than religious fundamentalists.

I have been over this soooooooo many times with you in the past, provided links you have clearly not bothered to read or you would still not be prattling on about cute animals and "fuzzy" thinking.

You are capable of debating with skill and from AN INFORMED standpoint, on this you display neither attribute.