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The Forum > Article Comments > Peace in our time, habitat forever? > Comments

Peace in our time, habitat forever? : Comments

By Tim Murray, published 19/3/2010

National parks and wilderness: there is no sanctuary from economic growth.

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Far too much of everybody else, and just enough of you eh Tim?
Posted by Peter Hume, Friday, 19 March 2010 9:59:12 AM
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It was the movie Primary Colours where they used the elaborate metaphor of the fisherman wanting to take a pooh in the woods but was attacked by a bear - the fisherman was 'Clinton', the fish were the women he was sleeping with and the bear was the media. With Tim's story are the Nazis us or capitalism or are they the bears?

Remember Bruce Dern in that 60s movie about the forests floating in space? That's Tim.

Tim is pretty despondent. You and me are the problem. Every time we eat, breathe, drive, have babies or live, well, it's just a kick in the guts for mother nature. We're doomed. Doomed as doomed can get. There's a strain of anti-pop that reckon it's all over so the last one alive, would they please turn off the 40W globe.

me and others have debunked their closed system theory, their fortress Australia theory, their anti-immigration diatribes, and their anti-capitalist rants about growth.

The Nazis actually were early Greenies. They believed that the German people (Volk) sprung from the soil. They had their own conservation movement. There was a mythical association with forests, farms and people who tilled the earth. They ended up putting 6 million people under the earth but so it goes. In fact, the more I think about it, I can see some fantastic parallels between the Unsustainable People movement that Tim belongs to and Himmler's barking mad philosophies.
Posted by Cheryl, Friday, 19 March 2010 10:34:29 AM
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To think the introduction of a few simple democratic rights and the scaling back of a few entrepreneurial rights should fix this problem:
-Forbid any privately coordinated housing developments, making future development of housing a state/public only affair
-Any proposal to mine or develop a heritage/conservation area can ONLY commence if the specific project is admitted via referendum of all adjacent localities- or even the entire region or state(s) that the park is situated in.
-A census of all towns, remote communities, gauging if any would actually LIKE to urbanize up a bit (eg immediately surrounding areas of CBDs tend to endorse the idea, so do many highly isolated communities short on vital services), and an investigation into non-sensitive uninhabited ecoland to consider building new cities on, before any new developments are to be undertaken.
-A ban of a few decades of building new suburbs around the Sydney area (I imagine many from other major cities would feel the same)- which may be overridden or made permanent via referendum.

Therefore we have a sustainable and democratic (and likely more stable) system of population growth.
Posted by King Hazza, Friday, 19 March 2010 4:59:13 PM
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"me and others have debunked their closed system theory, their fortress Australia theory, their anti-immigration diatribes, and their anti-capitalist rants about growth."

Oh, please do expound. Just what argument counters the physical reality of a finite planet? I await with bated breath.
Posted by maaate, Friday, 19 March 2010 9:04:43 PM
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Seconded maate- I don't recall anything ever being 'debunked' as much as whinged about and associated with nazism a few times.
Posted by King Hazza, Friday, 19 March 2010 11:52:00 PM
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What is the difference between modern progressive socialism, national socialism, council of socialists and the Baal religion of the Cannaanites. They all believe the creation must come first and man must be iliminated to produce Eutopia or heaven on earth. Kill, kill, kill for out of the ashes and slime will arise the master race who will be the true caretakers of this beautiful new world order
Posted by Richie 10, Saturday, 20 March 2010 6:16:20 AM
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<<< Just what argument counters the physical reality of a finite planet? I await with bated breath >>>

Thirded.

The silence is deafening.
Posted by Severin, Saturday, 20 March 2010 10:58:54 AM
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Here you go Severin - population isn't the issue and it's not a case of 'physical constraints'. It's a matter of energy. The earth is not a closed system it's open to energy from the sun (makes plants grow, heating, etc) and the moon and a whole raft of other forces. Life depends on these.

One of the greatest changes in media representation in the last 100 years is the power of the image. And the anti-pops use the image of people eating the earth, much as a picture of a child eating an apple. It's an immature and fanciful image not born out by the facts.

Most of northern America, southern Africa, Europe and SE Asia are covered in food crops. Humans could grow twice as much but the reason they don't is due to supply and demand. We could also feed starving Africa, but strangely, the anti-pops don't seem interested in that.

The reason they're not interested is that they come from a scientific/functionalist paradigm. Frederick Taylor and his theories on scientific management of production lines was probably the best known. They are often anal/passive types. Nasty if they get in to power.

The anti-pops saw that we are food importers therefore we're doomed. We import about $500M per year as we have trade agreements with Latin America and SE Asia. We have to buy their food. Note that Australia exports $27 Billion in food last year. Food we have.

So far as population goes, humans have more than enough food to feed the projected 9 billion people in 2050. I'm more concerned with the population slide after that.

Of course Severin (are you as Masoch fan?), one day we'll run out of iron ore, oil, coal, gas, minerals and imagination. When that day comes you and the anti-pops can stage your coup.
Posted by Cheryl, Saturday, 20 March 2010 4:20:39 PM
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Cheryl,you are an extremely silly person.Go get a face lift or the like.
What is behind the face is beyond educating.
Posted by Manorina, Sunday, 21 March 2010 6:00:31 AM
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Manorina

You were expecting intelligent discourse from someone who describes Nazis as early greenies?

<<< The Nazis actually were early Greenies. They believed that the German people (Volk) sprung from the soil. They had their own conservation movement. There was a mythical association with forests, farms and people who tilled the earth. They ended up putting 6 million people under the earth but so it goes. In fact, the more I think about it, I can see some fantastic parallels between the Unsustainable People movement that Tim belongs to and Himmler's barking mad philosophies.
Posted by Cheryl, Friday, 19 March 2010 10:34:29 AM "
Posted by Severin, Sunday, 21 March 2010 11:14:55 AM
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http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/How+Green+Were+the+Nazis%3F
Posted by Cheryl, Sunday, 21 March 2010 11:41:46 AM
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Can invoke Godwin now? To call the Nazis "greenies" is as disingenuous and plain stupid as calling them "socialists".
Posted by CJ Morgan, Sunday, 21 March 2010 2:20:10 PM
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Seconded CJ- I was wondering when the "Pro-Pops" debunked the "anti-pops", but then I realized they just invoked Godwin (as you said) and tried to paint them up as Eugenicists, and of course made a silly strawman based on only the underused fringe arguments of anyone that thinks population expansion would cause problems and assumed victory (while being very careful to address any of the other points expressed on the site).

It's all coming back to me now.
Posted by King Hazza, Sunday, 21 March 2010 3:11:59 PM
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Hang on a second, I was asked by Severin to respond and when I do, I get insulted or else there are these snide little references from a boys insider club which makes up the bottom feeder profile of Sustainable Population whatever.

The anti-pops are fringe dwellers of a sideshow. A Year 7 kid could refute their arguments. In future have a crack at playing the ball instead of the man or woman.
Posted by Cheryl, Sunday, 21 March 2010 3:50:23 PM
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Yes CJ you were definitely right about the 'debunkers':

Not once was there an argument from them about where the future generations will go (either adding to urban density, replacing the (NOW) abundant farmland and forests, or a new city positioned in a less arable place- or possibly encouraging people to live on floating cities as proposed in Japan to counteract compressed urbanization).
Of course, that only goes for about a century into the future.
The rest of the space of what happens next is left blank.

It's a simple question- where do you PUT the new people? And of course, the sharing of resources (or requirement to invest more money to build the additional infrastructure of water recyclers and desalination plants).

Instead we get:
-Silly outlandish accusations
-Lazy slagging off
-Claiming one could 'refute' the arguments but constantly refusing to even answer some simply questions.
-A special category of their opponents which conveniently allows them to quote some loony that sort of coincides with some very base criteria and pretend they alone represent the gigantic sub-community
-Being very careful NOT to actually cite a specific argument actually put forward- or else be unable to pretend you didn't read it.

Strangely enough, the only answers to any of these questions are coming from people who see problems in population increases (and there are).

Yet a simple opportunity to prove me wrong by one such individual instead accurately recreated my own accusations.
Not mentioning any names.
Posted by King Hazza, Sunday, 21 March 2010 4:16:43 PM
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King H, old boy, you seem like a nice enough chap so I'll go easy on you.

The anti-pops are the con side in this argument. They have to first prove the case. It's no use going 'nah nah' or whinging when people have a go at you. You have to prove the case.

People are more than happy to listen to you, it's just that your arguments are at best untutored or silly and at worst, dangerous.
Posted by Cheryl, Sunday, 21 March 2010 4:45:04 PM
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Cheryl I'm unsure what the proof is supposed to be when both sides are only gauging future hypotheticals.

But regardless, for population growth, you need a place to put the new people (the development of new houses either expanding outwards from cities into farmland or woodland or desert (thus shrinking them), or else try to fit them in the existing living spaces (compressing the living space of each person)- adding to that the smaller share of infrastructure, or the establishment of new infrastructure (easily done- but no small feat).

In short, the population will still keep increasing, although it should not indefinitely. And with that in mind, too few people (either those opposed or those lobbying for population growth) are coming up with tolerable ideas to address it.

Proposals to scout our abundant drylands for artesian basins to try to establish new cities would be welcome- but proposals to simply slap down a few acres of housing blocks along the outskirts of existing cities at the expense of prime farmland or ecosystems- or any proposal that just puts more strain on the people of the cities, is quite frankly immoral and greatly detrimental to the people of the city itself (further subdividing living, traffic space, administrative services etc)- and are often the only proposals being made because they're cheaper and more convenient for the people funding them.

I can confidently say that Sydney, in which one could sooner travel from the northern suburbs to Newcastle than to the Harbour Bridge via the expressway on certain times of the day, is too crowded.

Yet *MY* only suggestions to remedy these have been highly democratic and egalitarian proposals.
Posted by King Hazza, Sunday, 21 March 2010 11:13:43 PM
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Cheryl writes, "We could also feed starving Africa, but strangely, the anti-pops don't seem interested in that."

Oh please, spare me! Who has been flogging patented genetically modified seed stock that locks African agriculture into expensive chemical dependence? The Greens? Ralph Nader? GreenPeace?

The decision to let Africans starve is purely based on politics and commercial imperatives.

You've got an agricultural chemical with a dubious safety record? No worries, "THINK OF THE STARVING AFRICAN CHILDREN". Saving poor children from starvation and helping countries develop is always the argument from free market neo-fundamentalists but the poor are always left to suffer in the mire (often designed and maintained by Western economic imperialism) and the West finds ever more obscene ways to conspicuously consume disposable crap. If capitalists gave a stuff about anything other than filthy lucre we would have stopped deaths from preventable disease and starvation twenty years ago.

The people who argue for increased foreign aid programs are invariably the same people who argue for ecological sustainability in Western production systems. Cite one example where "anti-pops", as you call them, advocate against aid to developing nations. I'll give you dozens where conservatives want to cut foreign aid while progressives call for a lift in foreign aid as a percentage of GDP.

As for feeding 9 billion, who do you think you're kidding? You don't only want to feed 9 billion, you think we can all have the whole box and dice. You'll forego the McMansion, luxury cars, widescreen tv's, whitegoods, re-styling and makeovers, overseas holidays, renovations, private schools, holiday houses etc to help feed the poor and stop thousands of children dying from preventable diseases every day? Or you think 9 billion can live Western lifestyles? Don't make me laugh!
Posted by maaate, Monday, 22 March 2010 6:02:14 PM
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Cheryl writes, "We could also feed starving Africa, but strangely, the anti-pops don't seem interested in that."

There is an axiom called Javon's Paradox. The basic premise of this is if you provide a means to conserve energy, you will in fact consume more. This can also be applied to human numbers. The more food you supply to starving peoples, the more they will breed to make more starving peoples. In the 1980's we saw those poor starving Etheopians millions of them. Since then, with the help of food aid, their numbers have TRIPLED! And they are all still starving.

The Canadian Senate wrote a report of exactly that.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/39/1/parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/fore-e/rep-e/repafrifeb07-e.pdf

The facts are these Cheryl. Yes, the energy coming from the sun makes the planet not a closed system on its own. But that is not the issue. The issue is the rate of flow of that energy. Plants can only process so much of that energy at a time. In fact, because of the low CO2, the lowest in geological history, plants today grow very slowly.

Thus, the animal world that depends on that energy stored in plants is limited in population size. It's called the carrying capacity. All biological organisms suffer from boom and bust cycles. It's one of the major drivers of evolution.

Since we humans are also biological units, we too must eventually adhere to the limits of carrying capacity. The fact that people are starving in Africa and other places is because they have reached that limit due to their shere numbers.

All populations that have exceeded their carrying capacity, or have had the carrying capacity pulled out from under them, collapse. The volume of that collapse can be as high as 99% of the population wiped out.

continued...
Posted by Richard Wakefield, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 12:25:34 AM
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the rest...

We are heading to that collapse, and there is NOTHING we can do about it as long as the population keeps growing, and essential energy sources go into terminal depletion, such as oil now is.

The fact is, we cannot feed 6.5 billion people without oil, and oil is in perminant terminal decline.

Nothing I have presented here is bent on any kind of bias or world view. It's the raw hard reality.
Posted by Richard Wakefield, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 12:26:21 AM
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New report on resource depletion. We are heading to not only a civilization collapse, but a population collapse. And there is nothing we can do to stop it, except prepare for it.

http://www.theoildrum.com/files/Tipping%20Point.pdf
Posted by Richard Wakefield, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 1:49:42 AM
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Thanks, Richard, for adding some light.

Cheryl (a.k.a. the "let's stuff people onto this planet until we're all shoulder to shoulder and knee deep in human excrement" sock puppet)is just a typical clone of the vitriolic overpopulation deniers who would see this planet destroyed for future generations. As such she and her ilk are the true misanthropes in the room here. The only thing that Cheryl has ever "debunked" here is the idea that she may have something of substance to contribute to this discussion.
Posted by Rick S, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 11:22:11 AM
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Thanks for that source, Andrew Wakefield.

The following link is to a nomination by the Australian Conservation Foundation of human population growth in Australia as a key threatening process under the Environment Protection Act.

http://www.acfonline.org.au/uploads/res/EPBC_nomination_22-3-10.pdf

It is indeed fatuous to imagine that the environment won't come last if it comes into conflict with human needs or wants, as Tim Murray wrote. We saw this here in 2007, when a combination of drought with more and more extraction of water for human purposes caused a threat to Ramsar listed wetlands. Drying up of these wetlands would have put Australia in breach of its international obligations under the Ramsar Convention. (Signatories have agreed to protect wetlands that are significant for the life cycles of internationally migratory birds and fish.) As John Howard said at the time, though, "People are more important than wildlife."

A lot of the heat from this debate comes from conflicting world views. To Cheryl and Peter Hume, only people matter. They can't imagine why Tim Murray would care about extinctions or leaving some room for other species, so he must be motivated by racism, misanthropy, or a desire to hog something good for himself. They accept the concept of private property, that Cheryl can exclude random strangers from her house, garden, and car, without being a people hater, but not that of collective property. We thus cannot exclude random foreighers from our job market, health care system, and other infrastructure or public services without being racist, misanthropic, fascist, etc., even if these systems collapse, so that no one has anything. Cheryl has explicitly called for open borders. (cont'd)
Posted by Divergence, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 11:34:02 AM
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And, in the decline following peak oil, not only will there be a desperate grab of any existing energy resources, food shortages will see locals desperately grabbing any available food resources as well. I can just imagine the large scale exodus from uninhabitable cities with empty grocery stores to the countryside and natural reserves in order to hunt down out of desperation that last large mammal for food. As a result, the prospects for the survival of other species will be increasingly dim until human numbers decline to the point where other species have a chance again.

We have created the potential for the decimation of other species on a scale that will make the current Sixth Great Extinction seem rather small in comparison.
Posted by Rick S, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 11:34:51 AM
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cont'd)

Cheryl and those who think like her also generally seem to lack mathematical literacy and any background in science. They have a cargo cult mentality towards technological progress, ignoring all the predicted advances that haven't happened. Nuclear power too cheap to meter, anyone? They know that the Green Revolution "proved that Malthus was wrong" and suggest that we bet our future that such advances will continue, but ignore the long list of collapses in the historical and archaeological records, every one of them a case where human ingenuity didn't save the day, with many of them related to overpopulation. That is why such people are here on this thread, "rednecking like mad", to use Forrest Gump's useful term.
Posted by Divergence, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 11:44:31 AM
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It’s sad that the fall of clubs and societies around the western world means that single, childless men have to participate in these lonely masturbatory fantasies about ridding the world of people.

You need a hobby. I would suggest women but that’s too close to what you allege is the problem.

a. There is no population problem - as a few astute people have pointed out, it’s a first world consumption issue. You haven’t even discussed that.
b. Africa is starving because of post colonial corruption, banana republic trading positions and the destruction of kinship values – you idiot.

Most of you can’t even posit an argument and when you do, it’s directly contradicted by someone on your own side.

One of the key reasons the Unsustainable Anti-Population lobby is a laughing stock that you demonstrate a classic case of Bearded Gnome Group Think. Anyone who disagrees with you is called a ‘Redneck’. Read widely, keep an open mind and grow up.
Posted by Cheryl, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 12:43:12 PM
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Gee, Cheryl, if that's sad, then what does that say about you when you take the time to respond to the posts here? Sad, and sadder, eh?

The shrill and mindless overpopulation deniers (SODs) like Cheryl just keep avoiding the requests to actually provide some real arguments and ideas, and degenerate into redneck name-calling, labeling, and other desperate attempts to try to somehow justify their radical and dangerous ideas. Their insistence that infinite growth is possible on a finite planet makes them the laughingstock of thinking people around the planet.
Posted by Rick S, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 1:00:18 PM
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"Gee, Cheryl, if that's sad, then what does that say about you when you take the time to respond to the posts here? Sad, and sadder, eh?"

You might want to think that through Rick. Now Rick, you're one of the saddest of the sad. You're anti-pop Emo. The arguments are all here. No one has even touched the demo job done on OLO on Kanck and the SPA last year.

Rick it's important for you and half a dozen others to keep the Bearded Gnome fire alight with your prognostications of the apocalypse. It's all you've got.

Mate, most of your comments about doom and gloom are really an inner manifestation of your personality rather than an outward assessment of reality
Posted by Cheryl, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 1:20:33 PM
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Sorry to disappoint you, Cheryl, but I am married, female, and have two children.

If you want to have an actual debate about population versus consumption, this is from a 2007 post of mine. Some of the numbers may be slightly different now, but the argument still stands.

"Reducing our environmental per capita footprint (i.e. consumption, 79 hectares in Australia) to the global per capita average of 21 hectares would make us a bit poorer than the average in Argentina (23 hectares). If we cut back to the sustainable biocapacity of 15 hectares we would be in the same ballpark as Cuba. Somehow I don't think you would like it.

Once you get below the Western European average (54 hectares) human well-being starts to fall off, in terms of the UN Human Development Index indicators, but there is no advantage to consuming more than that, so it would be a good thing if countries with higher footprints, like Australia, did do more to reduce waste and conspicuous consumption back to this level. If your country's biocapacity isn't sufficient for that, then you also need to cut population.

About 1.08 billion people out of 6.75 billion live in developed countries. The average per capita footprint for Australia, Canada, the US, and Western and Eastern Europe comes to 60 hectares. This leaves an average footprint of 14 hectares for the rest of the world. If we all cut back to 21, they would go from a Cuban to a near Argentinian level of consumption (i.e. still poor). It would take 34 years of global population growth at 1.2% to bring them back down to 14, and after that it would get progressively worse.

The idea of fixing everything by cutting developed country consumption won't work, because there are relatively few of us and because the global population continues to grow by about 80 million a year.

(Footprints are the latest from the Redefining Progress site.)"
Posted by Divergence, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 1:38:28 PM
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Gee, Cheryl, look around. You seem to be in an increasingly small minority here. Your meaningless apocalyptic doom and gloom, vitriol, and denial about what might happen if, by some miracle, we come to our senses and learn to live sustainably on this planet is tiresome, and gives away your fundamental personality.

You are obsessed with overpopulation denial, taking away any chance for future generations to have any kind of quality of life, and just want us to end up shoulder to shoulder, knee deep in our own excrement, and with no other species left on this planet. So, not only are you a misanthrope, you are simply anti-life. And that is how I shall address you from now on.
Posted by Rick S, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 1:46:16 PM
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Rick, I secretly think you'd like to be knee deep in your own excreta.

Anti-life? I'm not the one advocating Oz's population drop to 7M. I'm not the one saying we should push the refugees back out to sea. I'm not the one who's prime intellectual prism in this debate is instrumentalism.

By the way, I like writing to the anti-pops. It's like shooting fish in a barrell. 'Oh no' Rick says, 'Now he's shooting fish!'
Posted by Cheryl, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 1:55:16 PM
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"It’s sad that the fall of clubs and societies around the western world means that single, childless men have to participate in these lonely masturbatory fantasies about ridding the world of people.

You need a hobby. I would suggest women but that’s too close to what you allege is the problem."

Hmm, 4 children and 6 grandshildren. Yep, I'm childless.

If you think there is no over population problem, then I must ask you, at what level of population do you think this planet can have and all live comfortably?

If you think that Africa is not over populated (I guess you know better than the authors of that report), then maybe you need to pay a visit to Kenia, Etheopia, Congo, Nigeria, etc, etc. Then come back here and with a straight face say we are not over populated.
Posted by Richard Wakefield, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 11:34:17 PM
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"We saw this here in 2007, when a combination of drought with more and more extraction of water for human purposes caused a threat to Ramsar listed wetlands".

Shite, what do you think happened on a reasonably regular basis prior to humans (god forbid) installing dams and weirs along the river systems. Its human intervention that has stopped the wetlands drying up years ago (like in the first year of the drought). Its convenient to forget that though.
Posted by Country Gal, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 11:35:21 PM
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The anti-pops are like winos wandering around a railway yard at night. They can see the lights and they just want to say hullo.

Lets talk about finite resources. The anti-pops love this one. It underlines everything they think. They're not talking about food as we're knee deep in food. What they're talking about is mining commodities - the hard stuff: iron, copper, zinc, etc.

This is going to come as a terrible shock to them but once the world runs out of iron ore in 800 years time (even with 9B people - which is only a projection), then that's it. Geez, you don't need to be Einstein. We'll recycle, make synthetics, find new processes, etc but once it's gone, it's gone.

Now if you're going to base your whole argument on 'final causes' you need to look not at state control of fertility but invest it new technological processes. But the anti-pops hate technology. It's capitalism in action - which for them is part of the problem.

It's not hard to see why they are called Bearded Gnomes. They have boxed themselves in to a corner.
Posted by Cheryl, Wednesday, 24 March 2010 8:59:50 AM
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Charyl, your grasp of the problem is seriously flawed. We are not talking about mineral resources (though many of them are in terminal decline), we are talking about ENERGY. Oil is at or nearly at terminal decline. We cannot feed 6.5 billion without oil. Do you even understand the concept of carrying capacity?

Did you even read this report (one of many on the subject).

http://www.theoildrum.com/files/Tipping%20Point.pdf

Before you post again, please read this.

And oh, I love technology. I write software for a living.

BTW, your continued attempt to belittle and insult us just shows you cannot defend your position. It is not possible to have an intelligent conversation with people like you.
Posted by Richard Wakefield, Wednesday, 24 March 2010 12:32:30 PM
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Country girl,

Before 1788, a bad, long drought could have made wetlands dry out some years, but humans are taking the equivalent of 1/3 of the natural outflow at the Murray mouth in an average year, more in a dry year, according to the Murray Darling Basin Commission website. This has to make a difference.

Cheryl,

So we are "knee deep in food". It is a pity that the World Bank doesn't agree with you.

http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/0,,contentMDK:21665883~pagePK:64165401~piPK:64165026~theSitePK:469372,00.html

So far as Australia is concerned, we have enough now, but we consume about 80% (by value) of our own agricultural production

http://www.agmates.com/blog/2008/01/01/report-into-ag-production-export-discrepancies/

We export about half the grain we grow in an average year and much less in a drought. Now imagine a long, severe drought plus twice as many people and a world market that is short of food.

"No population problem, just First World consumption." Sources please? This is patently ridiculous because people have to consume to live. If there are enough people, it doesn't matter if per capita consumption is low. This is obvious from my last post. The global average consumption level is on the poverty line, but we are still having a serious impact on our global life support systems. See

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html

Africa - You may be right about some countries. Overpopulation is not always the main problem. However, Rwanda is definitely a case where you are wrong and Andrew Wakefield is right. See

http://website1.wider.unu.edu/conference/conference-2004-1/conference%202004-1-papers/Ansoms-Marysse-1905.pdf
Posted by Divergence, Wednesday, 24 March 2010 1:27:49 PM
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Thanks for that Rick Wakefield, much of the anti-pop thinking is as contemporary as your name sake Rick Wakeman's - the keyboard player of Yes. I also like the fact that you have kids. So many of the Unsustainables have been intellectually neutured.

Dang nang it, I could swear I started this post started talking about energy and then the anti-pops, as they often do, wanted to talk about shrinking resources. So now it's not minerals but oil. Ok? Ok.

Here Rick you are on to something. We can build roads out of plastic bottles if we need too but we can't make plastics without oil. This is going to be a bonus but more on that anon.

The great mistake modern economies have has been an over reliance on oil. They had a fab chance back in the 60s and 70s to diversify but they didn't. Shame big time and it will cost a pretty penny too. We can afford that because we have lots of people. If there was only you and me Rick living in Australia, we'd be stuffed big time.

The anti-pops have poo-poohed electric vehicles, solar power, nuclear power - in fact almost every form of alternative power source available. Why? Because they're not environmentalists. They're instrumentalists. Remember that.
Posted by Cheryl, Wednesday, 24 March 2010 1:42:21 PM
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Rick Wakeman hey Cheryl? Back in the days when you had a crush on that young firebrand John Winston Howard? Sound to me like you hit a false neutral and never made it past 1974.

You didn't respond to my observation about the disconnect between your feigned concern for developing nations and your undying love for a political and economic system that steadfastly refuses to provide meaningful relief and assistance to those developing nations. Cognitive dissonance or plain dumb? Are you willing to take a reduction in YOUR standard of living to help the starving hordes? It's all very well to live an ideological fantasy land but when we raise your taxes to ensure that everyone on this planet has enough to eat every day, basic health care and shelter, will you still exult the market and its capacity to provide for a unlimited human population?

I'm glad you're all over peak iron Cheryl but what can you offer us on peak oil, peak rare minerals and peak phosphorus? Nine billion people consuming as much as the world's wealthiest billion people do now?

What happens when we start running out of phosphate rock Cheryl?

I suppose the free market and science will save us? Just like we were all going to be driving around in jet cars and holidaying on Mars?

First we went to the moon and then... we realised we were stuffed. Just a bunch of dumb animals with nowhere to go and no way to get there. Nothing to show for ourselves but a few failed experiments in self contained biospheres. ...cont...
Posted by maaate, Wednesday, 24 March 2010 8:56:13 PM
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...cont...

See, this is where your ideological fantasy hits the reality of a finite planet. There are many rare elements that are fundamental to modern civilisation. Without them, it won't work. Even with your little men digging up 20th century landfills to recycle our rubbish, we will still run out of the stuff that makes this magical technological world work.

And this is without even looking at the breakdown of ecological systems. You ought to get out of the house some time. You might learn something. These production systems and monocultures that you so love don't float in space. They are impositions on the real environment that gave rise to our species and sustained us for eons.

I doubt this will ever dawn on you, or even affect you, but it may be your descendants who will be stuck on someone elses spit like suckling pigs because, quite frankly, genetically challenged intellects will be the first to be picked off.
Posted by maaate, Wednesday, 24 March 2010 8:57:33 PM
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Maate, Maate, Maaaaate,

Here's an insider tip for you and one which a Year 7 kids knows. One day the world will run out of minerals. It might take a 1000 years but it's going to happen. Now this is such a bloody self evident point that its laughable that the SPA have adopted this as their key argument.

The SPA's angle is the world is going to run out of minerals so (a) meddle with womens fertility rights (especially in Africa and Asia - they're less powerful) and (b) we're all doomed anyway - which null and voids their whole platform anyway.

Look Maaaaaaate, neither you or the Unsustainables give a fat rats about international development. You know nothing of how markets operates. You know nothing about demographics, trade, microcredit, energy renewal, synthetics, new manufacturing processes, etc, etc
Posted by Cheryl, Thursday, 25 March 2010 8:58:13 AM
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You're getting a little windy there Cheryl.

So you acknowledge that the world may run out of resources but it's all so far off into the future...that Cheryl sticks her fingers in her ears and mounts the "la la la I can't hear you" offense.

Cheryl, with your mastery of the stock market, what can you tell me about the world's phosphate reserves?

And with your polymathic scientific expertise, what is going to happen to agriculture when we run out of phosphate based fertilisers?

Simple minded questions I'm sure you'll agree but, it may have a bearing on your idea that the human population can grow indefinitely without consequence?
Posted by maaate, Thursday, 25 March 2010 3:13:55 PM
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Maaate,

Well phosphate is the 11th most common mineral on the planet. It's sitting in seamounts in the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, but it will be mega expensive to mine. So we'd better start now - or how about we just recycle our crap which is full of phosphate?

Our fate Maaate won't depend on Phos-fate.

My share advice to you is to buy heavy in phosphate. We could actually mine grave sites too, which would appeal to the anti-pops.

The anti-pop solution to a shortage of fertilisers is to limit the supply side of people. That's their solution to everything. Got an itchy back? Reduce the number of people. Got an old car? Reduce the number of people. Got a girlfriend that won't stop crying? Reduce the number of people.

Thanks Maaaate. Next time, lets talk about bauxite.
Posted by Cheryl, Thursday, 25 March 2010 3:53:18 PM
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There you go Cheryl, you've just opened the door between Web 1.0 (mindless abuse) and Web 2.0 (tapping into a vast intellectual resource).

Let's probe some of the facetious, facile and infantile ideas that have been propagated on Web 1.0.

Given your expertise in engineering, and specifically open cut mines in marine environments, I'm interested in how we might go about extracting phosphate rocks from the sea bed. Would you care to expand on how we might go about such an operation? I'm sure there is some commercial interest in your developments in this area.

Also, just out of interest, what proportion of the phosphate used in agriculture could be recovered from human sewage systems?

You're big on high dudgeon and imperious condescension Cheryl, I just think we need to scrutinise your bona fides on these matters.

And you may be right about humanity's fate not hinging on phosphate but if you don't know diddly squat about this, why should we trust you on anything else?
Posted by maaate, Thursday, 25 March 2010 9:10:16 PM
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"The anti-pops have poo-poohed electric vehicles, solar power, nuclear power - in fact almost every form of alternative power source available. Why? Because they're not environmentalists. They're instrumentalists. Remember that."

No, I'm a realist. I go with what works, rejecting what doesnt. Alternatives to oil have a ERoEI that is too low. That is, the NET energy is just too low to run civilization on. In the 1960's oil returned 100 joules for every 1 we put into getting that 100. Today it's 25:1. Alternatives are less than 2:1. Hydrogen is 0.2:1 (that is negative).

Oil built this civilization, there is no other substance that would have done that. We can no more take ourselves off oil than you can take your body off blood. It's a REQUIREMENT to keep this civilization running, and hence people fed.

Oil going into terminal decline means this version of civilization will end, just like a loss of too much blood from your body will end your life.

As for electric, I'll give you an example. Ontario, where I live, consumes 15 billion ltrs of gasoline a year. If we were to replace every car today with an electric one it would require the construction of 35 nuke reactors. Ontario has 12 at the moment.

Oh, but there is wind you say. For our province to get 15% of it's power from wind would require 77,000 of them to be built and take 200 years to build them.

People generally do not understand the scale of our society, and hence throw out these suggestions to get us off oil, but unaware of the sheer size of such change over. Besides, to do the change over will consume more oil that we have available.
Posted by Richard Wakefield, Friday, 26 March 2010 2:07:02 AM
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"Look Maaaaaaate, neither you or the Unsustainables give a fat rats about international development. You know nothing of how markets operates. You know nothing about demographics, trade, microcredit, energy renewal, synthetics, new manufacturing processes, etc, etc"

Actually, I support capitalism. I think it is the best method to do commerce and in the next version of civilization, raw capitialism will be the ONLY method of commerce. Governments will largely be extinct or impotent.

There is no such thing as "energy renewal". Energy cannot be created or distroyed, only turned into a less useful (to us) form. The problem we face is not of loss of energy per se, but outstripping the NET FLOW of energy available to us. The essence of carrying capacity. No technology can sidestep the Second Law of Thermodyanmics.
Posted by Richard Wakefield, Friday, 26 March 2010 2:13:19 AM
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"Cheryl, with your mastery of the stock market, what can you tell me about the world's phosphate reserves?"

It is likely that Cheryl is unaware that China outbid the US for a phosphate deposit near the Caspian Sea. She is likely also unaware that China paid 3 times the market price to potash from central Canada.

You don't do that unless you know something about the ultimate fate of potash.
Posted by Richard Wakefield, Friday, 26 March 2010 2:17:27 AM
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Thanks Rick W and Maaate,

re in answer to the latter, what does in matter what my profession is. The simple fact is that all of your arguments come from an instrumentalist position and are easy to poke holes in.

Good on you Rick W re your support for capitalism. Ultimately saving resources will come down to a price mechanism and synthetics. The other alternative is fertility reduction and government control of pop. Maate is quite right though that one day, no matter what, we'll run out of minerals. I'm always amazed when people bring this up as its so patently obvious.

What will happen then? The SPA will take over. Actually population is getting a good run in the news today and yesterday re the 22M Oz pop mark. They need all the help they can get.
Posted by Cheryl, Friday, 26 March 2010 8:43:24 AM
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I think I'm getting a bead on you now Cheryl. You seem to be some sort of Lib/Lab bot slavishly parroting the dogma.

You've basically admitted that the planet is finite but you are so psychologically and ideologically addicted to the growth cancer that you can't recant.

Earth's systems are constantly and systematically compromised, exploited and destroyed but still you chant your faith based mantra.

It's sad really but illustrates the psychopathy that must be confronted if we want to maintain &/or restore ecological systems, experience quality of life in human dimensions and pass this inheritance on to our children.

The only good to come out of the 500,000 population growth in the last 12 months is that a huge proportion of the populace has suddenly realised who Lib/Lab really serve and what the consequences are.

I'm glad you've been able to demonstrate the vacuous waffle that passes for a defence of exponential human population growth.
Posted by maaate, Friday, 26 March 2010 7:39:48 PM
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Cheryl. You are not adding one and one to make 2. You are admitting there are finite resources, which will soon start to go into depletion, and claim that somehow all will be ok as capitalism will just adjust accordingly. You are not adding up the consequences of shortages.

People who start to get squeezed for what they need riot. Just look at what is happening in Greese today. And the food riots of last year. This is just a small sample of what is coming globally.

You remove the essentials of life (food, shelter, warmth, and economy) and the public is pushed into desparation. People kill when they get desparate in order to obtain their tiny bit of a shrinking pie. Think of it like musical chairs were not only is a chair removed after each song, but a new dancer is added as well.

These past 60 years of relative peace and prosperity was only because of cheap plentiful energy. At no other time in all of human history was that achieved. And once that cheap plentiful energy no longer exists (expensive and rationed), we will return to what humanity has been for 2 million years -- struggling to stay alive, and killing to do so.

Read http://www.wakeupamerika.com/papers-and-essays.html

Reduction in population (which you must then admit is too many) will take up to 80 years to achieve. And it won't happen voluntarily nor by government decree. There are too many religions and cultures in the world that work against that, who demand their people breed more. China just dropped it's one child policy and is allowing uncontroled population growth. Understand that China's population, right now, is still growing -- the size of Great Britian every 4 years. That means every 4 years they have enough births to replace all of Great Britian. India is even faster than that. So the human population is still growing, for a little longer. Nature will change that.
Posted by Richard Wakefield, Friday, 26 March 2010 11:37:03 PM
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As a case in point that depletion is nearer than we think in at least some cases, gold production peaked in 2001 and has been declining ever since, accompanied by an enormous increase in price.

Yet Cheryl will continue with her anti-life rants, trying to make sure that things will be as bad as possible for future generations. Yes, she really puts the "mental" in instrumental.

For more information, see http://salmonarm.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/a-peak-at-our-future-by-rick-shea/
Posted by Rick S, Saturday, 27 March 2010 10:21:27 AM
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