I cannot recommend strongly enough (again), that anyone who wants to talk credibly about growth should first consider Albert Bartlett, and the exponential function:
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4364780292633368976&ei=dP2LSorwAoKgwgPuruWpDg&hl=en#
We only have this one planet. At some point, growth must stop. This is absolutely as inevitable as death and taxes.
So the only question is, when?
When are we going to start planning for a sustainable, stable population?
Bartlett uses the example of a bacterium, which divides and doubles every minute; 1,2,4,8,16... The bacterium is placed in a container at 8.00 in the morning. The researcher records that the container is completely full at exactly 12.00 o'clock. At what time is the container only half full?
At what time is the container only a quarter full?
At just 3 minutes before 12.00, almost 90% of the container is empty.

This article completely ignores the that world's resources are finite and that economic activity is completely dependent on those resources. The quote "Human beings are not mouths that consume, but minds that produce" is bizarre! I konw that I eat and if you are reading this, presumably you do too. Minds produce ideas but they need materials and energy to be realised. So the statement is meaningless. If we ignore the fact that the world's resources are finite but keep expanding our population nonetheless then this statement "Man is man’s greatest resource” could beocme true for food! Only someone who puts "faith" before reason could believe this rubbish.

Of course the rest of the people in the world aren't bacteria in a laboratory of which Grim, or Albert Bartlett are head scientists, much as they dream of how lovely this would be. This is indeed the scientistic fallacy.

Unlike bacteria, people have the ability to rationalise resources with a view to the future. But it by no means follows from this fact that the best way to do that is to vest command and control powers in the hands of the egghead class, which history has shown to be an unmitigated disaster.

Tea party, radical individualism, capitalism, abortion - this one has the lot. Too many kids have abortions, no argument there, but it has nothing to do with the generative drive of an economy. Population is only one vector of analysis when it comes to an economy - and not necessarily the most significant in an advanced capitalist economy. The right to an abortion resides with the woman, not the state or free enterprise.

Perhaps Babette would like to explain why Australia's hypothetical shortage of young people can't be met from places like, say, India, which has roughly 300,000,000 people under 20 -- people who are already born and looking for a chance to improve their lives. They could supply an couple of siblings extra for every nuclear family in Australia and barely notice it. But somehow that option is never explored by the pious 'pro-lifers'.

Is it really falling birth rates which is the issue here -- or xenophobia?

Have a look at this map of world poverty... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

Basically the more red, the more poverty... But the surprise is that it is a map of FERTILITY - how many children are being born.

You know how our government seems unable to fund hospitals, schools and roads, and this is with our population failing to produce enough children to replace ourselves... imagine the problems of fundiong these essential

services if the population was not declining, but trippling every twenty years... no wonder they are poor. Worse than schools and hospitals, they somehow they also need to find more farmland too!

50 years ago, perhaps we could have ended poverty. But now there are so many more poor that the problem is so much bigger. For example, there are 60 million shanty-town dwellers in India alone, and only 20 million Australians... Let alone Indonesia, the Pacific Islands, New Guinea... What about Africa? Sth America? etc etc...

Why is China becomming so rich and powerfull? The one-child policy. It means they can finally afford to catch up with the infastructire and education that nations need to get ahead and build wealth.

I don't like the 'one child policy', but Thailand and surging Iran (Think nuclear power) also have zero-population growth due to marketing, free contraception and free choice. It's not really the feminist idea that educating women reduces population growth (think Iran, they're not keen on educating women)...

...continued