Malcolm’s entire premise in his post is a fallacy, he is obviously deluded.

The underlying theme he espouses is that population is not a problem; despite the growing evidence human overshoot on this planet is creating some serious problems.

Malcolm fails to acknowledge we will need to triple, at least, energy production by the end of this century to meet demand. No matter what mix this energy production actually is will be irrelevant, the only possible conclusion we can come to is that the "expected demand" will never come to pass because there are almost certainly limits to growth in energy production.

Every which way you look at it, a planet of nine or 10 billion looks like a nightmare.

Currently politicians have opted for failed diplomacy, i.e. the UN Convention to combat desertification, whose job it's been for 20 years to stop land degrading and becoming desert: Failed. The Convention on biological diversity, whose job it's been for 20 years to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss: Failed.

What politicians and governments say about their commitment to global problems is completely different from what they are doing.

The key here is very simple; humans don't want to change their behaviour.

Unfortunately Malcolm has no idea or understanding that humans cannot change their fundamental behaviours.

Malcolm has also failed to acknowledge our animal (deterministic) nature. It is pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that past human behaviour is a reliable guide to future human behaviour.

Malcolm’s confusion would disappear if he would acknowledge the painful, depressing fact that humans are what they are, and will therefore do what they do (and have always done) in these large, fundamental matters (e.g. growth and consumption).

The scale and the nature of the problem are simply not being communicated and Malcolm is a case in point.

I must object to Malcolm King's fabrication that I said the following in the February 2013 Sustainable Population Australia newsletter:
"In the 1990s, John Tanton founded the anti-immigration Zero Population Growth. Tanton is an anti-Semite and set up FAIR [Federation of American Immigration Reform], which wrote Arizona's anti-immigration law. Groups associated with him almost took over the Sierra Club. There is no point in arguing with racists using green arguments to forward a racist agenda."

I did not publish anything in the February 2013 SPA newsletter and I have never slandered John Tanton, period. In fact, I was one of the guest editors in the last edition of The Social Contract, the journal Tanton publishes. It was a special Canada edition, called "Beaver Fever", and the articles can be read here <http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_23_3/index.shtml>. I would hardly have agreed to be a guest editor in a magazine whose publisher I objected to! Furthermore, I think that Zero Population Growth is exactly what we need (actually we should be aiming for negative population growth) and that FAIR is a perfectly sensible organization trying to introduce some sanity to US immigration policy. As for Arizona, it has reason to be concerned about illegal immigration and the US government's failure to deal adequately with the problem. Regarding the near take-over of the Sierra Club, I would have been happy if the people associated with Tanton had taken it over, or I should say, taken it back from the traitors who allowed themselves to be bought off by David Gelbaum. In return for $10 million from Gelbaum, the leadership of the Sierra Club agreed to ignore immigration, by far the greatest driver of US population growth, thereby abandoning any hope of achieving sustainability. I am full of contempt for those who accuse people of "using green arguments to forward a racist agenda".

I don't know what Malcolm King thinks he's up to but I would strongly urge him not to put words into my mouth that may be what he thinks, but are certainly not what I think.

High immigration is about reducing staff costs, growing customer base and increasing property demand (go out west and look at the size of an average block in the new estates - 300-500 sq metres, use to be 1,000 sq metres). Good for the wealthy but the middle class is faced with less job security, less space, and consequently, an obesity crisis and much smaller family size - the birthrate has dropped from 4 to 1.8 since globalisation kicked in. The reason the SPP focus on business led high immigration at the moment is because natural population is below replacement so natural growth is not an issue....the middle class never asked for the supposed benefits of globalisation in the first place.

Apologies to Ms Weld. The error was mine as it was a review she conducted for Feb 2012 and was attributed to a third person. I will ask Graham to remove the reference.

Some good comments here. My favourite is "I can only conclude that Malcolm is either a Catholic, or his family has a vested business interest in maintaining high population growth."

Nope on either score. My background is in labour strategy and media. That's why I can use DEEWR figures with confidence as I worked on both the Pop area and older worker strategy. It's also why I find it easy to debunk the SPP and poor old Stop Population Growth's silly assertions.

The defining feature of the SPP push is 'demographic consciousness' - which is a fancy way of saying people who nothing about population dynamics have moved in to the space and are using it as an ideological hammer - paired with a fundamental environmentalism - to scare people. A good example is The Guardian article.

The SPP's statements about demography are presented as incontrovertible technical facts when of course they are highly nuanced and involve a process of selection and exclusion. They are motivated by a much wider ideological agenda which involves notions of power, race and nation.

Madeleine, if you are still out there, why did you get mixed up with Tanton? Are any other Australian groups such as the SPA associated with FAIR?

Malcolm King shows yet again he is a blight to the term journalist. He says:
'Even Madeleine Weld, the President of the Population Institute in Canada wrote of John Tanton in the February 2013 Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) newsletter:

"In the 1990s, John Tanton founded the anti-immigration Zero Population Growth. Tanton is an anti-Semite and set up FAIR [Federation of American Immigration Reform], which wrote Arizona's anti-immigration law. Groups associated with him almost took over the Sierra Club. There is no point in arguing with racists using green arguments to forward a racist agenda."'

There is no mention of Madeline Weld at all in the February issue of the Sustainable Population Australia Newsletter. It seems Malcolm King just makes things up to suit his unfounded prejudices.
John Coulter