This article is so full of straw man arguments that I don't know where to begin so I won't even try.
Have a good day.

David

There's no need to restrict the growth of human populations, certainly not to reduce them, since the world is rapidly reaching the stage where the numbers of human beings will peak and then decline. Most predictions I've seen suggest a maximum global population of some 9 billion in 30 to 40 years' time, after which, like in Japan, Russia and Italy as at present, populations will reduce quite dramatically. Why? Because education (mainly of women) and improvements in living standards will remove the need for women to have large families.
People who call for interventions to (forcibly?) reduce family sizes in developing countries do not understand basic human psychology or economics. Fortunately, except for a few fanatics, historical examples being Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao, these anti-populationists will be ignored.

...continued...
POVERTY IS CAUSED BY HIGH FERTILITY
It is not caused by unfair trade, or colonial exploitation, or capitalism... it is massively, unsustainable birthrates.

Look at China. With their One-Child Policy a fertility the same as Australia, and what's been happening to their wealth? BOOMING! Reduce population growth, and you build wealth!

Nobody wants to follow China's coercive one Child Policy, but rapidly developing Thailand has also reduced fertility to sustainable levels. How, simple - they hand out free hormone implants for women, along with positive promotions. No coercion there, simply get a free implant once every three years and you won't have an unwanted pregnancy.

While POVERTY IS CAUSED BY HIGH FERTILITY but the opposite is also true. Fertility that is too low, that is at suicide levels destroys ecomomies too! Look at Japan. In the early 1990's there economy collapsed. They have had stimulus package after stimulus package, they have toyed with negative official interest rates (Banks would charge you for giving them your money!) Why? Japan didn't have a baby boom in the 1950s and 1960's - it was hard after WWII, and so their population is older than ours. But the pattern is what we are seeing the start of now in the west, a massive boom followed by bust with no recovery (until the oldies die off).

All of these nation are close to having their populations halving each generation... it is hard to think of a word other than genocide to describe what's going on!

For a better summary look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic-economic_paradox

What is this a map of?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fertility_rate_world_map_2.png
a: skin darkness
b: wealth (GDP per person)
c: don't know?

Answer:
It certainly looks like poverty... with mid Africa being the poorest, southern Africa not too bad, landlocked south America being pretty bad, but Brazil and Argentina not too bad, India struggling... etc Europe USA Australia pretty rich!

Wrong! It's a map of fertility... this one has the numbers... in Central Africa, the average number of children borm per woman is around 6 or 7! This is children per woman, not children per family...

In countries like Australia, many families are small, but worse, many women can't get a man to marry them due to the tragedy of the marriage strike www.ifeminists.com/introduction/editorials/2002/0709a.html , and miss out on having kids, middle-class men simply realise that fatherhood in this era of divorce is a bad idea. So 7 children PER WOMAN is incredible fertility. (For a table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_rate)

Central Africa's staggering 7 children PER WOMAN is incredible fertility, and represents something like trippling the population every generation. We all know about strethed budgets... rich countries like ours can't afford quality schools, hospitals, even roads and public transport... and that is with declining populations... Imagine what would happen if our government had to built 3 times MORE schools, hospitals, roads every 25 years? So-called wealthy nations would collapse!

But not only that, but what about food? Regardless of the money, nobody can creat 3 times more farmland each generation... God just aint making any more land...

...continued...

Malcolm,
Get out there and clear a heap more of the natural world while you wait for population to stabilise.

Don't forget to budget for a few more interactive museums - your grandchildren will need them to imagine the world before overpopulation and mindless greed and comercialism destroyed most of it.

However,thankfully most educated women have more sense than to join your club for continued environmental vandalism and will vote for the Natural World's preservation and not your McFuture.

Dear Malcolm, I'm glad you have read my article even if it seems to have caused you considerable irritation. You seem to have misunderstood my statement on education of women. Scientists look for the true causes of phenomena so that they can make valid predictions of behaviour. If you don't understand the underlying cause, then any actions you take to make change could produce unintended, or even opposite effects. I was pointing out in my article that it is probably not education directly that lowers a woman's fecundity. It is the effect of education on a woman's viewpoint of future conditions. I supported this with the quote from O'Conner and Lines' excellent book Overloading Australia. It is quite probable that, in a world where women are highly educated but do not see any problem in supporting large numbers of children in a wealthy lifestyle, that their fecundity would rise.

You write that the "antipops" theory - "states the world and all life forms on it are finite and are bound together in an ecological web. All life and all energy can be measured in units and from these units we can determine how much human beings will consume in the future." Congratulations and well said! Now what is so hard to understand about that? The rest of the article just comes across as almost paranoid rantings about sterilization campaigns etc. The pure fact is that if we do not solve the population problem Mother Nature will do it for us and we will not like her methods. Bernie Masters - waiting another 40 years for stabilization is far too long. Expect famines by 2020.

King has interviewed primary sources. That's a blow for the sterlisers who are using Youtube.

I politely suggest the writer is mining comments from the 'anti-pops' to use to wedge the Greens at the next election. I could be wrong. Some wonderful material here.

There's no doubt these people are imperialists of the worst kind - and elitist too. .000001 percent of the population want to force their eugenic views on 99.999999 percent of the world's population. Can't get much more elite than that.

This was all started by Kanck. Where or what is Kanck? Google says she wants or wanted to decriminalise Ectasy and reduce Australia's population by 70%. I make no inference.

Either the author is not the brightest of little buttons, or he
perhaps has some agenda to push, for we have been through these
arguments before on OLO and there is a simple solution.

Provide third world women with the same family planning tools
that Western women use every day and they will use them too, but
at present they are either largely not available or not affordable.

Thats not rocket science, not hard to understand and its not
imperialism, its simply giving people choices in their lives.

Does this simple, basic concept go above the authors head?

I can't help but think Malcolm King, director of Republic Media, was acting in his processional capacity when he wrote this article and previous ones on the same topic.

Correction is already underway, not always in the most obvious ways.

Step I: In order to maintain a larger population on the same area of land and the same resources, society needs to become more and more sophisticated.

Step II: To maintain a sophisticated life-style, one needs a more skilled work-force, thus higher and longer education.

Step III: To ensure that all children are educated to become part of the highly-skilled work-force, the government imposes miryads of laws, in all areas of life, that control how parents must and must-not raise their children.

Step IV: Parents no longer feel that their children are theirs - to a large extent the children become the government's cannon-fodder to fuel the ever more sophisticated work-force. The parents are drawn into lives of ever-increasing complexity just to comply with the law.

Step V: Parents strike and limit the number of children (if any at all). Who wants to bring up somebody-else's child anyway?

Children were anyway meant to grow up in the open and not in cities, so in a way it is good - it is amazing to see in how many and intricate ways Mother-Earth takes care of keeping its ecological equilibrium.

I cannot believe that not one poster has made mention of the exact
tracking of energy and population over the last 1000 years !

Do your own searching on the The Oil Drum. Its there.
As oil gas and coal deplete the population will fall with it.
It won't be pretty but who said it was supposed to be ?
Why will the population fall ?

When food production falls due to less energy for food production and
the use of more manual labour malnutrition will affect fertility.
It will be as simple as that.

As far as Australia is concerned we have problems surfacing already.
If we allow the building of more dense housing people will not be able
to supplement their purchased food with their own grown vegetables etc.
Our cities are too big now for the coming era and their growth must be stopped.

'Anti-pops' - good, a catchy name for this form of lunacy, and as the author rightly asserts it is lunacy. These groups insist that Australia's population be shrunk to eight million but they offer no crediable agenda for this to achieved, and I can't think how it would be this century.

Just as well for us then, that there is no real evidence, aside from strains caused by agriculture in the Murray-Darling, that we are well past any population limit. We could do with more water but then we can always go the desalisation route if there are no other options. If are politicians are given a choice between desalinisation plants and a one child policy, I know which one they will choose.

Malcolm, you said that "anti-pops say we are eating the future." But it's not just the "anti-pops" that are saying that! Now I know you won't agree with anything I say because for some reason that can only be explained by genetic predisposition, you won't stop ranting long enough to take in the full picture. All you growthists seem to take great delight in shooting the messengers in order to prop up your narrow view of the future, however, I'll try once again.............

The "future" you depict relies on cheap and abundant energy. For the past 150 odd years, that energy has come from cheap and abundant fossil fuels. mostly oil and coal. We have passed, or are very close to having passed peak oil. Next will come peak coal as oil supply become severely restricted and coal usage ramps up to fill the void. Next to peak will be natural gas. Don't forget that by then, LPG will also be severely depleted.

Then there's Phosphorus. That marvellous substance that is 100% vital to life. All life! Currently, the Western and developed world is flushing it down the toilet and into the seas. Can it be recovered when we need it? Certainly, but only using massive and I mean MASSIVE amounts of energy. The trouble is, the energy from oil and coal and perhaps even gas has depleted to the point whereby that massive energy will no longer be available.

Can technology saw us? Absolutely, but not without abundant energy. Nuclear? Too late. Time of commission to full power is 20 years. Solar? Possible, despite the energy involved in making the plant, but we'd require major upgrades to the distribution lines. Because of commercialisation, nobody will act yet because there's no big money in it for them! By the time there is....... too late!

I hold no illusions that we're already in population overshoot and there's nothing that can be done to avert a disastrous future. Even if I could convince the "growthists," like everything else I've mentioned (and I've barely touched the surface), it TOO LATE!

"If are politicians are given a choice between desalinisation plants and a one child policy, I know which one they will choose."

Well, they are currently doing more of both.

We are not China, so nobody will ever tell you straight in the face that "you are not allowed to have [more] children". Instead, the Australian system is to overwhelm you up with red-tape: "Oh, you want children, that's great, just sign here please and here and here and here... fill this questionnaire in triplicate, wait for the lab's genetic tests, make sure you have read and understood all the department's brochures about raising children (it's only a matter of time before testing is introduced as well). Of course you know that children need this, and that and this and that, and you do understand that if you fail to provide them with everything up-to-our-standards we will take them away (and you will be liable for the costs)" ... ad nauseum, more humane and not less effective than China.

Considered having children? time to find better and cheaper hobbies.

The simple reality is that the operation of our civilization entails irreversibly using us the limited natural capital. That capital includes many other components than oil, fertile soil and aquifer water. It is becoming scarce. Society will have to power down because there is nothing they can do to stop this natural capital from declining. There are already too many people consuming this natural capital too rapidly.

The article didn't say much about the core argument of the anti-pops: depletion of natural resources. Here in Canberra, the insanity of encouraging more people to come when we are running out of water is plain to see. The local environment is deteriorating, but more houses go up. Encouraging more people is part of the growth mantra, just keep building, forget about the future.

There are some who envision a more compact, but happier population for Australia and the world, but their voices aren't heard. And what does the author think we should do about the Murray Darling, while building up our population base?

Malcolm King loftily declares something he disbelieves to be “blatantly untrue”, and accuses people concerned about over-population of getting their information from You Tube and Facebook, and accuses us of being “creative in sampling and citing (our) causes”.

What a cheek from anyone taking notice of the ratbag Democrat (retired) Sandra Kanck. She is the only person I know of who has called for a one-child policy, and a population of 7,000,000. Most people wanting a population policy for Australia have started off by asking for a cessation in immigration; a far cry from Kanck the Krank’s blathering. “Sustainable Population Australia” is a bunch of navel gazers who have never been listened to since their inception; hide-bound lefties.

King should be thinking more about the 13,000,000 Flannery came up with and pushed until he was given the Australian of the Year award. And, King’s old tired old claim that 20% of the world’s Anti-humanist and imperialist my eye!
population consumes 80% of recourses might be true, but only because the 20% haven’t made a hobby of breeding as many people as they can, like the 80%, who have proved that high population is a killer. King and his kind also overlooks that if it wasn’t for the wealth of the 20%, most of the 80% would be dead anyway. The new world needs an efficient use of resources to supply a small population. The current burgeoning population is killing off the planet.

The presumption by King that all people concerned about growing populations are all left-wing tree-huggers who hate capitalism is absolute rubbish. But King, so critical of where others get their information, is as wrong as he claims other people are.

It is not capitalism or industry themselves that are the problem; it’s the sort of dumb capitalists we have in Australia and the wrong industries.

How does King explain the many relatively lightly populated (compared with Australia) countries who are doing very well for themselves because they stick to intelligent industries, not the dumbo peasant ones Australia relies on:

...continued

digging stuff out of the ground and letting others manufacture the goods and, for pity’s sake, the building industry which is one of the main reasons for our stupidly high immigration intake at present. And, let’s not forget the education “industry” screaming out for more overseas students so that they can supply Australia’s managerial and professional needs to the detriment of Australians.

There is very little stamped “Made in Australia” anymore; there are no bloody jobs left, but still we import more and more people to a country which is two thirds desert! We refuse to take the education of our own seriously; we are too lazy to investigate clever, modern industry. We would rather rely on bringing in more and more people to buy foreign made goods and, if there are no jobs for these immigrants, they can rely on the dole and their cultural networks to look after themselves, as the rest of us will have to before the century is out. Australia is stuffed.

Australians, led by our politicians, are a bunch of ignorant boofheads to be cheering on immigration and importing foreigners to a country that is two thirds desert!

King brings up another old chestnut: technology will provide. Hell’s bells! Australia is too terrified of technology to use it, preferring to stick primary industry and mining and sport. Kids these days don’t want to learn anything; they want to be sporting ‘heroes’. Few of make it, so they get the few crap jobs left to them by our wonderful politicians who have not, and will not work for a new and modern Australia. One would have thought that smart industries would be at the forefront of what passes for minds with politicians – they have, after all, let all the manufacturing jobs go overseas. But, no just bring out a couple of hundred thousand non-English speakers each year, and she’ll be apples.

Kings seems to have got himself a catchy new phrase of people looking to reduce populations: “anti-pops”. One old word does for him and his scientist friends – idiots.

This was the most uncompelling argument I've seen within this forum. Honestly, it is easier to argue with a religious fundamentalist on the existence of God, than to deal with any of the red herrings, straw men, psuedo-facts and nonsensical diatribe espoused by Malcolm.

I'm no fan of the extremist environmentalist movement that would have us reduce to a population of 500 million and survive on a completely vegan lifestyle reminiscent of our ancestral cave-dwellers. But Malcolm has illogically and stupidly tied this mindset to the entire population debate.

Malcolm has stuck his fingers in his ears, plunged his ostrich head in the sand and is singing "la la la - population isn't an issue".

I enjoyed reading his Feb 09 article "We have nothing to fear but hype itself" and suggest that Malcolm has taken this to the extreme by choosing to ignore any sign of any problem anywhere in the world, particularly if it means having to take some personal responsibility for one's over-consuming western lifestyle.

I was rather taken with Leigh's argument as it popped Kanck (crank) and her Sustainable Population Australia bubble. Kanck did nothing in 12 years of parliament and she'll do nothing now.

The anti-pops deny human agency or humans the power to change the world. For them, we have no free will. We are ants in awe of the capitalist system, in awe of consumerism, of 'stuff'. There's no doubt that there are problems being drawn to material 'stuff' over maybe say an irrational commitment to culling one half of the worlds population.

But I'll go with the stuff. Let me give you a hint. You might think your vision of the future is etched in stone but to many of us, your fanaticism and Himmler-like attachment to bio-sociology, is a major turn off. You're out their swinging with the SS. King has burst your bubble, that's why your angry. It's a bugger that debate has a pro AND con isn't it?

I can hear the knock, knock, knock on my door now in the Year 2020. It's the suede denim police coming for my neice - hiding in the cellar - because she is pregnant with her SECOND child. As Charlton Heston said in Planet of the Apes, 'Damn you all to hell!'

PS. Have you guys thought what you'll do after the apocalypse? I'll tell you. You'll get rid of debate - and live with a specially selected harem of beautiful women (or men) and breed and breed. Hang on - that's my line...

Let's have a few figures, just so we know what we are talking about: these are from http://math.berkeley.edu/~galen/popclk.html

2009: 6,750,731,000
2019: 7,434,924,000
2029: 8,010,863,000
2039: 8,443,868,000
2049: 8,707,137,000
2059: 8,783,627,000
2069: 8,668,402,000
2079: 8,369,008,000

So yes, assuming current trends continue, the population will eventually start to drop. But most of us here will be dead by the time that starts happening. I think it's wonderful that my grandkids will see global population turn down, but in the meantime I would like to ensure that I get a reasonable share of whatever resources are going. It's better to promote contraception now than to shoot or blow up eighteen-year-old invaders in 2028 as they're trying to forcibly redistribute the things that I have and they don't.

Most of the history of Europe from 100 AD to 1500 is the story of successive waves of invaders from the East, driven west by population pressures, inflicting terrible devastation on the lands that they pass through, knowing that if they stop they'll be crushed by the next wave coming along behind. Maybe that won't happen this time: maybe it will. Let's do all we can to try and prevent it.

I am always amazed at these populate or perish advocates who pick the extreme end of an idea (ie. one child policies, forced sterilisation etc) and tar the whole sustainable population movement with one sordid brush. I suppose it serves its purpose in stopping reasonable and balanced debate in one swoop.

Populate or perish advocates stick their heads in the sand and hope it will all go away or worse complete denial. Those nasty sustainability people wanting to manage the earth's natural resources better to ensure that there is more equity between the rich and poor, that human life is not reduced to the lowest levels of degradation when we are all fighting over the last few resources.

If I was to adopt the extremism of this author for the other side, I would argue those populate or perish lot are anti-humanist greedy capitalists who encourage growth to serve the purposes of those at the top of the food chain. Whose disdain for human life means that we let the diseases of poverty and overcrowding, poor hygiene and waste/water management take their natural course so the poorest perish and live the lowest quality of life imaginable.

But arguments like this serve no purpose while the obvious stares us in the face. Let's talk about sustainability in conjuction with a greater sharing of resources, advanced technologies and healthier less pesticide intensive food production. Rather than forced population programs lets talk with reason (without hysteria) about getting rid of government handouts that encourage large families like baby bonuses, maternity leave etc.

As a humanist who is also an environmentalist, I'm as usual rather bemused by Malcolm's latest diatribe. I'm certainly no fascist, but I do recognise that the sheer weight of human population has wreaked havoc on the natural environment, and seems to be doing so exponentially.

One doesn't have to subscribe to sociobiology or AGW theory to acknowledge that we as a species have had extremely detrimental effects on the environment that ultimately sustains us, at a rate that is exponentially proportional with population increase, combined with increasingly intensive resource and energy use.

It seems to me that these are unsustainable in the long term, and that it is therefore simply prudent to acknowledge that. I'm also painfully aware that any strategies that might ameliorate the potential calamities to come will be complex, unpalatable and unpopular - and probably therefore won't happen voluntarily.

Indeed, I think that the planet will impose it upon us - but it won't have anything to do with 'Gaia'. Rather, it's the inevitable outcome of an organism outpopulating its ecological niche - which in our case is the entire planet.

Unfortunately, the world has developed a global economy that has a logic of its own, and is certainly not rational. Even more unfortunately, under such circumstances it's more rational for people to eschew the global good for local gain, which is why we see such entrenched, powerful and quite ruthless attacks on sensible ideas like population, resource and energy sustainability.

Meanwhile, people breed like rabbits and find ever more ways to hate each other, not to mention increasingly destructive ways to express that hatred. That's what I call real misanthropy, as opposed to those of us who would rather that we all learn to live with each other, within our globally collective means.

I'm not optimistic.

It is hard to know where to begin in refuting Malcolm King's scurrilous comments but I shall deal with just two: whether we who see populatuion as an environmental issue are scientific or not, and what motivates us.

First, when Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population (now Sustainable Population Australia) was set up in 1988, we founding mothers and fathers were insistent that the organisation be scientifically based. Subsequently, we nominated five Patrons, four of whom were renowned scientists: Ian Lowe, Frank Fenner, Tim Flannery and Mary White. The fifth, Paul Collins, is a theologian with anough scientific understanding to be write credibly on the subject (God's Earth). In recent times, we are integrating the latest scientific findings on climate change and Peak Oil and it's hard to find anything in the literature which says population growth is NOT a problem.

Second, we are not motivated by selfishness but by deep compassion for humanity and concern for the Earth. The fact that the average family size in Ethiopia is seven children means the average family is stretched to provide sufficient food and pay for education for all its children, further pushing them into an endless cycle of poverty. Even Peter McDonald, renowned Australian demographer who is happy to see Australia's population rise, sees population growth as an impediment to development in the countries in our region such as PNG where the average number of children per woman is four. Maternal mortality in PNG has doubled in the past year largely because of inadequate reproductive services, including contraception. When women cannot get access to contraception, they die from having their babies too young or too soon after the last one or often because they have had too many and their bodies are plain worn out. It is not cultural imperialism that makes us want these women to have fewer children; it is care for the women themselves and for the children they will leave behind should they die in childbirth

Tsk, tsk, if only all those nasty brown people would stop having so many children, we white people could go on living in the style to which we have become accustomed.

But who'll clean the pools?

Anyway, one good DK's lyric deserves another:

Now (we) can go where people are one
Now (we) can go where they get things done

Mr King you omitted to advise that pro-population advocate, Betty Hartmann, received her PhD, at the London School of Economics and Political Science, was Project manager for the Economic Development Bureau, Training Course in Petroleum Economics for Third World Officials, New Haven, CT and was Visiting Lecturer, Department of Economics, Yale University.

In 2007, “anti-pops” David Pimentel, Cornell professor of ecology and agricultural sciences, and a team of Cornell graduate students examined data from more than 120 published papers on the effects of population growth, malnutrition and various kinds of environmental degradation on human diseases. Their report is in the journal "Human Ecology."

Of the world population of about 6.5 billion, 57 percent is malnourished, compared with 20 percent of a world population of 2.5 billion in 1950, said Pimentel. Malnutrition is not only the direct cause of 6 million children’s deaths each year but also makes millions of people much more susceptible to such killers as acute respiratory infections, malaria and a host of other life-threatening diseases, according to the research.

Among the study’s other main points:

Nearly half the world’s people are crowded into urban areas, often without adequate sanitation, and are exposed to epidemics of such diseases as measles and flu.

With 1.2 billion people lacking clean water, waterborne infections account for 80 percent of all infectious diseases. Increased water pollution creates breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitoes, killing 1.2 million to 2.7 million people a year, and air pollution kills about 3 million people a year. Unsanitary living conditions account for more than 5 million deaths each year, of which more than half are children.

Air pollution from smoke and various chemicals kills 3 million people a year. In the United States alone about 3 million tons of toxic chemicals are released into the environment – contributing to cancer, birth defects, immune system defects and many other serious health problems.

Be careful what you wish for Mr King - do not defile the land where you live and 6.7 billion other humans dwell.

King's post is an assertion that there is no such thing as science or it should be totally ignored . I have no idea where he obtained the ludicrous idea that anyone was trying to propose forced population reduction . He really should have a good read of Liebig's Law

I found the argument so full of rubbish I could not dredge up the energy to read all of it. Suffice to say this planet is a finite resource. I repeat that: - A FINITE RESOURCE. It is (or should I say was) like a Petri dish filled with a food source in which a tiny number of bacteria are placed. Very soon the bacteria are no more. They've behaved like we humans are doing and kept multiplying and multiplying until their entire food source has been exhausted. What happened to them then pray tell us Mr King and Mr Masters?
What is true of the world is also true of Australia where our population growth rate has exceeded 1.6% pa in recent years. At this rate we are set to double our population in only 41 years.

When I was born 60 odd years ago there were 2.5 billion people on earth and Australia accommodated only 8 million of those. Now there are 6.6 million overall and Australia’s population is about 23 million. The planet has remained exactly the same size and shows no signs of expanding to meet the challenge of more people.

On top of this average per capita material consumption has also grown exponentially over the period. How much longer can this sort of growth continue and can we really, really expect to achieve sustainability by reducing consumption only and allowing population to go on expanding unchecked until it reaches a staggering 9 billion in only 40 years time.

And Bernie Masters claims family sizes in the undeveloped world will fall to levels prevalent in developed countries as these 3rd world economies become richer. How? Where are all the resources going to come from to satisfy the aspirations of all these extra billions?

Bernie, exactly who is advocating interventions to forcibly reduce family sizes in developing countries?

Ah yes, Malcolm.

You are an absolutely typical overpopulation denier. Perhaps if you cared to look around you at the devastation the human species is causing this planet, you might shuck off just a bit of your speciescentric arrogance.

In my mind, the best thing we can do for this planet is VOLUNTARY population reduction through education and contraception, but the cornucopian cliched rants of the likes of Malcolm don't give me cause for hope. It is indeed sad that Malcolm and his ilk hate humans so much that they wish to leave behind a crowded, polluted, and resource depleted planet for future generations to deal with. That is the real misanthropism here.

We are just one species on a finite planet and, like the story of the boy who cried wolf, the overpopulation wolf will eventually come. Malthus and Ehrlich and the many other sane and civilized voices who tried to warn us were not wrong, they were simply a bit ahead of their time.

“I am always amazed at these populate or perish advocates who pick the extreme end of an idea (ie. one child policies, forced sterilisation etc) and tar the whole sustainable population movement with one sordid brush. I suppose it serves its purpose in stopping reasonable and balanced debate in one swoop.”

That’s about the size of it Pelican. And there can be no doubt that it is deliberate and hence totally dishonest and scurrilous.

Kulu - as a geologist, I was taught there is more gold in one cubic mile of seawater than has ever been mined from the ground. The green revolution of the 1970s increased food production hugely to feed most of the extra billions of people who now live on the planet. And we all accept there's abundant energy falling on or occurring within the planet but we haven't yet worked out how to access it sustainably.
Human history is actually not full of devastation and destruction: instead, it's a history of mostly positive human achievements. There's no shortage of resources or of human ingenuity and I'm optimistic about the future of our planet, even though we have our most serious challenges ahead of us as we reach our peak global population in 30 to 40 years' times.
Talk of population control implies the use of force which is totally unacceptable. Education and provision of contraception are essential but I do not agree with China's enforced one child policy nor India's enforced sterilisation programs of a few years back.
The future is unwritten but we can choose to make it one where we avoid the pessimistic predictions of a small number of academics and anti-populationists like Ehrlich and sections of the green movement, and instead work to provide the sustainable means whereby global population stablises and then decreases.

Geez Bernie,
First I'd like to say that we 'do' have the skills to harness all that energy we just need to get rid of politicians and go make the equipment.. the skills lie in the voter yes? Bobby Brown would have it in the pipeline by now.
Second.. Your Quote (Human history is actually not full of devastation and destruction: instead, it's a history of mostly positive human achievements. There's no shortage of resources or of human ingenuity and I'm optimistic about the future of our planet, even though we have our most serious challenges ahead of us as we reach our peak global population in 30 to 40 years' times)
Bernie I would ask what is it that you think is ' positive human acheivments'
I'm tickled pink thinking of what it is that you may suggest if you want to bother.
On a local view we have destroyed everything good in australia and it only took a few generations. We are shovelling coal and native hardwood woodchips out of here at an ever increasing rate. Homes now are made of crap materials that have so many man made ingredients in them they are toxic places. Oh yes all good stuff on a long list of destructive human ingenuity.

Bernie, you say that "there's no shortage of resources," but surely you must be spending much of your time on a distant planet? Two rapidly diminishing resources spring to mind, oil depletion and Phosphorus. Without an ever increasing supply of cheap oil, the world's population will begin a rapid reversal. Without Phosphorus, nothing living on earth can survive.

Whilst we can do something about Phosphorus, example, collecting urine for use as organic fertiliser, the world has most likely reached peak oil. Anything we could have done to minimise the collapse that peak oil will cause should have been put in place 20 years before the peak. It's widely considered that oil peaked in 2007, total oil liquids including condensates in 2008.

In the meantime, due to the GFC, investment in oil development and infrastructure has dropped dramatically. Oil rigs are old and are literally rusting away. Very soon a leg could break off a deep sea rig with terrible loss of life and many of the rest will be forced to shut down for inspection causing an overnight rocketing of oil prices and massive loss of agriculture and industry since everything in our current Westernised world relies entirely on oil to survive.

I've focused on only oil and Phosphorus, but what about rapidly diminishing fish stocks and loss of arable soil, particularly in Australia? Anyway, too late to stop it now. The analogy of the Petri dish is quite accurate. Humans may think they are pretty clever, but in reality they have only the brains of a microbe in a dish!

The discussion of how scientifically-based the anti-pops are, ignores the fact that science, by definition, doesn’t supply value judgements.

Science, as science, provides precisely *no* justification for or against a particular policy. Only if the underlying value judgments are common ground does the positive science clearly indicate one way or the other. But the underlying value judgments *are* in issue.

When the anti-pops question what positive things humanity have done, and refer to a record of wastage and destruction, you have to remember that they don’t regard human life as a positive value. On the contrary, they regard it as negative. They think of humans as a form of noxious pest. ‘The problem’ is people, and the instrument they are urging to fix the problem is policy – the organisation of force.

By definition *all* human action produces a better environment, from the point of view of making conditions for humans more satisfactory – otherwise they wouldn’t do it. By replacing the stones and bark of my home-site with roof and doona, I have made the environment better.

No-one has a right to speak for values over and above human values. When people speak for ‘the environment’, they are merely asserting that their preferred use of scare resources should be preferred by others as well, even if they have to use force – the law – to make those others comply.

Ultimately all the environmental questions boil down to the ethical one – whether social co-operation is to be based on violence and threats, as anti-pop policy assumes, or not.

Policy to restrict the use of resources that support life is policy to kill people.

Those worried about the excessive or unfair use of resources need not resort to policy: let them grasp the nettle and reduce or eliminate their own use of resources which they, not others, regard as unjustified.

What we are witnessing in the anti-pops movement is an epidemic of pious neo-religious hypocrisy, like the public parades of ostentatious self-flagellation in Christian history.

What we are witnessing in the overpopulation denial movement is an epidemic of speciescentric arrogance, very much like that displayed by past civilizations just prior to their collapse.

I think we should arm all the experts to the teeth and then set them upon one another … a huge war game with real bullets and bombs

The ensuing death and carnage will provide :

the depopulation demanded by some,
the purism demanded by others

and leave the rest of us (the real people who simply wish to get on with their lives, without being micro managed by a bunch of ivory towered academic intellectual elitists and self appointed social despots) with a much improved gene pool.

Down with speciescentric arrogance!!

Equal rights for shower mould and windshield bugs!!

THis article suggests that anti-pops are all greenies, based on some 'mother earth' religion. But this is obviously not the case.

There are many rationalists also that hope for population management.

The developed world is committing genocide against itself, due to it's failure to produce children, especially children in the middle class/professional class.

The poor world is keeping itself in poverty because no government can produce three times more schools, hospitals and roads each generation. Let alone three times more land to grow food for their ever-growing populations.

In between we see countries like Thailand and China, who have booming economies... because they have managed their populations to improve quality of life. In China, they have done it the bad way. But Thailand, they have given women free contraceptive hormone implants that last for 3 years, giving women control of their fertility. Along with showing people the benefits of smaller families.

Throughout history, wars have been justified by religion, but really been about resources. In the most attractive and resource-rich parts of the world now (the western world) has dwindling populations. Meanwhile the resource-poor third world and Muslim worlds have booming populations.

It will only be a matter of time before the "population bomb" becomes a real bomb. The growth of radical Islam is a result of booming numbers of Muslims squeezed into increasingly impoverished countries.

War and invasion has always been a fight for resources. And I don't want my children to be killed in the up-coming demographic wars!

We need pro-family policies across the western world. NOT means-tested, because the middle class is the group most likely to fail in having enough kids. Middle class families can't afford large families like welfare moms. We also need a roll-back of father-hatred in divorce courts etc to protect kids. Feminist-inspired policies created professional male commitment-phobia http://www.ifeminists.com/introduction/editorials/2002/0709a.html.

And we need to help the poor World out of poverty by supporting their population management, following Thailand's model. Reducing skyrocketing birthrates to allow them to develop.

PartTimeParent@POBox.com

Some interesting posts here. I thought the argument was heading towards a stalemate of he said/she said.

I'd like to know politically and from a public policy point of view how the anti-pops would reduce population that didn't take away personal liberty or freedom.

Can this be done in a democracy or should we move to an anarcho-syndicalist approach?

Can this be done through capitalism as Jonathon Porritt suggests or do we have to get rid of it and replace it with a kinder, nicer world?

What should we do with people who say sod you, we'll do what we like?

Wing Ah Ling, "[S]cience, by definition, doesn’t supply value judgements." True.

"[A]nti-pops...don’t regard human life as a positive value". Untrue.

"Anti-pops" (catchy, BTW) value humans as much as youd do , but don't believe that we have a greater right to overbreed and destabilise the ecology than any other animal.

You could make the standard conservative argument that humans are a supreme species, exempt from the natural laws of the universe because God made it so, but you seem to value yourself as a rationalist.

Why do you retreat into illogical religious reasoning when the evidence conflicts with your ideology?

Cheryl: "I'd like to know ... [to] reduce population that didn't take away personal liberty or freedom."

Nice to see you have caught on. As far as I can tell, the only ones who are proposing drastic measures to curb population are the growthists - as straw man arguments. Right now King is a major offender.

Here in Australia, it is relatively easy to make our population static or reduce - by reducing immigration. It requires no impingement on any personal liberty or freedom of Australian citizens.

As for the rest of the world, I don't care. Besides I personally don't feel like I have any right to tell them what to do. They would at best ignore anything I say, but more likely take offence. Consequently CJ's pessimistic outlook is probably right for most of the world. Some of them could not stabilise their population even if the wanted to, and some just don't want to.

Right now we fall into the latter camp. We could stabilise our population, painlessly. We choose not to. This seems insane to me. However, I am not as pessimistic as CJ. Given most voters are anti-pops, we could easily change direction.

The question is not whether population growth will end - obviously it will as the earth is finite. The questions are whether individuals will be happier with more people who have less of a finite pie - should things turn out well. If they are, then are they are prepared to risk the four horseman and the apocalypse outcome that will happen if we don't choose to stop growing at an exponential rate to the right point.

Personally, I would like to know what point they have chosen, and why they are confident we won't hit exponential overshoot before then, and how they propose to stop population growth when we hit it. I would also like help in understanding why they think living in a place where basics are rationed (as water is now in Australia) is better than choosing to do otherwise.

I'm still waiting for my flying car and a nutritious snack of Soylent Green.

C'mon, the misanthropic neo-Malthusian wingnuts have been threatening mass starvation for over 30 years.

Personally, I look forward to the day when a man can have the satisfaction of strapping a shotgun holster on his back, heading out into the wasteland of abandoned, flooded cities, and hunting down a few of natural selection's losers. We shall feast on the still-beating hearts of the vanquished, and rejoice in finally, truly, being a race of purified, brave, free men!

The most revealing and ironically ticklish giveaway came from a very quick succession of neo-Malthusian posts here, discharging both pistols painfully and bloodily into their own feet...

Jon J: "Most of the history of Europe from 100 AD to 1500 is the story of successive waves of invaders from the East, driven west by population pressures, inflicting terrible devastation on the lands that they pass through, knowing that if they stop they'll be crushed by the next wave coming along behind. Maybe that won't happen this time: maybe it will. Let's do all we can to try and prevent it."

followed immediately by

pelican: "I am always amazed at these populate or perish advocates who pick the extreme end of an idea (ie. one child policies, forced sterilisation etc) and tar the whole sustainable population movement with one sordid brush. I suppose it serves its purpose in stopping reasonable and balanced debate in one swoop."

So what could be more extreme than the "extreme end of an idea" as pushed by a neo-Malthusian i.e., "invaders from the East"?!

Fire to the East! The fear of Mongol hordes! What to do? Pre-emptive strike perhaps? a la "let's do all we can to try and prevent it"!

Yet again the neo-Malthusians blurt out their classic fascist tendencies, as explicit in Nazi German and Italian fascist poster and film propaganda. Such premature ejaculation always gives these fetishists away.

I see a lot of posts talking about personal freedom and connecting it with population restriction.

I suspect that your grasp of societal rules and practises that indigenous populations had 'before chhristianity and the resulting industrial revolution' is a slim one. All groups practiced population control either by infanticide or other means that kept the group numbers to suit their envoirenmental needs for survival.

Population control is extremely important in a positive way for society that is not based on ever increasing consumerism as the haves would have us think is the only way to keep them rich and us working our arses off for them only to die sick and unhappy.

"C'mon, the misanthropic neo-Malthusian wingnuts have been threatening mass starvation for over 30 years."

And it's come awfully close. In case you'd forgotten, while we were complaining about expensive petrol recently, the third world was rioting for food, because the overpopulated planet is utterly dependent on cheap oil to transport it.

Food production and distribution has kept pace with population growth because exponential technology development has allowed it. But the tech-curve is now dropping off while the population soars. There will be no new oil, no new nitrogen, and no new natural gas. Nuclear's as close as it gets to a free lunch, and even that consumes too much of those other resources to make it viable in the long term.

The fact that technology has saved us in the past is the only basis for the theory that we'll be fine in the future. But can anyone point to a technology that might even come close to meeting our energy needs in the future? Cold fusion within 30 years, or something similar, isn't impossible, but so unlikely as to be absurd.

You can laugh all you like at the doomsayers, but the fact is that sometimes the world, as it's known, really does end. Just look at the Romans, Aztecs and Armenians.

Of course, we in the West will be shielded from the impact of resource shortages, but only at first. I just wonder if we'll have to adapt to a new world while coddling the fearful conservatives who keep shouting "it's all okay!" with fingers in ears, or if they'll see the damage coming and actually try to help.

But, Clownfish, you DO know your post-apoc fiction tropes. I'll give you that!

...and the Armenians too! [from pseudo-left sancho of the peerage aristo set]

Just admit your fascism folks, save us from wasting so much time reading your dreary posts and their denial of all human agency in all human affairs.

Cheryl: "I'd like to know ... [to] reduce population that didn't take away personal liberty or freedom."

Export Feminism
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Simple... Export feminism to them! Seriously, every time feminism gets more powerfull, from the flapeprs in the 1920's to 2nd wave feminism in the 1970s to now, increased feminism reduces birthrates.

On the flip-side the Baby Boom was only possible because so many men were killed in WWII that feminism collapsed. When there are several marriage-aged women for each desirable man (without missing limbs from the war), feminism tends to take a back seat.

More recently, "the war against boys" (http://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Boys-Misguided-Feminism/dp/0684849569) has meant that for every 10 graduates, there are less than 4 males.

Who are these six 'professional' women going to marry?
From the four available 'professional' men, one is going to be gay, two are going to marry their secretaries and another is on the Middle class marriage strike... leaving only one available, professional male for the six professional females that graduate each year. http://www.glennsacks.com/have_antifather_family.htm

Any society that treats men and fatherhood as second-class citizens is one that is dying. That is why the Western World is failing to reproduce ourselves.

Thailand
=-=-=-=-=
The other answer is to look at Thailand. For over a decade this country has pushed for smaller families. Handing out free contraceptive implants (that last for 3 years) to women and educating the population that small families mean you can afford a better life and a good education for your kids.

They have succeeded to reduce fertility to sustainable, replacement levels, a GREAT SUCCESS! And one that will see Thailand become a wealthy nation far more quickly.

PartTimeParent@pobox.com

“Kulu - as a geologist, I was taught there is more gold in one cubic mile of seawater than has ever been mined from the ground.”

Bernie old son, I was taught that the extractive industries are the predominant cause of climate change but the industry has certainly produced a few fat cats. In fact we have gentlemen in this nation who’ve been knighted for trashing the planet.

Your leader in WA, Barney Rubble, is looking forward to his corporate connections digging up the uranium in that state therefore, once all the uranium is extracted and the toxic land is tied up for perpetuity, you can move on to the seawater to extract that “gold” you speak of.

Problem is Bernie, your ideology is considered passé for those in the extractive industry are the new “luddites” who remain hell-bent on maintaining the status quo and for that, the industry must have access to the ignorant hordes overseas to do the dirty work there for the pro-population "empire builders."

However, Bernie, a united voice of the indigenous people from Asia, Arctic, Pacific, Carribean, North America, Latin America, Russia and Africa has swept from continent to continent in 37 countries calling their respective governments to stop large-scale mining and other extractive activities (oil and gas projects) in their indigenous lands.

There’s a call for a global moratorium on extractive projects for oil, gold, gas and other mineral resources and they’re also demanding that the World Bank cease funding the merchants of greed in the trans-national mining companies. They've proposed the creation of an international indigenous criminal court that will address the ill effects of extractive industries on the lives of indigenous peoples.

They’re demanding compensation too for damages inflicted upon their lands and lives, and the rehabilitation of their degraded environment caused by extractive industries especially those from Australia, Canada and Britain.

So no more cheap labour for the free racketeers (marketeers?), Bernie old chap. Who now shall we find to carry buckets of ore on their heads all day long for a dollar?

Antipopulationists..Malcolm King

He states that people are not pollution. He fails to grasp the point that each person on average in Australia will emit 20 tonnes of CO2 this year.

Malcolm also fails to understand that with population growth, society has to put people somewhere. We have to build up and out. Building up is a poor choice for raising children and building out covers up our best agricultural land close to cities,destroys precious ancient bushland and biodiversity.

He espouses classic specism. Like racism and sexism, specism is a perverse logic. It devalues the right of other species that we share the planet with a place to live. He sees no problem with destroying the native animal habitats for an ever growing population and for ever increasing food production.

Malcolm's moral compass is irrational and environmentally destructive. His commentary does not pass even a casual test of truthfulness or sustainable logic.

What is the infrastructure cost per Australian? Australia has just ridden a commodities boom, yet the cost of infrastructure has left government very heavily indebted. This seems in conflict with the "Growth is good" ethos.

What happens when you build an export economy based on digging things up and you run out of things to dig-up ? What happens when our combined public debt ( est. to rise to 300 billion) and private debt now at 640 billion = 1 trillion dollars ? What happens when you base your domestic economy on housing......those billions being spent on pollution ie. real estate infrastructure.....could have been spent on education, health and emerging technologies for export ? What happens when you increase your population by 1 million every three years and each one of those by birth and immigration, consume more than they produce ?

It is all unravelling before our eyes. A trashed economy and a trashed ecosystem. Take our collective heads out of the sand. Stabilise Australia's population growth. As Max Walsh ( ex Economics Editor for the SMH ) wrote in the 1980's, "..the last thing Australia needs is a housing lead recovery.

very perceptive, Protagoras, with your tongue-in-cheek suggestion that we'll soon move to mining seawater. In all seriousness, that's exactly what we'll do but it'll be hundreds of years into the future when our more easily accessible on-land or under-sea mineral resources have been exhausted. The history of mining over the last 20,000 years (the oldest mine I know of is the Widgi Mia ochre mine near Mt Magnet in WA worked by Aborigines with the variously coloured iron minerals traded over much of Australia) is that mining moves to the lower grade and more difficult deposits as the easily accessed higher grade deposits are worked out.
So, if history is any guide, we have lots of resources left to recover, including oil, gas, phosphate, whatever. It's just that our technology will improve, we'll be able to mine deeper and at lower grade and the many problems predicted by so many people who've placed posts on Malcolm King's article will simply not occur.
Our problems are reasonably short term - to not make as many mistakes over the next 30 or 40 years as global population stablises then reduces as we've made in the last 200 years since the start of the industrial revolution.
I believe we're smart enough as a species to learn from our past mistakes and continue to make this a better world for the vast majority of people. The saddest part is that so many people don't want to see or can't foresee such a positive future for humanity.

Cheryl,
Those "sod you we'll do what we like " people should be rounded up and put on a deserted island that is just about stuffed with 5 years of supplies.

Col will quickly call a meeting of the Elders and determine that a one child policy is mandatory .

They will then adjourn to the beach, beg forgiveness and pray to the Green God for the natural abundance that they destroyed back home.

Wing Ah Ling writes "Down with speciescentric arrogance!!

Equal rights for shower mould and windshield bugs!!"

No worries. Under Mother Nature's law, they already have equal rights. Mother Nature is not a democracy, and at some point we might come to understand that.

But even Mother Nature must have her standards, so She likely draws the line for equal rights just at the edge of politicians.....and economists.

An interesting array of responses. I have a few problems with King's toryism at times but in this case he has done his research, interviewed primary sources and caught the anti-pops napping. Their reponses have been incoherent at best. My favourite was the justification of infanticide.

The anti-pops come direct from sociobiology and the far right ideological baggage of that position suffocates their arguments. I think most people believe cutting carbon emissions is necessary. Culling people is not.

Bernie Masters: "I was taught there is more gold in one cubic mile of seawater than has ever been mined from the ground."

It would be nice if it was true. But it isn't, and it's disappointing to see a geologist quote such myths. I guess it is to be expected of a politician pushing his pet ideology. So forgive me - I am sure the geologist in you knows everything I am about to say, but bullsh1ting pollies must be exposed for what they are.

There is 0.000011 ppm (parts per million) of gold in seawater. http://www.seafriends.org.nz/oceano/seawater.htm There can be 2 ppm left in gold tailings http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS202047+06-May-2009+MW20090506 Wikipedia says it 0.5 ppm can be commercially viable. In any case 0.000011 ppm is right out. This is true even if you removed the water from sea water. The gold concentration in the remaining salts is still an abysmal 0.0004 ppm.

That aside, at 0.000011 ppm, there is 46Kg of gold in a cubic mile of sea water. The world produces 2500 tonnes of gold in one year. http://www.goldsheetlinks.com/production2.htm God knows how much has "ever been mined from the ground".

Interestingly, from that graph we have hit peak gold. http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1145804580.php Fortunately unlike oil, we recycle almost all of our gold so it isn't likely to effect us that much.

It is a pity you were full of it. I would really, really have liked you to be right. Not so much for Gold, but as an answer to peak Phosphorus.

Bernie Masters.
I think you had better look for another source of information for the amount of gold in the tailings of a modern gold mine. At Tennant Creek way back in the sixties our head grade was 4 pennyweights per tonne (about 6 ppm) and the tailings was virtually nil, using cyanide extraction. Your figures probably apply to an old stamp mill using mercury, technology has improved since then.

David

No doubt there will still be plenty of fossil fuels left in the ground, but will the energy returned over energy invested make it worthwhile to extract them?

The more immediate worries globally relate to arable land and fresh water, as the aquifers under the world's biggest grain growing areas in North China, North India, and parts of the US, which are essential for irrigating crops, are being pumped dry faster than they are being recharged, if they are being recharged at all. The world has consumed more grain than was being grown for 6 of the past 9 years, world food stocks are at the lowest level in more than 50 years, and last year there were food riots in 34 countries. See Lester Brown's article in the May Scientific American and his book, which goes into greater detail and has references to the relevant government documents and research papers

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=civilization-food-shortages&sc=WR_20090428

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm

Cornucopians like Bernie Masters forget that there have been plenty of collapses of past societies. In Europe, conditions actually got worse for ordinary people from 1400 to the 19th century (despite great technological progress) as evidenced by both real wages (scroll down to graphs)

http://www.ata.boun.edu.tr/faculty/sevket%20pamuk/publications/pamuk-black_death-final.pdf

and average heights

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/medimen.htm

Sure, global population growth is slowing, but the global fertility rate (~2.8) is still above replacement (~2.33, globally), and the UN has just had to revise its low growth population projection upwards. We are adding about 70 million people a year. Given that we are coping so badly with the 6.7 billion people we have now, why will 9 billion make it any better?

"All groups practiced population control either by infanticide or other means ... Population control is extremely important in a positive way for society."

Oh, for the Good Old Days, eh neillium? Back when if a new baby was just one mouth too many to feed, maybe deformed, or just a bit funny looking, or mostly just if it was a girl, the tribal witch-doctor would order it to be left out on the hillside at night for the local predators. Them was the days!

"Gawd, I miss the screamin'" - Argus Filch, "Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone".

Sancho, your allusion to the 2008 food crisis is a typical tactic of the Malthusians: Pick up on temporary blip in the data, and screech, "See! See! Finally we're going to be right!"

What you ignore is the highly unusual synergy that led to the temporary spike in food prices last year. "Analysts attributed the price rises to a 'perfect storm'": droughts in several key grain producing areas, a (likewise temporary) spike in oil prices, the Global Financial Crisis, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_crisis

Another key factor was that several food growing areas had switched to biofuel producing crops: In other words, people in the developing world starved so that elite green idealists in the West could feel better about driving their cars. Nice.

Unfortunately for the Malthusians, food prices have dropped again - as they always have. "Although some commentators have argued that this food crisis stems from unprecedented global population growth, others point out that world population growth rates have dropped dramatically since the 1980s, and grain availability has continued to outpace population."

Oops.

As Peter Cook said, "Well, it's not quite the conflagration I'd been banking on. Never mind, lads, same time tomorrow... we must get a winner one day."

Wing Ah Ling “Down with speciescentric arrogance!!

Equal rights for shower mould and windshield bugs!!”

Ah at last a quotable quote… love it..

more please

Clownfish… whilst I did not envisage a diet of soylent green, we do both seem to be viewing the hysteria with distance and the benefit which comes from standing atop a hill made of dead losers.

Kartiya Jim “Col will quickly call a meeting of the Elders and determine that a one child policy is mandatory .”

Actually I walk the talk …

I have a very simple philosophy.. breed but breed within ones personal economic capacity.

I stopped producing kids before I needed the government to help me out or where we could not live on my income alone (which, whilst more than average, was not infinitely elastic)..

I planned the birth of both my daughters.

I had a vasectomy after the second.

Before you try to criticize my attitude, I suggest you first check out my behavior.

If people managed their family commitments to live within their means and aspirations, we would see an immediate drop in populations… that might cause a problem for those who rely on a constantly expanding population to manage their perceptions of economics but who cares…

Better a small well developed population, where all can experience a good quality of life, than the milling hordes which seem to teem out of the under-developed world and all living in little more than a charnel house or deprivation and poverty.

Ahoy me hearties. Now don’t ye be tinkin’ dat da scurvy dog is after da gold booty.

Arrrrr……tis da pillaging and plunderin’ of U238 from da Davy Jones’ locker dat Master ‘Arlot’s after. Aye.... 4.5 billion tons of da green stuff in dat der seawater!

Avast me scallywags – away wit ‘is peg leg and crocheted eyepatch! It’ll be a good floggin’ for dis lilly-livered mutineer!

Clownfish, firstly, it's Wikipaedia. There are very good reasons that it's not academically accepted as a source.

Take a look at the references. The numerical data comes from the UN and governmental departments, but the analysis is overwhelmingly taken from conservative journals and think-tanks. Do you believe, even for a second, that teams of industry media managers aren't hovering over that page to ensure it gets history "right"?

The events you describe as "a perfect storm" were both predicted and unsurprising. And keep in mind that many of the "analysts" were the same people who failed spectacularly in warning us of the impending credit implosion. In particular, the World Bank (which receives 3 citations in the article) is anything but reliable or disinterested.

And - good lord! - did you read the section titled "Crop shortfalls from natural disasters"? Drought, cyclones, floods, heat waves, aridity-related crop blights, "consistent with the predicted effects of climate change." The "unseasonable droughts in grain-producing nations" are becoming the regular seasons. I know you think climate change is a furphy, but here you are, staring it in the face and claiming it's a one-off event!

I don't imagine I'm going to convince you (and I agree that biofuels are a crock), but the food crisis was the shape of things to come, not an aberration. You'll see when we get there.

On another note, why are you and other growthists unable to argue the point without descending into accusations of sadism and genocide (mil-observer is excused because he's a cultist and knows no better)? That sort of integrated ad hominem suggests a lack of belief in your own argument. I know you think it sounds triumphal and confident, but it actually comes across as the sort of defensive, clench-jawed assurance people affect when they're deliberately ignoring evidence that makes them uncomfortable.

"Ad-hominem", along with "Straw-man", the favourite adjectives of precious princesses who fondly imagine that they assume some sort of moral high ground by wearing the persona of a prissily wounded maiden aunt whenever someone rhetorically kicks their head. My favourite example was Bronwyn Bishop's faux-outrage when Gareth Evans (rather sensibly, if you ask me) threatened to cross the chamber and garotte her.

"Predicted and unsurprising" - did you read the Peter Cook quote? If tw@ts like Lester Brown dribble on long enough, every now and then a short-term fluctuation will happen along, and they can pretend that they were right all along. It's the same tactic used by sham psychics: Make a big enough screech about the one time you accidentally guess the right answer, and your adoring acolytes will conveniently ignore the 99 times you were wrong.

And, of course, it was almost tiresomely predictable that some alarmist idiot would blame it all on climate change.

"Well, whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it. Wizard!" - Lucy Lawless, the Simpsons.

Climate Change has become the Wizard of alarmists. Temperatures rise? Climate Change! Temperatures fall? Climate Change! Ice sheets melt, ice sheets grow, droughts, floods, rainbows, rain on your wedding day, that slight cough you had last week, the time you missed the bus and were late for work? Climate change! It's all Climate Change's fault!

Simple, obvious and wrong.

"They knew that when the rains came, it was a sign.
When the rains departed, it was a sign.
When the winds rose, it was a sign.
When the winds fell, it was a sign.
When in the land there was born at midnight of a full moon a goat with three heads, that was a sign.
When in the land there was born at some time in the afternoon a perfectly normal cat or pig with no birth complications at all, or even just a child with a retrousse nose, that too would often be taken as a sign." - Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

Clownfish, your first post had the semblance of an argument, but now all you have is abuse. I didn't think the well would run dry so quickly.

You seemed rational and sensibly critical when you first began posting here and to The Australian's letters blog, but it seems you're now happy just to fade into the reactionary white noise that can be heard in the background of a real debate.

Calling me names won't improve the quality of your argument, and neither will being an unthinking mouthpiece for industry and fundamentalist religion. Good luck nonetheless.

Peace, brother.

Considering all the doomists who contribute to these sites, there seems to be a coming together of views of anti-immigration racists, old-fashioned eugenicists, anti-(other people's)-population, infanticide of other people's children, cave-and-kelp environmentalists, and I suspect, euthanasia advocates. Amazingly, some of them think they are on the Left. Mind-boggling.

For what it's worth, I'm happy with:
* reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to ecologically sustainable levels;
* with sustainable living, along with sustainable development and use of resources;
* with increased immigration, particularly from the 'Third World', we need this for increased inter-marriage which is so obviously necessary to invigorate our Anglo population;
* with the decriminalisation of suicide and the current penalties for murder (i.e. euthanasia and infanticide);
* and for far greater funding of women's education around the world, since lower fertility eventually correlates with women's educational levels.

There was a time when Africa made up a third of the world's population, and I hope that, with present levels of fertility, they will soon re-acquire that population share. So I am also quite comfortable with:

* the current rate of growth in the African population, provided it is paired with massive infrastructural, educational and economic development, (particularly to take the burdens off women) and
* increased migration from Asia and Africa to Europe, the US and Australia,

in order to rejuvenate our populations, and move us away from tired old racist and anti-modernist policies which seek either to take us back to Menzies' fifties, or further back to a Medieval Golden Age - or even further back to a tribal Golden Age of hunting and gathering.

Hopefully, this will set a few cats of reality amongst the Utopian pigeons.

Ah ! I get it ! The anti-immigration and anti-population stance is a cover for your dread that your great-grandchildren will be coffee-coloured ! Is that it ?

Joe

Loudmouth comments "Hopefully, this will set a few cats of reality amongst the Utopian pigeons.

Ah ! I get it ! The anti-immigration and anti-population stance is a cover for your dread that your great-grandchildren will be coffee-coloured ! Is that it ?"

In the first place, what's wrong with wanting Utopia? Do you have some problem with us wanting to leave the world a better place for our children?

And, in the second place, accusations of racism don't change the facts ( http://sustainablesalmonarm.ning.com/profiles/blogs/accusations-of-racism-dont ) It's too bad that you have no better argument to support your opinions. You seem to harbour bigotry toward those who have reasonable arguments to support their own opinions. Sad.

Hi Rick,

I guess the problem with Utopias is that they all turn fascist: they all propose an idyllic solution to the complexities of the world, which could be brought about 'IF ONLY' one group or other - Jews, capitalists, rich peasants, priests, intellectuals, [insert out-group of choice here] - were 'extracted', liquidated, transmigrated or otherwise removed from the scenario.

So let's hope that we don't ever have any more Utopias, no more Nazi Germanies, or Pol Pots, or Leninist New States, that we have only the real world to deal with. What do we do about it ? How can we minimise, if not eliminate, all of the major problems of the world - global warming, racism, sexism - without picking on some out-group like immigrants and people who have more than one child in the time-honoured fashion of demagogues and fascists everywhere, Left and Right ?

Joe Lane

Ah, so here we have this oft-proclaimed Utopian age of prosperity; driven by economic growth, population growth, immigration, and no shortage of apologists proposing other idyllic solutions (IF ONLY the neo-Malthusians would shut up, IF ONLY the neo-Luddites would disappear, IF ONLY people opposed to eliminating borders would hive off, and so on). Your statement says unequivocally that it is destined to degenerate into a fascist dystopia (and some claim that it already has). Thanks for making that clear.

I don’t think you’re saying that we should just give up on our problems, and I agree that there has been too much collateral and direct damage in past attempts to solve problems. However, if it is clear that our sheer numbers our creating problems (and you may or may not agree with that), then what should we do?

Rick, mate, if there is one failing in the anti-pops it's the 'sheer numbers' argument. Not proven. Not by a long shot. Look, here's a clue that will give your argument some traction.

Focus on the urban pull of people in Africa. It's a shocker. There you have families of six and seven people people with no hope. Go with the Greens and aothers and crack down hard on corporate excesses and the rampant greed of some capitalists.

As it is now, you guys look like loonies. Yes, I know you can say you're 'dreamers' who will one day be proven wrong, but so far you're so far off message that you appear to be some sort of post millenium cult.

...infrastructure has left government very heavily indebted. This seems in conflict with the "Growth is good" ethos.
Posted by Fester

Hi Fester, You are correct. The voo-doo economics of population growth means that it is good for real estate agents but bad for the economy. Our national debt in 1980 was around 8 billion. It has climbed to around 640 billion now, even with massive asset sales. Those houses you see being built are largely funded by debt. That is, each one of us on average, are consuming well above what we are producing. As the population grows, our debt spirals upward.

To Bernie, Jo and Cheryl, it is a matter of what do you want left of the natural world ? It reminds me of a Catholic priest who screamed at me as a fifteen year old , "that until the last tree is chopped down........there is no such thing as overpopulation".

The "reduce consumption" and everything will be "OK" people, need to realize that this strategy is a monumental failure. I realize that it is hard to throw away your cultural baggage.... but we are not down to our last breeding pair. It is time for a reality check and help those species and the planet, we are destroying.

Rational argument will never change many ...we need to appeal to emotions. The " road kill" of tortured mammals, displaced by new housing starts? After a few months, there is none left to kill and this uncomfortable sight is removed.

Population boosters, eyes shut to the misery caused to the native world, have trouble with their moral compass. Population stabilisation helps reduce poverty, by making people scarcer and hence more "valuable". That is, their labour is worth more.

Big business loves population growth as not only do they sell more units, it also keeps the price of labour down and it enslaves the workers with huge housing costs.......hence a compliant workforce.

Muddled thinking from green left boosters, combined with the power of land speculators to corrupt the political process, is resulting in an economic and ecological mess.

Cheers everyone.

“an unthinking mouthpiece for industry and fundamentalist religion.”Ha, now THAT’S funny!

I can assure you that I am no fan of Big Industry, and if you’ve read any of my posts here on the subject, you’d also know that I am likewise no fan of religion.

On the subject of Big Industry, I might add that your assertion regarding the Wikipedia entry sounded like something the tinfoil-hat brigade would come up with.

I’m curious though about your reference to the Australian – is there a false Clownfish at loose in the world?Apart from a few comments on the brilliant Jack Marx’s sadly-now-silent blog, I don’t think I’ve ever commented on the Australian. Perhaps you mean the ABC news site? The only Age blog I comment on is Steven Walker’s music blog.

Sarcasm may indeed be the lowest form of wit, but if I occasionally stoop to mockery, it’s because I long ago learned, that the one thing that po-faced dogmatists, be they gibbering Creationists or deep-green Gaiaists, really can’t stand is being made fun of.

Besides, in the face of outrageous nonsense, sometimes you just have to be like my great sceptical heroes Penn & Teller, and stand up and say loud and clear, “Bu11sh!t!”

Call it for what it is.

...cont'd

cont'd ...

As I’ve said elsewhere, if it seems like I’m overly hard on the “green left”, it’s only because I’m the more sorely outraged by the egregious betrayal of my sincere beliefs, by educated – and not-so-educated –fools like Hansen and Brown, and by groups like Greenpeace, hypocrites who trade on their assumed mantle of virtue to get away with outright lies and deception (one only has to look at their ads on this very site to see they’re still telling whoppers).

But I’m not so much outraged, as truly alarmed by the witterings of the sustainable population lobby. These krancks might like to argue that they’re genuinely altruistic, but their own writings betray their peculiar and deep-rooted misanthropy, which seems to admit of no fundamental distinctions between a human being and a beetle. At least some of these miserable environmental Calvinists are finally admitting their desire to exert the ultimate control – life or death – over the recalcitrant hordes of humanity who stand between them and their utopian ideals.

The problem with utopias, as both Orwell and Huxley knew only too well, is that they have a way of turning ugly. 20th century history has shown us only too well how the terrible faith of dogmatic idealists has merely paved the road to the gulag and the killing field.

“Nothing is evil in the beginning,” as Tolkien wrote of Sauron, his own fictional personification of perculiarly 20th century evil, “he was not indeed wholly evil, not unless all 'reformers' who want to hurry up with 'reconstruction' and 'reorganization' are wholly evil, even before pride and the lust to exert their will eat them up".
And that, Sancho my friend, is exactly where I fear the terribly certainties of the deep-green misanthropes will end.

As Tolkien’s fellow inkling, Lewis, so wisely said, “those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.”

Dear Ralph, I quote you,

(The "reduce consumption" and everything will be "OK" people, need to realize that this strategy is a monumental failure. I realize that it is hard to throw away your cultural baggage.... but we are not down to our last breeding pair. It is time for a reality check and help those species and the planet, we are destroying)
I hope you don't mean 'breeding pairs' of the many many that have already gone, and many now threatened as we destroy at an ever increasing rate, " in astralia at least".

Don't you see Ralph, that the destruction "Is Consumerism" it's for no other reason than that.
I hope I'm mistaken about the meaning of your post.

On another note.. all this talk about being left or green, greens are conservative don't you know.. it's the blue bloods that are the radical destroyers. I'd rather have Chris Milne and Bobby Brown running the country " even if it does mean i have to sit and wait for a rabbit to die of old age rather than being allowed to shoot it..." They can't help their anti gun rubbish.. you just wait it will be anti lipstick n fingernail polish soon... just wait..

Clownfish makes an incisive call on "environmental Calvinists"; uncannily, I was thinking of the Calvinist comparison a few days ago. The neo-Malthusians are "the Elect", aware of our wicked ways and the path to Salvation. To everyone else, well: "You're going to burn!"

But in this context, better to be fair to those more purist of Protestants. The neo-Malthusians' cheerleading actually produces a cacophony more like any frenzied din at a satanists' convention. Every means of depopulation is fair to them (except their own selfish demise of course), from enforcing greater impoverishment of families (removing birth and child benefits), to brutal cost-cutting on the health system, to corollaries in such "progressive motions" as euthanasia bills, to reducing further the already dire conditions in agriculture, manufacturing and infrastructure.

Imperialism has always been big on death - other people's, that is.

Great quote from Lewis, Clownfish. I didn't think the anti-pop cullers would still be at it.

Isn't it fantastic that they've decided that NOW is the time to start the cull. Not, say, three years before they were born, if you know what I mean. Anyway ...

Here's the thing, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, its populations fault.
If you're single, miserable and can't get a girl/boyfriend, it's populations fault.
If you don't understand the great cultural contribution people have made, it's populations fault.
If you don't fit in and think the apocalypse is coming, it's populations fault.

Write almost any sentence in the negative and put people and population as the object ... you get the idea.

Is the anti-pops thinking simplistic, one dimensional nonsense? Sure is. Are they misanthropic? Sure are. They want to save us by culling us. Not on my watch pal.

Rant on, rant on you fools as exponential population growth and consumption exponentially rid this planet of all its natural resources and, who can tell, the the ranters along with all that other stuff.

I will miss the other stuff.

It is great to see a fair few minds with a bit of grey matter focused on the future.

Many of us change our position on "what's best" as we gain a bit more experience .

Let's have a close look at this " Growth is ALWAYS good" garbage.

Let's set our sights a bit higher for humans, [ and probably the natural environment ] by having Growth a bit lower !

Cheryl comments "Rick, mate, if there is one failing in the anti-pops it's the 'sheer numbers' argument. Not proven. Not by a long shot. Look, here's a clue that will give your argument some traction."

Cheryl, Cheryl, Cheryl. If there is one failing of the overpopulation deniers, it's the failure to deal with the 'sheer numbers' argument and the mounting evidence: the Sixth Great Extinction, aquifers drying up, collapse of ocean fish stocks, peak phosphorus, and the consequences of Peak Oil. Unfortunately, I suspect that the only "proof" the O.D.s will accept is massive dieoff of humans ( you know, more than the several million who die each year from starvation right now ). And even then, the O.D.s will be running around saying

"Oh good. We just had 5 million people die in this country, so we have room for 5 million more immigrants to make up for them. And everyone who lives here should copulate their brains out too."

or something like that. Yes, every cloud has a silver lining.

We do have a few two-pot screamers on this thread (apart from Mr King) and they’re all growth merchants but how long must one endure their irrelevant jabberwonky which is totally bereft of any genuine argument?

Meanwhile, the creeping white death is engulfing this nation from land clearing. Since European settlement began, an estimated total of 15 billion trees have been cleared from the Murray-Darling basin alone.

Approximately 5.7 million hectares are within Australia’s regions mapped which are affected by dryland salinity. It is estimated that in 50 years' time the area of regions with a high risk may increase to 17 million hectares.

Some 20 000 km of major road and 1600 km of railways occur in regions mapped to have areas of high risk. Estimates suggest these could be 52 000 km and 3600 km respectively by the year 2050.

Up to 20 000 km of streams could be significantly salt affected by 2050.

Areas of remnant native vegetation (630 000 ha) and associated ecosystems are within regions with areas mapped to be at risk.

However, the growthists believe they’ve fixed the problems with “new-age” technology by incarcerating food animals in cages for their entire lives.

So consumers now drink milk from incarcerated cows with pus filled teats and a myriad of other diseases. Pigs we’ve recently discovered to be surviving just long enough to get to the dinner table, despite being eaten alive by maggots and the chooks…..well what can one say about a featherless battery chook’s house – the size of an A4 piece of paper?

Nevertheless, it frees the land up for development as the growthists tell us. Brilliant! Problem is some 60% of Australia’s antibiotic use is now administered to the caged animals we salivate over and 70% of all new and re-emerging pathogens afflicting (and killing) humans have zoonotic origins.

So this year Swine flu – a pig/bird/human hybrid………next year? Perhaps by then we’ll have produced our very own pandemic if the deluded growthists (driven by an unrestrained greed and an addiction to power) have their way.

Clownfish,

You think that Lester Brown is a fool, but clearly the German and Norwegian governments, who are funding his Worldwatch Institute along with some respected US foundations, don't agree with you. Nor do the editors of Scientific American, who published an article of his this May. Why should we believe that they are wasting space and money on nutters?

No one has claimed that population growth was more than a bit player in the latest 2008 spike in food prices. The more immediate issues include drought in some big food growing regions, a doubling of meat consumption in China from the 1980s, Bush's idiotic plan to turn corn into ethanol (motivated by concerns about energy security and buying votes in key electorates rather than by the environmentalists he has always despised and ignored), and speculation. The biofuels were responsible for about 40% of the price rise for corn and 20% for rice and wheat. The reason for the speculation is that grain production has been growing more slowly than global population for years. World grain stocks have thus been falling and are now at their lowest level in 50 years. Otherwise grain would have just been released from stockpiles, preventing those food riots and blocking the price rises the speculators were anticipating. See

http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Grain/2006_data.htm

Believe it or not, we do need a safety margin.

Thank you Protagoras, it's always valuable to know what are the extremes of an argument, to know where the craziest position may currently be. I worked a few years ago milking cows and they were beautifully healthy, relaxed, well-fed and properly exercised with plenty of room to graze. After all, no dairy-person in her right mind would incarcerate milk cows as you suggested (off the top of your head ?) - a stressed or unhealthy cow is an unproductive cow. And the dairy company would send the entire truckload back and fine any dairy farmer who allowed diseased milk into the load, and fine them heavily - if it happened more than once, the dairy farmer would be barred from the collection.

Pigs being eaten alive by maggots: really ?

Protagoras, most of us sceptics know where you are coming from and would sympathise, as long as you didn't egg the pudding so ridiculously - it's a sign that your belief in your own case is weak, covered up by over-statement. Please come back to earth. Confront the real data, like some of us are trying to do. We know the world's got troubles, I'm sure that most sceptics wouldn't deny that, but nor are we going to revel in some imminent cataclysm, or try to justify the most brutal and fascist 'solutions' (final solutions?) to the world's problems, or look for scapegoats. We are all in this world, this one and only world, most of us want to know what can be done to sustain it, but nobody should be exterminated or even dictated to, and few of us are stupid enough to believe the hysterical stuff that you throw around. Keep it real, Protagoras, and you might win us over, if that is what you really want. IF that is what you really want.

Joe

Loudmouth,

Where has anyone here called for exterminations, forced sterilisations, or other horrors, outside of the fertile imaginations of people like yourself? Point to such a comment. People in other countries will take action to solve their problems or not, without reference to us. We can give a hand to people who are trying to pull themselves out of the Malthusian trap, but we can't force them to take it.

Overpopulation in the developed countries, due to both high fertility in the past and mass migration now, is causing both local and global environmental damage. See, for example, this graph on total and per capita greenhouse gas emissions from the US and Europe

http://d.yimg.com/kq/groups/20338607/929044366/name/One%20slide%20from%20WRI%20Pop%20and%20GHG%20emissions%2Eppt

The Center for Immigration Studies (www.cis.org) has estimated that the average immigrant to the US increases his greenhouse gas emissions by 4 times.

There are obvious cultural and educational benefits to having a moderate level of immigration, and there are talented people who would be an asset anywhere (ignoring the morality of poaching them), but it is amusing how "progressives" put "diversity" (i.e. mass migration) above all other values: our environment, our social cohesion, the welfare of our disadvantaged fellow citizens, and civil liberties which 1950s progressives would have died in the ditch to defend.

So far the anti-pops can't work out whether its global population or just Australian population they want to cull. They equate every person, whether a five year old in New Delhi and a 35 year old TV executive in Manhattan 'exuding' the same greenhouse gases.

Whenever we get individuals such as Divergence talking about people in terms of energy units, we should be wary. Coloured people, Asians, Jews, women, etc, become units who need to be 'dealt with' because they are standing in the way of some fantastical green paradise or worse, be blamed for causing the end of the earth.

'Infantacide has been common since time began,' was one anti-pop comment.

So people who fight for the rights of immigrants, of refugees (and these are often green groups too) get lumped in with 'false consciousness' and become part of the problem.

All argument against the anti-pops - and there have been many here from green groups, social democrats, socialists, those on the left and right - have been dismissed either with 'the apocalyse is coming' or 'you're part of the problem'.

They are social engineers brandishing their ignorance in public.

Good one, Cheryl :)

Thanks for the hyperbole Loudmouth Joe and your endeavours to paint the brutal dairy industry with a benign public "face" but the reality is obscene and I daresay that only those who reside under a rock would make such silly statements.

Either way the issue of livestock destroying Australia’s landscape and depleting precious resources remains unresolved and advocates for increased human population like to also obfuscate the fact that a lactating cow requires around 250 litres of water a day (source: SA Govt. Primary Industries.)

Water is not a concern of growthists who, in their feigned, collective ignorance, will tell us that there’s a massive amount of ocean which can be desalinated to cater for the burden of increased human populations and a subsequent increased burden of livestock to feed the hungry hordes which the growthists wish only to exploit for personal gain.

Currently marine biologists warn that widespread desalinization will take a heavy toll on ocean biodiversity; as such facilities' intake pipes essentially vacuum up and inadvertently kill millions of plankton, fish eggs, fish larvae and other microbial organisms that constitute the base layer of the marine food chain.

“Pigs being eaten alive by maggots: really ?”

Really Loudmouth Joe you’re a bit of an embarrassment to the cabal you represent. “Pig” ignorance is not an asset to any consortium:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/08/2565046.htm

http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuId=146&ContentID=132383

“it's a sign that your belief in your own case is weak, covered up by over-statement.”

Big mistake Loudmouth Joe for my “over-statements” are in fact not mine but are sourced from credible authorities. I am merely the messenger, however, I note you are yet to present any case at all and you have also evaded the serious issue of desertification and soil salinity.

Australian bureaucrats(operating third world standard,regulatory agencies) captured by growthists who carry brown paper bags, are failing to address the ecological ramifications of population overshoot. In addition, the increase in desertification and salinity is further evidence of the ongoing shoddy corporate practices by those who believe it is their right to privatise, pillage and pollute our air, soil and waterways with impunity.

Divergence, any fool can successfully apply for a government grant.

The Exclusive Brethren, for instance, are funded by the Australian government, as is Right To Life. The British government funded a couple to set up business as psychics, as well as funding homeopathic hospitals. American governments have even given money to the Scientologists. Even Pauline Hanson can truthfully claim to have been funded by the Australian government.

Not exactly a winning argument, is it?

And Protagoras: You are surely a sign that the Gods have a sense of humour. Everytime I think you've made a complete @ss of yourself, you come back to delight me! Now you're getting in bed with the lying, hypocritical PeTAphiles.

Now go off and enjoy your organic carrot, but wash it thoroughly first: it's probably contaminated with almost as much bu11sh!t as one of your posts.

Cheryl comments "They are social engineers brandishing their ignorance in public."

Yes, that is an excellent description of the S.O.D.s! Their attempts at social engineering -- crowding more and more people onto this planet while ignoring the consequences -- clearly demonstrate ignorance of our history, our impact on this planet, the concept of a steady state economy, and our place in the natural world.

Thanks for that, Cheryl!

“Yes, that is an excellent description of the S.O.D.s!”

I’m in agreement Rick S - and an accurate perception on your part.

Alas my visual acuity has been traumatised by the irrelevant tirades and nancy boy hysterics from the clownfish (bottom trawler.) Nevertheless I’ve learnt that physical activity, such as leaping to one’s feet and moving arms and hands together in frenzied motion, can be a safe way of keeping awake whilst having to suffer the bottom trawler’s boring off topic, stupefying swill - which would surely make a grave yawn?

Cheers

Kali spera, Protagoras,

Why do doomist drama-queens so easily go off the topic ? No, I don't support desertification, and I wish that Adelaide didn't need a desalination plant. I don't like the idea of maggoty pigs, or pus-filled cows, and I'm not sure what farmer would either. I do support education for women around the world, in order, in a roundabout way, to reduce fertility rates (to get back to the original topic).

On population growth: Given that Africa is a very huge continent, I am not worried if their population rises significantly, maybe doubles or triples, especially if the population in European countries and Japan keeps falling, and if China's starts to fall as well, as older generations there pass away. Population is not really a big deal (wow: cat and pigeons).

On immigration: yes, we benefit from immigration by taking the skilled workers of other countries, but that's the choice of those workers: people shouldn't be forced to stay in their own country if they see better opportunities elsewhere. Where would many Australians be if they hadn't had that choice ? The country would be populated only by Aboriginal people, and Irish and Scottish convicts (my kids' ancestors, actually). If anything, our immigration policy should be relaxed, to take in far more refugees, who are greatly enriching our society.

So I wish I could live another hundred years, to see my coffee-coloured grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and socialise with their non-Anglo parents and grandparents, and laugh at the tanties of early C20 doom-sayers.

Loudmouth Joe

Yes, hit 'em with it Joe. It needs to be stated here, in the face of all their sinister insinuations on immigration, "race", and efforts at progress and development for all humanity. These guys pose a clear and present danger, the disastrous and murderous results of which the world has seen before.

Clowbfish,

You appear to be against nearly everything. Are you? If not what exactly are you for?

Are you for perpetual population growth?
Are you for increasing consumption ad infinitum?
Are you for forest destruction?
Are you for aquifer depletion or exhausting fish stocks by extracting resources at a rate much faster than the resources can regenerate themselves?
Are for believing that Earth will expand to meet the desires of the human population filling it?
Do you believe that by growing and exploiting resources as noted you will improve your own well being and if so for how long (to the nearest couple of decades will do)?

Perhaps I exaggerate but it would be interesting to find out exactly where you stand on at least some of these issues.

Perhaps I do you an injustice and you are simply after the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If so you may never be satisfied as none of these things are simply black and white.

mal-observer comments "These guys pose a clear and present danger, the disastrous and murderous results of which the world has seen before."

Yes, absolutely. The shrill overpopulation deniers, coupled with growthists around the world, pose a danger to this civilization similar to the dangers underscored by Ronald Wright and others in past civilizations. He documents the parallels, and points out that, unless we change our ways, we will be doomed by our own success, and fall into the largest "progress trap" we have ever created.

Ronald Wright, Jerrard Diamond, Paul Ehrlich, Meadows et al who wrote Limits to Growth 30, 40 years ago to get a picture of what is going on on the planet.

Can anyone on the pro growth side provide some researched literature that provides any sort of convincing arguments that supports ongoing population growth.

I'm not referring here to some religious ideology as per the pope, Christian and Islamic or neo conservative fundamentalists. I'm looking for evidence based arguments.

Unfortunately, the pro-growth side has no convincing arguments, so they resort to "the sky is falling" scare tactics -- "we have to support an aging population," and "our economy will collapse," and "without more minds to work on them, we cannot solve our problems," and on and on. They are so darned negative about everything. Overpopulation deniers, to refer to the title of this thread, are the true wannabe imperialists in the crowd. Little do they suspect that Mother Nature holds the trump card.

But ask away. I'm not optimistic that you're get a convincing answer, or even an answer at all.

kulu: consider Jared Diamond 100% discredited. Fish-and-chip wrapping. I easily detonated his dodgy, self-contradictory thesis on 1994 Rwanda in an earlier OLO cross thread (see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8838#140663 ). It's time Diamond confessed his crime against historiography and stuck to relatively more harmless pursuits like coffee, croissants and gasbagging among other Ivy League snobs. What did Diamond do? Slick marketing? Opportunistic trend surfing? Telling stories to salve the consciences of a pseudo-aristocratic diplomatic circuit with whom he sympathized? Probably a bit of all three motives.

But he actually did not, by any conjuring of imagination, "do history"; certainly not when he presumed to lecture on modern history, but could only insinuate causality in a most passive, implicitly genocidal, and politically gutless manner.

And Diamond's offence is not the common liberalist academic misdemeanor of pushing mealy-mouthed "uncertainty" on some facts, as if pledging the fake "intellectual humility" that is in inverse proportion to their own grant- and advance-grabbing avarice, bureaucratic ruthlessness, and preoccupation with hierarchical rank. Any self-proclaimed "historian" making such wildly oscillating and claims on "causality" - as Jared Diamond does on Rwanda - is rather like a purported "surgeon" feeling very unsure about what that scalpel-thingy is for. The impostor-surgeon cannot make a proper *in*cision, if at all; Diamond could only make a *de*cision to get something together for publication to a targeted audience in the marketplace.

Of course, maybe you claim to have some substantial defence for Diamond's incompetent attempt at modern African history; it would be a first, because all we got on the earlier thread was some toadying genuflection to a well-publicized celebrity toff.

Ehrlich is probably a worse case of professional ineptitude, though apparently Ehrich was a much braver example than the clause-dropping each-way-better Diamond. Nonetheless, to make such grand predictions and then be proved 100% wrong should properly annihilate a writer's reputation, career and royalties.

But somehow there's a groupie cult sticking to Ehrlich! To paraphrase from recent English Cricket commentary (on their team's loss to the Netherlands): "that'd be like a bookmaker setting a rocking horse as odds-on favorite to win the Grand National"...

Have you stopped beating your wife yet, kulu?

That's pretty much the calibre of rhetorical question you've presented me with, but I'll answer: No, of course I'm not "for" any of those things.

I stated quite clearly, on an earlier article on this topic, that of course overpopulation is a concern - but that it's one that the world can and is addressing.

As I pointed out then, world population growth has slowed dramatically since its peak in the 60s, and is expected to stabilise some time this century. Will we be able to feed everyone? Thanks to the work of heroes like Norman Borlaug, I think the answer is yes.

But don't just take my word for it. It gave me no end of amusement to point out that even the IPCC implicitly accepts this probability, if one examines its assumptions about global income in its scenarios.

The IPCC expects income in the developing world to at least *equal*, if not exceed current developed-world incomes by the end of the century. This will be a fantastic achievement, not least because it is simply good that more people will enjoy the sort of living standard as us, but because history shows that well-off, well-educated women almost invariably *choose* to have smaller families. History also demonstrates that it is invariably wealthy countries that can afford to protect their environment.

I did, and do, concede that in some ways Australia is a special case: Our geological history means that this continent is less able than almost any other to support a large population. However, given our birthrate is naturally negative, such measures as a one-child policy are extremist and unnecessary. Careful - and non-discriminatory - adjustment of our immigration intake is all that may be needed.

What I am most certainly *against* is a group with a cultic, profoundly misanthropic, ideological obsession wanting to assert control over people's reproductive choices. Whether its the Church telling people to have more children, or green groups telling them to have less, I think the admonishment to "get your rosaries off our ovaries" is most apt.

Having individually named me, Malcolm King needs to be clear about what I said to a journalist - as compared to what I was reported to have said - about population increase. When asked whether Australia should consider adopting a one child policy I responded that it was something that should be thrown into the mix for public debate. When asked what was a sustainable level of population for Australia, I advised that on current rates of resource consumption it would be seven million.

From this King extrapolates and casts me into a group where, by his definitions, I am anti-humanist, a hater of science, someone who probably has not seen the Australian environment which I want to save, misanthropic, imperialist, and possibly anti-refugee and racist.

Come now Malcolm. You’ve met me. You’ve worked with me. And you know that not one of these labels fits.

Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), of which I am the National President, argues that our immigration program should be reduced so that it is no larger than emigration, and at the same time we advocate government giving greater priority to our humanitarian intake. Indeed, the issues of immigration and refugees must be totally separated.

We go further than most in regard to our obligations and responsibilities by calling on government to include not just political but environmental refugees in our humanitarian intake, and for the financing of our nation’s overseas development assistance program to be substantially increased.

Last year Australia’s population grew by 1.9%. Should that continue, our existing population numbers will double in the next 37 years.

Each new person will consume food, water and energy, along with health services and other infrastructure. Most Australians understand that this is unsustainable.

It is not racist, anti-humanist, or anti-scientific to suggest that it is human beings causing the problems, and more human beings means more problems.

Malcolm King’s optimism that a solution will be found is simply not justified.

Good to hear Kanck come on board, even if it's game over for the Unsustainables UnPeople lobby. She must have realised the incredible damage her own side is doing in the debate.

Some curious semantics here as she again says a sustainable pop in Oz is 7 million. That's defact green polly talk for saying she wants Oz pop to be 7 million, however you carve it.

I checked King's quote. It's from AAP. Still, it's nice to have it from the horses mouth.

She says: "We go further than most in regard to our obligations and responsibilities by calling on government to include not just political but environmental refugees in our humanitarian intake, and for the financing of our nation’s overseas development assistance program to be substantially increased."

This is a massive volte face re the Unsustainable Antipeople's stance on immigration. Rick. Divergence, your position is splintering left, right and centre.

“So I wish I could live another hundred years, to see my coffee-coloured grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and socialise with their non-Anglo parents and grandparents, and laugh at the tanties of early C20 doom-sayers.”

Loudmouth Joe – where is that rock you live under? Many of our grandchildren are already “coffee-coloured” and many of us (except the rock apes) have been socialising with non-Anglo parents and grandparents for decades.

But there you are, grunting away. First paragraph recommending birth control. Second paragraph, recommending Africans breed like rabbits, despite the AIDS plague, malaria, climate change and droughts and floods which sweep away whole plantations on the African continent.

Ah……your third paragraph – a clanger and typical of the free racketeers, who poach skilled people from poor nations who have struggled to educate their own, only to be cleaned out of skilled labour and professional people by the greed merchants in the West.

And spare not a thought for the uneducated women and children languishing in squalid refugee camps around the planet who are often raped, beaten and even murdered and have no chance of escape.

Only those who can enhance your bank balance are welcome! Who cares if skilled migrants or affluent young men with thousands of dollars to pay people smugglers jump the queue and deprive the helpless and penniless of a decent life?

Go forth and populate says the loudmouths and the clowns in our society. No worries about the more than 5 million children per year who die of hunger (about 1 every 5 seconds) and 40 million victims of all ages who die each year from starvation and diseases related to malnutrition.

Sizzling climates, mutilated forests, toxic waters, polluted air, dead oceans, desertification, crass, violent, short-sighted and shocking ecological behavior and resultant change. Living as if the Earth has no value is the norm for the intellectually disabled rock apes. Yay!

Clownfish,
Your constructive reply to my earlier post deserves a considered reply which will be forthcoming in about 24 hours time as my allowance for today is about to be reached.

Mil-observer,
Presumably you have better credentials than Diamond or Ehrlich on the population issue (and everything else). Instead of just throwing insults left right and centre do us all a favour and produce some evidence, just a tiny bit to support your view. If you cannot I suggest you shut up.

Cheryl,

You are doing exactly what Malcolm King did, putting words into Sandra Kanck’smouth.

What Sandra says she means or she should at least be given the benefit of doubt until or unless you are able to prove otherwise. It is easy to accuse people of doings things they haven’t done or thinking thoughts they haven’t thought if there is no onus on you to substantiate your accusations.

I agree with Sandra that at our present rate of consumption and resource exploitation 7 million is about the level of population that Australia could sustain. This does not mean – I repeat does not mean we should do a bit of culling or start forcibly sterilizing people etc. But we can start by reducing immigration levels almost immediately and by getting rid of the baby bonus and other incentives to breed and replace them with incentives not to do so.

When talking about things like sustainability we are not talking about a simple black and white issue, as you would perhaps have it. We might be able to sustain our present population for a period of say a decade or two at more or less current levels of consumption but as time marches on and our resources start running out or getting prohibitively expensive to extract we will no longer be able to do so and by then it will be much harder to bring population down to a more sustainable level and/or adjust our living standards downwards.

Sustainable Population Australia is what Sandra says it is and is not what you might want to believe it is.

GOOD NEWS! GOOD NEWS!

Australia’s quarterly GDP up by 0.25% so it is now a bigger nation than it was 3 months ago.

BUT WAIT… What’s this I hear? Per capita GDP has fallen by over 1% for the same period and unemployment has risen at the same time! How can this be? The answer is immigration according to Stephen Koukoulas a respected economic analyst who was interviewed today (Sunday) on ABC TV’s Inside Business.

Funny that but there you are; population growth has done nothing to improve our personal well-being while of course it has boosted total retail sales, residential housing demand, traffic congestion and environmental destruction. And even in the boom time per capita growth did not keep pace with population growth.

Another odd thing is that neither the government nor the opposition have publicly acknowledged these facts. And the Greens too are silent on the matter though it is not as if any but an insignificant number of these migrants were actually refugees.

kulu: presume all you like about my "credentials". You may even conjure some image of me as an Oxbridge don or Ivy League toff, if that makes you more comfortable when reading criticism of academic fraud - that's up to you, of course...

But my more detailed destructions of Jared Diamond are contained in my postings on the OLO cross-thread link I posted repeatedly here (or try this URL, if the server's still playing up: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8838&page=0 ).

Therefore, I've already produced "the evidence" that you demand, including 121 words of direct quotation from Diamond's book itself (Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed* (2005), Ch.10 'Malthus in Africa: Rwanda's Genocide').

Now, other OLOers could probably confirm for you that I'm not going to "shut up", as you suggest I do.

But are you going to "put up" in defence of Diamond? If so, then I look forward to it.

I fully support Sandra.

.
Yes Kulu, the economy continues to grow while per-capita GDP falls. As you say, even in the best of times per-capita growth didn’t keep pace with population growth, or with GDP growth.

Here is the interview with Stephen Koukoulas: http://www.abc.net.au/insidebusiness/content/2009/s2591589.htm

All along, our economic growth, which has been prompted by high immigration, has given us a false economy with a false sense of achievement as indicated by that very highly flawed primary indicator; gross domestic product.

Per-capita growth has been in fairly strong decline for some time now, despite constantly growing GDP. But we don’t hear this from government sources. And neither do we hear it from the Greens!

Our Ruddiculous government has actually seen fit to slightly reduce immigration, which means that at least they can see that ruddiculously high immigration is having a negative effect in the current economic climate. Thank goodness for small mercies….I think!

Hmmm, ludwig, Sandra apparently now supports immigration and wants more humanitarian aid. Astounding as the Sustainable Australia website is covered with anti-immigration posts.

Replace 'growthism' with capitalism and you've got these jokers covered. They've got more angles than an echidna has spines. If you don't like the market economy, go to Cuba and leave your passport at the airport.

While I support the right to free speech, it's only free if you've got something sensible to say other wise it taxes the readers. The anti-pops are taxing as they don't have the foggiest idea what they're talking about. That's why Kanck has entered the fray - to minimise the PR damage.

They have no consistent line (except we're doomed). I've enjoyed the comments of my fellow posters in exposing the lunatic fringe loitering at the margins of the environment movement.

I say adieu.

A manipulative piece of obfuscation on Cheryl’s part. I would say it’s all part of a grand plan to keep control of the masses. Quite scary in my opinion and should one file these comments and articles under “Crimes against humanity?”

It appears Malcolm King’s only other outlet for article publications is “ Eureka Street”, a website owned by the Jesuit priests and his earlier OLO article “Planet Earth - babies need not apply” was published by Catholic News under the heading: “Opinion - Global green campaigns obsessed with population control.”

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=13315

(Note link: “ Swine flu and Mexico's recent earthquake had been the judgment of God for that country's abortion laws, a visiting US priest told members of Canberra's St Christopher's Parish.”) Good strategy Father.......terrify the gullible masses and keep them breeding like rabbits to prop up a failing church.

And only last month, another Catholic Priest, Joseph Ndagijimana, from Kabgayi Diocese, central Rwanda, was charged for his role in the 1994 genocide. Ninety percent of Rwandans are Christian and 60% of those are Catholic.

Can we put Mil-observer’s hatred of Diamond and his account on Rwanda, down to the same maniacal ideology?:

http://www.ditext.com/diamond/10.html

Currently there are more child-headed households in Rwanda than in any other African country. Farmland continues to be divided among family members, and many Rwandans find themselves without enough land to support their families. Nearly half of Rwandan children suffer from chronic malnutrition – 19 percent struggle with acute malnutrition. At least two-thirds of the population lives below the national poverty line.

Those who doubt AGRA's forecast, that hunger will be halved by 2015 in Africa have good reason for their fears. Climate change, rapid population growth and shrinking farm sizes continue to reduce food production. In addition, in South Africa, this year, more than 80,000 hectares of maize crops failed - a result of Monsanto selling dodgy seeds to farmers though that's nothing new.

Worldwide, there remains 20 births/1,000 population and 8 deaths/1,000 population.

The Cross, the Omnicide and the Sixth Extinction?

And how the western-based financiers just love servile lapdogs like the yelping, submissive protag!

Rwanda has an economy strapped by cash-crop imperialism: the absurdity of vast fertile land set aside mostly for coffee and tea production, with unfair income stretched to cover meagre food imports and tenuous efforts at local self-sufficiency.

But such misleading filth as protag's has been disposed of already; it's only difference is its additional poison of anti-catholic bigotry. A priest as killer? As if the vast population of Catholicism (or any other religion) did not include some alienated, twisted minority of neo-Malthusians and their (more overtly) fascist comrades too!

Yeah, and a Da Vinci-code/Vatican "grand plan to keep control of the masses" i.e., by not castigating the masses as a burden, by not killing the masses off, by not reducing their populations to dysfunctional, grey, gay and drug-addicted decrepitude. How terribly and oppressively sinister of a Jesuit group to run King's article! Obviously the rancid one also pours itself another martini when celebrating news of large death tolls among poor mid-eastern muslims, south Asian buddhists, Orthodox Jews, Taoists, Hindus, Sikhs, or any other devout group that reproduces at healthy and competitive rates, relatively untouched by the degenerate cult of fake, non-productive monetarist economy and alienated, narcissistic individualism expressed so consistently by vain pseudo-aristocrats like protag.

One of you devoted neo-Malthusians should grab protag by its powdered nose and steer it onto that thread where I destroyed Diamond's claims about "Rwandan overpopulation", and Diamond's own offensive self-contradictions citing comparable and higher population densities in northwestern Europe, along with the preconditional determinants of cash-crop price falls and World Bank austerity measures! Oh, but we'll just blame those crucial factors on the number of poor Rwandan victims themselves; even Homer Simpson wouldn't be that lazy OR stupid...

While you're at it, tell it to make up its mind over South african crop failures: is that a population cause or the monopolist, non-reproducing seedstock made infamous by such usurer-extortionists as Monsanto?

What a confused, pompous git...

Dear Mil-Observer,

Regarding your last post. The emotion is fantastic. I can see your spittle fly! Why so upset ?

Protagorus is just stating the obvious. Don't be afraid of the truth........you will feel liberated when you overcome your "demons". I'll try this tack.

Where do you go to maximize the chance of catching a fish? Or catch that uncrowded perfect wave ?

There are plenty of people and always will be. Don't worry, a stable well looked after population will maximize happiness and minimize stress for all species.

Love and peace,

Ralph Bennett

Okay Milob. You have made your point that people concerned with population are moral degenerates, so how about arguing the benefits of a growing population? What is the per capita cost of providing infrastructure and education for an Australian living standard? There has been a strong belief by the major political parties that high population growth is very rewarding economically. Yet the massive immigration over the past decade or so seems to have left governments with huge infrastructure debts, incurred by providing for the extra people. How is this economically beneficial for Australians? Shouldn't we be pursuing a population policy that maximises the benefit for Australians?

*and steer it onto that thread where I destroyed Diamond's claims about "Rwandan overpopulation", *

Err in your little mind perhaps Mil-Observer, but that is about
all.

Once those LaRouche cult members get going, its hard to shut them
up lol, but of course Mil Observer refuses to come clean on that
one.

In LaRouche's world, there is no space for "mere beasts", just
ever more humans with ever more crazy ideas.

A bit of info about Rwanda, in case Mil=Observer missed it.

http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/volumes/2002/2-1/magnarella2-1.pdf

.

Clownfish,

Thank you for your response to my post.

Indeed the world population growth rate has slowed since the 60s and is predicted to stabilize at around 9 billion by 2050.. But merely because it is predicted does not make it a given and steps can and should be taken to slow the rate of growth down as much as possible as the Earth will not sustain the current population let alone 9 billion with any reasonable degree of comfort for very long.

The green revolution did give rise to greatly increased food production and hence the ability of the planet to feed the burgeoning population. However Borlaug’s improved varieties have not been the only factor contributing to the revolution. Cheap fossil fuel derived and facilitated fertilizers and mechanical farming methods, irrigation schemes such as our own, near defunct Murray/Darling effort and land clearing on a grand scale (the sort that Australia undertook in the 60s) of increasingly marginal land were important too. Agricultural productivity increases (if they are still occurring) are slowing and are likely to be reversed as water shortages, land degradation and urban encroachment take their toll not to mention the melting of the Himalayan glaciers that feed the into the Ganges Delta. In short we cannot simply expect the future to be a replica of the past.

If the IPCC expects the developing world’s income to equal that of the developed world it is crazy. China tells its own story as you will see if you watch the video link below – a talk by Lester Brown: -

Discussion on China starts 5” into the video.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4449532225517541673
Australia’s birth rate is below replacement but still exceeds the death rate so population will continue to rise.

You say. “What I am most certainly *against* is a group with a cultic…obsession…”
SPA is not such a group being neither misanthropic nor racist but it recognizes the need to find a course of action to adopt in the interests of the well being of ALL of mankind who have to co-exist in a resource limited environment.

On R&B: A lip-service of peace, and a “peace” of corpses and ashes, no less...and from an “animal lover”! How touching! Must have donated generously to those heavily funded orangutan reserves too. Such bestial sentiments – typically in the now degenerate west – often result in beasts getting more care and resources than children in developing countries. To those who love humanity and civilization more: stay on guard against those who would put an animal's life above your child's welfare.

Yes. “Specism” [sic]. I wear that badge with human pride and clear sense of progressive purpose.

fester: “You have made your point that people concerned with population are moral degenerates”.

No, I made no such explicit point on this thread. I did make points about the fascist tendencies and sentiments clear from the depopulationist and genocidalist rantings here and in related cross-threads. I also made the points about those same people's gross hypocrisy, their elitist fear and loathing of poor people, and their warped, dishonest, and dangerously misleading (even genocidal) views on history and causality.

Fester: “...the massive immigration over the past decade or so seems to have left governments with huge infrastructure debts, incurred by providing for the extra people”.

Since when? How did it “seem” so? The question is not “which country are you in”, but more “what planet/drugs are you on?”

If it's “infrastructure debts” we're talking, try investigating the phenomena of “privatization” and “PPPs”. But that'll be an even bigger challenge now, because you'll have trouble finding a time to stop counting: the bail-out heists just keep going, and they've thrown “infrastructure” into that mix of taxpayer funding of financiers too.

Oh dear, Lester Brown again.

Frankly, if Lester Brown told me it was going to be sunny, I'd break out the umbrella.

Lester Brown always makes me think of Kerry Packer's blunt assessment of Fred Hilmer (and, Lord, how it pains me to quote Packer): "The most educated f*ckwit I've ever met."

Yes, fossil fuels have helped feed the world; and we're not going to be running out any time soon - foolish hand-wringing panics by Brown or Ehrlich notwithstanding. "We've been running out of oil since I was a boy," as Notestein observed.

Besides, do you really think we're not going to develop alternatives? Did the Stone Age ended because they ran out of stones?

The alarmism over melting glaciers, for instance, is a furphy. Of course glaciers are melting: they've been advancing and retreating periodically during the entire Holocene, and most of them peaked during the Little Ice Age ending last century, so there's no surprise that they're currently in retreat.

Besides, just because the glaciers are melting, doesn't mean that the precipitation that feeds them in the first place is necessarily getting less. Indeed, doesn't geological history indicate that Greenhouse periods are always wetter than Icehouse? What it does mean is that rivers that are fed by glaciers will show different patterns of flood and retreat.

Perhaps I do you a disservice by lumping you in with other anti-population and "sustainability" nits on this forum, who spout such nonsensical jargon as "specism", liken humanity to a cancerous organism, and declare that the planet would be better off without us. You may not be racist, but there is no doubt that groups like SPA have been a boon of respectability to the "F- off we're full" wingnuts.

But what really concerns me is the well-meaning zeal of "reformers", who invariably lose patience with the messy reality of humanity and, if given power enough, sooner or later decide that a few eggs must be broken, so that their gloriously imagined omelette may come to fruition.

We've seen the miserable results of that far too often, this last century.

Clownfish, you make an interesting point about the Himalayan glaciers. The present problem is not soo much the amount of water that is available, although that might also be debated. The main problem for countries in that region is the Chinese who have diverted a large percentage of the water into their country and it just isn't available for the others. This has resulted in Thailand going from being a large exporter of rice to being forced into a position of needing to import.

Another problem caused by the Chinese dams is the effect it is having on the breeding of fish in the rivers systems. Because of the comparatively constant flow of the rivers, the fish which need turbid waters caused by periodic flooding, are failing to spawn and large numbers of people who rely on fish for their daily food are being starved. The reduction in the deposition of silt in the river estuaries is also causing a dimunition of fertility.

David

VK3AUU,
Your comment about the Chinese dams is already happening in Australia .

The Gippsland Lakes are a disaster as fresh water use for power stations and farming has ruined them . The Weekly Times had an disturbing update article about their state recently.

Those that would divert inland or dam the little remaining Coastal water in Australia belong to the 19th and 20th Centuries - their Education on the Environment [if any] a disgrace .

We have the Victorian Government now getting ready to pump scarce water from the Murray System over the Great Dividing Range to Melbourne, to flush their toilets and water their gardens, and determined to prevent every bit of water from storms from being "wasted" by going to Port Phillip Bay - also a vital fish nursery. Gross Stupidity .

The answer is to cut the Population Growth .

The Salt and Freshwater fishermen all over Australia should be outside their Parliaments protesting their MP'S ignorance of the natural world as the business world rubs it's hands together for the Planned population increase in Australia.

Mil-ob seems to think he has won an argument on Rwanda. He hasn't disputed that average land holdings per household are too small to be sustainable and will become even smaller with a population doubling time of less than 25 years, but says that the real problem is social inequality. He would like you to think in terms of a hacienda-like situation, where 2% of the people own more than 90% of the land, rather than farm sizes becoming too small due to subdivision on inheritance. Of course inequality has always existed and has gotten worse in Rwanda since the mid-1980s, but back then the Gini coefficient was 0.29, quite low. This was within a decade of the 1994 genocide.

http://www.fdu-rwanda.org/fr/rwanda/detail/article/rural-poverty-is-dramatically-increasing-in-rwanda-belgian-researcher-an-ansoms-reveals/index.html

This study from the mid-1980s shows that the richest households in the study community (with > 1 hectare) owned 20% of the land.

http://www.foodnet.cgiar.org/SCRIP/docs&databases/ifpriStudies_UG_nonScrip/pdfs/Southwestern_highlands/Land%20relations%20and%20the%20Malthusian%20trap%20in%20NW%20Rwanda,%20Andre%20a.pdf
http://www.aec.msu.edu/fs2/Rwanda/nonfarm_empl.pdf

This later study by Clay, Kampayana, and Kayitsinga on a random sample of more than 1,000 farm households shows that the richest 15% of households received 34.9% of the agricultural income.

http://www.aec.msu.edu/fs2/Rwanda/nonfarm_empl.pdf

Growth of coffee means nothing, as ~60% of smallholders grow it too. Everyone needs a cash crop to buy what they cannot grow or make themselves.

Clownfish,

Even your well-funded delay-n-deny thinktanks haven't disputed those Worldwatch graphs I linked to on grain production, just the interpretation. They claim that the developed countries were overproducing and dropped back, while growth continued in the rest of the world. There was some truth in this in the past, as the Green Revolution spread to new countries, but those big surpluses are gone now and grain prices are high. If, as you think, a lot more can be grown, why isn't it happening?

Jim. Absolutely agree.
Do you live in Stratford or thereabouts?

David

And your well-funded deceive-n-alarm thinktanks?

Are you trying to tell me that green groups don't sock away a tidy sum from their scare campaigns? Greenpeace Australia alone made a net profit of $2 mil in 2000. Imagine what they're raking in, worldwide.

So enough of this pose of the poor-but-honest tree-huggers versus the oligarchic conspiracy of the wicked corporations.

Anyway, why isn't more food being grown? Because corrupt and brutal governments hold their countries back from development. Because too many peasants are still locked into subsistence agriculture. Because city-bound fashionable Western elites, living in a fantasy world of noble-savage peasant idyllia (I think of it as "the Hameau de la reine syndrome"), try to deny developing countries the very things that have brought themselves so much prosperity.

Cheryl,

Being innumerate is hardly something to boast about. Your idea and (apparently) Loudmouth's that all we need to do is spread development and any population issues will fix themselves might have worked 70 or 80 years ago, although some cultures are fairly resistant to change.

The problem is that with current technology, it would take the resources of 5 Earths to sustainably give everyone a US or Australian standard of living and 3 Earths to give everyone a modest European standard of living, even if all the resources were divided equally. (See graph on p. 10 of 7/10/07 New Scientist.) Bjorn Lomborg has disputed the way the calculations were done and says that these figures should be cut in half. Even if he is correct, there still isn't enough to spread development everywhere, even for the existing population. A society has to have a certain level of wealth before it can provide effective education and health systems, sewers, old age pensions, etc., etc. If we really all are in it together, then we are likely to all go down the tubes together. Despite Cheryl's misrepresentations, it is hardly evil to try to save your own environment and society, as much as you can, even if you can't save the whole world.

By the way (sigh), as I have repeatedly said, we neither can nor should tell other countries what to do. I am, however, in favour of offering more evidence-based help to countries that want it.

You and Loudmouth might consider what is likely to happen politically as living standards fall. The search for scapegoats and growing support for extremist political and religious movements is only part of it. Take a look at what has happened in the recent European Parliament elections and remember that a million people voted for One Nation back in 2000.

Astounding ignorance Divergence. Who said that we'll every create three America's? You wouldn't be talking about GDP would you. You don't even agree that it's much of a measure of productivity.

Alas Divergence, the poor will always be with us. But how about we have a crack at feeding as many as we can and educating them? That's not on your agenda is it? You don't believe in the efficacy of education. You don't believe the NGOs, the UN have any moral or even economic substance. Not even on your radar. You're in your survival shelter cradling the shorn-off shotgun.

One problem that's overwhelmingly clear is that only a couple of the anti-pops have the foggiest idea of economics. They know nothing about trade and trade surpluses. They see the earth as a black box full of 'stuff' and once the 'stuff' runs out, we all fall over dead. That puts the mokka on creativity, ideas, commerce, intelligence, free will.

They're dead from the neck up. They want to save the world by creating a real life 'lifeboat' scenario. Nice work if you can get it.

Even Kanck is for humanitarian aid and immigration. That's a major surprise as the Sustainable People are pretty much out there with the BNP on some issues.

Isn't it amazing in the midst of a recession that we get a few people crawling out of their holes and saying we should pull of the drawbridge and re-create Fortress Australia.

VK3AUU,
Over the Range with a 14 inch rainfall, once in a blue moon - Bendigo way . Cheers.

(With the word limit on responses, I continue what I began yesterday)

Only six percent of Australia’s land is arable, so how do the proponents of population growth propose to double that amount of land to support the food production needed by that number of people? Indeed, how will we prevent that number of people putting houses on that scarce arable land?

We are struggling now to provide enough water in the Murray-Darling Basin for all those who need it to survive. It’s a worldwide phenomenon – check out Fred Pearce’s “When the Rivers Run Dry”.

Population growth is fuelling 80% of Australia’s increasing greenhouse gas emissions. The resulting climate change, including decreasing rainfall and increasing temperatures, which will create intolerable living conditions in some parts of Australia (where presumably King might want these extra 22 milion to live), is not spurious science as King asserts. It comes from our best scientists in the CSIRO.

A basic principle of Sustainable Population Australia is that the size of any population must be kept within the limits of its natural resource base. Sure, we can import food and energy then claim to have solved the problem of our larger population, but in doing so we will have irresponsibly transferred our problem to other people and future generations.

If we as Australians are to accept our ethical obligations, we should take the actions required to stop growing our population and to live sustainably within our own resource base. If we do not, then it will be forced upon us by the limits that nature sets, but on its timetable, and in much more draconian ways.

It is a clever tactic to invent a term “anti-populationist”, and then use it to deride those who want to limit our population, but the reality is that Sustainable Population Australia is pro-planet. And that is surely not a bad thing when we don’t have a replacement one.

Sandra Kanck
National President
Sustainable Population Australia

Divergence-Kanck, back with an avenging abacus! Unfortunately for them, the abacus just repeats the same simple, long-discredited equations...

Yes, clownfish states simple historical facts about reduced surpluses; “free-trade” fanaticism since Thatcher steadily diminished protectionism – and thereby European agriculture in general - as if food surpluses were intrinsically evil. Of course, neo-Malthusians and their more overtly fascist comrades indeed regard them so, because surpluses allow for fairer distribution, industrial and employment diversification and, last but not least, leisure and learning. As Cheryl notes, none of that registers the slightest blip on the imperial-revanchists' radar screens.

Divergence “seems to think” that I “seem to think” that I “won an argument” over Diamond's bogus historiography on Rwanda. Well no, I rather *know* with calm, cognitive certainty that I annihilated Diamond's pretensions by exposing his confusion, inconsistency and disingenuous approach to the subject. A simple exercise in logic, clear as algebra and flowcharts, and on record.

But that hasn't stopped Divergence from trying the same three-card tricks over data from Rwanda. Indeed, the same warped entymologist views on humanity came about during the mid-19th century Irish case (and since, retrospectively), when facts first revealed most emphatically that Malthus was the dangerous fraud we understand him to be still. Of course, febrile anti-catholic bigotry like protag's comes into its own there, because blaming genocide on its victims is a favorite imperialist-fascist pastime, enjoyment of which the British Empire did not avoid.

Perhaps Divergence's most outlandish claim and red herring is: “Growth of coffee means nothing, as ~60% of smallholders grow it too.” On Divergence's hacienda, he thereby gives priority to the growth of straw, thus to produce nothing more than a poor imitation of a humanoid with a sign scrawled “Mil-Observer”.

While we're at it, how did Ireland's population reach its recent heights when Malthusian genocidalists and other degenerates claimed (as their latter-day acolytes still claim) that Ireland's population outran its “sustainable limits” in the mid-19th century? Let's see (they've tried answering it before): because modern Ireland's population apparently eats petrol and microchips...or, yes, they didn't know about “peak oil”...etc.

Clownfish I have obviously wasted my time in responding to you in an adult manner with reasoned argument and referrals as I get back the same emotional trash many of the the other idiotic posters keep spewing out.

Did you take the few minutes needed to look at the video link I provided? Have you actually read Lester Brown or any other recognized authority on any of the issues you so confidently presume to judge?

Yes Chinese dams have taken water away from communities further downstream (and I'm not sure this applies to the Ganges) but this evidence does not at all contradict the evidence of the melting Himalayan glaciers.

Until you can provide any sort of decent contra arguments to those claiming overpopulation is a serious problem that needs addressing I cannot take you seriously and you certainly will not convert anyone who has considered the problem to your way of thinking unless you do replace your insulting and derogatory rhetoric with reasoned argument.

Milob

"“...the massive immigration over the past decade or so seems to have left governments with huge infrastructure debts, incurred by providing for the extra people”.

Since when? How did it “seem” so? The question is not “which country are you in”, but more “what planet/drugs are you on?”"

I should be asking you what drugs you are on. Take Queensland, for example. It will have gone from no debt in the late 90s to well over 70 billion by the end of the current parliamentary term. All coinciding with the federal governments massive immigration increase. All incurred in a period of great prosperity and massive revenue increase. All incurred because of the massive infrastructure required by all the extra people.

Pretty clear to anyone who looks at the facts. Clearly the facts come a distant second to your dogmas, and are invisible when they conflict.

Your funny Milob,

I got sucked in by you, thinking you might be "human". But you appear to be just a paid stirrer, a mercenary for the growth lobby....and/or religious vessel who believes in the means justify the ends. Anyhow, keep up the posts devoid of truth or reason....they are hilarious.

I love your hate comments ".... reducing their populations to dysfunctional, grey, gay and drug-addicted decrepitude" and your admiration of "any other devout group that reproduces at healthy and competitive rates".

A beautiful insight into your murky mind, uncluttered by compassionate reason, full of hate for this world and the longterm health of the planet. But I guess you think "god" will reward you for your lies with "heaven"................you can't wait for the world to "stuff" itself....the faster the better.

As some have worked out here, the anti-pops are not environmentalists. They are radical functionalists born and bred from the socio-biological paradigm. They are anti-people.

Not once have they discussed reducing consumption through price point, distribution or reallocating resources. Modern economics is dead to them. They don't subscribe to capitalism.

They have no policy implementation program except to reduce people, ie, the consumer. For them we are simply economic animals. They are the anti-thesis of the Greens in that they direct the blame not at the corporates - the Enrons of the world - they simplistically blame you and me. And one of us has to go.

When you peel away their obscurantist dogma and dodge the backflips, you see them for what they are: the lonely people. They are as TS Eliot said, the Hollowmen, head pieces filled with straw.

They are bleating now because King set them up. So not only are their arguments silly, unsustainable and exhausted, the anti-pops themselves are embarrassed. It's the embarrassment of the irrelevant.

"Modern economics is dead to them. They don't subscribe to capitalism."

So what is the per capita infrastructure and education cost to provide the Australian living standard, Cheryl? You seem more interested in abusive tirades than arguing the economic benefits of recent immigration.

R&B: “Your funny...”

[“My funny” R&B? Yes, and you're illiterate, and that's very unfunny. Learning your language from orangutans or bonobo chimps? Like “specism”? Is that discrimination against people who wear or don't wear glasses? Or is it bigotry against beasts? If the latter, I'll contact my union so that we can lodge a formal complaint about the bosses' continuing refusal to hire your pet axolotls as database administrators]

Anthropology has committed various offences for racism, imperialism and fascism. But these guys reduce it into a cruder kernel of entomology whereby humans are the insects; countries nothing more than ant farms, and; creativity, innovation, adaptability and even civilization itself just gross impertinence, an affront to nature, nuisances to an imaginary, staid, sacred order of eternal swamp-life. Their ideal of perfection is life-as-stasis, which probably says much about themselves and their own insular, complacent torpor.

Serious economics is a subject way beyond these guys; it's the domain of “human agency” after all – no bonobos of much relevance there.

In that respect, the anti-migrant zeal would be hilarious – if you're an Australian with dual-citizenship, overseas work, accommodation, and a smooth ticket outta here, that is.

Migrants pay full-fee education and tax, but get no Centrelink, FAO, Medicare, pensions, are limited to 20 hours work per week to survive, but somehow it's as if they're the liability! If migrants were not here to do so many jobs, this country would have ground to a pathetic, screeching halt years ago.

And why don't these economic geniuses make the same dullard's superficial inference of "migrants=debt" for Australia's postwar immigration boom? Let's see: the huge infrastructure cost, and massive, endless debt burden, from the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme, all because of migrants? But built almost entirely by the vast influx of migrants! And there was no privatizing scam involved either.

Their (usually) thinly veiled fascism and racism are bad enough on universal moral grounds. But their lazy and shallow minds are a disgrace in their own right. The immigration issue is where the greens' socks & sandals cavort with the skinheads' boots and braces.

“A lip-service of peace, and a “peace” of corpses and ashes, no less...and from an “animal lover”...... Learning your language from orangutans or bonobo chimps?”

Ah….that’s a bit rich Mi-lord from one who is a descendant of a gorilla and a member of a cabal of simian-like trogs, responsible for the Inquisitions, incessant anti-Judaism, racism and who whack divorcees, gays, family planners and the like and threaten little children with the fires of "hell." And just have a gander at the bloodthirsty deity of the Old Testament.

Nevertheless Mi-lord, I shall leave you with a few of your biblical passages to ponder which convey a very clear message – evident, even to unevolved screeching gorillas and ethics-free, pygmy chimps:

“The just man takes care of his beast but the heart of the wicked is merciless.” Proverbs 12:10

“And to all the animals of the land, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the ground, I give all the green plants for food.” Gen. 1:30

Ah hah……..is your supernatural deity a vegan Mi-lord?

“As for the children of men, it is God’s way of testing them and of showing that they are in themselves like beasts. For the lot of man and of beast is one lot; the one dies as well as the other. Both have the same life-breath and man has no advantage over the beast; for all is vanity. Both go to the same place; both were made from the dust, and to the dust they both return.” Ecclesiastes 3:18-21

“For nightmares come with many cares and a fool’s utterance with many words.” Eccl: 5:2

Indeed Mi-lord - “Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch!"

kulu, you didn't actually read my response at all, did you? Otherwise you'd note that I didn't say a thing about Chinese dams. I merely pointed out that glaciers are currently retreating from a maximum reached last century, and that that fact still doesn't alter the amount of water in the system.

I guess you just read my uncharitable comments about Saint Lester, and immediately averted your eyes; well, that can't be helped: I hold Brown and his ilk in the deepest contempt. To paraphrase the great Albert Rosenfeld of "Twin Peaks": I suffer fools rarely, and fools with degrees never.

Lester Brown is obviously intelligent and well-educated; sadly, he seems so deeply wedded to a dogmatic worldview that is unable to see modern society as anything but "dysfunctional", that like any other fundamentalist, every piece of information can only be seen through the lens of that gloomy worldview.

But as you seem determined to miss the point, I'll try spelling it out again:
(cont'd)

(contd ... )
Yes, overpopulation is a potential problem, but it's a manageable one, and it's being managed.

So why am I so against the SPA and their apparatchiks? Because if the 20th Century taught me nothing else, it taught me to be deeply suspicious of dogmatic zealots who wish to assert control of the most basic aspects of peoples' lives. Especially when they affirm that it's "for the greater good".

Let's assume SPA get their way, and Australia's population is mandated at, say, 7 million. Even if SPA also get to halt immigration, what to do with the other 14 million selfish humans? Would SPA mandate the one-child policy that some have openly considered - "for the greater good", of course?

Still, 14 million people aren't going to conveniently drop dead overnight, or even in the next few decades. It seems to be a given with green alarmists that for any given problem, "we must act now, before it's too late!" 20 or 30 years max. seems to be the standard timeline.

What to do, what to do?

Repatriate all overseas-born Australians? For the greater good.

Voluntary euthenasia? For the greater good.

I'm sure they'll eventually come up with a final solution. For the greater good, of course.

Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I also recall a former Bosnian university student remembering an odd fellow named Radovan Karadzic who used to hang around their political discussions; they always thought he was a bit of a buffoon, if harmless enough.

ClownFish: "Yes, overpopulation is a potential problem, but it's a manageable one, and it's being managed"

Yes it is, by starvation, griding poverty and civil war. Look overpopulation is a problem only in the poor World... it is THE CAUSE OF POVERTY. Across Nth Africa, Parts of the Middle east and Oceanea, the poorest parts of the WOrld are the places with the highest fertility. And it has been like that for generations.

Terribly poor Hiati has grown from 3 to 10 million over tle last couple of decades... and that is why they are so desperately poor. With no resources to speak of, they have half the population of Australia.

Niger has a fertility of 7 children per woman!

There are three Australias (60 million people) living in "slumdog Millionairre" shanty-towns in India...

There is simply NO WAY that we in the wealth World can help such a HUGE rapidly growing mass of poverty... We have to help them by giving them the simple, safe CHOICE of contraception and education.

Contraceptive Hormonal implants can last for several years and are cheap. Copupled with a culturally suitable PR campaign we could save these people from decades of war and famine. We could save their rapidly declining environments.

We could make a difference.

On the other hand, in Countries like Australia, WE NEED MORE BABIES. Our fertility is the same as China, and their one-child policy! We are committing a self-inflicted genocide against ourselves.

We need to scrap the Familiy Tax A, B, Childcare benefit, maternity leave, baby bonus... and simply give people a BIG TAX cut for each child they have. We need to encourage people to marry and for marriages to survive, as only single parents who have large families are the welfare dependent.

We need to reward fatherhood and get more men willing to become fathers.

"what is the per capita infrastructure and education cost to provide the Australian living standard, Cheryl? You seem more interested in abusive tirades than arguing the economic benefits of recent immigration,' Fester.

Well Fester, the annual tax revenue from all tiers of Gov in $348 billion in 07-08. Capital infrastructure is split between public and private - mainly public. So road, ports, transport, airports, public buildings, welfare, etc, are funded from the tax base. That's people Fester. You and me.

Now if the Sustainable People Himmlerites get their way, it'll just be YOU supporting your vision of Fortress Australia.

Good luck with that. If you want more info, ask Clownfish. He/she is way ahead of the game.

Cheryl,

This is from an article on this forum by Eric Claus in which he discusses the Productivity Commission report on the economic effects of mass migration.

"In April 2006 the Australian Government Productivity Commission published a report entitled Economic Impacts of Migration and Population Growth which said:

• Economic gains accrue mostly to skilled migrants and capital owners (page 151)
• Hourly wages will drop slightly under high immigration (page 161)
• These results are consistent with research both in Australia and overseas (page 161)
• Environmental impacts are likely to impose a drag on productivity and living standards, but the details are "too hard" to quantify (page 122)"

There were similar findings in the 1997 US Academy of Sciences Report entitled "The New Americans". Any net economic benefits were small and went mostly to the owners of capital and the migrants themselves. Mass migration also tended to redistribute wealth from workers in direct competition with immigrants to owners of capital. One of the authors, George Borjas, who holds a chair in economics at Harvard, has written extensively on the labor market effects of mass migration. See for example

http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~GBorjas/Papers/QJE2003.pdf

There is also the issue of increased population and competition leading to big increases in the cost of certain necessities. For example, an average house now costs the equivalent of 7.5 years of the median wage, and more in a number of cities, compared to 3.5 years in 1970, mostly due to increased urban land prices, even though block sizes are much smaller. There are permanent water restrictions, and water is going to get much more expensive, due to the need for desalination plants.

Cheryl

The reason it is useful to know the per capita infrastructure and education costs per Australian is that it allows better planning. I note that neither yourself or other pro-growthers seem to know this figure: Odd for people so sure of the benefits of population growth. How do you think people would react were they to know what the cost was?

As divergence pointed out, the productivity commission's report on immigration showed a negligible benefit for the existing residents, and it didn't consider the infrastructure cost to my knowledge. So why should I support something which has the potential to be financially damaging? Isn't it part of the philosophy of capitalism to make decisions which support your financial interests?

Hi Fester

Generally speaking in 1980 our foreign debt was around 8 billion and population 15 million. 2009 our debt is 700 billion (674)and population 22 million ( 21.5 ).

So for an increase of 7 million people and to maintain the existing population, debt rose roughly 700 billion ( 674-8 = 666 ). What proportion of that 700 billion is the per capita cost of new infrastructure ?

Hard to say, in Overloading Australia by Mark O'Connor 2008 ( I have given my copy away ) there is a section in there on that topic.

My recollection is that some 10 years ago, it was estimated that $500 million was spent each year providing "new" water infrastructure for population growth of around 250,000 ( That half billion could then be multiplied by ? factor, to estimate other Government provisions, including on-going welfare). Bob Birrell in People and Place Journal ( Monash University Press) established about ? 5 years ago, that in some immigrant groups, that after 5 years a staggering 70% were still receiving some form of social security.,,, let alone Government housing.

What we can say though is each of us on average have consumed more than we have produced, to a masssive collective debt of $700 billion and set to grow to a trillion with govt borrowings of 300 billion coming up. Welfare costs to spiral out of control, as record population growth levels of 1.2 million every 3 years; intersects with job shedding.

It is a very simple concept. Each extra person is sending us broke both financially and environmentally.

Sorry I couldn't be of more assistance,
Cheers,
Ralph

Thanks, Ralph and Fester. So, let me get this straight. Each additional person is adding to the national debt, creating more competition for increasingly scarce resources, and increasing the total ecological footprint of the nation. And we want more population growth because.....?

And we want more population growth because.....?

Because It makes bloody Kevin Rudd(aka "we have to have violence in modern societies- as long as its not in my neighbourhood") & all the other 'out of touch' Parliamentarian wannabees approach the US President in Global stature backed by an uber National wealth & populous significance.

The uber National Wealth is expected to be underpinned by immigrant loaded GST which can go 20% at the very hint of a war footing.

When things get too hot Parlimentarians can retire, move to the Gold Coast and let some other halfwit run the country and deal with Harris Parky immigrant sludges and all the other social cockups that Rudd & Co are building (and downplaying) on their way to fame and glory.

UNSUSTAINABLE?

YEAH!

But LOOK at the advantages!

We can have a prime minister with his own Air Force One.

Why, we can have enough Nimitz class carriers and Abrams tanks so every Australian can have a nice war.

And all the victims in Harris Park? Its not as if they're genetically superior new-Labor rich-immigrant stock. They are necessary and in some ways appropriate casualties of .. er .. economic Growth.

Sandra,
It is great to see the subject finally debated - good luck !

As for the " pop-ullutionists " they too will eventually agree that science does not have the answers to the greedy destruction of the environment we depend on .

What made me change from my wicked bulldozing ways was to shift from the Great Dividing Range near Tamworh to an Irrigation property in Victoria, where in the interests of production, the previous owners had dilligently cleared 99.5% of it's native vegetation .

It was a fairly lifeless irrigated desert really .

It had always puzzeled me why a Sydney Computer nerd had bought up large areas of station property around me in NSW and hadn't cleared a stick - now I know why .

Holding my belly laughing at these latest posts from economic illiterates. This is from people who are anti-capitalist, anti-technology, anti-creativity, anti-education for women and they hate the market economy - and they're now quoting the productivity commission at me. ha.

And now they are saying people, aka, labourers, producers, workers, are sending us broke. Hmmmmm. We can't blame the education system for creating these fringe dwelling freaks drinkign mulled wine and stroking their beards in the Adelaide Hills. To get this twisted, you have to do it all yourself.

Lets call a spade a spade. The Unsustainable Unpeople Group (UGG) are racists, pure and simple. They have no program except culling.

Thank goodness, Cheryl.

For a moment there, I thought you were talking about all the reasonable and rational people who care enough about our future that they are trying their best to mitigate the disaster, and only promote humane methods such as education of women, and provision of contraception. But I realized that you were addressing the very few who may in fact be motivated only by a racist agenda. Thank heaven they are only a tiny, tiny minority among the many thinking people who really do care about our future generations. As for the rest, concern for the environment isn't necessarily politically left, but it's always right.

And remember, there are liars, damned liars, and economists. Given that the so-called economic "literates" were guiding the policies for various governments that led to the current meltdown, perhaps we should be looking somewhere else for guidance.

I must say Cheryl, you do make a very compelling argument for culling.

Back a while ago, I studied economics, (so I am not completely illiterate on the subject, Cheryl). We were assessed on our our years work, but the faculty insisted that the lecturer produce an exam paper. He put in the same one as the previous year. When queried about that, the opinion was put that the students would know the answer from last year's paper. "Oh no", he replied, "The subject is Economics, same questions, different answers".

David

P.S. Our angry friend has been suspended.

D.D.T.

"Thanks, Ralph and Fester. So, let me get this straight. Each additional person is adding to the national debt, creating more competition for increasingly scarce resources, and increasing the total ecological footprint of the nation. And we want more population growth because.....?
Posted by Rick S,"

Hi Rick,
The reason is your local real estate person, local & State Govt beneficiaries of re-zonings, land speculators, huge political donations from the above ( read the corruption of democracy), Business Council of Australia ( banks,"big business", ), Property Council of Australia , "open borders" Resistance/ Green labour Left boosters ( do they want 200 million overnight ?) and "numbers don't matter"...eat lentils and ride bicycles type confusniks.

A fantastic combination of the political right and far left......it is a staggeringly destructive mix.

That is a start. Capitalism just needs to be fine tuned a bit !

Sophisticated capitalist countries such as the Scandinavians ( although not perfect), have vibrant essentially stable populations and economies.

Cheers, Ralph

PS I forgot the Harvard MBA/economists disease. These guys provide the smoke and mirrors for their employers to con the gullible masses that sitting in traffic jams and being chained to huge housing costs is "good for us".

Thanks for answering my question, Ralph. I didn't expect anything more than a Freislerian tirade from Cheryl, and I cant say that I have been disappointed.

As for opposing immigration being the mark of a racist, I can only wonder about the justification for such a remark.

The “scenic cash cow” over which the growth merchants salivate is in reality a huge mound of growing, toxic waste including heavy metals, lead, hydrocarbons, asbestos, pesticides, dioxins and putrescible wastes being dumped in what was once Australia’s healthy ecosystems.

The increase in Australia’s population has seen the oceans so polluted from human faeces that now all states supply “biosolids” for use on commercial food crops. It’s the “black gold,” the ultimate growth industry for the pro-population freaks!

Human faeces is used on plantation forests and sold as “bio-organic” manure and compost at nurseries. All the run-offs end up in our rivers anyway - and possibly a good reason (apart from over-exploitation by the greed merchants) why the UWA Marine Futures Project team advised last year: “We have 750 hours of footage from the Abrolhos to Cape Naturalist and we saw only 43 dhufish in 750 hours.”

Back to the "black gold" containing urine, faeces, menstrual blood, hair, fingernails, vomit, dead skin cells, industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals, soaps, shampoos, solvents, pesticides, household cleansers and hospital waste.

Sewage sludge, the viscous brown gunk left over when wastewater is treated, is more than just poop: it’s an odiferous smoothie of everything we pour down the drain. There are pathogens; there are heavy metals. PCBs, dioxins, DDT, asbestos, parasitic worms, radioactive material—all have been found in sludge.

Despite pre-treatment programmes that prevent some of the most noxious stuff from entering the public sewers, sludge can include so many toxins that the US Clean Water Act lists it as a “pollutant.”

http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:reAaFsNQ-2cJ:www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23506826/+sludge+US+cattle+died&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

http://sludgevictims.com/pdf_files/IJOEH_1104_Snyder.pdf

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/05/sludge-happens

And if anyone believes the corporate controlled, sycophantic regulators in this nation are protecting the interests of the public or if they even think that Australia's regulators are competent, then they'd have to be silly moos:

http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=929&language=en

Nearly twenty two million humans all discharging approximately 21 kilograms of sewage per year(though I think Cheryl's et al would exceed that amount?) and rising rapidly. With the full of "it," eco-illiterate growth merchants in control, this nation will soon be drinking "black gold" leftovers.

Protagoras says "this nation will soon be drinking "black gold" leftovers"

Parts of the nation already are......

"Treated sewage is on tap

Recycled effluent is already in Sydney's drinking water system, undercutting the State Government's claim that people will not drink it because of health fears, water experts say.

When a toilet is flushed or a washing machine drained in Katoomba the water eventually makes its way to taps in Richmond and Windsor, says a former Sydney Water executive, Charles Essery.

Treated sewage from Goulburn and Lithgow also ends up in Sydney's water catchment, he said, adding that the release of treated effluent was licensed by the Environment Protection Authority.

The Hawkesbury's 52,000 residents have for years been drinking a mix of treated effluent, rainwater and water from the Hawkesbury River.

"Everyone thinks Warragamba Dam is what we would class as virgin water," Dr Essery said. He is one of a number of water experts taking part in a three-month investigation into Sydney's water shortage conducted by Foxtel's The Weather Channel ."What people don't know is that sewage and stormwater from Goulburn and Lithgow go into the various rivers that feed Warragamba Dam so that everyone in Sydney drinks water that has either passed through someone else's body or gone through the streets of those places."

Sydney Morning Herald, October 25, 2005

"As for opposing immigration being the mark of a racist, I can only wonder about the justification for such a remark. Fester"

Hi Fester, I have confronted the Wilderness Society and Resistance reps on this one......their definition of a racist is anybody who opposes open borders( "do they want 200 million overnight?") .

Best regards, Ralph

Those with a genuine interest in population dynamics might find the following reference to trends in the Japanese population of interest. Obviously, we do not need to resort to eugenics, as some have suggested, just a reduction in immigration will do the trick.

http://www.japanfocus.org/-Vaclav-Smil/2411

David

The soiled greens having obviously lost the ridiculously expensive publicly financed "reduce CO2-global warming campaign" on the solar facts,and now,the devastatingly cold weather unfortunately arrives in full force, move to stage two - population control. With a step to the left,these miscreants fall off the round table clinging to their sauce bottle,the public teat! No honesty or truth with these succulents,only publicly funded policy schemes dressing up fear to reduce human endeavour, scientific and technological advancement. They can't afford the nimbin or cape tribulation trip again as their are too many people, so I suggest the lost green baggage,finance their own exodus in the direction of the nearest darkroom and medicate until they see the light on the hill.

Dallas:

Ah, another of the typical redneck responses. "If you don't like it, then leave." Did you know that the Rockefeller Foundation (a very right wing think tank in the U.S.) recommended to the president of the U.S. over 10 years ago that they halt population growth there? How is that a "step to the left?" This has nothing to do with left or right, but everything to do with caring about future generations and trying to mitigate what some see as a coming disaster. And for that you criticize people viciously? What kind of person are you?

"No honesty or truth with these succulents,only publicly funded policy schemes dressing up fear to reduce human endeavour, scientific and technological advancement. "

Dallas, nowhere in this discussion has anyone on the side of population control suggested that we should abandon human endeavour, scientific and technological advancement. We have merely indicated that these measures are not going to be sufficiently effective in giving succour to the coming hordes that you lot are advocating. Once again, as have others before me, remind you that we live in a world of finite resources. Once we have used them up, that will be it and the human population will go the way of the dodo. God is not going to find a way.

David

Hi Dallas,

Your concern for "human endeavour, scientific and technological advancement" is enhanced by stabilisation, along with treasuring the wonders of the natural world.

My previous post tells you how. "......those billions being spent on pollution ie. real estate infrastructure.....could have been spent on education, health and emerging technologies for export ".

Cheers,

Ralph

Thank you Ralph Bennett,and may your children multiply!

I expect that Ralph's children have a greater understanding of mathematics than just multiplication. For example, there is the exponential growth function,and a lack of understanding of that function is haunting the human race right now.

Dallas, Cheryl et al.

For a simple (?) explanation of exponential growth function, go to

http://math.usask.ca/emr/examples/expgrtheg.html

David