ericc and Candide have it right.

If anyone wants to know how to reduce birthrates in other countries just have a look at what Iran did, purely by education. They lowered the birthrate below 1.4 per woman(I think) Proves it can be done with out force or draconian laws. Google Iran+birthrate or fertility should find it.

Biggest problem is how to get religions to be onside.

Yabby,
Thanks for the opportunity to expand my reasoning.
I'm saying two things.

Firstly, the rejection of the only fertile ground , (what and how we do it) leaves us with only nihilist conclusions. Chicken little effect and push back. Which the primary ( tactical )issue I have with discussions on AGW, in fact any topic that can have emotional issues appended to it..

We need to think laterally and investigate all alternatives.
The nihilist approach generated 'push-back' resistance to the reality i.e. pointless bi polar antagonism.

he second point was for people to start that lateral thinking process.
I'm suggesting that the analytical process you put forward is the problem it assumes "realistic" underlying limitations (sic). Consequently reducing solutions to “patching” a problem that is beset with systemic flaws/failures, corruptions and really needs a new, better, controllable operating system.
In short the old order doesn't meet the new requisite criteria/goals/circumstances.
The conditioning/training of the old system interferes with the logic of the new.
e.g. windows to Linux, arguably provides up to 60% of the problem..

We currently have much of the technology to achieve a lessor Cumulative footprint but the above conditioning issues preclude their most effective implementation.

If we don't take this different approach we will simply continue in the endless punctuated cycle of catastrophic disasters that gets us no further than the metaphorical fur challenged ape.

This is no dream-scape merely a methodology that reversed current direction of thinking. Nirvana? Not in the least.

Do I have all the answers to the ultimate goal the cumulative foot print ? no!
No one individual can. There in lies one of the two terminal flaws of Philosophic political treaties like communism, socialism, capitalism et al. The second TF is that they stereotype, dogmatise the impossible, humanity.

Jardine K Jardine,

You have said that we have more water per capita than in the US - probably true, but misleading. A few centimeters of annual rainfall over a vast desert adds up to an enormous volume of water. There is a lot of water in the tropical North, but there are problems with making use of it because of poor soil and ferocious evaporation rates in the dry season. These maps by Chris Watson of the CSIRO show the areas of Australia with good rainfall and good soil.

http://www.australianpoet.com/boundless.html

A lot of your indignation is because you refuse to recognise collective property. Read some of the accounts of the first settlers in the US and Australia. They endured hardship, danger and backbreaking labour. Many had no choice about coming because they were fleeing religious or political persecution, or were slaves or convicts.

If Australia is an attractive place to live with decent infrastructure and decent education, health care and living standards, it is because our predecessors made it that way and because we are keeping it that way. They did it for themselves and their friends, and for their own childen, not so that any random person from around the world could latch onto a ready-made high standard of living or so that the business elite could get even richer on real estate speculation and exploiting cheap labour.

Some immigration is often in the interests of the host population, but why do you think that otherwise you have any more right to simply horn in on someone else's country, putting more pressure on the environment and diluting the quality of life, than you do to help yourself to someone else's car or mobile phone? Why should people who have not overpopulated, or mismanaged, or supported corrupt and incompetent leaders pay for those who have? You would be outraged if you knew that your estate would be distributed to random strangers rather than your own children, but that is exactly what you want to do with the value of our citizenship.