If I am not doing particularly well explaining my point, you guys aren't exactly being clear in your objections to it.

(CJ) >>You know next to nothing about wilderness, and quite deliberately it seems. There's much more to it than "cutesy widdle animals"<<

It has nothing to do with cutesy widdle animals per se, they are merely a metaphor. So if you'd like to park them for a moment as red herrings, perhaps we can concentrate on the main game.

(Severin) >>Pericles, it is not about "cutsie widdle animals", it is about maintaining and enabling biodiversity, from the smallest microbe to the largest animals (including us).<<

Absolutely right. I agree.

I am looking at it from the broadest possible view: the (very short) history, current plight, and extremely fuzzy future, of mankind on this planet. To narrow the discussion to saving this animal or that plant in a specific geographic area simply underlines the need to think this thing through at a different level.

We have reached a level of civilization that allows us the luxury of thinking about the requirements for physical survival on this planet, including the need to maintain a balance between what we take out and what we out back.

And what we know is that, generally speaking, the more primitive (as we like to call them) societies took and gave in equal measure.

Generally speaking also, from the time that we started building cities, we took, but didn't give back.

I have no doubt whatsoever, as I have also said on many occasions, that this imbalance will necessarily lead to, or at least accelerate, the extinction of human life as we know it today.

The only point where we appear to differ is that you seem to think that unilateral action will make a difference. That saving the (metaphorical, remember) hairy nosed wombat is in itself a Good Thing To Do.

I consider that akin to standing in front of an approaching bush fire with a glass of water, saying "if only everybody had a glass of water to pour on it, we'd be saved".

Pericles,

I am no more anti-immigrant than you are anti-salt if you don't want a whole tablespoon dumped on your dinner. In reasonable numbers, immigration has significant educational and cultural benefits for the host population, and some enterprises, such as science, have a profoundly international character. I would be jumping up and down just as much if we had no immigration at all and the unsustainable population growth was coming from Australian babies. Unlike you, however, I don't see mass migration as a sacred cow to which everything else must be sacrificed.

As a number of us have explained, it is quite possible to stabilise our population on a national level. If numbers are not too big, we can afford to give everyone a decent standard of living and some choices in life without having to degrade our agricultural land or wipe out other species.

Unlike you, I don't regard residents of other countries either as helpless victims of the evil white man or as childlike little brown brothers that we have to rescue. Development really should be easier for them than it was for our own ancestors. They know it is possible and what policies are necessary to achieve it, and can also learn from our mistakes and leapfrog over obsolete, dirty technologies. It took South Korea 35 years to go from being tied with Senegal for poorest country on earth to fully-fledged member of the First World, and it was about the same for Taiwan and Singapore. China has been making enormous progress in lifting people out of poverty. If other people are determined to turn their situation around, there is a lot we can (and should) do to help, but if they persist in supporting corrupt and incompetent leaders, in denying justice to people in other ethnic or religious groups or in other social classes, and in keeping women barefoot, uneducated, and pregnant, there is nothing we can do about it, except prevent their problems from becoming our problems, so far as possible.

Pericles

<< The only point where we appear to differ is that you seem to think that unilateral action will make a difference. That saving the (metaphorical, remember) hairy nosed wombat is in itself a Good Thing To Do.

I consider that akin to standing in front of an approaching bush fire with a glass of water, saying "if only everybody had a glass of water to pour on it, we'd be saved". >>

You completely underestimate my intelligence, after all this time. Or your comments are a deliberate, petulant slur. Whatever. We appear to be talking at cross purposes and as with any debate about sustainable futures - getting fcuking nowhere!

Divergence has a quite remarkable turn of understanding. (quote).. "but if they persist in supporting corrupt and incompetent leaders, in denying justice to people in other ethnic or religious groups or in other social classes, and in keeping women barefoot, uneducated, and pregnant, there is nothing we can do about it, except prevent their problems from becoming our problems, so far as possible "

Such a perception is rare and should be the foundation cast in stone of opposition to this "free for all- all for free" refugee/immigration policy of successive Governments and more particularly, this one.

An ordinary man's analysis usually questions whether similar benefits exist for Australians moving for whatever reason to other countries? and why would we give millions in aid to royal, religious,military of despot regimes with estates in Europe and gold in Swiss banks and at the same time give refugees greater benefits and opportunities than we give our pensioners.( Source:Centrelink) The majority of these people are fit men who have run away and that says more about them than if, by doing so, "they contribute to the cultural diversity of the Nation".

We broadcast our Nation to the World. Many have risked their life and a debt of thousands for the prospect of a journey to peace and plenty who could have banded together with their wealth to fight for their causes. But there are others whose ideology would destroy it and in the process kill the innocents and blow themselves up believing that they will dwell in paradise for having done so. (www.pointofviewSA.wordpress.com/and still they come

Petulant? Moi?

>>Or your comments are a deliberate, petulant slur. Whatever. We appear to be talking at cross purposes and as with any debate about sustainable futures - getting fcuking nowhere!<<

No slur intended. But I agree with the rest of your summary.