I've been away for a bit, so I'm late on this. However, as someone who both advocates ecological sustainability and deplores racism, I find little to disagree with in Jane O'Sullivan's article.

As I've articulated at OLO on numerous occasions, population sustainability is an issue that is subject to manipulation by various interest groups, with very disparate agendas. While, for example, it may be utilised as a cover to further the objectives of some white supremacist nutter mob, it can equally be deployed negatively in the kind of strawman strategy that favours the 'growthists', exemplified by that which Cheryl consistently uses whenever the subject is raised at OLO.

Forrest, while I like your notion of 'rednecking', isn't it really just a particular version of the strawman fallacy?

rstuart

Let’s develop your analogy. Much infrastructure is a public good – up to a point, more people can use it without existing users being noticeably worse off. So, if the desert island of your example had a main street, a boat jetty, an airstrip, and a radio station, these might not need to be expanded at all to accommodate a larger population. At worst, the expansion would be at lower marginal costs than the average cost of the established infrastructure. You might need an additional airstrip, but not a whole new airport. And the larger population could support things the smaller one did not – perhaps a hospital or a high school, a concert hall or a theatre. This is why many people in the sparsely populated towns of NW Australia are so keen to increase their populations – they want the infrastructure and services that are only viable in larger communities.

Who pays for infrastructure and services is also not as simple as you suggest. If a migrant buys a house leading to increases in building activity, that’s no cost to me and a benefit to the builder who constructs it. Even if migrants’ children attend state schools, that’s fine so long as their parents pay enough taxes to cover the costs of extra teachers. All this leads to increased economic activity – which is one of the reasons for attracting migrants in the first place. Migrants’ gains are not our losses.

Of course, the proper measure of the welfare effects of this increased activity is on a per capita basis. In Australia at least, over many years the States with the fastest population growth (Qld and WA) also have the fastest per capita GDP growth.

Consider the parallels between AGW sceptics and population growth advocates: Both use a succession of false arguments which are regularly recycled. Both have very little evidence for and a substantial body of evidence against their stance.

Would Australians today be better or worse off without the same rate of population growth? The truth is that nobody knows as the Australian experiment has been conducted without a control, but I would suggest that an underpopulated Australia is a far easier problem to deal with. As more than one population growth advocate has pointed out, you cannot shoot people to ease population pressures.

@Rhian: up to a point, more people can use it without existing users being noticeably worse off

True. But you are looking at it as if we just add one person and stop. In reality, that isn't what happens. Currently Australia is adding 100,000 people every year. Our island is also adding new people every year. So yes, one year we build a new mud hut that may take accommodate 3 people. Thus you could say that for next two immigrants, mud huts are free. But you could also say you need to invest the time it takes to build 1/3 of a mud hut for each new immigrant. That is what the formula I gave does.

@Rhian: that’s no cost to me and a benefit to the builder who constructs it.

So who paid the builder? We assume it isn't the migrant, because Australian's migrants are young and thus don't have much in the way of assets to pay for anything. So someone on the island must have paid the builder. You say it isn't you. Well fine, but it doesn't matter because the calculation is about the island in total, not just you. Regardless of whether you helped or not someone had to sacrifice their spare time to get this stuff built. You say it wasn't the builder either. So I presume someone was off hunting his pigs for him while he was doing the building. If so, that hunter would be the unselfish one who ended up taking on the burden.

@Rhian: fastest population growth (Qld and WA) also have the fastest per capita GDP growth.

Both Queensland http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/16/2600001.htm and WA http://www.wa.alp.org.au/news/0210/12-01.php have had to borrow heavily to fund that growth. The Labour government in Queensland is by all indications going to crash and burn because of looming asset sales. Can you guess why they are being forced to sell very profitable assets, even though they know it will get them chucked out of office? It is because in reality there is no magic builder who just does the work. Someone has to pay him.

@Rhiann fastest GDP growth

As Stuart has already pointed out that very growth has created problems for the queensland government. The growth in south east queensland is funded by government debt. What few people fail to realise is that the cost of development is borne by the entire community. For example the homes that are currently being built are spacious. To keepo the costs down and the size of the space up they are built with all the integrity of a hollywood filmset hence they need airconditioning to make these homes remotely habitable - the rule of a thumb is that if you spend $x on an airconditioning system then a similar figure needs to be put in by the community to cover the costs of extra infrastructure to service that airconditioner.
The second point that needs to be made is that GDP is not a measure of wealth or quality of life - politicians have sold that idea to us and on the whole we blindly accept it.

And don't get sucked into any government schemes such as the solar energy devices, hot water etc., in which you have to put in money and then wait for a rebate, unless of course you have money which you don't need for some considerable time.

As of today, the department is currently processing applications which were received on the 18th December 2009. Under the new minister, different arrangements and rebates are being put in place, so no doubt there will be further delays.

See www.environment.gov.au for details

David