cont'd)

Cheryl and those who think like her also generally seem to lack mathematical literacy and any background in science. They have a cargo cult mentality towards technological progress, ignoring all the predicted advances that haven't happened. Nuclear power too cheap to meter, anyone? They know that the Green Revolution "proved that Malthus was wrong" and suggest that we bet our future that such advances will continue, but ignore the long list of collapses in the historical and archaeological records, every one of them a case where human ingenuity didn't save the day, with many of them related to overpopulation. That is why such people are here on this thread, "rednecking like mad", to use Forrest Gump's useful term.

It’s sad that the fall of clubs and societies around the western world means that single, childless men have to participate in these lonely masturbatory fantasies about ridding the world of people.

You need a hobby. I would suggest women but that’s too close to what you allege is the problem.

a. There is no population problem - as a few astute people have pointed out, it’s a first world consumption issue. You haven’t even discussed that.
b. Africa is starving because of post colonial corruption, banana republic trading positions and the destruction of kinship values – you idiot.

Most of you can’t even posit an argument and when you do, it’s directly contradicted by someone on your own side.

One of the key reasons the Unsustainable Anti-Population lobby is a laughing stock that you demonstrate a classic case of Bearded Gnome Group Think. Anyone who disagrees with you is called a ‘Redneck’. Read widely, keep an open mind and grow up.

Gee, Cheryl, if that's sad, then what does that say about you when you take the time to respond to the posts here? Sad, and sadder, eh?

The shrill and mindless overpopulation deniers (SODs) like Cheryl just keep avoiding the requests to actually provide some real arguments and ideas, and degenerate into redneck name-calling, labeling, and other desperate attempts to try to somehow justify their radical and dangerous ideas. Their insistence that infinite growth is possible on a finite planet makes them the laughingstock of thinking people around the planet.

"Gee, Cheryl, if that's sad, then what does that say about you when you take the time to respond to the posts here? Sad, and sadder, eh?"

You might want to think that through Rick. Now Rick, you're one of the saddest of the sad. You're anti-pop Emo. The arguments are all here. No one has even touched the demo job done on OLO on Kanck and the SPA last year.

Rick it's important for you and half a dozen others to keep the Bearded Gnome fire alight with your prognostications of the apocalypse. It's all you've got.

Mate, most of your comments about doom and gloom are really an inner manifestation of your personality rather than an outward assessment of reality

Sorry to disappoint you, Cheryl, but I am married, female, and have two children.

If you want to have an actual debate about population versus consumption, this is from a 2007 post of mine. Some of the numbers may be slightly different now, but the argument still stands.

"Reducing our environmental per capita footprint (i.e. consumption, 79 hectares in Australia) to the global per capita average of 21 hectares would make us a bit poorer than the average in Argentina (23 hectares). If we cut back to the sustainable biocapacity of 15 hectares we would be in the same ballpark as Cuba. Somehow I don't think you would like it.

Once you get below the Western European average (54 hectares) human well-being starts to fall off, in terms of the UN Human Development Index indicators, but there is no advantage to consuming more than that, so it would be a good thing if countries with higher footprints, like Australia, did do more to reduce waste and conspicuous consumption back to this level. If your country's biocapacity isn't sufficient for that, then you also need to cut population.

About 1.08 billion people out of 6.75 billion live in developed countries. The average per capita footprint for Australia, Canada, the US, and Western and Eastern Europe comes to 60 hectares. This leaves an average footprint of 14 hectares for the rest of the world. If we all cut back to 21, they would go from a Cuban to a near Argentinian level of consumption (i.e. still poor). It would take 34 years of global population growth at 1.2% to bring them back down to 14, and after that it would get progressively worse.

The idea of fixing everything by cutting developed country consumption won't work, because there are relatively few of us and because the global population continues to grow by about 80 million a year.

(Footprints are the latest from the Redefining Progress site.)"

Gee, Cheryl, look around. You seem to be in an increasingly small minority here. Your meaningless apocalyptic doom and gloom, vitriol, and denial about what might happen if, by some miracle, we come to our senses and learn to live sustainably on this planet is tiresome, and gives away your fundamental personality.

You are obsessed with overpopulation denial, taking away any chance for future generations to have any kind of quality of life, and just want us to end up shoulder to shoulder, knee deep in our own excrement, and with no other species left on this planet. So, not only are you a misanthrope, you are simply anti-life. And that is how I shall address you from now on.