Thanks for that Rick Wakefield, much of the anti-pop thinking is as contemporary as your name sake Rick Wakeman's - the keyboard player of Yes. I also like the fact that you have kids. So many of the Unsustainables have been intellectually neutured.

Dang nang it, I could swear I started this post started talking about energy and then the anti-pops, as they often do, wanted to talk about shrinking resources. So now it's not minerals but oil. Ok? Ok.

Here Rick you are on to something. We can build roads out of plastic bottles if we need too but we can't make plastics without oil. This is going to be a bonus but more on that anon.

The great mistake modern economies have has been an over reliance on oil. They had a fab chance back in the 60s and 70s to diversify but they didn't. Shame big time and it will cost a pretty penny too. We can afford that because we have lots of people. If there was only you and me Rick living in Australia, we'd be stuffed big time.

The anti-pops have poo-poohed electric vehicles, solar power, nuclear power - in fact almost every form of alternative power source available. Why? Because they're not environmentalists. They're instrumentalists. Remember that.

Rick Wakeman hey Cheryl? Back in the days when you had a crush on that young firebrand John Winston Howard? Sound to me like you hit a false neutral and never made it past 1974.

You didn't respond to my observation about the disconnect between your feigned concern for developing nations and your undying love for a political and economic system that steadfastly refuses to provide meaningful relief and assistance to those developing nations. Cognitive dissonance or plain dumb? Are you willing to take a reduction in YOUR standard of living to help the starving hordes? It's all very well to live an ideological fantasy land but when we raise your taxes to ensure that everyone on this planet has enough to eat every day, basic health care and shelter, will you still exult the market and its capacity to provide for a unlimited human population?

I'm glad you're all over peak iron Cheryl but what can you offer us on peak oil, peak rare minerals and peak phosphorus? Nine billion people consuming as much as the world's wealthiest billion people do now?

What happens when we start running out of phosphate rock Cheryl?

I suppose the free market and science will save us? Just like we were all going to be driving around in jet cars and holidaying on Mars?

First we went to the moon and then... we realised we were stuffed. Just a bunch of dumb animals with nowhere to go and no way to get there. Nothing to show for ourselves but a few failed experiments in self contained biospheres. ...cont...

...cont...

See, this is where your ideological fantasy hits the reality of a finite planet. There are many rare elements that are fundamental to modern civilisation. Without them, it won't work. Even with your little men digging up 20th century landfills to recycle our rubbish, we will still run out of the stuff that makes this magical technological world work.

And this is without even looking at the breakdown of ecological systems. You ought to get out of the house some time. You might learn something. These production systems and monocultures that you so love don't float in space. They are impositions on the real environment that gave rise to our species and sustained us for eons.

I doubt this will ever dawn on you, or even affect you, but it may be your descendants who will be stuck on someone elses spit like suckling pigs because, quite frankly, genetically challenged intellects will be the first to be picked off.

Maate, Maate, Maaaaate,

Here's an insider tip for you and one which a Year 7 kids knows. One day the world will run out of minerals. It might take a 1000 years but it's going to happen. Now this is such a bloody self evident point that its laughable that the SPA have adopted this as their key argument.

The SPA's angle is the world is going to run out of minerals so (a) meddle with womens fertility rights (especially in Africa and Asia - they're less powerful) and (b) we're all doomed anyway - which null and voids their whole platform anyway.

Look Maaaaaaate, neither you or the Unsustainables give a fat rats about international development. You know nothing of how markets operates. You know nothing about demographics, trade, microcredit, energy renewal, synthetics, new manufacturing processes, etc, etc

You're getting a little windy there Cheryl.

So you acknowledge that the world may run out of resources but it's all so far off into the future...that Cheryl sticks her fingers in her ears and mounts the "la la la I can't hear you" offense.

Cheryl, with your mastery of the stock market, what can you tell me about the world's phosphate reserves?

And with your polymathic scientific expertise, what is going to happen to agriculture when we run out of phosphate based fertilisers?

Simple minded questions I'm sure you'll agree but, it may have a bearing on your idea that the human population can grow indefinitely without consequence?

Maaate,

Well phosphate is the 11th most common mineral on the planet. It's sitting in seamounts in the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, but it will be mega expensive to mine. So we'd better start now - or how about we just recycle our crap which is full of phosphate?

Our fate Maaate won't depend on Phos-fate.

My share advice to you is to buy heavy in phosphate. We could actually mine grave sites too, which would appeal to the anti-pops.

The anti-pop solution to a shortage of fertilisers is to limit the supply side of people. That's their solution to everything. Got an itchy back? Reduce the number of people. Got an old car? Reduce the number of people. Got a girlfriend that won't stop crying? Reduce the number of people.

Thanks Maaaate. Next time, lets talk about bauxite.