A very good overview Gary.

But what on earth can we realistically do about it??

What can we do about it?

First of all destroy the humanist impulse by adopting instrumentalism.
Second, instead of out breeding our enemies (blacks, Muslims, Irish, people who go back for seconds), breed them out.
Third, never, ever use logic or rules of evidence in an argument.
Fourth, promote a crisis beyond all bounds of reality.
Fifth, says its not about immigration but population.

There is no evidence or even an argument offered to support the case that 'Had we kept the Earth's population at that (1900)level we would not be having this conversation'. Rich people are forever framing new philosophies for relieving poor people of their property and wealth. The draft Copenhagen Treaty although well disguised as assisting the developing world, was no exception to this rule.
There are valid points and insights raised in the article. However the first step in addressing the population issue is to work from a sound scientific basis. Sadly this article fails to acknowledge that increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere help to increase world food production. It also perpetrates the myth of man-made global warming or 'climate change' which I suspect given the current political climate and collapsing climate science, is the main subtle purpose of the article. It is therefore not contributing to the population debate but rather using it for political ideological purposes.
Unless we have international organisations and scientists, independent of government funding concerns, that we can trust on such important matters, we are indeed a long way off addressing the 'real' challenges we face.

Could someone please pass this timely and erudite epistle on to Dr Aaron Paul, Dr Eslake and Bernard Salt.

As has been said often 'economists only look at what interests them in terms of 'economic growth' and totally fail to take in any other parameters'. Economists NEVER give an opinion or forward a view on how to change the cirumstance our economy is placing us in. They only ever explain what happened 'after the fact', too late then!

Economists should never be considered as scientists, 'Academics' may be, because they do not have hypotheses which they 'test' like the rest of us. As shown in this timely piece our economy is driving us to the wall and anyone who does not see it is profoundly deluding themselves. Where are our leaders to show us how to avoid our common demise.

CO2 you are in cloud cuckoo land!
Increased CO2 only works if heat stress doesn't come with it, and even this effect is small.
Your last sentence is a cracker! "Private" science is needed to remove bias!! ROFL! Do you live in a cave? There is practically no such thing as "private science"...almost all real science is public because most private companies want specific pre-determined answers.
To remove bias you go global to harness the competition that exists to be the first, or to knock down the conclusions of the first. This is why international competition between respected opponents is such an essential part of the way science operates. "international organisations" such as BP, Monsanto, etc are a *huge* part of the problem.
Climate science is certainly not collapsing! Over 95% of active climate scientists *still* agree that induced GW is occurring, despite the potentially lucrative opportunities that opposing the conclusions would give them. The fact is that unlike politics, economics, banking, etc, scientist are paid to do repeatable science that is then reviewed by peers and publicly available for ever-after. Despite what you confidently state, almost all the published articles are in support of the CO2 theory. Those that present alternatives generally conclude that they are not superior to the now standard model. There are no valid alternatives that fit the data, except postings on Right wing blogs..but they need not be scientific!

Good article on population.
Ideally the solution would be education, politics, etc.
Alas, "The Solution" will probably be an enclave of culture and technology, armed to the teeth defensively. The enclave should offer to teach and assist, but not save and rescue. I would love the enclave to build a big enough zoo to protect some key ecosystems, but I doubt it will be done in time. Eventually the enclave will deal with environmental issues, but the major challenge will be to deal with hungry deluded "kidult" humans who have lived by insanity of economics and have been led to believe they "deserve" a comfortable life without any ramifications for their actions.
Sad, but nature's way.

Gary Peters quotes from many books but the most telling is when he castigates two writers for not mentioning Paul Ehrlich, the professor who was famously wrong for forecasting that over-population would lead to mass starvation in the 1970s. In fact conditions (mostly) improved.
But Ehrlich was only one of a long line of commentators of varying qualifications who have forecast disaster in coming decades (concerns about over-population date to at least the 1930s) all of which have been disproved, if not completely contradicted, by events.
So why should we believe this set of forecasts of disaster? Peters doesn't bother to tell us.
If he was writing a serious article he could would also have to explain away why there has been a substantial reduction in povery in recent years - so substantial that even the UN agencies have (grudingly) taken notice - and despite increasing population in India and China where the reductions occured.
The reductions have to do with economic reforms in both countries.
Peters may care to have another go at the article.

Curmudgeon,

And this makes it OK to have more people on the planet just because Dr Ehrlich was supposedly wrong, give or take a few years.

What about the devastating effect all these 'better off' people have on the rest of the inhabitants of our piece of rock, you know, plants and animals which live in specialist niches?

Why do we need one more person than is required to advance technology and quality of life for us all? There is no way every person now on the planet can possible enjoy the quality of life they deserve. Do the sums, it is not possible, so why increase the population. When every girl now born in Mumbai or Mexico City can get a University Education if she wishes then you can raise the world population and not before!

Guy,

There are two ways to increase population - (a) have more babies, and (b) live longer. Let's suppose that (a) can be avoided in the near future, that ZPG is attainable: actually, since you mention it, if all those girls in Mumbai and Mexico City can get a good education, it's very likely that they will marry later, if at all, have fewer kids, if any and lead highly productive lives.

But they will also live longer, even with ZPG: if those girls live on average to eighty rather than sixty (to over-simplify), as they have every right to do, then the population will increase even with ZPG, perhaps by a third. If they live on average to ninety (ad reductionem ad absurdum), then even with ZPG the population will grow by a half, give or take. You get the picture :)

With ZPG, smaller populations of younger people will then be supporting larger numbers of older people, unless they all are required to pay super and/or the pensionable age is kicked up.

In short, population control has to be thought out very carefully: in ten years, we will be witnessing the catastrophic effects of China's one-child policy, as a cautionary example. ZPG - even more so, population reduction - is a hundred-year project :)

Joe

Most of our population increase is caused by immigration. There is nothing hard about reducing immigration.

At the coming election, people who are concerned about population increase can LEGALLY and WITHOUT INVALIDATING their votes, write at the top of both ballot papers "REDUCE IMMIGRATION". If enough people do that - and at last count in was 77% of Australians who wanted immigration reduced - the parties will take note. They are, of course, not bound to do anything but it is believed that Bob Hawke was influenced by the 44% of voters who put NO DAMS FOR THE FRANKLIN on their ballot papers.

Guy V - I was asking Peters, not unreasonably, to improve his article. Why should we believe him when he says it will also end badly when every other writer who has stated it will all end badly has been proved wrong, to date? Ehrlich is jut the most famous example. Not only just wrong but completely contradicted by events with resources falling in price in the long run, not rising. (Yes, yes, I know they've been rising in the past few years because of China.) The one exception in oil which is the subject of a cartel.
As for the diatribe about women getting degrees in Mexico, Ehrlich and the others are still wrong, so where is the relevence?
If you are agin population growth then what do your propose to do about it?

I am quite sure that we can just keep on growing and in the future science will develop artificial environments for us to live that are fantastic. Future man will look and wonder what was the problem. The question is one of quality of life.

Economists certainly have lost the plot with the consume everything and grow, grow, grow mantra. This can hardly be blamed for the over population in the third world where they don,t enjoy our rate of consumption. Education is probably the best chance we have, if we understand the issues maybe we will want to do something about them.

Another point is the never ending push for more and better fertility treatment. I don't deny that this problem causes couples great distress, but in a world that is so over populated it seems arragant of us to treat having children as a right. We could require people to demonstrate their ability to afford children and restrict them to one per family but these tactics have also not worked in the past never mind the screams from the human rights fraternity.

The bottom line is that Australia, at some 22 million is bursting at the seams to cope ecologically and socially. Law and order, education, social identification are just a few of our problems. It is time we seal the borders and concentrate on a sustainable economy that can be supported by a stable population that are not hell bent on consuming every natural resource they can lay their hands on. Maybe some leadership will show the way to the rest of the world.

Of course we could have a good old fashioned world war complete with a bit of genocide. HEY always worked in the past.

If resources are really that scarce we could cull a few more roos, emus and wild animals. Of course this article is a joke. We have plenty of land and resources to share with a lot more people than we have now.

Deliberately, the poster “CO2” persists in evading the stark scientific facts on fossil fuel carbon emissions. Fossil fuel emissions are killing hundreds of thousands of humans every year but the same old propagandists lurking here advocate for the market to continue buying and selling disease and murder. This is as perverse as things can get and shows just how avaricious right-wing whack jobs can be, even independently of their denials on AGW.

The poverty threshold in China has not been changed for 20 years in step with the pace of economic development so the Chinese poor actually total in excess of 150 million, if using the internationally accepted $1 per day guideline. While many Chinese are willing to ride their bicycles 10 miles to work through poisonous yellow-green air, others in the "emerging middle class" are willing to wade into debt up to their nipples.

At the end of 2008, the UN FAO estimated around 963 million people were suffering from chronic poverty. In 2009/2010, it estimated 1.02 billion so zero credibility to Curmudgeon for his deceptive ‘economic reforms!’

The Indian population is still growing at a whopping 1.578% per year. All the advances made on every front are simply negated by the burgeoning population where more than 300 million Indians remain classified as being below the poverty line.

The Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LIFDC)stands at 77 countries.

In the last decade, expanded activity in agriculture, mining and manufacturing has led to increased salinity, desertification, depletion and contamination of arable soil and poisoned surface and ground water worldwide.

Arable soil in Australia is just 6.15% of land mass. World ranking: 145. Arable soil in Australia has depleted by 0.73% since 1998 but the empire builders have brought in grim reapers, Monsanto et al!

Despite the dire consequences of the planet's crumbling ecosystems, capitalist bloodsucking economists and greed merchants monkey with the papers whilst chewing the arse out of Momma Nature. I say stuff 'em down the blowhole of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform.

Good thinking? Yay - Dealer, hit me with two more cards, I’m feelin’ lucky!

Protagoras - all of the figures you quote in your post were wildly exagerated, taken out of context or plain wrong.. hundreds of thousands dead due to fossil fuel emissions?? Where did that come from? All I can think of is you must be referring to people being affected by smog from car exhausts - breathing in a little extra CO2 won't hurt anyone, but nitrous oxide can. But the death toll for smog is nothing like your statement, even taking China into account. Particulate pollution (smog mostly) has been declining in cities world wide for decade (except for China).
Poverty has declined noticeably in both India and China in recent decades due to changes in their economies. No one is arguing that point. There are still too many people in poverty there, that is certainly true.
I could say lots moer but that will do for now. Leave it with you.

"So why should we believe this set of forecasts of disaster? "

Very true. Six decades ago the population growth cult was forecasting catastrophe for Australia via invasion and the collapse of manufacturing. Now the population growth cultists are warning of the utter calamity we face from an aging population, and the solution, as it always is, is jacking up immigration. Ironic that the impending aging calamity is a result of taking the growth cultists advice last time. Why should the population growth cultists be believed this time?

But Australians have never been fond of high immigration, so the policy is also sold under the guise of making Australia more prosperous. It is a bit like the story of Mr Bear and Mr Rabbit. The two are sitting about reading the paper, when Mr Bear asks,"Mr Rabbit, do you have a problem with poo on your fur?". "No.", says Mr Rabbit. At this, Mr Bear uses Mr Rabbit to wipe his backside. Prosperity might appeal, but it isn't necessarily associated with high population growth.

If the Australian government wants to pursue a policy of high immigration, it should have public support. To pursue a high population policy for spurious reasons like increasing prosperity or fixing an aging crisis is taking the public for bunnies.

Curmudgeon – What was your science major? Motorbike frogs? The UNEP estimated that emissions of VOC and NOx pollution is linked to 500,000 deaths, 4-5 million new cases of chronic bronchitis as well as millions of cases of other serious illnesses each year and that was in 2001.

Of course curmudgeons are completely unaware that PM2.5 (particulate matter) from fossil fuel combustion are so minute that humans unwittingly inhale them where they lodge in the lungs and eventually enter the blood stream. Curmudgeons are so dense they can't fathom that all VOC (including carcinogenic and mutagenic and teratogenic fossil fuel chemicals like BTEX) burn to carbon dioxide. CO burns to CO2. Fossil fuels form unintended gender bending dioxins if there's a bit of chlorine in the mix particularly with poor combustion.

http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd/csd9_bp15.pdf

Nitrous Oxide gas is formed by oxidation of nitrogen compounds chemically bound in fossil fuels and is found in the atmosphere that contributes to the greenhouse effect including sources from land-use conversion, industrial stacks, biomass burning, soil fertilization and very significantly from motor vehicles so do you have a mental problem Curmudgeon?

In 2007, Associate Professor Dr Ray Kearney, Department of Infectious Diseases, U of Sydney, told the 7.30 Report that “we know that up to about 1,400 persons die each year as a result of exposure to these air pollutants" (motor vehicles - "fossil fuels - the new asbestos").

There is a 10 million square kilometre brown cloud hovering over Asia which is dimming major cities and other A/brown polluting clouds are now hovering over Europe and North America impacting on climate. But of course I’ve already told you that haven’t I but you play dumb while desperately clinging to the corpse of the capitalist eco-bludger.

However, the charade of ever-increasing denialism can be kept up only as long as the public remains ignorant. Once ecological limits have been reached the capitalist political game is up and you're dead meat.

So keep blogging spin towards the Kingdom (tik tok) and keep on humping Curmudgeon. See you at the Doomsday Ball!

If you want to change the values of a society you must replace old values and ideas with other values and ideas. In the early 1900's the socialists started changing the west,s Judeao christian values of respect for others. Am I my brothers keeper, who is my brother, put God first and love one another. In the 70 a rebelious generation of socialists came to power in the west and set in place the humanist world view with eugenics and a culture of death at its centre. (abortion, the pill, drugs, euthenasia and other regressive practices) All about power and control in the name of saving the planet. A belief in God fosters brotherly love, personal responsibility and equal oppotunity for all. All other belief systems foster divisions, race, and control of the masses through selective education and wealth distrabution. The way you train up a child is the way he will go. The truth you know sets you free. This present generation of our native Australians have very limited opotunity to share in the common wealth of this nation because of socialist ideas of wealth distrobution instead of the Godly Idea of equal opotunity.

Well said Fester

One US scientist has genetically designed a new species of bacteria from the ground up.

This technology could be used to genetically modify the human Chlamydia bacteria so to enhance its ability to cause sterility, enhance its contagiousness but reduce the severity of any other symptoms it might cause.

You would then have an extremely efficient, self replicating global contraception that would rapdily reduce the fecundity of the human race, particularly in the third world where it is needed most. And as with all human diseases, immunity to it within the effected populations will build over the generations until its effects become negligable. In which case we may have to create a new strain of the bacterium.

We need to get over this religious notion that humans are of eminent importance and priority on this planet. We are a part of evolutionary creation and must fit into it rather than attempt to make evolutionary creation fit around our ever expanding numbers and 'wants'.

If we see nothing wrong with controlling the fertility of other animals in African game reserves, so as to preserve the environment in them and therefore the animals whose fertility is being controlled, then why should we not be prepared to do the same for our own species in order to ensure our own long term survival.

Sure it is trampling on the basic human right to have children but, in the third world, the basic human right to simply live is being trampled on by sheer weight of numbers. Which is the lesser of two evils? The above method is akin to drawing straws where all players have a more or less equal chance of drawing a short straw and being unable to have children.

"We have plenty of land and resources to share with a lot more people than we have now."

Plenty of land and plenty of resources for the moment, but no where near enough water.

Do you propose that we urbanise the red centre?

Bloody ignorant fool!

LOL - Richie10 - I went to the beach the other day and asked JFK if he wanted to take a dip with me and Joan of Arc. He hopped in and said, 'Hey, hot enough for ya?' Joan of Arc said, 'I've had worse.'

Your bloodsucking holy Joes are the kings and feudal lords of corporate finance who are not waiting to inherit the earth. They’re taking it now, tax-free by tapping into the business market with maniacal religious fervour.

Religion has the advantage over the commercial world in that they do not have to pay tax, they do not file tax returns, they get government concessions and grants, much of their workforce is voluntary so they have relatively small wage bills, and there is little accountability and transparency about what they do or how they spend the money. And 'God' loves happy clappers like you.

Consider the following “Money Pot” Pentecostal revenue earners in 2004:

i. Hillsong Church $40 million

ii. Christian City $38 million

iii. Paradise Community $ 5.3 million

iv. Cornerstone Community $ 3.8 million

The five biggest religious groups in Australia turned over $21.6 billion in 2004, with the Roman Catholic Church making more revenue than the other four put together. Through its vast empire of health and education the Catholic Church earned:

At least $5.28 billion from its 1700 schools
At least $5 billion from health, which includes 65 hospitals and more than 485 aged-care homes and hostels
At least $3.2 billion from property rentals
At least $4 billion in superannuation funds under management that BRW could locate.
And the biggest employer in Australia – employing 180,000 people.

"Socialist ideas" Ritchie10?

American fundamentalist, Gary North announced decades ago:

"We will train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

Well, they've done it, thanks to born again stupids like you. Now go away!

Fur heavens sake, Ludwig - maybe Fester and Protagoras have got to the bottom of the problem.

Human beings are noxious pests who should all be machine-gunned - for a better society.

Peter,

For a society of what ? If you are serious, you have some real problems.

Joe

Peter,

Oh I see now, a society of machine-gunners - well, put me up against that wall :(

It's been tried before, many times, you know, by various fascists and pseudo-socialists. So you've joined that club ? Is that where extreme environmentalism is heading ?

Joe