Andrew Whitby, as a doctoral candidate in economics - you lean towards infinity with your argument. It shows a glaring need for you to “Drop your preconceptions, and allow yourself to hear a real argument”:
Have a cup of tea, a bex, a good lie down and take a trip into the real world with the help of Professor Al Bartlett’s “Arithmetic, Population and Energy”

Nice one Andrew. Did Smith really call it the Wilberforce Award? Oh dear. That's just plain silly. About as silly as linking population with rising sea levels.

Smith bought the media to show his doco which is fair enough. It's what capitalists do but it's odd that he has gone in so hard with his anti-growth/anti-capitalism/anti-people message as his business was built on people, technology and consumerism.

Look, there's no shortage of hypocrites in the population debate - on both sides - or all sides.

Good to see engagement with the topic.
Your post ignores a number of key points. The below are a critique on the ideas, not the person.

1. In critiquing Dick Smith on Population, even if we had a stable population today, we are already exceeding ecological limits.

August 21st was Earth overshoot day (www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day/). Taking the ecological footprint of humanity currently we have already passed our 'annual budget' and this is on average across the planet (If everyone lived as Aussies or NZers- we would need 4 planets). To ask for a stable population or a limit on population will require redesigning our economy to give back rather than take. This is not a 'technology will solve us' case.

2. To conclude by saying that "there may not be a meaningful long-term limit, but accept that sometimes we will face short-term or local hurdles on the path of growth (of which climate change is probably one), and work out how to overcome these hurdles" is really part of the problem.

Assuming growth is the point of what we are doing and that we are living all independently, instead of living sustaining, just and fulfilling lives, is really a root cause of the issue.
Systems Thinking says you can't maximise a subsystem (the economy) without detriment to the overall system (the planet). We need to ask what is the economy for, how, and how to design a subsystem that supports, not deteriorates the larger system.

Yes- the award has a strong tinge on population but Dick also acknowledges that a consumption-growth economy cannot continue (without our own demise) and encouraging rethinking of a new economic model like that being educated and promoted at steadystate.org
This requires stripping back a number of unexamined assumptions that are in your post, and that we have in ourselves (I include myself in this).

Carl
A NZ citizen grateful that these issues are coming more to the public discussion.

Aldous Huxley also studied at and graduated from Balliol College.

He wrote both Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited--which provide very accurate descriptions of the state of Civilization in 2010.

As does Mike Davis in Planet of Slums.

Welcome to the kaka-topian future.

So we have an economist trashing part of Dicks argument. We know that growth can continue if no other factors are considered, but this is not the point! The question he asked is: Is this a good idea for people's lifestyle and well being? Speaking out against rampant growth for the short term benefit of the very few is quite valid and many folks are glad that Dick has the vision and resources to raise this argument.
It seems that economists have little to say about the unstable markets, regressive policy, vested interests corrupting free markets, concentration of press ownership, parasite industries and corporate welfare, yet they like to speak out against other disciplines such as climatology and ecology. How about keeping your own house in order! The GFC came and went without any repercussions or lessons learned. It seems that economics can barely describe simple things like money supply and trading.
Can economists please now speak up about the BS economics that is the bread and butter of politicians and the media? At least get your own stuff partly right before leaping into areas you clearly only partially understand.

Dick Smith has done a wonderful thing with his ‘Population Puzzle’ documentary. He has really entrenched the issue of continuous population growth and the addiction to growth in general within the mainstream media and minds of the general public.

And isn’t it about time!!

On the Q&A program following Dick’s docco, we witnessed Bob Brown (Greens), Scott Morrison (Libs) and Tony Burke (Labs) all sounding very much in support of him.

Now that was truly amazing! From within the awfully pro-growth-with-no-end-in-sight Libs and Labs and the terribly silent Greens, we suddenly had broad agreement amongst them all!

So perhaps Andrew Whitby needs to think about why these three, all speaking on behalf of their parties, have come onside with Dick Smith and Tim Flannery and Ian Low and Kelvin Thomson and Sustainable Population Australia Inc and an ever-growing number of learned people and an ever-growing number of ordinary Australians?

I’d suggest that it is because Dick Smith and the others are spot-on with their concerns about growth and that the message is as clear as can be to all but narrowly focussed economists and business people with vested interests in maintaining high a growth rate.

Andrew Whitby

Malthus was lucky; he lived before the institution of the London school of Economics and the host of schools throughout the world mimicking it.

He did not know of the veritable flood of graduates from these institutions. Had he known, what would he have thought?

Would he have thought of them on the same line on which he reckoned that the inordinate growth of population would be exceeding the growth of essentials for the sustenance of human life?

For how long will society be capable to feed, clothe and keep amused an ever engrossing torrent of economists and assorted university graduated whose useful product is nil?

Andrew, as I understand it, Dick Smith is using the name Wilberforce as a kind of corollary where in the slavery debate, the main argument was that commercial enterprise would not be possible without slavery. As we know, capitalism has prospered well despite its abolition.

So to make plain the comparison, the current argument is that there cannot be increasing prosperity without increasing population.
Dick Smith doesn't take this argument for granted, and like Wilberforce is challenging conventional opinion, hence the use of the name Wilberforce for that iconclast intent.

Hi Andrew,

We each have different levels of knowledge.

A simple example, then the solution.

If you want to catch fish easily, the best place to go is to an area where there are very small numbers of our species.

If you want to feed the world; encourage, educate and support the universal ideal of around 2 children at about 30 years of age.

Cheers,

Ralph

Overpopulation has been taken care of, because corporations running this planet are "TOO BIG TO FAIL "

On every road in Australia, tailgaters on hi-beam hunt for cars travelling at the speed limit and create a rage scenario. Its legitimate. They get to travel faster than the speed limit and get a superiority rush while police look on and smile while booking some mum or dad for 3Km/hr over the limit.

This is unsustainable behaviour but we have to live with it, especially in NSW. And the stress it creates makes all our lives go faster, more accident prone &dangerous and more expensive to the glory of forever economic growth.

The point is, on the current social trajectory, the middle classes are & will be essentially executed in their beds when resources run out in our unsustainable economies. The police will look on and smile as usual. Only Wall street, its expensive armed forces, its goverment bailout legislators, all the middle class deceased estates and backtaxes & the wild druggy spend-it-up youth markets will remain.

This form of 'economic dictatorship' could go on forever under the guise of 'too holy to fail democracy'? Why?

Because the middle classes are too media-complaced & gutless to stand up and tell governments "we WANT "corporations and banks too big to fail" to actually fail when they stuff up". The inevitable consequences of unemployment, injustice and poverty are already here, They cannot get any worse. The TRUTH is, OUR ingenuity not wall Street's, will PREVAIL.

But hush! That's Wall Street's biggest secret apart from the fact that GFC#2 is less than a year away while Wall Street fudges $accounts to make it look like the global economy is forever in the black, even when its not..

Even dopey Bravehart knew: "THE COST OF FREEDOM IS ETERNAL VIGILANCE". But does it have to be on YOUR middle class deathbed?

"No meaningful long term limit" to growth,eh?

That just about sums up this cornucopian rant from an economist of the old (and discredited) school.Mr Whitby.I recommend a reading of the work of Hermann Daly who recognizes the ECOLOGICAL limits to growth.

That is,of course,if you can climb down out of your ivory tower to access information which does not concur with your preconceived pixie notions.

The founders of the older schools of economics saw no need to consider limits to growth, just as 18th century gunners didn't need relativity theory to work out their trajectories, even if they had known about it (unlike modern particle physicists). These economists grew up at a time when there were less than 2 billion people worldwide, most of them living in appalling poverty. Humans were capable of doing some local environmental damage, but not of interfering with the vast natural cycles that sustain life on earth. New technologies were unlocking vast natural resources per person.

Paul Ehrlich and quite a number of others were wrong about widespread famines in the 1970s because they were unable to predict the success of the Green Revolution. Even the agronomist William Paddock was caught out. However, our problems today are far more extensive than theirs were then. We are facing shortages or losses of arable land, fresh water, fish stocks, biodiversity, fossil fuels and minerals that are vital for our agriculture and other technology, and capacity of the environment to safely absorb wastes. See for example the famous 9 Thresholds paper in Nature

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html

This is Nature, probably the most respected peer-reviewed science journal in the world, not a blogsite run by a few ignorant fringe Greenies. Or see Lester Brown's Plan B, recommended reading for his May 2009 Scientific American article and available as a free download

http://www.earthpolicy.org/images/uploads/book_files/pb3book.pdf

Does Andrew Whitby seriously think that we will be able to come up with technological solutions to all these problems, and in time to make a difference, while also continuing with massive economic and population growth? Perhaps he should follow the example of Herman Daly and listen to the natural scientists who do understand these issues.

The growthists who airily assume that technology will solve all our problems might sober up a bit if they went back and read the popular science articles and science fiction of the 1950s to see what they were predicting for us.

Where are Cheryl's flying car and robot servant? Where is our nuclear power that was going to be too cheap to meter? Where are our bases, let alone colonies, on the Moon and Mars? We were promised so much leisure that we wouldn't know what to do with it. Why don't we have it? Why haven't human translators been completely replaced by computers? Why can't we regrow amputated limbs? Why are people still dying of cancer? The list could go on.

Two things, a fixed future only comes from a fixed past, anyone who says they can see into the future is lying.
Secondly, if Chicken little is running around saying the sky is falling it usually means we're doing fine, when people stop talking about what a mess we're in it's time to panic because it means no one is paying attention.
The flaw in the global population debate is the assumption that non White people will behave like White people if given equal technology and resources, they won't, because they're not White.
They may come up with surprising new uses for our inventions but Kibera will never look like New York.

If we give Asia the technological know how to produce Green energy they'll use it, improve it's efficiency and maintain the standard of quality in service delivery. But will their population come down? History says no.
If we give Africans the same technology they'll grab the machinery take it apart and use it for something more practical, like shelter or agriculture, or sell it to buy something else they need. As long as we keep donating the parts they'll keep finding alternate uses for them.
Will their population go down? History tells us no.

Africans don't need Plasma TV's, if they did they'd have invented them, before they met us they had everything they needed to be Africans, whatever we give them will be used in an African way not a White way.

I am annoyed that Dick Smith has limited the Wilberforce award to people under 30 - its not only ageist, but really stupid if he actually wants the issues widely addressed. It may well be that an under 30 yo wins, but I can't see any benefit in excluding so many people who could make a useful contribution.

Dick has opened up the debate.
Here is an exercise for anyone who thinks there is no problem.
Plot oil consumption and world population on the same graph.
Frankly considering we are facing energy depletion what the graph
reveals is frightening. Population tracks energy usage exactly and if
it is projected forward with depletion rates it shows some billions will die.

Andrew Whitby is a cornucopian and believes that something will turn up.
Well something did turn up and it was called coal and oil.
Now they have done their dash and it will be back to square one.

I'm right behind you Jay. 'Africans don't need Plasma TV's, if they did they'd have invented them ...'

We didn't need Dick Smith, but as a 'growthist', he could see our penchant for all things electronic could make him big bucks. And it did. Did it make Dick happy? You bet.

See Dick fly his plane. See Dick go on new adventures. See Dick fund anti-capitalist/anti-people propaganda. Where's Nip and Dora in all of this because that's about the level of debate so far.

It's great to be sitting back in white Australia slagging off at the Africans and Asians who are breeding and waiting, cunning in their plans to invade us with their food and oil consuming babies. They come at night you know. Hard to see.

Well, so far we have about 400 years of coal in Oz, 100 years of oil, and we haven't even gone below the 1km mark for mineral and oil extraction. One day in the next 500 years or so, we'll run out of everything - and do you know who'll we'll blame? The hungry Asian/African hordes.

Andrew you are a young and naive fool in the image of your baby boomer parents.

You place a great deal of confidence in technology.

The bible thumpers say "God will always provide".

The economists say "Technology will always provide".

Both ideologies are fatally flawed.

The ability of humans to invent new technolgies my indeed by arguably infinite.

But all technologies require considerable resources to implement them on a large scale.

And all resources are finite and we have chewed through a very large proportion of them already with previous rounds of technological innovations.

We are at or very close to peak oil for starters.

Cheryl said;
Well, so far we have about 400 years of coal in Oz, 100 years of oil, and we haven't even gone below the 1km mark for mineral and oil extraction.

Where you are wrong Cheryl is that it will cost more energy to get that
400 years of coal than is contained in the coal.
The same applies to oil.
Aside from that peak coal occurs around 2025 and peak oil occurred in 2008.

Australia is producing just under 50% of what we use and in 10 years
we will be down to 20% of that 50%. Sure it will never run out !
A good thing actually, it can be used for medical plastics and the like.
We just won't be able to afford to burn it as a fuel.
Why ? The magic formula EROEI Energy returned on energy invested.

I doubt if there is a hope in hell in preventing a reduction in world
population. The reason, food production is very energy intense in the
quantities that we presently grow, harvest and transport it.
With energy depletion we will need something like 50 to 100 times the
number of farmers we now have. One offset might be the complete
electrification of farming and transport.
However because of peak coal, it will require geothermal and nuclear
together with reprocessing of nuclear fuel.

No easy answers here.

It is no surprise to find Andrew Whitby is a student of economics, that wretched anti-science discipline that operates in fairyland and not the real world. Sorry Andrew, but there are biophysical limits to resource and population growth. Right now, we're in crisis because the biosphere cannot absorb our wastes and biodiversity is crashing because of pollution and habitat loss. Why is there habitat loss? Because there are too many people needing food and fibre and energy. By all means, grow meat in vats if you must (innovation) but please understand the complexity of the natural world and understand that people are part of it. Dominance of one species (us) simply drives the others to extinction, with the possible exception of jellyfish.

The article lost me at 'Malthus'. The old furphy trotted out for lack of cogent argument about limited resources let alone the impact of human activity on biodiversity and the environment.

The views expressed by the author could be described as "cornucopian", a term which applies to ideas which have an implied assumption of endless bounty and scope for growth. To scientists whose disciplines are rooted in the real world,this belief is similar to a child's wishful belief in Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy.
Dick Smith, in fact, contrary to the author's statement starts in the right place,if he assumes the potential for growth is finite.

Again contrary to what the author says, population growth does relate to slavery in that overpopulation leaves poorer people vulnerable to exploitation and consumption growth is obviously related to population growth in that as population increases, so does consumption unless per capita consumption declines dramatically.

I recorded Dick's doco as I was away at the time. I just watched it today.

The whole discussion on Q&A was redundant and would have been
obviously so if Dick had made the point when he drew the chart of
population and fossil fuels, if he had pointed out that fossil fuels
will decline from about now and population will fall with it.

It is as plain as the nose on your face that population is directly
related to cheap energy as it means cheap food.
Oil depletion, the most important for food production, has already
peaked and in the next 1, 2, 3 years will start declining.
From then on population will start declining, probably with a time lag.

Bazz, you're quite right. Global population will start declining from 2050. The boomers are already dropping off the perch in the west. Spot on re energy individual energy use although there has been an increase in carbon emissions by corporations.

Should we roll back capitalism because we're infested with greedy corporations? Throw the baby out with the bathwater. Hell yes, say the pinky misanthrope anti-pops. That'll certainly make sure we're in a Year Zero Cambodian trading position.

Where do these people come from?

At no time here, on OLO or other media has anyone - and I mean anyone - made a definitive and scientific connection between population increase and food stock depletion before 2050.

It's astounding that people even consider that as it is plainly and fundamentally not true. Eat hearty. Have a second serve.

If you want, give $20 to an international aid agency and do something positive instead of trying to sterlize the Indian, Asian and African people or rant on about boat loads of ravenous Muslims arriving with revolution in their stomachs or knocking back international students.

The anti-pops like to say that one day we'll run out of ore, nickel, cobalt, oil, coal, etc. Guess what? We know that. Does it mean the end of the world? Could be. But I take considerable satisfaction that if we all go together when we go, we'll take you with us.

One other thing ... others must find it equally offensive that millionaire Dick Smith, whose business empire traded entirely on volume of cheap technological goods, now comes out and says he wants less people and less growth. Give me a break. Pull the other one.

And he has called it the Wilberforce Prize? LOL. Malthus Award is about right - and Malthus couldn't even do maths. Had the vision of a dingbat.

One poster drew an incredible long bow and said the slavery of the pro-population side was akin to the slavery Wilberforce fought against. Ha ha ha ha. Here's a secret. There is no pro-population side. The war is in your delusional head.

*But I take considerable satisfaction that if we all go together when we go, we'll take you with us.*

Ah Cheryl, you are a wonderful example of the reality that people
need pain to learn, for they learn the hard way. So be it.

Meantime I take considerable satisfaction from knowing that you
are unable to give a good reason why people should keep popping out
babies that they don't want in the first place.

Your affiliations with the Catholic Church are hardly an excuse
and you have come up with no other good reason

The funny thing about growth advocates' mockery of Malthus is the claim that Australia's economy would collapse without high immigration is based upon a Malthusian understanding of demographics and wages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus#Demographics_and_wages

"Malthus saw poverty as a positive check to population growth, believing people without means less likely to have children whom they could not support.[36] Similarly, as wages increased, the birth-rate could be expected to increase while the death-rate decreased. Consequently, wage increases caused populations to grow. Malthus believed that this inevitably led to economic oscillations between relative prosperity and distress, though the oscillations were not always apparent:"

The difficulty nowadays is that contraception is available in developed nations, so the growthists believe that immigration is required to balance things.

"do something positive instead of trying to sterlize the Indian, Asian and African people"

Why portray efforts to provide contraception to people in developing countries on a voluntary basis in such perverted terms? Would you consider GPs in Australia who provide patients with contraceptive scripts as genocidal practitioners? What do you find so wrong about providing a service in developing nations that is so readily available in developed countries?

"Had the vision of a dingbat."

Better vision than some of his unwitting followers I think.

If anyone is "Malthusian", it'd surely be Whitby. His lack of concern for the masses, should ecological damage that only begins with global warming, let alone soils, water and a population too large for the resources currently arrayed against enviro degradation and mass poverty be not amenable to his as yet unindentified techno fixes, becomes pure cold Gradgrind.
Cornucopian in only the way that the privileged can be.
A lazy essay reprising for a Tory think tank; watch your back Chris Berg..

Cheryl,
I don't know where to start.
First you question Dick's sincerity. Well I know Dick rather better
than you do and from way back when, he was always an enthusiast for
whatever he was interested in.
That he is able to change his mind when confronted with different facts
is a good thing.
Do you change your mind with new facts ?

Re capitalism in a zero growth regime it will have to either disappear
or adapt. To repay debt requires growth to repay the capital and
interest. There may be a way to do it but I do not see how.

A reduction in the amount of food available below a certain level
will result in lower fertility, but not starvation.
That requires an even lower level of food supply.
So the world's population could reach a point where birth rates fall
and just enough food is available to avoid famine.
It will all depend on how fast we adapt to a new farming regime.

We, in this case does mean the whole world but as transport between
continents will become much more expensive conditions could be quite
different in Australia than elsewhere.

Gee Yabby, that's a bit rough what with the Catholic Church and all.

I could retort that the Sustainable People Australia group are crypto-fascists in league with the National Front. About the same IQ. You're right as they do paste over some of my articles as do the Greens when they agree with me, rather me agreeing with them.

The anti-pop rhetoric has a school marmish quality about it. Finger waving. There must be some old Democrats there. Hang on. Their President is Sandra Kanck. I rest my case.

Bazz, did you really know Dick from way back when? When exactly? Did Dick buy airtime way back when to drop a load of cobblers on the Australian people. I admire people who change their mind when confronted with the facts. So what's he doing ranting on about population?

Yes Cheryl,
I did not mean to imply we are friends, more acquaintances.
I and many others of our ilk first met Dick when he opened his first
shop next to the WIA in St Leonards.
We have had passing contact over the years and I had radio contact with
him a few times,especially one when he was flying his helicopter from
Japan to Alaska. I spoke to him at a function a couple of months ago
about a mutual friend who was his contact on the ship where he
refuelled on that Japan to Alaska flight.

So I hope that makes it clear as to my knowledge of Dick.

>So what's he doing ranting on about population?

I gather from the program that his daughter stirred him up on the matter.
You know as much as I do about that.
Perhaps he is adopting the role of the boy who said the emperor has no clothes.

Unlike some other cornucopian growthists, Cheryl accepts that there are limits to growth, but asserts that they are so far in the future that we effectively don't have to worry about them. However, the 9 Thresholds paper in Nature that I linked to earlier says that we have already crossed 3 of the thresholds, relating to climate change, loss of biodiversity, and interference with the nitrogen cycle and are out of a "safe operating space for humanity". We are rapidly approaching 4 more thresholds.

Cheryl might also check what has been happening to prices of commodities, such as crude oil, corn, wheat, and rice over the past 10 years. Graphs can be found here

http://www.chartsrus.com/

and this one for phosphate rock

http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/phosphate_rock.html

If there are plenty of resources, why are prices much higher than in the 2000-2005 period? Why has China, one of the biggest producers of phosphate rock, slapped a 135% export tariff on it, effectively banning export, instead of taking advantage of the high prices? Is it possible that they know something Cheryl doesn't?

If the famous Ehrlich-Simons bet on the cost of 5 metals had closed in 2008 and not 1990, Simons would only have been right about one of them, and Ehrlich would have won. See

http://biolaw.blogspot.com/2008/03/ehrlich-simon-bet-update.html

and

http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/02/re-litigating_t.html

Divergence, I never argued about the limits to growth. It's also rather unusual that the anti-pops make this as a unique claim. Back in the 19th C economists knew that we'd run out of 'stuff' - minerals and oil. There are some things we can synthesise but much we can't.

Even back then they knew the problem wasn't people, it was energy. That's a major problem. Pulling back the levers of capitalism now won't make the faintest difference. Neither will cutting population. Indeed, global population will start to fall by 2050.

The main game is looking at new energy sources and how they can be adapted as part of the mix for the future.

Quite right about phosphate. Running out.

"Even back then they knew the problem wasn't people, it was energy."
Cheryl you are naive fool in a state of denial. People use energy therefore the more people there are the more energy will be consumed. Reduce the number of people and you reduce the amount of energy consumed. To deny this is just plain STUPID.

"Neither will cutting population."
Rubbish Cheryl!

"Indeed, global population will start to fall by 2050."
All the demographic evidence is to the contrary. And even if the global population does start falling after 2050 it will be far to late to avert a human catastrophe.

"The main game is looking at new energy sources and how they can be adapted as part of the mix for the future."
Yeah, yeah Cheryl. We have heard it all before. For the christians, their god will always provide. For you and other idiotic humanists, technology will always provide.

What is your fall back plan if technology fails to come up with a miraculuous new energy source