So basically when prices go up for rent etc its the fault of population. No mention of supply problems vis a vis land. No mention of vacant business premises either.

When interest rates go up --- the author blames population.

Its all just a bit too simplistic and childish for my liking.

Land supply problems are directly related to growing populations. That is where the demand is coming from.

I tend to agree with the SPA and the findings of the Australian Academy of Science that the upper limit of Australian population in terms of carrying capacity is about 24M give or take a couple of million up to 26M to allow for flexibility and movement in and out of Australia.

Small business are struggling with the rising costs of rents facing a loss of income while different pressures keep prices down in some sectors eg. competition with large bulk stores who can purchase in bulk and in some cases receive lower rents in shopping centres to attract customers.

Unchecked population growth is unsustainable - there has to be a limit to what land can reasonably carry before the pressure points burst.

I would agree that increasing population is senseless and will do nothing towards improving quality of life in Australia.

However, I would think that house prices will continue to increase even with a stable population, and this is because of the number of single person household. About 1 in 4 households are now single person households and increasing.

Single person households increase demand for new housing even in towns with a stable population. They also increase the need for more infrastructures, more roads, more electricity and more water.

We have a culture of divorce, and in some towns, almost 70% of real estate transactions are now a result of divorce, which also impacts severely on family assets and family finances.

Everyone is paying for it.

vanna
The incidence of divorce has increased for sure and probably puts short term pressure on housing but mainly in the rental market going by the experience of some of my friends and colleagues.

However, most divorcees usually remarry or end up in defacto relationships so it is a fluctuating influence I would think and would not have a big impact on the demand over time. It would be interesting to know how many people remain single permanently after a divorce. I would expect more would remarry or end up in defacto relationships.

Pelican,
Currently 1 in 4 households is a single person household and the number is increasing, mainly due to divorce and also due to people not getting married at all.

De-facto relationships are normally short lived, and second marriages normally end in divorce.

Go to any town with a stable population, and look for the number of new suburbs.

at 18 my boy brought a home, has traveled and lives at a much higher standard of living than I could of dreamed of at that age. Population increase had proven a huge plus for him and most others.

It is only the fools and the ignorant who see any merit in increasing population. In another 50 years time when the world starts to run out of physical resources and we lose the ability to feed the ever growing numbers, that they may begin to see the error of their ways.

David

Unfortunately VK3AUU, they won't realise their mistakes at all because most of the people with a growist mindset will have already be dead.

I shudder to think of just how many people of religious persuasion there are that believe some god or other 'gave' them this world to do as they please, like some huge kiddies playground. Those same people also believe that it's their "god-given right" to breed out of control. Who knows what reason they have for this. Is it simply to out-breed the other religions?

It's a similar mindset that says we can keep on breeding forever and hang the consequences. If only I could get through to people that they've been brain washed. There really is no god and when they die, that's all there is. The lights go and and it's goodbye forever.

If we could convince religious people that what they believe is total and utter nonsense, then perhaps we could also convince them that this world has finite resources and the only way to help future generations is to stop breeding and work towards a more sustainable future.

But, I suppose I'm just 'spitting into the wind.' Those born a fool, always a fool!

Well done William. Big business wants high population growth, but for small businesses higher costs make things tougher. For wage earners it is even tougher still.

It is difficult to convince the general population because issues like biodiversity, protection of ecosystems and ecosystem services like flood control, breeding areas and pollination are complicated. Hopefully the idea that rent, power and water gets more expensive with high population, is easier to understand.

Aime - Lots of high profile religous leaders are for high population growth (like Cardinal George Pell who said that people wanting a stable population were "Nervous Nellies" because the world's population was ONLY going to increase by 3 billion by 2050) but there is a strong movement among many religous groups (like the Anglicans and many Catholics) that favour sustainability and stable population.

Yes,far too often opponents of our 'population policy' are characterised as 'dreamy greenies',when in fact there are sound economic arguments against high population growth,as William Bourke indicates,

runner,

you're making the assumption that our higher living standards are due to population increases, not necessarily. There are many nations with smaller populations than ours with higher per capita incomes,they probably have smarter politicians and capitalists.
Australia is basically a desert,it's not Brazil or the US.
We're incurring a huge foreign debt just to cope with an increased population which provides very doubtful 'benefits'.

I recommend the book 'Overloading Australia', its authors examine the political and economic vested interests behind our high population gowth rate.

Runner, you have been reading too much of the "Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die" self indulgent crap. By the time your boy gets to the "Age of Wisdom" he might have actually got a sense of propriety.

David

population increase has its pluses but these are out weighed by the negatives. The problems in the realestate game are caused by a cross section of issues. Certainly population growth puts pressure on demand and the inevitable shortage ensues. But high pressure sales methods and an escalating expectation of what we deserve also adds greatly to this problem. Then there is the slow progress within government with the release of land and ever increasing costs for builders with insurance and regulations.

The problem of what we expect from life and the standard of living we demand have much more to do with the pain we all feel financially. Everyone expects bigger profits and cheaper prices all of this is unsustainable but do we care NO! The long term future of our current economy is bleak as another GFC would cripple this country and be the absolute end of it for most of the developed world. We live way beyond our means and don't see the issues for our country and planet. I have always seen our constant growth as destructive and all back to front. We need to understand what the country can handle as a population and then plan our economy to suit.

Population growth is not just bad for business, it's bad all round. The morons who will inherit the earth will find out but unfortunately they're dragging the thinking minority down with them.
If business wants more business then why doesn't it focus on quality rather than quantity. Just imagine if business got into education. How much could be achieved by exploiting the intelligence of the young rather than dumbing them down. Let business take on education and it won't need population growth.

“We need to understand what the country can handle as a population and then plan our economy to suit.” (nairbe).
That is a very difficult ask: there are so many factors involved, and circumstances are continually changing.
The country is not handling very well its current 22.5 million people together with its 1.8 per cent rate of increase. It would be logical to work towards stabilizing numbers, and then attempt to adjust society so that it has cohesion with our natural and social resources. The policies of past and present Governments have been the reverse - at least 27 years of increasing numbers in order to cater for ever-increasing numbers. Economic activity has increased - but benefits have, per-capita, been diminished; as has natural capital.

There is no justification for any policy of facilitating population increase until stability is assured in agriculture, fishieries, forestry, energy, water supplies; and until social capital in areas such as provision for education, health, housing and infrastructure ceases to be in decline.
With socially responsible politicians in charge, it might be possible to rein-in the population gallop to halt at 28 million, and see how the country handles that stabilized number. On present indications - not very well.

You know how our government seems unable to fund hospitals, schools and roads, and this is with our population failing to produce enough children to replace ourselves...

Have a look at this map of world poverty... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

Basically the more red, the more poverty... But the surprise is that it is a map of FERTILITY - how many children are being born.

In Australia articles like this a complaining that we can't afford schools, roads and hospitals for our pretty stable population (we are suiciding by not having enough kids, but importing people through immigration). We can't afford population growth.

Imagine the problems of funding these essential services if the population was not declining, but trippling every twenty years... no wonder they are poor. Worse than schools and hospitals, they somehow they also need to find more farmland too!

Too many children means poverty, too few children also means economic colapse.

On the other hand, why is the 'aging population' such a bad thing here in Australia? Surely it means we are living longer, and isn't that a good thing?

The problem is not an 'aging' population, it is that we are suiciding... failing to produce enough kids to replace ourselves.

Here we need to give tax reductions for kids so middle class parents can afford the kids we want. Those on welfare are pumping out kids like there is no tomorrow because of the welfare bribes to have lots of kids. Meaning that single mums are pressured into having more kids than they can look after. And the incentives make sure that few get married, as this reduces their welfare paynments.

Also making divorce fairer, because Australian men don't want to become dads... because they are afraid of having their kids stolen by divorce lawyers

Where is Pericles? Usually in articles like this he jumps in right at the beginning and bags the hell out of the outrageous idea that population growth is a problem. I miss him, because at least he cares enough to actually have a view.

What astounds me is the responses from Greenies who say "it's not the population, it's the greedy lifestyles of the Western societies that causes the environmental damage. You shouldn't blame the developing countries with their exploding populations, it's not their fault".

Well of course you cluckwites, it's BOTH, and if you can't see that you've got an unfortunate cognitive problem. BOTH population growth AND ever-increasing consumpiton of resources per person add up to more and more demands on the environment. Sure, if you use better technology like solar the damage will be reduced, but if there are more and more people it will soon overtake any improvements in technology. Is that a nose in front of your face?

Come in Pericles please, I miss you. Andrew Bartlett, too, if you're willing to open your mind - which I doubt, I suspect you're being paid off by wealthy developers to white-ant the Greens just as you did the Demos.

Talk of population always makes me think of the Eagles song The Last Resort, and its closing lines: "You call someplace Paradise, kiss it goodbye".

What concerns me about "big Australia" is that we cannot possibly maintain what we have while engaging in massive population expansion. If, by the time I die, Australia has a population greater than 35.5 million (a middle-of-the-road estimate from the ABS: [http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3222.0]), we would be naive to believe we would be talking about the same country as the one we live in now. Obviously, I would be naive to endorse stasis - technology, environmental conditions, local and international affairs will all change the nature of our world. But, parochial as I may be, I kind of like things the way they are.

What would this new country look like? We need to slot those 13m people in somewhere. While we could engage some sort of conditional immigration (spend your first three years in regional Australia, or something), I suspect that people would do their time then hit the city where the jobs, money, culture and facilities are. I don't blame them. While city life is not for me, I can't imagine too many people setting out to start new lives in Mt Isa (not that there's anything wrong with the Isa): the people I know who have headed over there have done so to earn some cash, get a start in life and then head elsewhere. The result, then, is increased sharing and reduced access to the wonderful things our cities and their surrounding areas have to offer. Sydney Harbour? Too crowded. St Kilda? Alright if you get there early enough. Gold Coast? Well, even the little 'pockets of peace' will develop to accommodate the extra visitors. All the things people come here for will crumble through the very act of their coming.

I know this is selfish (and possibly even hypocritical) thinking: people, my family included, come from a lot worse to revel in what Australia has to offer. I'm not against immigration per se, just against growth for the sake of growth itself.

colinsett,
That is pretty much what i was saying. The fragile environment of this country is with the current methods of energy production, transport, infrastructure and community structure well over populated. We should be aiming to reduce or at least stabilise the population while we get the infrastructure in place to support what we have. Changing our polluting ways would also make a big difference.

We complain about the murray darling and the farmers are worried about lost production but some of the best and most reliable farming land in this country is being subdivided to accomodate tree changers who are vacating the cities for the immigrants. We need to stop the whole cycle, Sydney used to be a fun city with a usable harbour. Now it is an overrun hell hole and the harbour so over used and over regulated that fun is something you can tell the kids about.

Yes Thermoman, the greedy lifestyles of the population are a major part of the population issue and of course we can support more if they were not so destructive. The other side is that the larger populations create social and community disharmony with divisions forming due to lack of understanding and compassion.

Here we go again.
The Malthusians are out in force with all their gloomy doomsday predictions.
The article - and Part-Time-Parent - made some fundamental mistakes confusing cause and effect and completely ignoring other factors. Have you ever considered that although poverty and fertility are linked it is not the fertility that makes a country poor but the poverty that leads to higher birth rates?
The population of Australia has been growing since European settlement - and every measure of quality of life has been improving along with it. Of course, some will declare; it can't go on forever, we have limited space, limited food, limited water - the tipping point must come eventually. Well, perhaps - but as Part-time-parent has already pointed out, the more affluent you are, the fewer children you have.
The key to population growth is not coercion, it is wealth creation.
Besides, I can never take hypoctrites seriously. Anyone who is seriously concerned about over-population should take the only honourable course and do something within their power about it.
Oh, finally, there is no land shortage in Australia. High land prices are a natural and deliberate result of our government's desire to limit urban sprawl and the associated cost savings in infrastructure. Get rid of these limits and land prices will dive.

I guess the main issue to worry about is what standard of living (income, community, environmental, ageing, health etc) do we want in a future Australia.

On the article:
1. Increasing costs that threaten export-oriented businesses may be one side of the coin, but we also need to look at demand overseas and the widely-reported undervalued Chinese yuan which makes Chinese products cheaper than they supposedly should be. I would guess the GFC has not been too kind for businesses either.

2. Infrastructure...does anyone blame the lack of planning from all our governments? One of the drawbacks of our current politicians is that they worry about winning elections as much, if not more, than the actual tasks at hand. Also, what lifestyle do we want? If we all want a backyard, car and low-density neighbourhoods, then we will continue to have the same problems as now, unless everyone in Australia immediately stops having babies, 1-person/2-3-bedroom house cases are banned and no-one is let in even for a holiday visit. (A little extreme, I know, but using it for emphasis)

3. Also as population and wealth have increased in recent years, the number of businesses would have increased accordingly. Thus, it is fair to say that the number of businesses closing or shutting shop would also have increased - sadly, not every business is successful. Is the real problem: population, the GFC or the fact that big business has a cosy relationship with government? And isn't competition usually good for consumers by fostering innovation and efficiency?

4. The environment is a difficult one. While I'm hopeful that oil and coal will gradually be phased out (thanks mainly to consumer demand), the question of water supply is important. There are alternatives: desalination, recycling...cost, safety and feasibility should be studied.

Finally, what industries are going to maintain the current high Australian standard of living in the future? Agriculure? Mining? Tourism? Manufacturing? The world is moving forward, in good ways and bad. Australia needs to figure out what will generate growth for itself in the future, otherwise big or small population..it won't matter.

http://currentglobalperceptions.blogspot.com/

J S Mill,

There seems to be a conflict here between reality and libertarian dogma. It is true that development makes people richer and brings down fertility rates, although developed countries can still have high population growth rates, as in Australia, due to government sponsored mass migration. Development can also take place quite quickly from apparently unpromising beginnings. South Korea was tied with Senegal for poorest country on earth in 1960. However, even if all societies were willing to make the necessary reforms and trade-offs, and there is no reason to believe that they are, it would require the resources of three Earths to give everyone a modest Western European standard of living. See this graph from New Scientist

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2624/26243101.jpg

The y-axis scale of the graph ranks groups of countries by their ranks on the UN Human Development Index. Cuba is highlighted as the only country that gives its people a relatively decent standard of living without using more than its "fair share" of resources. This is just for the existing population, not the 9 billion or more that we might expect in the future.

There is also serious concern among the mainstream scientific community, not just fringe Greenies, about the impact we are having on our planetary life support systems, even at the present level of global population and low average consumption. See this paper from Nature for example

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

Furthermore, I reject the accusation of hypocrisy, apart from the (rare) case where a "Malthusian" has been having a large family while urging others to show restraint. Why should only growthists like yourself be deemed fit to decide if we wipe out half our bird species, force my (two) children and their friends to live cheek by jowl with their neighbours, or force everyone to pay three times as much for water? (Desalinated water is 4-6 times as expensive as dam water.)

What are the reasons for you believing that continuing population growth is good? I.e. I am questioning REASONS behind this opinion.

The main REASONS are economic ... the 'theory' behind business.
Economics is based on numerics and everyone thinks More people = More sales = More money for you. This is the ERRONEOUS basis population growth ideology.

FACTS why these REASONS are erroneous:
Earth's resources (read any environmental constraint) within a specific time period (eg 100 years before interplanetary migration) is limited. Economic theory which our eco-political system is based and operates does NOT apply this Zero Sum perspective (yes your bank/govenment economists actually believe this 9-5 monday-friday). Point = The system you seem to be endorsing is theoretically refusing and only politically bent to acknowledge our physical limitations. it sees growth based on population growth is limitless. In fact individual wealth and life quality (true economic growth) - given historical proof from numerous times of population REDUCTION - increases.

Economic theory again believes that we all have the CAPACITY to improve our economic well being. We all KNOW the global fact poverty is reducing, but also inequality is increasing. So how are you I and any other person (unless you don't believe in resource constraints) INDIVIDUALLY getting wealthier and improving life quality as a DIRECT cause of population growth? Your improving life quality is due to technology i.e. QUALITY not QUANTITY.

Policitally, why is the system saying that the richer and better educated you become the stupider and selfisher you are because Australians have fewer children? Why was your individual wealth rising until we promoted and taxpayer funded a wealth-reducing population-increasing program (many countries not just here). Point - What is your politcal lobbyist doing for you? Currrently those profiting from mortgages are our main political lobbyists ... would your interests come after or before theirs?

Phew, I haven't even started to ramble about how we stopped the MASSIVE damage this fact-denying system is wreaking on our natural environment and the incredible plant and animal life within.

This is clearly one of the top 10 most crazy population articles. Up there with rising sea levels and population, extinction of polar bears and population, the death of bonobo chimps and population and the real estate conspiracy and population. Now it's interest rates and population. So the monetrist policy is due to population? That's a new one - and a new one for the Reserve Bank and Milton Friedmann too.

Much of this poppycock has been debunked and it's moving off the media's agenda which is why we're seeing desperate articles like this.

The reason I like these articles is that they teach us something about ourselves - an almost endless propensity to run and believe in fear campaigns. The anti-pops use pop terms such as 'tipping point' or chaos theory to create a meaningless stew of babble. Actually, this is nothing new. Every 50 to 100 years the cranks rise up and trot this stuff out. Why?

Why would normally sane, rational people write this stuff? That's the same question Arthur Miller asked when he wrote The Crucible. It's not the problem that's the problem. It's the people. Solution: get rid of the people.

cheryl; is adding more than 200,000 people to the planet daily sane?

from Dr. Albert Bartlett's "Laws of Sustainability"

"First Law: Population growth and/ or growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained"

"Tenth Law : Growth in the rate of consumption of a non-renewable resource, such as a fossil fuel,causes a dramatic decrease in the life-expectancy of the resource."

" Twenty-First Law: Extinction is forever."

the overpopulation index

www.optimumpopulation.org/overpopulationindex.pdf

kiwichick,

If you want to post a clickable link on OLO, the site software requires that you use the prefix 'http://', thus:

http://www.optimumpopulation.org/overpopulationindex.pdf

For those who want to know, the PDF is a 324KB file.

isn't it funny that it use to be the DINK's 9double income no kids) that use to be labeled selfish. Now as with most upside down morality it is those who have kids. Start talking about killing a few animals for food and many of these anti growist freak out. Very funny indeed. Hopefully those with a bit of sense will out grow the mother earth worshipers.

Ah runner, I have news for you. Without a mother earth, you'll have
nothing, no runner no offspring, no bibles, no churches.

Should the earth,s core cool down eventually, the planet will
lose its atmosphere, it will become a spinning lump of rocks,
a bit like mars really.

That thought should cheer you up!

My interest in this issue centres on the rise of instrumentalism and that's at the core of the anti-pop push. If we treat people solely as economic units, we can easily reduce the number of units through population control. Units have no morality, ethics, family, feelings, reciprocal relationships, etc.

Yet the anti-pops have consistently failed to show how they would reduce the world's population. Their 'ends justifies the means' rhetoric sounded like something out of Nazi Germany. And their ignorance of even the most basic economic principles was insulting.

The media have already left the population issue but the sociology and psychology of their push is interesting. The anti-pops were a sign of the times. They hitched a rise on the global environmental movement but like some cults, simply went too far. Their prophesies of doom and gloom turned people off and for people on the left of politics, the anti-pops seemed like anti-immigration loonies.

cheryl;reducing the population is very simple; just encourage women to limit their family to a maximum of two children

the 2nd largest economy on the planet aims to stabilize its population within 20 years

the now 3rd largest economy has a population which is gradually declining

unfortunately the largest economy is full of americans

runner the anti growthists are not advocating killing humans and being concerned about animal welfare does not not imply that it is okay to kill human beings. One does not follow from the other. Just because you are a Christian does not mean I think you still believe in burning women at the stake for nothing more than disobedience. For goodness sake, where does your logic come from? Or don't you care about the validity and integrity of what you write.

Cheryl
That is so untrue. Have you not been reading the same threads over the past few months in which the following ideas have been floated in regards to managing population growth:

- no baby bonus or middle class welfare in relation to raising children or a means test to ascertain need
- reduce immigration depending on resource management/skills issues
- increase social welfare structures and education in developing countries which is shown to reduce the size of families
- reduce global economic inequities
- aid in the short term to provide education and practical help for improved agricultural practices
etc.

How many times does one need to stress these points.

No-one in the anti-unfettered growth movement is subscribing to inhumane measures - you are the only one raising these options. It makes me suspicious of what vested interest you have in unfettered population growth which is in itself anti-human and causes much suffering and hardship.

At least try and see the rationale in an opposing view before people like you and runner jump to the most irrational conclusions.

It does wear a bit thin.

Laws of Sustainability ( Dr. A Bartlett )

First Law: (a) A population growth rate less than or equal to zero and declining rates of consumption of resources are a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for a sustainable society

(e) Persons who advocate population growth and/ or growth in the rates of consumption of resources are advocating unsustainability

(h) The term "Sustainable Growth" is an oxymoron

Well Pelican, I have been reading the posts from the anti-pops and I do find them interesting as they consistently fail to discern the difference between people and consumption. People are people; consumption is a process.

I rather liked some of your 'solutions'. Actually, aiding the developing world isn't high on the anti-pop agenda. Pulling back aid is and cutting them adrift is their normative policy. The Muslim 'darkies' are part of the problem (apparently). Chuck in re-erecting high trade barriers too.

How do you propose in real terms to measure hard resources against people?

Also, do you subscribe to the comments of the previous poster that:

"A population growth rate less than or equal to zero and declining rates of consumption of resources are a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for a sustainable society"

I have no particular barrow to push except to expose poppycock and cant.

Is it just me or do others find it an incredible hypocrisy that we have a party who is against population but who are willing to use pictures of kids to promote their aims?

http://candobetter.org/node/1988

Cheryl,

You ignore all of the times in history and prehistory when collapses did occur. A good account can be found in the book "Constant Battles" by Prof. Steven LeBlanc (Archaeology, Harvard), and some specific cases are also discussed in Jared Diamond's "Collapse". Some of LeBlanc's ideas are also discussed here in the popular science magazine Discover

http://discovermagazine.com/2003/may/featwar

Basically, people outbreed their resources and overexploit their environment, so living conditions tend to get worse with time. There are occasional countertrends towards peace and prosperity, when new crops or new technology have expanded the carrying capacity, or when some disaster has drastically reduced the population, but the good times never last, because they just lead to more and more mouths to restore the accustomed level of misery. Before development, it was this way all over the world.

When people become desperate enough, they try to kill or drive off their neighbours to take what they have, although the conflict or persecutions are frequently blamed on religious or ethnic differences. After all, religion and ethnicity make good rallying points when people are joining up sides, although they can easily find something else. In Rwanda, Hutus killed other Hutus in districts where there weren't any Tutsis. Rwanda's former Agriculture Minister, James Gasana, wrote an article on the genocide for Worldwatch Magazine

http://www.worldwatch.org/system/files/EP155B.pdf

It includes a table showing the correlation between massacres and calories per person per day. Gasana writes, "First, rapid population growth is the major driving force behind the vicious circle of environmental scarcities and rural poverty."

Since Cheryl is deeply concerned about children, it is worth noting that whole families in Rwanda, including babies, were hacked to death with machetes, and some have suggested that the reason this was done was to prevent anyone from coming forward in the future to reclaim the stolen land.

We want to prevent collapse, where children are likely to suffer the most, and to ensure that everyone, not just the elite, can have (and keep) a good, free life in a healthy environment. Cheryl and her friends are in willful denial.

Engineers understand the idea of systems going "non-linear". Any system pushed to extremes will begin to behave in a non-linear fashion - where change in one factor no longer leads to a continuously proportionate change in another factor (i.e. the proportionate change you might expect for a linear relationship
between cause and effect). You see this when driving a car - when you put your foot down there is an optimal range of engine response for any gear and outside that range the response becomes more sluggish. You feel it when drinking -additional alcohol can be fun until it makes you sick and you are throwing up or blacking out. You see it in plant growth - they grow faster as it gets warmer until the temperature gets too extreme. You see it in cricket where the energy
delivered to the ball by the bat is optimal at a certain position down the length of the bat - the "sweet spot".

The people who promote population growth want you to believe that more people can only ever be better. In other words, they are trying to make you believe that population growth and economic growth/development/human happiness/lifestyle are related in a linear fashion no matter how many people there are. Of course,this is simply impossible. In the early phase of growth more people CAN make a
community more functional for all but after a certain size the lack of
additional resources (e.g. water) and the problems of transport (travel time/congestion/parking) no longer allow a linear response. By this measure Australia is already beyond its "sweet spot" in terms of size and any additional people can only make things worse. Increased energy inputs (e.g.desalination/building highways) can relieve this partially but that will not be possible much longer. (Actually it is no longer possible now.)
So when Bourke says continued population growth is bad for business he is merely stating that we are beyond the "sweet spot"

Great post Divergence.

Wonderfull how political correctness can even make archieologists develop an academic culture of lying and hiding the obvious truth. It's incredible! They are researching things that happened thousands of years ago, but still, nobody is allowed to criticise the American indians.

In this case the political correctness is that only western culture can wage warfare, and that all other traditional cultures lived in some sort of Rousseau-ian idyll of peacefull communion with nature. What a load of bunk. Life for primatives was ugly, brutish and short. And often ended violently.

In Australia we have the same myth about Aboriginies... and the truth that the first waves of Aboriginal conquest caused a huge number of extinctions and the degradation of vast areas of forest to grassland.

For more detail, read Tim Flannery's "The Future Eaters

Cheryl
Part of what you say is apt, high consumption is part of the problem with resource management driven by extreme capitalism, but if we are to continue to increase populations throughout the world and the inequities are not smoothed, those in the most highly populated will be the most at risk, as they are now.

Why is it that some of the poorest nations are now growing food for export when many people within their borders are still starving or living well below the poverty line. Trade barriers are not all bad if free trade means an increase in the cost of food for locals who now have to compete on a global stage of which they are at the lowest end of the spectrum.

While you many think resources are limitless many people don't and would resent being told that is poppycock when all the evidence suggests we are deforesting at rates faster than is optimal for human existence.

Mankind could just go on and on exploiting resources without replenishment or being mindful of the effects of pollution, contamination of food (necessary when feeding large populations), but to do so without pause or care is just plain negligent. I am not sure what your obsession is with Muslims and populaton. Much of the overpopulated world is not Islamic.

Australia is an arid country, population capacity is not just about space, why don't we learn from the mistakes of others rather than go on to repeat them which is what we are apt to do based on previous experience. Human beings should be able to make wise decisions before the event of disaster rather than always be sweeping up the mess afterwards.

update from the IPCC mid 2009

"global average surface temp is unlikely to drop in the first thousand years after greenhouse gas emissions are cut to zero"

"nine out of every ten of us living THIS CENTURY will die from climate impacts,leaving a population of just a few hundred million clinging to refuges in places like Greenland and New Zealand. And of course that would destroy our global civilization."

James Lovelock from Prof. Tim Flannery's latest book "Here on Earth"

and some people think the planet can handle more people!