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!