Dear Yabby,

You make a few unsubstantiated and personal assumptions about my domestic position, but as you're young and naive, I'll let them pass.

Demographers knew the pop would go down back in the 70s by the year 2050. The death of the whole boomer generation (about 1 billion) will have passed, plus improvements in education, falling developed world family numbers (still not enough in Africa) and access to contraception is helping. Strangely, China's one child policy didn't help at all. In fact there were some very odd results re raw numbers and social problems now.

I know the anti-pop message is appealing because it hawks death, environmental disaster and its all because of us, you, me - the people. How silly and misanthropic.

I want you to go to bed tonight and when you're all snug and tight, think about first world consumption and the type of things we consume. Most of the 'stuff' we have we only need one of: house, car, meal, blankets, power, etc. Sure we can drink heaps and go silly but generally our needs are met relatively simply. This is net individual consumption.

Now think about corporate Australia, the big steel mills, car production, fisheries, etc. We trade much of what we make and its this that makes us rich. But keep in mind your house and our roads are also funded from corporate Australia. They are massive consumers of power and materials. This consumption is of a far different order than individual consumption. It's first world consumption that is the problem - not the net number of people on the planet.

How will we be viewed in 2050? They'll be astounded that we started talking about population control when the real problem is rapacious corporate greed

*You make a few unsubstantiated and personal assumptions about my domestic position*

Not at all Cheryl, for to me, you are nothing but a name on a
screen. But you also reprepresent Ms/Mrs average Australia, and the
choices that she has, compared to her third world sister.

*They are massive consumers of power and materials. This consumption is of a far different order than individual consumption. It's first world consumption that is the problem - not the net number of people on the planet.*

Of course the net number of people matters. If 10 billion eat fish,
rather then 3 billion, we'll wipe out the fish.

Go to India, Rwanda etc. Diseases used to keep the population in
check. So we sent them vaccines, their kids stopped dying. But
we forgot the family planning. So farmed plots are getting ever
smaller, generation for generation, as the land is split between
more kids. Many "farms" are less then an acre, no wonder they
have a problem. Cut it in half once again, you'll have little but
a house plot.

So population matters hugely in the third world.

Corporations are nothing but a paper entity, to achieve an objective.
Yes they consume resources, for people like you, who want computers,
who want pots and pans, who want tvs. So your simple needs is what
drives them. The more billions of people you add, the larger your
problem.

Cheryl, you are ignoring the very basics of nature, which is that
biodiversity is what creates sustainability. Overcrowd any species,
eventually the thing collapses. Things like the species barrier
matter. Ignore them at your peril.

Defecate in a field, its called fertiliser. When 10'000 people
do it in the same field, it becomes a pollution problem, with
disease implications.

Of course Yabby's attitude re 'nothing but a name on a screen' typifies the misanthropic objectification and instrumentalism of the (un)sustainable people of Australia loony tunes faction.

He thinks he is on solid ground mentioning 'diversity' as we all nod sagely (must have diversity of species) but then he shafts the blame on this real problem to all people and not people's behaviour. The logical extension of this is that if you don't like a member of a particular family, kill them all.

Remember Dick Smith's paid anti-people rant on the ABC recently about how we should slash migrant numbers before we're all 'over run'? Then he makes a TV commercial where his staff are more diverse than members of the UNHRC. I don't mind a bit of hypocrisy, but fair suck of the the save.

Lets cut to the chase - what we have here with Yabby and a few of his mates is a diatribe that seeks to destroy a womans reproductive rights in the name of environmental facism. It's sad anonymous lonely heart club of blokes who instead of collecting stamps or model railway trains, have decided to use the Internet to vent their neurosis.

Populate or perish is still the order of the day, One million new cars were born in 2010 in AU. No increase in pop; no increase in economy.
Ye can no have it by not cloning.

*Lets cut to the chase - what we have here with Yabby and a few of his mates is a diatribe that seeks to destroy a womans reproductive rights in the name of environmental facism*

Er not so Cheryl, you remain confused. What we have here is Yabby
thinking that all women should have the right to choose the size of
their families, just like women in the first world. For then we
know, that on average they choose to have far smaller families.

Some people might choose to breed like rabbits, others are quite
happy to just have sex like rabbits, without all the children.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1812250,00.html

This is the sort of thing that your Catholic Church gets up to,
they should be ashamed of themselves.

Force people to have children that they don't actually want and
you land up with what we have now, poverty starvation and
population growth for people who can't afford it. Its hardly good
for the planet either.

I see the error of my ways. It's all the Catholic Churches fault! The CC are an easy target. They're like the banks but they pray more.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4768644.stm

This link is fairly old. Pop in Europe is falling even more rapidly now. Pop in Russia is in free fall. They want emigrants to come home.

And Catholic Italy is in the pooh with an ageing population and falling birth rates. Maybe the anti-pops should be following their social policies.

It's one reason why I said in my first post here that the anti-pops really needs to be careful about making sweeping generalisations. Population is one vector of analysis and not even the most compelling in the 21st Century. It's first world consumption and finding new energy forms.