A lot of writing here. A lot of work. Red Book? I'm feeling all Maoist. The discouraging aspect of this story is the fact that DIMAC is simply the public service. They implement government policy - they don't make it. There are many primers available on how the Australian system of government runs.

Why would anyone be surprised that the Immigration Dept is in favour
of increased immigration.
Am I the only one to watch "Yes Minister" ?

Another thought for pro immigration advocates;

For every immigrant that buys a car, one Australian will have to to
take a car off the road.

What what you say, well that is what will eventually happen because
we only produce, at present, half the fuel we use.
When oil imports are not available or too expensive we will have rationing.

Basically government in Australia has simply gone mad.
They really don't have a clue.

One has to wonder whether DIMAC has been effectively hijacked by the pro-high-immigration lobby. Let’s hope Julia Gillard sticks to her promise to not go for a Big Australia and let’s hope she means stabilising population rather than stabilising population growth. However she has opposition from all sides of politics and the silent majority who do not want 35 million by 2050 are being - silent. An extra sad fact is that on present trends it will be more like 50 million by 2050 and 100 million by 2100.

"Note the absurd attempt to raise concern by suggesting that the Department’s visa fees are an important part of the national balance sheet, which will be lost if NOM falls."

I have seen assertions like this so many times in the APS - it is indicative of the sort of muddle headed thinking (almost nonsensical) that the culture fosters to justify the existence of various programs and policies. It all amounts to an endless justification of waste and a focus on 'self' rather than 'service'. And if there is a growing demand from the public for sustainable population even via a fair arrangement such as a one-out-one-in policy depending on birth rates at any one time, the public basically gets the finger (if you will excuse the expression).

As far as the national balance goes, how much, as the article continues, is lost to the costs of infrastructure. Much of the current and proposed infrastructure is bandaid stuff that barely keeps up with demand. We continually hear about hospital cuts and waiting lists but no acknowledgement that with growing populations you will need to spend more money to guarantee the national health service.

Fact is the Immigration Dept has been largely monopolised by pro-growth advocates and pressures from ethnic lobby groups - they have too much to lose if immigration quotas are cut significantly and the government of the day is responsible for buying into the unfettered growth as good mythology.

"one-out-one-in policy" - did you just make that up Pelican? Imagine the bureacracy needed to implement that. Welcome to an Orwellian world.

The anti-pops are rabid today. If you hate capitalism and growth so much, why don't you emigrate to say, Zimbabwe? That's away from the coast so you should be safe from polar ice caps melting, sea rising, etc.

The anti-pops are going for a triple whammy by blaming a government department for allowing people in to the country. It's a bit like blaming social security for being on the dole.

'The public service is full of growthists'. Of course they are. Your boat to Zimbabwe is leaving soon. Please file to the far left. Oh yes, say hullo to Robert Mugabe for me. He'd love to hear your ideas on reducing the population. He's been doing it for 20 years.

According to Cheryl, who seems to be having a very bad and excited day, I am an anti-pop. I am assuming that the phrase means someone who does not see the growth of human numbers as an unalloyed good. I prefer to think that I can count and, even more hyper advanced for some, I understand the exponential function.
The thrust for ever more people, i.e. for ever higher levels of net immigration, has for a long time been pushed by the peculiar combination of business, big or small, and a group of doubtless lovely people generally on the political Left who appear to just want to be nice to everybody (except ant-pops). I say 'appear' becayse I have yet to see an argument put forward by those nice people that made any sense socially, environmentally or economically. Perhaps Cheryl will give us a reasoned argument as to why huge net immigration into the country is a good thing - and if so for who. Of course I could be totally wrong. Cheryl may just be repeating the big business line. Please tell us your reasoning Cheryl.

Why does everybody talk about an "aging population" and not talk about a middle-class genocide. We are aging because we aren't able to have enough children to replace those dying.

Around the World, the middle classes are dying out.

Tragically many professional women can't get husbands and are destined to die childless. Good people who would love to be wonderful grandparents are seeing their families die out as their children either refuse, or fail, to have children.

Put simply, men realise the goal-posts have been moved and are refusing to become fathers in droves. Too many good fathers have had their kids stolen by the divorce lawyers that is is a common wisdom now to avoid 'commitment' at all costs. For example, Australia has the highest rate of vasectomies in the World.

Not only that by social engineering in the school system means that now for every male uni studnet, there are two females. Since women don't 'marry down' theis means there is a real 'man drought', brough on by educational discrimination against innocent boys.

Finally, middle class parents can't afford the children they want. We should give tax reductions (instead of means-tested payments) for kids.

The whole idea of increasing the population is redundant.
We are entering a period of zero growth, which short of an energy
miracle happening will be followed by contraction.

We are facing a very difficult time financially right now and there is
next to no funds available for infrastructure.
I am speaking world scale here, not necessarily how Australia will see it.
However as China contracts, don't laugh, it is a certainty, we will be
in the same boat as all the rest. It is just that there is a time delay.
Europe and the US are about to go through a ordeal of financial stress
that must have an effect on us and we should be preparing for it, not
bringing in more people abd trying to fund the necessary infrastructure.

Too many think it will be business as usual.
The sand has got into their ears so they cannot hear either.

Sure eyejaw, population is a good in itself. It refreshes the gene pool (something the socio bio/anti-pops know about); it provides new workers for industry, new skills, and widens the tax base. Population is the generator of universities and new research; it provides workers from offshore, who initially do the jobs that Australians don't want to do.

Population (lets call them people) are a generator of small businesses, they are creators of capital in themselves and generate income through sales; population provides cultural diversity within current cultures which is a social and may be an artisitic good; population provides us with trade contacts offshore to buy and sell goods and commodities. Dick Smith couldn't have done it without people immigrants buying his goods and working in his shop.

I could spend a day on this but lets cut to the chase. You don't believe in any of this because you hate capitalism. The anti-pops are like a socio-biological virus that has infected the enviromental movement and seeks to foist its instrumentalist dictates, not through any democratic means, but by whining how bad things are and how we're all doomed. Please consider the Zimbabwe option. Your farm is waiting for you.

Just back from a trip to Japan; Population 127 Million. Saw some beatuiful wilderness areas, some vibrant cities, wonderful cultural sites, beautiful friendly people & brilliant public transport to boot.

The Australian environmental ethos; "This country is full & the environment is at constant perril because we are here at all" seems ridiculous in the face of a nation like Japan(the Japanese even have the sense to utilise free range organic whale meat).

Just one question for those who think people are a massive problem for the Australian continent. Why do you (& your family) have a right to be here? Think about that.

All the ideas in Mark O'connors article are predicated on a value system that says human population and land uses are bad, while anything else is good. But where does this philosphy lead? Will we have to rid the whole planet of humans?

Sustainability doesn't mean "without people"... it's about BALANCING VALUES

@cheryl to be anti population growth is not inconsistent with capitalism.
A thriving community needs a particular critical mass to remain thriving.
If you are below that critical mass you struggle but if you go above that critical mass you do not keep improving, on the contrary your society/economy goes backwards.
The critical mass is not a fixed number, the actual number will depend on a range of variables. We live in what is effectively a desert - as long as we are able to produce domestically what people need to have what they believe to be a good lifestyle then our numbers are OK. The reality is that we are currently already net importers of a number of goods on which our society depends hence we are already vulnerable.
If you want capitalism to survive then curbing population growth is an essential first step.

Thanks Baygon for your comments. Go back and look over these comments and others on OLO over the last year or so. The one, ineluctable, irreducable fact hawked by the anti-populationists is their anti-capitalist, anti-growth rant. I've read Clive Hamilton too.

We've been importing goods we both want and need for 150 years. it's called trade. Right now we're exporting $43 Billion per year in food and importing $6 Billion mainly in wine and dairy from NZ and Sth America.

What I'm suggesting is exporting the anti-populationists to Zimbabwe. It's reasonable. Do you think Mugabe would take 30 or 40 bearded gnomes?

Dean K, The 127 million people of Japan are almost entirely dependent upon imported energy and materials to fuel their lifestyle. Fortunately their population is no longer expanding and they did have a fairly large population in their pre-industrial era so, as energy availability contracts, they may be able to go back to a more agrarian way of life (albeit with a very painful transition period) farming their well-watered, fertile volcanic soils.

Cheryl's rants are always fun to read but why anybody rises to the bait is puzzling. They are incoherent and make no sense at all. None of the advantages of population growth she cites actually have anything to do with growth, only population size. From what I have read elsewhere, the author of this article is quite pro-market and it is ridiculous to paint him as an anti-capitalist lefty.

Dean K,

The Japanese are quite concerned because they are only about 40% self-sufficient in food. So far, this hasn't been a problem for them because they have had the money to buy food on the world market. However, in 2008, due to bad growing conditions in some important places, very high oil prices, and land devoted to biofuels, among other factors, world food prices skyrocketed, and there were food riots in 34 countries. A number of food exporting countries banned exports to protect their domestic populations, who are, after all, the people who can vote politicians out of office, at best, or line them up against the wall, at worst. The 2008 conditions can easily recur, especially since we are adding about 80 million people a year to the global population. That is why food importing countries are buying up farmland in places like Australia.

You clearly believe that human population and land use are good, while everything else is bad, or at least irrelevant. Will we have to rid the earth of everything but humans?

Cheryl,

A sceptic demands more evidence. A denialist is impervious to evidence. You are a denialist on population, collapse, and limits to growth, despite repeated links to scientific evidence. Most of us, all probably, would accept that is possible to have too few people, but you refuse to accept that it is possible to have too many people. If a really big population is so wonderful, why are there so many malnourished children in India? Why are Indians trying to migrate to Australia rather than the other way around?

You persist in implying that only a few fringe dwellers are concerned about population growth. Take a look at this survey

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/chancellery/mediacentre/publications/Betts%5BFinal%5D.pdf

It is your views that are in the minority.

There is a boat for Bangladesh waiting for you.

Spot on Michael. Each of "Cheryl's posts features derogatory comments and abusive name-calling in place of argument. A clear case of Do Not Feed the Troll. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
Let's those of us that are genuinely interested in the article carry on, and ignore Cheryl.
Livio

I have a suggestion-read Connor and Lines' book "Overloading Australia". The authors convincingly expose the myths,the self-serving myth-makers and the attempts by vested interests to con the public into accepting high population growth rates.

Right on cue Cheryl gets more and more excited. I am distressed, mortified, to learn that I am a 'socio-biological virus' who 'hates capitalism'.
Please, Cheryl, will you explain to me how you are able to know that those two facts are true of me from my little comment earlier?

The example of Japan has been raised, I am unable to think of a more irrelevant example for Australia. The Japanese population is barely holding and, it may be asked, how many immigrants to they take per annum?

The brute fact is that Australia is NOT the lucky country. The vast majority of it is composed of very poor thin soil. The rainfall is generally low and wildly variable. The recent events here in Queensland should surely get the rainfall issue into the thickest of heads. The percentage of the country that has both good soil and reasonable and reliable rainfall is miniscule. Those are the basic facts that have to be faced, and no amount of wishful thinking is going to chage them.

Cheryl's beliefs may be a bit wacky but she has a very good reason to believe in high immigration and growth. I remember a post from her from sometime last year when she stated she was a business owner and did quite well by employing poor Indians on wages that Australians would not work for. She was doing very nicely by exploiting these people.

Cheryl, you can still can have people moving about between countries in order to "refresh the gene pool", growth is not a pre-condition for such movement.

You also need to note that there are both economies and diseconomies of scale
see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomy_of_scale
Basically beyond a certain size you actually incur more costs. Look at how infilling suburbs create extra costs by requiring upgrading of service infrastructure: water mains, sewerage lines, electricity, gas and telecommunication, storm water runoff. This is not mentioning extra cost needed to upgrade hospitals, schools, public transport, roads to cope with higher populations. Look at how expanding suburbs gobble up market gardens forcing farmers to live at a greater distance from the consumers, thereby incurring extra transport costs.
Bigness has its price

*There is a boat for Bangladesh waiting for you.*

Now there is a place for you, Cheryl. You could live cheek to
cheek, surrounded by human faeces. You'd love it!

Its hogwash to suggest that everone who understands the implications
of overpopulation, is against capitalism. That is just the bucket
created in your mind.

I'm hardly known as an anti capitalist poster on OLO. Yet I am
also fully aware of what can go wrong, when we think we are above
nature and not part of the bigger scheme of things.

Anyhow Cheryl, Bangaladesh sounds perfect for you, Divergence
makes a valid point

Hi Cheryl. Looks like you're having a tough time trying to bring some balance into this discussion.

The problem is that the anti-pops don't like change. The idea that they can't simply stand still and smell the roses, fills them with dread. Hence their eagerness to fill each others' heads with doom and gloom.

Japan is facing an awkward few decades, as its population ages, and the burden of sustaining any vestige of past lifestyles becomes intolerable.

"For about 50 years after the second world war the combination of Japan’s fast-growing labour force and the rising productivity of its famously industrious workers created a growth miracle. Within two generations the number of people of working age increased by 37m and Japan went from ruins to the world’s second-largest economy. In the next 40 years that process will go into reverse. The working-age population will shrink so quickly that by 2050 it will be smaller than it was in 1950, and four out of ten Japanese will be over 65."

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/japans_population

The rest of the article is behind a pay-wall, sadly, because it does shed some light on the damage to the social fabric that such demographic disasters carry with them. Something your average anti-pop hates to think about, because it gives the lie to the "happy-ever-after" scenarios that they fondly believe in.

Regrettably, the debate here has been overwhelmed by the dog-in-a-manger brigade. They don't actually give a stuff about Australia's future prosperity, so long as they themselves don't suffer in their own lifetimes.

Which is ironic, given that their mantra is "curb population now, or our children's future will be rooned".

By insisting that the debate is framed in such a negative fashion, they are able to stifle any proposal that involves any form of growth. Their argument is always that we have reached, or surpassed, the level at which our population might most profitably be stabilized. Curiously, they are never able to explain how they reached this conclusion.

Nor how any "stabilization" process might work in real life.

It's all just self-righteous rhetoric.

Dean K wrote:
"Just one question for those who think people are a massive problem for the Australian continent. Why do you (& your family) have a right to be here? Think about that."

In all the arguments put forward by those who want to see a truly sustainable population policy, no one is talking about expulsions. We are talking about setting future parameters of immigration and getting rid of policies that pay people to have more children. We who are citizens of and live in Australia are here and for the most part will live here for the rest of our lives. We have to deal with the reality of the current population and put in place policies to maximize current and future sustainability.

Dean K wrote:
"All the ideas in Mark O'connors article are predicated on a value system that says human population and land uses are bad, while anything else is good. But where does this philosphy lead? Will we have to rid the whole planet of humans?"

Current land use practices are unsustainable, using fossil fuel to substitute for poor and thin top soils is not sustainable. Consuming fossil fuels to produce artificial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, with generous amounts of diesel for on-farm machinery and for transport and processing is unsustainable. Setting up agricultural settlements that require levels of irrigation that cannot be supported in drought years is unsustainable.
As the saying goes, "nature bats last", no matter what you and I think, the sustainable population of Australia post-peak oil (i.e. post fossil fuel frenzy era) and with climate change will be determined by how we live, not what we wish for. Increasing our population at 2% per annum is not part of the solution but a big contributor to our current and future problems

"Current land use practices are unsustainable."

How do you know?

If we aren't allowed to use a resource because it's non-renewable and therefore unsustainable, then obviously any future population would be in the same position. Therefore to say we can't use non-renewable resources is in effect to say that no-one may use them, ever. I suggest you start by applying that standard to yourself first.

People use things in their order of preference. There is no reason why people shouldn't use up unrenewable resources in preference to much more expensive resources. *When* other resources are equally economical, that is the time to start using them.

The reason we have problems with infrastructure is not because we have too many people. We would laugh at the economic illiteracy of someone who said we won't have enough iPhones or socks or pizzas or buildings because there are "too many people". The reason there is a shortfall of hospitals, land for housing, and roads is because the supply of them is the responsibility of government, and they have no way of equilibrating supply and demand other than by watching the growing queues, or watching the media for critical reports.

The economic illiteracy of the Malthusians thus makes a perfect match with the economic incoherence of government, but don't expect China to sit by and watch this foolery while millions go hungry for want of resources that Australia's xenophobic socialism is unable to rationalise to people's most urgent needs.

This discussion is largely irrelevant.
The word anti-pops is new to me and I think it is being used like
denier in the now redundant agw debate.

Well I am an ant-pop but I am certainly not anti capitalism.
However I am wide awake enough to realise that capitalism as it now
stands will have to change dramatically. Why ?
Well the current model depends on credit and interest payments.
When you do not have growth there is no new extra profit to pay the interest.
This will force a major modification of the capitalist structure to
enable whatever industry continues to be restructured to suit loss of
long used inputs and different product demand.

For instance a food processing company may need to make paper bags
instead of heat seal plastic packages.

The changes that will take place will affect banking and finance in
general. For instance, how do you lend money when the business will
not have increased business with which to pay the interest ?

These are the problems that we should discuss.
To get back to the subject all the above problems get worse with larger populations.

Not necessarily, Bazz.

>>To get back to the subject all the above problems get worse with larger populations.<<

Japan built one of the world's most powerful economic engines during a period of population growth. Proving that there is no direct causal relationship between larger populations and "worse problems".

What we are seeing is a deliberate blindness, on the part of the folk here who believe we can just say "stop", and everything will suddenly be all right.

(I actually think that Cheryl's neologism "anti-pop" is quite a good shorthand for this attitude, but am willing to accept that there may be a better descriptor).

Here's a fact about Japan's ageing population. "Ten years ago each person in retirement was supported by four in work. In ten years that burden will fall on only two workers." Economist: Special Report on Japan, 18th November 2010.

But some folk are actually doing something about it.

"Tomohiko Murakami, a pioneering Hokkaido doctor... closed down two-thirds of the hospitals, cut the number of ambulances in half and told his elderly patients they should walk to hospital because it was good for them. They grumbled, but it caused no obvious deterioration in their health... 'They had to use their own initiative rather than relying on the government to look after them.'"

Thing is, it is far easier to cower in a corner and say "stop the tide coming in", than it is to bend one's mind to solving the problem in a positive and constructive manner. And while we can blame "government" for not catering for our every whim, nothing will change.

One more thing.

History has been full of naysayers.

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon". Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

Personally, I'm a great fan of human ingenuity. I fully expect that we will continue exploit that ingenuity, and future generations will chuckle patronizingly at the current crop of doom-merchants, in the same way that we today smile knowledgeably at Sir John's timidity.

Spot on, Pericles, as usual. Even many of those anti-pops would concede that they have some measure of ingenuity, intelligence, initiative and innovativeness. So it can be with most of their fellow-humans.

It would help if the debate occurred in a factual environment. Population growth has four components: births, deaths, inward migration and outward migration. The net difference between the first wo and second two constitute the elements of growth or decline. First births. This is generally not susceptible to being changed by government policy in a democracy (I studied and wrote on this area for 20 years). Australia's present total fertility rate (TFR) is about 1.9, i.e. just below the level necessary for long term replacement of those dying. With the present age structure even sub-replacement fertility means that the natural increase (births over deaths) will continue for at least 20 years. Even without net migration growth the population will continue to grow, albeit at a slowing rate, for a considerable time.
Secondly, deaths. No-one seriously argues that the death rate should be increased and all government policy is directed to reducing deaths, i.e. increasing life expectancy. Although the population is aging it will still be at least 20 years before births and deaths are in balance.
Thirdly migration. A government to most intents has little or no control over emigration which will fluctuate according to a range of condiitons.
That leaves immigration. Again a small part of that is susceptible to government control. People entering Australia for the long term (i.e more than 12 months) include returning Australians, people entitled as of right to come (eg New Zealanders), people coming under family reunification programs, humanitarian reasons etc.
So of the 4 main components of population change governments can influence only one to a significant degree, but much less than popularly believed.
In this set of facts the Australian population will grow by about 1% minimum for the next 10 years and slowly taper down after that. This equates to a minimum growth level of about 17% over 10 years with zero net migration. It is within this minimum framework that the issues should be discussed.

Ah Pericles, but now its you who is preaching gloom and doom,
about Japan!

Japan indeed had huge growth, created huge wealth, all on the back
of cheap oil and plentiful fish to feed its people, as they
plundered the world's oceans.

But we do have global game changers coming along. The worlds
fish stocks can't handle all that plundering anymore, energy costs
are heading upward, as the oil genie runs out of puff.

Japan has already found solutions to some of its problems. Toyota,
Honda, Isuzu etc, all manufacture around the world, no need to
do it all in Japan. The Japanese have huge investments in
China and elsewhere. Profits are still returned to Tokyo.

The retirement age could be increased to 70. Guest workers could
be imported, much as the Swiss used to do in the 70s. Japans income
from its accumulated wealth is not unsubstantial. By 2050, robots
will be doing most of the assembly anyhow. I gather that in America
alone, there are over 1 million of them these days.

So its not all gloom and doom, as you might think. So lets say
that Japans population eventually drops to say 50 million. Why
would that be such a bad thing? No need to plunder the world's oceans
anymore. No need to import hay to feed their cows, they could actually
eat Japanese grass. All this makes lots of sense in an expensive
energy world.

People could once again live in houses, rather then be cramped in
endless apartment blocks, like animals at the zoo.

Your option of ever more people, to solve the problem of more
people, we'll rely on luck to innovate our way out of this mess,
might work, but it might not. If it doesen't, it will be one hell
of a mess

James O'Neil said:
"That leaves immigration. Again a small part of that is susceptible to government control."

Do migrants fall on Australia like unavoidable rain storms?
No, the government sets targets each year.
It can if it wanted to put hard numbers on all the various alphabet soup of Visa categories in the same way as it has defined targets for refugees, family reunion and skilled migration.
Also the government could if it wanted to put caps on NZ migration numbers. Instead we have the likes of James O'Neil throwing his hands in the air proclaiming our population destiny is controlled by some being in the skies.

I always thought I lived in a democracy where a government that is elected expresses the will of the people. Clearly polls show that we are not in favour of a big Australia (40M+ by 2050). Cutting net overseas migration (including all various Visa categories) to 76,000 per annum would stabilize our population at 26 Million. Gee, it can't be that difficult?
But I suppose if we had a government do that James O'Neil would declare that the sky had fallen.

Have a read of federal ALP MP Kelvin Thomson's 14 point population plan:
http://www.kelvinthomson.com.au/Editor/assets/pop_debate/091111%20population%20reform%20paper.pdf

Pericles, 16 years ago my kids often attended a show jumping club at a pony club grounds, in an outer southern suburb of Brisbane.

The district had many areas of acreage living, & most kids rode their horses to the club. Even parents who did not have acreage could find cheep agistment where a kids pony could be kept. Over the years I had noticed less kids, & more horse floats, as it became dangerous to ride the roads, & horse paddock numbers became few.

Now it's just another suburb, & I noticed the other day, the club had died.

When I was a kid in Sydney, virtually everyone lived within 45 minutes drive of a beach. There was parking free when you got there, & room in the surf. Hell, I could even drive into the city on a Saturday night, park in the street, & take in movie with my girl. What heaven.

Today,for most Sydneysiders it's damn near an overnight trip to go to the beach, or the city. If that's progress you can keep it.

Only an absolute idiot would say that people today have a lifestyle anywhere near as good as I had back then. I would take a smaller house, TV, car & a lot less income any day, if I could have that life style back.

Why on earth would we want to increase our population, when every extra head reduces our well being. Why on earth would we reduce our standard of living, as distinct from income, just to favor some foreigner who wants to use us only for their own ends.

By the way, I am very much a capitalist, but there is more to capital than just money

Pericles said;
Japan built one of the world's most powerful economic engines during a
period of population growth. Proving that there is no direct causal
relationship between larger populations and "worse problems".

Japan had an unlimited supply of cheap oil and coal.
With that you can do anything.
We live in a different world now and it bears no relationship to what
is being faced now. It is why the Japanese economy is in the doldrums
these days. They have significant unemployment these days.
China is a much cheaper manufacturer of everything on which
Japan built its fortune.

Never mind you are certainly not alone in your beliefs, witness the
mindset of our politicians and they are only reflecting the general
populations dreaming.

Since 1983 we have burnt more oil per year than we have found each year.
The world now burns about 5 times the amount we find each year.
We import half of what we use and people think we can just keep
increasing the population !

Anyone who thinks growth can continue indefinately is either a
madman or an economist.

I vociferously attack the anti-pops whenever I can find the time because their 'arguments' are sourced from within a coiterie of hard line environmentalists, YouTube posts and fellow tribes on the loony left living in Byron Bay and Melany.

I came out hard in this session and timed how long it would take before the usual suspects at the Unsustainable UnPeople Lobby took to email each other – about two hours.

Their posts invariably take the same form: closed system analysis, we’re coming to the end of the world, the life boat scenario, anti-immigration, pining for a lost arcadia, an almost total ignorance of modern economics and trade principles and when all is lost, they go for the man or woman.

I’m not alone in thinking that there are some cult-like features in this psychology. The accent on genetics and socio-biology and their contempt of a woman’s reproductive rights is not necessarily a male response but certainly a response which hasn’t had much female intellectual input.

They suffer from the kind of closed group thinking that made headlines in Jonestown in Sth Africa and the Heaven’s Gate cult.

That's exactly what I mean, Bazz.

>>Anyone who thinks growth can continue indefinately [sic] is either a madman or an economist.<<

I am not suggesting for one moment that the only path to take is to grow until we burst. By suggesting that the only alternative available to drastic population control is exponential growth, you are deliberately missing the point.

There are many opportunities to develop and grow Australia into a better and more prosperous country. What is missing is the political will to do so. And the political will is absent because so many of the citizenry share your view that we should look backwards to the fifties, and pretend that life was really-truly-rooly great back then.

Hasbeen leads the way.

>>When I was a kid in Sydney, virtually everyone lived within 45 minutes drive of a beach. There was parking free when you got there, & room in the surf. Hell, I could even drive into the city on a Saturday night, park in the street, & take in movie with my girl. What heaven.<<

Reality check: not everyone hankers after an insular, low-aspirational suburban lifestyle. The fact that so many folk back then worked their butts off to make sure their kids were well educated, and create the prosperity that we now enjoy, is testimony to that.

What saddens me about the "back-to-the-backyard-Hills-hoist" attitude is its effect on future generations. While Hasbeen might "take a smaller house, TV, car & a lot less income any day, if I could have that life style back", imposing that decision on the rest of us impacts all future Australians.

That's a pretty selfish approach. And one that is highly visible to the youth of the country, who see Hasbeen's generation as being primarily responsible for the comparatively narrower life choices that they have today.

Telling them that they should be happy with less simply adds insult to injury.

Funny. When the subject is immigration the population cargo cult criticise the Japanese as weird and insular for their opposition, and desperately in need of some foreign genes to refurbish the decaying gene pool. But with population growth they hold up the Japanese as an example. But what about India and the Philippines? Clearly Japan's prosperity is not founded on a "have lots of kids" basis. I wonder if education and diligence might have played a role?

In 1994 the Federal Government conducted the “Jones Inquiry” into the population issue. The expertise of CSIRO ecologist Doug Cocks was drawn upon to assist. He withdrew from that to write his seminal book “PEOPLE POLICY”, published 1996. The issues debated in this book are still relevant.

Cocks’ introduction states:
“This book has been written for a number of reasons. The first is to convince as many Australians as possible that we have enough and possibly too many people living in this country. The second is to make more people aware that Australia’s population growth can be stopped within a generation or so by the relatively simple expedient of reducing net migration into this country to a few tens of thousands per annum. A third is to demonstrate that the population question is important, irrespective of one’s views on Australia’s rate of population change and ultimate population size. That is, the consequences of getting it wrong could be quite unpleasant. A fourth is that writing a book that takes population-immigration questions seriously constitutes a protest against all the gobbledegook, newspeak and throwaway lines that politicians and other ‘leaders’ offer as for their positions and actions concerning population-immigration matters. I want to do what I can to force population-immigration issues onto the political agenda and unhorse the politicians and others who want to keep them off.”

Mark Oconnor’s article demonstrates that the gobbledegook, newspeak and throwaway lines (and worse) are still alive and well in the political arena and its bureaucracy; and in the most poisonous responses to the article.

Olduvai: you clearly did not read what I wrote. Persons counted as "immigrants" for the purposes of the statistics include a wide variety of classifications. I was making the point that of the total inflow the government is only able to control a relatively small proportion. The government's "target" of 170,000 or any figure it nominates is the net figure, i.e. the difference between what goes out and what comes in. That figure is never achieved for the reasons I set out in the space constraints permitted.
The other central point I was making that you wilfully ignore in favor of fatuous allegations of "hand waving" on my part is that net migration is one of only several factors in the population growth/decline equation. Even with zero net migration our current age structure and birth rate means that the population will continue to grow significantly for at least one and more likely two decades. That is the policy reality that has to be dealt with, not the more esoteric concepts found in mmuch of the above correspondence.

Pericles, would you please justify your desire to take the simple life, & our hills hoist off all those who want it.

What right do you have to impose overcrowded high rise living on so many?

What is so good about your Mcmansion, & two metre plasmas, that we should all aspire to them.

I think a great many would join me in a lifestyle where they could afford to live only 20 minutes or less from work. One that allowed people a comfortable life, with home ownership easily achieved on just one wage.

If you think life is better today, you "ain't looked too close".

Some time back I read of an experiment with laboratory rats. They kept adding more rats, progressively, to a large cage. These rats were well fed, & to start with had a great life.

After a certain density was reached, discord started. As overcrowding developed, rats started killing each other. There was a stocking rate above which their society broke down.

You only have to take a look at the behaviour of too many young people, on a night out, in any of our larger cities, to see that we have all ready exceeded the safe stocking rate in these cities.

@James O'Neill. Your point is well made. Given that government has so little control over population growth it makes it even more important that it exercises what little control it has responsibly.
Part of the problem has been highlighted by Colinsett - migration has essentially become a sacred cow with very little critical analysis allowed of the claims regarding the benefits of immigration.
If we manage to limit net immigration to humanitarian and family reunion programmes we will still have some population growth but that growth will be due to advances in medical technology that has managed to reduce the death rate.
People like myself who are opposed to population growth are largely concerned at government policies that stimulate growth. Government policies should be focussed on ensuring that natural population growth does not result in a reduction in the quality of life for all of our population.

Pericles,

You are assuming that limits to growth, while they exist, are so far in the future that we don't have to worry about them, but globally, we are experiencing shortages or losses of arable land, fresh water, biodiversity, fish stocks, fossil fuels and minerals that are vital for our agriculture and technology, and capacity of the environment to safely absorb wastes. We have many of these problems in Australia as well, and concerns about them are coming from mainstream scientists. See for example

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

There have been numerous societal collapses in the historical and archaeological record. See Jared Diamond's "Collapse", "Constant Battles" by Harvard archaeologist Prof. Steven LeBlanc, and "Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations" by soil scientist Prof. David Montgomery. Overpopulation relative to resources and technology, and mismanagement of the environment were major causes. The people in those collapsing societies were just as intelligent and ingenious as we are, but it didn't save them.

Your world view resembles a picture of Mickey Mouse. The face is the economy, and the environment and society are the less important ears. Nice if you can afford them. In fact, they are concentric circles. If you trash your environment, you trash your society and your economy. The government of the old Soviet Union was terribly wrongheaded about economic management and made people unnecessarily poor. Nevertheless, the average citizen had a job, a roof over his head, enough to eat, a school for his children, etc. In a limits to growth collapse, people starve, die in the epidemics that sweep through malnourished people living in crowded, filthy conditions, and get murdered in fighting over resources. It is far better to be pig ignorant about economics than pig ignorant about the biophysical conditions that determine our prosperity and indeed our survival.

The growthists are a threat to our environment, security, social cohesion, personal freedom, and general quality of life, which is getting worse, according to a government leak, not just Hasbeen:

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/8536559/city-life-in-decline/

The (temporary) problems of a large elderly generation as we stabilise are trivial by comparison.

You misunderstand me, Hasbeen.

>>Pericles, would you please justify your desire to take the simple life, & our hills hoist off all those who want it.<<

If that is the life you wish to lead, I do not begrudge you a moment of it. By all means, go ahead and lead it. There are any number of towns in Australia where you can feel entirely comfortable, doing just that.

Unfortunately for you - but happily for me - Sydney is no longer on that list. And won't be, ever again.

>>What right do you have to impose overcrowded high rise living on so many? What is so good about your Mcmansion, & two metre plasmas, that we should all aspire to them.<<

This simply shows that you haven't understood a word I have written. I am not suggesting that these should be everybody's aspirations. Although I do believe in allowing them to be a choice.

If your desire to re-vegetate in this manner only affected you, there would not be a problem. Fact is though, your generation is now a net "taker", while the present and coming generations will be required to be net "givers", for the rest of your life.

The macro-economic view of your position is that you have been able to save enough to be in a position to make a choice. Your property is likely to be worth considerably more than when you first bought it, representing value that has been soaked out of other parts of the economy. Similarly, at a national level, we would not have the financial ability to release that captured value, in the stagnating economic environment that you propose.

Since WWII, the working segment of our population, i.e. that aged between twenty and sixty, has expanded, and their surplus has been ploughed back into economic expansion. If you now choose to take your "age dividend" out of the economy, and rely on the next generation to support you, the least you can do is to leave them with as much of an opportunity to achieve as you had.

Too many people

For this ancient country

Does no-one much good

Yabby:>> Japan has already found solutions to some of its problems. Toyota, Honda, Isuzu etc, all manufacture around the world, no need to
do it all in Japan. The Japanese have huge investments in
China and elsewhere. Profits are still returned to Tokyo.<<

Your usual rhetoric Yabby?

Japans unemployment rate has gone up by almost 300% in twenty years, and 2009 and 2010 were the highest in twenty years. That really sounds like they have "already found solutions to some of its problems" as you said.

Yabby if you take manufacturing from an economy it wilts and so do the citizens, and no matter the amount of cheap imported goods available to a diminishing work force the prosperity of that society ebbs. It seems that “profits back to Tokyo” are not as satiating as full employment.

Shintaro:>> Too many people

For this ancient country

Does no-one much good<<

When the Chinese own Australia Shintaro you will see what vision can bring to a dry land.

They will build infrastructure and impliment a long term water management project that will capture enough water up North to irrigate the rest.

Bazz I suspect you have hit the nail on the head. Anti-pops is similar to the use of 'denier' to inflict a negative image on a very serious subject. Perhaps Cheryl should move to Zimbabwe if she wants to live in an overpopulated, unsustainble environment that has little care for its citizens.

It is a free world and we are all free to disagree on how much a piece of ground can sustain in terms of feeding, housing and transporting populations. There has to be a give point - it is a mathematical certaintly - the issue is where is the breaking point.

The unfettered-growthists may continue to throw around accusations like "unwillingness to change" etc etc but the fact is whether one thinks the environment can always bounce back, it cannot. Personal attacks just because someone disagrees with your growthist view of the world means your arguments cannot stand the test of scrutiny.

It is all very well to argue that infrastructure will solve problems and to some extent it will, but the fact is governments don't do it well and it costs money.

Cheryl I did not make up one-in-one-out policies they have been discussed over the course of time. If 400 people emigrate out of Australia then 400 emigrate in - it is not rocket science and anyone who can count should be able to handle it bureacracy wise. Of course it doesn't have to be a set in concrete approach and can be fexible according to skills needs, birth rates and humanitarian obligations.

It is all very well to be anti-environmentalist but not if that favoured position in itself becomes more important than reality and means you are blinkered to forever ignore any valid environmental argument.

Arguing the extreme cases or hysterical scenarios in the debate is a lost argument and means there is not much to support an ever growing unsustainable population.

The fact is those who argue that continual growth is a positive forget about the long term effects of squashing millions of people into small spaces - the social consequenes, the pressure on services and resources, reduced standards of living (to an unacceptable level). We should not aspire to mirror the mistakes of other nations. We don't always have to follow the lemmings over the cliff.

The idea that populations should be encouraged to grow by social engineering when our populations are already high for arable land area is anti-people in the truest sense.

Isn't it fun to accuse other people of the most extreme positions ? So, in this 'discussion', we have the unfettered-growthists on the one side and the back-to-the-cavists on the other, with everybody either on one side or, by implication, the other ?

Then we could add conspiracy: everybody on one side is not just a fascist but is secretly in the pay of Wall Street, the Vatican, the climate-change-deniers (who in turn are of course in the pay of someone), the Swedes, or all of the above - or of some socialist-Trotskyist-Fabianist clique.

I look forward to the day when issues can be examined without any need to fall back on insults and slurs, or taking positions to extremes that their proponents never intended.

Let's face it, most of us are somewhere in between the two extremes, and it merely irritates to be accused of false positions. Of course, there is a limit, but of course also, we know that populations are not increasing in Japan or in most of Europe. We know that birth rates decline with women's education level.

But surely we are also aware of the possibly grave demographic consequences of rapid population reduction: we will see the catastrophic effects of this in China over the next twenty years. We will probably learn too late that a population reduction policy has to be somehow engineered very slowly, if it is at all possible, a fraction of a per cent per year, one or two per cent each decade, if we are not to burden the working generations with the cost of caring for the retired generations.

As medical services improve, as populations become more affluent, regardless of birth rates, a population can keep growing, simply because more people grow older before they die. With more affluence, they will demand more sophisticated services, putting a double burden onto the shoulders of the next generations, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Hasten slowly.

Joe Lane

You're brave Loudmouth as the anti-pops are now in high sugar/feral mode. Your true comment about falling birth rates and declining pops in Japan (and western Europe) and increasing education levels will just add fuel to the fire.

Actually, just between you and me, there is no contra argument that can defeat the closed systems argument. Resources are finite and one day we'll run out of them, but not all at the same time! Ha. We will run out of fish stocks though if we don't do something in the next 5 years but I digress.

The anti-pops presuppose a static world where we do nothing, where creativity, creative capital investment in new energy sources, the creation of new synthetics, play no part. It's incredibly passive. The scientific and technological world doesn't work like that and history has shown that.

But if you now important The Great Chain of Being theory (popular in the 19th Century), as the anti-pops do - we are also worthless rabbits who have destroyed the earth through consumption. They want to shame us in to admitting that we're bad, but the carrot is, if we're good, and cut down the population (which country? who goes first? Bullet or sterilisation?), we can live a bit longer. But not much longer, because remember, the world is finite - and we're all doomed to death. It's a teleological argument that starts with death and works backwards.

Who said anything about humans being worthless rabbits. You are the first to use that term.

Sustainable population is an issue that needs discussing with all views taken into consideration. However, to pretend that anyone who is for sustainability is advocating anti-human policies like one-child programs, forced abortions etc is grossly misleading.

I wonder what your agenda is Cheryl - other than a knee jerk reaction to environmental concerns. The health and wellbeing of humans is very much tied up with the health of environments. It is a no-brainer.

Even with the best of technological innovation there is a point where large populations begin to work against themselves.

However you are in the populist camp as far as our governments are concerned - so you have nothing to worry about. Will any government be brave enough to put population level to a referendum? I suspect not given the pressures from the business lobbies.

Loudmouth I agree, population reduction can go too far and should never be done under a dictatorial or forced arrangements.

Fact is the anti-people growthists will win the debate hands down, the power of individuals is outweighed by that of the big end of town - it is a no contest. In that case it will be disasters that dictate the level of populations whether it be famine due to economic disparities or natural disasters but it is a shame we have to let it get to the survival of the (economic) fittest and not work to the betterment of human beings from the non-bandaid end.

Someone knocked Hasbeen for his comments regarding the 1950s.
Well I was not married during that decade but later but I can tell you
he is pretty close to dead right !

My wife and I raised three sons and my wife did not have the problem
of juggling work and family that can be seen hassling the modern wife.
No wondering what to do if the child minding fees go up, no trying
to get someone else to pick up the kids if work threw up sudden
emergency, etc etc. I don't have to tell you all about it.
Just watch your daughters in law.

Why was it so ?
Simple, we were not stupid enough to borrow on two incomes !
The current families would not borrow on two incomes if they could
avoid it either.
So why do they ?
Well, it goes back to the 1970s when the feminist movement pushed
the government into forcing the lending authorities into lending
on both incomes.
Oh dear, what do you think happened then ?
All you people who are always saying that the market will fix
everything will know won't you.
Surprise, surprise, the price of houses rose to meet the amount of
money available.
So the feminists shot themselves and their sisters in the foot so
now they don't have the option of working, now they HAVE to work.

The wives not having to work was the single most great thing for
families in the 1950s to 1980s.
Compared to the rat race that I now see it was pretty good.
We were able to raise and school three children and pay the house off
on 17 pounds ($34)a week. We bought our furniture with cash and cars
with cash. Not all at once but gradually.
We had yearly holiday trips interstate with three kids.
I had all the radio gear for my hobby that I wanted, we had two TVs
washing machines, dishwasher etc etc just like people do now.

No Hasbeen is right, life was good then and we bought what we wanted.

I ran out of space.
One of the things I was going to say was the population then was about
12 or 15 million if my memory serves and I can't say the near double
population has improved things much. Many things are worse especially
the affordability of housing, and thats about as fundermental as it gets.

Bazz in 1960 household savings as a percentage of GDP was 18%, today it is 2%. In 1980 the average take home pay was $250 and the average suburban house was $36,000. Now the take home is $700 and the same house $360,000. Three hundred percent rise in wages and a thousand percent rise in the price of the house. Our kids might be spend crazy, it is what consumerism is based on, but they are woefully disadvantaged in comparison to we who went before when it comes to "the great Aussie dream".

Pericles,

How do you explain the top 10 countries of the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Index? Down from Switzerland (the leader) with their population growth rates (from CIA World Factbook), they are: Switzerland (0.22%), Sweden (0.16%), Singapore (0.86%), United States (0.97%), Germany (-0.06%), Japan (-0.24%), Finland (0.08%), Netherlands (0.39%), Denmark (0.27%), and Canada (0.80%). (Australia is 1.7% (ABS)). There another four low growth European countries in the top 20: Norway (0.33%), France (0.53%), Austria (0.04%), and Belgium (0.08%). All these countries also rank as Very High Human Development Countries on the UN Human Development Index. How is it possible for a country to have a stable population and still be competitive and give its people decent lives?

The US, on the other hand, has followed your advice and had lots of immigration and other "pro-capitalist" policies, so they should be in great shape. In fact, there has been economic growth, but the bottom 90% of the population have had fairly stagnant real incomes since 1974. See

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/articles/view/6

Note from the first bar chart that family incomes rose much faster from 1947 to 1979 and the gains were more equally distributed than they were later on. The US had essentially zero net immigration until 1965, and it took time for numbers to build up after that. This was also before the era of off-shoring and other such policies.

This graph on child poverty rates in the different OECD countries is also instructive

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/view/116

and this one on the share of income going to the top 0.1% of the population

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/view/120

Loudmouth,

No one thinks that the extremely low fertility rates to be found in Italy, Japan, or South Korea are good or will not lead to problems. In China, they were faced with collapse because of very low arable land per person unless they did something drastic. Demographic momentum can keep a country growing for up to 70 years after the fertility rate falls down to or below replacement level. That is why Australia still has some natural increase, even though the fertility rate has been below replacement level since 1976.

*Yabby if you take manufacturing from an economy it wilts and so do the citizens*

Sonofgloin, Japan has hardly taken manufacture out of its economy.
But indeed, robots are doing more and more of the assembly, far
less workers required. I've actually heard of production lines
totally automated, just some overseers in the control room.

That is of course great news for the Japanese, as there will be no
shortage of labour, as those pesky gloom and doom merchants are
predicting and plenty of labour to take care of the elderly.

It opens up another potential growth area for the Japanese. Skilled
medical care, surgery etc. No need for everyone to flock to America,
they need some serious competition. Every American surgeon that I've
met, reckons he should earn at least a million a year and plenty
of Arabs and other rich people from third world countries, flock
there for treatment, despite the rip off charges.

Yabby:>> That is of course great news for the Japanese, as there will be no shortage of labour, as those pesky gloom and doom merchants are
predicting and plenty of labour to take care of the elderly<<

Yabby, Japan was not built on service industries; it was built on producing products for export.

Re the medical service industry, unless you’re from a second world nation, if you have the money to travel os to obtain quality medical expertise then you could afford the best in your country of origin. I don't think medical procedures will ever come up as a percentage of GDP, and to suggest it is typical of the flagrant and diabolical machinations of your mischievous mindset, no offence.

Someone should point out that Europe is far more over-populated than, say, Africa, or South America: it probably would not matter if there were only half as many Europeans - that would give their environments some respite, after about a century of population decline.

But Africa alone is many times bigger than Europe, or Australia, as is South America. The proportion of Africa which is uninhabitable, or totally unproductive, is probably about the same as Europe's, but it is around four times bigger. So it follows that the population of Africa should be around four times Europe's. Similarly, South America.

Asia is, at a rough guess, eight times as big as Europe. So, between them, Africa, South America and Asia should have around sixteen times the population of Europe.

But we are mostly agreed that there are already too many people in the world, in total. So clearly, the task is to somehow reduce the population of Europe (not by migration policies, but by policies promoting actual decreases in population) and RELATIVELY increase the populations in Africa, South America and parts of Asia.

One way to slow down the population growth of Asia, Africa and South America is to ensure that women gain very high levels of education, by the way.

Of course, all this could take centuries, but the optimal outcome is surely:

* a massive reduction in the population of Europeans, in Europe itself as well as in Australia (we already have too many people) and in the US;

* a steady increase in the populations in sparsely-occupied parts of Africa, South America and Asia;

* co-ordination of these two arms of policy such that overall population declines in a socially-supportive way.

If we took steps immediately, in perhaps a century, there could be ten times as many non-Europeans in the world as Europeans, which would be in line with geography. Of course, with population mobility, populations may be far too mixed to be able to make any firm rules about any of this, and getting more mixed with every generation.

Joe Lane

*Yabby, Japan was not built on service industries; it was built on producing products for export*

Yup Sonofgloin, they worked hard in those factories, lots of sweat
and blood for the nation there. The Govt wasted huge amounts,
building bridges to nowhere etc. A big chunk landed up in US
treasuries, earning nothing, but keeping the yen low and assisting
Americans to live it up. Inflation will eat most of it away over
time, Japanese savers and workers are the losers. Perhaps its time
that they spent some of it on themselves, rather then watch it vanish
before their eyes.

The new Japanese economy can change and adapt. No need for more
bridges to nowhere. Japanese service industries have huge potential.

*if you have the money to travel os to obtain quality medical expertise then you could afford the best in your country of origin*

Not so Sonofgloin, air travel is cheap as chips these days, unlike
medical procedures. I seem to recall even posters on OLO mentioning
going to Thailand for dentistry work. Others fly to India for a
kidney or various places for a boob job.

It was in fact Pericle's favourite article in the Economist, which
just happened to be lying on my coffee table, which suggested
medical care as a growth industry for Japan. So it was not my
idea and I am in good company on this one, unlike yourself :)

*So it follows that the population of Africa should be around four times Europe's. Similarly, South America.*

Sheesh Loudmouth, there was silly old me, thinking that those
vast rainforests in Africa, South America and Asia, were considered
the lungs of the world, sucking up CO2 and releasing oxygen.

Given that the likes of Cheryl think that we are above nature, clearly
we don't need to worry about things like rainforests or breathing,
humans will solve that one too! More people will fix it, according
to Cheryl. Breathing, pah, its so passe you know..

Fair question, Divergence.

>>Pericles, How do you explain the top 10 countries of the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Index?...How is it possible for a country to have a stable population and still be competitive and give its people decent lives?<<

Best suggestion I can come up with at this stage is simply that there is a lead/lag component in operation here.

Leaving aside Switzerland for a moment, a country that has operated independently of the economic, ethical or moral standards observed by the majority on your list, most are entering the zone where the impact of an ageing population is only just starting to be felt. So even though we can forecast the pain, as the post-war "bulge" hits 65, it has yet to trickle down.

But I notice that you are in some danger of contradicting yourself, by simultaneously including the US in your list, then choosing to denigrate its inclusion with a bit of income-discrepancy irrelevance.

Also, while it is clear that it is presently possible to "have a stable population and still be competitive", any model of the future needs to include the additional burden the aging population will create.

So your graphs are merely historic, and in no way indicative of the future - because we know that these people are alive now, will stay alive longer, and need to be fed and watered for a long time to come.

As I have said before, these are decisions that need to be made with an eye to future generations, and not just, selfishly, for ourselves.

Compulsory reading for all High School and University students on how Government policy is corrupted by "big" business and land speculators.

Seventy to eighty percent of Australians want stabilisation.

Why isn't Government policy reflecting this ?

It is a shame our bushland and ancient forests can't vote.

I fear the demolition of the anti-pops is helped by comments from their supporters. They wouldn't be alone in that. The Greens have been spoke screening division in their ranks for the last three years and it wasn't so long ago in the ALP that the rank and file were called the 'crank and vile'.

Lets turn to the political implications of anti-pop rhetoric or more kindly, 'policy'.

Lets say you want to run as Mayor for a Council in Adelaide. You're a gung-ho anti-populationist and you want to spread the word. Get people to vote for you. So you call a public meeting and families, young home buyers in the outer suburbs - all sort of people come out. This is good. Right? Gee there are reporters there too. That's good right?

Now what they want to hear is how you're going to cut the population. Here goes:

We'll stop building cheap houses in the outer suburbs.
We'll limit family size to two kids - how are you going to do that? Better skip that. Sounds nasty. Sounds like central control = Logan's Run and ZPG.
We'll stop immigration - you've won some hearts but you've lost the left and the ethnic vote. Probably a number of small business owners too.
We'll cut paid maternity leave - well, that took women 30 years to get that. They'll walk out, dragging their husband and kids with them.
We'll slash international students - now you've got landlords and the unis, TAFEs and secondary schools up in arms - and the NUS.

Actually, you won't get this far. It be be pandemonium. The reason is that cutting the population must happen to someone else. Get it? Not me or you. Get it? I know you guys think you've got a monopoly on the future and doom and gloom. But you have no policies, no principles, no manifesto. You have Malthuse - who couldn't even do math.

Hiya Yabby,

You were saying, "there was silly old me, thinking that those
vast rainforests in Africa, South America and Asia, were considered
the lungs of the world, sucking up CO2 and releasing oxygen."

And there was silly old me, thinking that people in Africa, South America and Asia had not only the right to the sort of lifestyles that you and I have become accustomed to, if they wished, but also had the intelligence to know how to protect their environments.

Little did I know that their destiny was to protect the world's environment for the sake of Australian inner-city middle-class professionals, and to eschew any thought of economic, social or educational development, for OUR good. What nice people.

It comes as a surprise that you are actually a Green, Yabby. Say it isn't so !

Joe

No-one has the "right"

To a profligate lifestyle

Even you and me

*It comes as a surprise that you are actually a Green, Yabby. Say it isn't so !*

Ah there you go Joe, wanting to put me into a little box, just like
Cheryl. I don't belong in any of them. I try to understand issues
and find win-win solutions.

Frankly, if humanity lands up stuffing the planet, its not going
to affect me or my offspring. Its actually my prediction for
humanity, ie a species smart enough to invent interesting new things,
but not smart enough to use them wisely. It'll have been a waste
of a cute planet, as it spins with cockroaches and ants on board,
not much else. So be it.

I've had to laugh at economists trying to value biodiversity.
Biologists would point out, that without biodiversity, there won't
be a humanity, so your economy really won't matter much.

If you think that the world's rainforests are in safe hands, being
looked after by the locals, perhaps you need to think again Joe.

Just chop em all down and see what happens. But remember, you only
have one chance at this. If you get it wrong, your grandkids will learn
the hard way. So be it.

Cheryl,

The "anti-pops" don't all think the same, any more than the rabid growthists, however, I suspect a lot of us would go along with Kelvin Thomson's 14 point plan. Why don't you address it, instead of some fantasy of your imagination, such as people being dragged off to be sterilised?

http://www.kelvinthomson.com.au/Editor/assets/pop_debate/091111%20population%20reform%20paper.pdf

Pericles,

I included the US because it is one of the top 10. As for the other graphs, you have been claiming that population growth has economic benefits for the host society as a whole, not just a relatively small elite. The graphs show that the majority of the US population had more income growth and social equality before the era of mass migration. The only real beneficiaries have been owners of capital and the migrants themselves, contributing to higher social inequality. This was one of the conclusions of the 1997 US Academy of Sciences report, and the Productivity Commission report in Australia says something similar. See page 151.

http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/9438/migrationandpopulation.pdf

I suspect that the aging population after stabilisation will be far more manageable than you think. Dependency ratios will be no worse than in the 1960s, as we will have more elderly, but fewer children, who are far more dependent for far longer. We may have to adopt a more rational attitude to prolonging dying, however, as this is hugely expensive. Even if you are correct and a stable age structure will be a disaster, surely you realise that growth can't go on forever in some gigantic Ponzi scheme? Why not bite the bullet and stabilise while we still have some environment and quality of life left?

Loudmouth,

It would take the resources of 3 Earths to give everyone a modest Western European standard of living with the existing global population. Reducing the population of Europe would make relatively little difference. See

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

So Yabby, let me see if I've got this right ..... The people of Africa, South America and Asia are supposed to sacrifice themselves for our lifestyle ? Or are you striving to live in the way that THEY have become accustomed to, and are expected to stay accustomed to ? Do you have air-conditionning ? Do you use a car ? Then why can't they ? I'm not saying that you can't, or shouldn't, just that others in the world should have the same rights that you or I expect.

The question is, can the world develop the technology to make our lifestyle sustainable, for everybody ?

And vice versa: we should be prepared to make some of the same sacrifices that we expect others to make.

Divergence,

Hi. Yes, I understand that: Malcolm Caldwell made the same points back in about 1973, before his murder in Cambodia [check out his 'Wealth of Some Nations']. The whole world can't live as we do, yes. So how do we

(1) develop technologies to minimise long-term damage, and at the same time

(2) slowly reduce world populations, especially of those high resource-users that you speak of, i.e. us ?

Perhaps a world-wide sterilisation program, of people from countries whose use of resources is unsustainable ? i.e., us ? I've had my kids, so that sounds fairly equitable to me :)

Joe

You must be thinking of some other guy, Divergence.

>>...you have been claiming that population growth has economic benefits for the host society as a whole, not just a relatively small elite<<

I didn't mention "elites" anywhere. Go check.

But I'm glad you found some material that supports my position anyway. This, from the link you provided.

"Migration has a neutral to mildly positive effect on overall living standards."

The report also provides a forecast through to 2025, based upon a "50 per cent increase in the level of skilled migration". Here it is:

"population is higher by 3.3 per cent... (GDP) is 4.6 per cent larger ... GNP increases by 4.0 per cent... income per capita is higher by about 0.71 per cent... average hours worked per capita are higher by 1.18 per cent"

Sounds all good to me. What was the point you were making again?

The last prediction intrigued me a little - the increase in working hours - until I looked at the next sentence.:

"The distribution of these benefits varies across the population, with gains mostly accrued to the skilled migrants and capital owners. The incomes of existing resident workers grows more slowly than would otherwise be the case."

Obviously, the incoming skilled migrants will be working harder and longer than the locals. No wonder they are going to be better off.

And you might like to rephrase this to make it clearer:

>>Dependency ratios will be no worse than in the 1960s, as we will have more elderly, but fewer children, who are far more dependent for far longer.<<

Is your position that we had a) a higher or b) a lower proportion of elderly in the 1960s?

And that children are a) a higher or b) a lower cost burden than the elderly?

And that children are a cost burden for a) a longer or b) a shorter period of time than the elderly?

Perhaps you have access to another report that supports your position?

The unfettered growthists are beating the same tired old drum again about limiting family sizes etc. We are an educated, democratic and free society I can't see any Australian (of sound mind) arguing for draconian policies of the one-child policy as in China. Why so many people can look at China and not see the potential dangers in burgeoning populations will remain a mystery.

The pro-sustainables have only ever argued that governments don't encourage large families by social engineering triggers like Baby Bonuses for wealthy middle class families, subsidised child care, increased immigration (excluding asylum seekers) etc.

There are concerns being raised in Europe about living conditions and infrastructure issues due to population growth. I have relatives in Europe and their concerns are far greater than any of those raised in Australia. The negative impacts of huge influxes of people into these smaller countries is being felt across Europe.

The only way to work toward a sustainable population IMO is to improve education and working conditions in the developing world and introduce social services including pensions to ensure that large families are not used as a cultural substitute for well targeted social programs. The largest problem is economic inequities that foster civil war and impact on food security in the developing world. Fixing those problems is the key or at least a good starting point.

There are too many issues to go into in the space provided but sustainable populations are achievable over time without resorting to Orwellian of facist scenarios.

I am not sure why some of the unfettered growthists believe humans are capable of great endeavour in technological terms to solve problems but fail to see those same capabilities in terms of solving problems in other ways. Technology is not always the answer as the desalination debacle has revealed with a great impatc on energy consumption and cost. Victoria has already blown out the costs of desalination which is to be managed by a private company costing (estimates) of about $570M per year. That is not including the billions it is costing in establishment.

Pericles,

No one disputes that a bigger population leads to a bigger GNP, at least until collapse. That is why the business elite and government want it. This doesn't mean that the average punter is better off.

"income per capita is higher by about 0.71 per cent... average hours worked per capita are higher by 1.18 per cent"

Any numerate person can see that the Productivity Commission model only shows a (very modest) gain in income per capita because they assume that hours worked are increasing faster, i.e., average income per hour worked is falling. You could no doubt increase your income by working 6 days a week, but would hardly say that you were better off. Furthermore, they did not consider environmental deterioration, crowding, etc., matters that are difficult to quantify economically, but have an enormous impact on quality of life. A few hundred extra dollars are not going to go very far when your utility bills and your housing costs have doubled or tripled in real terms.

So far as the global literature is concerned, Prof. Robert Rowthorn (Economics, Cambridge) wrote in a column in the Sunday Telegraph (UK, 7/2/2006):

"If you repeat something often enough, you can perhaps make people believe it. What you cannot do is turn it from being false into being true. And the Government's claim about the economic benefits of immigration is false. As an academic economist, I have examined many serious studies that have analysed the economic effects of immigration.

There is no evidence from any of them that large-scale immigration generates large-scale economic benefits for the existing population as a whole. On the contrary, all the research suggests that the benefits are either close to zero, or negative.

Immigration can't solve the pensions crisis, nor solve the problem of an ageing population, as its advocates so often claim. It can, at most, delay the day of reckoning, because, of course, immigrants themselves grow old, and they need pensions."

Total dependency ratio includes both the elderly and children. It costs approximately $10,000 to keep a child in public school for a year.

Are you sure, Divergence?

>>There is no evidence from any of them that large-scale immigration generates large-scale economic benefits for the existing population as a whole. On the contrary, all the research suggests that the benefits are either close to zero, or negative.<<

I know some historians who disagree with this view at a fundamental level.

"[Immigration] constitutes one of the central elements in the country’s overall development, involving a process fundamental to its pre-national origins, its emergence as a new and independent nation, and its subsequent rise from being an Atlantic outpost to a world power, particularly in terms of its economic growth. Immigration has made the United States of America." Hasia Diner, Professor of History, New York University.

You mention "large scale immigration".

Between 1892 and 1926, 16 million immigrants were processed through Ellis Island. That's around half a million a year, or thirteen hundred a day. Any thoughts on the impact of "large scale immigration" on the economy of the United States during the twentieth century?

Of course, no-one is remotely suggesting - least of all me - that such a massively bold, and preternaturally successful, experiment could ever be repeated. But your absolutist claim that "there is no evidence" lies in tatters around you, does it not.

I notice in passing that you avoided any "clarification" of your assertion that:

>>Dependency ratios will be no worse than in the 1960s, as we will have more elderly, but fewer children, who are far more dependent for far longer<<

Any chance you might do so, any time soon?

Pericles,

Go back and look at the quotation marks. What you have referred to is a quote from Prof. Rowthorn's article, not from me. I am a natural scientist, not an economist. Nor are Prof. Rowthorn and Hasia Diner in conflict. She is talking about when there was still a frontier in the New World. In this situation, more people may indeed be of general benefit. Prof. Rowthorn was talking about the situation today.

What is unclear about the total dependency ratio including both children and elderly? I have gone through my references on aging. This one suggests that disability is going up far less quickly than aging.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/7991505/Costs-of-aging-population-have-been-overestimated.html

This one is an animation of age distribution since 1920 for the US

http://beacheconomist.com/popdis2.gif

Australia would not be all that different. You can see that the proportion of children has been going down as we move from a pyramid shaped towards a column shaped age distribution.

See also

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/agepop.htm

Divergence,

I apologise by lumping you in with the fanatics at Sustainable Population Australia who post here. Sandra Kanck, the head of the SPA, called for Oz's pop to drop to 7 million as per below.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/call-for-onechild-policy-20090421-ae3l.html

Kanck was also behind the push to legalise ecstasy. At least we'll go out with a smile on our faces.

Aged dependency plus child dependency (beyond 65 plus 0-14 groups) when factored together from the Australian Bureau of Statistics graph (ABS 3105.0.65.001) has the following ratio of the total dependency age groupings to that of the total population at five year intervals over the last sixty years in Australia:
1950, 26 Per cent; 1955/29; 1960/30; 1965/28; 1970/29; 1976/27; 1980/26; 1985/24; 1990/22; 1995/21; 2000/21; 2005/20; 2010/19

thanks colinsett for the dependency figures. But you can easily take things further. Once you turn 65 you do not automatically become a dependent. In fact many people in their 60's and 70's are involved in the care of their grandchildren. They are also overrepresented in many aspects of volunteering in groups that support others. They are also overrepresented in many community based political action groups.
In reality it is only once they get into the 80's and 90's are they more likely to be "true" dependents. And nowadays there are many people in their 80's still leading independent lives and making contributions to their family and community.

At the other end of the scale very few young people leave home at 16. Most continue to be full time students until their early 20's. Even though might have part-time work they are still DEPENDENT on their parents for housing and other key requirements.

So you could argue to redefine the dependency age ranges from 0-21 and 80+. In which case colinsett would have shown dramatic improvements and will continue to improve as the population ages.

I would also envisage an increasing number of 60+ people working part-time. We don't have to go from full-time to retirement. If there are truly labor shortages employers will be more flexible and we will see more older people part-time in the workforce.

So it would appear that all my concerns about the impact of an aging population are nonsense, Olduvai.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Apparently, the more people in the over-65 (or over-80, you be the judge) cohort, the better off we all will be.

At the same time, of course, as we are living longer and need to keep the population "stable", we would have to insist on fewer carbon-based life-forms in the 0-21 category, would we not.

But hey, they are also a drain on our resources, aren't they, so we will all be that much better off again, yes?

Sounds almost too good to be true. Lots of oldies, no kiddies, all living in harmony with their Hills hoist in the yard and and FX Holden in the driveway.

Can't help thinking their may be something wrong with this picture.

Can anybody explain how that works, in simple terms?

As in "clearly, with lots of oldies, no kiddies, and no net immigration, the economy would thrive, because x, y, and z"?

From the tone of the posts here it must be me who is out of step. But I'd appreciate a little help to square this (ghastly) image with some credible version of reality.

Anyone?

Hi Pericles,

China has gone down the path that Sandra Kanck has suggested as an ideal. Over the past thirty years, the Chinese economy has boomed. But wait: that's just the first generation.

In the second generation of its one-child policy, starting about now, lo and behold there are as many over-fifties or -sixties as there would have been regardless of its policies. They are the parents of the one-child generation, and are now supporting their own aged parents. In ten years or so, after 2020-2030, they will be the non-working, aged parents themselves, often keeping their own parents company.

So this rising new generation, far smaller in numbers, will be supporting a retired population of 'normal size', their own parents, and very likely their grandparents as well. With afffluence and highereducation levels, they may marry later, dragging dow nthe birth-rate even further. The thought of emigrating may cross their minds: they might as well put that pampering and education to good use in a high-paying country.

How many children will this 'new' generation have, one per couple ? i.e. one grandchild per four grandparents ? Certainly, raising children will not be much of a social or economic burden, if a society has very few of them. [By extension, to have none at all would be extremely efficaceous for an economy, saving enormously on education and other infrastructure costs. Sandra Kanck would be over the moon.] But improved health services will mean that their aged parents and grand-parents (and even great-grandparents) age even more greatly.

[TBC]

Pericles,
look up "demographic transition"
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
At some point in time (if you believe that we can't go on growing forever *). We will get a population pyramid like that of stage 4 in the reference I have provided.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/DTM_Pyramids.svg
With death rate and birth rate in rough equilibrium. Life will continue, humanity has far greater problems than worrying about an aging population in Western nations. I thought you growthists always believe in human ingenuity and technology will solve all our problems?
Can't be that hard to come up with a viable way to continue life on Earth with countries like Australia at stage 4?

Also why the focus on Japan? Russia's population has sunk since the end of the USSR by 6 million.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Population_of_Russia.PNG
It would not be my choice of place to live, but they are still a viable entity. They are not starving or have gone back to the stone age.

(*) Kenneth Boulding:
"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."
exponential growth = Constant percentage growth

This is a paste from Deep Blue from another post yesterday.

"Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), believe that as the driest inhabited continent, Australia cannot continue to sustain its current rate of population growth without becoming overpopulated... The UK-based Optimum Population Trust supports the view that Australia is overpopulated, and believes that to maintain the current standard of living in Australia, the optimum population is 10 million.

I like the name Deep Blue. It has Giai or Gaia like connotations. I like Deep Blue because unlike Kanck, we're can have an extra 3 million people. This is good news.

*So Yabby, let me see if I've got this right ..... The people of Africa, South America and Asia are supposed to sacrifice themselves for our lifestyle ?*

Sheesh, I had to wait 16 hours to respond to this. No Loudmouth,
you have it wrong. The suggestion is that Africa has more chance
of one day becoming sustaintable, if the population stops growing.

The population would most likely stop growing, if women in the third
world were given a choice about family size, as they are in the first
world. We take things like family planning, abortion etc, for granted.
Not so in Africa, where some Western Christians are
preaching that they should cross their legs for Jesus. Its been
shown to be a miserable failure, even in America.

So we've sent them boatloads of food and vaccines and no family
planning, then wondered why they have huge families.

Having a choice about birth control is hardly self sacrifice.

More people is clearly not the answer to the wellbeing of those
already present. Try feeding and educating 8 kids and see how you go.

In fact in places like Rwanda, family farming plots becoming smaller
and smaller with each generation, was one of the reasons for the
genocide that followed.

In India and China we have similar problems, ie more and more people
over generations means smaller and smaller farming plots. Any
possibility of increased agricultural productivity goes out the window.
It also means that food which is produced, is more and more
expensive for those who buy it, usually other poor people.

It looks very much as though we are in total agreement, Olduvai.

>>Pericles, look up "demographic transition"... At some point in time (if you believe that we can't go on growing forever *). We will get a population pyramid like that of stage 4 in the reference I have provided.<<

Which clearly shows that there is a bulge of oldies at the top and a shortage of kiddies at the bottom.

Since we agree, perhaps you would try your hand at completing the equation I offered earlier - "with lots of oldies, no kiddies, and no net immigration, the economy would thrive, because...?"

And Stage 4 depicts contraction, by the way, not...

>>...death rate and birth rate in rough equilibrium.<<

It is of course only a model. A model that in fact freely confesses "the DTM is only a suggestion about the future population levels of a country. It is not a prediction."

One of the obvious reasons for their caution is that "although this model predicts ever decreasing fertility rates, recent data show that beyond a certain level of development fertility rates increase again."

So we should probably expect a variation on the model (Stage 4.5, perhaps?) to appear soon, that will lead you to a position of even greater certainty, I expect.

>>Also why the focus on Japan? Russia's population has sunk since the end of the USSR by 6 million. It would not be my choice of place to live, but they are still a viable entity.<<

From the same source:

"Russia has been undergoing a unique demographic transition since the 1980s; observers call it a "demographic catastrophe": the number of deaths exceeds the number of births, life expectancy is drastically decreasing and the number of suicides has increased."

That would add a subtle new shade of meaning to the concept of a "viable entity" to most people, I suspect.

Russia's economy is doing fine. It is in no way a failed state. As I said no one is starving and they did not revert to the stone age because their population fell. I don't know why this change was called a demographic catastrophe.

A catastrophe to me is defined by systemic failure. I would call the fall in population and the loss of many technologies, culture and knowledge that corresponded to the collapse of the Roman Empire and the beginning of The Dark Ages as a demographic catastrophe. Most Russians went through the transition without too much pain. See the writings of Dmitiri Orlov for detail.

Infinite growth with finite resources is a mathematical impossibility. Anybody to stupid to grasp this fact should be required by law to take a remedial mathematics class; those who still don't get it should be taken out back and shot.

Whether more or less population is the aim or not, it will not matter.
Nature is about to impose her solution.
The green revolution has resulted in the farmers using increased
fertiliser and the soil has become infertile in India, according to a
report this morning.

Increasing food shortages are alarming the UN Food organisation and
the resulting increases in prices will result in malnutrition and
starvation.

Couple all that with energy descent and larger populations are not a
relevant discussion. This discussion should be how to manage a mass
movement of populations together with sudden falls in population.

Will starving populations be able to move more than a few hundred Km ?
Certainly they won't be able to pay people smugglers, but will there
be enough with some money that want to get out asap ?
Should we pull up the drawbridge ?

These are the population questions, not can we have a population of
30 or 50 million.

“These are the population questions, not can we have a population of
30 or 50 million.”
Bazz, if we are going to have the train wreck you describe, it would seem reasonable to stop pushing more people onto that train, as is being done by our Government.

Yes indeed Colinsett.
It seems odd that we continually worry about the wrong problem.
We worry about global warming when the real problem is a fall in energy
availability. The IPCC still has not rerun its projections, as far as I
can tell, with the new available fossil fuel figures.

The real problem is what should we do when the food shortage gets
really severe, the problem will not be how we stop the boats but to
where we tow them back. Of course their ships may be too big to tow so
it would require armed boarding parties.

I wonder if any politicians would be politically courageous enough to
consider these things. Judging by their cowardice to discuss oil
depletion with the public I guess not.

[cont.]

Many of the young people born between now and 2040, G2, will still have aged great-grandparents, as well as aged grandparents and working parents, to support when they hit the work-force after 2030. By then, there could even be more great-grandparents around than children, another first for China in world history. They themselves will be retiring from 2070 or so.

So let's move to the next generation, G3, born after 2040, the generation of one child per two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grand-parents: from the 2070s, each of those G3 children will be supporting up to four grand-parents and probably some great-grandparents as well, not to mention the tiny numbers of their own precious princes and princesses, G4. By this time, mortality will easily exceed births. A strictly one-child policy would produce only one-eighth as many children as the great-grandparents' generation born before 1980 - sufficient only for a nation of about two or three hundred million.

With the family and tax burdens, the temptations for G3 and G4 children to delay having children, not to ever have children and/or to work overseas will grow stronger.

What might have been the effects on demography, on numbers in age-groups, as this ghastly process unfolds ? The Chinese population will keep rising for forty or fifty years, as its population ages. But sooner or later, fewer people will reach old age because fewer will have been born in the first place. The problem will not just be population size but composition: very few young people, very many old people to support through pensions and health/housing services: a small body with a long and fat tail.

[TBC]

[contd.]

Perhaps by 2050-2060, the Chinese population will start to decline, eighty years after the drastic one-child policy was introduced. By that time, eight great-grandparents will have given rise to four grandparents, two parents and one young person. And that's how the mix will be, as long as a one-child policy is in force: the actual numbers of children being born would decline relatively more rapidly than the numbers of older people, as the population decline chases its tail down a hole.

Regardless of explicit policy, population growth may decline, as women become more educated around the world, and as governments are able to institute age-pension schemes.

There may ultimately be little that we can do about it, either way: it may well be hubris to think that we can engineer population size. But an optimal policy would be one of extremely slow decline, say 0.1-0.5 p.a, 8-40 % a century: this would put a lighter burden on each working generation. That's how it might happen in any case. We should get down to Sandra Kanck's Australian ideal in about 500 to two thousand years at that rate.

Joe

Loudmouth,

Do you really think that the Chinese leadership was too stupid to anticipate these problems? Of course it is better if population declines slowly, but these people were faced with collapse. See

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/arable-land-hectares-per-person-wb-data.html

and

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6363991.html

Estimates vary on how little land is needed per person, assuming reasonable quality, to provide a minimal, nutritionally adequate vegetarian diet. Vaclav Smil's estimate is about 0.07 hectares.

The real problem in their case was demographic momentum. When a population has been growing rapidly for a long time, it has a pyramid shaped age distribution, with most of the deaths in the relatively tiny elderly generation and most of the births in the very large young adult generation. It can take up to 70 years to stabilise, even if fertility rates stay at or below replacement level. I have seen calculations that if India's fertility rate dropped to replacement level and stayed there, that the population would double before it finally stabilised. The Chinese simply couldn't afford this. Blame Mao for encouraging large families.

Pericles,

Of course there will be children and young people with a stable age structure, they just won't be as big a proportion of the population. So what? We have a smaller proportion than they did in the 19th century. Has it been a disaster? What is wrong with longer lives, provided that those extra years are worth having? Does the economy exist for the sake of the people or the people for the sake of the economy?

Cheryl,

Trying to guess the carrying capacity or optimum population in the distant future is not useful. 7 million may be far below the optimum or Sandra Kanck may turn out to have been wildly optimistic, because the worst predictions of the climate scientists have come true. There was apparently unbroken desert from the southern tip of Africa up to Northern Europe during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. We don't have to know the optimum, however, just that growth is currently degrading the environment and quality of life.

Divergence, some very valid points!

Loudmouth, I think you are bogging yourself down with the
relatively little picture, rather then the bigger picture. The population
genie cork popped out in places like China and India, some time
ago. Once out, its not too easy to put it back.

The net result has been Chinese and Indian peasants, on ever smaller
bits of land, trying to make a living. When you get down to a bit
larger then houseplot size, the manure hits the fan, as we found out
in Rwanda.

The Chinese had a history of 5 kids and more, with a population of
a billion. If the Chinese had done nothing, what would have
happened? You only need a 2% growth in population, over 100 years
your population will triple. Even you would have to concede that a population
of 3 billion would not be sustainable in China.

I read somewhere that the population of Indonesia is destined to
increase to around 600 million, in 50 years time. Once that happens,
do you really think they won't want to head South? Don't be amazed
if they do. Even chimps fight over territory, when their's gets
crowded.

There are a number of ways to deal with retirement issues. Workers
could work an extra 5 years. Our present baby boomers when they
die, will leave the next generation wealthier then any generation
before them, through all that inheritance money. The baby boomers
can't take it with them.

Perhaps boomers can use some of that vast wealth that they have
saved, in real estate and other assets, to pay their own way, rather
then suck on the Govt teat. Some of the younger ones might not
inherit quite as much as they are rubbing their hands over, but they
will handle it.

Divergence,

"Trying to guess the carrying capacity or optimum population in the distant future is not useful"

But isn't that the central tenet of the anti-populationists? Saying how many people we should/could have? I mean we're in la la land talking about population projections because they are only projections and notoriously unreliable as we saw recently when the ABS changed the methodology.

And talking about projections in 2050 seems pretty wacky to me as there are so many variables - population being just one - as to be almost meaningless.

If we look at countries like Norway, Denmark and Finland, which have low pop growth rates, their GDP per capita and GDP per capita growth exceeds that of Aus, UK, US and Canada which all have high pop growth rates.

Furthermore, expenditure on education and health per capita in the low growth nations is higher in low pop growth nations than in high pop growth nations.

Would Cheryl et al care to offer an opinion on this observation?

Also, why do we have a current infrastructure deficit? Shouldn't pop growth over recent decades have created a infrastructure surplus (according to your theory on the POP GROWTH BONANZA...ROOM FOR EVERYONE...JOBS FOR EVERYONE...BLAH BLAH BLAH...DON'T ASK ABOUT MY VESTED INTEREST)?

And a crazy youtube vid to boot... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

Actually, the world's population is declining, not increasing as many people would have you believe. This interesting fact was deduced by the Guru's Guru, Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune, and set forth in more detail in 'The Book of Ultimate Truths'. Basically, it goes like this:

Every person needs two parents, four grandparents, eight geat-grandparents simply to exist. So If you regress backwards in time a mere 40 generations (800 years, assuming an average generational length of 20 years, which is reasonable) it is easy to see that every single person on the planet required over a trillion (a thousand billion) ancestors just to exist. And that's just for one person - there are currently about six billion of us. So the worlds population in circa 1200 AD must have been six billion X one trillion = a hell of a lot of people. The world's population is declining, and declining rapidly. QED.

NB: this is not an original idea, and full credit must go to Mr. Robert Rankin, aka 'The Greatest Author Who Ever Lived (except for Douglas Adams, peace be upon him)'.

“The world's population is declining, and declining rapidly. QED.”
I am afraid not, Aleister - except, perhaps, in the mind of a Monty Pythonesque Minister for Silly Walks. The best available stats the bean counters can give us show that it is increasing rapidly, at about 1.1 per cent. The rate of increase has declined from a massive 2.4% during the 1950s, to 1.2% a decade ago; dropping a further 0.1% to its present rate (0.6 less than Australia’s).
The US Census Bureau estimates the increase over the past year to be 76 million (1.1%) to 6.9 billion.
The CIA Fact Book estimate for world growth rate is 1.13 %, to a present total of about 6.8 billion.
UN’s medium projection, of various scenarios, estimates an increase of about 3 billion to 9.7 billion by 2050.
Anyone who confidently makes a projection about society in 2050 does need counseling. Given the present dire circumstances for the present majority of the world’s population, optimists are those in most need for it.

With the present disconnect from provision of the necessities (regarding food and water, shelter, education, social cohesion and security) for the majority of the world’s 6.8 billion people, the prospects for an extra 3 billion are dire indeed. As for Australia, the Immigration Department’s “little red book” should invoke a feeling of despair and umbrage in its citizens who have any sensibility and sensitivity in regard to their grandchlidren.

Hi Yabby,

It's not either-or: either one-child or open slather. China could have tried a two-child policy, and although the population would have grown faster than it has, and would have kept growing for longer, eventually it would have stabilised and then started to decline, maybe by 2080, who knows. As it is in China, with the gender imbalance brought on by trying to implement a one-child policy in a sexist society, this could limit population growth slightly more than was suggested.

So in many ways, China has inadvertently implemented not just a one-child policy but a preferred-male-one-child policy, with all sorts of demographic implications for this generation and those to come.

Aleister,

Not really: go back just a few generations and one starts to share ancestors. Go back a few hundred years, for most descendants of English and Scottish and Welsh and Irish peasants, across small regions, and we share almost all of our ancestors over and over. My maternal grandfather's ancestors and my maternal grandmother's ancestors came from towns barely five miles apart in the Scottish border country. My maternal grandmother was born in Durham barely five or six miles from my father's foster-father's village. Go back a hundred years and it would be no surprise if they shared ancestors. Go back a couple of hundred years and they probably ALL shared ancestors. Go back five hundred years and they probably shared ALL their ancestors in common.

Amongst Aboriginal people of my acquaintance, looking back into their well-documented genealogies, one can find that many married couples are already related many times over, often sharing great-grandparents and gt-gt-grandparents. In one group, it is still common for a woman to marry her maternal grandmother's sister's son, i.e. her uncle, once removed.

So, instead of requiring a billion ancestors if we go back, say, a thousand years, it would be quite plausible to propose almost the same thousand ancestors for all Aboriginal people in a particular area. So it would have been in any region with a fairly static population.

Joe Lane

Tell me, Colin and Joe, are you at all familiar with the notion of a 'joke'?

You could be onto something, Aleister, about drastic population decline: how many of those trillion ancestors are still alive ? Not one ! Bloody AGW !

Alesteir - yes.
However, your joke would have been too subtle for the overly-serious who are mathematically challenged - those referred to in an earlier post of yours. Been there, done that, often enough myself.

Louthmouth, you are free to quibble about the details of the
China policy. The way I understand it, some in the country are
in deed allowed 2 kids, others have 2 and pay a fine or similar.

The real question is the big picture. If China had done nothing,
then eventual disaster would have been that much greater. If China
had acted earlier, perhaps their policies would not have needed to
be so draconian. I can only guess that the Chinese put alot of
thought into doing what they did, before acting.

There are clear lessons for the third world. If countries pay
no attention to population growth, they will land up with similar
problems as China and India have. Its then very difficult to undo
the population genie.

Giving women true choice about family size and the means to impliment
those choices, clearly make sense, for sometimes more people only
compound the problem and are in fact not the answer, as Cheryl
claimed.

No Yabby.

According to the population cargo cultists the Chinese should have allowed their population to balloon. This would have resulted in an explosion of creativity which would have solved any and all problems. Never mind that the Chinese cannot provide the infrastructure to satisfy their current rate of growth. This is simply proof that they are not growing fast enough to spur on their creativity.

Creativity can solve nearly all problems. And you only get creativity with massive population growth. Of course, the only thing that creativity cannot solve is that most horrible of horribles, the ageing catastrophe. While no one has observed it happen yet, I believe that it will be utterly dreadful. Flood, tsunami, cyclone, earth quake, or volcanic eruption:the ageing catastrophe will dwarf them all.

Quite simple, maaate.

>>If we look at countries like Norway, Denmark and Finland, which have low pop growth rates, their GDP per capita and GDP per capita growth exceeds that of Aus, UK, US and Canada which all have high pop growth rates. Furthermore, expenditure on education and health per capita in the low growth nations is higher in low pop growth nations than in high pop growth nations. Would Cheryl et al care to offer an opinion on this observation?<<

They all have had Socialist governments for the last fifty years.

(Well, it makes just as much sense)

Forget Norway, Finland, Sweden etc. Pericles and Cheryl, those fervent pop growth cargo cultists, should be banging the growth drum about the great life to be had in places like the Philippines. No problem with the winging chattering class there as they have been eliminated: Only rich and (mostly) poor. No problems with employment as you can readily earn enough to feed you five kids by sifting though piles of filthy rotting garbage. Yes, good honest hard work is rewarded there, and what lazy no good Australian would do jobs like that? And welfare? There is a wonderful policing system in place that ensures that if you have a pet dog (it can feed on the piles of rotting gabage while you do your honest hard work), you will enjoy the right to eat it should it die. And what about healthcare? What does it matter if a few battery humans fail when there is a mass of others to take there place. Indeed, you are are in more perfect society because you are improving your human stock by obeying the natural law of "survival of the fittest". No namby-pambying by breeding genetically inferior people as we do here.

Yes, the lifestyle is truly vibrant and wonderful in the Philippines, and the feudal masters might even grant those hard working lucky serfs access to contraception. Personally I think it would be a bad step as it could jeopardise everything that they have worked so hard for.

What are we waiting for Australia? We should be marching behind the pop growth cargo cultists toward that wonderful Philippino Utopia.

That's so cute, Fester.

>>Pericles and Cheryl, those fervent pop growth cargo cultists, should be banging the growth drum about the great life to be had in places like the Philippines.<<

Apparently, anyone who dares to question your dedication to controlling every aspect of other people's lives is a "pop growth cargo cultist".

If that's the best you can offer, I'm afraid it isn't that impressive.

>>There are clear lessons for the third world.<<

Were you always this patronizing? Or have you had to work at it.

So Pericles, are you saying that these low pop growth "socialists" have managed their economies better than the US, Aus and Canada pro-growthers?

They have higher GDP per capita, their GDP per capita has grown faster and they spend more per capita on health and education.

If we are being outperformed by "socialists" on first order public spending priorities like health and education (not to mention the generation of wealth per person), perhaps we should become more socialist too?

Or would rather increase your personal wealth by denying your fellow Australians the opportunity to get rich faster? Not to mention the decline in our quality of life caused by your "get rich quick" scheme!

It's a pity for you that your fantastical notions of the benefits of population growth are flatly contradicted by real world evidence.

If your pro-growth propaganda was true we ought to have a surfeit of public infrastructure in comparison with those damned "socialist" Europeans. Where is it? We're being "pantsed" in wealth generation by bleedin' "socialists" for crying out loud!

As, other writers have noted, if rampant population growth was a good thing, we'd all be striving to be more like Bangladesh, for instance.

*>>There are clear lessons for the third world.<<

Were you always this patronizing? Or have you had to work at it.*

That was my point, Pericles. I will stick by the evidence, to
back it up. Agriculture not being your strong point, perhaps
you have never thought about it.

Austalian broadacre farmers are some of the most efficient in the
world, purely because of economies of scale on huge areas of land.
For generations, Australia became wealthy on the back of agriculture.
City Australians like you, still benefit today.

When population increases and increases over time, like it has in
places like China and India, forget efficient farming, its down
to an acre or two per family. Its then all about struggling
peasants, or as in Rwanda, even worse.

Giving women a choice about the size of their families, before it
comes to that kind of overcrowding, makes perfect sense to me.

And yes, I think that there is a lesson in there for third world
countries, who commonly don't give their citizens that kind of option.

Not at all, maaate

>>So Pericles, are you saying that these low pop growth "socialists" have managed their economies better than the US, Aus and Canada pro-growthers?<<

I am saying that to link economic success or failure with population growth alone is meaningless, when there are so many other relevant factors. Including, incidentally, the point at which you choose to begin your measurement. Much like climate change, in fact.

My own personal position is that we still, in Australia, have quite a considerable distance to travel before we could realistically say "We're full. Go away".

I am fully aware that mathematically, perpetual growth is not possible. But to advocate an intelligent and thoughtful approach to a difficult subject - freighted, as it inevitably is in this country, with a mild xenophobia and fear of foreigners in general - appears to be impossible.

As far as this thread is concerned, to do so immediately brands you a "fervent pop growth cargo cultist".

Which, incidentally is a thoroughly silly label, when you think about it.

And Yabby, maybe I didn't quite understand your position.

>>yes, I think that there is a lesson in there for third world countries, who commonly don't give their citizens that kind of option [a choice about the size of their families].<<

Which countries?

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

That is just one example, Pericles. The Philippines.

But the list is huge. Organisations like the Guttmacher Institute
do surveys of unmet need in the third world.

Hundreds of millions of women still don't have access to modern
family planning, or simply can't afford it.

Even abortion is banned in many third world countries, unlike
the first world. So they keep popping them out, they have little
choice.

If you'd like me to google for you, a whole host of articles on
the subject, I can do so. But a well informed fellow like yourself
should soon find it.

Pericles, if we can increase our individual and collective wealth, improve our standard of living and simultaneously conserve our resources by slowing population growth rates, why would we increase population growth rates? What's the point? Growth for growth's sake? Reaching (and surpassing) Australia's carrying capacity for the sake of it? What a absolutely inane pursuit!

<Apparently, anyone who dares to question your dedication to controlling every aspect of other people's lives is a "pop growth cargo cultist".>

Not at all. It is my understanding that a majority of Australians are opposed to a big Australia, yet it is foist upon us because some people in power believe it is good. It is this sort of feudal policy making which I dont like. It is those responsible for things like high immigration and the baby bonus who are the control freaks, not me.

I would like the Australian Government to be a bit less feudal and a bit more egalitarian on the population question.

Fester, Yabby, Pericles, Cheryl etc;
No point in getting flustered about it all.
Nature does not negotiate !
She, (why do they call it she ?) is about to impose her will upon us all.

With a growing population, less energy, higher fertiliser costs, more
costly transport, the UN is warning of significant food shortages.
Nothing cuts into birth rates more severly than malnutrition.

So as far as we are concerned we should pull up the drawbridge and hang on.
There is no point in us getting involved in the mess just to feel good.

That's a bit of a squeeze, Yabby.

>>That is just one example, Pericles. The Philippines.<<

You have substituted "they have little choice" for "[their government] not giving them a choice", which is hardly the same thing.

And maaate, you make a very valid point.

>>Pericles, if we can increase our individual and collective wealth, improve our standard of living and simultaneously conserve our resources by slowing population growth rates, why would we increase population growth rates?<<

The answer is that we would not.

Sadly, we have yet to stumble across a way in which this can be achieved.

And Fester, that's not quite the whole truth, is it.

>>It is my understanding that a majority of Australians are opposed to a big Australia, yet it is foist upon us because some people in power believe it is good<<

If you ask people the question "would you like more people in Australia", the majority would indeed answer "of course not".

But that is only half the question. If you completed it by saying "or suffer a slow but steady decline in your standard of living, and that of your children", you might get a somewhat different response.

The concept of a "big Australia" has not, to my knowledge, been discussed outside the framework of the immigration debate. Which, in turn, has been conducted largely by big business saying "we need more labour to be fully productive" on the one hand, and a bunch of back-to-the-fifties suburbanites whimpering "things ain't what they used to be" on the other.

Until and unless we can introduce more reality into the discussion and drain from it the emotive "we'll all be rooned" mentality, we will continue to go round the exact same circles that this thread has exhibited.

Regrettably, we lack the sort of political leadership that is able to think beyond the sound-bite that wins them the next election.

*You have substituted "they have little choice" for "[their government] not giving them a choice", which is hardly the same thing.*

Pericles, quibble all you like. Fact is, in many places both
would apply.

Pericles,

You are asserting that incomes would fall if we had a stable population, but offer no real evidence. The US has followed the prescription of growthists like yourself. See

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/about-problem/our-lost-future.html

By your lights, it ought to be doing brilliantly. Yet incomes have stagnated for the vast majority of Americans since 1973 in real terms, and the bottom quintile is actually slightly worse off. See the graphs I linked to earlier and here

http://www.sharedeconomicgrowth.org/ourchildrensinheritance.html

I will concede that there have been real gains for the top 1%. The US has been outperformed on important indicators by those despised stable countries. You say that there are a number of factors involved, and there no doubt are, but if population growth were as beneficial as you say, there would be some evidence of it. My guess is that if people followed your advice, they would get the big population with the pressures on the environment, infrastructure, and amenities on top of income stagnation for the vast majority.

Thanks for a good laugh, Fester. A really good counterexample to the more people are the solution crowd. It is worth pointing out that Thailand and the Philippines had about the same population in the 1960s, but Thailand, which had an enlightened government that encouraged family planning, now has less than 70 million and is stabilising, while the Philippines has over a hundred million. According to the World Bank, GNP per capita is $4,060 in the Philippines and $7,640 in Thailand.

If our population reached stability (whatever that is - one in/one out?) income would probably remain steady for a few years. Then, because we're trade in commodities by volume, it would fall rapidly leading to major economic contraction.

Population is only one angle, labour is another. I'm astounded that some people on the anti-pop side don't connect labour with productivity. They only see labour as a cost or consumers. It's like they skipped Economics 101 completely.

Rwanda? Shrink the tax base? Slash exports (and ergo imports), rip up our trade agreements and then watch billions of dollars of investment pour out of Australia. What have you been taking? Is Kanck behind these ideas? They have the strong smell of mad Democrat behind them.

But I can see the ideological merits of reducing the population and it's entirely consistent with your fundamentalist-back-to-the-earth, Garden of Eden thing.

*Then, because we're trade in commodities by volume, it would fall rapidly leading to major economic contraction.*

Not so Cheryl. Because most of those exporters are highly productive.
When you are operating trucks which carry hundreds of tonnes etc,
it takes very few people to move massive volumes.

On the one hand we have a whole lot of OLO posters crying gloom
and doom, because we import consumer goods and don't manufacture
them here, apparently stealing all those jobs. On the other hand,
we have the WA export scene, screaming for trained workers, to
build and operate mines. They need people, from wherever they
can find them, if Australians don't want the jobs.

But where have many migrants been going? Sydney or Melbourne of
course. Increasing their problems. Many are students, who paid alot
of money to study here and were bribed into doing so, by the
potential of an Australian visa.

Yet much of the NSW and Victorian economies are not based on
efficient export industries, but on building and then administring
yet more houses for yet more migrants for Sydney and Melbourne.
Its one big Ponzi scheme.

So either train Australians who want to work, to take the jobs
on offer in efficient export industries, or target migrants who
add to the countries wealth and don't just create more houses for
more people, to sell to each other. No wonder that people in Sydney
and Melbourne are complaining.

A recent TV news item reminded me of this thread. China has just introduced a limit on the sale of cars in Beijing due to increasing traffic problems with a growing population and increased car ownership. This is in addition to a growing and very real pollution problem.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12072845

The trouble with the growth at all costs brigade is they cannot see past short term gains from population growth (ignoring the resultant infrastructure problems for the moment) in terms of a boon for property developers and the business sector, but what of the long term impact when land and resources can no longer efficiently support those growing populations.

We seem forever doomed to repeat mistakes rather than head them off at the pass, but with an ever growing lack of courage in our leadership and the short election cycle the growthist mentality will no doubt reign for a bit longer until the sad effects of unfettered and unsustainable growth lead to greater, not less, government interference.

Even Economics 101 knows that some resources are finite and that increasingly growing populations has an adverse impact on productivity and quality of life. The earth's carrying capacity is not endless and human beings are possessed with great abilities to solve problems before they are exacerbated. We need to get out of the mindset that unrestrained economic growth and consumerism as the solution and become creative thinkers who are not afraid to think laterally and beyond the standard economic mythology.

<"would you like more people in Australia", the majority would indeed answer "of course not".

But that is only half the question. If you completed it by saying "or suffer a slow but steady decline in your standard of living, and that of your children">

Where is the evidence for this? There are many examples of developed countries not reliant on population growth. Some decades ago we were told we needed high immigration so we could reach a critical mass to protect the manufacturing industry and avert the threat of invasion. Those reasons turned out to be spurious. And what about technology? Does it only apply in relation to the problems of population growth? I thought technological progress was the main factor in improving living standards, not population growth.

As Australia has had high population growth it is unsurprising that it has a large growth based economy which would be damaged with a cut in immigration. That is the basis of the "We're doomed if we cut immigration." mantra. But the mining boom provides the ideal opportunity to move away from the population growth based economy and its many problems. Australia could satisfy the skills shortage by cutting immigration and retraining workers displaced from the growth economy. This would greatly reduce the infrastructure burden which is driving Australian governments heavily into debt. It would also greatly ease the housing crisis.

Continuing high population growth is not a corner we have painted ourselves into. It is a choice, and it is disingenuous of Dema to pretend otherwise.

It would help you all if you read Jeff Rubin's book;
"Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller".

His thene is the coast of freight for international trade will reduce
the trade to low levels and that manufacturing will become local again.
It has already started in that steel and furniture manufacturing has
returned to the USA.

Another sign of this is that fast container ships designed for 25 knots
are running at 14 knots to save fuel. Some are experimenting with
flying spinnakers to save fuel. Isn't there a message there somewhere ?

Jeff Rubin, an economist would you believe, has a number of talks on
Utube and he has a web site, Google him, it will change the points
you make on here.

Well may they say that the Freedom of Information Act is really the Freedom from Information Act. BECAUSE NOTHING can justify witholding that section of the red book that dealt with the implications of low net overseas migration. If that is what happened, it is so crass, so pathetic, so mediocre and so plain chuckle-headed that it would make the authors of Yes Minister blush.

Clearly DIMA has been completely infiltrated at its top level by people in the pay of those vested interests who will benefit from untramelled population growth, just as the top levels of the Resource department have been totally taken over by the coal industry.

The idea that we live in any kind of democracy is a clever fiction, with regular "plays" at Parliament House by well-paid actors and gullible journalists all with the purpose of deluding the electorate into believing they have some say in affairs ... by withholding that section of the red paper the pollies show their hand blatantly.