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'?