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.