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.