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.