I cannot recommend strongly enough (again), that anyone who wants to talk credibly about growth should first consider Albert Bartlett, and the exponential function:
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4364780292633368976&ei=dP2LSorwAoKgwgPuruWpDg&hl=en#
We only have this one planet. At some point, growth must stop. This is absolutely as inevitable as death and taxes.
So the only question is, when?
When are we going to start planning for a sustainable, stable population?
Bartlett uses the example of a bacterium, which divides and doubles every minute; 1,2,4,8,16... The bacterium is placed in a container at 8.00 in the morning. The researcher records that the container is completely full at exactly 12.00 o'clock. At what time is the container only half full?
At what time is the container only a quarter full?
At just 3 minutes before 12.00, almost 90% of the container is empty.

This article completely ignores the that world's resources are finite and that economic activity is completely dependent on those resources. The quote "Human beings are not mouths that consume, but minds that produce" is bizarre! I konw that I eat and if you are reading this, presumably you do too. Minds produce ideas but they need materials and energy to be realised. So the statement is meaningless. If we ignore the fact that the world's resources are finite but keep expanding our population nonetheless then this statement "Man is man’s greatest resource” could beocme true for food! Only someone who puts "faith" before reason could believe this rubbish.

Of course the rest of the people in the world aren't bacteria in a laboratory of which Grim, or Albert Bartlett are head scientists, much as they dream of how lovely this would be. This is indeed the scientistic fallacy.

Unlike bacteria, people have the ability to rationalise resources with a view to the future. But it by no means follows from this fact that the best way to do that is to vest command and control powers in the hands of the egghead class, which history has shown to be an unmitigated disaster.

Tea party, radical individualism, capitalism, abortion - this one has the lot. Too many kids have abortions, no argument there, but it has nothing to do with the generative drive of an economy. Population is only one vector of analysis when it comes to an economy - and not necessarily the most significant in an advanced capitalist economy. The right to an abortion resides with the woman, not the state or free enterprise.

Perhaps Babette would like to explain why Australia's hypothetical shortage of young people can't be met from places like, say, India, which has roughly 300,000,000 people under 20 -- people who are already born and looking for a chance to improve their lives. They could supply an couple of siblings extra for every nuclear family in Australia and barely notice it. But somehow that option is never explored by the pious 'pro-lifers'.

Is it really falling birth rates which is the issue here -- or xenophobia?

Have a look at this map of world poverty... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

Basically the more red, the more poverty... But the surprise is that it is a map of FERTILITY - how many children are being born.

You know how our government seems unable to fund hospitals, schools and roads, and this is with our population failing to produce enough children to replace ourselves... imagine the problems of fundiong these essential

services if the population was not declining, but trippling every twenty years... no wonder they are poor. Worse than schools and hospitals, they somehow they also need to find more farmland too!

50 years ago, perhaps we could have ended poverty. But now there are so many more poor that the problem is so much bigger. For example, there are 60 million shanty-town dwellers in India alone, and only 20 million Australians... Let alone Indonesia, the Pacific Islands, New Guinea... What about Africa? Sth America? etc etc...

Why is China becomming so rich and powerfull? The one-child policy. It means they can finally afford to catch up with the infastructire and education that nations need to get ahead and build wealth.

I don't like the 'one child policy', but Thailand and surging Iran (Think nuclear power) also have zero-population growth due to marketing, free contraception and free choice. It's not really the feminist idea that educating women reduces population growth (think Iran, they're not keen on educating women)...

...continued

..continued

What succeds is explaining to people that too many kids leads to poverty, and long-lasting free contraceptive implants. Eventually compulsary education and urbanisation also drive down birthrates, because they make kids expensive. This tends to come along at the same time as education for all, which creates the feminist myth that only educating women decreases birthrates... it does, but that's only a small part of the picture.

On the other hand, why is the 'aging population' such a bad thing here in Australia? Surely it means we are living longer, and isn't that a good thing?

The problem is not an 'aging' population, it is that we are suiciding... failing to produce enough kids to replace ourselves.

Here we need to give tax reductions for kids so middle class parents can afford the kids we want. Those on welfare are pumping out kids like there is no tomorrow because of the welfare bribes to have lots of kids.

Meaning that single mums are pressured into having more kids than they can look after. And the payment incentives which ensure that few get married, as this reduces their welfare paynments.

Also making divorce fairer, because Australian men don't want to become dads... because they are afraid of having their kids stolen by divorce lawyers.

The author is wrong to imply that this issue is ignored. Think tanks like the CIS do look at the interface between religion and economics from a free market social conservative perspective, and CIS hosts a regular Acton lecture on this topic.

http://www.cis.org.au/events/category/2/The-Acton-Lecture

However, I doubt the American Acton Institute’s rather unusual blend of free market economics and Roman Catholic social conservatism will attract much support in Australia. Most Australian free marketers I know see economic, personal and social freedom as indivisible, and would certainly not support an anti-abortion, anti-contraception agenda, even if they might not share green fears of the perils of population growth.

Roman Catholic social conservatives tend to be ambivalent at best towards big business and free markets, while the left of catholic social thought is positively hostile to them.

A facile identification of abortion/contraception bad, babies/population growth good is not going to persuade many people, even those like me who are not alarmed at population growth.

Babette of course belongs to the same stable of propaganda hacks as Bill Muehlenberg wherein everything is framed in the language of binary exclusions.
Meanwhile Acton is a strange kettle of rotting fish too. It has very strong links with opus dei and other right-thinking "catholics" who like to pretend that the "catholic magisterium" is the ONLY source of Truth in the world.

And of course the "catholic" church itself is the worlds largest and most influential think tank, the agenda of which is now set by various right-wing outfits such as opus "dei".

“Unlike bacteria, people have the ability to rationalise resources, with a view to the future.”
Do they?
Passenger pigeon, hunted to extinction
American bison, hunted to the brink of extinction
Whales, several species hunted to the brink of extinction, saved only by international (government) treaties.
Orange Roughy, slow growing and of low fecundity, currently being hunted to extinction, and still being sold in most supermarkets.
I have a lovely set of photos of a beach in Costa Rica, where plump, well dressed people are harvesting all the sea turtle eggs they can find as fast as they are being laid, and carrying them off in feed bags to sell. Caption: “Global Warming ain't driving sea turtles to extinction”. All those people could be described as 'free independent capitalists', and no one of them could -individually- be accused of causing the extinction of the sea turtle.
Peak Oil, probably already passed.
Peak Coal, possibly within as little as 15 years:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5869
Peak Phosphate, probably within 30 years.
If the bacteria in the example were as clever as people, would they realise they were only 3 minutes away from disaster when their container was still 87.5% empty?
BTW, I'm guessin' Professor Mises doesn't qualify as an 'egghead'; maybe because all the good little libertarian capitalists who haven't been born yet can't possibly have any influence in his wonderful Economic Calculation theory.

Part time...."The problem is not an 'aging' population, it is that we are suiciding... failing to produce enough kids to replace ourselves.".....You have to be kidding!

The myth with over population, is that the only one's that see prosperity, is in the business ends of the scale. At the currant rate of NEW Australians floating in by what-ever means, we are, by NO means, committing population suicide.

300,000 new migrants were expected to arrive in Australia, the highest number since World War II. However, in March 2009, the Australian Government announced a 14 per cent cut in the 2008-09 permanent skilled migration program intake from 133 500 to 115 000 in response to worsening economic conditions, this was further reduced to 108,100 for 2009-10. In November 2009, specific skills are still in shortage in Australia, especially in the areas of Health and Social Welfare.

Country of birth Estimated resident population

United Kingdom 1,153,264
New Zealand 476,719
China 279,447
Italy 220,469
Vietnam 180,352
India 153,579
Philippines 135,619
Greece 125,849
Macedonia 120,649
South Africa 118,816
Germany 114,921
Malaysia 103,947
Netherlands 86,950
Lebanon 86,599
Sri Lanka 70,913
Serbia and Montenegro 68,879
Indonesia 67,952
United States 64,832
Poland 59,221
Fiji 58,815
Ireland 57,338
Croatia 56,540
Bosnia-Herzegovina 48,762

Yes I can see we are in trouble all right...rollies eyes:)

BLUE

Then there's the environmental damage control, which all like yourself, thinks the worlds life support systems will go on for ever, with no consequences. lol.....2050....the estimated population for Australia will be more than it can sustain.

But, I guess you think the same as the in-sane one's, that's running this country/world. ITS all for GREED! More people...more money right?

Capitalism will get us all in the end.

BLUE

I would think the author is on the nail in a number of areas.

Destroying families does not build prosperity, and divorce is a cancer that has taken over much of our society.

The skills shortage can also be attributed to a decaying education system that thinks mainly of taking from the public, while giving back as little as possible.

We now need immigration to prop up our society, and we are told to believe that a multicultural society is good, when in fact a multicultural society leads to no culture at all.

We are a society that can't produce enough to sustain itself.

Vanna......

"The skills shortage can also be attributed to a decaying education system that thinks mainly of taking from the public, while giving back as little as possible.

Its easier to pick pre-trained over-sea's people than to invest in the white Australians. The government see's no value in a people that would rather party-on, than getting educated.

They tried with the $1000 per child on the Australian public, which made an in-crease, but at the wrong end of the scale.

Anyway, this is what Australia is looking at.

Environmental movements, notably the organisation 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. SPA also argues that climate change will lead to a deterioration of natural ecosystems through increased temperatures, extreme weather events and less rainfall in the southern part of the continent, thus reducing its capacity to sustain a large population even further.[21] 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 (rather than the present 20.86 million), or 21 million with a reduced standard of living.[22]

Continued

It is argued that immigration exacerbates climate change, because immigrants generally come from countries with low greenhouse gas emissions per ca-pita to countries with high per ca-pita emissions (like Australia). A number of climate-change observers see population control as essential to arresting global warming. Australia could experience more severe droughts and they could become more frequent in the future, a government-commissioned report said on July 6, 2008. The Australian of the Year 2007, environmentalist Tim Flannery, predicted that unless it made drastic changes, Perth in Western Australia could become the world’s first ghost metropolis, an abandoned city with no more water to sustain its population. Analysis by The Australia Institute shows that Australia’s population growth has been one of the main factors driving growth in domestic greenhouse gas emissions. It further finds that the average emissions per ca-pita in the countries that immigrants come from is only 42% of average emissions in Australia, meaning that as immigrants alter their lifestyle to that of Australians, they increase global greenhouse gas emissions.

It is calculated that each additional 70,000 immigrants will lead to additional emissions of 20 million tonnes of greenhouse gases by the end of the Kyoto target period (2012) and 30 million tonnes by 2020. In contradiction to this, a study in science journal Nature claims that immigration does not result in global warming because although immigration increases population in one country, on a global level immigration does not affect population.

However...I might be very, very wrong:)

BLUE

Grim

Think: who owned all the species you cited?

All you've proved is that public ownership is an irrational way to try to conserve resources.

You've got me there, Peter. Who do you think owns all those species I mentioned?
As to resource ownership, are you saying you believe BHP, Rio et al., would, if they owned their mines outright instead of leasing them from we the people, immediately cut back on production for the sake of future generations?

Babette Francis is an anachronism. We had this argument from her decades ago and all that's changed is the desire to add capitalism and defence to the mix. Funny, but I also went to Sunday School and came home with a different Christian message - one that is far closer to a cooperative caring society than to a competitive free enterprise system. And defence? What about turning turning swords into ploughshares? What about 'Thou shalt not kill'? But even if Babatte cares nought for other species (despite Jesus saying God cared even for sparrows) and wants the whole world used for human use, she should consider the concept of 'ecosystem services'. If we care about humans, we need to care about the Earth and its ecosystems that provide us with clean water, clean air, food and so on. It's time to stop population growth and gradually reduce our numbers until we can find a level at which we are in balance with the resources that sustain us.

Deep-blue,
"Its easier to pick pre-trained over-sea's people than to invest in the white Australians. The government see's no value in a people that would rather party-on, than getting educated."

Australian's are actually quite hard working, with about 50 hrs per week being the average.

It is not that possible to go beyond that 50 hrs per week without sacrificing family-life, or what we call family-life in a feminist society.

The lack of skills is based on an archaic education system that places little emphasis on developing something, and much more emphasis on taking as much from the taxpayer as possible.

Grim
They were either owned by ‘the public’ meaning the state e.g. bison, or unowned with government preventing private ownership e.g. marine species.

Bison are a classic example. Bison and cattle are almost the same species. Yet while bison numbers dwindled to near extinction, cattle numbers rose to untold levels – on the same lands and in the same period! The difference obviously wasn’t in the nature of the beast. It was that bison were owned by the government, and cattle were privately owned.

Aristotle explains why: “The property of all is the property of none.” What private farmer would kill one of his cows just to take the tongue and leave the rest to waste?

Trying to solve the tragedy of the commons by *expanding* common ownership is a recipe for tragic waste and environmental destruction.

“As to resource ownership, are you saying you believe BHP, Rio et al., would, if they owned their mines outright instead of leasing them from we the people, immediately cut back on production for the sake of future generations?”

(Miners don’t lease their lands from “us the people”, they lease them from the state. If you think these are the same thing, try taking possession of your aliquot share and see what happens.)

If we have a moral obligation not to use a resource for the sake of future generations, then obviously those future generations will be under the same obligation to still future generations.

On the one hand, if that is so, then the resource may not be used, ever.

On the other hand:
“Once we grant any amount of use to the depletable resource, we have to discard the robbery-of-the-future argument and accept the individual preferences of the market. There is then no more reason to assume that the market will use the resources too fast than to assume the opposite [i.e. deliberately holding resources off the market for speculative purposes]. The market will tend to use resources at precisely the rate that the consumers desire.” Rothbard – Man, Economy and State: http://mises.org/books/mespm.pdf at p.499 The Depletion of Natural Resources