donkeygod,

The "Green Revolution" in India is only now being fully played out.

Environmental degradation is now in stark evidence with depleted water tables, poisoning of the land due to the overuse of pesticides and fertilizers. Erosion and general soil degradation abound.

This, coupled with the loss by Indian peasants of knowledge and the usurping of their agency in their ability to share seeds results in them having to now "buy" the new strains of rice every time they sow.
Multi-national pharmaceutical corporations developed these new strains (and pesticides and fertilisers) then flew like bees to a honey-pot to the third world for the massive profits on offer.

It's really only a short term solution, as it's not environmentally sustainable in the longer term, - one presumes the piper will eventually have to be paid.

Correct Poirot.

It will eventually dawn on the people, the “your standard of living” is going to decline.
Is our standard sustainable? Of course not. Sustainable growth is the biggest oxymoron so far.
If you fill a container with a family of rats and provide some food everyday, they will survive. As time passes the family will increase and have more pressure on them as they compete for food (and water, Ipads, largescreen TS, SUVs and so on).
If you gradually decrease the amount of supplies arriving into the finite container the competition increases until it is so fierce that they are eating each other.
I know that some will say “but we have plenty of food, water, Ipods, and so on but in case you have not noticed the world is a round ball. It does not stretch off into infinity.
The logic is that one day it will run out of something and then continue running out till the day arrives that we will have eat each other to survive.
Yes we are very clever and will find alternative things to eke out our lives but if we were so clever surely it would be better not to place ourselves in this fix in the first place?

King Hazza,

I support stable and even diminishing populations, and I certainly don't see any "genuine" quality of life in consumerism and mass culure. But I argue that so long as we are part of the world economic system we can't be excused from its fundamental dynamic: growth. I actually believe we would rediscover quality of life by seemingly paradoxically suffering cuts in living standards.

As I allude above, stable populations such as those you refer to, are economically sustained via off-shore markets and exploitation. We have to get past this mind-set that national borders have any geological significance, they're abstractions via which we rationalise our comparative advantage, wealth and the off-shore effects, as well as vitiate our ethical obligations. In the current paradigm, economic growth has to be maintained somewhere; if we want to retain the luxury of a modest population, and that would certainly be my preference, and western lifestyles, we have either to continue flogging our resource wealth or find new ways to bring capital in; either way, we rely on continued expansion "outside" our convenient borders. We contribute to the overpopulation and rape of the planet whether our population grows or not, ergo we should acknowledge the onus of our portion of responsibility. The economies of countries with stable populations are maintained by exploiting foreign resources, labour and markets.
Pragmatically, Australia could halt population growth and retain standards of living by continuing to export its mineral wealth, and hopefully by doing some value-adding of its own, though that would make us rather dependent and vulnerable to global economic fluctuations, and unsustained by internal economic growth.
But there are also matters of geopolitical realism to consider and our responsibilities in the "global" context of overpopulation, refugees, international security etc.
The only viable and "ethical" way for us to halt population growth then is to be self-sufficient--even then we ought to address the ethics of our good fortune in presiding over such an abundant land mass--and we can't be, in terms of security alone; meanwhile, the atmosphere remains like a goldfish bowl and doesn't care about borders.

KAEP,
It's not a "Labor" plot (though granted popular Labor and Liberal in Australia are identical); the ponzi scheme is run by conservative neoliberals. It has little to do with politics and everything to do with economic hegemony.

Well said Squeers & Poirot.