So its about time all those lazy women got out and bred for the good of the aging? Have I got that right?

Maybe it would be good to look at how we actually support children and care for the people that bear and raise them. Our culture is now all about money, comfort and getting someone else to do the hard yards.

Dressing it all up as needing more people to produce babies without looking at the whole scenario of the various collapses, shortages and disasters we face is exactly the way of thinking that has brought us to this mess.

Graham

If you're going to write an article like this, start by getting your facts right. The populations of the world as a whole, and in Australia, ARE replacing ourselves and actually increasing, with a couple of exceptions like Japan and Russia. Just because fertility falls below replacement level, doesn't mean the population goes into immediate population decline. It takes a couple of generations. But we urgently need to stabilise and then reduce our populations because we are in "overshoot" - we are using more resources and producing more wastes than the biosphere can provide or absorb. We have passed the peak of conventional oil which means oil will become increasing expensive and that will flow on to the price of food. If we have another climate change-induced catastrophe such as the Russian heat wave or the Pakistani flood we may well face food shortages and even famine. Add to that the possible end of supplies of Phosphorus by 2030 and agriculture is in for tough times. It may well be that before long we will have to emulate the Chinese in their one-child policy (hopefully without the coercion) even if it does lead to ageing of the population. And please don't be so dismissive of climate change - mitigation and adaptation are going to be HUGE issues.

Breeding outselves back into the stone age! Well, if you're going to forecast, why do things by halves?

For once I agree with popnperish (gasp!) Although there will be more old people around in the next couple of decades, there will still be plenty of young people coming through the system to spoon feed the drooling oldies...

In any case, as has been pointed out now countless times, the oldies stay active much longer and stay in their jobs much longer, on average, than they use to. Those factors alone are enough to destroy any of the old calculations of the ratios of workers to dependents..

Hmmm. As the song goes, I'm torn between two loves and I feel like a fool.

While I'm against the social engineering of some of the more rabid anti-populationists, I aint saying we should go gangbusters for more people either.

My old sparring partner Micheal-in-Adelaide, the Uber leader of the anti-pops and me agree on one area - it's pointless breeding like rabbits to support oldies in their infirmity. Then we're on a breeding merry-go around.

Am I right Graham in saying that you are more worried about the concertina effect of history so that we are not adapting to new changes in technology so that we are hamstrung when radical change does come along?

For a change I am also in agreement with Cheryl. There is no point in continually exacerbating the problem. History shows as societies become more educated population will decline. There is no resilience in overpopulating.

The post-war baby boomers (like me) will eventually pass away peacefully into the night of our own accord. We won't ever see the baby booms of the past again unless we start obliterating human populations through war, then the cycle might naturally and necessarily begin again.

Monumental rubbish in this article.

In Australia, from ABS data.....our birthrate is double our deathrate.

Worldwide, we are going from 7billion to 9 billion.

Has the author any comprehension that we can't feed 7 billion and that with the price of oil about to increase rapidly, that "cheap" food is over and the world is facing mass starvation ?

Is there any hope for authors' who are so specist in their attitudes, that until the last eco-system is destroyed for food production...they can't understand that the bio-spere has been pushed to the limits ?

"Do gooding",environmentally illiterate commentators push the poor further towards chaos, while congratulating themselves on how wonderful their booster policies are for the World.

Please throw your religious, cultural baggage out the window and look at the World through the eyes of the poor and the poor doomed species we "share" the planet with.

Ralph Bennett

I'm sorry Graham, looks like the consensus is against you for a variety of quite good reasons. You had better go back to the drawing board and do something useful to support your aging rellies.

David

“No resilience in low fertility”

Resilience is far from bad in Finland, Switzerland, Norway, and Holland. These nations have low (or about right) Total Fertility Rates of about 1.7 - and only one in 6 of the population is under the age of 15.

On the other hand, resilience is far from good in places with high fertility rates - as heartrendingly evidenced during the last generation or so in Uganda, Somalia, Yemen, East Timor. They all have Total Fertility Rates of about 6 or above, and about half of their populations are under the age of 15.

Homo sapiens has taxed its resilience by maintaining high fertility at old feudal rates while diminishing early death rates via modern science and technology. This impost on our resilience has been pointed out often enough by biological scientists such as Sir McFarlane Burnett, Sir Howard Florey, Norman Borlaug, Frank Fenner; and by institutions such as the Australian Academy of Science. The mathematical impossibility of maintaining population growth should be obvious, - but for those not convinced, a short visit to Professor Andrew Bartlett’s “Arithmetic, Population and Energy” might help.
The unprecedented rapid population increase over the last century has been a tremendous impost on our resilience.

Graeme Cooke’s article is a nonsense - a serious distortion. The last century’s unprecedented increase in human numbers has left us unprepared, with little resilience for whatever difficulties lie ahead from our overtaxed planet. Billions of people in the less-developed world are already struggling; yet the extreme sentiments of this article are pushing to make their situation worse.
Population decline? Moderately applied by ourselves - a good idea. Better than letting nature take its unforgiving course.

Nothing to say here- except that a person who states "We may be literally not breeding ourselves back to the Stone Age." simply cannot be taken seriously.
Graham, you should have stayed in a job where you just cite what the news actually is, instead of trying (and failing) to interpret it yourself.
Having you out of news (or more precisely, now IN public service) is a great loss to Australia.

Ha! If I said I can see into the future will OLO publish my articles just on that basis?
Unfortunately I can't and neither can anyone else, the 13th century Nobleman, couldn't have accurately predicted the rise of the machine age,much less a peasant, nor can a 21st century journalist claim to be "Seer" of demographic or climatic change.

Since when do "we" have a problem with rapid change?
White people certainly don't, Africans adapt with astonishing speed,just look at the exponential growth of Christianity and Islam on that continent. Ditto Asians, and the old "Fall of Rome"analogy just falls flat at the feet of anyone who's given that era even cursory attention, by the time Rome "Fell" it had already adapted to the coming age and taken on it's new form.
There are too many historical exceptions to the "Doomsday" rule and the only constant is that all things are not equal when it comes to Humankind, one man's famine is another man's feast.

Jay
Not quite sure what you're trying to say but I assume you're claiming that humanity will survive (though rather unevenly) the coming crises. Yes, I think so too but we have to be prepared for these crises and help those less fortunate than ourselves to survive them e.g. adaptation funds to low lying countries to help them cope with rising sea-levels. Overpopulation is going to make all crises worse so we need to start on a rapid course for stabilisation and then slow decline of our numbers - too rapid a decline distorts the age structure and leads to excessive ageing. (We can cope with some ageing but not excessive.) But if we ignore all the problems and don't prepare, then we really will have a Doomsday scenario in which there are many deaths.

Popnperish.
So cynical!
I'm a glass half full kind of guy, I believe that Doomsday prophecies are a Western luxury and an excuse to shift the focus away from practical concerns and into the realm of magical thinking.

The Third world is more than capable of dealing with it's own problems, simply put they will have to deal with climate change, if in fact the doomsday prophecies come true.
By that I mean they will have no choice but to adapt, so they will simply adapt, Third Worlders are no more tolerant of unnecessary privation and disruption than we are.
If you do a quick whip around of the websites of Third World environmental groups they come off as practical, down to earth and focused very much on the future ,I've yet to come across a non Western Group which is infected with such pessimism and magical thinking as displayed in this article.
Just to take one example BAPA, a Bangledeshi environmental group sees their nation's long term challenges as manageable and the tone of their press releases and official web page convey a sense of hope and a "can do attitude".

Jay of Melbourne
I attended many of the Prepartory Meetings for the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 and met many women from countries like Bangladesh that were already affected by climate change. I found them slightly desperate about the future, wondering how they would cope with ever more floods and droughts and the kind of extreme weather events they had been enduring with ever greater frequency. Perhaps the environmental groups that you speak of were run by men, not yet directly affected personally by the changing climate.

Perhaps, then again belief in climate change is part of fairly broad based theology, maybe the groups I've looked up view things from a secular or materialist point of view, which is also where I'm coming from .
BAPA cited government corruption and mismanagement along with unease over the treaties with India on water security and conservation of river systems as among their major concerns, acts of God didn't feature in their manifesto.

Jay of Melbourne
Worsening floods and cyclones are more acts of Man rather than acts of God and it is time they were mentioned in their (environmental organisations')manifestos.
I find your reference to climate change as a 'belief', rather than fact based on real scientific evidence, offensive. It is the denialists who have a belief and are sticking to it despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

What a happy day. Agreeing with Curmudgeon and Cheryl. Graham Cooke brought us together. What an incredible talent.

Nine billion people by 2050 and Graham thinks we are going back to the Stone Age. I'm guessing you aren't much good with a calculator, Graham.

The problems of an ageing population are miniscule compared to the problems of fossil fuel depletion and trying to give the whole 9 billion a decent standard of living on a finite planet. As my new friend Curmudgeon says older people will work longer. Get your calculator out Graham (if you have one). By increasing the retirement age / age eligible for the pension to 66 then 67 then to 70 over the next 30 years the ratio of retired to working is pretty flat. When the pension was initiated in 1910, life expectancy was 50. Now it is 80, so we need to adapt, right Graham.

Ericc
Thanks for spelling out the easiest way to beat ageing, namely by steadily increasing retirement age or eligibility for a pension to 70 gradually over the next 20 years. And if people stick to two children or fewer, that will decrease the number of dependents at the other end.

Popenperish.
I beg to differ, Apocalyptic Climate Change is a part of a wider, post modern Western theology because it is very much a set of beliefs.
You believe in anthropogenic climate change but you don't know what it's long term effects will be, belief and knowledge are two different things.
Presumably you're waiting for certain signs, or harbingers to appear as evidence of the end times.
In the same vein events such as the Copenhagen/Bali/Kyoto conferences are rituals, performed at periodic intervals and bringing together the priestly class, aka the scientists with the laity and missionaries from far flung lands.
Belief in an anthropogenic "doomsday" scenario is a pre rational, or "Magical" way of thinking, superstition in other words.
Outrage and indignation at perceived slights or contradictions offered by "deniers" adds further weight to my argument, it's behavior which would be well know to any atheist who's made the mistake of engaging with a Righteous person on the subject of faith.
To take the example of the article at the head of this thread, population pressure.
Is it rational to propose limitations on childbirth in Australia in the hope that it will alleviate the material situation of ALL people?
To a religious person that kind of causal reasoning is valid, to an atheist, such as myself it's clear that no ritual, sacrifice or penitence on the part of the righteous few is going to save the masses.