Gawd, Saltpetre, you've excelled yourself with that one.
"....transparently camourflaged myopic xenophobia in feigned outrage at you hallucinatory spectre of hordes....an ostrich praying for salvation in opaque denial....a horse long since bolted....minuscule cosmopolitan kaleidoscope within an overstocked frenetic whirlpool of humanity simmering on the precipice of unfulfillment...the tip of a tsunami clamouring for justice...tenacious fortification of western decadent utopia is merely clinging to the ethereal threads....inglorious suppositions...."

Might I suggest that your post is a fine example itself of an overstocked frenetic whirlpool.

Btw, is it even possible for an ostrich to be in opaque denial?

Peter Hume.
“It’s meaningless to talk about whether we have too much population or not enough in the abstract, as if human values don’t count. These are not technical questions that can be solved in aggregate by white-coated experts avoiding value judgments”
Yes they are. Resources can be categorised as 'renewable' and 'non renewable'. They can be assessed as 'scarce' or 'abundant'. One of the greatest survival traits of human communities has been the ability to ration themselves. In times of intense economic stress, this has been a Government ('by the people') function.
“People have different values, wants, time preferences, risks and opportunities...These values are dispersed throughout thousands of millions of human beings. They are simply not known or knowable to the Ludwigs and Saltpetres of this world...”
Actually yes, they are, and furthermore it is almost heretical for you to suggest otherwise. Have you forgotten Mises' Praxeology?
“every conscious action is intended to improve a person's satisfaction”
Probably the single thing every living creature on the planet shares, from paramecium to cows with their heads through the fence, from peasants to Warren Buffet is their desire for 'more'. Why should it be that some should be allowed more than their share (in the name of THEIR Liberty), while others starve?
“A private owner of a depletable resource has an interest both ways. He has an interest in profiting from selling now to satisfy current demand. And he has an interest in capitalizing on the expectation of profit from its future sale when it may be more valuable”
Does he? What if he has no children, and the 'future sale' won't occur until after he's dead?
“How is population policy going to weigh the interest of a person now against the interest of a person 500,000, or 50,000, or 50 years into the future?”
By according both an equal right to exist, and enjoy those resources that every human should have an equal right to enjoy, despite any accident of birth.

Peter Hume has no objection to people owning property. He also has no objection to companies of people owning property.
He only has a problem with nations of citizens owning property.
What's the difference between ownership by corporation, and ownership by nation?
One offers everyone an equal vote.
The other offers the 'favored few' millions of votes, and the unfavored no vote at all.

“The axiom that you can’t have indefinite growth on a finite base does *not* mean that crisis is imminent”
No. It means that crisis is unavoidable.

Well put Grim.
I daresay Hume has never heard of Ludwig von Mises. Others might also read some of his philosophy.

David

Peter Hume, Ok, I said I wasn't going to read your posts, but your challenges shouldn't go unanswered.

Your posts read like a soul in torment, forever seeking answers and not finding any, proposing quality of life and then denying any acceptable basis for evaluating it, criticizing democratic process and capitalism but only offering anarchy and strength of individual possession as alternatives. My assessment is that you are fully capable of answering your own questions, but are perhaps seeking either confirmation or absolute refutation of your views. You and I know you will continue to believe whatever you want, irrespective of any insights provided to the contrary, but face it, democracy is here to stay, government is elected to make broad decisions in the interest of national security and societal stability, and they won't ever get it absolutely right to everyone's satisfaction all of the time. We don't live in an ideal world, we don't live in isolation of external world forces, and we are not, nor can we be, the absolute determinants of all we survey. That is the way it is, imperfect as it may seem, it is the best available.

Peter Hume,

You posted this response to me: "You rail against the human use of natural resources, as if living is wrong for humans, but not any other species." "But you still evade the big question - what do you say policy should do about these human pests?"

We are stuck with these so-called "human pests" as you put it, but they are no more pests than you or I, just the continuing procession of survival by whatever means are available. There but for the unequal cast of the dice go you and I. Shall we therefore disenfranchise them because it affronts some misplaced inference of "worth"? You have yourself posted the question as to where may be found the answers to so many human plights, and this can only mean which of the world's multitude may have the potential, as yet untapped, to provide those answers, given the necessary opportunity to do so - for we in our western marble towers ought not be so bold as to think we have a monopoly on the capacity for innovation, inventiveness and ingenuity, or do you perhaps think otherwise?

As for other species, biodiversity and the environment, all of this represents what is truly worthwhile in our existence - the landscape of our human heritage - but it is ours to nurture, and not to over-exploit and plunder for some grandiose ambition to beat down, suppress and conquer at any cost. Loss of the amazing diversity of capacity and prospect already sustained through mankind's wanton plundering will be a source of enormous regret for generations to come. Perpetuation of our human disregard for what is truly valuable can only leave an epitaph of what might have been. Our inventiveness is at once our inglorious ignorance.

What to do? Rectify inequity, educate and support, embrace all the possibilities for realising sustainability before all is overwhelmed.