"I am a firm believer that something must be done .......to remove ourselves from the bonds of this planet."

You are talking about space colonies etc and I have pointed out the major flaw in this strategy to others on countless occasions.

For the forseeable future any such space colonies would be critically dependant on finite Earth resources for their maintenance and construction - water, oxygen, food, replacement parts, new components,.......

So moving excess human beings into space will not reduce pressure on planet earth and is therefore no solution at all.

There is only one viable solution and that is fertility control, involuntary or voluntary, and population reduction.

Thinkabit,

Peasant farmers usually manage to survive crop failures. They tighten their belts, borrow money to buy in food until the next harvest, and hope for the best. What made the Irish Potato Famine such a hideous disaster was that a great many families were living on plots of land that were too small to feed them on anything but potatoes. (Potatoes were vastly more productive than grain under Irish conditions.) The average land holding was only 0.2 hectares. This was partly due to the British, who had commandeered large areas of the best land to grow export crops, and partly due to the Irish themselves, who had blown out their population from perhaps 1.2 million in 1600 to 8.5 million in the 1840s. The late blight kept coming back year after year, and the people had nowhere to turn. There is an account of this in "Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations", by soil scientist David R. Montgomery.

So Mr Windy cannnot refute the reality.All we see is ad hominem and no logic or facts.

Mr windy, breaking the bonds of this planet might not mean leaving it, it could also be managing how we all live on it.
I agree totally that decreasing the overall requirements we place on ourselves as a animal species and work so that sustainability is achieved is the desired result.
Basically less people...under-developed countries have a much higher population per sq. mtr. than developed countries because we are more self-indulgent, thats why we require a high rate of immigrants or, because of their over populated state, refugees.
Auatralians are leading in de-population, only the government and business want large populations so they can continue making obscene profits,

Divergence, thank you for filling in my argument the Irish over-populated their total agri area...terrible how many died....I already believe that we, as we stand now have over populated, it already requires the world to redistribute the food supplies e.g africa in a terrible state, how many people could survive in Indonesia if their protien intake was totally stopped.

If we really want to de-populate just stop sending food out! very humanitarian NOT

Just look at the arable areas in our wonderful country great around the edges nearly bloody useless in the middle.

Ted Trainer,

Humanity is uniquely the cause of its own troubles, troubles that, paradoxically, cannot but grow in size as humanity grows in numbers.

No human can modify in any way the conditions of humanity as a whole.

What remains to us is only to wait for the inevitable or, I should say, the inexorable.

Methinks our author is just a little skew-balled.

Poirot posted: "Just because something works for a time in an unsustainable fashion, doesn't mean it has no limit." How right you are, Monsieur Poirot!

"Bitcoin"? (As Arjay has mentioned.) Money transfer between computers? The new cash economy? This, and overseas internet purchasing (avoiding GST), will either revolutionise trade - with an end to GST and VAT, etc, and with implications for income tax collection - or the powers will find a way to stop it or harness it. Interesting.

Full-on barter system, community banks, community veggie gardens, biomass (dung) communal electricity, home-solar and water recycling abounding - have we got it licked or what? All we need is sustainable bio-fuel to take the place of oil. What's the problem?

One good move toward equity, for all, would be to minimise (or banish) graft, corruption, warlords and repressive authoritarian regimes by mandating transparent banking - so no-one could "hide" assets. Maybe there should also be limits on private wealth, with any excess confiscated and re-distributed. How many villas, mansions and yachts does a person really need? But, will the wealthy just have more kids, so they can spread (and keep) the wealth? Hmmm.

MickC, we are not yet at the "dire" stage, and with goodwill and reasoned effort I'm reasonably confident we can avoid Armageddon. Patience, toil and pressure, and eventually the powers will get the message.

Zero-growth, growth economy? Methinks the elephant in the room is the unexpected - oil spills wrecking the marine food supply, global warming doing the same, dams and over-irrigation despoiling groundwater and rendering soils useless for agriculture, chemical production rendering the atmosphere toxic, nuclear accident (not war), or super-virus, ending overpopulation once and for all.

Let's not be hard on Arjay fellers, he has great talent for finding interesting links and tidbits, and for keeping all of us on your toes.

Mr Windy, you are a fount of sci and tech know-how, so surely you can devise an alternative sustainable boundless supply of energy? Common, you can do it! Think, think! We need you.