Every country on earth legislating to drastically penalise couples having more than one child.

BBBBWWWHAHAHAHAH!

Everald, mate, its impossible. Waste of time and space to even suggest it. If you seriously believe there will be resources shortages then a much better plan would be to work hard on ways to stretch the resources to accommodate what will be an undoubted peak in population. Perhaps you could combine this with greater help in family planning in some countries.

This might actually do something about the problem, and be vastly easier to implement.

"Perhaps it might help if the West stopped plundering the third world long enough for living standards to be raised."

Poirot, how could you suggest such a thing? You are right though. Not only are we pinching their physical resources, but we are also encouraging their brightest and best to hope on the next boat and plane and come and join us. It might be good for us, but it is sending third world countries backwards at a great rate. Unfortunately, for them, there doesn't seem to a lot that they can do about it, because their ruling classes are in it up to their necks too, and they control all the arms and other resources used to quell rebellion.

David

I enjoy most of the anti-pops posts - they swarm like angry lemmings whenever people mention the word 'cull', sociobiology and eugenics, systems thinking and instrumentalism, not to mention my favourite: the Unsustainable Unpeople of UnAustralia lobby's Kanck's massive gaff when she said Oz's ideal pop should be 7M.

OLO is a broad church but one senses that the anti-pops need, for psychological reasons, to campaign against people. They use 'sustainability' as a battering ram, not to try convince readers of the correctness or validity of their position (which they have consistently failed to do) but rather as a crutch to support an essentially misanthropic world view.

Is the baby bonus raising sea levels?
Is our foreign aid budget simply keeping more 'darkies' alive who threaten to sail west south west and eat us out of house and home?
Should we dismantle capitalism because of population projections?
Should we erect trade barriers and keep 500 million sheep and cattle to ourselves?

I wonder too whether our schools are churning out graduates who confuse debate with a sense of entitlement to construct the most silly arguments and then howl when people don't listen.

The problem isn't only that there are too many people, but worse, the wrong ones.

In Australia, the wealthier you are, the better educated you are, the better postcode yo live in, the more your husband earns, the more you earn all point to one thing. You are likely to have fewer kids.

Put simply, the smarter you are, the fewer kids you have.

And there results of this are already visible... as the smart get rarer, the middle class shrinks... the few rich get richer and the poor get poorer and more numerous. Then more security cameras, police, private bouncers, harsher penalties and bigger jails.

Meanwhile, in africa and the muslim world (where 7 children per woman is the AVERAGE in many countries!) the chance of them ever escaping poverty is getting harder and harder, as these populations swamp the populations of the aid donor countries.

Decades ago, we could have donated enough to pull the poorest out of poverty, now there are so many more poor than wealthy, it is impossible.

Good one, Cheryl.

A one-child policy ? Just watch how that turns out in China over the next ten and twenty years, which is about all they've got. After all, a one-child policy implies a two-parent: one child economic burden - even a four-grandparent: two-parent: one-child economic burden.

Reducing population without inducing catastrophes such as plagues or wars, or eating every second or third child (tasty as that sounds, and tempting as it was when mine were little and stroppy), must be a very difficult process to manage well: even a planned reduction in population of, let's say, one per cent per year, demands a population reduction from one (productive) generation to the next of 25-30 per cent.

After all, a deliberate continual population reduction policy - even of only 1 $ p.a. - would mean a drastic reduction in the number of births each year, since those already born will keep living, working for a time, retiring on the product of those next generations. So effectively, population reduction means enormous economic, tax and financial burdens on the younger generations, forever, and perhaps a cutting back on benefits for the older generations, forever.

Of course, contra Col, we could eliminate this problem by eating - not the young - but the elderly, putting up with the gristle and sinews. There are cold mornings when I drag myself out of bed and think that wouldn't be a bad idea. Perhaps compulsorily at seventy, that gives me another year or two. Think of the savings !

And do you reckon that many Gen Y haven't tossed this idea around ? Even the vegans: from their perspective, we could be ground down for blood and bone, for example, for their Iceberg lettuces and rocket and boutique tomatoes. Win-win !

Joe

VK3AUU “…pinching their physical resources, but we are also encouraging their brightest and best to hope on the next boat and plane and come and join us.”

That people want to become part of the affluent “West” and away from the underdeveloped and supposedly impoverished “Third World” is very understandable, indeed, in migrating half way around the world to arrive in Australia, from UK, I made exactly the same choice.

The last thing anyone can demand is we condemn people to exist in the circumstances of their birth.

The communists did that when they built the Berlin Wall… and turned the countries of Eastern Europe into vast prisons, from which many were prepared and did risk their lives to escape.

I too find the notion which Poirot suggested offensive since it is sanctimonious and has no bearing to the facts of history, commerce, economics or peoples freedom of choice.

It wallows in the theory that bad things have been done by colonists of the past, be they of European origin

- but so too Arabic, Ottoman or the Mongol hordes

However, many benefits have likewise ensued from colonisations, even if some would claim they are second-hand.

In my book, a benefit is a benefit.

Similarly, pretending certain cultures are “innocents” and others are “predatory” colonists and empire builders is garbage

Cheryl, I did enjoy your post. I think you are reading from a similar page to me.

Imho I believe those of the “anti-people” brigade should lead by example and terminate themselves and (to cleanse the gene pool), their children immediately.

No deciding who should not breed, it gets too close to playing God and we have too many doing that already.

Simply leave people to their own devises and survival of the fittest

That way the weak do not get to pollute the gene pool and the human race grows ever stronger and more able to deal with the issues which our great-grandchildren will face, instead of diverting precious resources to feed the incompetent non-achievers out of a sense of enforced “social justice and universal equality”