Lower living standards and lack of education also exacerbate the world's population problems.Greed and lust for power are destroying what little democracy and freedoms left on this planet.We can save the planet and our people too.The two are not mutually exclusive.

The source of most of our problems is the debt money creation system of private central banks that owns our increases in productivity and creates it as debt which our Govts must tax us to service.L Frank Baum in 'The Wizard of Oz' had a real economic meaning for us in his book, which was lost in the production of the movie inWhich Judy Garland starred. http://www.youtube.com/?v=6cq9yEVcGIU

Oxley belongs to the dinosaur class of economist. Free trade is anything but, it allows the exploitation of the markets of weaker nations by the more powerful. He takes issue with the notion of environment preceding economics; just because other dinosaurs said they were equal at the Rio Summit does not make them so. If anything, the economy is but a subset of the environment. If we stuff the environment then the economy will totally collapse.

What is needed is a winding back of the "growth at any cost" economy to a steady-state economy (cf. Herman Daly) where development has multiple meanings, not just making more stuff. It may well mean a somewhat simpler life, but it would still be rich if we replaced overconsumption with more social activity.

The Greens may not have all the answers, but then neither does anyone else. At least they are asking many of the questions that need to be asked.

"Business as usual" is doing a damn fine job of screwing the whole planet. For our children and our children's children it may be time for some new thinking.

Most of the policies being mooted by the political parties bode misery and poverty for the wage earners in probably all the countries, It had been proved by success when Harold Holt was the Treasurer for Australia, but he is only remembered as the person who was washed out to sea and lost. Neither the gross resources exporting nor the immoral tax system has done anything towards driving Australia towards being a prosperous economy, the higher top tax of 66.6% was reducing the excessively high incomes we were getting then, and it would do the same now. The improvement would have to be an increase of the level of the zero tax earnings to about $30,000, to bring the tax intake to the 30% of GDP that has been the aim of the Treasurers since 1970, unfortunately their religion does not allow them to think about such a sacrilege as reducing costs for mere wage earners. The reciprocal imports of all the goods we were manufacturing here previously, have all but destroyed our own industries, the economy and employment opportunities of far too many of our people. The call for our people to leave their homes and opt for the mining employment away just does not wash. The Parties neither Labor nor Liberal have been able to recruit people with the required intelligence to manage these problems, they don’t even recognise that there is a problem, and I don’t see that they have enough intelligence or integrity even to handle the “Global Warming” problem. The religion of the members of political parties demands complete destruction of the countries and the conditions of their workers.

Do the sums Merv09.We have a $1.4 trillion economy.With inflation and increase in our productivity of 6% pa ,the money supply is inceased by $84 billion pa but not as a tax credit by our Govts.It is created by mostly private central OS banks as debt.So in going from a what should be a tax credit our productivity gets expressed as a negative thus our liablity doubles to $168 billion pa plus interest.The debt can never be repaid.

In the 1970's we had a national OS debt of $ 3 billion and now it is over $ 600 billion.The more productive we are,the more debt we incur.China has many Govt banks which produce 80% of its' new money either as debt free infrastructure or as a tax credit when the money is loaned to private individuals/companies.

Only sovereign Govts should have the power to create new money to equal our increases productivity.The US Consitution still states this but Pres Woodrow signed way this right in 1913 with the Instigation of the US Federal Reserve whom our banks borrow from.

Had our Govt the power to create new money debt free,every workers tax bill would be reduced by over $18,000.Do you now see how rotten to the core our system is?

jimoctec - "Free trade is anything but, it allows the exploitation of the markets of weaker nations by the more powerful."

Nope, precisely the opposite in recent decades, as even a glance at the region's economies show. As an example, free trade permits manufacturing work to go to the lowest wage country (mostly) where it generates jobs. Wages and our dollar are very high at the moment and that means its cheaper to make toasters and cars almost anywhere else.

In buying that stuff we are paying for jobs in other countries. They get the extra work, and we get goods cheaper. Both sides benefit.

But wages in the countries that get the income don't stay low. They start increasing - as happened in Japan and Korea and is happening (off a very low base) in China. The country stops being poverty stricken and manufacturing moves again. People stop being factory workers and start being tourists, design consultants and lawyers.

Although free trade has problems as well as benefits, it can do far more for any country than aid.

Critical self-reflection leads to the conclusion that our society fails on the criterion of ecologically sustainability. We are a profligate, consumption-mad society, in a world in which unsustainable living arrangements are the norm in the developed world and spreading quickly in the developing world. We can't predict the time frame for collapse if we continue on this trajectory, but we can be reasonably certain that without major changes in our relationship to the larger living world the ecosphere will at some point (likely within decades) be unable to support large-scale human life as we know it. These crises, if honestly acknowledged and squarely faced, would test our capacity to analyze and adapt, there's no guarantee that enough time remains to prevent catastrophe. Without such honesty, there is no hope of a decent future. So, the bad news is that we're in trouble. The worse news is that the mainstream political culture cannot face this reality.

As the world burns, as species die off, as mothers breastfeed their children with dioxin-tainted breast milk, as nuclear reactors melt down into the Pacific while the aerial deployment of depleted uranium damages innocent lives, it is perplexing that so few people fight back against a system that has horror as a reality for most living on the planet. And those who fight back, who stand in opposition to the culture behind such wholesale abuse and call it what it is – a genocidal mega-state (especially if you believe that the lives of nonhumans are as important to them as yours is to you and mine is to me) – are met with hostility and hatred, scoffed at, harassed, even tortured. With so much at stake, why aren’t more people deafening their ears to the nutcases who preach a future of infinite-growth economies? And why do so many people continue to put “the economy” first, to take industrial capitalism as we know it as a given and not fight back, defend what’s left of the natural world?

I'm not sure I agree 100 percent with this article but it raises some interesting points.

It's hard to reconcile their No Growth stance (which they took from Clive Hamilton when he was their CoS) with modern capitalism. I suppose we could erect tariff barriers, close down energy companies and run cars off the road - but the realpolitik suggests they wouldn't last long as an electoral force.

We could also cut population simply by closing our borders to immigrants and refugees. That would keep the far left of the Greens happy but of course there are those pesky old middle of the road Democrat types who would whine about the injustice of it all - you know - pushing the boats out to sea again.

Ultimately one hopes the Greens will do some good while they are there.

Jimoctec “What is needed is a winding back of the "growth at any cost" economy to a steady-state economy”

What we need is for government, be it Red, Green or Blue, to stop pretending they have the answers and leave the “economy” in the hands of the “real” people who live with its ups and downs.

Therefore

Strip the Civil service and the rest of the parasites who sup out on the public purse to the bone-

By cutting public service salaries (none of this parity with the private sector where “security of tenure” is not guaranteed)

Cull the number of pointless bureaucrats pretending that they are needed to regulate almost every aspect of peoples lives and

Leave more money in the pockets of the people who went and worked to earned it (instead of stealing it through taxation)

Of course forget all the dingbat regulations of land use and housing and carbon taxes, which the Watermelon Greens and other levelers feel they can use as a stealth maneuver to steal the private property of private individuals

As for “Business as usual is doing a damn fine job of screwing the whole planet”

No, what screws the planet is the uneducated pretending they should make decisions for the commercially capable (aka green activists and the public service hoardes)

GeoffofPerth “And why do so many people continue to put “the economy” first, to take industrial capitalism as we know it as a given and not fight back, defend what’s left of the natural world?”

Oh yes, Capitalism is a terrible thing but

As Churchill said of Democracy, it is still better than any of the other systems of economic organization and ownership

Example, Chernobyl a "collectivist" environmental failure

And so too is the Aral Sea

I suggest, before you throw out the baby with the bath water, you reconsider your criticism of libertarian Capitalism.

Government can regulate capitalists (example the US anti-Trust Acts) but

No one has managed to regulate government – example all the mass murderers who found their way to the top of Collectivist politics

The 'world in crisis' scenario which is commonly perpetrated by politicians, particularly the Greens and reinforced by the Media is the dominant theme of our times and is the underlying logic behind their desire to thwart development.

Perhaps ironically, it is the slowing of growth and development which is more likely to push the world towards disaster than prevent it. In reality, due to economic development living standards across the globe have generally increased, India, Russia and China are now some of the biggest buyers of luxury items such cars in the world and the nutritional value of food has greatly increased. And its not just the rich. China and India have ever growing middle classes. Pollution in western countries, contrary to popular belief has decreased. Western Cities are cleaner than they ever were thanks to increasingly stringent pollution laws. (no, not CO2, real pollution).

The environmental 'disaster at our doorstep' is generally a re-run of the old Malthusian myth and re-manufactured by scientists and politicians using hyperbole and computer modelling, albeit with the question marks left out. Similar computer models predicted widespread famine in 1970's and the world running out of resources well before 2000. Unfortunately, while end of the world preachers are scorned when the day of judgement passes, our scientists-prophets live to invent new judgement days despite the failure of their last to eventuate.

The 'World in Crisis' model serves Politicians, Environmentalists Scientists and the Media and notably the UN where thousands are employed to talk about disaster scenarios and creating world governments and centralising world finance but little else.

Great stuff from Geoff in Perth.
There is nothing at all conservative about right-wing politics.
The current thing about the dark lord or would be lord of the rings (of Mordor) namely Rupert is an in your face example of how rotten to the core now-time "conservative" politics is. It is also amazing the garbage that has been written in Ruperts defense by those on the right-side of the culture wars.

Two paragraphs from a profoundly conservative essay on the nature of Freedom.

"If you examine your life with and degree of seriousness and discrimination, you know very well that the "philosophy" of ego-fulfillment is not how life (or reality) works! And yet you are living in a worldwide culture that suggests that that IS how life (or reality) works - that the ego-"I" should simply be allowed to do whatever it pleases, and, furthermore, that the collective of mankind should be organized to allow, and even to serve, the search of each and every ego-"I" to fulfill its desires."

"When the entire human world founds itself on the adolsecent motive to aggrandize the individual ego-"I", then everyone is collectively working toward the destruction not only of human culture and mankind itself, but even of the Earth itself, the very vehicle that supports life. The root of that terrible destructiveness is simply the aggrandizement and idealization of egoity, and the illusion that the ego- "I" is great".

Strangely and tragically enough the most ardent boosters of this kind of destructive "culture" are all on the so called conservative side of the culture wars divide, including many who presume to be religious. The mantra being "that there is no other way"!

The entire essay is available here http://www.dabase.org/freedom.htm

Geoff,
It's not "us", ie White People who are pushing the world toward some imaginary precipice, it's that 1% or so at the elite levels of the Anglosphere, the English speaking world and their Third world "clients".

It's amusing to me that this White Guilt is still promoted when it's so blatantly obvious what's going on, we should also be laughing at the "all hope is lost" attitude of some on the Left. All hope is never lost if there are White people around, we don't starve unless another White person has us captive, do we?
"All hope is lost" is a licence to do nothing, which is precisely what the "Left"are doing at the moment, what's worse is that they attack anyone on the "Right" who's trying to stop the criminals.

We're all in this together,the Banksters and Elites are enemies of humanity,they want dominion over every living thing on the planet, pure and simple

Just have a listen to this:
http://archives.kpfa.org/data/20110713-Wed1300.mp3

Part 2

Please check out this profoundly sobering assessment of the state of the world in 2011, and how we got to here.

http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/reality-humanity.html

Which is featured on this site http://www.beezone.com/news.html

Also this essay (The Realization of The Beautiful) which features a phrase which goes something like this "humanity in its current state has been reduced to rubble". A talk which was spontaneously spoken at the time of the Stone Buddhas incident in Afghanistan.

http://www.adidamla.org/newsletters/toc-aprilmay2006.html

Of course we Westerners (in particular) are fundamentally incapable of appreciating the cultural significance of the appearance of an Avatar or Divine Incarnation. Yes some of like to prattle on about long ago fairy tale "Jesus".

But the Real Thing is completely unacceptable by both those who presume to be "religious", and secular "realists" too.

Ho Hum.
"Western"civilisation won't be ready for that kind of thinking soon, we have to go back to our roots, to the kind of "Aryan Cosmocentric" thinking that gave rise to 'Eastern" mysticism.
Dr Clare Graves and his successors have taken a more focused and rational approach to studying human evolution, it's worth looking at concepts such as Spiral Dynamics as a framework for understanding the task ahead, whatever school of thought you're seeking to employ.
"Western" civilisation is stuck, egalitarianism is a millstone around our necks, it's been imposed at the wrong time and it's associated ideologies have de railed us from the evolutionary path.
We have a long way to go, ethnocentrism has to come first, then world- centrism then cosmocentrism, at present we're still for the most part stuck on Grave's "Orange" level, "strive/struggle", with elements of society rolling back into blue and even red.
The "Green" stage is an illusion at present, it's ideological rather than substantive and genuine, it's professors are actually no more evolved and in some cases far less advanced than the rest of society so the whole "everyone must share" idea has become toxic, even pathological.
Hinduism is the closest surviving system we have to "our" religion, that Pantheism with an obscured monotheism, I've a lot of time for "White Hindus" like, Savitri Devi, Julius Evola and even Ken Wilber's more recent work.