...Salt has been given his marching orders from OLO. Discredited as a seller of “Snake oil”. No, you have not inherited a lesser world but a different world. A world filled with challenges, the same challenges presented to past generations; to feed and house yourselves and your families.

...Your objective is to solve the housing cost crisis (consider for a moment the alleged housing shortage is a marketing “myth”) and to find objectives capable of usefully employing a population of youth acclimatised to unemployment and a life lived at home with parents, as a forced alternative (or is it)?

"...yet are seemingly intimidated by the opposing perspective of a 23 year old female university student".

Far more likely than intimidated, has better things to do, can't be bothered, sees it as a waste of time. As I would

Bullseye Fiona! This guy speacialises in spinning falsehoods that serve the pro-growthist agenda of big business. He continues to pass himself off as a demographer despite having previously and categorically stated that he is not.

http://markoconnor-australianpoet.blogspot.com/2011/05/bernard-salt-is-not-demographer.html

A flim-flam man of the highest order!

No wonder Salt would not enter into a debate - much easier to remain locked into his own pre-conceptions. It was our generation that came up with the term Populate or Perish and we were right - the only thing is we used the wrong conjunction - we should have used and - Populate and Perish is far more accurate.

Wounded vanity. Always a problem.

"So I sent him a message. He did not respond"

A message? But what did it say? Was it along the - somewhat unfriendly - lines of the article here? Did he receive it? Or did it go straight into the spam bucket? All sorts of random unsolicited items go into mine.

"I would have thought that the proposal for an intergenerational debate would be very interesting to such a passionate Baby Boomer pro-growth advocate. My being ignored shows it is clearly not."

Another unfounded assumption. Perhaps - just perhaps - Mr Salt has already looked through "Sleepwalking to Catastrophe", and has formed the quite understandable conclusion that such a discussion would yield only more polemic. He may well have taken a view that wading through 326 footnotes of supporting opinions would not allow a serious opportunity for factual discussion.

Just a thought.

It's all about being ignored, though, isn't it. Ms Heinrich has form, after all.

This, from her previous contribution...

"...why are young, up-and-coming female writers largely disregarded? This concern was partly born out of my own experiences as a 23-year old Generation Y female when my counter-responses to highly topical pieces in the Murdoch press weren’t published."

Much as they might prefer to differ on the subject, it is not an inalienable right that "a 23-year old Generation Y female" gets the automatic attention that she believes she deserves. Sometimes, content is important too.

"Writing from the perspective of a 23-year old Generation Y female, who like most people my age group, face uncertainty in employment, I am not sympathetic."

Fear not, Ms Heinrich. You are entirely qualified for a long and untroubled career in academe. You write lots of words. You choose an appropriately trendy windmill at which to tilt. Tenure is all but assured. Send the taxpayer the bill, won't you.

And before everybody shrieks "ad hominem", take another look at Ms Heinrich's piece, and mull over the fact that it is itself little more than a personal diatribe against Mr Salt.

As Mr Loveday says, "Far more likely than intimidated, has better things to do, can't be bothered, sees it as a waste of time. As I would.

Which can be reasonably paraphrased as, "disinterested in the consideration of well constructed opposing points of view and too rude and self-indulgent to reply". Is that the view you're subscribing to Mr Loveday?

Pericles you suppose Mr Salt's disinterest in academic detail as an excuse for his silence in the face of Fiona's request for debate. I acknowledge the telling accuracy of this prognosis however you seem to be entirely ignoring the salient point made by Fiona regarding Mr Salt's whinging upon the lack of manners in others who behave so.

You are also correct to observe that, with regard to publication in the Murdoch press, 'content is important'. As anyone with a clue on the topic can clearly see, and as Dick Smith has taken to task with a full page ad in the Australian on the subject, that media group will not print content that challenges the population growth agenda amidst its unending torrent of growthist copy.

It also seems odd that yourself and the opening commentator both see Fiona's article as hostile. It reads as a perfectly well measured description of matters germane to her case. I guess form is defined within the eye of the beholder and reality is wrought to align with ones own understanding and aspiration. There is merit in considering the limiting effect that the latter of those two attributes can put upon the former.

Do you think she should be more circumspect, or perhaps even dutifully respectful, toward his dismissal of her call to substantiate his relentless, but error-riddled, crusade to deplete the finite national resources that Fiona and her loved ones will need for sustenance long after Bernard has shuffled on from the comfort-soaked mortal coil that his deeds furnish so well for him?

You're not really likely to get an answer, because Salt and Co just love being on the winning team, aren't so interested in the facts, and prefer to talk to the government and the vested interests that already agree with them. Gillard had promised us a different approach to population compared with Kevin Rudd, but it's now clear from Burke's population 'strategy' paper that she was not telling the truth. Not that many have noticed, in all the hot air over climate change.

Well, the grumpy old misogynists are out in force today!

Steve S,

Same thing happened in Qld. in 2009 when Premier Bligh acted to divert intense public pressure over population growth into the sewer of a 'growth management summit'.

The Courier Mail loudly banged the drum of public concern to loudly resonate scorn upon the ALP Govt, but then deftly switched aim to amplify the growth saving agenda whilst completely suffocating the population critics.

I think Fiona's article is cute,if she were my daughter it'd be stuck straight up on the fridge with one of those little magnets the local plumber hands out and she'd get an extra helping of ice cream for dinner.
Then we'd sit with a nice cup of Milo and talk of many things, I'd tell her about a silly man named Malthus who lived long, long ago in a land far away.
We'd discuss the term Ceteris Paribus and make a game where we tried to think of ways that statement might apply to little blonde haired girls and boys.

Satirical responses aside, since when did Anti Racism suddenly become unfashionable in the young?
Africans are now supposedly suffering because they're demographically adjusting to modernism?
I'm opposed to anti Racism on principle but, gee whiz, don't it look an awful lot like the current problems in Africa ARE being caused by a lot of greedy old White men and their Jewish financiers?
My point is that the Third World isn't on the same trajectory as pre industrial Europe because they're not Europeans.
Third worlders are "going somewhere" alright, straight back to being colonial subjects.
Still, labouring in South Sudan for some American or Israeli agribusiness company or for Chinese miners for three dollars a day is better than starving...besides, they can have more kids if they're working!
So calm yourself Fiona all hope is not lost, because, thankfully for those starving Africans, all things are not equal.

Jay you highlight how a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Have you actually read Malthus? The logic of argument is very simple - exponential growth in a finite world is simply not possible. The claims that he has been proved wrong simply highlight how poorly we understand the mathematics behind exponential growth.
Secondly you equate racism with an opposition to population growth. No doubt for some racists population growth becomes a flag of convenience but an argument opposing population growth does not depend on racism - in fact quite the reverse. If we are serious about addressing world poverty, if we are serious about making education accessible to all then the population question will neatly solve itself. The attraction of large families in many underdeveloped countries is simply that labour is the only marketable asset they have - remove that economic imperative and you will quickly see a reduction in population (just use the last 100 years of European history as an example) As far as education is concerned when women have the knowledge to control their own fertility and of course the income to act on that knowledge you again will see the same things as what has happened in the west.
But at least you are happy for after all ignorance is bliss.

Jay, everyone is currently in the process of going back to being colonial subjects. It is just that the Africans never really got past that point prior to the global contraction that resource depletion is gradually but ubiquitously delivering, and which the primary resource owners will milk to the maximum for as long as they can. A significant difference this time around is that the new colonialism with be defined by corporations rather than nations.

So keep paddling along the economic millstream mate, and try to keep your head above the rising tide of land and resource prices that are necessarily accruing to their corporate owners due to ongoing population growth. With some luck and diligence maybe you'll be one of the last to go under. And with some added humour you'll perhaps understand why others might mock the essential futility of your acclaimed ambitions.

Not in the slightest, wallumi. Not in the slightest.

>>Pericles you suppose Mr Salt's disinterest in academic detail as an excuse for his silence in the face of Fiona's request for debate.<<

I do not suppose Mr Salt's disinterest. (Or to avoid ambiguity, lack of interest, which is the meaning I suspect you intended). That is for him to sort out. The observation on Ms Heinrich's contribution to the debate was mine alone. And again for the sake of clarity, how do we know that any such request was made in the message? Typically, the article leaves out key information points, a habit quite common to Ms Heinrich's writings.

The suppositions are all yours. The supposition that a request was made, in an appropriate fashion, in the first place. The supposition that the message was actually received. The supposition that a reply is not, in fact on Mr Salt's to-do list. None of this is made clear.

>>It also seems odd that yourself and the opening commentator both see Fiona's article as hostile.<<

And it appears that you equally suppose that there was no intent in the article to heap scorn or opprobrium ? Wow. You are unable to detect the sarcasm ("apparently this does not apply to himself"), or the faux-surprise ("I would have thought that...") that decorate the article at every turn?

>>Do you think she should be more circumspect, or perhaps even dutifully respectful...<<

Not necessarily. She is free to choose her method of communication, as we all are. It does occur to me that there may be better ways to engage than a single random message, that may or may not have contained a request for a debate, in language that may or may not have been clear and unambiguous, and in a manner that may or may not have been courteous.

Given the lady's preferred method of communication with us, which I personally would categorize as a sketchy, randomly constructed mini-lecture, it would be interesting to see how, exactly, that message was phrased.

We may never know.

Ah Fiona, the stories I could tell you about emails ...

Here is a hint for further ref. If people don't respond to email it either means:

1. they hate you
2. they hate emails
3. they didn't get the email
4. they have better things to do

But don't jump to conclusion #1 too quickly.

I actually went to a public meeting in Melbourne some time ago when some poet guy who wrote a book about how we're all doomed through population got up and debated Salt about population - and Salt wiped the floor with him.

Yeah - Salt isn't a demographer. He's an urban geographer.

@ Baygon & Wallumi.
Fiona left out another crippling legacy passed to her generation from the Boomers, cultural relativism.
Was Malthus right or wrong about Europeans?
See White people overcome scarcity, so Malthusian arguments don't apply to us, all things are not equal, we can build farms in the desert, we can turn sand into glass, we can turn sewage into drinking water.
The only time you see White people starving is if another group of Whites deliberately oppressing them.
Ditto Africans, they do OK if there are no White people interfering with them, but if they're starving it's usually something to do with Western Globalists.
Then if they're overcoming scarcity it'll be with the help of benevolent White people.

Malthusian arguments only apply in discussions with a pre determined outcome, it's closed system thinking promoted to sustain the closed system of petro capitalism.
Nobody would be talking about Malthus if we weren't living under an oligarchy which is dependent of fossil fuels, there'd be a photo of Tesla or some other wild eyed White guy on the wall of every school room.
"Race is real and it matters" is what we call "Wide Sky" thinking, don't worry about the Africans, there's some brainy little White person who will figure out a solution to world hunger and untap free energy and a whole bunch of other White people who are determined to see Africans thrive.
Don't sweat the small stuff, worry about getting rid of the Petro Oligarchs and bringing in a new energy system, the rest will sort itself out.
Think wide sky.

Mr Salt and KPMG make huge amounts of money from his populate or perish message so Salt has incentive to keep on saying the same thing, no matter how nutty it is. It's the same process that keeps a poor old mouse pushing a lever to get a piece of cheese. I guess that Mr Salt doesn't know how to do anything else. He isn't a force for the public good. He is a commercial lab-rat. Another thing is that a lot of people, young and old, have been schooled to think (perhaps like Pericles) that anyone who has made a lot of money out of something must be right. Look at how everyone kowtows to Mr Murdoch. Right now there is an inquiry in Britain about the reprehensible antics of his media, but you can be pretty sure that not much will happen about this, because he is rich and many people simply cannot believe that the mainstream media and the government are dominated by rich but stupid people with the ability to blackmail politicians too. But then, the rich can also afford good lawyers, whereas most of us can only afford not to break the law. Murdoch media do publish some anti-growth stuff, but only a drop in their ocean of greed-is-good growthist stuff mixed in with some page 3 girls. Mr Salt writes for the Herald Sun occasionally. All the growthists just merge into one, really, one big public-private land-speculation snow-job.

Good on Fiona for issuing that challenge to that hoary old Salt. It shows the man up, again, which can't happen enough. Growth doesn't pay for itself and it already costs me more than money, so keep at it Fiona.

And another thing..
We're a race of dreamers but we're also too modest.
White people's dreams have a consistent record of coming true.
There are a lot of White people who dream of ending world hunger.
A world without hunger will become a reality.
Let's just stop kidding ourselves about it being a team effort,and spare ourselves the false modesty, the answers which will end global poverty will come from some White brainiac in Switzeralnd, or Ireland or Australia or Ukraine.
This is the true meaning of "White Pride", anyone wonder why those words are to the Petro Parasites as Garlic is to Vampires?

I am depressed by the level of misogyny abroad in Australia at the moment, directed primarily at the Prime Minister but now at Fiona Heinrichs whose previous article on OLO was quite wonderful. Her desire to debate Bernard Salt is perfectly legitimate. I heard him speak a few months ago in Canberra and he is full of alarming claims that indicate a total absence of any environmental awareness. For instance, he said, how great it will be when the Antarctic Treaty finishes because it will allow us to exploit all the mineral wealth down there. Sorry, but some of us would prefer to leave it as a pristine wilderness. He has no concept of climate change or peak oil and the consequences thereof. Fiona, on the other hand, does indeed understand these things. We lucky to have a young woman of such breadth of understanding in our midst.

Can someone explain to me the payoff from "All hope is lost"?
What do you people get from believing in doomsday scenarios?
We can turn sewage into drinking water yet somehow we're doomed?
This is comedy to me.
Face facts, Fiona's future Blonde children won't be affected by climate change or peak oil or any of the other lavish expressions of White self indulgence.
Even if she marries an African her children will never know real poverty or hunger because they have a White parent.
Things have been "uncomfortable" in the past, the 1930's in White Australia was probably no picnic, but in 1930's China you'd be lucky if someone dragged your starved corpse off the streets before the rats got to it.

So in terms of "posterity" we're all A-OK.
See that's the thing, if White people are running around saying "all hope is lost" it invariably means everything is OK on our side.
If there were no White people around me indulging these extravagant, apocalyptic fantasies then I'd be REALLY worried about our posterity

"We can turn sewage into drinking water yet somehow we're doomed?"

Ah yes, with fossil fools you can do anything. Pity all the cheap stuff's already gone and that it will soon take more energy to extract said fossil fools than the fools contain.....

Oh and forget Malthus.... just watch Albert Bartlett's fine series of youtube videos.

And also, congrats to Fiona... you should consider gunning for Dick Smith's million dollar award.

Did anyone click through and read some of the supporting documents that Fiona linked to her article? Salt's "book review" did catch my eye. Far from being scathing or dismissive of Gen Y, it stated a few facts:

1. In Australia and most of the western world, life has been getting easier for years. Succeeding generations have been given more material belongings and have more opportunities than in the past.

2. Whilst some may see Gen Y's as precious/selfish, that tends to disappear when they have kids of their own and realise that their kids dont care if their parents have always been "special" - I'm the kid and I want your attention NOW!! Bernard's indirect comment is that having kids catapults young adults into being true "grown-ups" that have a better sense of their place in the world

I sent Bernard Salt an email some months back questioning some of his assertions in an article he wrote. He did reply to me but all he said was he didn't agree. That was it, no why not, no explanation, no argument, just that he didn't agree.
I suppose time is money and he is paid to produce his opinion so why waste time.

Well done Fiona.

<< Well, the grumpy old misogynists are out in force today! >>

You’re not wrong there Michael!

.

This appears after the end of the article:

< Fiona is an Arts (Hons.) graduate from Sydney who is very concerned about population growth and environmental sustainability. She has recently authored a book titled, Sleepwalking to Catastrophe: ‘Big Australia’, Immigration, Population Expansion and the Impossibility of Endless Economic Growth in a Finite World. >

Excellent Fiona. Sustainability is the most important subject of our time and population growth is the most significant component of it. Keep getting stuck into the likes of Bernard Salt!

We so desperately need a major change of political direction away of continuous rapid expansionism and towards genuine sustainability. I thought we might have seen an inkling of this with the carbon tax, but alas, there was nothing of the sort.

Can I ask you; how much concern about real sustainability is there within Gen Y?

I haven’t encountered much at all, unfortunately. But it would be great to hear that there was a fair bit of concern and that there is real potential for harnessing it into a political or lobby force that could really have some clout, if that be the case. Here’s hoping!

Cheers.

Exactly so Michael, Salt is about advancing influence and privilege, not accuracy and truth. Public humiliation is most likely the only remedy for his self-serving hubris.

Jay, add to your list of 'white person' feats the rapid drawdown of the intense but finite energy resource that fundamentally enables ALL of these accomplishments. A new energy source to replace this squandered bounty? All notions of one are no more than science fiction at this stage. Maybe we'll realise the use of one before our excess is drawn into oblivion by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The odds a this stage though indicate we most likely will not.

Your implicit certainty that we will is a form of religious faith, not rational understanding. Calling for a slowdown in population driven aggregate resource consumption is a sound and prudent action. Calling for more speed as you do is simply reckless.

Pericles, scorn is a commonly accepted form to use in response to hypocrisy and disingenuous evasion. Fiona has been relatively restrained in regard to Salt's display. Also, why do you so certainly presume a deficient approach to Salt by Fiona? You have no evidence for this view yet have made it a foundation to your argument. As such, the stridency of your assertion is no more than a baseless attack upon Fiona's credibility. Is it reasonable to do this simply because it suits your argument to do so?

I look forward to the day when this current fascination with generation gaps gives way to a new fad. Salt's views are by no means exclusive to Boomers, and Heinrichs's views are by no means exclusive to Gen Y. Furthermore, neither is universally accepted by a generation. As such, an inter-generational debate would be little more than an older man set in his views arguing with a younger woman, also set in her views. It might produce a short-term media circus, it might offer some controversial quotes for publication and misrepresentation in the media, then it will fade away.

I also feel for the Gen-X folks out there, who are lost in the aether between the Boomers and the Ys. If the BBs leave a mess behind, it will be the Xs who are in the positions of power when the mopping-up begins. And if the BBs leave wondrous treasures behind, the Xs will have first dibs when it comes to claiming them. Why does nobody care what they have to say?

It strikes me that Gen-Y isn't the first 'look at me, I'm so special' generation, and the Boomers aren't the first 'look at them, don't they think they're special' generation. And, in years to come, when I and my fellow Y-Gens are in a position to look down our noses at those younger than us, I suspect many will have forgotten their (our) outrage at being labelled, pigeonholed and ignored.

Aah, well. A little outrage adds a bit of spice to life.

Ludwig, the only gen y's I know well are my own 23 yo twins... who of course have been thoroughly brainwashed by yours truly. One is doing his second science degree at UQ, while his sister is a hard working public servant.

Neither have driving licenses, let alone cars. They have both decided to never have children. Though of course you can never say never, and in life, as I know too well, anything can happen, like having twins when you wanted to only have one child!! But my point is there are lots of these kids who are environmentally aware and have at least some understanding of sustainability (from where I sit, I can tell you almost no one understands the concept..). Many of their friends think like they do. In fact I recently read somewhere that an astonishing 30% (can't remember the actual figure) of gen y's don't have drivers' licenses.

Hopefully.... they may even comment here as I recommended they read Fiona's piece for inspiration...

Coorangreeny:"They have both decided to never have children. "

And the world heaved a great sigh of relief...

Maybe so, wallumi.

>>Pericles, scorn is a commonly accepted form to use in response to hypocrisy and disingenuous evasion.<<

Sadly, there is no evidence of "hypocrisy and disingenuous evasion" in the article. It seems to me that Ms Heinrich takes for granted that when someone has an opinion that differs from hers, a) it must be wrong and b) her own views are automatically shared by all.

Such sloppy writing may be the norm in universities these days, but doesn't actually inspire confidence that the writer has properly mustered her arguments.

>>Fiona has been relatively restrained in regard to Salt's display<<

"Display"? What display?

>>Also, why do you so certainly presume a deficient approach to Salt by Fiona? You have no evidence for this view yet have made it a foundation to your argument.<<

I made no such presumption. I merely offered alternative scenarios, that the writer had clearly not taken into consideration.

>>As such, the stridency of your assertion is no more than a baseless attack upon Fiona's credibility.<<

Credibility has to be earned. It cannot be taken for granted, simply because the author is "a 23 year old female university student". Apart from any other consideration, it is unfortunate that she makes the article all about herself, and how insulted she feels that someone isn't dancing to her tune. Not a good look, I would have thought, in anyone's language.

Antiseptic, I'm assuming that your seemingly nasty and hurtful comment is just 'sarcasm' and it as an acceptable way to interact with people who do not think the same way you do. Or do you really believe it is a good thing for left wing people to be choosing not to have children? (My children also say they are not going to have any children.)

Have you thought about this in respect to the idea (or fact?) that muslims will out-breed us?

And do you think that right wing parents always produce right wing children and vice versa?

Mollydukes, you may assume what you will and I'm certain you shall.

I'll assume your comment is a mishmash of racist hatemongering and some weird form of reverse elitism.

Sorted.

Cheryl:

“and Salt wiped the floor with him.”

In your opinion Salt wiped the floor with him.
Maybe that is what you wanted to think?

That is very, very sad.

Coorangreeny: >>my own 23 yo twins... have both decided to never have children<<

Mollydukes: >>My children also say they are not going to have any children<<

What a barren (I use the word advisedly) existence these folk have condemned themselves to. And an utterly pointless gesture, at that. I genuinely wonder that any parent, having rejoiced in their own children's existence, can stand back from such an attitude, without comment.

The response should be "It's up to you, of course. But you have no idea what you will be missing by voluntarily denying yourself one of the true joys of living on this planet."

Do you instead say "Good on you, people. The world needs more unselfish folk who are prepared to sacrifice their own happiness and fulfillment for their ideals"?

I'd say the same, of course. Except I wouldn't say "ideals", but something far less polite. And I'd lay on the sarcasm, just in case they thought for one millisecond that I was being serious.

It does show the power of concerted scare campaigns, though.

And this is an odd addendum, Mollydukes:

>>Have you thought about this in respect to the idea (or fact?) that muslims will out-breed us?<<

How does that sit with your population-reduction ideas? Are you suggesting that this is another reason to refrain from breeding?

Most bizarre.

We've reached a neat level in insult-trading, though.

>>In your opinion Salt wiped the floor with him.
Maybe that is what you wanted to think?<<

Or maybe, that is what you wanted to think that Cheryl wanted to think.

Love it.

Sad Pericles...? WHY would you bring children into the world when it's all about to collapse around your ears? I know several very happy childless couples. Reproduction is over rated IMHO, and it is NOT a god given right in view of what the future holds.

I agree with you about the insults though... this is the only forum I [occasionally] participate in where this occurs. Go figure.

No Sarnian,

The poet/anti-pop lost the audience when he started talking about cutting the population. It was obvious to all and sundry that the man had mixed motivations: to roll back capitalism and cut the population. He also didn't understand how the modern economy worked.

While I am not a great fan of Salt, in this case, I'm afraid it was a demolition job. But I gave the poet anti-pop kudos for having a crack.

I too am not so sure about the validity, replication or even usefulness of terms such as Boomer, Gen X, Y or Millenial. I can't see much difference between them except when I look at them through the prism of consumer goods or purchasing habits.

Kids will be kids, teens will be teens and old boomers like me will whine that the good old days were really GREAT - except for the war in Vietnam, the threat of nuclear holocaust, the blandness of Australian cultural life, etc.

I simply can't or won't categorise people because they were born in a certain decade. To do so is akin to believing in horoscopes. There might be 'tendancies' for people to behave like this or that but one needs to look at life cycles rather than short skips and jumps.

My daughter (who is now 29) also maintain through her late teens into her early twenties that she had no inclination to have children. but life goes on and now she is in a stable loving relationship...hey presto!, she now desires to have a family.

Those whose children are still fairly young may find that they have a change of heart as they grow older and their perspective alters.

The decision as to whether to have children or not may no longer be a personal decision before long. Latest news is that all natural resources are in such a state of decline that, in order to avert total disaster in the form of ecosystem collapse or famine, we may need to reduce population rapidly by means of a one-child policy everywhere. Some credible analysts say the only long-term population that the world can sustain is 100 million. That will require a one-child policy for a century at least. There are difficult times ahead - Fiona Heinrichs recognises this but Bernard Salt does not.

Wallumi.
Jules Verne was dreaming of manned powered flight in the 1860's, 40 years later his dream came true.
In 1901 H.G Wells was dreaming of a flight to the moon, 60 years later his dream came true.
In 1983 William Gibson was fantasising about the internet and virtual reality, his fantasies have become reality.
There are a LOT of White people who want to help the people of the Third world, they dream big dreams about it all the time.
See we overcame scarcity about 10,000 years ago, now we are motivated solely by the desire to make the world a better place.
The people who look like us but have no loyalty to us run amok, turning things upside down wherever they go, that's unnatural, they're what we call "Pink Rabbits".
You have all your little Brown, Black, White,and Asian Rabbits...then these psycho Pink ones who are trying to wipe us all out...they're Pink because that's a really unnatural colour for a Rabbit.

Today I read an amusing article about a Swedish guy who was trying to build a little nuclear reactor in his kitchen, the amazing thing was he didn't contaminate his apartment with radioactive material.
http://www.thelocal.se/35306/20110802/
If you've got White folks building aircraft in their bicycle workshops and trying to set off nuclear reactions in their kitchens....well you're not dealing with "normal" human beings, we're something special.
White people will find a way to provide a life of plenty for all.

To the people who seem so pleased about their lack of Grandchildren, that's a selfish stand to take...think of all the Africans those kids could support.
What the world needs is more White babies not less, who is going to pay taxes to support all those refugees in their old age?.

Popnperish,

Are you sure they have said 100 million? If so, how long-term are we talking? According to estimates, our world has had a population of 100 million or more for over 2,500 years:

http://worldhistorysite.com/population.html
http://www.scottmanning.com/content/year-by-year-world-population-estimates/

Now, to reduce our population to 100 million in a century seems like an optimistic timeframe (or a remarkably pessimistic one, alternatively). Playing with the following calculator:
http://www.metamorphosisalpha.com/ias/population.php
the magic number (based on a current world population of 6.945 billion, close enough to the US government's estimate) is a population growth rate of -0.041520889. That is, an annual decline of 4.1520889%. Even then, we end up with 3 over quota, at 100,000,003 people on the planet.

I don't know that a one child policy could produce such results. Poorly implemented though it has been, China's one child policy only managed to reduce the fertility rate to about 1.5 children per woman (http://www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/society/one-child-policy/). We might have to do some culling.

Popnperish
White people treat self sufficiency and alternative energy as a hobby.
White people make bicycle powered televisons, composting toilets and permaculture gardens just for fun, or just to see if they can do it.
When there was a water "crisis" a few years ago White people were bragging to each other about how they were only showering every second day and only flushing their toilets when the pong became too much.
Only white people treat environmental sustainability as a hobby or a game, because we "don't do scarcity", we're the creative race who can turn sunlight into electricity and sand into glass.
If you're living amongst people who can turn sand into glass just for something to do, you're never going to go hungry.

Africans and Chinese and Indians don't need oil and get by on scant resources as it is, are they going to suffer?
Nope
Africans don't need Aircon and Landcruisers, if they did they'd have invented them.

So nobody is going to suffer from resource scarcity. Worst case scenario:White people will still have all their technology, we'll live in sustainable and selff sufficient communities while the others will still be living the way they do now or they'll go back to farming and herding.

Jay...... Africans may not need "Aircon and Landcruisers", but they sure as hell need FOOD! And your assertion that "Africans and Chinese and Indians don't need oil" is only half right, because the latter two sure use their share. China is now the world's second consumer of oil and the biggest consumer of coal. China is also now a nett importer of food. They are losing topsoil at such an alarming rate that they are securing farmland all over the world, even here in Australia.

As our ability to grow our own food becomes really hard (Australia is on target to be 100% out of oil by 2020, and I remind you that 90% of supermarket food calories come from fossil fools), exactly how will we send aid to Africa?

And I can tell you, we here do NOT treat sustainability as a hobby... it's a full time job.

Jay Of Melbourne:
You would have gone down well in 1930s Germany.
I wonder why there is wide spread starvation in parts of Africa right now when: “Africans and Chinese and Indians don't need oil and get by on scant resources as it is, are they going to suffer? Nope”

I think that as well as being a white racist; you are also a shade blind.

Fiona Heinrichs s a brilliant, insightful person who is telling it like it really is and not the way some Dinosaurs would like it to be.

Pericles,
hypocrite refers to Salt's declamation of people who fail to return his emails but him not bothering to reply to Fiona's.
Disingenuous evasion refers to his pretense toward being some sort of scholar or learned authority toward the matters he evangelises upon when in fact he has no scholarly intent whatsoever toward properly testing his views.

You can invent all sorts of possibilities for his silence toward Fiona's eminently relevant and reasonable request. His considerable investment in his brand of distributed snake-oil very clearly points to the shortest odds option. Why would he want a public audit of its content?

Jay

Leonardo da Vinci designed a helicopter over 500 years ago.
The working machine was finally realised over 400 years later. Oil made this event possible.

When oil is no longer available for such frivolities, the helicopter will return to the drawing board and to the world of dreams. As will so many things that you seem to hang your apparently egotistical hat upon. Including, most gravely, much of our food supply. Plenty of white rabbits though to tuck into. Yum! They taste so creative

For those who are pro growth why not look here:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
for those of us who see the absurdity of continuous growth paradigms this is also a useful link - seems to make the likes of Salt an irrelevancy condemned to be not even a footnote in history - the only problem is that if his views continue to hold sway he may take the rest of us with him.

Sarnian.
In your opinion I'm a Racist, you're just saying that because I'm White, anti Racism is just a code word for Anti White.
Anyone else can spruik the virtues of their people but if I point out some truth about my people, the White people, namely that most of us are motivated to make the world a better place....then you say I'm a Naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
Even the silly people who don't want to have kids are doing so to make the world a better place...LOL even Racial suicide is justified as altruism ....crazy White people.

As I said, why do you think the petro Bandits and global finance crime families are so scared of White Pride?
Why does their media blare Nazi!, NAZI!, NAZIIIIIEEE! 24 hours a day?
Because White Pride might lead to White people saying "Screw them, let's just get this thing done" and implementing grass roots solutions to problems such as fossil fuel dependency and global famine.
If some Swedish guy is cooking up a little nuclear fission with his George Foreman Griddle then you can be sure that there's some White kid in his garage working on Telsa coils or spinning plasmas...just to see if he can do it.

BTW
THEY, the Globalist Mafia caused the problems in Africa today, here's a precis from a Kenyan commentator:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25871

It's a good tactic, blame White people for your crimes and demand that they pay your victims compensation in the form of aid.....which you then steal.

Wallumi.
Yes, of course, the people who invented helicopters didn't pass any of that ingenuity to their descendants... that never happens to White people.
So, all this talk of making fuel from Bacteria and pond slime is just so much hot air, just White people running their mouths?

What happens if we do run out of oil to power those copters?
Oh well, it's back to solar powered Zeppelins, Nuclear Fusion and supersonic planes running on liquid hydrogen I suppose....the horror, however will we cope.

C'mon guys this is ridiculous, we're not going to fail, this doomsday nonsense is just part of the closed system of petro oligarchy, you can't defeat it by playing along.
For a bunch of people supposedly dedicated to saving the planet you're a pretty grim spectacle.
I we met at a barbecue I'd tousle your hair, give you a friendly punch on the arm and say "Maaaaate...Get over it!".

Still, If you have to indulge in this fantasy of "levelling" White ingenuity by taking an "Only by defeating ourselves can we win!" position then I suppose we can extend you the courtesy of at least humouring you.
The solutions will come in spite your discomfort over the fact that Race is real and it matters.

"Only by defeating ourselves can we win!" is not the issue... we won't be defeating ourselves, we will simply run out of fuel. Hydrogen, BTW, is not a fuel. Point me to hydrogen mines. And in any case you have clearly not read (or understood?) the "do the math" website someone else cited earlier.

I don't understand why so few people can understand that there are limits to growth. What is so hard to understand?

Humanity's greatest shortcoming is its inability to understand the exponential function.... Pr Albert Bartlett.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

I understand your points of view perfectly, I just don't accept them.
I don't see the quest for knowledge as having an end point, that's closed system thinking, think wide sky.
Fact:White people don't do scarcity, we don't run out of resources and we don't starve.
When the next energy source is rolled out it'll already be obsolete, when we get to hear about these things they're already over with.

Ditto the current closed system in which we live, the fact that all over the world people of all races are beginning to say that the petro oligarchy is done for means that it's well over with, they've had it, kaput, c'est fini.

We're heading toward endgame in somebody's world, but it's not ours, we're going to survive and we're going to get presents.
Maybe you'll wake up one morning and a big light bulb will have gone on over Africa and they'll start steaming ahead, or some Black Atilla will sweep across the continent and unify it into a superpower.
Always be ready to amazed.

Coorangreeny writes "Hydrogen, BTW, is not a fuel".

Well Coorangreeny, you'd better sit down because this might come as a bit of a surprise.

Try this little bit of text lifted out of the old Wikipedia - Hydrogen fuel is: "An ecologically-friendly fuel which uses electrochemical cells or combusts in internal engines to power vehicles and electric devices. It is also used in the propulsion of spacecraft and can potentially be mass produced and commercialized for passenger vehicles and aircraft".

Shocking, isn't it?

And BTW, the major by-product of combustion of this (not) fuel, is water vapour! Yep, everyday ordinary simple water vapour. But wait, that's not the end of the horror - water vapour is THE major predominant greenhouse gas! Ergo, if you're a true greeny - and you'd better listen up here too Gen Y - then naturally, that would make it a nasty pollutant along with that other horrid stuff, carbon dioxide.

Who would ever have thought that those lovely puffy white clouds in the sky were really filthy pollution like carbon dioxide?

What can you say?

So much for those scientific "the science is settled" brigade.

It really does makes you wonder.

voxUnius yes it does make you wonder. It makes me wonder how the human race has ever got this far.
Yes water vapour is a greenhouse gas but unlike C02 and methane it does not hang around for centuries. It is also quite good at reflecting the sun's heat back into outer space so its impact as a green house gas is quite minimal.
As for hydrogen being a fuel yes it is a fuel but with our current technology to convert it into a safe usable fuel we need to use some rare earth's to act as a catalyst this in turn means that the idea of a switch to hydrogen technology is unlikely to get us out of the woods.
Until we face up to the reality that a business as usual approach is not going to work then all we have is doomsday scenarios - however, an approach that enables us to make the transition to a low energy zero carbon world does offer some hope for the future but perhaps too many of us have been conceived in the shallow end of the gene pool.

There is also the unfortunate fact, that it takes more energy to produce hydrogen than you finish up with, so why bother?

It is a non-starter in the vehicle propulsion stakes, as everyone knows. Well maybe not quite everyone.
Stay in after school the slow learners.

Whilst hydrogen is a fuel, it is not an energy source. It is an energy carrier. On this planet it has to be produced rather than simply tapped and then consumed. That process consumes a significant proportion of the energy available from the resultant fuel. That's a serious problem very often underestimated by optimistic folk who think we'll just move onto a new energy platform as oil runs out.

Also hydrogen has all sorts of other practical, energy consuming problems like being enormously corrosive, needing incredible pressurisation to liquid form which creates really low storage temperatures and containment problems. As a gas it requires large storage volume per unit of energy. And its molecularly really small making it tend to leak out everywhere, a behavior that is further assisted by its corrosive effect.

And so on.
Don't hold your breath waiting for the hydrogen economy to arrive.

So basically you guys want to fail, you're investing in our failure.
This is where your White guilt and lack of self esteem have lead you.
I could throw out any number of alternatives, Zero Point Energy, Nuclear Fusion etc but you'd just say NO! WE MUST FAIL! WE HAVE TO FAIL OR ELSE WE"LL BE SEEN AS RACISTS!
Down on your knees self hating Whites! An Inferiority complex is not a soul and guilt is a useless emotion.
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/1prayer1_t607.jpeg

NB: This is a picture of a woman begging forgiveness for slavery and segregation, you guys might as well go and start begging for Africans forgiveness because you're "Hope deniers" and you're going to let them starve.... chop chop, you have a lot of hands to clasp.
BTW, Third worlders are the the world's premier White Supremacists, go and ask the kids sitting in the dust on the Kenyan border, waiting for the Hercules to land.