Excellent article - it is high time that we worked out what the actual carrying capacity of Australia is - until we know that how can we responsibly keep on adding more people to the mix. Responsible and successful farmers ensure that their stock numbers are well within the constraints imposed by the carrying capacity of their land; should we not do the same with the human population?

The GFC should have lowered the price of oil but it has remained High. Further, the supply of oil has not increased over the last 5 years even though the price has stayed high. The Peak Oil research appears to have been correct - most of the cheap oil has been burnt.
Michael’s connection between food and oil is so obvious. We may expect upheavals in the years ahead because people become very agitated when hungry.
The worst thing we Australians can do is increase our population. Google 'Stop Population Growth Now'. This party could do with a few more supporters.

Articles like these are what people do when they don't have to work for a living. Oh, and who live in Adelaide. Oh and yes, who believe surveys that tell them that Adelaide is Australia's most liveable city.

For goodness' sake, the industrial revolution happened centuries ago. (Although perhaps more recently in Adelaide, I guess.)

"It is only when farmers produce food surplus to their own needs that some people can give up farming and do something else".

So that's how it happened. Not the other way around - where people in cities built machinery that allowed farmers to produce more, with fewer people?

But even that doesn't justify the glib, sound-bitey "Cities are what people do when they are not growing food". The growth of cities and the food supply that keeps them going have progressed in tandem, over the decades and centuries. The difference today is that the food catchment area is the world, and the trade involved in moving product from A to B, is good for both A and B.

Sure, the time may come when that movement becomes uneconomical. At which point, A will lose income, and have to buy their own food - at a lower price, since they would be unable to afford more. Their economies would contract accordingly, and they'd be significantly poorer.

B, of course, will have to find alternate sources closer to home. This will lead to a revitalized food industry - prices would inevitably increase for a while, but our entrepreneurial spirit will find a way to develop new cultivation and husbandry processes to feed the demand.

At which point, I'm sure a few worthy souls will point out that or previous overseas suppliers are starving, and start exporting food to them.

Q. Where exactly does a city end and farming begin?
A. At the Airport freight terminal ..

In the US people can live in rural areas as their services extend everywhere, which is why they have so many much smaller cities and rural living is common.

Oh yes, and they have infrastructure, roads bridges .. and when the GFC hit, they started work on all the roads and bridges that needed upgrading or rebuilding .. what did we do, ah, I remember now, we hosed it all away building school halls that were not needed, are hardly used and only by a tiny tiny minority of the population.

What genius thought of that .. the treasurer, the PM and his deputy Swan, Rudd and Gillard .. the three stooges

What foresight we have?

Pericles, which part of resource depletion don't you get? I'm sorry, but you seem to be one of the multitude of zombies who get around with their head in the sand. And please don't take that personally. You're not alone.

The population is exploding. An imminent professor or similar said just recently that there is now two births in the world for every one death and to "do the math!" Only a fool could believe that this scenario can go on forever. Perhaps those who do believe in endless growth haven't got children and grandchildren of their own and so have no reason to concern themselves with an over crowded future.

And yes, "the growth of cities and the food to supply that keeps them going have progressed in tandem" but how much longer can that go on, especially without cheap and abundant oil to make that progression possible.

The trouble is, there's no end to this madness no matter how many well thought out articles (like Michael's) are published. We're in population and resource over-shoot and it's too late to end it without immense conflict and pain in the very near future. People continue to breed out of control and will continue to do so while ridiculous schemes such as the baby bonus remain in place and while women in third world countries continue to have no say in how their reproductive organs are used by religious fanatics who use women as commodities.

Amicus, I'd dearly like to know where you got your info about America "started work on all the roads and bridges that needed upgrading or rebuilding .. ", because all the Americans I constantly converse with tell me that America is so broke, it's actually ripping up bitumen roads to turn them back into dirt as it is a cheaper option. AND half the bridges in the US have reached the point where they are officially "unsafe".

This is no surprise, because as we hit Limits to Growth, it becomes ever more difficult to BOTH build new infrastructure AND fix the old...especially when every day there are fewer and fewer resources to do this with.

What a delightful post, Aime.

>>...you seem to be one of the multitude of zombies who get around with their head in the sand. And please don't take that personally.<<

First, may I congratulate you on some very fresh imagery.

The vision of multitudes of zombies, all with their heads in the sand, is a new one for me. I do wonder however how they actually "get around" in that position. I'm sure a competent film director could work that out, but the actual horror element that zombies are intended to engender would, I suspect, be somewhat lacking.

And no, of course I don't take it personally. The very idea.

>>An imminent professor or similar said just recently that there is now two births in the world for every one death and to "do the math!"<<

An "imminent professor", eh?

Well, that's the sort of professor I like. One that is just about to happen.

>>Only a fool could believe that this scenario can go on forever.<<

Absolutely agree.

Every imminent professor understands that exponential growth, if it continues, will eventually fill the entire world with zombies. Even ones with their heads above ground.

But it won't, will it? Growth is already slowing down, even as we speak. And any severe lack of food would slow it down even further, wouldn't it? There's a kind of self-regulating thing that goes on - as I pointed out, the growth of the human population has kept pace with food production for thousands of years.

There's a kind of synergy going on, if you get my drift, between the food and the people. More people, more food. Think about it for a moment, there are fewer starving people in our world of seven billion, than there were when there were only six billion of us. And there weren't exactly piles of uneaten foody substances littered around the place, just waiting for the next billion to appear. Go figure, as they say in all the tackiest movies.

No, Chicken Little, the sky is not about to fall.

And please, don't take that personally.

The article provides insight into one issue associated with cities and their inhabitants - the provision of food. Another issue, relates to the operation and maintenance of the vast amount of infrastructure. Natural forces, such as friction, wind and rain, ensures that all these systems age. The population has to have air, food, water and shelter. The infrastructure has to have materials, electricity and fuels, so long as they are available! A population will survive (outside cities)on the natural income of air, water and some food. The cities will not because the natural capital,including much more than the fossil fuels, is irreversibly running out.

coorangreeny - I go to the US constantly, and drive between a lot of cities because as an "alien" I get tired of the constant random searches at airports, once they discover you are an alien that is.

So I see the work, I see the roads, and I know government folks who all had shovel ready road and bridge plans, as part of their normal course of work, ready to go should they be needed.

So the GFC hit, they were asked what they had ready to go, shovel ready, they got out the plans, selected the top priority ones and got on with it ..

Where on earth do your friends live? The Ozarks, West Virginia?

It is certainly not the hellhole in the US that you seem to think it is, their road system makes us look prehistoric.

Yes they have awesome traffic and peak hour on the DC Beltway is terrible, but then again there's 300 million of them, we struggle to cope with a fraction of that. Mind you they don't convert usable roads to bike tracks, they have reasonable speed limits and don't have revenue cameras everywhere.

Look at Melbourne or Sydney, one accident now on a main road, and it's city gridlock for hours.

But, we do have Julia Gillard Memorial School halls, no idea why, no idea where the money went but there you go.

Amicus Says
“Oh yes, and they have infrastructure, roads bridges .. and when the GFC hit, they started work on all the roads and bridges that needed upgrading or rebuilding ..”

Why then are some States in the US actually ripping up bitumen from roads because they cannot afford to repair them anymore?

From: Brian McGavin, writer and analyst.


Below I give some interesting and generally unreported facts that give important background on many of the failing states regularly in the news. For example, Somalia, Haiti, Iraq, Palestinian Territory and Afghanistan. It also includes Pakistan and Iran.

Despite the near daily news coverage of these countries, critical, underlying issues are almost never mentioned by journalists reporting endless symptoms and predicaments. These issues add a great deal of insight into the key development challenges facing the countries concerned and by implication the policies of countries like the US, UK and Canada, where billions are being spent in aid and military interventions to try and stabilise failing states.

The aim is to give journalists more balance and context to reports. A simple one or two-sentence addition of data gives a far better understanding of the significance of demographics to a country’s geo-political profile, its aid dependency and social and economic future.
(See table below*)

Through 2011 we have seen almost daily coverage of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ and armed conflict. While some underlying factors of high youth unemployment, rising food prices, water shortages and fears of growing Islamic fundamentalism are mentioned, the media has decidedly not focused on the troubling demographic realities the Middle East and other crisis-ridden countries face. Good news coverage is not just about immediate events, but fundamental causal symptoms. Here are some examples.

1) Egypt. Hardly any mention has been made of the large and rapidly growing population of Egypt, its extremely small arable land area of just 3 per cent, food imports of 40 per cent and the total dependence now on food imports and aid to sustain the population.

Egypt’s population almost quadrupled in just 60 years, from 21 million in 1950 to 81 million in 2010 and at its current 1.8 per cent annual increase in population, the population could hit 150 million before 2050, unless the birth rate declines. (UNPD data). Consider the potential for endless and costly food aid and the rapidly growing numbers of unemployed and disaffected young people attracted to violence and extremism.

cont
2) Afghanistan. On December 23, 2009, UK Channel 4 TV news ran a 20-minute lead on selling children and kidnapping people in Afghanistan. The father selling two of his children was portrayed as a ‘victim’ of poverty in being unable to feed or care for his family. The size of his family was not mentioned – but he had a lot of children.

The reporter asked what would happen to the child and was told it was an opportunity for a better education, but no more was asked about the child’s fate. Various ‘experts’ including Joe Klein of the New York Times and the CEO of Oxfam UK were asked for their view. Corruption, poverty and criminality were discussed, but what was not mentioned was the country’s demographic trajectory that would add a great deal of context to the discussion.

The UK Guardian newspaper on 14/9/10 ran a four-page spread on progress in Afghanistan towards meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The prognosis was gloomy, but in all this verbiage, there was just one minor mention of a 'rising population in Afghanistan' as one of several environmental factors that may see the country not being able to produce enough food to feed its people. In fact, several interesting factors were mentioned in the article, but does any of this important information get covered in the almost daily news reports of more coalition troops being flown home in coffins?
Among the largely unreported gems was that remaining forests were being chopped down for firewood; water shortages and contamination was growing, with thousands of hungry people fleeing the countryside to cities - particularly Kabul, which at 5m people is now the fastest growing capital city in the world. It is also one of the only capital cities without a proper sewage system. Yet Coalition forces have spent years and billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in the country without these issues being reported in mainstream media.

He goes on to document the way in which population pressure has generated crisis after crisis in the various international hot spots. So why is that problem continually being debunked by people like Pericles? An article in neuroscience may give part of the answer (Adolphs, K.I.R., The Brain's Rose Coloured Glasses. nature neuroscience 2011. 14(11).) It seems that many of us are wired to deny anything that shakes our optimism in the future - bad things happen to others cannot happen to me seems to be the way some of us are conditioned to think. That same sort of thinking can lead to avoiding uncomfortable conclusions about the causes of unrest or the fact that our cities have moved well beyond any standards of sustainability.
Of course the deniers employ elegant sophistry to bolster their 'intellectual' response which is really the adult equivalent of hiding under the bed clothes.

sarnian "Why then are some States in the US actually ripping up bitumen from roads because they cannot afford to repair them anymore?"

I know you love to knock the US, that's a given and the schadenfreude is palpable, but where are you hearing this stuff?

So you believe they can afford to rip up roads .. which of course takes no labor or cost (sarcasm), rather than repair them?

Think about it, why not just abandon them, why rip them up?

Why spend money they evidently cannot afford?

This is the richest country in the world we're talking about.

Which states?

Are they ripping up old roads, because they have just built brand new really good roads?

Spending money to remove something they cannot afford .. sounds like, like ..

It just sounds like some US hating lefty urban myth

Ever been to the US sarnian?

Great place, wonderful people .. a bit crowded for an Australian, but otherwise same sort of people, trying to get on with things.

They are not stupid, they still rule the world, they are still the most technically advanced people in the world.

Amicus;

Yes I have been to the US.
Ripping up roads is a cheap way to replace it with an easily graded gravel road.
I disagree that the US is the richest country in the World …….. now.

They are not stupid? Some of them are stupid.

They think they still rule the world.

They were the most technically advanced people in the world.

Wonderful people? Yes some of them but certainly not all.

sarnian, says ..

"Why then are some States in the US actually ripping up bitumen from roads because they cannot afford to repair them anymore?"

So they are ripping them out because they cannot repair them, but can afford to rip them out, then they turn them into a different kind of road .. what was I saying about plans and building?

"Ripping up roads is a cheap way to replace it with an easily graded gravel road"

Rubbish, they might be ripping them out, to upgrade them to a different surface, they are not going back to gravel roads, what a fantasy.

Your stories get more and more convoluted with each telling.

Sure some are stupid, like here. Some are blinded by their hatred of others, like here .. eh?

My thanks to Michael for the perfect opportunity to plug my own little hobby:
http://nakedhydroponics.com

Flying over the rural areas of our country, one should note the meandering avenues of greenery, never very much wider than the rivers they flank. As Michael points out, cities are now a much more reliable source of water for agriculture than our rivers are. Indeed, in the south east areas of Queensland, agriculture often goes begging, as water supplies are usurped to water urban lawns.
And the water from the cities is already enriched with lots of valuable fertiliser.
It's absolutely insane that agriculture is made to compete with cities for water, when the one lot can serve both, and better.

An article on a return to gravel roads in the USA:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-02-03-gravel-roads_N.htm

and a longer article on the same topic:

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/52300

My thanks to Michael for the links to the articles on ripping up asphalt roads.
I suppose it would be too much to expect an apology from Amicus?

579, michaelinadelaide - wow, 100 miles, converted in the outback nowhere of of some northeastern states, of roads with less than 200 cars likely to travel on them.

100 miles in 55,560 MILLION miles of US roads, is oh jeez, it is so small you need exponents to express it.

Something like 0.00000002%

Being catastropharians of course, that's the end of US civilization and hence, it's all over! (sarcasm)

Why are you guys so inclined to hysteric exaggeration?

Sarnian your comments earlier alluded to the US being is such a disastrous state that they were ripping out roads .. when I said the Americans were building.

Now it turns out some almost unused back roads beyond nowhere were actually sealed! The local councils, they are pulling some of them out .. why one county recently converted 3 miles of road .. aaaargh! end of the world! (We wouldn't even seal roads like that, they are so advanced, so civilised they do .. now it seems, due to them almost never being used, they have decided to convert a few, good for them, looking after ratepayers money)

This is like saying Australia is converting all roads to bike tracks because they have a whacko eco mayor in Sydney who has converted a couple of little used roads to bike paths .. but to get to the level of exaggeration you use, would take way more than that.

Michael, thanks, you underline my case, this is a small rural thing in out of the way places, the rest of the US is improving their roads so that people and transport can move around. The only place it is reported is the lefty USA Today, in April of 2010 (nothing recent?) and an eco whacko site .. yep big news guys!

Hey we should have a peak asphalt tax for you guys, I know it would feel good wouldn't it .. all that guilt, the world ending and all .. a nice big new tax will make it all better .. sheesh!

Sarnian not 579 .. sorry 579

Sarnian sorry
Posted by Amicus, Saturday, 12 November 2011 9:11:41 AM

OK I accept your apology.

I recently covered 74Km on a newly ripped up, ex bitumen, gravel road, into Tenterfield.

But hay, that only the hicks up there. Too far from the great metropolis of Sydney to matter.

Good article. Most people have little concept of what it takes for cities to exist.

There is a federally registered political party tackling this: STABLE POPULATION PARTY

www.PopulationParty.com