As a member of SPGN I would like to thank the author for drawing the attention of the OLO readership to our party. If readers go to our website http://stoppopulationgrowthnow.com/ they will see for themselves what we stand for. Clearly we are seen as a threat by the ALP for since we made clear that we are planning to ru n candidates in seats where they have run roughshod over the local communities by allowing development that favours no-one other than the developers they have changed the rules for party registration. Making it extremely difficult for us to gain registration. (Initially the reason was given on the groounds that people like Pauline Hanson made gained a financial benefit by running as a candidate - odd argument since there are no public funds given to parties here in SA.)

So if you agree that filling Australia to overflowing is a problem, if you would like to see SPGN on your ballot paper why not join us?

There are no flies on Baygon. He's like the Monty Python knight on the bridge who wants to fight even though he's had his hands and legs cut off.

I doubt the anti-pops will recover from this but I hope they do as it gives me an excuse not to do serious work.

I checked the claim that the SPNG would drive population down to 'sustainable levels'. It's on their website. Oh dear.

This is what happens in public debate when an organisation doesn't have all of its 'ducks lined up' and someone goes for the jugular.

Isn't it ironic that BAYGON is a chemical used to exterminate insects.Is it a seething hate of our own humanity that spurs us on to self destruction?

BAYGON makes excellent sense. We can rationally limit our numbers to the earth's capacity to sustain us or we can let the traditional remedies of pestilence, war, famine and death do the job. Either way population will not expand indefinitely, and our numbers will be limited.

No species of life can expand indefinitely. That applies to humans as well as any other species.

Implicit in this essay is the presumption that the human population can keep on increasing for forever and a day.

Such a proposition is obviously completely absurd on a finite planet.

In the weekend paper there was an item re the growing political tensions between India and Pakistan re the damming, and thus control of the major rivers in the Indian sub-continent.

But that poltical tension re access to and the control of water is not limited to India and Pakistan. It is now being felt and dramatized all over the planet. Such WILL be the case and even more so in the near future, including in Africa. And of course here in the land of Oz too.

I agree that public discussion of contentious issues is important, but this article doesn't come close to OLO's past standards. This alarmist and deliberately divisory Dumbbell politics does nothing but provide short term gain to people of a particular political persuasion.

As an environmental biologist, and former state and federal candidate to the (self-destructed) Australian Democrats - and now a proud card carrying member of SPA - who has never been and never will be a member of the Labor party, I would like to suggest the author is suffering from cognitive dissonance.

There are two words that none of us - not even the pro growth economists - can ignore: carrying capacity.