The author writes as though it will all go on loverly.
Nowhere in his article does he mention energy.
It is clear that he simply does not understand that the population will be limited by energy availability.
The world population climbed to its present level on the availability of cheap oil and coal.
Its population will decrease on the depletion of oil and coal and will
not give a damn about authors who do not understand the function of
energy in our civilisation.
We are already at zero growth and you may have noticed how in Europe
and the US they are all chewing their fingernails looking for growth.

Australia will have very little growth for a while, but sooner or
later we will find ourselves limited directly and indirectly by world
depletion of energy sources, and the more we export the sooner it will be.
Political population parties may well only be spectators in the fall of world population.

From about now. +- a few years, the depletion of old fields will
overwhelm new finds and new sources. This will signal a fall in world
food production and via women's malnutrition a fall in fertility.

Humans are not rabbits, Cheryl, but given the right circumstances,
they breed and live like rabbits. If you want overcrowding, go
and live in Bangaladesh or Rwanda. They bred like rabbits there
and we can see how they landed up.

Daffy Duck
You say “Implicit in this essay is the presumption that the human population can keep on increasing for forever and a day.” Wrong. Explicit in this essay is that population levels have stabilised or are stabilising on every continent except Africa.

No draconian measures are needed to slow or reverse population growth, because it’s already happening. And while there may be an overpopulation problem in parts of the world, there isn’t one here, nor is there likely to be at any realistic population growth rate over the next few decades.

Bazz
You say energy is the factor that will limit population growth. Makes a change from food and water. Are you aware how much energy Australia has – coal, conventional gas and unconventional gas, as well as uranium and renewable options?

Yabby
Australians are not breeding like rabbits; in fact, our current fertility rate is already below the replacement rate. So why should be introducing policies to discourage people from having babies

<So if you have an open fire, drive a six-cylinder car and have a high power bill, you’re in line for a visit from the eco-fascist police.>
That’s ok, if they hit those with the biggest footprint first, they won’t get to the rest of us for ages!

This article is an impressive rant indeed—and I’m glad the baddies are right-wingers for a change—though it's a bit short on evidence:
<Their ‘meta’ thinking – of rolling psychology, sociology, biology, climate analysis, Marxist economics and mathematics in to one discipline to explain everything - is an embarrassing nonsense> Who are “they”? References please? And can the author name one government that is acting or is planning to act on the anti-pop agenda?
It's all talk and nothing will come of it.

<Humans create schools, plant crops on terraces, make their own fertilizer and grow food to ensure survival. Humans have memory, technics and planning skills to maximize crop productivity>
So why shouldn’t they also husband their resources and live sustainably?
Since I gather you’re in favour of population growth, may I ask why? Isn’t 7 billion and counting life enough? Does increasing the number increase the quality of human life?
What the author and all these population-growth enthusiasts ought to make clear at the outset is that they’re economic fundamentalists. Economic growth is the answer to all our ills; indeed that humanity can only endure in a state of perpetual economic growth, that is by keeping capitalists prosperous.

*And while there may be an overpopulation problem in parts of the world, there isn’t one here*

Well no Rhian, but its a global problem. All it needs is for an
entrepreneur like me to charter a few old sheep ships and bring
asylum seekers here by the hundreds of thousands, direct from Africa
and the ME and there is not a thing that you could do about it.

Fact is that the global population keeps increasing by about a
quarter of a million per day and they will all go somewhere. As
things become more overcrowded elsewhere, we'll be taking our
ever increasing share, like it or not.

Rhian said;
because it’s already happening.

Surprise, surprise and so is cheap energy depleting.
What a coincidence !
There will probably be 1/2 a generation lag.

You also said;
Makes a change from food and water.

Exactly, food requires large lumps of energy, and the cost of
fertilisers made from oil and gas and the tilling, harvesting and
transport of food are all oil based, and in the subsidence farm
areas they cannot afford the fertilisers.

Water is another problem, but often requires pumping and that requires
lots of energy.

If and when we slow down to living off human labour, or some animal
energy, our food and our population will be as it was in the middle ages.
With any sort of luck we will get ourselves organised to have a large
amount of electrical energy to maintain a reasonable industrial
level that may provide us with enough energy to stabilise the world
population around two or three billion.

Don't worry Cheryl, it will happen faster than any political party
could get its programs off the ground even if they got elected.
It does not matter how dire any problem is the politicians have
already shown that they are unable to act on any major threat to
which it means telling the public bad news.