An excellent analogy Ian. Indeed, population should be there as one of the big four issues to handle. Good to hear that Jeffrey Sachs had made an impassioned speech at Rio+20 about how it had been left out of the discussions there, that population needed to go beyond women's rights and that we needed to talk about population growth and numbers. There will be a big difference between having 8 rather than 10 billion people. We can't feed the latter sustainably - we might just be able to with 8 though even that will be difficult. And yes, we have to break down the silos between the issues because each one impacts on the other. Extracting fossil fuels, particularly unconventional oil, has enormous implications for climate, for instance.

just collect the food that is left on the tables of fast food restuarents and you have plenty to feed the poor. The world is not overpopulated just controlled by greedy people unwilling to share. Among them are corrupt African leaders such as in Zimbawe.

MOst people that carry on about the overpopulation of the planet are like Mr Rudd who claimed that climate change was the world's biggest moral challenge. A load of hot air that is usually an excuse not to look at the moral corruption in man's heart. Its been called Green relgion which really is putried.

Dear runner
You have to do better than that, sorry. The issue is serious and you have to deal with it. It comes down to a balance between resources and population. Yes, food waste is an issue but dealing with it won't necessarily put food in the mouths of those who need it. The sooner we stabilise population then go into decline the better for the planet and for our own ultimate welfare.

'Sustainability' is a myth based on the assumption that people will want to live the same way we do from now till the Sun explodes. Given the changes in human society documented over the last 5000 years or so, that's -- well, let's be kind and say 'unlikely'. I have no idea what my great-grandchildren will be doing in, say, 2112, but I'm pretty sure they won't be getting their fuel or their food or their metals from the same place I do. Why seek to prolong the current way of doing things at the expense of development and discovery that can open up new avenues? Do you think future generations will thank us for condemning them to live in relative poverty by eking out the resources we've been able to find, and blocking their attempts to discover and exploit any others?

The best way to assure the welfare of future generations is to accumulate wealth ourselves and then pass it on to them, not to force them into squalor and then lecture them about living within their means.

Beautifully put, Jon J.

>>The best way to assure the welfare of future generations is to accumulate wealth ourselves and then pass it on to them, not to force them into squalor and then lecture them about living within their means.<<

I dips me lid.

Nicely put JJ.

"We have the knowledge, we have the global management capabilities, and we have to make it work. We only have one planet. We therefore cannot afford to fail."

One wonders whether the author is confusing knowledge with green propaganda?

Do the Greens have the knowledge regarding anthropogenic global warming? If the answer is yes, let them table the empirical scientific evidence that proves the hypothesis that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are the driver of dangerous global warming.

With regard to global management, as former senator Bob Brown indicated, the Greens have the ambition to form one world government and assume total control of the planet. Who said totalitarianism was dead?

Hi Popnperish,

You may be onto something very fundamental. And it is almost self-evident that there are two ways to deal with this urgent issue:

(1) sterilise a proportion of young people, perhaps a tenth [but see (2) below], say around their 18th birthday. Those to be sterilised could be chosen by lot.

(2) a similar proportion of larger and fatter young people could also be chosen, again by lot, for community consumption. At eighteen, they would be in their prime. They should have the choice of being either eaten by other Australians or processed and shipped to Third World countries. This could relieve problems associated with the importation of meat products, as well as varying our national diet. Win-win-win !

In these ways, the effective birth-rate could be consistently reduced - before people became fertile - by about a fifth, well below replacement rate, so gradually the overall population will decline over the next couple of centuries, in a fairly smooth and socially non-disruptive way.

Young Greens should be encouraged to volunteer for this importantly historic service to mankind. Be the first in your community, Popnperish !

Cheers,

Joe

Dear Joe/Loudmouth
Well, it's an interesting idea and maybe better than everyone dying a slow and painful death from starvation or malnutrition-related disease. But it's on a par in the altruistic stakes with JonJ, Cheryl and Pericles who only want to act in the interests of their own descendants and to hell with the wider community.
Much better all round if we acknowledged limits to growth that have been set by the biosphere, both with respect to availability of resources and also with the capacity of the atmosphere, earth and oceans to absorb our wastes. Once we acknowledge those limits, we can accept the need to limit population growth.

It's a modest proposal Loudmouth, but one which I fully support. Who said the Internet wouldn't solve the world's problems?

My proposal to the Green Reichstagg never saw the light of day.

I thought we could provide the feral anti-populationists with long sharp sticks made of cedar and dolphin snout and get them drive the refugee boats back as they tried to land. Of course it would mean them living north of Derby in summer, but the price of eternal fanaticism is no air conditioning. They hate technology anyway.

I sense I am in the presence of genius.

Cheryl
Boy, you're sure raising the bar on sheer nastiness but you've already achieved great heights in that respect on various fora around the place.
For the record, we 'feral, anti-populationists' aren't about to wield any sticks at refugee boats. Rather, we prefer to deal with the problems at source. While many refugees on the boats fulfil the strict definition of refugee by genuinely 'fleeing persecution', most are economic refugees driven out of their countries because their populations grew too large for the resources available to sustain them. If we can 'take the pressure off' by helping these countries stabilise their populations, then we might see less pressure on our shores.

Hi Cheryl,

I hardly think so !

Hi Popnperish,

As you write, "Much better all round if we acknowledged limits to growth that have been set by the biosphere, both with respect to availability of resources and also with the capacity of the atmosphere, earth and oceans to absorb our wastes. Once we acknowledge those limits, we can accept the need to limit population growth."

Yes, but aren't there more humane ways than Cheryl's proposals or mine ? Yes, I think so - the key factor to bringing down the birth rate in most western countries was their various Education Act, by which it was compulsory for children to attend school from five or six until they were twelve or fourteen, thereby rendering them no longer an economic asset but actually a cost during those years - with the bonus that they were, by definition, educated.

And the key factor these days is to ensure that as many women as possible around the world get highly educated, so that they not only can make their own choices but, as experience suggests, they delay having children, have fewer children or choose to have none, and are far more economically productive into the bargain.

Population reduction is, as we may belatedly realise, is something which needs to be handled very carefully. It would be too easy - and too late - to discover way down the track that various population-reduction mechanisms (all freely chosen) have reduced the number of young working tax-payers below levels sufficient to comfortably support a rapidly growing older, non-working population.

Effective population reduction, at a rate which does not disrupt this balance between workers and non-workers, may be as slow as 0.01-0.1 % p.a., or 0.3 - 3 % per generation. Say, 1-10 % per century.

As work becomes less physically onerous, governments could tinker with the notion of raising the retirement age, at least for those in fairly cushy jobs like public servants (and conversely lower it for all working women, and for physical workers).

[TBC]

*I dips me lid.*

Which might just make you a bit of a hypocrite Pericles, if you are
having wild sex with plenty of family planning, as otherwise you
could not feed all the little blighters, but can't see the need to give
others the same choice.

[contd]

The upshot, Popnperish, is that population reduction may on the one hand

* require a sort of equalisation of educational opportunity around the world, and therefore a great deal of positive social change, especially in regard to the rights of women and the overthrow of many abhorrent cultural practices,

and on the other,

* it needs to proceed at a very slow pace, once world populations have been stabilised over the next century, to avoid the next generations of Deep Greens re-inventing the Solent Green solution.

Dropping the population back a few per cent per century may be the most painless way to bring about what you want, but only if it could be managed without interfering with anybody's equal rights to decent lives.

But of course, if you want something of a quick-fix, or quicker fix, then my suggestions still stand. Be the first !

Cheers,

Joe

Well said, Popnperish. With no vision re the stabilisation of population Rio and all other environment conferences are a waste of time. As Paul Ehrlich said: "Whatever your cause, it's a lost cause without population control".
Yes of course we need other reforms as well, though it would help to group them into three main ones (with population stabilisation as the first of the Steve Jobs' four). But without a stable population we're just pushing gravel uphill.

So Popnperish & Lady Jane, how do you propose to bring about this New Utopia ? How fast are you contemplating ? Who is to be sacrificed, other than your good (and so valuable) selves, of course ?

I've just been cogitating on the possibility that Leninism was a useful precursor to Fascism and especially Nazism - that it provided the rationale for the elimination of undesirables in both societies - well, in any society actually. A timeless principle, and perhaps a necessary corollary of all Utopias:

'If only we could get rid of [insert out-group here] ....

So who are YOUR 'undesirables' ? How do you propose to eliminate them ?

For the Common Good, of course :)

Cheers,

Joe

We can plan, we can recycle, we can come up with myriad ideas, all of which may assist.
Population control, is really only possible, when all females become educated demographic?
Micro loans financed by a tinsy winsy Tobin tax, will pay for the proposal?
Or, we could do what some seem to be suggesting? Deny the poorest communities both preventative health medicine and food aid?
However, we really do owe our current first world nation status, to our immense mineral wealth, which mostly currently prospers foreigners; and, will eventually run out.
Some of it as soon as 30 years from now?
So, on the driest inhabited continent on Earth, we have no guarantee of continuing prosperity. And indeed, if current trends continue, we may well join the least prosperous nations
No, on reflection, I think we'd all be safer, if we simply concentrated on educating the world's women.
We need to recycle everything! We need to stop wasting our waste, or sending it to land fill, where it can then add to climate change, with methane emission.
One unit of methane, equates to 21 units of carbon.
We need to convert all our economies to non carbon polluting ones! The best solutions will walk out the door.
Our world is threatened by real happening now carbon pollution, rather than hypothetical nuclear Armageddon.
We need to decentralise, given city dwellers produce 2.5 times the carbon of their country cousins.
But most of all, we need all those who know all the reasons we can't succeed, to get out of the way.
[ Any opportunity to convert to much lower emission lower cost fuel, as an interim alternative, must be taken.]
Ditto those who don't/won't believe, like the super rich/ultra-privileged, we can no longer grow our economies based on an ever increasing population/exploitation model!
But particularly, when simply ending poverty in all its forms and guises, will work far better at growing both the economy and wealth creation opportunities!
Even more so, if recycling absolutely everything is part and parcel of any successful future economy! Rhrosty.

popnperish

'The issue is serious and you have to deal with it. It comes down to a balance between resources and population.'

Just about all the earths problems boil down to moral issues which excludes the UN or any other world body from being able to deal with it. Have you not read of the data manipulation and lies by the IPCC, have you not heard of UN representatives raping woman in Africa. Teaching kids and modelling generosity, self control and love will do a billion times more than love feasts such as CopenHagen and Rio.

You might genuinely believe that we are overpopulated or heading that way but up to now the evidence does not confirm this and even if it did man is incapable of solving greed, lust and pride. The hypocrites at Rio confirm this.

Demographers generally don't get concerned unless the fertility rate goes below 1.5, that is, you don't want population to decline faster than about 1% annually, assuming that you are overpopulated and want to decrease it. Countries would only consider a one child policy if they were so overpopulated that they would be facing collapse just as a result of demographic momentum and wearing the problems of fast decline is a lesser evil. We coped, albeit not well, with more than 2% population growth in 2008, with all the additional need for infrastructure. It is not clear why Loudmouth thinks rates of decline need to be so low. With a stable age structure, the dependency ratio would actually be no worse than in the 1960s. We would have more old people but relatively fewer children, who can also be very expensive. Giving a child a year's education in a public school can cost $10,000 to $12,000 a year or more.

https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/media/downloads/about-us/statistics-and-research/key-statistics-and-reports/financial-information/education-cost.pdf

If there were less age discrimination, a lot of older people could and would go on working for longer, at least part-time.

I agree with Loudmouth about his solutions, compulsory education for children (and I would add enforcement of child labour laws) and education, civil rights, and economic opportunities for women, as well as access to family planning. People also need to organise income support, perhaps on the local level, as in early modern England, for disabled and elderly people who end up without a son to support them.

Unfortunately, people have to be willing to change cultural patterns that have become dysfunctional. The traditional way for people to deal with overpopulation was to start killing each other. There is a map in Prof. E. O. Wilson's article in the latest Discover magazine. It shows archaeologists' estimates of sustained death rates as a result of warfare in different societies. 20% and 30% rates were common, and there was one as high as 46%. The comparable figure for our bloody 20th century was less than 3%, making it look like a happy multicultural picnic by comparison.

*The traditional way for people to deal with overpopulation was to start killing each other.*

That is just part of it, Divergence. Yes people will fight over
resources which become scarcer, as we saw in say Rwanda, when the
machetes came out. But disease and starvation have been part of
natural population regulation of just about all species. The very
role of parents, is to provide food for the offspring.

What we are doing in places like Africa is basically establishing
human feedlots and then we are amazed when they can't feed all the
offspring created, whilst denying them family planning.

We in the West feel smug about all this, as of course we have choices,
so sensibly we choose to have 2-3 kids. Yet we deny these very choices
to women in the third world and then are amazed when they
have sex and keep popping them out like rabbits. Just like we used
to do, before the advent of the pill.

Its all very well to say that women need education, but they also
need the means for family planning, as many simply don't have the
resources. When you live on a dollar a day, survival is the issue,
not fancy western pills etc.

As long as people have sex without contraception, they will keep
popping out far more children then they want or can feed. Nothing
will change. Why not at least give these people a choice?

There is little doubt that the world is over populated. Especially those countries that are suject to famine. There is a dire need to stableize population and we had better start soon.

For those posters on this thread that are not familiar with the story of birthrates in Iran, I suggest you google birthrates or family planning in Iran.

Iran lowered their birthrate from 6.5 per woman to 1.7 per woman by education in family planning and provision of the means. No need for draconian methods. If Iran can do it there is no reason why similar cannot be achieved elsewhere.

That is what needs to be followed and beginning with the high birthrate countries and those subject to famine.

It was not that long ago, 1958-62, that the famine in China killed 45-50 million people from starvation. That type of senerio has to be avoided in future.

A meaningless, banal article. What does sustainability mean? That we should limit ourselves to natural process; does that mean we should resort to hunting and gathering.

I see Ehrlich got a guernsey in the discussion; this guy is despicable and he has never been right about anything; none of his predictions have come true yet he is still quoted as though he has some relevance; actually I guess he has since Holdren, Obama's scientific advisor, is a fellow Malthusian and supporter of Ehrlich.

The whole debate about population, which the 'sustainability' nitwits have appropriated as their justification, is that who should make the decision about what the ideal population is; the greens? That would be a joke, a large number of greens think the planet would be better off without humans all together; so the ideal population would be zero.

One of the greatest humans who ever lived was Norman Borlaug, who oversaw developments in agriculture which were based on defeating natural limitations; in doing so he contradicted every one of Ehrlich's vile prognostications about humanity.

The answer to population [what is the question?] is prosperity. When people are satisfied and materially comfortable with their lives they don't have large families because the exigencies of bare survival have been defeated. However the greens want to take away prosperity through limiting energy. It is madness.

The essence of the sustainability position is imposing limits on human initiative, discovery and achievement. It is a small-minded, wretched concept which has been carried along by the AGW scam.

cohenite,
I am a retired farmer and certainly no greenie, I also am an AGW sceptic.

I do not know of any inovative farming practices that will increase present food production, to feed an ever growing population.

Without some effort being put into birth control it is my view that the risk of many dieing from starvation in future is inevitable. I also question the viability of transporting food to millions of peoplethat are in need because they cannot produce enough to feed themselves. Take Aus, for example, we currently export much food but as our population grows there will be less available for export.

In developing countries, there is far greater risk of people dieing of starvation than there is of them being adversly affected by any climate change.

I see it being far better to reduce birthrates in those countries that are over populated and subject to famine.

Hi Banjo; you say:

"I do not know of any inovative farming practices that will increase present food production, to feed an ever growing population."

Google Norman Borlaug; watch this [this is the 1st part of 3]:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgqn56_TKKA&feature=channel_page

Consider GM.

And most impostantly consider what I said about prosperity. If people are well off they will not breed [with the exception of religious interdiction]; the greens are actively oppressing humanity's prosperity; this is plain; so the irony is this notion of sustainability and concern about population will be defeated by green ideology which, by preventing prosperity, will cause unsustainable increases in population

*If people are well off they will not breed*

Not quite correct, Cohenite. People will have sex, no matter what
their income and if people have sex without any form of family
planning, they will land up producing far more children than they
ever wanted.

Note the dramatic drop in birth rates, when women have been given
a choice, as in Thailand, or Iran or the West. Note the hundreds
of thousands of women who die in the third world from backyard
abortions, because they are desperate and don't have choices about
the matter. Note the "unmet need" identified in large parts of
the third world, women who don't use family planning, as they are not
given the option and can't afford to pay money themselves.

You are never going to stop people having sex as the Catholic Church
attempts to do. Result is millions of unwanted children that their
parents cannot feed or educate. The West's solution is to feed them
all with boatloads of food, creating even more hungry children.

So the solution is pretty straight forward really. Give all women,
rich or poor, a choice about how many children that they want to
have.

So many in the West simply don't understand this basic problem. I saw
a documentary some time ago, a British journalist went into the
backblocks of Nigeria to do a story. She was completely blown away
by a whole lot of women who approached her, trying to give her
their babies. They simply could not cope with them all and had never
been given a choice in the matter, unlike say Mrs Cohenite

Did you read what I wrote Yabby?

I said when people are well off they do not breed as much and then you say I'm wrong and provide examples of people being in poverty who breed a lot!?

I also mentioned religious influence; this influence is pernicious in that it can both stop prosperity being equally distributed, as in Islamic nations, which results in high birth rates; and it can also add to poverty by suppressing women's rights as in Islamic countries which also contributes to high birth rates.

So, let me spell it out; the greens will take away both prosperity and suppress individual rights; how will that not increase the birth rate?

Cohenite,

I am as big admirer of Norman Borlaug as you are, but he recognised that his efforts were only buying time. This is from his 1970 Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

"It is true that the tide of the battle against hunger has changed for the better during the past three years. But tides have a way of flowing and then ebbing again. We may be at high tide now, but ebb tide could soon set in if we become complacent and relax our efforts. For we are dealing with two opposing forces, the scientific power of food production and the biologic power of human reproduction. Man has made amazing progress recently in his potential mastery of these two contending powers. Science, invention, and technology have given him materials and methods for increasing his food supplies substantially and sometimes spectacularly, as I hope to prove tomorrow in my first address as a newly decorated and dedicated Nobel Laureate. Man also has acquired the means to reduce the rate of human reproduction effectively and humanely. He is using his powers for increasing the rate and amount of food production. But he is not yet using adequately his potential for decreasing the rate of human reproduction. The result is that the rate of population increase exceeds the rate of increase in food production in some areas.

There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort. Fighting alone, they may win temporary skirmishes, but united they can win a decisive and lasting victory to provide food and other amenities of a progressive civilization for the benefit of all mankind.

Then, indeed, Alfred Nobel's efforts to promote Brotherhood between nations and their peoples will become a reality."

cohenite,
I looked up Norman Borlaug. He was certainly a great man. A great scientist who did much to develope improved plant varieties. Here is his obituary. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/business/energy-environment/14borlaug.html?pagewanted=all

I found it very interesting in what he had to say about population and below are a few of the things he had to say,quote

<The Green Revolution eventually came under attack from environmental and social critics who said it had created more difficulties than it had solved. Dr. Borlaug responded that the real problem was not his agricultural techniques, but the runaway population growth that had made them necessary.

“If the world population continues to increase at the same rate, we will destroy the species,” he declared.>

Also from his obit. After World War II, the introduction of basic sanitation in many developing countries caused death rates to plunge, but birth rates were slow to follow. As a result, the global population had exploded, putting immense strain on food supplies.

This confirms what Yabby and I are saying and I do not think we can rely on plant breeding technology to keep abreast of world food demand.

I cannot see any scope to greatly increase Australias food production and remember if it is not profitable farmers will not grow it. So the big question is 'who pays'

He was frustrated throughout his life that governments did not do more to tackle what he called “the population monster” by lowering birth rates.

A great man indeed and we should note his comments.

Oh that terrible 'religous'influence that has set up schools and hospitals all over the world. When are the human haters going to stop their propaganda. Never I suppose until all accept their idiotic dogmas.

I read exactly what you wrote, Cohenite and you miss the point
entirely. The problem is not the greens, the problem is lack of
family planning for those who cannot afford it. Given that we spend
4 billion $ rising on foreign aid, we could easily commit a percentage
of that to help poor women have a choice about family size. They
could do that next week, rather than wait decades until they can,
meantime having even more unwanted children to keep them poor.

Iran and other Islamic countries show that they are indeed prepared
to address the problem, unlike our Vatican, which continues with
its head in the sand approach.

Hospitals eh runner? A gather that a night at St John of God
will cost you around 850 $, if you can afford it. Hardly charitable
and all tax free, AFAIK.

You guys are putting the cart before the horse. Humans breed when they are poor or stressed or religiously inclined or oppressed. If they are not they don't breed. We see many examples of nations where that is true; for instance nearly every Western Nation and particularly Japan.

The main ingredients for the prosperity necessary to curtail population are cheap technology and individual rights democracies.

And if you have not noticed enforcing edicts about who can and cannot reproduce in those types of societies is anathema to those basic social principles.

So, the solution is increase prosperity. The greens will decrease prosperity; in fact their declared intention is to reduce lifestyle; so logically, the greens if successful in promulgating their odious ideology will increase population.

Unless, of course, they introduce enforced sterilisation; and of course anything is possible if the greens are in power.

Look,

As long as Me and my kids can live a cosy first-world lifestyle to age 90 or whatever, it doesn't matter if future generations have no resources left and die in horror and degradation.

People have to understand that the here-and-now is all that matters. Its up to future generations to find more resources after Gina Reinhardt guts every mineral on the Australian continent in the next 20 years. When they can't find minerals future generations will have to fight each other or suicide to fit in with evolutionary pressures in a New World. And that's not our problem!

As Julia Gillard puts it "Its time for all nations to make stimulus packages and GROWTH" so we can live the LIFE and ENSURE women's breeding rights - the MOST important single ISSUE as Julia Gillard correctly infers in her pleas to other nations.

T-Rex didn't care what kind of Earth he left, Why should WE. Clearly it's fate.

Good on Cheryl and JJ for getting with the program.

And if overpop doomers lay a guilt trip on our SELFISHNESS just tell them, "Demographers generally don't get concerned unless the fertility rate goes below 1.5, that is, you don't want population to decline faster than about 1% annually". That always shuts 'em up!
Then, avoid like hell the issue of global population increase of 75 million people^/year.

That way we can all get on, men having sex, women having babies, Coles and Woolies having more customers and Julia and all the other politicians having more votes and taxes to collect.

This is OUR planet, not some creepy future dweller's. So, let's P.A.R.T.Y ..

WhY?

Because we have the Technology and We GOTTA!

And oh, by all means plead for illegal islamic boat migrants to be placed in communities within 30 days of arrival. Slaves are essential for raising our kids in style. But be clever like Malcolm Fraser. NEVER let them come to OUR community. As a rule of thumb ALWAYS externalise the immigration costs & dangers to poorer communities which don't have the resources to fight-back.

Enjoy Australia! OUR-FUTURE.

Cohenite, if you are arguing that making everybody prosperous and educated will reduce the birth rate because women will then have the know-how and means to employ contraception, and Yabby is saying that women in impoverished countries could reduce the birth rate now if the wealthy nations would give them access to the necessary know-how and means, why isn't his solution not only more assured of working than yours, but more likely to have its effect in time to stave off a species catastrophe?

@KAEP: "As long as Me and my kids can live a cosy first-world lifestyle to age 90 or whatever, it doesn't matter if future generations have no resources left and die in horror and degradation."

KAEP, when you can tell us exactly what resources, technologies, discoveries and problems will be around in, say, 100 years -- and prove it -- then you will be entitled to tell us how to make life better for the people who live then. But until you can demonstrate your ability to make flawless long-term predictions covering every possible set of circumstances, you're in the same position as the Londoners who predicted in 1880 that their streets would soon be waist-deep in horsecrap.

In other words, you just don't get it.

GlenC, you say Yabby's idea of giving women in impoverished nations the means to control their fertility is a better method then my method of making women [and everyone] more prosperous and better educated.

That is unrealistic; here is a list of all nations listed in terms of their wealth;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

Look at the bottom nations, the most poor; these are strongly patriarchal, tribalised and oppressive nations; often they have the patina of Islam which makes the oppression and inferior status of women even worse.

Do you really think if the UN pulls up, distributes some condoms, birth control pills and some instruction manuals that the women will take them or that their menfolk will let them take contraception?

Here is a map of the fertility rates of the nations of the world:

http://www.indexmundi.com/map/?v=31

Scary isn't it?

The UN is a waste of space because a lot of the most fertile nations are voting members and have oppressive, as measured by the standard of individual rights and democratic structure, societies.

Frankly I think Yabby's idea is ridiculous.

In response the the Jon J comment "The best way to assure the welfare of future generations is to accumulate wealth ourselves and then pass it on to them, not to force them into squalor and then lecture them about living within their means."
Not sure what the basis is for this idea. A family's wealth, for example, is usually divided between the number of children and so the less children there are the more weathly each of those children would be on receipt of their inheritance. Now consider the situation where a family has 12 children, and they have used up all the family's resources through their eating, education, etc. Where is the wealth to be passed on to the next generation? And the little there is 'left-over' would be divided between so many.
Think this analogy could be logically be extended to the global population. Eating it all now, isn't going to provide a jot for the next generation. There is no savings bank for food, money, or non-renewable resources that our generation can pass on to the next. Not much point everyone in our generation being rich and educated and fat, and there being nothing left for the next generation...

http://opinion.inquirer.net/9489/family-planning-in-thailand-ph

Cohenite, Banjo posted this URL on another thread and it clearly
shows that the problem is not wealth. Note the difference between
Thailand and the Philippines.

In other words, give women a choice and they will take it and have
smaller families. People have large families, when they have sex
without family planning, its as simple as that. Have sex for 25
years without family planning and see how many kids that you land up
with. This is not frigging rocket science you know.

Yabby, did you look at the world fertility graph? Women in the most fertile nations do not have a choice.

I suppose you could argue that oppression of women and poverty often travel together and reflect a type of society; and you would be right.

In the example of the Philipines and Thailand one of the crucial factors was the lack of religious oppression of women in Thailand and another the value given to education. In fact I would say they are 2 sides of the same coin because education also suffers under religion.

I have already noted that religion is a crucial factor in population.

But like all the other impediments to reducing population religion also shrinks in the heat of propserity and education.

I don't know what you guys are going on about; I agree population unchecked is an issue; but you seem resistent to the undoubted benefit prosperity brings to the population problem.

Prosperity, in fact, is not only the best solution to population but also to environmental problems, which are far fewer in properous nations then in poor ones.

If you exclude the lie of AGW, that is, which isn't an environmental issue but a misanthropic ideology.

cohenite,
I did look at the map of birthrates and I noted that countries of high Catholic populations like Ireland, Italy and France are at the lower end of the scale, so obviously Catholics do take family plannig seriously, when they can afford it and have the knowledge. So there is reason to think that would happen in the Phillipines, and other RC predominant countries, as well, depite religous doctrine.

As distinct from you, Yabby and I believe the UN and governments should be doing far more to reduce birthrates, especially in those countries subject to famine.

Countries like Iran and Thailand have shown it can be achieved by family planning education and provission of the means. Lower birthrates means less people go hungry and economic benefits are gained.

Hilarious Banjo:

"As distinct from you, Yabby and I believe the UN and governments should be doing far more to reduce birth-rates, especially in those countries subject to famine."

Which is why the green led government in this country are closing down prime agricultural land and fishing areas through the creation of parks; all under the imprimatur of the UN's AGW edicts. That is really going to produce more food, isn't it.

You guys are not serious; you haven't addressed the issue of tribalism and religion in the most fertile nations; have you?

And what should governments do? Take a leaf out of China's handbook.

I'll finish by quoting from Christopher Monckton's team at the obscenity which was RIO:

"CFACT Executive Director Craig Rucker: “While we stand here, 1.4 billion people are suffering in poverty…Any hope they have of rising out of poverty is being threatened by the negotiations here at Rio+20. [...] There is no imminent eco-disaster. We must not sell the potential prosperity of the poor for the dirty rags of sustainable development. Human beings must come first. In fact, history has shown that the environment is best protected when humans prosper. It is no coincidence that the regions of the world with the best air and the purest water are the also the ones that have the most advanced economies and used conventional development to get there. On the other hand, the poor cannot afford to care for the environment when every day is a matter of survival. Nature suffers when people suffer.”

See here:

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/rio-secrets-they-were-hiding-their-failure-im-hopeful-marc-morano-cheers-on-behalf-of-the-poor/#more-22338

Cohenite,

You are forgetting that a great deal was done to increase prosperity in the poor countries through the Green Revolution and the earlier Haber-Bosch process. Agricultural yields were doubled and in some cases tripled. Some countries, such as the Asian Tiger economies, did take advantage of this extra food and freer trade to pull themselves out of poverty. People in other countries simply took advantage of the extra food to rear more babies, "feeding more hungry people rather than feeding hungry people more", as Prince Philip once put it. If the real problem is the culture, it is hard to see how future efforts to increase prosperity won't go the same way and actually make the long-term problems worse. Food aid has also just led to more people, rather than giving people a hand up. The population of Ethiopia has doubled since Band Aid raised money to relieve the famine in the early 1980s.

It just might help, however, to supply contraceptives that women can access in secret. See this on the work of Melinda Gates and the Gates Foundation on supplying contraception to women in poor countries:

http://newsstore.fairfax.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac;jsessionid=AA4BAB34368965D10E689DF7E9DBA662?page=1&sy=afr&kw=director&pb=none&dt=selectRange&dr=1month&so=relevance&sf=text&sf=headline&rc=150&rm=200&sp=nrm&clsPage=1&docID=SHD1205131V6713656CC

Melinda Gates had been meeting with groups of African women in connection with the foundation's vaccine program, and she asked them what else the Gates Foundation could do for them. Again and again, they wanted access to contraception, especially long-term injectable types. These injectables can have some nasty side effects, but their advantage is that a woman can slip off to have an injection every few months with her husband and in-laws none the wiser. The Gates Foundation has decided to get into supplying contraceptives in a big way, despite opposition from the Catholic hierarchy.

It is not clear how we could make everyone prosperous in any case, at least without gutting the planet. The Global Footprint Network estimates that we are already in environmental overshoot, consuming renewable resources faster than they can be replenished. Think of those aquifers that are being pumpled dry under North India and North China.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/ecological_footprint_atlas_2010/

(cont'd)

There are also issues where people may be locked into a death spiral leading to collapse because the population is too big to do what needs to be done. And no, contrary to Jon J, new miracle technologies don't always come along to save them. This is what Prof. David Montgomery (Soil Science, University of Washington) has to say about the collapse of the Sumerian city states in his "Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations" (pp. 30-40):

"Preventing the buildup of salt in semiarid soils requires either irrigating in moderation, or periodically leaving fields fallow. In Mesopotamia, centuries of high productivity from irrigated land led to increased population density that fueled demand for more intensive irrigation. Eventually, enough salt crystallized in the soil that further increases in agricultural production were not enough to feed the growing population. ... Temple records from Sumerian city-states inadvertently recorded agricultural deterioration as salt gradually poisoned the ground. ... The decline of Sumerian civilization tracked the steady erosion of its agriculture. Falling crop yields made it difficult to feed the army and maintain the bureaucracy that allocated surplus food."

Before Saddam Hussain got really crazy, he had a research program to try to restore the land the Sumerians wrecked 5,000 years ago.

KAEP, I am actually on your side. Loudmouth was expressing exaggerated fears about economic disaster if overpopulated countries let their populations decline. I was saying that there will be no economic problems, even if rates of decline are 30 to 100 times greater than he thinks prudent, and that really fast decline may be indicated if the situation is dire enough, despite the economic problems.

cohenite,
Now you have gone right off the subject again. You earlier gave a link to a leading agricultural scientist and i pointed out that his views on world population supported mine.

You say 'Hilarious Banjo:

"As distinct from you, Yabby and I believe the UN and governments should be doing far more to reduce birth-rates, especially in those countries subject to famine."

Why is that hilarous? That simply says that Yabby and I disagree with what the UN and governments are doing. They fail to address the issue of world population and so do all the talkfests that have been held about AGW.

Now I will not speak for Yabby on this but I would not mind if we pulled out of the UN altogether. People in developing countries are in far greater danger of starving than they are of being affected by climate change. The UN fails to address that and continues with programmes like the World Food Programme, which is merely treating the symptions. You have already been given examples of how governments, and UN, could act, by following on from what Iran and Thailand has done.

I remain an AGW sceptic and I do not believe that we have the capability to feed an ever growing world population. The countries that are most subject to famine will be the ones to suffer first.

*Women in the most fertile nations do not have a choice.*

So give them a choice, Cohenite. When did Australia spend a part of
its 4 billion aid on doing exactly that? That is exactly what I
am lobbying for. Money is the issue, time and time again. We
spend billions, but due to religious lobbying, not on family
planning in the third world. Thus my outrage and suggestion that
Australia should change. If enough voters agree it will happen,
despite the Catholic lobby.Harradine is now retired.

Fish sanctuaries are indeed a good idea and for good reasons. We
have so plundered the oceans for fish, that last time I checked,
only about one sixth of the fish were left, which existed just
200 years ago. We wiped out the cod with overfishing and many other
fish species are on the edge. Fish sanctuaries give fish somewhere to
breed. We are paying a heavy price for all this plundering. The
Nomura jellyfish invades the Japanese coast, as they caught all its
predators, which kept it in check. Ecosystems collapse when you
overfish. There are countless examples.

I remind you that the so called "fertile Cresent", is not so frigging
fertile anymore. Farming without replacing nutrients, lands up with
clapped out soils that have basically been mined and eventually stop
producing.

Now you suggest that we plunder every bit of earth where other species
live, to make way for ever more humans, who are breeding like rabbits
to suit the religious lobby. What kind of world do you want to leave
for your great grandkids? Just wall to wall concrete

"You earlier gave a link to a leading agricultural scientist and i pointed out that his views on world population supported mine."

No, I did not. I referred to Borlaug to show the point about sustainability made in this article was wrong. In fact the very notion of sustainability is stupid; presumably what was sustainable before Borlaug, or indeed any advance in agricultural production was less than AFTER that advance.

The very notion of a limit to resource extraction has been disproved time after time; Ehrlich and his ilk are never right in their prognistications. Personally I think they have no confidence in human ingenuity; they are pessimists, nothing more.

"I would not mind if we pulled out of the UN altogether."

That I can agree with; I think the influence of the UN is pernicious; it is a flawed concept, that is all the nations of the Earth discussing issues and democratically solving them. It is flawed for 2 reasons.

Firstly because many of the UN nations are themselves failed states, undemocratic and oppressive which push grievances, usually against the West.

Secondly, the UN itself is now a player; the largest, most influential bureaucracy on Earth with its own survival uppermost in its actions. It has no efficacy and its involvement in world issues is a record of abysmal failure.

In fact, it could be argued that the UN, through its support of AGW and interference with the availability of cheap reliable energy to 3rd world nations is actually exacerbating population pressures.

I don't think you and I are in much disagreement here.

Johnny J,
Mate, Ban Ki Moon and the whole bloody UN are the ones spruiking Earth's finite and rapidly partitioned and depleted resources in favour of first selfish worlders like us.

My point is we can use this against the UN. Illegitime non carborundum!

We have a just case to ENJOY now and let future cretins deal with the evolutionary pressures without raising a wrinkle.

Get with the Program or the UN will make everyone equal and hold resources in reserve for future eaters. And you know what that means for men .. even less nookie than we get now. And if we wear the ladies out then they can have all the time out they want with their babies as has always been the case whether in the first world or the last.

Get it?

Relax, enjoy, shut the F up!

Cohenite,

A few problems with your theory:

. There is not the means available to lift all the world's population to prosperity, high education and true freedom of choice - not now, and probably not in the foreseeable future - not at current population levels;

. Farmers in the developed and developing world have been employing 'Green' techniques to improve productivity and sustainability concurrently - planting trees to counter soil salinity and to protect crops from drying out and wind-blown erosion (also to protect stock), and using no-till, fencing off remnant woodlands to maintain water quality, and moving to more organic farming methods for controlling insect pests, for maintaining soil fertility and the micro-organisms contributing to that fertility, and employing rational grazing - all of which reduces usage of costly (and sometimes environmentally detrimental) herbicides, pesticides, stock drenches, and synthetic fertilisers = Win, win;

. Excessive exploitation of both agricultural land and the natural environment brought about by excessive populations in many developed and developing countries has destroyed both the environment and overall food production, leading directly to the famine and starvation we are seeing now, and have for some years been seeing, in those countries;

. You criticize the establishment of marine reserves, but it is these (specifically selected) which provide an essential breeding ground to maintain those very fish stocks which are currently being plundered far beyond sustainability - better a smaller sustainable catch than a total collapse;

. We can only protect that within our means in order to ensure a sustainable future, but the dilemna is that outside the area of our influence others are plundering stocks on land and sea without mercy - and that is why the world needs a strong UN with the right 'plan' and the backing of the world community as a whole;

. One must live in concert with nature, or perish;

One life raft.

(Lesson: Mao got rid of sparrows, and caused an insect plague. Quick fix = new problem.)(We imported cane toads.)

cohenite,
OK we agree on the limitations of the UN and we agree, possibly, that AGW is incorrect and that any climate change is a natural occurance over which we have no,or little, control.

But you did refer me to Borlaug and from reading his material, and his obit, it is obvious he had similar thoughts to me about over population.
Obviously you admire his work, so take note. From his obit. "He was frustrated throughout his life that governments did not do more to tackle what he called “the population monster” by lowering birth rates".

Humans developed, through their ingenuity, the means to control birthrates and we should make far better use of that. My object here is not some ideal of green 'sustainability' but simply to reduce the number affected by famine and starvation.

I think you are very wrong if you think that technological advances in food production and distribution can keep pace with the rising world population.

Saltpetre says:

"There is not the means available to lift all the world's population to prosperity, high education and true freedom of choice - not now, and probably not in the foreseeable future - not at current population levels"

This is the nub of the sustainbility concept and the larger theme of AGW. It is a nonsense; no doubt its advocates can dredge up the usual examples of the dire consequences of man interfering with nature or 'exceeding' nature's limitations.

Well, I don't want to read about Easter Island or the Mayans or any of the usual suspects because none of them deal with man exceeding nature; they all deal with man NOT exceeding nature and herefore being constrained by Malthusian principles.

They were dead technologically.

Humanity today, globally, is not dead technologically; the only constraints are those which are being generated by AGW and its ridiculous, amorphous offspring, sustainability.

For all those who are preaching sustainability and living within nature's means go and google Kardashev scale; and try not to be so miserable.

Banjo says:

"I think you are very wrong if you think that technological advances in food production and distribution can keep pace with the rising world population."

Let's be positive shall we Banjo and hope that the greens don't lock up any more productive farmland

Hi Banjo,

Lo and behold ! On the news today, they mentioned developing a new strain of safflower oilseed crop with a far higher mono-unsaturated oil content, and suitable, not just for human consumption, but for processing into plastics.

I recall an episode of The New Inventors in which a couple of blokes were demonstrating a filtering system which would enable irrigation using much more brackish water and potentially doubling the area Australia's arable lands.

Yes, I agree that there is little point in population growth for its own sake, but from Cohenite's Fertility Map, it is clear (well, at least to my mind) that countries which:

* enforce compulsory education for all children between the ages of 5-6 and 14-15, forcing children out of the free labour market and making them a cost instead of an asset for those years,

* institute an old-age pension scheme;

* enable equal educational opportunities for women,

have fertility rates below replacement level.

If anything, fertility rates in some countries may be too low to satisfactorily maintain a population balance in which the numbers of old people on pensions can be paid for by the number of younger people working.

For those who are thinking in terms of a 1 % p.a. reduction in population, or something even more drastic, consider these factors:

* since the 'population reduction' that we are talking about focusses on the birth-rate (one would hope!), a 1 % reduction means a massive reduction in the annual number of births, maybe 10 % p.a., i.e. halving the birth-rate in barely seven years - reducing the birth-rate by three-quarters in fourteen years, and by seven-eights in twenty eight years, i.e., in a single generation;

* that rate of reduction would mean that each generation was 28 times as numerous as the next, and so on: how many working people might there be then, for each new generation of people on pensions ?

[TBC]

[contd.]

Okay, what people may mean is a 1 % p.a. reduction in the birth-rate, not in the overall population. Let's run with that:

* even so, it would mean that each new generation is only three-quarters as numerous as the previous one, or barely half as numerous as the one before that. i.e.

* only fifty babies are born to every seventy five young people who were born to the one hundred people who are now mature-aged.

And the total population might have declined by 10 % in those fifty or sixty years, at an average of 0.1 - 0.2 % p.a.

Even with ZPG, there are roughly sufficient people working to finance the costs of pensions and health care, etc. Even with a 0.5 % p.a. reduction in the birth-rate, population would be significantly reduced, putting a heavier financial burden on those who are working, and for all of their working lives.

But why should I worry ? I'm in the age-group which is living in clover, at least until the Deep Greens take over and feed me into the grinders.

Cheers,

Joe

The thing is, Cohenite, that you can offer absolutaly no solutions,
apart from man plundering ever more of planet earth, wiping out
any other species in the way, to make way for ever more human babies,
which all your claimed human ingenuity seemingly is unable to
deal with, apart from more plundering.

Sustainability does not matter? What will you do when you run of
more land to plunder?

If its not sustainable, Cohenite, then all your hoping and dreaming
might just turn out to be a failure. Given that you only have one
planet to destroy, why would you want to risk it?

The world is full of flawed human judgement. One disaster after the
next, but your solution is to ignore all that and create another
disaster, somewhere else.

People like you give me all the confidence about my own prediction.
Humanity is intelligent enough to invent interesting new things,
but simply too stupid to use them wisely. In the end the planet
will spin with cockroaches and ants on board, those walking, talking
apes will simply be a memory of evolution having played out as
predicted.

So be it, its just a shame, it could have been a rather nice place,
for quite some time.

Joe,
Thanks for your thoughts. Sometime the figures regarding birthrate are confusing because they are expressed differrently. Some call it 'fertility rate' whish I hate because it does not measure fertility, then sometime the percentage is expressed over the whole population. I prefer the birthrate to be expressed in the number of births per woman and I can easily see where it is going.

Yabby posted a link on page 7 of this thread which give a comparison between Thailand and the Phillipines and the difference in the two countries is amazing. The Thai government actively sponsored family planning while the Phillipines does not. It seems to me that the economy of Thailand is much better off and can now find more funds to spend on social policies, like education and health. Iran also is worth googling for family planning as it to has made dramatic reductions in birthrates. I have not read of any envisaged problems in those countries, only in Aus have I seen comments regarding low birthrates that could cause future tax problems.

I am thinking more in relation to famine suseptable countries where masses of people die from lack of food. There are a number of websites that put out birthrate or fertility figures per country.

If a government thought its sponsored family planning was working too good and may cause some future problems, it would be easy to reduce government involvement and the birthrate would increase.

Loudmouth,

Joe & behold, when you get old the government will give you to the private sector for age care(disposal). You will be treated like sh$t on a shoestring budget while the books are cooked to make it look like you are healthy at great cost to taxpayers and are in need of more immigrants to care for you. This is just a ruse to boost imported votes for politicians and boost consumer numbers to profit Australia's monopolistic corporate sector. the Australian Labor & Liberal governments are alternately running this Ponzi scheme to the detriment of all citizens including you.

As you age, the last thing you'll know is being placed in aged care and as your brain deteriorates you will just remember all the garbage you have written here and it will haunt you into oblivion.

So maybe you should just show a bit more respect for the truth that is dawning on just about everyone except you, as australia is being overpopulated & overcharged to death.

Meanwhile immigration is being spruiked as the panacea to all Australia's problems when it the beginning of UNSUSTAINABILITY & low quality life for the bulk of the masses.

Hi KAEP,

Well, I AM old, pushing seventy, so I don't know what you are going on about. Do you actually read people's postings ? Do you actually understand what they write ?

Best of luck with that,

Joe

Loudmouth,

The 1.0% population decline was for a population that has already stabilised but is still considered too large, i.e. the generations are approximately equal in size up to extreme old age. You would only get roughly a 25% decline in a single 25 year generation if there were zero net immigration, so that reduction has to be entirely achieved by reducing the birth rate. Otherwise the decline would be spread more evenly across several generations. Even in your worst case scenario, why is there such a problem? After all, we have coped with much larger increases in population, which require big increases in infrastructure.

Some years ago, there was a program on Radio National discussing how Britain introduced its old age pension in the 1920s, not to help the poor old folk, but to ameliorate unemployment, which was causing social unrest. At that time, 75% of the men between 65 and 70 were still working and nearly half the men between 70 and 75. The average job today is much less physically demanding than the average job then. The Baby Boomers have also enjoyed better diet, better health care, smaller families, and better living and working conditions than their 19th century ancestors, so they are likely to be in much better shape for their age. If high immigration were shut off, employers would simply have to stop turning their noses up at older workers. Yes, jobs that require heavy manual labour or fast reflexes would still have to be done by younger people, but these are a relatively small percentage of the job market. You can't expect to go on being a professional athlete or dancer until you are 65 even now.

Joe,
I did not comment on the things you said first.

I fully expect there to be ongoing deveopments in plant improvement and agriculture generally, but we are using nearly all our available land now, and some very marginal land as well. I just do not see dramatic rises in production. Most of our towns in Aus were built on rivers where the best land was and we are fast covering much of that up with houses, concrete and bitumen. A lot of our irrigation areas suffer now from rising salt and the cost of developing more irrigation land is prohibative.

I think it is better, and more cost effective, to reduce birthrates first than it is to educate and improve living standards in developing countries. If Thailand is an example, living standards and economies will improve after birthrate have gone down.

Be interesting to see what would happen in the Phillipines if their government introduced sponsored family planning. My bet is that it would be accepted by the people, same as in Ireland, Italy and France, despite religous doctrine.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-pandemic-bird-flu-transmissible-air.html

I heard about this story at about 3am on Bloomberg, so thought that
I would verify it with a Google search. Sure enough, it seems to
be correct.

Now the bird flue virus killed millions of birds, but only about
600 people, because its so hard to transmit between humans, not being
air borne. Sure enough some Dutch scientists have created an airborne
version and wiped out their experimental ferrets in the process,
which means that this version could easily spread between humans.

Not only have they created it, but published exactly how they did it,
which means anyone with that knowledge could copy them.

So lets say that this virus escaped at some major airport like London,
or Amsterdam, by some carrier going there. Within 12 hours it would
go nearly halfway around the world, to every major airport on the
planet.

Our species may be largely thinned out, purely by our own making and
our ignoring nature and things like the species barrier. We are not
above nature and we ignore this at our peril

*My bet is that it would be accepted by the people, same as in Ireland, Italy and France, despite religous doctrine.*

Banjo, well of course it would. The problem is not the people, but
the level of interference in their lives, by the Vatican powers that
be.

I'll never forget the face of the woman in the Phillipines documentary, delivering her eight child and pleading to have her
tubes tied. The procedure was denied to her.

Just how far these powers stretch into our own lives, became evident
to me when Catholic Health services tendered to run the new Midland
hospital in WA, built by taxpayer money. Women who want their tubes
tied or men who want the snip, will be denied these services, to suit
the religious dogma of the church.

AFAIK, Catholic health services would operate tax free, unlike other
service providers, claiming to be a charitable institution. The reality is that they would have a distict advantage over others, with
no tax to pay. So right under our noses, at our expense, they can
promote and enforce their dogma. How the hell do women in the
Phillippines ever stand a chance, against this kind of religious
power?