On that basis, Yabby, why bother to start a single-topic thread in the first place?

>>So the issue is now a political one. Policitians won't touch family
planning in the third world, as they don't want to upset the Catholic
Church.<<

In the same way that Ludwig diverted the original conversation to meet his own requirement to talk (yet again) about his ideas on population control, you have introduced the Catholic Church. On that basis, the way is now open to the pros and cons of Catholicism, open season on religion in general, then a short hop to Islamic terrorism and so on...?

Next thing you know, Arjay will be telling us that it is all the fault of the evil banksters, and you will endorse this as a perfectly valid contribution.

For me, I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who cares to defend Greenpeace's position, which in my view is a modern manifestation of Luddism, but with far wider and more deadly connotations

<< I stand by my initial observation that, once again, you have hijacked a perfectly reasonable discussion to suit your own population-control agenda. >>

And Pericles I stand by my assertion that you are off the rails with this assertion!

It is just completely bonkers! The thread is free to go in different directions. It has not in any way been hijacked. And if you reckon I’m a hijacker, then you’d have to be the second-in-charge, as you have promulgated the hijacking by repeatedly mentioning only the hijacker’s cause and not at all addressing the very subject the you think should be discussed here!

But please, keep objecting every time I dare to mention that despicable P word. You help promote debate on the issue in whatever context it has been mentioned.

<< …the intent of the article, as I read it, was not to cover every aspect of food security, but to highlight examples of despicable interference by Greenpeace… >>

Yes, but re-read the first paragraph. By way of a summary of the main factors influencing food security, Tim Andrews mentions investment, innovation and green groups. Surely population would have been mentioned there if it had been in his headspace.

He is quite wrong to say:

< …the most serious threat to food production has been ignored: environmental groups and their political supporters. >

Population is the BIGGEST factor. And within that; vested-interest population boosters and their political supporters are a pretty major problem. And also green groups that ignore the population factor, when they are precisely the people who should be highlighting this omission!

Now it is a bit rich to be suggesting which aspect of this discussion you think I should be concentrating on while you are writing successive posts that add nothing to the debate.

I’ve tried a couple of times to get you to debate the Greenpeace thing.

The point I made about the Greenpeace agenda is very salient – they’re on about sustainability, but you never hear boo out of them regarding population issues.

So do you think I’m wrong here?

*On that basis, the way is now open to the pros and cons of Catholicism, open season on religion in general, then a short hop to Islamic terrorism and so on...?*

Well not really Pericles, so I'll try and put it another way. If
you often wrote and posted articles about why you think that you
should be paid more, to feed your ever growing family, the kids were
barefoot and hungry etc, it would be quite reasonable of myself and
other posters, to suggest some family planning for yourself and the
wife.

That is exactly what we have in the media today. Endless articles
about the hungry children. Enless articles about how we could somehow
extract a little more from clapped out soils or steal more living
space from other species, to keep adding to our own growing billions.
It's taken just 12 years to add the last billion.

They want our charity, our tax money, the tv ads show the poor and
hungry. Yet not word on family planning for these people!

The whole thing is out of balance and yet its a Ponzi scheme. Pointing
that out and introducing some balance, is not such a bad thing.

So valid questions arise. Why don't we spend a share of our 4 billion$
in foreign aid, on family planning for the third world? Why are our
policitians so backward about this? When will they finally address
the issue? If enough Australians rattle the cage about this,
we might finally see some changes happening. It can't be soon enough,
IMHO

A good point, Yabby, but still a tad off topic.

>>Why don't we spend a share of our 4 billion$ in foreign aid, on family planning for the third world?<<

It touches upon one of the most vexing food-related questions. If we don't send food, more people will starve to death, and populations would decrease. So if you substitute condoms for rice, the recipients would die anyway. Starvation is not the prettiest form of mass contraception, but I suspect it is one of the most effective.

What has been proven to be an effective population management technique is, in fact, economic growth. If a smallholder in Central Africa can double the yield on his small patch of land, through the sorts of agronomic advances that Greenpeace seems determined to quash, a more humane, less interventionist and ultimately more beneficial solution can be reached for all concerned.

So, instead of the kind of protestation-by-rote that we have become accustomed to, I would have expected Ludwig to come out fighting against the murderous shortsightedness of Greenpeace, who stand directly between him and his population-control agenda.

That would have been on topic.

"If a smallholder in Central Africa can double the yield on his small patch of land"

Well we already know what happens then, Pericles. Even more children
can be fed and in the next generation the small plot becomes even
smaller and the problem even larger. We'll just have to chop down the
remaining bit of rainforest, or bring out the Machetes, as happened
in Rwanda.

*What has been proven to be an effective population management technique is, in fact, economic growth*

Well yes, because when you earn a dollar a day, there is hardly any
surplus money to afford a Norplant or have the snip undertaken at
the local hospital. So you are stuck with having ever more babies,
which is exactly why there is a problem. There is a huge unmet need
for family planning, which people in these areas simply cannot afford. So why not assist them? For whilst they keep popping out
ever more babies, they will remain poor.

I saw a great documentary about the situation in the Phillipines.
They interviewed this family who lived on the Manilla rubbish tip.
She was 35 and on her 8th child, pleading for her tubes to be tied.
She was denied that choice as the hospital was Catholic and the Govt
would not assist her to have the operation. On her dollar a day,
she simply can't do what richer folks do, which is go elsewhere and
pay to have it done. Why wait before she is rich enough? Why not
assist her now?

Growing ever more food simply increases and delays the problem, it
does not solve it.

Yabby,

Re: your comment on clapped out soils.

There have been, and continue to be, enormous profits made by multinational corporations supplying fertilizers and pesticides to nations that have clapped out soils. The overuse use of both has "caused" the degradation.

Soils are supposed to be alive with micro-organisms, not dead and fed with chemicals.