Thanks Cheryl. I was wondering how to respond to KAEP, and you just saved me the trouble.

I do find these "discussions" on population quite fascinating, though, as I suspect you do too. Once you have scraped away the doomsday rhetoric, there is very little left of any substance. The sum total of their ability to predict appears to be "if we keep growing our population exponentially, then we will eventually be squashed together like sardines, and die." Which is, of course, mathematically incontrovertible. But about as useful as saying "if you save $0.01c today, $0.02c tomorrow, $0.04c the day after, pretty soon you'll be a billionnaire". (By 12th December, actually. Just in time for Christmas).

At some point, reality creeps in.

But despite this, the debate seems to be a playground for people with a playing-god complex, who think that government is all about telling people what they can and cannot do. And who also think that the more government we have, the happier we will be, when exactly the opposite is invariably the case. The EU experiment is a classic example of this, with the creation of thousands of bureaucrats whose idea of fulfilment is thinking up more and more rules for the hapless citizenry to abide by. These folk are held in high esteem by their colleagues, and universally hated by the populace.

And what greater power can such a bureaucrat have, than the ability to tell people how and when they are allowed to procreate. (I can feel a play coming on, "The Wet Dream of the Anti-Pop"...)

Of course, none sees the absurdity of lecturing third-world countries on what they should and shouldn't do, from the comfort of their armchairs in a leafy North Shore suburb, or while contemplating the endless, empty beaches of Northern Queensland.

It would be vaguely amusing, if it wasn't also vaguely repellent.

I'm worried about KAEP's blood pressure, though...

>>Global War where 5-6 billion people will die within the NEXT 30 YEARS... We may all soon end up Grilled by a neutron bomb<<

I bet he's great fun at parties.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics(2LT),PEAKOIL, plus human History and rapid advances in weapons of mass destruction GUARANTEE what I say is True.

The Jews in 1935 laughed at those predicting holocaust. Most thought it was a passing phase of hooliganism. And who had the last laugh?

The 2LT? You can't have infinite ambitions on a finite planet and you cannot tell some future person that they regulate their breeding rights when you expect bloody bonuses for yours in the here and now.

Your stance is not just selfishness and not just Hypocrisy it is utter stupidity and I suspect the blood pressure is yours to deal with.

You dopes MUST have an inkling how wrong you are. Why don't you have a NAZI party. You could tell each other how electricity prices are making you more at ease going into a better future!

ITM minds far superior to yours are plotting to take over your lives. And they're not coming from Mars. Will anyone feel sorry for you FUTURE EATERS?

I'll just ROLMAO.

HAAA hahahaaa!

That’s got to be one of the funniest... and cutest, things I have ever seen on O.L.O....Pericles snuggling up to Cheryl!

Pericles, you’ve certainly gone a little ratty lately, after our good long amicable discussion and consequent quite high regard I developed for you recently. But to play snugglepot and cuddlepie with Ms King, now that has really sent my regard for you tumbling!

So, what's the major problem with your outlook?

Could it possibly be that to do nothing about continuous population growth would be a whole lot worse than striving to do something meaningful to lower the fertility rate.... and would just be damn irresponsible... and it would make no sense at all to constantly strive to increase food production while doing nothing about the ever-rapidly-increasing demand for food?

Pericles, are you a complete ‘do-nothinger’ about population? Are you really? Is that the full extent of your argument – that any efforts to lower fertility are just ‘repellent’?

And yet the current efforts to facilitate population growth – the baby bonus and all the other financial assistance that parents get, and the extremely high rate of immigration, are ok by you. Anything on this side of the ledger is fine but anything on the other side is just completely not on?

Your notion that government bureaucracies, police and the rule of law should be minimalised, especially at a time when there is ever-more pressure on people to break the law, due largely to increasing population pressure, is just bonkers.

Lower populations that are much more comfortably able to live within their means and enjoy a high quality of life with the confidence that it will last, would be able to get by with minimalist government control. But big populations and high population growth that stresses out our resource base and environment need a strong government and highly effective rule of law and policing regime.

Your push for no population management and low government ‘intervention’ simply doesn’t add up at all.

.

Well said Yuyutsu.

Ludwig, I admire your tenacity to adhere to a delusion that the total of the world's ills revolve around population. You are now the lone bearer of this fantasy - except for KEAP's Nazi fantasy, which is another new one.

The anti-population 'argument' - so far as it has been an argument - has been so comprehensively crushed that even Michael-in-Adelaide, the lone real thinker of your faction has left the field defeated. You have met your Agincourt here.

Your 'side' has not been helped by people who I fear have recently come off medication - and Dick Smith who recently wrote that Australia's population will reach one billion in 2200. I want you to leave Dick alone. He's not well.

The real politic of the anti-pops on OLO has nothing to do with population and everything to do with trying to get enough people to register the Sustainable People's Party or the People against People Party or what every you are called. Good luck with that.

The prime reason the media won't touch the anti-pops is that you have no coherence to your ideas, no research and no implementation policy. Your rag tag followers are good copy for freak show stories.

The real interest in this debate has turned psychosocial. Why do a small group of people so doggedly adhere to beliefs when the evidence so completely points in the other direction. I put it to you that you need to believe the world is doomed. This gives coherence to your disorganised and contradictory thoughts which must, at times, bother even you.

Australia's population will reach one billion in 2200. I want you to leave Dick alone. He's not well.
Cheryl,
Just because you're atrociously lacking in the skill of diagnosing doesn't mean they're wrong. I put it to you that in 190 years from now Australia would have a population as predicted by Dick Smith. Or have you already forgotten the multiplying effect of our boat people's agenda ? Probably another one of your lackings, foresight !

If Iran can address its own issues, why can't PNG? Why is it our problem?

And the Australian government is hardly in a position to preach "control/limits".

Australians, like most Westerners, *have* been reducing their birthrates.
What do Western governments do? Bulldoze this self-regulation aside, and bring in millions of immigrants, on the false basis of an industrial-age "headcount = wealth" myth.

How about the government stop "intervening" in *our* population growth as well as others'?