Yes, Wm Trevor's link was interesting. The rises and falls of pop are curious.

Australia is well placed to be a food bowl for 9 billion people. We export $46 billion food per year and import $6 billion through reciprocal trade agreements. We could drive more food on to our domestic market but why? Economics dictates that we preserve scarce resources.

The real problem, which even most of the anti-pops agree with, is birth and survival rates of 5 kids or so in Africa. Almost no one has discussed what to do short of military intervention.

Of course population is just one vector of analysis and not the most important. What the anti-pops really want is a hammer and sickle government which forces contraception on to women and girls and oddly, this appears to be misdirected at Australia where fertility is 1.7.

In Australia, domestic energy consumption is about 40 percent of all energy consumed. What the anti-pops want here is to go back to the kilgardie safe. The anti-pops are The Sullivans with a copy of Marx under their arms.

Pericles "where government is concerned, doing nothing is always infinitely better than doing something."

But it's not doing "nothing".
It's artificially *adding* 100,000+ foreigners every year.
100,000 people who drive cars, refrigerate food, heat or air-condition their homes (newly built on former farmland).

Cheryl "misdirected at Australia where fertility is 1.7"
What does it matter how low our fertility rate is, when the government just overrides it with mass immigration anyway?

yep, that's what people do Shockadelic. Use heaters, drive cars, I even hear they use high speed drills and eat food.

Your default position is not to do away with the heater, cars or food but to do away with the people. You come from another paradigm completely. You're not alone - but you're pretty much alone, in more ways than one.

Two very good points, Shockadelic.

I note that Cheryl responded to you without in any way responding to the one and only point that you were making!

Brilliant!

And Pericles won't respond because you have comprehensively nobbled him on this particular point.

The government is indeed doing something, and very much so, by way of imposing very high immigration up on us.

So, going by Pericles' own dictum, they should STOP.... and do nothing instead. And yet, he has never been critical of the government's current approach to immigration, with every indication being that he fully supports the current very high annual intake.

Work that out if you can!

This conversation is becoming particularly tedious.

But necessary, of course. The kind of binary thinking that goes on here illustrates beautifully one of the principal reasons our politicians find the problems so intractable. It is a balancing act, not a yes/no determination.

>>But it's not doing "nothing". It's artificially *adding* 100,000+ foreigners every year.<<

There's nothing "artificial" about it, Shockadelic. The government is perpetuating a policy that has been in place for many decades...

http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/_pdf/migplan11-12.pdf

It is adjusted to meet our economic needs each year. The discussion here seems to ignore this simple fact. "Doing something" in this context means - as far as I can tell from Ludwig's contributions - doing away with the process that has served us extremely well since WWII, and has been instrumental in establishing the prosperity we currently enjoy. Government intervention to satisfy the doomsayers would create far more problems (economic imbalance) than it would solve (stopping Ludwig from whingeing).

Have great day.

And Ludwig, for heaven's sake, go to the beach and relax.

Future Eaters .... Yetch!

They should have been drowned at birth .. the damned lot of them.

Their reckoning is coming. Its written in the Laws of Physics more than any history tome.

The Asian Century will not tolerate free speech and it will not tolerate the selfish profligacy that we are witnessing on this forum.

The Gillard white paper on engaging with Asia is a Death Wish. It has sealed the fate of future eaters and their plethroa of Environment destroying children and grandchildren.

How are sensible people supposed to feel pity for these morons?

To all those interested in SURVIVING the opening pages of the Asian Century, ONLY Energy independence is of any concern. Forget the ALP's Schizophrenic Diplomacy: The sell Carbon to the world so we can have a dysfunctional Carbon Tax variety of Schizoid political embolism for example. Or that 'divide and conquer' Australia with multiculuralism of questionable loyalty embolism. Or the Gender frippery.

Australia cannot engage Asia unless it can stand firmly on its own two feet. That means Geothermal power stations surrounding every capital city for starters.

With all the schizoid emboli and a growing dangerous dependency on Asia for refined fuels, if it came to conflict (more plausible Asia scenario than engagement) then Australia and all its future eating upstarts will be wiped from the pages of history.

Only upside: Cheryl & Pericles et al will be able to read of their own demise in Mandarin if Gillard has enough budgets to teach us all Chinese.

I love this country .. Shame about the greedy, selfish, stupid people!

E N E R G Y ... independence & Teach citizens the Laws of Thermodynamics NOT Chinese Languages and rubber neck diplomacy.