If anyone is interested in a factual representation of the Stable Population Party, please visit this website:

www.PopulationParty.org.au

BETTER, NOT BIGGER: A sustainable Australia starts with a stable population.

Incredible to think that in this day and age with the knowledge we have of how we are destroying this planet, our one and only home, that greedy and blinkered people who believe that infinite and continual growth is possible in a finite world still exist.
It is your grandchildren who will pay the price for such a short sighted view.
Over population is our ONLY problem.
Solve that and all others fall into line.
Vote Stable Population Party.
The ONLY party thinking of ALL our futures.

Let's hope the party does well in the next Federal elections. The government's obsession with "economic growth" at all costs is due to tunnel vision. They ignore the costs of our high rates of population growth, driven by record levels of immigration. It assumes that our country has unlimited social, environmental, financial and structural resources for millions more people. Already our cities are nearly at crashing point from population overload.
Population growth is an "everything" issue. Most countries have stringent permanent residency visas for foreigners, or none, and there are no reciprocal opportunities for Australians to live on other countries, even the ones our migrants mainly come from. Food security, climate change, living standards, energy shortages, biodiversity, costs of living etc etc are all driven by our record rate of population growth - and largely ignored by the mainstream media. Once we stabilize our population we can be prepared for the 21st century of scarcities - and what should be a period of de-growth!

Whose fault is it really, ateday?

"It is your grandchildren who will pay the price for such a short sighted view."

Which you can only have if you have children.

So, everyone who has... it is your fault!

WMT,
I made a conscious decision some 40 year`s ago not to breed and add to the problem.
I thought even then that there were enough bodies in this world.
Your story?

Australia has less pollution than ever as do many other developed countries. The rate of hunger and starvation is going down and incomes are generally increasing. Why do we need fewer people? The concept that we have excess people causing increasing levels of pollution is not verifiable. It is a meme.

We need fewer people because we are greedily destroying our environment, the only thing that keeps us alive.
We do not own this planet.
We share it with every other animal species of which we are but one species.
We are no better than any other species, different perhaps but not better.
We are, in fact, the only animal species actively engaged in destroying our own environment for our own self gratification.
All to the detriment of the other species.
No healthy environment.
No healthy us.
Simple really.

Same story, ateday... only 35 years ago.

Now reread my last sentence in that comment.

WMT
Well done.
Sadly not going to change the mindset though.
So why do we worry?

"Once we stabilize our population we can be prepared for the 21st century of scarcities - and what should be a period of de-growth!"

"We need fewer people because we are greedily destroying our environment, the only thing that keeps us alive.
We do not own this planet."

"We are no better than any other species, different perhaps but not better."

The anti-population people are really misanthropes; they despise progress and prosperity which are the only checks on population other than the fascist tyrannies they envisage.

They really are pitiful little people who lack any confidence in the human race and seek only to denigrate humanity.

As for being no better than other species, I agree the misanthropes are no better and are in fact worse since they despise their own species; everyone else however are different from other species, completely different, and in fact we do own the planet.

Respected sociologist Frank Ferudi sums up the case for population control and its fanatics.

http://www.frankfuredi.com/index.php/site/article/3/

Even so, they will still get votes from those who want ASIANS OUT and who want to create Fortress Australia. Small minds desperately binding together, fearful of the world and of each other.

An admirable try, Mr King. But frankly, there's no point in having a discussion with these people, especially when you introduce facts. They are so convinced that every problem is caused by "too many" people, they have programmed themselves not to listen.

The naked self-hatred that shines through their every assertion - that we are "no better than the animals" is a classic - is typical of their breed. Although sometimes it is difficult to work out what it is exactly that they hanker for. They must have been at least this depressed since the Industrial Revolution - perhaps even since the end of the Dark Ages.

The tenuous nature of their position is clearer, when you ask them tough questions, such as "which would be worse for the human race: for everyone to have no children, or for everyone to have four?" Sadly, they don't have the imagination to actually follow through on these scenarios, and work out that if everyone followed their "no children" example, the last twenty years or so of their lives would be a living hell.

Atman,
What part of too many people do you have difficulty with comprehending ? May I suggest you go to a country with 200 or more million people & see for yourself.

If action is taken to limit our population by cutting immigration, this should be combined with efforts to raise our appalling literacy levels.

This can be done by bringing back the Dictation Test.

Agree with Cheryl. Single issue parties, usually have a very short life cycle!?
However, we do need to remain cognisant that only the thin green edge of the Australian continent will reliably support us and guarantee our food security. And there is a finite limit to how many that and our finite fresh water resources will support
Even then ,climate change is changing that, and making the south-west and the south-east, less viable as food production areas.
We also confront a future, where we will have less reliable fresh water supplies and possible energy deficiencies?
Rising sea levels could make some of the most fertile food production areas, unproductive, salt laden, coastal swamps.
The Nile delta, Bangladesh, and the Mekong delta, just to name the most glaringly obvious.
If population growth continues at current levels, we will need to produce 80% more food by 2050?
We do live on a finite planet with finite resources, and do need to invent a prosperity model that no longer includes endless population growth and the continued depletion of finite resources. It's a no brainer!
Simply eliminating poverty in all its forms and guises, will produce far more prosperity for far more, than the dog eat dog exploitation/individualism, which creates so many problems, and is ever only viable with endless population growth. And that model is now a zero sum game!
Recycling can and should replace mining, and it will create more endlessly sustainable jobs and wealth creation opportunities, than digging a few holes in the ground, to provide temporary incomes for a few.
What we do need to make this alternative growth model viable, is very low cost clean energy! Suggest you'll read, Thorium, cheaper than coal.
Rhrosty.

Individual - Ive been to the USA and it didn't seem crowded at all. In fact there are vast areas of wilderness where few people live.

Your idea that everywhere will eventually be like an overflowing India is childish and wrong. What you are noticing is the lack of hygiene, poor organisation, poor infrastructure and few facilities - not overcrowding.

Humans are a noxious pest, a plague, a cancer.

Everyone should stop phucking. No-one should use depletable resources: they have to be saved for the future. Of course those in the future will be under the same constraint for some still more distant future, so anyone using any depletable resource should be shot. This cannot be argued to be bad, because reducing human life is the ultimate ethical criterion, and only a moron would contend that people have any right to consume depletable resources, on the ground that you can't have indefinite growth on a finite base.

Everyone should be issued with free sackcloth and ashes - but hang on - making them free might encourage overconsumption! No - they should be FORCED to pay for their compulsory allocation of sack-cloth and ashes.

Oh and the sky is falling - and it's all man's fault. If only we had more police to ban things I don't like, then what a wonderful society we would live in.

vast areas of wilderness where few people live.
Atman,
I don't suppose you've ever given it any thought as to how vital these areas are for ALL life on Earth.
the USA is not over crowded ? what is your definition of overcrowding ? Do you think Chicago is not crowded ? How many areas in the Americas could take many more people ? Why do so many risk everything to go across the border ? Because Mexico IS overcrowded & people are fleeing the poverty due to overcrowding.
Have you noticed how Norfolk Island has put a population ceiling in place ? Have a look at the rivers that flow through large cities. Do you like the pollution which comes from so many people crowded into a small area ? If you continue to advocate population growth then the whole planet will be crowded. Do you want that & for what reason ?

It's all about education and fairness. The remainder is twaddle.

Is it not true that fertility decreases in line with increasing education of girls and women?

Is it not also true that family size (fecundity) decreases in societies where women have a choice as to whether or not they choose to become pregnant? And where women are treated as social equals alongside men?

Those three subjects, I believe, are the only effective way achieve long term population reduction, or even reduction in the rate of growth of population.

They are thus the only true policies of the Population Party.

All else is window dressing or wishful thinking from a single policy parthy which is seeking to present itself as having all the naswers on the whole range of policy issues.

fertility decreases in line with increasing education of girls and women?
JohnBennetts,
That just goes to show that before we lecture others we should start with our own, way too many unwanted mothers & babies here to support by the rest of us..

Single issue parties,might have a very short life cycle but all parties have a short attention span and are prone to changing policy overnight.

The Earth is finite, whether you people like it or not and regardless of name-calling. Continuing economic growth at the present rate would cook us all in just a few centuries, just from the waste heat, long before we reach standing room only (659 years at Australia’s current 1.7% population growth rate or 933 years at the current1.2% global growth rate). See

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

Smart people bet on the laws of thermodynamics.

Past societies have done great damage to their local environments, sometimes enough to achieve permanent collapse, as with the collapse of the Sumerian city states due to salinity problems, just like those in the Murray Valley.

http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL115/115CH17oldirrigation.html

http://www.smectech.com.au/ACMS/ACMS_Conferences/ACMS22/Proceedings/PDF/S7_5%20ARGA2%20Newman.pdf

People back then didn’t have the numbers or the technology to interfere with global life support systems, however. Before 1800, global population was below 1 billion people. Now it is 7 billion and rising, with 10 billion expected from the UN medium projection, nearly all of them wanting "a better life". We are facing not just problems with the food supply, as in the 1960s, which had a good technological fix, but serious environmental and resource problems in nine separate areas, according to this paper from Nature, probably the most respected peer-reviewed science journal in the world:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html

open version: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/

See also

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/07/earth-tipping-point-study_n_1577835.html

These are the findings of respected scientists, not opinions of misanthropic Greenies. There is also the issue that a good solution to one problem can make others worse. Cohenite has said, correctly, that making people richer will bring down fertility rates, but the necessary economic growth will make the environmental and resource problems worse.

Australia is not isolated from these global problems, and it makes sense to maintain good safety margins, just in case nasty things happen to the climate and our water supply, or to our ability to import vital resources such as phosphate rock. The Australian Academy of Sciences, back in 1994, recommended a population of 23 million as a safe upper limit.

http://www.science.org.au/events/sats/sats1994/Population2040-section8.pdf

Divergence; Steffan's paper seeking to impose limits of humanity is typical of the AGW mindset.

AGW is a failed theory:

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/man-made-global-warming-disproved/

Ocean acidification is NOT happening:

http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=db302137-13f6-40cc-8968-3c9aac133b16

Ozone depletion; the AGW propaganda always ignores the role of Cosmic Rays in Ozone variation:

http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~qblu/Lu-2009PRL.pdf

Phosphorus and Nitrogen pollution; this is an ongoing issue and certainly not resolved:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01113.x/abstract;jsessionid=B1807F1750996588F4D866C82E162DD9.d03t03?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false

P and N pollution could certainly be alleviated by greater GM application; but the same people who oppose N and P also oppose GM; result people will starve.

Biodiversity loss; exaggerated:

http://www.co2science.org/subject/e/summaries/extinctionmodel.php

What the hell is biodiversity anyway and why is it desirable in preference to humanity.

Freshwater should not be a problem with the expansion of desal plants under the auspices of AGW.

Landuse change; bad luck; Steffan's recommendation of a limit to landuse change of 15% of potential stock is an absolute recipe for starvation.

Aerosols and chemical pollution; start with China and the manufacture of solar panels.

What has happened with AGW is a complete reorientation of the criteria for pollution from what is detrimental to humans to any encroachment of pristine nature. Preserving pristine nature is NOT correlated with the best interests of humanity to the extent Steffan recommends.

I really think Steffan should be held to account for his alarmism.

Cohenite,

There is always some scientist somewhere who will say whatever you like: alien abductions really happen, the HIV virus has nothing to do with AIDS, childhood vaccinations cause autism, etc., etc. Scientists are people too. Some of them are corrupt and willing to act as guns for hire, and others are just deluded. You need to look at the consensus of the scientific community on an issue, not just try to find someone who agrees with you. If a doctor tells you that your child has cancer, you might be wise to get a second opinion, but not to visit 50 doctors in the hope of finding one who will tell you what you want to hear. Yes, there have been cases where the maverick was right and the scientific establishment was wrong, but the odds are with the house. Most mavericks are cranks.

On ocean acidification see

http://nrc.noaa.gov/sites/nrc/Documents/SoS%20Fact%20Sheets/SoS%20Fact%20Sheet_Ocean%20Acidification%2020130306%20Final_v2.pdf

The scientific establishment is still taking it very seriously.

Biodiversity refers to all the extinctions that we humans are causing. This has direct economic importance (as well as being blasphemous) because our agricultural scientists are constantly looking to import genes from wild relatives of crop plants, genes for disease resistance, drought tolerance, etc. At the Siege of Leningrad, the scientists at the Vavilov Institute chose to starve rather than eat the seed collection.

http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/9554-the-leningrad-seed-archive/

How much of the Earth's surface and primary production do you want humans to take?

http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0725-pnas.html

When the American Indians entered the New World, there is good reason to believe that they caused a mass extinction, directly or indirectly wiping out 35 genera of animals. They couldn't think of anything better to do with horses, elephants, etc. than eat them. You are proposing the exact same heedlessness.

Desalinated water is suitable for rich coastal cities, but it is 4 to 6 times as expensive as dam water, far too expensive for agriculture, and even more so, when you consider the energy costs of pumping it inland up a gradient. Water is heavy.

I am just suggesting that we listen to expert advice, rather than wishful thinking.

Divergence

Who's "we"?

Your method of determining what science is, is unscientific. Real science is always about what the data say, never a headcount, never blind faith in a consensus, never groupthink.

An irrational belief system will still be irrational even if people mistakenly believe it has the backing of science, even if technical scientists mistakenly believe it has the backing of science.

You understand, don't you, that science can tell us what the distribution and abundance of species are, but can't tell us what they should be?

It is not lost on me that most of the target audience posting on OLO is made up of the very same humans who are screwing up the oceans, the climate, other animal species, and just about everything else, including their self-created economy. Thus, in all but a few cases, any warnings, insights about human behaviour, descriptions of the science and evidence, and all the rest will inevitably fall on deaf ears.

The essential craziness and hopelessness of the delusion of most posters on this site is not lost on me. But then again, how are we to spend our precious time on Earth? Posting on this blog is my choice.

Now, for the relatively intelligent people who read this site there are two ways to go, you can make it easier, or you can make it harder. If the former, I am grateful. If the latter, congratulations! — you are part of the human mess I go to great lengths to describe.

There are lots of things humans don't do well, or can't do at all. They can't stop killing each other. They can't create and maintain a complex society which doesn't have all sorts of inequality and unfairness built right into it. They can't stop themselves from killing off other species and destroying the ecosystems large & small upon which they depend. They can't stop making babies unless they're also consuming all sorts of stuff. Speaking of stuff, they certainly can't stop themselves from consuming lots of it, given the means and opportunity to do so, etc., etc., etc.

Why climb that mountain? Because it's there! Why screw up the oceans? Because they're there!

Why build a life-like statue to our so called 'gods'? Because we can! We love it, and we're good at it too!

Technology is the hammer, and to humans, everything looks like a nail.

I'm too old to be governed by fear of dumb people and this opinion piece and most of the comments reflect the ignorance and stupidity of our species.

Cohenite:

"Scientific concensus demonstrates global warming has slowed. Many researchers have identified this phenomenon is linked to the heat being absorbed by the world’s oceans."

FACTS:
Global cooling is nonsense. This claim relies on no year has yet been hotter than 1998, an exceptional climate year.

NOAA has scientifically provel all 12 years of the new century rank among the 14 warmest since record-keeping began in 1880. The second-warmest year on record, was 2010. This is not evidence of cooling.

The rate of global warming is less this decade than it has been during the prior quarter century.

Fewer warming El Ninos and cooling La Ninas has adjusted the influence produced in an unbroken pattern of warming.

The heating hiatus is a divergance from the atmosphere into the oceans. A study from the NCAR published in Geophysical Research Letters, found that ocean warming has been accelerating over the last 15 years.

The University of Reading in England states: “Warming over the last decade has been hidden below the ocean surface.” If you take the oceans into account, “global warming has not slowed down.”

The oceans are the planet’s heat sink. More than 90 percent of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases ends up there. While climate models are good at calculating atmospheric processes, they are poor at plumbing the ocean-atmosphere interactions that determine how fast and how regularly this happens.

Virginie Guemas of the Catalan Institute of Climate Sciences in Barcelona, provides the first “robust” evidence linking ocean uptake of heat directly to recent “temperature plateaus” in the atmosphere.

If natural cycles start pushing towards strong warming, they will add to the continued inexorable upward push from rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Vis, we would see climate change returning to the rapid pace of the 1990s. Whatever happened to global warming? The odds may be that by 2020 it will have come roaring back.

Cohenite will dispute all of this evidence, unfortunately for him he remains stuck in his denial and the reality of getting stuck in a mantra that discounts evidence despite being a 'lawyer'.

Geoff of Perth

Have you stopped your unequal consumption of natural resources yet?

Too much of everyone else and just enough of you, eh

Cohenite cannot get past reading WUWT a debunked discredited fossil fuel funded web site, as probably he is as well to put up the rubbish he spouts.

“Skeptical Contorption”
– by Horatio Algeranon

Tony Watts is quite contorped
His “analysis” is bent and warped
Twisted into a Möbius loop
And endless train of puppy poop.

AGW is just a nutty cult, that's all. If all the fallacies that comprise its line of reasoning were science, they still wouldn't have justified their normative conclusions.

The fact remains that, quite apart from any issue of climatology, they don't know what the distribution and abundance of species should be, don't know what the temperature of the globe should be, don't know how people value their prospects in the status quo versus their counter-factual, don't know what people values should be, and have no means of calculating whether their own proposed policies can achieve their own aims in terms of the human values they claim to stand for. They are neck-deep in nothing but narcissism and fallacies refuted a hundred times. The rest is their infantile rage at anyone pointing this out.

I feel a bit sorry for Geoff of Perth as his throw away comment that all those who don't agree with him about population or global warming are 'stupid'. It's not a very mature position nor has he tried to refute the article.

The default position for those who want to rid the earth of people is to simply state 'finite earth'. But this only holds true for minerals. Indeed, the most valuable commodity these days is information traded on the internet. The anti-everything lobby (but mainly anti-people) is a throw back to Malthuse and it reflects his 18th C opinion that the poor of the world are a threat.

A vote for the Stable Population Party is not only a dead vote but a complete waste of time as a voters prefs will be scattered to the wind.

WOW!
Such vitriol.
Mainly from those who seem to believe that they have are above all other animal species and have a god given right to destroy the future of their and every other creatures descendants.
It is indeed ironic that I, who have no descendants, appear to be more concerned about the future of theirs than they are.
Strange people indeed.

Divergence: Just a few points. We routinely pump millions of tons of nitrates and phosphorous out into the marine environment every year, where it does nothing but harm!
Importing these products at great or increasing expense, could be entirely negated, by simply using what we currently waste.
If we were to do just that, we could, as a by-product, create enough virtually free energy to power our entire domestic energy needs, plus produce endless free domestic hot water and reusable agri water.
We can grow crops using virtually free desal water.
Ag-pipes wrapped in membrane can be laid underground, and wind or wave powered powered pumps, pump salt seawater to a convenient reservoir, from where it can be progressively released, through the pipes, with the resultant liqueur released back into the ocean.
Various plant species apply greater pulling power than many pumps, thereby taking as much water as they need from this flow.
An acre of trees, i.e., can evaporate 2.5 times as much water, as an acre of open water.
Given this form of agriculture takes place under-glass, the pristine evaporate is collectable and able to be reused and reused again and again!
Possibly for even more under-glass food production.
A fodder factory, i.e., is just a large shed covering around a half acre, which can grow as much green fodder on many shelves, as thirty acres of arable land; and, for just 1-2% of the normal water application.
Producing more food is not the problem, nor is housing more people, without in any way harming the environment. In fact, just the opposite!
The real problem is getting people to just let go, of their particular prejudices, their favourite thou shalt nots; or the myriad reasons this or that can't be done or won't work; and instead, open the eyes, the ears and the mind; and start to think and work outside the box, where virtually anything is possible!
And please, don't take any of this as a personal critique!
Cheers, Rhrosty.

JKJ, yes in fact I pretty much have.

I generate my own off-grid power, I use and drink water collected from my roof, I generate about 85% of my own food and reuse, recycle as much as possible. I also give plenty of food (particularly fruit and potatoes, carrots etc) to my neighbours and those living near me so in a sense I have a lucky ability to help offset their consumption from industrial agriculture.

I also recognise that I am fortunate to be able to do this and not everyone can.

I also recognise that as our population grows (about 80 million people annually-net births over deaths), global consumption of goods and services increases at an increasing rate.

You don't need to be a Malthusian to realise this cannot go on for ever. I also recognise that most people are selfish, as I am when I want to be, but I try not to be to the detriment of others and the world around me.

Geoff, you are a misanthrope.

You dislike your species and you feel superior to those who disagree with you.

It's a common, indeed defining characteristic of AGW supporters.

Your alarmism is unfounded. Your comments about warming and the recent years being the warmest ever is typical misrepresentation. What has happened has been a warm decade, the 90's and non-warming decades either side:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/to:1990/trend/plot/rss/from:1990/to:2000/trend/plot/rss/from:2000/to:2010/trend

Argue with that graph Geoff.

All attempts to prove current conditions are exceptional from Mann to Marcott have been distinguished by shoddy and deliberate misrepresentations; the climate scientists are either dupes or willing exponents of AGW.

Science has suffered and will suffer as a result.

Great post PeterA, for an obvious greenie; the greens have ruined this country and would ruin humanity if allowed. Your type are not fit to lick Anthony Watts boots.

Humans can be divided primarily into two groups, optimists and pessimists. The majority of humans are optimistic by nature, those who are sanguine about the human future, regardless of any current problems, and regardless of any worrisome ongoing trends, particularly our ever growing population. In extreme cases, as with technological optimists, they are actually excited about our bright future regardless of real problems or disturbing trends.

Scientific research has identified “optimism bias" has actually been found in the brain.

In a series of experiments, neuroscientists identified a region in the brain that seems to be responsible for this bias. They temporarily disabled this region using a magnetic field and then asked people what they think. The bias disappears. People stop being overly optimistic. They start to take risks seriously.

This is a remarkable finding which confirms that optimism is built right into humans at the genetic level. If optimism is innate in humans, you would expect that there will be a class of exceptions to the general rule because the complex combination of biological determinants which give rise to this trait is bound to "fail" in some individuals (via mutation or genetic switches or whatever). And that's exactly what we find.

Thus we have a much, much smaller group of pessimists. Pessimists are not rare, but they make up a very small percentage of the general population. Pessimists may be infrequent in the general population, but they are vocal attention seekers.

Whereas the optimist sees a bright future, the pessimist sees no future at all, literally. The pessimist is waiting around for the collapse of everything.

Thus we see that optimists and pessimists might be regarded as two sides of the same genetic coin. Fortunately there is a third group, "Realists".

This group have neither an optimism bias nor a pessimism bias. Realists look at the current problems and the trends, and make a considered judgment about the human future based on the evidence available. Only realists can assess risk correctly, for they lack the bias which colours the judgments of all the others.

I am a realist.

Earth calling Geoff of Perth, Earth calling Geoff of Perth ... what the fricken hell are you talking about with the genetic optimism/pessimism thing and how come you got appointed a realist?

Maybe you're a top gun in the sustainable water, drop toilet, renewable, mulching green arm band brigade but you're a long way from your medication pack with your last post.

No need to be so defensive. It's just a simple case that those who support liberalism, capitalism, humanism and western democracy, don't want you and the Unstable Unpopulation whackos depriving people of the right to have kids and pursue freedom and happiness where ever they can find it.

Nor do we want you carrying out sociobiological experiments on the Australian population as if we were rabbits. Yours truly, Bugs Bunny

Cheryl,

Why would we want to stop people from having children? The Australian fertility rate is 1.9, slightly below replacement level, as it has been since 1976. The real problem is the Government's enormous mass migration program, hardly an issue of personal freedom unless you believe in completely open borders.

Rhosty,

You are always coming up with these technological schemes. Once it has been fully proven that they can, say, make the interior of Australia green and fertile, and don't have nasty side effects, we can then talk about increasing the population. Not the other way around. You need to think of the physicist Luis Alvarez, who demonstrated muon catalysed fusion. He initially believed that he had solved all of humanity's energy problems forever, but then found that it was impractical due to the cost of making muons, their instability, and the "alpha sticking problem". I agree with you about recycling nutrients better, but there are always losses.

Jardine,

Our culture is so complex that no one person can understand it all. You accept an argument from authority every time you get into a car or airplane or fill a prescription. You only have a problem if you don't like what the experts are telling you. Scientists get grants, promotions, and respect by coming up with interesting new findings or ideas, or by shooting down the ideas of other scientists. Climatologists would just love a credible argument against AGW, if only to shoot it down, and it would mean a Nobel Prize for the originator if it held up.

There is nothing mystical about consensus, but any statistics book will tell you that you are more likely to get a reliable result with a bigger sample size. Science is also self-correcting, so why not leave it to the experts and do the no regrets items first?

"Climatologists would just love a credible argument against AGW, if only to shoot it down, and it would mean a Nobel Prize for the originator if it held up."

An explanation is only required when there is something to explain; ALL attempts by AGW to describe an abnormality in the current climate which requires a non-natural explanation have failed.

Marcott is the latest shambles.

Given this the pursuit of an AGW based explanation is a waste of time.

One of the best expositions of the sun's climatic dominance is by Stockwell:

http://vixra.org/pdf/1108.0004v1.pdf

Short version:

http://vixra.org/pdf/1108.0032v1.pdf

Yet to be published.

Climatologists do not like a credible argument against AGW because they know they do not have a credible argument in favour of AGW.

Geoff of Perth
Your self-abnegation is commendable piety in one so ostentatiously pious. Still, how do you know you’re not consuming too much and too many natural resources? How do you know you’re not screwing up the planet more than you are morally entitled to? Indeed since, according to you, human life is self-evidently bad for the environment, are you entitled to live at all? Please explain how you you know the appropriate and moral level of consumption for any given person?

Divergence
Who's "we"?

The difference between voluntarily accepting an appeal to absent authority, and having it imposed against one’s will by force, should be obvious. Whether or not the warmists and anti-populationists understand this, it invalidates their entire argument.

You do understand, don’t you, that science cannot tell anyone what the distribution and abundance of species should be, what the temperature of the globe should be, how many people there should be or what their living standard should be, and no government policy is capable of knowing whether it is producing an improvement, even in its own terms, once we take into account the problem of knowing what human values are and should be now and in the future?

“why not leave it to the experts and do the no regrets items first?”

This line of reasoning would only be valid if you could answer my above questions first. You can’t.

You are merely assuming, without any scientific or rational basis for your assumption, that the State can create greater net benefits for society by the use of force – policy - without ever taking into account what knowledge we would need to have in order to know that whether better serves the human values it purports to serve.

You can’t prove the anti-populationist case any more than you, or anyone else can prove that the world faces detrimental AGW that policy can improve.

The idea that “science” justifies the conclusion of the warmists or anti-populationists is simply an irrational belief system.

But if it’s not, then please go ahead and answer my above questions.

Population is more of the same.

There is more of the same robbery by the establishment.

There is more of the same poverty; there is more of the same denial, more of the same advertising for unlimited resources, more of the same consumer sales, more of the same real estate rebounds, more of the same road construction.

It’s just more of the same hollow, pointless, so called progress.

More of the same, management systems the world has relied upon since the late 1940’s are breaking down but more applications of the same failed management approaches are underway. To support more of the same failures there is more of the same moral hazard, more of the same credit provision, more of the same propaganda and lies. There are more of the same breakages with more of the same exponentially increasing consequences. There is more of the same corruption, more of the same outright pillage and government and big business deceit.

There is more of the same indifference and refusal to face reality.
There is more of the same flight out of banking deposits into risky currency traps even as there is more of the same flight into banking deposits!

In the end apparently “the good old days” are just around the corner. At the same time, there is more of the same begging/wishing for more of the same.

With more of the same taking place right now, less of the same will certainly be a whole lot worse.

What is sustainable about any of this? Who knows? How many more of the same vacant buildings are needed before the Chinese get to sustainability heaven?

Cheryl is indifferent in order to ‘have’ her desired industrial goodies and whatever she wants, she just refuses to see what is self-evident.

Our collective future is binary: we are either heading to some unknown utopia or destruction by our short sightedness.

Right now, this is happening and too much fantasy thinking and denial remains in the optimist’s brain.

Anyone want a deck chair on the Titanic?

Reckon you're a paid up member of the pessimists, Geoff of Perth. Nothing I can say will change that. When you open your fridge door, note first you have power and refrigeration and then note all of the nice things you have to eat. I get the feeling you might be a koolgardie safe man but each to their own. If you don't like progress of technology - DONT USE THEM.

When you get sick, don't take the medicines that we and foreigners created; don't drive that car or turn on the air conditioner because all of these things are made by us. But they come at a cost. You are an environmental ascetic and rightly belong to a faction than wants to curtail immigration, meddle with women's fertility and create Fortress Australia. For you, the world is a scary place. For me, it is wonderous.

Cheryl I am not a 'doomer' I just know limits when I see them, particularly from a scientific point of view.

Most people these days erroneously equate science with technology. Thus scientists in labs create the latest iPhones and cures for diabetes. Give them enough time (and money) and they will cure cancer and perfect cold fusion. Just don’t hold your breath while you are waiting.

You allude to the internet being a saviour, another techno trap of our age – the assumption that the universe operates along linear lines. That’s why most put hope in economists who regard monetary and fiscal policy as scientific instruments. Just tweak this knob and this will happen. Pull that lever and that will happen. But that’s not how the real world operates – economies are human constructs and as such they are vulnerable to the vagaries of human irrationality and emotional drivers. Fear and greed are two words conspicuously absent from economics textbooks.

Those of us who are realists know the scale of the problems and we are now seeing the first part of the great deleveraging. For the past hundred years or so we have seen a giant credit bubble grow – the biggest credit bubble in the history of the world. There is now something like 99 units of phantom ‘money’ for every unit of value.

Those in the know are quietly getting rid of their soon-to-be-worthless paper wealth and using it to buy up tangible wealth in the form of solid productive enterprises, land, minerals and gold.

Empires in waiting are quietly disposing of their US debt and buying up precious metals, and the average man in the street thinks the fact that the stock market is rising means that everything is doing fine (just don’t look at the trading volumes, which tell another story).

You can breed as much as you like, consume as much as you want, it makes no difference to me in the long run, but I do think it will make a big difference to you directly as we continue down this road of denial.

Ah, I see, Geoff, you're just a survivalist with pretensions.

Don't forget the 9mms.; gold bars are no use against a feral mob looking for working solar panels.

You can't get more accurate an assessment & prediction than the last two posts by Geoff & cohenite. Anyone disagreeing with them is disagreeing with reality & should finish dreaming & shake themselves awake.

Thanks 'individual' so true.

Cohenite, I don't own or need any firearms.

Solar panels in the city will be much easier to steal, probably from your neighbours I would suggest.

Happy with my lot and not a survivalist, just ensuring that I don't need to worry about much as the government continues to defraud those stuck in their industrial ways of life.

When they come knocking on my door, which I doubt, perhaps then I will consider using my ex-military skills and buy some ammo and a gun or two, thanks for the heads up!

Cheers

Geoff

Sustainability is not of this world, not of this universe. Every second the distribution of atoms changes to a new configuration, never to go back to what it was before, and only to change the next second. Every second the distribution and abundance of species changes likewise. More than 99 percent of species that ever lived are extinct. All is constant change.

Sustainability is a religious, not an ecological concept, a dream of stasis in which the original economic problem of the scarcity of resources is permanently solved by virtuous human self-abnegation - a Paradise.

Fretting about sustainability is foolish, and fully on a par with James Joyce's mother's fretting that power-points left unplugged were leaking electricity; on a par with the mediaeval monks who hated women as the instruments of generation.

The bald presumption that government, of all things, can and should aid in the achievement of ecological sustainability, is nothing short of laughable. Before astounding us with your rank foolery, you guys should pause for a moment and reflect on what government actually *is*, rather than what you think it *should be* - and take a look at what it's been doing for the last few hundred years while you're at it! Even just the last few years should be enough to cure your delusions!

Of itself, the basal idea of the anti-populationists is so obviously false that we can only laugh at their vanity and foolishness.

But as they want to use the State to restrict people's freedoms and choices, and physically coerce and threaten people into obedience with their foolish opinion, I resent them, I refute them, and I condemn them.

It is enough to point out the illogic and hypocrisy of Geoff's reply. Like all the anti-populationists, secure in all the comforts of industrial capitalism, he deals with with questions that he can't answer because he knows they disprove him, like any cultist, by evading a discourse of reason, and returns to chasing his tail gabbling his self-righteous anti-human, anti-rational, hypocrisy. The rest of them share the same methodology.

JKJ you are obviously in your 60's, probably toward the later end, i.e. nearly 70 odd-ish and really have no idea about the genuine world that now is our real reality. Perhaps, given your surmised age, you don't really care about the future of mankind. Selfishness is such an easy option when you are not threatened by the truth.

May I suggest you take your head out of your 'English Literature' books, and take a really hard look at reality.

Such a pity that someone, obviously intelligent, is so woven up in such a misguided and misaligned paradigm to reality.

I really do feel sorry for you.

Geoff

Geoff
All that supercilious ad hominem mind-reading assumes that you are already right in the first place.

As your illogic, my critique, and your evasions have just proved, you're not.

Suck it up bro.

Thanks ‘BRO’, you have just outed yourself, “All that supercilious ad hominem mind-reading assumes that you are already right in the first place. As your illogic, my critique, and your evasions have just proved, you're not. Suck it up bro.”

Fortuitously you have done what I expected, torn the bait from the rod, there is no logic or critique needed, and you have not provided either, silly man.

Whether I am right. time will of course tell, have you forgotten the need to study history?

Cohenite, Spindoc and others on this site differ in their views, we do however, try to remain within the realm of reality.

Unfortunately you have proven that you are unable to articulate your own stance, oblivious of our need to feed our insatiable hunger to denounce your prognostications.

I would suggest that I could parachute out of a snake’s a.se provided you were a viper. Please articulate how I can satisfy you need for this to occur.

I acknowledge that Cohenite, Spindoc and others have realised my stance and remain stoically abhorrent to some of my beliefs. I have no problem with this, they have views and so do I. This is what OLO is for.

You unfortunately remain enwrapped in a manta of denial and obsequious irrational detraction from reality, stay true bro you will eventually find some truth that fits your delusion.

Psychologically speaking, I understand your need to overcome your obvious failure in your professional life, please don’t take out your frustrations on me, I have better things to worry about.

Life is short and you have shown that some deserve less than others

Have a pleasurable Saturday evening if that is at all possible for someone so pious and ‘right’ as yourself

Cheers Geoff

Geoff
All that assumes that you're right.

So why don't you answer my question which you know very well you can't answer without proving yourself wrong?

OK JKJ if you need it in black and white...

"Your self-abnegation is commendable piety in one so ostentatiously pious. Still, how do you know you’re not consuming too much and too many natural resources? How do you know you’re not screwing up the planet more than you are morally entitled to? Indeed since, according to you, human life is self-evidently bad for the environment, are you entitled to live at all? Please explain how you you know the appropriate and moral level of consumption for any given person?".

Well JKJ since I don't consume or take from my net environment, my scientific EROEI is positive on my side, so I have a little to play with in terms of what I have construed as 'balanced'.

I have never stated "human life is self-evidently bad for the environment" however it is pretty obvious to the ley man or woman in the street we are now having a detrimental impact on ourselves (ever heard of a positive [negative] feedback impact), obviously not. Again this strengthens my argument.

There is no moral level of consumption, I am just acutely aware that my current impact, and that of my family (oh yes so sorry I have had the ability to breed) is globally, negative.

Too bad your moral high-ground espoused position precludes you from demonstrating the same; then again, you have no interest in ensuring the on-going perpetuation of our species, just another hypocrite with a well-worn moral imposition supposedly worthy of you typing on a computer.

Respond in kind and I will refute, denigrate through assumption of a false moral high ground and I will ridicule.

Do you finally get the message...

Jardine K. Jardine,
Your famous explorer pioneer namesake of the late 1800's would most likely be not very happy about finding out you're constantly driving on the wrong side of the road :-)

"however it is pretty obvious to the ley man or woman in the street we are now having a detrimental impact on ourselves"

No, that is just wrong; things have never been better for more people than today; and it is all due to resisting nature and natural 'constraints'; that is what the average guy knows and what he also knows is the lie being told by the alarmists and greens that he should tighten his belt further; people are sick of not being able to pay their electricity and eat at the same time.

What I would like to see is a massive effort made to colonise first the Moon and then Mars. The technology is already there or on the drawing board.

It would be great boon to mankind and shut the doom and gloom parade up; although maybe that is a harder task then settling Mars.

cohenite,
Grab all those pro population growth & economic growth mutts & send them to Mars. See how they go without us taxpayers. I wonder if boat people would be interested to give their agenda a go on Mars ?

Geoff

“There is no moral level of consumption, I am just acutely aware that my current impact, and that of my family … is globally, negative.”

You’re contradicting yourself. If there’s no moral level of consumption, then how do you know that your current impact is morally negative? And if it’s not morally negative, then what does it morally matter?

“(oh yes so sorry I have had the ability to breed)”

You’re the one arguing that human resource consumption is bad, remember? You should be apologizing to yourself for breeding. You should be apologizing to us for your hypocrisy.

“my scientific EROEI is positive on my side”

Does that include the EROEI for all your offspring and all their activities and any descendants?

“I have never stated "human life is self-evidently bad for the environment"

Your entire argument is nothing but that human life is self-evidently bad for the environment, otherwise there’d be no issue. Why else moan about “this road of denial”? If AGW is not self-evidently bad for the environment, it’s irrelevant, isn’t it? If not, why not, consistent with your statement that there’s no moral level of consumption?

If human life is not bad for the environment, then why get your EROEI down?

“however it is pretty obvious to the ley man or woman in the street we are now having a detrimental impact on ourselves …..”

Hang on. The question is whether we are having a detrimental impact. When I challenge you to prove it, you can’t answer by simply asserting it’s “pretty obvious”. You’re only proving my point – that your belief is circular, and you can’t provide a rational defence of any anti-populationist or AGW policy.

“Again this strengthens my argument”
Circular reasoning and ad hom don’t strengthen your argument, they weaken it.

“OK JKJ if you need it in black and white...”

Geoff you didn’t answer my question. How do you know the appropriate and moral level of consumption for any given person?.

You say there’s no moral level of consumption, thus surrendering the ground on which the anti-populationists and warmists stand.

(cont.)

So, how do you know the appropriate level of consumption for any given person? Without knowing that, how can you justify your contention that we are consuming too much?

“you have no interest in ensuring the on-going perpetuation of our species”

I assure you I have the most urgent interest in the perpetuation of our species.

You’re misunderstanding the issues, because you’re assuming that policy can make human life more sustainable, when that is precisely what’s in issue.

“Only realists can assess risk correctly, for they lack the bias which colours the judgments of all the others.”

In this whole discussion so far, you have kept assuming that you’re right so you’re biased in favour of your own conclusion, and therefore according to you, you cannot assess risk correctly.

What we need to know is, can the interests of mankind in the on-going perpetuation of our species be better served by the anti-populationists’ policies, or not?

You have assumed, but not demonstrated that they can. When I’ve asked you to prove it, you have either not answered my question, gone around in a circle, or conceded the general issue.

So you haven’t got to square one in establishing that policy can improve the situation, even in your own terms.

The question is this: by what rational criterion do you know whether a given resource should be consumed now or conserved for the future?

The rest of your post is ad hominem and assumes you’re already right.

Hypocrisy is not practising what you preach. In what way is what I’m saying hypocrisy, or making any “moral imposition”? I’m not the one favouring the forcible restriction of people’s freedoms for a theory I can’t rationally defend – you are!

Individual
Please answer the same questions.

Please answer the same questions.
Jardine K Jardine,
No props, as soon as you come over to my side of the road so that I can follow you & see where you're going I'll tell you what you want to hear or perhaps even need to hear.
talk to you tonight.

can the interests of mankind in the on-going perpetuation of our species be better served by the anti-populationists’ policies, or not?
Jardine K jardine,
I could only find the above line of any real relevance in your post. The interests of mankind ?
What are they ? Which grouping of mankind ? I am a firm believer that so far as good/bad mankind is concerned several groups do the damage to our planet. The growth advocates & those who cause the growth advocates to continue to advocate growth-the consumers. The religious who think only mankind needs protecting. Then there are the control freaks who think one group should dictate to another. And last but not least are the academics who think they know better than all others. The ones who keep everything going are those who care, who aren't as greedy, who aren't religious, who don't want to control others & last but not least those who know.
There will always be suffering poor as there will always be those who want more without putting up the effort. The ones who keep everything under as much possible a balance are those who can control themselves i.e. those with a conservative mentality.
Overpopulation will not ruin the planet, it is ruining the planet.

Thank you, individual.

Here it is, in all its self-righteous glory. The driving force behind all this agitation for population control, in one easy-to-digest sound-bite...

>>Overpopulation will not ruin the planet, it is ruining the planet.<<

Self-loathing and hatred of mankind in general simply oozes from this heartfelt assertion, does it not.

It's all our fault, for being born in the first place. And if only all those people in Uganda, or Sudan, or Niger, or Burkina Faso would stop exercising their rights as people to procreate, my life in the sleepy suburbs of Australia would be so, so much happier. How dare they.

Staggering.

Pericles,
That's just plain stupid !

I'm a little surprised the anti-population folk are still carrying on as the article and others on OLO and elsewhere have shown their true socio-biological colours. They love earth so much they would rid the earth of humans - the one specie who identifies with its beauty.

The anti-people lobby remind me of a drunk who has lost his car keys. He wanders up and down the street but only looks where there is a street light. When asked why, he says, 'because it's lighter over here'. I remember Hugh Streeton teaching economists how to tell social science 'fact' from fiction and how to correctly operationalise phenomenon.

The anti-pops desperately need to revisit basic social science texts and start looking at how phenomena presents itself and how to determine cause and effect. They are, in the main, an embarrassing joke.

Another word or two of writing on the wall ?

Egypt is to start diesel rationing in a couple of months.

But Bazz, you old dog whistler..

This is from Bloomberg:

"Egypt, which needs to reduce government expenditure, plans to introduce ration cards for subsidized fuel in its next fiscal year.

Egypt’s oil Oil Minister Osama Kamal said “The main purpose of the coupons or the smart-card system is for subsidies to reach those who deserve them and to curb the smuggling phenomenon.” (Bloomberg)

It's an anti-expenditure and anti-smuggling measure.... Unless of course they really know what happened to Marilyn Monroe and they have Harold Holt doing laps in what's left of the Presidential Palace.

Thats right Cheryl, they have been suffering with a diesel shortage for
at least 12 months. All fuel in Egypt is subsidised which is meant that
their use has been quite wasteful.
The objective is to make the diesel available to the most urgent users.
They have garbage building up in the streets as
the garbos cannot get reliable supply.
That is just one example.

They got themselves into this mess as they were an exporter of oil
until 2000 when their production peaked and they became an importer
about, I think, 2005. Their subsidies were not reduced and the govt
started running out of money due to food and oil imports price
increases and export income decrease.
Food and oil prices rose and the subsidies were reduced.
That caused the rioting and eventually the overthrow of the government.

It is all made worse because over the years their population
increased from 40 million to 80 million and the Nile can no longer
support their population.
At present they are existing on charity from the Gulf states.
The IMF is trying to lay down some conditions for a loan.

You listening Ludwig, there is a classic example for your campaign.

There endeth the 2nd lesson.

Cohenite, I don't believe that I have ever supported the AGW mantra, I do however observe, investige and measure the marine environment, part of my employment, it shows our localised climate is changing, all be it slowly and mostly from a system dynamic point of view.

Whether anthroprogenic impact is a cause/effect is yet to be scientifically verified and I commend you for your stance but wish you would cite peer reviewed evidence to support your claims.

You should always consider what makes Earth special; the life on it. Otherwise, it's just another ball of metal and rock in a vast, inhospitable Universe. Here I am referring to life, not saving the earth. The biosphere is a completely different thing from the 'earth'.

Bokonon translates pool-pah at one point in The Books of Bokonon as "s.it storm" and at another point as "wrath of God."
— from Kurt Vonnegut's Cats Cradle, chapter 110.

He wrote:

'The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What Can A Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?"'

It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it: Nothing.

You won't find any "market calls" from me, you see, sometimes the pool-pah exceeds the power of humans to comment.

As for terra-forming the Moon and Mars, well I will leave that to the Cornucopians who believe we don't have an energy problem on this planet and all things being equal, life will go on, ever upward and outward despite the rational and obvious scientific evidence to the contrary!

If you wish to be a 'Star Man' good luck and good fortune, I think you will be disappointed with the results. Take some really good books if you ever make it that far, which I firmly disbelieve given our current energy constraints and our ever failing economic fortune based on fractinal reserve banking and a system that rewards greed over the common good of mankind.
Cheers

Geoff

Individual, Geoff

The question is not whether one thinks the world's population is unsustainable. Maybe it and maybe it isn’t. It depends what time-scale you choose, how you define unsustainable, and a host of other contingencies and unknowables.

The question is whether policy interventions can make it more sustainable - even from the interventionists’ own standpoint - once we take into account the need for the intervention itself not to be the cause of human death, hardship, deprivation, or arbitrary or unjust abuse of power.

In order to answer this, we have to take account of the all-critical factor of human evaluations. The positive scientists so often who favour sustainability policy are too used to ignoring this factor, because they have no scientific methodology for dealing with it.

The interventionists all seem to jump from their premise that the status quo is unsustainable, to their conclusion that policy is the solution, without ever pausing to look down over the giant abyss of knowledge, or ignorance, they are blithely passing over.

However just because *they* pretend to a knowledge they don't have, doesn't mean the rest of us have to share in that pretence!

In a word, it's bullsh!t. The reason is because they don’t, and policy cannot, take account of the critical factor of human evaluations. And without ever turning their mind to what the State actually *is*; they indulge an assumption that what it *should be* is some kind of benevolent institution favouring delayed grat of all things LOL! Wotta joke! Once we unpackage these assumptions, we find there is no way they can justify their proposals.

For a scientific or rational belief system, *one* logical disproof should be enough to dispose of the question. Once we take into account the human evaluations involved, their case is a shot duck.

It's not enough to *assume* that restricting present resource use automatically serves the purposes of "sustainability", because if that were true, we could just ban all productive activity. The advantage would be a pristine environment preserved in perpetuity, and the disadvantage would be that all the people would starve

Therefore the question is ALWAYS how to balance present human values (including nature conservation for future generations and non-money values) with future human values.

To balance present with future human values, we need to know the values that all people with an interest in a resource, have in using that resource, now and in the future; compared with the interventionists’ dispensation.

Obviously that knowledge is not and cannot be available to the interventionists. Their presumption to know the appropriate level of consumption for any given person or resource now and in future, is completely unfounded which completely destroys their entire case.

(But it gets worse. People universally value present satisfaction of a given want more highly than the satisfaction of the same want in the future, and the further into the future, the less they value it. Hence the economic phenomenon of interest. Yet the absurd premise of the "sustainability" brigade is that future satisfactions are to be accounted equal to present satisfactions: people are supposedly to value their child not starving now, on par with the interest of a hypothetical stranger in a thousand or a million years time!)

Furthermore the instrument of policy is of course to be the State. Policy is to be enforced, that’s the whole point. It never seems to occur to the interventionists that this power might be abused, either in good faith or in bad. Because they always think of people as great aggregates, vast herds, it never occurs to them to reflect that their policies might forcibly and wrongfully cause individuals’ death.

There are already food shortages in the world, and many people live in constant hardship and privation. Yet the effect of ALL policies of the sustainability brigade is to divert society’s resources from satisfying the more urgent and important values of the world’s people – as judged by the world’s people – in order to satisfy the less urgent and important values of interventionists, the most comfortable and well-fed portion of mankind thanks to the industrial capitalism they despise, and the principles of liberty they are determined to violate.

Quite right Jardine K.

One major problem with the Stable Population Party and its followers is the obsessive hounding of the consumer aka - the individual as being the sum cause of all the worlds ills.

The notion that global warming is totally caused by each and every person is ridiculous and also punitive. The anti-pops want to empower the state to crush immigration and I suggest procreation in some countries, while continually bleating that the earth is finite and its everyone's fault were running out of X, Y or Z.

This is extraordinary and ignorant thinking on behalf of the anti-pops and shows a lack of conceptual understanding, not only of cause and effect, but also on how societies and economic systems operate. They would do far better and get a better hearing by analysing the reckless greed of some major polluters rather than shafting home the blame to everyone.

Racist. Misanthrope. Alarmist. Pessimist. Luddite. Ammo-hording Survivalist.

In a nutshell, Fruitcake.

Can we ever have a sensible debate about population and immigration?

A vote for this party may be "dead", that doesn't mean the issue is.

It's not rocket science.
The only way we could have an ever-expanding population is if we have ever-expanding resources, both locally and globally.
Is this the case?

It may have appeared to be the case in centuries past, as there was still plenty of growth that could be accommodated.
Is this still true today?

There is an assumption that things will either continue as presently, or improve (new tech).
What if things get worse?

What if political or environmental catastrophes devastate the oil-rich Gulf states or the manufacturing centres in China?

The presumption of an eternally improving interconnected global system is an utopian fairytale that could come undone in days or weeks.

If we are living in a sustainable way locally, we will be relatively unaffected.
If not, we are devastated too, even though half-a-planet away from the crisis site.

We need to be concerned about the sustainability of *Australia*, not just the world as a whole.
And most experts agree we are near or have exceeded our population capacity.
Something must be done now. Reducing or stopping immigration (a completely artificial, politically controlled phenomena) is fundamental and cannot be avoided and delayed forever.

Cheryl "whackos depriving people of the right to have kids"

Reducing government-determined funding or immigration numbers has nothing to do with any "right" to have kids.

Thought you'd sneak one in old Shockadelic, but you know, as I do, that the whole of Australia's population is about the size of greater New York City.

Population in Australia is a crank issue. Best left to the far, far, far left of the Greens and what's left of the crazy Democrats.

You're obviously a smart person. Redirect your thinking to urban design and give the 'ants will rule the world' thinking away.

Anyone, such as Cheryl who thinks that population is not involved in
THE problem is living in la la land.
The higher the population that we have the more urgently we have to
deal with the problems that Australia faces.

In about one years time we will be dependant on 100% import of oil fuels.
It will only require one upset in the Persian Gulf and Iran to close
the Strait of Hormuz and all private use of petrol and diesel will be
forbidden the next day.
Due to our governments ignoring this problem we are very vulnerable.
It is obvious that the larger our population the greater the difficulty
we will experience.

Has no one noticed that we are getting further & further behind in
house building ?
Has no one noticed that the cost of housing has reached a level that
people cannot afford to even rent a house.
Has no one noticed how our infrastructure such as country bridges is
getting in need of rebuilding or repair but the councils don't have the money ?
Any country roads being turned back to gravel ? Belly ?

Am I really the only one that has made the connection between the
above and falling GDP ?

Nope, absolutely nothing to do with population.

About the time of the release of the 2011 Census, there was great lamentation amongst the anti-pops that these ravenous migrants would boost average household sizes faster than we could build houses for them. If that was true, average household sizes should explode.

Yet the 2011 Census found that the average household size remained steady at 2.6 persons per dwelling - the same average as what was back in 2006 and in 2001. ‘Hang on’, I hear you say. ‘If Australia’s population is exploding, shouldn’t the number of persons per dwelling be climbing?’ Absolutely. It is a direct indicator of population. We all need somewhere to live.

Why is it so? One reason is the death rate. Death and serious illness in old age turns over property. Most people these days die of old age 70+ or of illnesses associated with age. The property goes to the children or it is placed on the market. In 2011, 146,932 people died. The great majority of these were elderly. So even though the property market is tight, there are still new properties coming on to the market. Over the next 30 years you can expect much more of that.

There was a rise in couple families without children (+20.3 per cent between 2001 and 2011), one-parent families (+16.8 per cent between 2001 and 2011) and lone person households (+16.9 per cent between 2001 and 2011) grew at a faster pace than a couple with children households (+8.7 per cent between 2001 and 2011). No sign here of a population explosion. The population problem is in Africa, a fact the anti-pops such as Bazz and Shockadelic conveniently ignore.

Errr, who is an anti-pop ?
Not me, I believe that we need around three children per family.
What we don't need is a population boost at twice that rate.

We need to know more accurately how many people we can support in
the manner to which we are accustomed.
That "manner" has to be adapted to the amount of energy available to
produce the food we need.
That is what we do not know and what the politicians show no interest in finding out.

Cheryl "The population problem is in Africa, a fact the anti-pops such as Bazz and Shockadelic conveniently ignore."

Actually a google search for global pop-density maps clearly shows that Africa has rather low levels (Nigeria excepted).

The highest are China/Southeast Asia, India and Europe.
Europe doesn't have a high birth rate, Asia does.
Pop growth is cultural.

And Asia is where we now get 2/3rds of our immigrants from.
If they can't control their growth there, what makes you think they will in Hurstville or Parramatta?

Immigrants come here for a "better life", no?
You think they want to end up in the same overcrowded, dirty hellhole they left behind?

Comparisons to New York or Africa or anywhere else are not relevant.
The question is not just how many people Australia can support, but what is our *preference*.

If we want a small population, we can have it.
This is our land, it doesn't belong to "the world".
The future is our choice.
Immigration is not necessary, inevitable or compulsory.

Domestic energy consumption is less than 30 percent of gross production. We export almost 30 billion of food. Population is a non issue in Australia. Not even a starter. Handy if you want to run a fear campaign as per Stable Pop Party or the loonies in Adelaide.

Cheryl, I suspect you believe that food production is limited by land
and weather.
Other things being equal, that is correct. Unfortunately there is more
energy cost in the value of food than any other cost and it is that
which sets the cost and availability.

It takes 10 calories of oil to produce 1 calorie of food.

Bazz, I thought you were talking about housing. Now you're discussing energy. I saw a poet guy try that tactic discussing population growth with Bernard Salt a couple of years in a debate and Salt salted him good and proper.

Yep, it takes energy to grow food but not more or less than 50 years ago. We'll need to grow more to capitalise on the China market but of course the main source of energy is the sun. If the sun grows food and creates photosynthesis, doesn't that mean the earth is part of an open system? Of course it does.

Cheryl said:
Bazz, I thought you were talking about housing.

However just two posts back Cheryl said:
Domestic energy consumption is less than 30 percent of gross production. We export almost 30 billion of food.

Your comment on Bernard Salt, whoever he might be, but energy is behind everything.
Without energy at an affordable price you cannot build houses, grow
food or indeed do anything including increase the population.
No Cheryl, it does take more energy to grow food now than it used to.
We ship it further, we use no longer use animal power, who got their
energy from other paddocks set aside for fodder.
We process food more than we used to in that it is packaged
differently and the greater variety of food requires more energy.

Australia is entering an era on being dependant on overseas supply
of liquid fuels. It is these liquid fuels that is the key to food
production and also a very large factor in energy consumption.
Your quote of domestic consumption is as you said only 30% but what
do you think the rest does ? It puts food on your table and a roof
over your head and keeps you warm.

I seriously doubt that in the longer term we will have enough energy
available to support a larger population.
That is why I complained that the politicians don't even want to
find out just how many we can support.

so we should cut population because we're consuming too much food?

Or it's too expensive to produce in terms of energy? Is that your take?

The reason that I ask those questions is that if you believe we are going to run out of oil over the next 200 years or when ever and shale or synthetics won't do the job, then it doesn't matter about population because we're knackered anyway. See what I mean?

In fact, the most insightful thinking has been about new power sources rather than consumption. If though, you (and many of the anti-pops are) are fixated by consumption then your thinking might be more fruitfully directed at criticising large corporations and their inefficient supply chains and waste.

No Cheryl, you misunderstand what peak oil is all about.

It is NOT about running out of oil !
It is about reaching the maximum amount of oil that can be produced.
That happened in 2006.
At peak the price of oil has increased five times since about 2002.
AS demand from China and India has been increasing the shortfall has
been taken up by a 3 million barrel a day reduction in US consumption
down to 18 Million a day.
Europe has reduced its demand by about 2 Million a day.
These reductions are just about equal to the Chinese, Indian and
Brazil increases.
However that cannot go on forever. As developing countries keep
increasing their demand physical shortages could occur and there
might not be enough flexibility in developed countries to reduce
further.
It is the cost increases that will be inherent in this situation
together with increased food demand and increased food prices due to
the inbuilt oil cost in food that is the concern.
The increased population will increase oil for food demand at 10
times the rate of population increase.

It is these problems in which politicians show no interest.

The unconventional sources you keep reading about are not much more
than a drop in the bucket and at present are about 4% of total all
liquids production. Thewy cannot offset the current decline rate of
all the other fields of 4 to 6 percent a year.
It is physically impossible.

That is why energy and population is so important .

Some interesting numbers there, Bazz. So interesting, I'm not even going to bother to check them.

>>...a 3 million barrel a day reduction in US consumption down to 18 Million a day. Europe has reduced its demand by about 2 Million a day.<<

At first glance, it would not appear that these reductions in total US/European demand were caused by a diminishing population.

>>The increased population will increase oil for food demand at 10 times the rate of population increase<<

From this, I take it that the consumption of oil-for-food in the United States has doubled in the last ten years, as its population has grown by 9.6%

http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2013/02/08/top-20-states-with-highest-population.html

Which is pretty impressive, set against the 14% reduction in overall consumption that you describe.

So what has in fact caused the lower levels of consumption in the US? Presumably, it is a by-product of their post-industrial economy, which means there is still hope for us all, n'est-ce-pas?

Pericles, the US reduction was caused by a slowing economy a change to
smaller cars and some reduction in electricity generation by oil fired
power stations. The latter I gather was a rather small amount.
Additionally in the US there is a change to rail for freight to a
significant degree.

The economy in Europe was the cause of the reduction there as they
already had smaller cars and also use diesel more.

I have not seen a breakdown on the oil for food, but if there was 9%
increase in population, there could well be a 90% increase in oil used
in food production. However the cost would be paid for by 9% more people.
There have been substantial increases in food prices from what I have read.
Are you confusing oil-for-food with total oil consumption. ?

>Which is pretty impressive, set against the 14% reduction in overall consumption that you describe.

Decline in oil production which is expected fairly soon as the plateau
which started in 2006, is not expected to go beyond about 10 years,
and will cause price rises which will be reflected in food prices.
Just how much, who knows !

That is exactly my point, Bazz.

>>I have not seen a breakdown on the oil for food, but if there was 9% increase in population, there could well be a 90% increase in oil used in food production.<<

The information you provide shows clearly that it is patently possible for a population that has increased by more than nine percent, to reduce overall oil consumption by fourteen percent.

This means that either the food-for-oil component must be insignificant in the overall consumption picture, or that a 90% increase in oil used for food is more than offset by economies elsewhere.

>>There have been substantial increases in food prices from what I have read.<<

Substantial increases in food prices in the US? First I've heard. What do you consider to be "substantial"?

http://www.bls.gov/ro3/apmw.htm

Your own numbers show clearly that a growing population does not necessarily result in increased oil usage. Also that overall, world consumption adjusts itself to the oil supply profile. Just as one would expect.

Pericles, I am not sure of the point you are making.
I have never seen a figure put on how much oil is used for food
production. It is known that it takes 10 calories of oil to produce
one calorie of food.
I would expect the oil used for food production to be small in the
overall oil production, but I have no figures for that.
It would be difficult to work that out as you would have to know such
info as what percentage of a trains tons/km load was food.
In 2007/2008 the cost of food went up because of the diversion of
maize into ethanol and as we know oil prices went very high and
disrupted the mortgage market.
The link to the table is interesting, as it seems the prices are now
quite stable over the last couple of years.

Apologies, Bazz, I was obviously not being clear.

>>Pericles, I am not sure of the point you are making.<<

You believe that the consumption of oil is driven by population increase.

You provided statistics that tell us that this cannot possibly be the case.

I pointed this out to you.

That's all

People in the Stable Population Party are probably a little upset with the Dead Vote article but it's important to understand Bazz, that much of this Malthusian thinking is still stuck in the 17thC and fixated on consumption.

Consumption of food and energy, at least domestically in Australia, is not the problem. It never had been a problem. You and others I suggest have been trawling the Net (Gail Tverbeg, I bet).

The real issue is the underlying politics of the SPA who say they only want initially to cut immigration. But alas, this is not the case. Population control for them and their allies means the right to create laws that would control people.

They are fear mongering instrumentalists who list everything from cats howling at night to dogs digging on a beach as evidence of Australia's booming population.

They are indeed an interesting bunch, Cheryl.

>>The real issue is the underlying politics of the SPA<<

I had a quick browse through their site, and found this:

"The Stable Population Party supports the (formerly) bipartisan Liberal/Labor intake of around 13,750 genuine refugees per annum (the highest per capita resettlement in the world, along with Canada)".

Casting a quick eye around the rest of the world, I found this:

"Over 30,000 refugees and migrants arrive in Yemen so far this year"

http://www.unhcr.org/517a58b5fac.html

Yemen has a population pretty close to ours, 24.8 million, and a GDP per capita of US$2,200. Which is not only a twentieth of ours, but also has actually declined for the last three straight years.

For all the sensationalist bluster about being overrun by refugees, we are quite significantly distanced from the real pain.

Pericles, Ummm, there are figures showing the consumption of oil per
head for all countries. If the people who comprise the increase have
the same consumption per head as the rest of the population, then I
guess the oil consumption would increase by that amount.

Is there something wrong with that reasoning ?

Cheryl, Australia is in the process of closing all our refineries.
Shell at Silverwater closed last year, Kurnell closes this year, and
Brisbane closes next year.
When complete we will depend 100% on imported petrol, diesel and
bunker fuel. Our 400,000 barrels a day will be exported.
If there is some sort of a problem internationally we will be in the
rush with the US, Europe, China, India etc to get supplies.
What chance do you reckon we would have in that scramble ?
The higher our population the greater the effect on us.

I don't know anything about SPP or their policies, but I think our
politicians are very remiss in hiding such reports as ABIRE's 2010 report.

This is getting more than a little bizarre, Bazz.

>>Pericles, Ummm, there are figures showing the consumption of oil per head for all countries. If the people who comprise the increase have the same consumption per head as the rest of the population, then I guess the oil consumption would increase by that amount. Is there something wrong with that reasoning ?<<

Well, yes, actually there is a great big hole in it. Right in the middle. Mathematically, of course, there is nothing wrong with your logic. It is only that small word "if" that indicates there are problems.

You gave us some statistics that showed clearly that both in the US and in Europe, an increase in population did not result in an increase in oil consumption. In fact, it decreased by a significant amount. Therefore, the consumption per head must have decreased.

So to accurately reflect this state of affairs, your statement should have read: "only if the people who comprise the increase have the same consumption per head as the rest of the population, would the overall oil consumption increase".

They hadn't. So it didn't.

Which, as I pointed out earlier, means that the entire argument that "more people = more oil" is comprehensively trashed. All, I might remind you, predicated on statistics that you kindly provided.

Which part of this is still a mystery to you?

Don't be so difficult Pericles.
Whatever decrease took place in the US, the consumption would have
been higher because the population increase did happen.

You know that so you are just being hard to get on with.

This still misses the mark, Bazz.

>>Don't be so difficult Pericles. Whatever decrease took place in the US, the consumption would have been higher because the population increase did happen.<<

According to your own numbers published here,

1. The population increased.

2. Consumption of oil decreased.

Therefore it is as clear as it possibly can be, that there is no direct relationship between total population and total oil consumption.

Surely we can agree on that?

You cannot be that dopey, so I just presume you are trolling.

Bazz, Bazz, Bazz,

Pericles is right. You really must do more research in this area and especially in multivariate analysis. One effect of rising prices since about 2003/4 is consumption is down. Another is the use of smaller vehicles in the US, although domestic consumption of oil never was an issue.

But Bazz, you've hit an interesting issue on the head and one which bedevils our pollies. How can we explain to people that the problem is not consumption (oil or food) or people (population) but the externalisation of risk by corporates (and Govs)? That's why the UnStable People Party will get votes. It seems like commonsense. But it ain't necessarily so..

I used to feel angry and confused by the prop-pop/multicultis (they're one and the same).

But I've had an epiphany: they're alone.
They are seeking what all people seek: a "home" and a "family".

Through misplaced guilt over events they had nothing to do with, they seek it in food courts and travelogues, in the "others".

Of course, the "others" *cannot* be their home or family, which just makes them more desperately alienated.

One day, like Dororthy in Oz, they'll realise they already had what they were looking for.
If their home isn't Australia, it's somewhere in Europe.
Ireland, Denmark, France.

But by the time they click their heels and wake up, there won't be an Australian that's Australian, an Ireland that's Irish, or a Denmark that's Danish anymore.

*Their* ideology will have destroyed the thing they long for the most, a home and family.

Not longer merely lost, they will be desolate.
Their hearts will break for the final time, never to mend.
And their former ethnic "titillations" won't help either.
They would be just be salt in the wounds of their empty soul.

Wake up Dorothy, while there's still a "Kansas" to go back to.
We're right here, waiting for you.

You have a home, a brain and a heart.
Discover your courage. Let the futile dream go.

That's an odd sort of post Shocker. I can only presume you're on Xanax.

Any chance of staying focused and making a sensible comment as per either my or Pericles' last two posts?

Just found this, published in March 2010, but covering an analysis of 1997 to 2002... still reading through the 39 pages.

http://dusp.mit.edu/sites/all/files/attachments/project/Energy_in_Food_System.pdf

This from the abstract should provide people a warm-up exercise in readying their calculators:

"A projection of food-related energy use based on 2007 total U.S. energy consumption and food expenditure data and the benchmark 2002 input-output accounts suggests that food-related energy use as a share of the national energy budget grew from 14.4 percent in 2002 to an estimated 15.7 percent in 2007."

Just up to the first paragraph on page 9...
Does this help?

"Still, on a per capita basis and on a per dollar of real (inflation-adjusted) Gross Domestic Product basis, annual energy use in the U.S. declined between 1997 and 2007."

Just lashing out, Bazz?

>>You cannot be that dopey, so I just presume you are trolling.<<

It is not "trolling" to explain to you that you are mis-reading the information that you offer. The mathematics involved are quite simple, and it is sad that you have made a Federal case out of some very simple numbers. I can only assume that you are doing this because you don't want to believe what they are - very specifically and clearly - telling you.

There are plenty of other numbers out there - go and look for some that support your views, an activity seems to be the accepted practice these days. Just don't publish stuff that is completely contradictory to the narrative you provide. It isn't a good look.

Have a great day.

Pericles,

It seems pretty obvious that consumption of anything can be expressed in terms of the population times the average consumption per person. Do you dispute this? Oil consumption in the US went down despite population growth due to the economic hit from the global financial crisis. What is interesting is that crude oil prices have stayed very high in historical terms for the past 10 years, giving the market plenty of time to adjust.

http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/Historical_Oil_Prices_Table.asp

How could this be so if the world abounds in cheap oil or cheap oil substitutes?

The high oil prices have fed into record high food prices. See

http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home/foodpricesindex/en/

Although there have been a number of factors involved, including population growth, speculation, and persistent drought in Australia, Don Mitchell of the World Bank assigns the most blame to biofuels (partly a response to rising oil prices and worries about energy security) and then the cost of oil feeding into agricultural inputs.

http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2008/07/28/000020439_20080728103002/Rendered/PDF/WP4682.pdf

This article by Michael Lardelli shows the true status of our food production in Australia, based on ABARE statistics.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2010-05-06/can-we-feed-%E2%80%9Cbig-australia%E2%80%9D

In the conclusion, he finds that we could supply about 3X our current population with wheat in a good year, less than 2X in a drought year, and 2X our current population with red meat in a normal, not a drought year. This doesn't even consider climate change, peak phosphate, etc. Doubling pig and poultry production would require us to consume all our coarse grains domestically and cut back on wheat exports. It seems that the Cornucopians like you and Cheryl don't understand the concept of a safety margin. Also, more people are going to require more imports. If we are going to consume most of our agricultural production ourselves, how are we going to pay for them once the minerals are mostly gone?

Cheryl,

In your article, you set great store on rising incomes, but you don't consider how much of that income is being eaten up by rising housing costs, or rather, the rising cost of residential land. The idea that population growth makes no difference when development is being concentrated in a few big cities with only so much land within commuting distance is just loony. See

http://economics.hia.com.au/media/House%20price%20to%20income%20ratio%20-%20FINAL.pdf

You also ignore effects on the environment, not just the direct effects, but also the damage that is done in producing the exports needed to pay for the imports for the larger population. Not all environmental problems are related to population - it only took one fool to introduce the rabbit, but I = PAT applies to most of them. (Impact on the environment equals the population times the average affluence of that population times a factor representing the dirtiness of the technology used to produce that level of affluence.) You want to just reduce T, without changing A (very unpopular), while P increases without limit. Forgive us for being sceptical. The Australian Conservation Foundation has nominated human population growth in Australia as a Key Threatening Process under the Environmental Protection Act.

http://www.acfonline.org.au/sites/default/files/resources/EPBC_nomination_22-3-10.pdf

That's a very strange question, Divergence.

>>Pericles, It seems pretty obvious that consumption of anything can be expressed in terms of the population times the average consumption per person. Do you dispute this?<<

Not at all. What's your point?

>>Oil consumption in the US went down despite population growth due to the economic hit from the global financial crisis.<<

What occurred here is a natural outcome of the laws of supply and demand - you will notice also that the price of oil went down recently, in order to meet the lower demand for the product. It is of course entirely possible that, when the US economy recovers further, demand will increase again, and the price will go up. Alternatively, it might occur to them to think hey, we previously managed on less, let's keep our costs down.

>>What is interesting is that crude oil prices have stayed very high in historical terms for the past 10 years... How could this be so if the world abounds in cheap oil or cheap oil substitutes?<<

You know as well as I do that the world does not "abound" in substitutes. World demand for oil - as opposed to just the US and European markets - has remained pretty high, which is why the price is still historically high also. I doubt if the price will decrease in any substantial way until such time as alternatives are brought online - they exist, of course, they are just too expensive right now.

But you also say:

>>...giving the market plenty of time to adjust. <<

Errrm... the market has "adjusted". That's why the prices are high.

>>It seems that the Cornucopians like you and Cheryl don't understand the concept of a safety margin.<<

I'm not a Cornucopian. I'm a Scorpio. Anyway, how much of a "safety margin" do you think we need? If we increase production further, prices will fall. If prices fall, farmers will stop growing the stuff. Then prices will rise again.

Supply and demand are in equilibrium at a particular price point. Even Scorpios understand that.

“Over the same period, food exports increased by 12.3 per cent to $30.5 billion, the highest they have been since 2001–02. With more than 50 per cent of Australia’s food exports going to Asia in 2011–12, we are well on our way to taking advantage of increasing opportunities. Imports also increased this year to $11.3 billion, but we still managed a very strong food trade surplus of $19.2 billion, 14.6 per cent higher than in 2010–11. This ranks Australia tenth in terms of food trade surpluses worldwide.”

http://www.daff.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/2269762/daff-foodstats-2011-12.pdf

Australia doesn’t and never had a population problem nor a food supply problem now. It has a few loonies bowing to Malthuse but that’s not a problem either. We can provide them with remedial education on how modern economies operate.

Oz’ population is about the size of greater New York at 22 million. It is neither over populated or under populated. It does have urban design and infrastructure issues in Melbourne and Sydney; the same bloody issues of poor agenda setting of priorities that have been with us since the 1970s.

A couple of years ago the President of the Sustainable Population Australia, Sandra Kanck, called on the Australian Government to implement a one-child policy in Australia and to stop all immigration. She recanted soon after when the media did a double take.

It’s factional bedfellow, Stop Population Growth Now – which hopes to be a political party in SA - wants to “Reduce Australia's rate of population growth to zero as rapidly as possible. If the resulting stable population is still environmentally unsustainable then work to reduce the size of the population until we achieve environmental sustainability.” That’s from its website.

Michael Lardelli, a geneticist, is a member of Stop Pop Growth Now and is an associate of Sandra Kanck. Are you still happy to use him as a ref?

Are these the people you want in government, Divergence? Are these your army who will save capitalism from the consumptive terror of people eating?

You clearly don't understand about secondary sources, Cheryl. They can be useful because they collect information in a convenient form, and this is often done because the author has an agenda. Their credibility depends on their primary sources, however. You can only discredit Michael Lardelli here by showing either that he has misrepresented his sources or that ABARE is wrong itself and not a credible source. You haven't done this. The dollar amount of exports is irrelevant. What matters is the proportion of food that we would need to keep back for our own needs with a much larger population. You show an inability to look at the longer term. Some of us have children and grandchildren, and we actually care about their future.

You are also unwilling to believe that we could be seriously impacted by global resource and environmental problems. For example, Australian soils are very low in phosphate and productivity can be increased 'severalfold' if it is added.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/1ca94df590adff7fca2569f300250a31!OpenDocument

See this chart for how the world phosphate rock price is being bid up

http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/phosphate-rock/all/

Australia's population or population density are irrelevant. Australia is really a small to medium sized country wrapped around a big desert - useless apart from its value to the mining industry. According to the ABS, 85% of the people live within 50 km of the coast. Even you would be aware that we have some very serious environmental problems, and there are also problems related to providing enough infrastructure and public services, not because all our politicians have suddenly been hit with the stupid stick, but because the cost of the current rate of population growth makes fixing them impossible.

Sandra Kanck's opinions are her own. Australia doesn't have a problem with high fertility, and SPPA doesn't advocate a one child policy, just cutting back on the highest rate of mass migration in the developed world.