Rhian,

Re: your comment "That's not a meaningful comparison."

My link was in reply to your response to Geoff:

"You also say "a planet of nine or 10 billion looks like a nightmare." Not to me it doesn't."

I think highlighting depleted groundwater reserves stemming from human activity is a pertinent point - especially when discussing high-density population needs.

Poirot
You’re right, water constraints may in principle be more of an issue for global population growth than for Australia.

In practice, though, I think India’s groundwater problems are due more to poor management and regulation than sheer weight of numbers. Most of the literature I have seen points to subsidised electricity for pumping and free water allocations as the main causes of over-consumption in India – a problem that any economist could have predicted. I have only looked at these papers briefly, but they seem consistent with the analysis I found when looking at this issue in a bit more detail a few years ago:

http://ejournal.icrisat.org/agroecosystem/v2i1/v2i1irrigation.pdf

http://www.sigmaxi.org/programs/issues/Tancig_Jawitz.pdf

If our governments declared that there are no bag limits on taking crayfish, took no licence fees for fishing and provided subsidies to fishermen, we’d quickly over-exploit that resource. India's governments took that path with water, with predictable results.

Rhian,

Of course, you are right. India's government decreed such things.

I believe they were also pressured by such entities as the World Bank, IMF and WTO with "structural adjustments" and such like, to achieve ends which may not have been sustainable.

Rhian,

I will write it again, just to clarify what I wrote the first time.

'you don’t get it.'

It's that simple, you just don't get it.

You have a preoccupation in believing in the growth mantra. Malthus was obviously early in his estimations, just like the Club of Rome and some others in the 1960s and 70s.

Unfortunately the clock is running down, not just in literal minutes, but also energy, biodiversity, top-soil, agricultural output etc etc.

There is pretty much no point going on. As I said, you just don't get it

"the green shoots of Orwell's totalitarian future are emerging in Australia"?

It's already a forest.
And it's called Progressivism (this article being a prime example of it).

Why are so many people getting their knickers in a twist about a party that's achieved nothing?

Because Progressives *are* the Totalitarians-they-warn-us-about.
They cannot tolerate dissent. Ever!

Maybe the environmental and heritage groups are the real villains here.
Why *haven't* they been protesting mass immigration, the number one threat to their beloved causes?

I would like to answer Shaockadelic's question.

Because, Shocky, the people who once advocated a sustainable environment, have sold out to the idea of wanting to remain in government for the perks and lurks.

The Greens grew out of the Australian ZPG Party, which was primarily composed of what we would call today "tree huggers" and "world savers". But the ZPG was a bit advanced for it's day in a low population density country like Australia. But what astounded the world was the electoral success of the Greens party in Germany.

Clever people like Bob Brown, who knew how to manipulate the idealistic and mollycoddled middle class youth of an ever growing prosperous society, saw the opportunity to create a new party based upon this demographic group. The Greens swept upon the political landscape with all the force of a Southern Baptist evangelical revival meeting.

The message presented to their supporters by their Elmer Gantry leaders was simple and clear. YOU are the smart ones who know what must be done to create Salvation. YOU are the self sacrificing morally pure who stand in stark contrast to self interested sinners who are killing holy mother Gaia.

But there was a few thing s wrong with the Greens business model. To begin with, if you oppose everything which makes a buck, then you are getting away from the Socialist business model of screwing the productive to buy the votes of the unproductive. And you are going to run out of money to buy votes. Especially if somebody is stupid enough to buy your ideas like "wind farms" and "renewable energy." And strutting around in a state of feigned moral outrage, like Fred Nile walking around a Kings Cross's brothel, will only work for a while.

So, what the Greens needed was a new demographic to vote for them. Voila! Along comes the Muslims and the illegal immigrants. So the Greens new line is, "Vote for the Greens, and we will let everyone from your home country come to Australia and get on the dole."