spindoc, there is an ommission in your list:
people who use grocers' apostrophes.

Whilst some of the comments are moving into the direction of humorous or grotesque, I try to remain serious.
I think all of us agree that growth (population, economic etc.) can not carry on forever - we live in a limited world. Unfortunately we carry a very heavy baggage stemming from the history of previous centuries when space and resources were seemingly unlimited. The "go west" mentality is also very strong, people believe that we always can find new resources, open up new land for subdivisions etc. This approach MUST be changed before we can expect any positive movement.
This needs education. Few week ago I talked to our federal representative, who had no idea what carrying capacity means. He supported all development, growth, population increase, you name it.
And these people govern us, bring down legislation and set the direction of the nation.
Therefore we can not expect any solution from above. The bottom up solution will not work for two reasons: 1. most the people are passive 2. soon or later small pressure groups will take over the initiative.
I would love to be more positive, but as time goes by, I am growing more and more pessimistic. We will carry on business as usual until the stock lasts and then we bang our head into the wall. (see the fate of carbon charge, solar panels and similar attempts).
The only remedy so far is more ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

Pocika,

You started well with the line “I try to remain serious”.

After that I spilled some of my precious Margaret River Petaluma, a lovely cherry red drop from WA. Is this you being “serious”?

If the laughs had continued I could have forgiven you but in retrospect even the slightest stain of wasted Petaluma offers no compensation for your crass, infantile, peak population, morbid, patronizing garbage, funny though it may be, is no compensation for lost quaffing opportunities.

If you are going to continue your career as a comedian, you need to consider, timing, punch lines, variety, delivery and at least some contact with reality.

Get yourself an agent and work through some of your issues with reality, then try again. Don’t bother with “Australia’s Got Talent”, you won’t even make the semi’s.

Troll on Spindoc if it gives you relief. In the meantime, a serious question: do you believe the world has the capacity to cope with an infinitely large population, or do you believe that the capacity is finite but just much larger than it is at present? I'm not having a go, just interested.

If you wish to address concerns regarding population growth from immigration, the last thing you should be doing is restricting the rights of people to develop property. All you end up with is an obscure and corrupted development process. And with the potential profits from this process all the greater with high immigration, it is hard to see government conforming to the public decree for long, much like happens in Oz currently.

But with fewer restrictions on development, there is much less opportunity for corruption, leaving government without the corrupt spoils and the big problem of providing infrastructure.

For once I actually share Cheryl's cynicism of people wishing to restrict your rights so they can give you what you want: Such is the oxymoron of development restrictions.

This article could have been written by US based anti population and anti immigration advocates under the umbrella of the bigoted "John Tanton Network", or Sustainable Population Australia, Stable Population Party, Dick Smith etc.

Why? There are claims of over population, high population growth and high immigration, without any empirical evidence of direct causal links, and what appears to be democratic (for those suggesting the system) is in fact authoritarian......

Who chooses? If we had such a system in the past, Australia would never have received the benefits of immigration from and ongoing links with Europe and now other regions such as Asia, Africa, South America. I think that's the point isn't it?