<< At this crucial time in human history Australian politics could not be in worse hands. >>

You’re not wrong John!

Abbott’s mob is just so totally oblivious to the continuous-rapid-growth issue. Actually, they’re worse than that – they are total panderers to what the vested-interest all-powerful big end of town wants.

And Labor is only slightly less disgusting.

I just hope to goodness that the forthcoming Abbott disaster will make Labor realise the absolute imperative of a sustainability-oriented stable-population paradigm, and will understand that they would get overwhelming support from the Australian people if they undertook this and promoted it in the right way.

Labor has surely GOT to do this, starting straight after the election, so that they can win the confidence of the voters that they are genuine by the time the next comes around.

"What is clear is that our leaders need to understand that continual growth of GDP is neither desirable nor possible...." Our politicians are living in an artificial, self-created political world of power, in their ivory towers, with their single-aim of "growth" at all costs. Single aims, and narrow focused policies, are always doomed as they fail to consider the whole landscape, the multiple perspectives and the implications. Economic growth is not desirable if our living conditions continue to become eroded, and our cities continue to buckle under the heavy weight of human numbers. Population growth is the easy, mindless, no-brainer, minimal effort route to GDP growth. There will be many constraints to fracking, and the destruction of arable land and water basins. It's self-destructive to aim for "growth" at the detriment of per capital human well-being, per capita GDP, wilderness areas, food security, and a robust planet that future generations can inherit. Gluttony and greed for growth is detrimental. We should be investing in hon-tangibles, that can grow limitlessly. We shouldn't be waiting for climatic and environmental disasters before changing tracks!

"Two outcomes are possible..."

Many more than two outcomes are possible, but at the moment the most likely one appears to be that the supply of energy from shale gas and other new fossil fuel sources -- supplemented by solar in those circumstances where it is viable -- will keep us going until we get nuclear fission sorted out, and that the scary-wary 'cataclysmic' jump in global temperature predicted by the alarmists will turn out to be as imaginary as the ongoing rise that they predicted eighteen years ago.

"In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010."

http://asiancorrespondent.com/52189/what-happened-to-the-climate-refugees/

What reason do we have to believe that your predictions are any more reliable than theirs?

I agree with the thrust of this article, that we've got to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel energy, but we tend to exaggerate the "finite planet" argument. Haven't we been able to move well beyond Malthus, thanks to new techniques, technologies and discoveries he didn't foresee? Certainly, the planet is finite to some extent, but recycling and the fact that trees and plants continue to grow still offer hope for the future - as will the re-discovery in farming techniques provide an incredible solution for carbon sequestration. It's not all bad news.

The argument here rests on a non sequitur. One can fully understand the consequences of the finite nature of the planet’s resources and still have no policies to deal with it. The reason is simple; there aren’t any sensible policies to deal with it. The trouble is that John Coulter’s feelings about how to live without economic growth, or better, with economic contraction, may be admirable but they are not shared by the vast majority of his fellow inhabitants of Earth, including at a guess around 80% of Australians. So what’s the plan? Force them to start agreeing with the John Coulters of the world? It won’t work, guaranteed. Indeed, virtually all of the policy objectives that Coulter’s political sympathisers espouse need greater national wealth, not less.
Here’s the problem. How do you get everyone in the world to agree that prosperity growth must be reversed when pretty much everybody wants, indeed needs, the opposite? You can’t. It’s exactly the same as the carbon emissions problem. However, it’s obvious that some individuals in some rich countries can and do enjoy making do with less. Good luck to them

The fracking technology that revitalized gas drilling could start an entirely new energy age of cheap energy by releasing vast reservoirs of geothermal energy underneath our feet at depths of 1 to 7 Kilometres. Tapping only 2 percent of it could satisfy current annual U.S. energy use 2,000-fold for each and every year of the foreseeable future, according to an analysis from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fracking, the same technology used to drill for natural gas, may provide an economical way to get at that geothermal energy. : Pump water or other fluids down deep beneath the surface. Hot rocks at depth boil the water into steam, which rises back to the surface to spin a turbine and generate electricity. With that in mind, the US Department of energy is focussing on better methods for geothermal prospecting, drilling and fracking.