<< 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.

John, I disagree with your premise about the thinking of our two potential leaders. They are much more limited than you suggest.

Both of them are rank opportunists. As politicians, their first thought is about themselves, how to promote themselves, how to grab total power and hold onto it, how to advantage themselves and their underlings, etc.

The fact that both potential leaders represent either the Big End of Town or The Low End of Town does not bode well for them having thoughts about what is best for our country in any area.

The fact that the Liberals won't release their costings and cuts and there are only a few days left shows how contemptuous they are about the electorate. I just watched Abbott at the Press Club. He grinds out cliches with a monotony that cannot be matched by anyone. The Liberals, of course, will advantage business and the rich during their tenure. It is their trademark!

I agree that there are major issues in Australia which need to be addressed but neither Abbott or Rudd, both ego-centrics, are unlikely to produce positive results.

God help Australia!

As soon as I hear someone babbling on about global warming I know they are not up to it, or are part of the fraud. It is so overwhelmingly obvious with all the recent data, that CO2 is very much a minor bit player, in all but plant food, sensible people should drop it now.

As we see that salesmen are the easiest to con with a good sales pitch, perhaps scientists are the easiest to con with a good science fraud. I hope so, as I don't like the idea that so many scientists are stupid or rip off men.

If in doubt refer to the old cliché, "the stone age didn't stop because they ran out of stones". The same will apply to the hydrocarbon, & nuclear ages.

So stop trying to use a dead horse. You can't ride one of them to victory, or anywhere much else. Try talking the fact that every extra person in Oz reduces the wellbeing of almost everyone already living here in almost every way.

Get the population to understand that & the politicians will stop the flood of immigrants to save their jobs. Stop flogging the resource thing too, it is a non event, in fact & to the public. There are enough resources in the sea to supply a thousand times the current requirements, When we need them, we'll go get them.

I have no idea if PESTs hot rock is going to supply the answer to energy. What I am sure of, is just like every thing in the past, when a need is identified, someone will respond, & get very rich doing it.

Some have asked for Coulter to substantiate his predictions - these are contained in the article - the Club of rome report from 1972 was dismissed as being alarmist - forty years later we find that their projections were accurate.
Tombee argues that 80% of Australians want growth. He is half right - 80% of Australians want to enjoy a good quality of life. However, since 1974 our GDP has kept steadily increasing whereas our quality of life has been decreasing. You do not need Lawn and Clarke's peer reviewed study to believe that just talk to someone who was an adult in 1974 - we may have more gadgets but we have to work longer hours and assume a greater debt in order to enjoy the sort of quality of life that we would like.

Great article John. I've just been at the National Press Club listening to Tony Abbott "grinding out the cliches" and it was a truly depressing experience. Twenty minutes of the carbon tax with no thought about why the carbon tax was implemented in the first place. (Sorry Hasbeen, climate change is real and happening now and largely man-made.) Once Abbott stopped talking about carbon tax he got onto the need to build all these new roads. Absolutely no awareness of the likely price rise in petrol because conventional oil is being replaced by expenive unconventional oil with very low EROIEs. And then there is the unsettled state of affairs in the Mid-East. Should the US decide to strike against Syria after all, one form of retaliation by allied states would be to reduce oil exports. Analysts say the price would go straight to $125 barrel (from the current US$116 in London) and possibly to $150. Let us not forget the GFC coincided with oil reaching $147 barrel. That will mean collapse of the oil price as demand collapses and then there is not enough money to extract the unconventional oil, most of which requires $100 or more/barrel to make it worthwhile. Oil resources may be seemingly infinite, but very much finite when we talk about affordable, extractable reserves. Transport is 86 per cent dependent on oil so we had better relearn how to ride a bike and how to grow much of our own food.

Oh Dear, here we go again.
The arithmetic does not listen to the optimists.

Here is a bit of a shock for those of you who think technology will save us all.

The increase in shale oil production will delay the final transition
from the plateau to decline by wait for it.,.,.

TWO WEEKS !

The worry about AGW is a waste of time because there is not enough
fossil fuels to generate that much co2.

I agree the politicians are the greatest obstical to the adoption
of realistic programs. I have spoken to two MHRs and they both go
through the motions of listening and commenting, but that is where they switch off.

Our rescources are not unlimited and are getting more expensive and
indeed are getting close to the point of unafordability.
I agree that we stand virtually no chance of getting action to
mittigate the effect of energy decline.

Complex systems theory shows that if no actions are not taken to
mittigate the effects of decline a society collapses very fast indeed.

Bazz, according to this article South Australia has an estimated 437 TRILLION cubic feet of gas reserves:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/mining-and-resources/australias-shale-reserves-among-worlds-biggest-20130611-2o15z.html

If you think this is only going to last two weeks, you will need to show your working. A mistake of five orders of magnitude is a little hard to swallow even from an AGW alarmist.

Only if you screw your eyes up and squint really, really hard, BAYGON...

>>Some have asked for Coulter to substantiate his predictions - these are contained in the article - the Club of rome report from 1972 was dismissed as being alarmist - forty years later we find that their projections were accurate<<

If you actually look at the referenced CSIRO report by Dr Turner, he first pretends that the Limits to Growth was not, in actual fact, intended to predict anything at all...

"The World3 model was not intended to be predictive or for making detailed forecasts..."

http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf

...and then proceeds to find "evidence" that supports those predictions that it, apparently, did not make.

The incongruity of this contradiction does not seem to disconcert the author at all. Which is more the behaviour of a politician, than a scientist.

Forbes magazine nailed it beautifully:

"So if we’re not running out of metals and minerals but we are substituting metals and minerals for fossil fuels then the idea that actually, the Club of Rome were quite right looks a bit odd, doesn’t it? In fact, that one assumption obviates everything else that Turner wants to tell us. For he’s just assumed the exact opposite of what we’re all already doing."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/04/09/the-club-of-romes-limits-to-growth-updated-entirely-bizarre/

Limits to Growth remains a highly flawed document. Here Mr Coulter uses it as a platform to promote the pipe dreams of his Sustainable Population Party...

"...a society based on renewable sources living a dynamic steady-state economy"

Apart from the fact that these policies amount to no more than an exhortation to stagnation and universal mud-hut poverty, his entire argument rests on an internal contradiction of embarrassing proportions.

The other trick is to dismiss GDP as an effective measurement tool, and instead utilize hearsay:

"many media commentators seem not to understand that GDP is a very poor measure of human welfare"

... which encourages people like BAYGON to write:

>>...since 1974 our GDP has kept steadily increasing whereas our quality of life has been decreasing<<

Decreasing? Sez who?

John J, what seems ridiculous you, ie all that gas cannot overcome
oil decline, becomes obvious when you look into it in a bit more detail.

First, cracking shale gas requires very large amounts of water.
Can we afford to allow the Great Artesion Basin to be used for cracking ?

The cost of shale oil and gas at the well is a lot greater than conventional oil & gas.
There are a number of articles on http://www.resilience.org/

The main problem is as conventional cheap oil declines it is mixed with
the much more expensive shale and oil sands output at $100+ a barrel.
Even Saudi Arabian conventional oil requires about $80 to $100 a barrel.
Other conventional oil seems to be about $40 a barrel.

I read an article, on which site I cannot remember, that we appear
to be on the verge of unaffordability of oil & its refined product.

Australia's particular problem is that we are closing ALL our refineries.
This means our production of about 400,000 barrels a day will all be
exported.
WE then will import 100% of our petrol & diesel.

We will then be at the mercy of international dealers for even
emergency supply.
Any sort of blow up in the Middle East could mean rationing the next day in Australia.
Remember it is not the US Navy that will resolve such a problem but the insurance companies.

It is true that gas can subsitute for petrol but the cost of
converting the vehicle fleet would be prohibitive, to say nothing of
converting all the service stations.

Whichever way you look at it we really are in a bind and we cannot
rely on politicians to act in any realistic way.

It's a general human failing not to appreciate exponential growth, let alone a political one.

Every time they say that the consumption of a resource has continued to double, it doesn't just imply that we have just used twice as much, it means that we have just used more than the combined total ever used.

There are more people alive on the planet today than the sum total of everybody who has ever lived and died in all of recorded history.

Next time it "doubles" we will have 14 billion squabbling over what remains of the resources we are now wasting be like?

What will being one of 100 billion by the end of the century be like?

Maybe we should just party on now and let those future suckers worry about it!

At least, that's the general attitude today.

Thought I would share this quote with you on oil decline & shale oil;

Current optimism about tight oil production increases is like the crew
of the Titanic bragging about how fast the ship was pumping water out.

So correct..no more wishful thinking and lies from those who base their business model on importing more people ! Ralph

You may wish to check out the BBC's More or Less program from 3 February 2012, wobbles... in which they looked at the 'zombie statistic' claim that, "There are more people alive on the planet today than the sum total of everybody who has ever lived and died in all of recorded history."

The Population Reference Bureau expert's opinion was clear on the difficulties and assumptions involved but concluded that there are probably 15 dead for every person alive.

"Maybe we should just party on now and let those future suckers worry about it!"

Did you mean "those suckers in the future", since I got the impression from your post that 'we' are the ones sucking up their future?

Helloow Pericles. Good to see you didn’t drop off the perch afterall!

No, I’m not looking for another debate with you about population growth and all that stuff. We’ve been over it a thillion times.

Just saying howdy, to an old OLO mate. Cheers.

Decreasing? Sez who?
Pericles,
The non-public servants, those who have to perform for a living & who pay the way for too many.

Ever heard of Methane clathrate.

There's enough of that lying around the ocean to fuel us for a few hundred years, if needed.

Others tell us they can produce all the liquid fuel we require with algae. I'll believe it when I see it, but who knows, perhaps they can.

One has to doubt all these alternate energy production technologies, not one of them has done anything but waste public money, making a few smarties very rich.

If anyone has any math which shows any enrichment of the taxpayer from any alternate power system, I'd love to see it. The way I see it is that it has allowed Obama to give billions of public money to his campaign backers, with many other leaders doing the same.

Sorry popnperish, I won't take your word for AGW, just as I won't take anyone else's word.

I tend to evaluate everything I can find, & that tells me you are way wrong. If you have some proof, now's the time to trot it out. If not, please excuse me ignoring your assurances.

Nature bats last. To think otherwise is pathetic.

It takes a while to sink in but I just realised that there is not an economist or demographer amongst the SPP, the SPA or Stop Population Growth Now party (SA.) Plenty of geneticists and IT experts = rabbit counters.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14617

My article above gives some idea of the productive and generative power of the Australian economy. Bona fide environmental groups are right to be concerned about fish stocks and water resources but Kanck's idea of one child families or Tim Flannery's 16 M population in Oz (Future Eaters) is laughable.

No nation in the world would turn on its own people or prospective immigrants or visitors and deny them liberty and natural rights. The SPA are the thin black wedge of eco-fascism.

I'm blowed if I know how the SPA can claim tax deductability when it is a social engineering lobby group. Maybe the Liberals can address that.

'. Humanity exploits these energy sources in exponentially increasing amounts '

yea let the pensioners die of cold or heat. Those evil humans whose lives have improved and lenghtened through the use of coal. Let the thousands fly off to love/talk fests in CopenHagen but deny the average joe blo the same privilege of flying even know he/she pays for it themselves (unlike other leaches). Lets now deny the third world the benefits we have received and talk about 'peak oil'. I was told in school in the 70's that we would be well and truely run out by now. How much propaganda can be produced in one article. Now wonder 'science/religion ' is given such a bad name.

Malcolm King,

<It takes a while to sink in but I just realised that there is not an economist or demographer amongst the SPP, the SPA or Stop Population Growth Now party (SA.) Plenty of geneticists and IT experts = rabbit counters.>

I don't know about their membership of SPP. etc., but if you want demographers with a jaundiced view of unending mass migration, you might look at Bob Birrell and Katherine Betts.

<No nation in the world would turn on its own people or prospective immigrants or visitors and deny them liberty and natural rights. The SPA are the thin black wedge of eco-fascism.>

So you believe in open borders? People have a natural right to move into other people's countries to horn in on their resources and share in infrastructure paid for by others? And it is "eco-fascism" and "social engineering" to object? A pity that you don't apply the same standards to your own house and car. There must be many needy people who would be delighted to share.

If SPP really does have authoritarian policies, perhaps you should share them with us? They have a website with policies, so maybe you could link to the ones you mean.

Is the famous Divergence who in my last article of mine took on one of the demographers behind the 2010 Productivity Commission and was shocked to find the aim of the report was not to sledgehammer immigrants but assess validity of productivity measures? You are an embarrassment.

Of all the posters on OLO you are the most devious and worrying. Betts is a sociologist. Birrell is a demographer who writes for John Tanton's Social Contract Press. Birrell's reports on international students taking jobs were tiresome back in the 90s and even more so now. They pay his salary.

Why do you endorse the covert racism of the SPA and SPP? Why have you turned a blind eye to the direct influence of the American right wing Roy Beck and Numbers USA in establishing the SPP?

You desperately connive and bend citations so that they fit your argument rather than creating and argument and then use objective citations to support it. Is that what they teach you in physics? You must separate your fanaticism for blaming people for everything and start looking at the serious flaws in capitalism. It's your only hope.

According to arch capitalists Deutsche Bank for whom the flat earthers, i.e. anti population growth advocates, would probably claim to have a vested interest in population growth, have come with research of their own.

As opposed to high end UN projections, Deutsche Bank now challenges assertions and assumptions made and predict opposite problem, declining and ageing populations..... which finance sectors must adapt for.

http://aiecquest.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/world-population-growth-or-decline/

Bad news for John Tanton's network and Tanton himself, tasty quotes:

'“Do we leave it to individuals to decide that they are the intelligent ones who should have more kids? And more troublesome, what about the less intelligent, who logically should have less? Who is going to break the bad news [to less intelligent individuals], and how will it be implemented?” — John Tanton, 1996 letter to California multimillionaire Robert K. Graham, a eugenicist who started a sperm bank to collect the semen of Nobel Prize-winning scientists'

“[Millions of immigrants coming to America will be] defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs.” — John Tanton, 1997

“In the bacteriology lab, we have culture plates. You put a bug in there and it starts growing and gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And it grows until it finally fills the whole plate. And it crashes and dies.” — John Tanton, 1997, comparing immigrants to bacteria

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2008/09/19/fair-tanton-quotes/

Also for John Tanton adherents in Oz including Bob Birrell, Katherine Betts, Ernest Healey, Dick Smith, Kelvin Thompson MP, Sustainable Population Australia, Senator Bob Carr, Stable Population Party, (real estate industry & Fairfax) etc.. who will not have an excuse to highlight immigrants and other foreigners as a population or environmental problem......

What will they come up with next? A topic for 2013 John Tanton, Social Contract Press, F.A.I.R. etc. writers' workshop?

Related to Birrell and Betts, Birrell is not a demographer and Betts conducted the prized interview with French author of racist novel "Camp of Saints", Raspail in the 90s:

http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1504/article_1340.shtml

Birrell's expertise is based upon a PhD thesis about Chinese Communism, then essays for Tanton's The Social Contract Press early 90s, and by mid 90s contributing essays to his own magazine "People and Place".

Common strand is flawed research methodology (or none whatsoever) including lack of critical literature reviews, empirical research and referencing.

Accordingly Birrell's "research" can be best described as personal biases informing essays based on unsubstantiated claims without references, therefore just essays in magazines...... gobbled up by mainstream media, amateur eugenicists, environmentalists, real estate lobby etc..