"The population control movement invokes the concept of lebensraum. Nations must accommodate biological processes of growth". Australia's population growth is not driven by "biological processes of growth", considering our below long-term replacement levels of fertility. What's driving our population growth is Net Overseas Migration, or the number of people arriving here to live, less the number of Australians going to live abroad. According to the ABS, 60% of our population growth is from immigration. The idea of population "control" alludes to forced sterilizations, abortions, coercion and breeding according to racial or desired physical features! The Sustainable Population Party of Australia support no such things! What they really support should be available on their website, not assumed. It's an acknowledgement that the world is finite, and productivity and growth can't continue forever. Sustainability is what we are all trying to achieve, and population growth is a multiplier of all the challenges we face in a world of decline, depletions, species extinctions, "peaks", climate change, over-fishing, pollution and food security issues. Nothing can grow forever. Why should women only be burdened with responsibility for family planning, and birth control?

Good morning Malcolm.

Thanks for keeping this subject in the spotlight.

Cheers.

"to defray significant revenue outlays from now until about 2050."

Don't worry about after 2050. With AGW there won't be any to worry about.

Malcolm

Who pays you to write this rubbish?

People do increase carbon emissions - they breathe and a lot of them eat meat of ruminants that emit methane when they burp. There's a huge discrepancy between the biggest and smallest emitters, nevertheless, in Australia, population growth contributes 84 per cent to our growth in emissions.

I'm not sure whether any men from Stop Population Growth Now or from Stable Population Party or Sustainable Population Australia will be going for the 'snip' on Friday, nevertheless, most of the men I know in the population movement have had it done happily already.

People in the population movement don't hate people - many are motivated by the suffering of people caused by the imbalance between resources and population. Many others in the population movement are motivated by the effects on wildlife (loss of biodiversity) caused by too many people. But these are altruistic positions to take, surely, not to be derided

Malcolm (continued)...

You sure got in a muddle over statistics, didn't you? How many people leave Australia in one year is of course significant but it's net migration that counts (immigration minus emigration). And if you would care to go the latest ABS catalogue 3101.0 you will see that in the year ending March 2013 Australia's population grew by just under 400,000, 60 per cent of which was from net overseas migration. Yes, the fertility rate is below replacement but it takes decades before natural increase goes negative. Right now it's still well over 150,000.

You're up to your old tricks in trying to denigrate SPA by association. SPA works happily with the UK's Population Matters but they didn't have to tell SPA what to think - SPA has been thinking this way since its inception 25 years ago. SPA has a friendly connection with Roy Beck of NumbersUSA but SPA looks primarily at population as a whole (from whatever source) while NumbersUSA primarily focuses on immigration. They simply want to get it back to manageable levels. At the moment it is out of control and disadvantaging African-Americans in particular. Which brings me to the point of "Who is racist?" Those condoning the mass immigration to the US are actively acting against the interests of poor African-Americans. Add that to the inherent sexism of your position which, by denying legitimacy to the population movement and justifying the status quo, is basically denying women access to contraception and control over their own bodies.

I really don't understand why anyone would believe that the right of the slugs, caterpillars, rhinoceros and rose bushes to grow and reproduce needs to be protected while that of humans doesn't.

People are being turned against each other by the Green lobby which values acorn trees and mosquitoes more than people.

The Green Left are all about controlling peoples behaviour,not saving anything and reproductive control is but one way to do it.

and, oh! Malcolm, by the way...

Australia does not have a "small" population. Only the ignorant use land mass as the sole criterion for carrying capacity. The Sahara Desert is comparable in size to Australia but has a mere two million people. Why? Because it's a desert. Antarctica has no permanent human population. Why? Because it's too cold and you can't grow food there. Australia is largely arid with thin poor soils and a variable climate that will be hard hit by climate change.

Infrastructure spending? Some once thought Dr Jane O'Sullivan might have got it wrong when she said each extra person costs $200,000 in infrastructure costs, but at the Fenner Conference last week the figure of $340,000 per person was used, based on the original CSIRO report by Barney Foran and Franzi Poldy. Governments may not have to cough up the lot, but some state governments (Qld, NSW) have recently fallen because they could not keep up with supplying infrastructure to a rapidly growing population.

And don't dismiss Paul Ehrlich. He didn't anticipate the Green Revolution so billions didn't die last century, but they may still might. Ian Dunlop at the Fenner Conference said a four degree warmer world (which is where we're headed) is a world on one billion people, not seven billion, let alone the projected nine or ten billion this century. I doubt it will be pretty going from seven to one billion

...and finally Malcolm...

Population is certainly one of the triumvirate of the three P's, the others being productivity and participation. But having more people doesn't help people if the spoils have to divided into ever-smaller portions. More people does not lead to higher GDP per capita. Right now we have unemployment heading for 6 per cent and underemployment of 700,000 plus about 150,000 who have simply given up trying to find work. Importing well over 300,000 people annually is only exacerbating this sad situation.

Ageing? Studies now suggest that extending the retirement age to 68 will solve any negative side of ageing. Expanding the population through increased birth rates or immigration only delays the inevitable.

Sandra Kanck, like Paul Ehrlich, may in the end be proved to be right when she says a one-child policy may be necessary. If indeed, the world can only sustain a billion people then we either wait for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or we do it humanely, by delaying child-bearing and by having much smaller families. The voluntarily childless will be the new heroes.

I've run out of room, but yes, a "no growth" economy - or a dynamic steady state economy - is exactly the way we have to go. We live in a finite world after all.

Our author either hasn't read or chooses to ignore The Future Eaters, by Australian of the Year Tim Flannery. Flannery is not and I'm not "anti-people" or a host of other evil things used as smears in this article. I'm just concerned about species loss, global warming and other grave environmental problems, and I can do basic arithmetic.

The Horror...the horror!

Orwell? The Spanish Inquisition? No...the Guillotine!

Behold the cutting of balls as a spectator sport.

And here is the Media Release:

http://riaus.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/131009-RiAus-World-Vasectomy-Day-Media-Release.pdf :

"On World Vasectomy Day, 17 men will PUT THEIR BALLS ON THE LINE to save the planet and they’ll do it in front of a live studio audience in association with national science communication organisation: RiAus."

"A diverse gathering of thought leaders will participate..."

Will Pilger's Truth Tellers triumph over the Thought Leaders - only Aldous Huxley knows. See his Brave New World of population control:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z776bAqWxyQ

Taking this seriously.

It takes two to make a baby. And babies can't look after themselves!
It's entirely irresponsible to have more than you can afford to feed, house, clothe and educate.
My partner and I stopped at two, with the assistance of surgery. To be sure to be sure, the only way to be sure?
That said, the natural birth rate in Australia, is below replacement. Conventional economic wisdom, would have us increase the migration numbers, so we have enough taxpayers to keep supporting us in our old age
The only effective way of limiting population growth in the third world, is to educate the masses, particularly, womenfolk!
Statistical evidence shows, as the educated female becomes a larger part of the demographic, birth rates invariably decline.
We, knowing this, have decided to assist this very outcome, by quite massively slashing our foreign aid budget.
I mean there were other choices, like getting on top of now massive tax avoidance. Avoidance that may be ripping as much as 100 billion or more PA, from the budget bottom line!?
Simple enough to fix!
All that's required is to jettison the system every boy and his dog can avoid in favour of one they can't! It's not rocket science and you don't have to be Einstein!
However, too timid by half pollies, may just have to lift their game or put the nation ahead of the usual cronies, to get it done? And if the cap fits?
Rhrosty.

Wow, Malcolm, I have rarely read so many empty words on a blank sheet of paper. A long time ago, when I matriculated, there was a topic called 'clear thinking'. You would have achieved a perfect F.

You are also a highly anthropocentric person obviously believing that humans are somehow superior to other forms of live. Well, they are not. Ultimately, we are all descended from the one bacterium, that first formed on the planet, or hitchhiked a ride onto the planet from elsewhere in the universe.

We are all dependent on each other for survival on this planet - the web of life. I vividly recall one of the David Attenborough series about 'Life in the Underground', where he concludes with with the words (an approx. quote): "...if humans disappear from the planet right now, not much will change, but it these little critters disappear the planet will become unrecognizable..." I would add, if humans disappear the planet may change for the better.

There are way too many people on the planet in proportion to anything else, everywhere: here in Australia, on every little island, in every little niche and corner, on the plains, the mountains, the cities - wherever there is land.

In my lifetime so far humans more than tripled. It would be wonderful if in the lifetime of my two very young grandchildren the human population would reduce to one third or one fourth of what it is now, namely around the one - two billion mark.

To achieve that we need population control, family planning, vasectomies and sterilizations via laparoscopy, after one or two children, and a myriad of other contraceptives. But more than that we need a cultural change, a change of mentality, a move away from humans' extraordinary arrogance that somehow they are superior.

Malcolm Cheryl:
When we have two parties vying for power and they use the carrot of giving huge amounts to parents to have babies ( as in $75,000 for the wife's maternity leave) the end result can only be chaos.
This propaganda to increase the population at all costs is pushed by the vested interests of various business groups who hope to make more profits for example real estate agents.
It has no bearing at all on the future of Australia and is detrimental.
We know that you operate a propaganda business to push whatever your clients want advertised and you are using this and other forums as platforms for this.
Please stop and allow the sensible people who wish to debate seriously not to have this rubbish take up valuable time and space.

Gee Pop goes the Anti-pop,

some nice florid posting there.

1. "People .... breathe and a lot of them eat meat of ruminants that emit methane when they burp. Are you serious? Not say an aluminium smelter? Burping." Didn't you write a book on population which is the bible for the anti-people movement? "Moonlight Misanthropes."

2. "In Australia, population growth contributes 84 per cent to our growth in emissions. Not burning coal/electricity generation? You know ABARE has records on exactly how much energy is used for domestic purposes. Last year it was 29 per cent. About the same as domestically grown food consumption.

3. You know the ERP is derived from the Census and that they recently subtracted 200,000 people due to an overcount. You'd also know that the NOM includes 140,000 new international students about 60,000 Kiwis and long term holiday makers. Please consider taking a degree in demography before writing any more about population. See my comments re anti-immigration and Numbers USA.

4. "Dr Jane O'Sullivan might have got it wrong when she said each extra person costs $200,000 in infrastructure costs, but at the Fenner Conference last week the figure of $340,000 per person was used, based on the original CSIRO report." Oh dear. See Dept Infrastructure report re 11 per cent spend as a total of GDP. It's about $12K per person. But you'd be an idiot to try put a per capita figure on it. We live in a capitalist system you know. Google 'Bonds' and find out more about capital raising.

5. As Australia is 16th in the world re per capita income, who cares about population. It was never factor.

6. "Sandra Kanck, like Paul Ehrlich, may in the end be proved to be right when she says a one-child policy may be necessary." and here is the crux, the rub. At the sinister root of all of the ridiculous figures and non-sensical rants, we get to the social engineering. One child family enforced by bearded gnomes.

Malcolm King,

<Yet to believe as the Sustainable Population Australia(SPA)and SPGN do, that having babies equates to boosting carbon emissions, then God help us all.>

So where are these babies who are never going to consume? Bob Birrell has estimated that 83% of the additional emissions in greenhouse gases that the Treasury predicts by 2020 will be due to population growth.

http://arrow.monash.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/monash:64185?letter=H&collection=monash%3A63642

Our fertility rate in Australia is slightly below replacement level (as you yourself admit) and has been since 1976. It is not a problem, not even if a relatively few Australians choose to have large families. They are more than balanced by all the people who don’t have children or only have one. You are implying that the population would immediately go into decline without net migration. Nonsense. Two thirds of our natural increase (40% of total annual population increase) is due to babies born to Australian born people. Our population would go on growing until some time in the 2030s, even if net migration stopped tomorrow. The population of South Australia is growing at 1.0%, according to the ABS, a 69 year doubling time, so hardly stagnation.

You and your politician and property developer mates are doing a far more effective job of keeping Australian fertility rates low than SPA, SPGN, etc. could ever dream of. The cost of housing has more than doubled since the early 1970s and nearly tripled in some cities in terms of the median wage, mostly due to the rising cost of residential land, leading to mortgage payments and rents that can only be serviced with two incomes. The demographer Joel Kotkin has called high density living (increasingly forced on people because they are priced out of anything else) a more effective means of bringing down fertility rates than China’s one child policy.

“High-density environments such as Manhattan, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., or Boston invariably have the lowest percentages of children in the country, with Japan-like fertility rates…”

“Due largely to crowding and high housing prices, 45 percent of couples in Hong Kong say they have given up having children.”

http://www.joelkotkin.com/content/00806-city-leaders-are-love-density-most-city-dwellers-disagree

<The SPA and the SPGN are anti-immigration lobbyists. That's why their sister political faction, the Stable Population Party (SPP) preferenced Pauline Hanson above the Greens at the last Federal election. No government in the world will enforce a whacko social engineering program based on a 'one in one out' immigration system…>

Since natural increase is a temporary phenomenon, assuming that the fertility rate stays at or slightly below replacement level, 60% of our population growth is due to immigration, and about another 13% due to births to migrant mothers, please explain how the population can be stabilised without reducing immigration. Do you really think that we can go on doubling our numbers every 38 years ad infinitum?

Given its objectives, why shouldn’t SPP put growthist parties last. The Greens had the balance of power, but they didn’t say a word when Kevin Rudd concealed his intention of massively boosting immigration until after the 2007 election. Julia Gillard said that she didn’t believe in “hurtling down the track to a Big Australia” and then did the exact opposite once she was elected without a murmur from the Greens. Their asylum seeker policy would quickly lead to enormous numbers, as happened in Europe.

A number of European countries, such as Germany and Finland, have approximately stable populations, i.e. they have instituted your “whacko social engineering”. Why are they performing well instead of being economic basket cases at the bottom of the UN Human Development Index?

<Much of their thinking comes from UK Population Matters ('babies are carbon bombs') and NumbersUSA in America. The right wing of the Republican Party slammed NumbersUSA for using racist dog whistles, which cost them the Chicano vote at the last election.>

If these organisations really are racist, it will be easy to go to their websites and find a racist article or policy. You can then link to it and condemn them out of their own mouths. I have challenged you to do this with NumbersUSA, but you were apparently unable to find anything. Phony hysteria about racism is just a ploy to shut down debate. What exactly is this “racist dog whistling”? The Republicans are caught between their Big Business donors, who want high immigration, and their voter base, which wants just the opposite because mass migration greatly increases competition for jobs, housing, public services, and amenities. The Chicanos vote overwhelmingly for the Democrats and always have. The Republicans’ real problem is that a lot of their natural supporters have been disillusioned with them and unwilling to turn out and vote.

<Compared with other nations of in the developed world, and the available cultivated landmass we inhabit, Australia has a small population. We have two medium sized cities and a Federal system, which has failed to take responsibility for urban design.>

Australia is really a small to medium sized country wrapped around a big desert, an example of what demographers call a “big little country” – lots of territory, but most of it uninhabitable. The arable land tends to be of low quality compared to Europe and North America, and has far less reliable rainfall. That is why the Australian Academy of Science (which also sponsored the recent Fenner Conference) recommended back in 1994 that we stabilize our population at 23 million. Of course, PR flacks understand these matters far better than natural scientists writing in their areas of expertise.

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

Ah Divergence,

No more quotes from the Productivity Commission? Fancy one of the authors actually replying and making you look damn foolish.

NOM has been relatively high (since Federation) since 2005. Why? International students. How so? More of them but also change in methodology in counting them over 12/16 months so more are captured in the 'survey'.

How does that translate for the SPA and fifth column loonies? Asians eating us out of house and home. We're doomed. And carbon producing burps apparently.

As SPA/SPP are linked to John Tanton and The Social Contract Press via Mark O'Connor and Dr. Bob Birrell of Monash University (& colleagues), one should take this facade of concern about overpopulation with a large grain of salt.

Without empirical evidence they provide a guilt free way to oppose immigration, etc.. through distortion, inflation and conflation of data, which all seems reasonable, plausible and having resonance in Australia.

Further, SPP/SPA seem neither willing to divulge their links to Tanton. nor how they would put their demands into action e.g. "one in one out", etc. requiring Nuremburg type laws, ID cards, increased bureaucracy, flood of Australian "immigrants" (after reciprocal visa treaties are cancelled) thus defeating the purpose of the whole movement, but that's not the point is it?

Tanton's views on immigrants are best exemplified by some choice issues of TSCP, e.g. 2007 issue given over to Vdare, white supremcists of a very nasty kind, interview with racist author Jean Raspail (Camp of Saints) by Australia's own Katherine Betts etc..

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/the-social-contract-press

Anti Defamation League's profile of Vdare (plus they have plenty on Tanton's network and adherents):

http://blog.adl.org/tags/vdare

Has anyone ever asked Dr. Bob Birrell, Paul Ehrlich, Dick Smith, Bob Carr, Tim Flannery, Kelvin Thompson (PFIR), Cory Bernardi (ALEC), et al why they have direct or indirect links to the John Tanton network?

Further, are journalists who quote or cite Dr. Bob Birrell's "research" aware of these connections i.e. Fairfax, ABC Radio (Faine, Williams, Adam et al), News Corp or are they too embarrassed after being duped (one would hope) by propagating dodgy data and xenophobic views for several decades? (even most Liberal party people view them as a joke, but Labor (and several key unions), the founders of the "white Australia policy" no?)

Agenda 21 had its origins way back in 1968.This was all about giving power to a few hundred elites on this planet who control our monetary system,absolute power under the guise of saving the planet from nuke wars and climate change.

People like Henry Kissenger and Obama's science Tsar John Holdren want to see the world's pop reduced by 90%.Will they volunteer to be first to go?

The environment will continue to change, but will somehow survive, the carbon-thing is a hoax anyway, so humanity will just apply more ingenuity and survive with even greater numbers. Even the environment will be saved by using DNA from extinct species to revive them. So what's the problem?

What the author failed to address is the price of having more people. Not the economic price, not the environmental price, but the cost to the meaning of life.

Increased population requires increased technology, thus increased human organisation and specialisation.

Yes, if we take it to the extreme, it is even possible to live in a submarine or a space-ship, but the level of regulation and collectivism there is extreme.

The only way to sustain more people on earth, is increased technology. If the world stopped growing at any stage, then some could claim that technology makes them happier (which I doubt). However, instead of enjoying the technology, the world doesn't stop, human-numbers keep increasing, demanding ever higher technologies. This in-turn, diverts us from having a meaningful life: instead we operate as a tiny cog in an ever-increasing machine, devoting our time to serve technology itself rather than any meaningful pursuit.

The author dislikes corporations, but BOTH corporations and government are just symptoms of population-pressure. Both grind us down, treating us like cells of a larger organism, or ant-colony, rather than as individuals.

The author makes the following chilling conclusion:

<<For a nation, the ultimate economic goal is to have rising output per head, produced on a sustainable basis, distributed fairly, with jobs for everyone who wants to work. Productivity and workplace participation and population growth are the main means to that end.>>

Indeed, that's what a "nation" would want if it had a life, if it were a sentient being. There's "input"/"output" and we're just "heads". "Nation" wants to grow and become healthy and wealthy... What about us?!

Our happiness, meaning and quality of life means practically nothing when there are so-many billions of others.

Those numbers should come down, not because they are technically-unsustainable, but because they bring us misery.

Overpopulation is a green Malthusian myth swallowed by people who live in overcrowded cities. The fact is that everyone in the world could fit into Texas with enough space for a townhouse for every family of four.

There are vast uninhabited regions of the Earth and we grow much more food than we need already we just cant store it long enough to keep it fresh so it get wasted. Population is decreasing in many parts of the world and will peak soon if it hasn't already.

Alarmist projections are usually from the UN which wants to create a view of the world to align with its aims to increase its own power to dictate what people eat, where they live and whether they reproduce or not.

GROOOOOAN!

Yet another anti-anti-pop article from Malcolm King, the fifth so far this year, less than 8 weeks after the last one.
Every 7-8 weeks we get another one!

Why is OLO/Forum allowing this?
His articles add nothing new, they just regurgitate what he's already said before!

I think we should all boycott his future articles and simply refuse to comment on them.
Maybe then OLO will get the message. Enough already!

Tired of his article or the unwelcome attention to details such as lack of empirical research,not acknowledging contrary evidence, dubious white nativist links, and then attacking the messenger...... meanwhile rent a quote Birrell and SPA/SPP seek out any opportunity to appear in mainstream media appearing all cuddly and plausible while negatively stereotyping all those dusky foreigners..

Shockadelic,

Your comments re censorship neatly describe my underlying theme.

Look, if I can be frank. The whole anti-population push is a sideshow. In fact, it's a sideshow of a sideshow. It lacks evidence, it lacks research and most of what you read here from the SPA and its sucker fish, is self-referential quoting. They parrot each other. When they don't like something or can't defeat it, they scream censorship.

I have only a cursory interest in population. Most of my articles have been on ageing population, fiscal gap, generational change and the importance of higher education. I used to work for a large government department where we looked at labour market statistics, population, participation and productivity.

When ever Mark O'Connor and others started using ABS figures to say the apocalypse is coming - which showed a fundamental lack of understanding of how an economy worked - we used to wonder about the psychology behind this and how you can get people to believe stuff which is wrong on first principles.

I do write on the anti-pops because they are a new right wing phenomenon with totalitarian aspects passing themselves off as greenies trying to 'save us'. Hasbeen wrote an excellent piece sometime ago about the cultic nature of these groups.

You see, on first blush, their message of less people equals a happy, harmonious world, sounds appealing. But once you scratch the surface, you'll find a morass of contraindicated data and simple fantasy which, implementation-wise, has jackboot written all over it.

Try defeat the arguments instead of crying censorship.

Malcolm

Let's deal with each point in your latest rant, shall we?

1) "The whole anti-population push is a sideshow". No it isn't. It was World Food Day yesterday and Lester Brown from the Earth Policy Institute noted "There will be 219,000 people at the dinner table tonight who were not there last night—many of them with empty plates... In India some 190 million people are being fed with grain produced by overpumping groundwater. For China, there are 130 million in the same boat... In Nigeria, 27 percent of families experience foodless days. In India it is 24 percent, in Peru 14 percent...At no time since agriculture began has the world faced such a predictably massive threat to food production as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia...After several decades of raising grain yields, farmers in the more agriculturally advanced countries have recently hit a glass ceiling, one imposed by the limits of photosynthesis itself...To state the obvious, we are in a situation both difficult and dangerous."

If you have some magic bullet to solve the looming food crisis, please share it with us. It may win you the Nobel Prize.

2)"When they don't like something or can't defeat it, they scream censorship." Sorry, I think this applies to you, not to us. The problem with you is that you make baseless allegations and when we try and make a rational reply, you're the one that gets hysterical, not us.

3)"I have only a cursory interest in population". That's the problem, isn't it? You're ignorant of the wealth of population literature. It's more than ageing, education, fiscal gaps etc. You're an economist (aren't you?), not a scientist. The population question is inherently a matter of science, of balancing resources and population.(cont. next post...)

(continued from previous post)

4) "When ever Mark O'Connor and others started using ABS figures to say the apocalypse is coming..." Not sure that Mark ever used the word 'apocalypse' but the ABS projections are indeed very worrying. If this growth rate of 1.8 per cent continues then we will have doubled the population in 39 years,that is, 46 million people by 2052, and doubled again by the end of the century. We might just know a bit more about maths than you do Malcolm.

5)"I do write on the anti-pops because they are a new right wing phenomenon with totalitarian aspects..." I think you just breached the guidelines there. But it's laughable. People in Sustainable Population Australia are a broad church but virtually all SPA presidents have been left of centre. Many SPA leaders come out of the Australian Democrats which are about as democratic as you can get. No-one I know of in the movement has totalitarian inclinations.

6) "...you'll find a morass of contraindicated data and simple fantasy which, implementation-wise, has jackboot written all over it." Once again, you've breached the guidelines. But it's not us you're talking about. We're evidence-based.

Perhaps I shall now breach the guidelines by saying you are a paid PR hack doing the bidding of your developer masters who have a vested interest in continued population growth. You have nothing of substance to say.

you are a paid PR hack doing the bidding of your developer masters who have a vested interest in continued population growth. You have nothing of substance to say.

hear hear.

The New World Order needs to reduce population so their fascist world Govt can be more easily control the planet.

I am not "anti-pop" or "anti-people". I am anti-immigration.

Nor am I "totalitarian", I'm a classical liberal.
I actually want Australians to have *large* families, as I think having siblings is highly beneficial to children.
They can't do this while immigration continues on its current scale.

I am opposed to eugenics and forced sterilisations.
Yet I'm presumed to be a Nazi ("lebensraum", "jackboot") simply because I dissent from the multicultural/multiracial utopian agenda.

That is the fantasy with "a morass of contraindicated data" (e.g. crime/unemployment rates).

Malcolm Cheryl;
I hear that you are doing well from the "property council"
They are paying quite well for your propaganda

AndrasSmith,

The usual way to determine whether a person is a racist is to look at what they say or do. With organisations, you would look at their policies and the statements they put out. If you are dishonest about it, you try to smear them using guilt by association. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in the US, an organization that you quote a lot and whose tactics you copy, is notorious for accusing political opponents of being racists or "haters" to shut down debate. Even some people on the Left who share a lot of their views are disgusted.

“I feel that the Law Center is essentially a fraud and that it has a habit of casually labeling organizations as “hate groups.” (Which doesn’t mean that some of the groups it criticizes aren’t reprehensible.) In doing so, the SPLC shuts down debate, stifles free speech, and most of all, raises a pile of money, very little of which is used on behalf of poor people.”

http://harpers.org/blog/2010/03/hate-immigration-and-the-southern-poverty-law-center/

http://www.examiner.com/article/cornell-law-professor-blasts-southern-poverty-law-center-for-stirring-hate

If you think that Bob Birrell, say, is a racist, please point to something he actually said or did that is racist, or admit that you lied. Appearing in the same publication as a racist is not evidence. The Australian newspaper once published an opinion piece by John Pasquerelli, the former adviser to Pauline Hanson.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/one-nation-voters-can-look-to-joyce/story-e6frg6zo-1225788493489

Does that mean that anyone who ever published anything in the Australian, even a letter to the editor, is racist or on the Far Right? This is tinfoil hat territory.

By the way, you still haven't denied that you are a migration agent with a direct financial interest in this debate.

Malcolm King,

I don't feel silly at all. This is from the Productivity Commission 2010/2011 annual report (p. 6):

"An understanding of the economic impacts of immigration is sometimes clouded by misperception. Two benefits that are sometimes attributed to immigration, despite mixed or poor evidence to support them, are that:
* immigration is an important driver of per capita economic growth
* immigration could alleviate the problem of population ageing."

http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/113407/annual-report-2010-11.pdf

People can judge for themselves whether I have misquoted this or taken it out of context. Your growthist demographer friend clearly didn't agree with the thrust of the report, but presented no evidence to refute this statement or to show that his colleagues were wrong to put it in.

On the other hand there is good evidence that mass migration is leading to an oversupply of labour. Roy Morgan Research says that as of September, we have 10.4% real unemployment and 7.9% underemployment. Tim Colebatch, the Economics Editor of the Melbourne Age recently wrote:

“People born overseas have taken almost three-quarters of the net growth in full-time jobs in Australia in the past two years, even though they make up just 31 per cent of the adult population. Analysis of the Bureau of Statistics jobs data reveals that, comparing the six months to April with the same months two years earlier, Australia gained just 131,000 more full-time jobs - one new full-time job for every five new people.

"But in net terms, people born overseas gained 97,000 more full-time jobs, while Australian-born people gained only 34,000. The economy created only one new full-time job for every 10 more Australian-born people aged 15 and over.

"The figures raise doubts about employers' claims that they must hire workers from overseas because Australians are not available to do the jobs.”

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/skilled-newcomers-flood-fulltime-jobs-market-20130614-2o9vm.html#ixzz2i3tNxUVR

See Prof. Peter Turchin for the relationship between oversupply of the labour market and inequality.

http://www.aeonmagazine.com/living-together/peter-turchin-wealth-poverty

Divergence, so writing for John Tanton's The Social Contract Press is not compromising?

An opinion article by someone from "Christian Ministries" is published along with another opinion piece about suppsoed ethics etc. of SPLC, so what? If you need further evidence re bigotry behind the movement try the Anti Defamation League, Imagine 2050, NYT, Hampshire College Population Deveopment Program, Ian Angus etc. etc..

Again, it's classic evasion, produce no evidence for shonky claims then both attack or smear messengers, and encourage external focus vs exactly what is the anti pop movement trying to claim is supported by evidence?

Tim Colebatch of The Age (like many who think they are "progressive") cites and uses Birrell's "research" often and as most commenters here seem to, they use data and make opinions based upon conflated/confused definitions and therefore inflated numbers.

What is the definition of "immigration" or "immigrant"?

Using the net overseas migration NOM data, which makes up the estimated resident population figure and describing those included as "immigrants" is absolutely misleading, but that's the intention isn't it?

The NOM includes balance of all arrivals/departures in Australia for 12/16 months+ so includes backpackers, 457 workers, permanent immigrants, dependents, NZ'ers, international students and (if more return permanently), Australian citizens.

Accordingly one cannot use this data population, workforce, employment etc. for direct analysis and comparisons as students are on limited work rights (nor do all work), backpackers also have limitations, 457s have limitations, and dependents, especially children, would not be working.

Birrell does not need to write racist articles as he has plenty of media outlets and (hard hitting and reputable) journalists using or citing his headline "data", "research" and "opinions", think it's known as "dog whistling" (guess in earlier days he had plenty of development and guidance while cooperating with TSCP via FAIR writer workshops etc.)

Article supporting Tanton and attacking SPLC for daring to investigate from VDare, a very credible source, Vdare are white supremacists :)

http://www.vdare.com/articles/the-tale-of-john-tanton-cis-krikorian-kammer-make-fatal-concessions-to-splc

For some more points of view on John Tanton and his network including TSCP, FAIR, CIS, PFIR (Kelvin Thompson), ALEC (Cory Bernardi), NumbersUSA etc.., and for financiers, that's another story..... :

" There appears to be a dirty little secret lurking in the halls and cocktail parties of the of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meetings – overt racism."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/04/1106275/-ALEC-SLLI-Bipartisan-Bigotry

"Major Anti - Immigrant Organizations have ties to Racist Pseudoscience"

http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/05/08/1981521/john-tanton-pioneer-fund/

" It turns out that many anti-immigrant leaders have backgrounds that should disqualify them from even participating in mainstream debate. What is sad is they manage to get the American press to quote them without ever noting their bizarre and often racist beliefs."

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2007/09/19/3519/know-your-sources-the-mainstream-press-keeps-finding-wacky-immigration-experts/

Anti Defamation League

http://blog.adl.org/tags/john-tanton and http://blog.adl.org/tags/the-social-contract

Who bankrolls John Tanton etc.

http://imagine2050.newcomm.org/2011/09/01/quiz-time-which-single-foundation-almost-solely-bankrolls-the-entirety-of-the-john-tanton-network/

A John Tanton connect the dots:

http://www.thepinkflamingoblog.com/2008/12/22/a-john-tanton-connect-the-dots/

" Where Anti-Immigrant Zealots Like Lou Dobbs Get Their 'Facts' The media keeps turning to racist group FAIR for its "expertise."

http://www.alternet.org/story/70489/where_anti-immigrant_zealots_like_lou_dobbs_get_their_%27facts%27

The last is relevant to Australia, as mainstream media seem to accept at face value the caring message about humanity, population growth, immigration etc.. propagated by SPA, SPP, Birrell & CPUR at Monash University, etc.

Not forget New York Times feauture on Ehrlich's, O'Connor's and Birrell's mate John Tanton.

"...... Rarely has one person done so much to structure a major cause, or done it so far from the public eye. Dr. Tanton has raised millions of dollars, groomed protégés and bequeathed institutions, all while running an ophthalmology practice nearly 800 miles from Capitol Hill.

“He is the most influential unknown man in America,” said Linda Chavez, a former aide to President Ronald Reagan who once led a Tanton group that promoted English-only laws.

While Dr. Tanton’s influence has been extraordinary, so has his evolution — from apostle of centrist restraint to ally of angry populists and a man who increasingly saw immigration through a racial lens......

..... While the whole movement grew more vehement as illegal immigration increased, Dr. Tanton seemed especially open to provocative allies and ideas. He set off a storm of protests two decades ago with a memorandum filled with dark warnings about the “Latin onslaught.” Word soon followed that FAIR was taking money from the Pioneer Fund, a foundation that promoted theories of the genetic superiority of whites."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/us/17immig.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Divergence, I could swear we’ve had this conversation before. One section of the report report looked at methodologies and past research to determine if immigration can be quantified in economic terms. It carried out no research of its own. It recognised that skilled labour was a productivity enhancer.

The benefits of immigration in the first instance are accrued by the immigrant. Then through taxes and of purchasing goods and services, makes a similar contribution to the economy as you or I do. I noted your reply to a senior member of the public service.

We can physically see over a 50-year period that in many cases immigrants have surpassed local borns in wealth accrual. This is most evident amongst the Greeks and Italians who worked harder and longer hours than the ‘natives’ to buy property and put their kids through private schools. It is not unusual to find them owning significant property portfolios. This is capitalism at work – something you do not subscribe to. Nor do you subscribe to GDP which is curious as this is the core measure of growth. You are anti-growth.

You want to run a tape measure up and down immigrants as if economic worth was somehow representative of a human life. Your comments are highly problematic as you dog whistle racism (foreigners taking our jobs) which is far from true. They do the jobs we don’t want to do: aged care, cleaners, taxi drivers, etc. They are critical to keeping the service and hospitality industry going.

The 10.4 per cent Morgan estimate is an analysis which rightly includes youth unemployment if one removes the one hour a week criteria of being ‘employed’. It has little to do with population or immigrants. Yes, job creation is slow but that is because of global recessionary forces. Your arguments would be more cogent if you broke out of your ideological blinkers and read arguments which have some economic validity.

Just a footnote to immigration & unemployment:

With the latest buzz word being DIVERSITY. Govt institutions seem more tuned into/keen to employing those of non-English backgrounds rather than those of English backgrounds--all things being equal, or even where things are less than equal.

One example, but not in anyway an isolated case: An associate of mine recently went for a govt position. The panel of three interviewers proudly announced at the outset that the organization was multicultural and the panel reflected that.The panelists introduced themselves as representatives of/from three (multicultural registered) ethnic groups --the organization clearly believed it had covered all bases,leastways, all that were entitled to appeal to any discrimination body!

Malcolm King,

The 2006 Productivity Commission report on immigration did indeed do some modeling to try to quantify the benefit to productivity from immigration. They did find a positive benefit, but it was small, mostly going to the migrants themselves and to owners of capital, while there were definite losers among the bulk of the population due to wage depression. See p. 154 and the graphs on pages 155 and 147.

http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/9438/migrationandpopulation.pdf

I don't judge migrants or anyone else purely in terms of their economic value, but a common argument used by the growthists is that there is some enormous economic benefit from a bigger population, so we just have to put up with the other problems that are being caused by the population growth - which you ignore, as if the economy existed in a vacuum, with no effects on the environment or the society.

<For a nation, the ultimate economic goal is to have rising output per head, produced on a sustainable basis, distributed fairly, with jobs for everyone who wants to work. Productivity and workplace participation and population growth are the main means to that end.>

Let's test your ideas on the US. They had high tariffs and essentially zero net immigration between 1921 and 1965. Americans picked fruit, cleaned toilets, and did all those other jobs that they supposedly won't do now, at least for what employers want to pay. The government then moved toward a more globalized economy, reducing tariffs, instituting very high legal immigration, and condoning illegal immigration. If you were right, everyone would be doing splendidly.

Most men are receiving lower real wages now than in 1979:

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4c-change-real-hourly-wages/

Wages went up with productivity until 1972. Now productivity is up by 240.9% since 1948, but real wages are only up on average by 107.8%.

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4u-change-total-economy/

The ratio of CEO to worker compensation was about 20 to 1 in 1965, but is now about 230 to 1, down from 400 to 1 in 2000.

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4-ceo-worker-compensation/

No wonder that the US has become so polarized. State of Working America has many other fascinating graphs.

AndrasSmith,

There are people on the Left in the US who believe in open borders. In their view, anyone who wants to restrict immigration for any reason is therefore automatically a racist, and any other reason that he or she puts up has to just be a pretext. All that is needed to refute any argument that such a person might have is to scream, "Racist!"

Since you can't read minds, you can't tell if Bob Birrell has racist ideas or not. Since his arguments aren't based on racist theories, you should be using rational arguments to refute them - if you can, instead of trying to smear him.

Tim Colebatch didn't claim that all the new people we are acquiring would be active on the labour market, but most of them would be. As of last January, there were 8 job seekers for each vacancy in Tasmania, 3.9 in Victoria, 4 in New South Wales, 4.3 in Queensland, and 1.5 in Western Australia.

http://www.smh.com.au/data-point/job-vacancies-plunge-as-confidence-slides-20130109-2cguy.html

It is funny that no one had any problems understanding why the price of bananas went up when Cyclone Larry went through, but somehow issues of supply and demand don't apply to the market for labour. Take a look at those State of Working America graphs that I linked to in my previous post.

Malcolm cheryl paddy King:
Do you get paid for each comment on this forum by the property council?

No. I get paid $50 by your wife every time you post one of your ridiculous asinine comments. She's thankful for the breathing space.

SPQR

you only have to watch the ABC to see that white males unless in another minority group have very little chance of a job.

Malcolm 'Paddy' King "Divergence, I could swear we’ve had this conversation before."

Well stop writing the same article over and over again!

"Then through taxes and of purchasing goods and services, makes a similar contribution to the economy as you or I do."

So, basically the same economic benefit would occur with more *native-born* citizens (solutions: retain potential emigrants, train unemployed, raise retirement age, encourage births), or with White immigrants only.
Economic analysis still doesn't justify multicultural/multiracial policy.

"You want to run a tape measure up and down immigrants as if economic worth was somehow representative of a human life."

It's the pro-pops who view human lives as interchangeable units. Who cares *who* they are, as long as GDP benefits.

"aged care, cleaners, taxi drivers"

And White Australians did all those jobs and everything else not so long ago.
If there is less representation now, it's because there is excess competition and few "barriers to entry".

"Yes, job creation is slow but that is because of global recessionary forces."

So why doesn't immigration "slow" in equal measure?
When the stock market crashed, why didn't the immigration quotas "crash" too?

Malcolm Cheryl paddy King;
I see that my comment has spurred you into the "ad hominem" mode after being exposed for the shill that you are.
So be it, I will continue to expose you while you keep on repeating your propaganda.
Even Goebels had to stop in the end and what an end.

God, this discussion is so infantile.

As Malcolm points out, birth rates in developed countries (including Australia) are at or below replacement rate already. Food production has doubled in forty years.

But let's get to the nub of this racist attack on no-whites. Africa is four or five times bigger than Australia and, apart from the Sahara and parts of the north-east, is undeveloped. It has half a dozen of the biggest rivers in the world. Agriculture is mostly hand-worked without irrigation. [You can see where I'm going with this ? Quick, marshall your opposition !]

IF only 10 % of the arable land in Africa was irrigated from the Nile or the Congo or the Niger or the Zambezi or the Limpopo, massive rivers, say a million square kilometres, that would increase the world's food productive areas enormously. It probably won't happen by next week, but soon enough.

Why do developed countries have a zero or negative replacement rate ? Partly because women are grasping education and employment opportunities and either not having kids, postponing their family creation, or having far fewer kids.

Yes, of course, ideologies such as Catholicism and Islam demand that women stay more or less barefoot and pregnant, so there is a bit of work to be done there in overturning those reactionary belief-systems and freeing up women. No, that won't happen by next week either.

And one thing you can say about the Chinese in Africa, they are putting in infrastructure. Perhaps for their own ends of course, but if sub-Saharan African countries could overcome the corruption and incompetence of their governments, and develop productive infrastructure: dams, irrigation and electricity-generation systems, road, rail and port infrastructure, it's pretty obvious that they could feed the world.

So there's the agenda: educate women, invest in infrastructure and bingo ! Massive food production ! AND reduced birth-rates.

[TBC]

[continued]

Yes, it may take a century, in which time the population of Africa may triple - horrors ! All those Black people ! - but sooner or later, it has to happen. The current under-population of Africa could become just part of history.

And the racist notion of over-population will thankfully be a distant memory.

People create, people have ingenuity, they work, they are not just a burden, as they may seem to be for publicly-funded professionals in non-productive inner-city coffee shops, sipping their soy-lattes.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Loudmouth "God, this discussion is so infantile."

So is posting almost identical articles every 8 weeks.

"birth rates in developed countries (including Australia) are at or below replacement rate already."

Which is cancelled out by mass immigration.

"But let's get to the nub of this racist attack on no-whites."

Whose race is being "attacked"?
Is Africa or Asia being radically transformed by alien immigration?

"Africa is ... undeveloped."

And why is that?
Could it be the character of the people who live there?

Europeans colonised all of Africa and most of Asia, yet development barely happened.
Surely, it would have benefited their empires to fully exploit those resources.

But in places where the Europeans established significant populations (North America, Australasia) you now see "very high development".

It's not the place, it's the people, that determine whether potentialities are achieved.

"Why do developed countries have a zero or negative replacement rate?"

Because immigration has pushed housing prices so high, two incomes are essential.
Feminism has also demonised motherhood for several generations of girls.
Concern over an uncertain future, whether conscious or not, will also make people reluctant to have children.

"ideologies such as" White guilt, multiculturalism and political correctness will keep Whites metaphorically "barefoot and pregnant", always having their needs and wants made subservient to alien peoples and utopian agendas.

"the population of Africa may triple - horrors ! All those Black people !"

Who cares, if they're in Africa.
That's not my concern.

"And the racist notion of over-population will thankfully be a distant memory."

So will people with red hair and green eyes.
If we keep being "inclusive" for much longer.

Here you go Ludwig,

This sort of promo is great isn't it? My bill will be sent to the SPA.

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/fortress-australia-green-washing-the-future-20131021-2vwzy.html

Loudmouth,

Before 1800, the global population was always below 1 billion. Even then, people sometimes overexploited their local environment and collapsed their society. "Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations" by Prof David Montgomery (Soil Science, University of Washington) has numerous case studies. Those people, however, did not have the numbers or the technology to interfere with the great natural cycles that support life on earth. Now we do. See

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

Open version

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

We now have 7 billion going on 10-11 billion people, on a planet that could sustainably support perhaps 1-2 billion in modest comfort, given today's technology. The UN recently had to raise its medium population projection because fertility rates had not fallen as far as expected, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. We are only getting by because so many of us are living in appalling poverty and because we are in environmental overshoot, using up renewable resources faster than they can be replenished. Even if the fertility rate dropped to replacement level tomorrow, all over the world, we would still be in for billions more people, just due to demographic momentum. Poor people are understandably focused on immediate survival and achieving a decent standard of living, not on the future or protecting their environment.

You might try reading a few issues of Science or Nature, our top science journals, instead of your usual fare, or New Scientist and Scientific American on a more popular level, and you will see that the people with the best understanding of the environmental issues are really alarmed.

What is infantile is harping on as if this were all about racism, instead of considering the real issues.

Hi Divergence,

Not sure where to start. We're not living in the early nineteenth century, by the way. And the proportion of the world's population living in poverty has halved in the last forty years.

Production techniques, technology, plant-breeding, etc., etc., have seen massive improvements in the last couple of hundred years. You may be aware of some of them.

My point was mainly about the effects of universal education for women, and the possibilities of vast increases in food production in Africa if those countries could drastically improve their infrastructure and production techniques.

Imagine if mechanisation could replace those millions of women chipping away with hand-hoes, if irrigation schemes could utilise the massive waterways there, if women didn't have to sit in the dirt pounding away at grinding corn. Yes, there would be - from one point of view - greatly increased unemployment in agriculture, but new fields of work, at higher levels, would open up.

I am confident that Africa can become the power-house, and the food producer of the world, and in this century. In the process, women will be freed up, to force changes in social structure, and to seize new educational opportunities. In so doing, they will move from large-families to small, have their children later, or not at all, and transform their societies. Birth-rates will fall in step.

Population hysteria will wither away accordingly.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Loudmouth,

Obviously, the Africans could benefit from better management, education for girls, and so on, but I am amazed that you think we can go on interfering with the carbon and nitrogen cycles, overfishing, wiping out species, unsustainably pumping groundwater, dumping garbage in the atmosphere, etc. without any repercussions. Note that the warnings on these things are coming from the mainstream scientific community, not hysterical fringe Greenies.

Growth in productivity of rice, wheat, and maize has plateaued or is leveling off in the most productive countries, probably because we are running up against physiological limits.

http://www.earth-policy.org/books/fpep/fpepch7

Tim Wheeler and Joachim von Braun wrote an article on global food security in the August 2 issue of Science (pp. 508-513).

"However, the big picture is clear. About 2 billion of the global population of over 7 billion are food insecure because they fall short of one or several of FAO's dimensions of food security."

They suggest that this may actually underestimate the problem, due to the definitions that have been used.

India has an child under-nutrition rate of 48%, according to its own government.

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/aspiring-global-power-suffers-from-chronic-malnutrition

Surely it makes sense to be cautious and wait until the marvelous technologies that you anticipate are actually proven before you proclaim that the population problem is solved. (Where's my flying car? Where's my electric power that was going to be too cheap to meter? Why are people still dying of cancer nearly 50 years after President Nixon declared his "War on Cancer"?}

It is strange that you cling to your Cornucopian faith and ignore the experts that you expect to deliver the miracle technologies. Before you assert that Africa could feed the world, you need to look at the actual numbers. The Global Footprint Network (an international think-tank of scientists, engineers, and economists) has done this, working out production and consumption from the best available figures. Take a look at their latest atlas and see if you are still so optimistic.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/ecological_footprint_atlas_2010

Divergence,

You mention India. Yes, indeed, with half of the villages not even connected by road to the outside world, and a massive back-log in infrastructure development, India is also ripe - if it can get its act together - for massive improvements in production.

If India had a similar infrastructure to Australia's, in electricity production and distribution, in ports, roads, irrigation, schools, rail, etc., etc., who knows what those 1.2 billion people could achieve ?

It really doesn't help your case when you speak of countries and regions which are currently producing at relatively rudimentary levels, since the only way is up. What sort of production outputs would Australia be making if we had the basic, animal- and human-powered technology of rural India and Africa ? Do the maths: there is enormous potential in those parts of the world, encompassing a significant proportion of the world's arable lands.

If you are from NSW, you need to be careful building so many straw men, Divergence :)

Cheers,

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Dear Joe/Loudmouth

India can't develop along the Western model because we are fast approaching resource and energy scarcity. No reason why they shouldn't be as 'successful' if they did have the same resources and energy but unfortunately, they are likely to hit trouble before they get around those issues, though it may not be possible anyway. 170 million people in India are dependent on groundwater for irrigation - groundwater that is rapidly declining and not being replenished. Add to that the problems of melting glaciers on the Tibetan plateau and the Himalayas that will mean the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Indus etc will initially flood but then become seasonal with huge ramifications for food production.

If, if, if, if, if, if, if.

Why is it progressives are always referring to the ideal, rather than what's real, right here and now?

Hi Chockaholic,

Pot & kettle, my friend :) So you don't rely on a sheaf of dubious 'ifs' ?

What have been some of the trends in demography over the past century ?

1. As women become better educated, they postpone their child-bearing, and have fewer children, if any.

2. As agriculture is mechanised, as irrigation systems improve, and as plant-breeding develops higher-yielding crops, farmers need fewer children to work the land. New occupations blossom and are taken up by people who need higher levels of education. Including women.

3. As Marx would point out, both capitalism AND the 'people' have inexhaustible ingenuity to develop technologies, mostly capitalist fiirms exploiting the ingenuity of people, especially as they get more skilled. Especially women. And they have fewer children as a by-product.

4. The upshot of all this is that birth-rates n developing countries fall, sometimes precipitously.

Is any of that false ?

And thank you for calling me a 'progressive', by the way, it's an honorable title.

Cheers :)

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Loudmouth,

What part of damaging our life support systems don't you understand? Do you think that the scientists warning about these things (see the Rockstrom et al. paper I linked to) are all fools or are lying to us? See the Global Footprint Network Atlas I linked to earlier for the biocapacity values for the various countries. There are some countries such as Papua New Guinea that are still within their biocapacity, but a great many aren't, nor is the world as a whole. As I said, we are in environmental overshoot. Something like 190 million people in India and perhaps 130 million in Northern China are dependent on unsustainably pumped groundwater. No water, no food. It is just like running through an inheritance or lottery winnings.

What you say about bringing down fertility rates in Africa is quite correct, but this isn't the main issue. If they don't bring down their fertility rates, they will deal with resource problems by killing each other, as happened in Rwanda (see the Malthus in Africa chapter on Rwanda in Jared Diamond's collapse and note the extremely low figures for agricultural land per person). The real issue is the numbers that are going to be added by demographic momentum in the countries that have recently brought down their fertility rates. It can take up to 70 years to stop population growth after this happens, because of the pyramid shaped age distribution that is associated with fast population growth. The births are in the very big young adult generation, while most of the deaths are occurring in the relatively tiny elderly generation.

Globalisation is also allowing a lot more people around the world to consume more. China now emits more greenhouse gases than the US, even without including production for export, and consumes twice as much meat, even though less on a per capita basis. As well as the environmental problems, most commodities are vastly more expensive in real terms than in the 1990s. See

http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/

What is likely to happen with half again as many people?

Hi Divergence,

Yes indeed, the world's population will keep rising, until those social and technological and economic and educational changes have a chance to kick in, and will keep rising after that as more people reach extreme old age.

But then it will start to level off and fall, as it has done in developed countries. Yes it might take a century, with a population around ten billion, but innovations of all sorts will also move towards less polluting and more sustainable modes of production.

Otherwise, how do you see any reduction in population occurring ? Mass exterminations ? 'Solent green' solutions ? Sterilisations ?

It seems to me there is either a peaceful, education- and technology-driven solution, very broadly speaking, or a more brutal solution.

Do you have any other positive suggestion ?

Cheers,

Joe
www.firstsources.info

So Kettle, what are my sheaf of dubious 'ifs'?
I note you can't refer to any.

Loudmouth, you've just changed the word "if" to "as".

"As" only applies where events have actually occurred.
Where they are only conjectures about the future, the word "if" applies.

When Africa get its act together (with China's "help": Hide a dagger behind a smile), let me know.
Until then, I would prefer political decisions be based on "what is", not "what ifs".

Loudmouth

It would be a help if we could address how to get to a genuinely sustainable population cooperatively rather than adopting such an insulting manner. Divergence is simply presenting the facts. What would YOU suggest about the 190 million in India and the 130 million in China who are being fed by the unsustainable use of groundwater? At some point most of them are going to starve unless we can produce food in a sustainable way elsewhere and get it to them. What will they produce to pay for this food? Probably little, so a lot will have to come as food aid. Will there be enough food on the world market for the World Food Program to buy? These are questions we have to answer rather than blithely assume we can get to 10 billion people and gently decline in numbers. Those of us concerned about population are in the forefront of worrying about how to feed people, just as Lester Brown was in 1965 when he went to India. He realised drought would cut yields and so encouraged the US to ship massive amounts of grain to India. This staved off mass famine. That was when India's population was about a third of what it is now. The likelihood of any country doing it again on that scale is unlikely. Hence the spectre of famine looms as climate change bites, but it is hardly what we in the population movement want.

Pop,

You talking bout the Bihar famine of 65? Brown of the Overseas Development Council?

Mark has inadvertently raised another matter re global population control.

In India in the mid 60s, US food and medical aid was tied to performance targets for IUD implants. Expulsion rates and bleeding was over 20 percent. Girls as young as 12 were implanted. You hungry? There goes your genetic line.

Malcolm
India got that food in exchange for adopting some of the new strains of rice and wheat being developed by Norman Borlaug at the time. They lifted their yields and were able to feed their population.
Nobody condones the forced sterilisations of the 1970s in India. Some aspects of the sterilisation program were legitimate, however, where people came freely and they already had enough children. But the main problem with the Indian program was that, because it was at times coercive, it set the whole population stabilisation movement back decades.

So don't employ your usual tactic of trying to besmirch the good name of those in the population movement by associating us with something we deplore as well as you.

Pop & shockadelic,

How then ? How do you propose that world population can be reduced - not just stabilised but reduced ? Certainly, if you are proposing that the world's population should be halved, then how do you propose that can happen relatively quickly, say in a century or two ?

If you propose doing it by reducing birth-rates, then you have to be aware that smaller young populations will have to be supporting growing older populations, isn't that so ? So it would have to be done - it will be done by sheer social change - very slowly, if you do the maths.

Perhaps even a birth-rate per woman of 1.9 would be drastic, the equivalent of the loss of a year's births every eighteen years or so, i.e. fewer age-groups supporting larger age-groups as life-expectancy improves, at five years every twenty years or so.

After all, think about it - a birth-rate of 1.9 births per woman would mean the equivalent of the loss of three or four age-groups across a working life-span, supporting perhaps an additional three or four age-groups in the post-work population.

So across an average life-span of eighty (or ninety in a few generations), there would be the equivalent of about three or four age-groups, even more as time passes, supporting an equal amount of older people.

Or are you proposing something more 'subtractive' ?

It's easy to carp and bitch about a problem, but a bit harder to suggest remedies for it :)

Cheers,

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Loudmouth,

Any such problems could be dealt with by raising the retirement age a bit. In any case, there aren't enough jobs for the young people we have now. Most elderly people can look after themselves, except in the last few months of life. Generally it is grandparents who look after grandchildren, not the other way around. Any problems to do with aging are trivial compared with the problems that come with overpopulation. I would only be concerned if the fertility rate dropped below 1.5. A number of European countries have been coping quite well, despite having a high proportion of old people.

Your friend Malcolm King could bring fertility rates down very far and fast all over the world, just by cramming people into big, crowded cities. See my previous post with the link to Joel Kotkin.

population issue in western world is a sideshow of a sideshow, except where you have large ageing populations viz smaller age cohorts supporting them. Actually, it's not a population issue but a large ageing cohort issue.

Fiscal gap in Oz from now to 2050 to support aged Boomers will be about 2% GDP. Can be ameliorated by Boomers working longer - those who have jobs. Except 120,000 don't and many more women underemployed.

It's the framework for intergenerational transfer problems - another issue the anti-pops know nothing about. But I'm sure they'll try.

Divergence,

I agree with you that, as populations live longer, and healthier age-for-age, people can fairly happily work more years, and the age-pension can be pushed up in step with life expectancy. It may be that, as cures are found for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and arthritis, thanks to human innovation, any worry about younger generations having to support growing numbers of non-working elderly will prove to be a non-issue.

On the other hand, the education of those younger generations may stretch out as the economy and society require people with higher qualifications. Win some, lose some.

But this can be handled equitably and relatively problem-free if the birth-rate is just below replacement rate, 1.9 or so. A birth-rate of 1.5 births per couple would indicate a decline of a quarter of the population of each new generation, and a quarter again, and so on. In the future, around 2100, hypothetically three generations hence, the youngest generation would be far out-numbered by those over seventy or seventy five. And in turn they would have a similar unbalanced ration of old-to-young in their turn.

A program of rapid birth-rate decline would therefore be a program for passing huge burdens onto each young generation of working population. Even so, it would take the best part of a century for the population to stabilise, and then decline.

So of course we do it more slowly, if - from our Olympean heights - we can control the process at all. Perhaps over several centuries ? Or can technological innovation, medical advances, etc., keep pace with that very gradual slowing in population growth in the meantime ?

I agree with Paddy King, that it' not really a major problem. Really, i don't think it's even a minor problem, but there you go. People are a positive. Slower population growth will come about, with women's education, and the costs and length of education generally, and preference for smaller families. It's not something I waste a minute of sleep over. Sorry.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Loudmouth “How do you propose that world population can be reduced - not just stabilised but reduced ?”

Couldn't care less about world population.

My concern is with Australia and other Western countries, which *would* actually be reducing if it weren't for immigration.

What is the point of a low birth rate if immigration overwhelms it?

“passing huge burdens onto each young generation of working population”

Income tax is only half the total taxes and I'd like to see companies/businesses pay more by eliminating all the twists and turns available to minimise tax.

No matter how many “workers” there are, businesses will and must make money.
A business can make millions with a dozen employees.
It is commercial income that should produce the majority of tax revenue, regardless of how much human labour exists.

Pensions should not be available to people with expensive property.
What is the point of “assets” if you don't cash in when you need the dough?
No, you don't have to leave your home. Ever heard of leaseback?

“Or are you proposing something more 'subtractive'?”

Like oooh... DEATH CAMPS!
Only for progressives (a technical label that has nothing to do with real “progress”).
Traitors deserve execution.

The next influenza epidemic will solve any “overpopulation” problem.
Nature knows how to kill. No need for human actions.

Influenza won't stop the stealth genocide of Whites though.
In fact, it would only encourage the multopians to advocate higher-than-ever immigration.

“It's not something I waste a minute of sleep over.”

You seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on something you consider irrelevant.
And where's that list of “ifs” you accused me of?

Distinct ethnic biological types and their related cultures are *fact*.
Whether they can survive an onslaught of competing genes and memes is the “if”.

3 out of 4 immigrants now come from unrelated genetic/memetic groups.
How do you think we can survive as *our type* with that kind of drastic change?

Hi Shockadelic,

Ah, I get it now, you're not anti-world-population-growth, just against the growth in Australia from immigration, is that right ? And you're against inter-marriage too, have I got that correct ?

I think the horse has well and truly bolted on that last point, but you are free not to marry someone from another group if that is your preference. You're missing out on a wonderful experience, by the way: my wife was Aboriginal, and I was incredibly lucky to have those forty-odd years with her. So I'm not the person to talk to about segregation of groups. Incidentally, inter-marriage tends to produce more beautiful kids so that can't be a bad thing.

As for immigration to Australia, I can appreciate that, since immigrants tend to be young, and to build their families in the country of destination, whether, say, an Iraqi is a migrant or a refugee or someone here on a 457 visa, they will indirectly add to Australia's population while, notionally, reducing the potential population in Iraq.

In those two senses, immigration and family construction, the process increases Australia's population: you're right if you are asserting this. But of course, those relatively younger people contribute to Australia's well-being by working and paying taxes, and by their very presence and contributions, they are helping to maintain a healthy population growth which would otherwise be stagnant and loaded towards the older end of the population spectrum.

In other words, without the efforts of migrants and refugees, Australia is in danger of developing a lop-sided population, one which increasingly needs support from a shrinking population of workers.

So thank goodness for immigration :)

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth, I never said anything about inter-marriage or segregation.
I would oppose those restrictions on the liberty of *citizens*.
This isn't about citizens, but foreigners (who have no "rights" in Australia unless we say so).

Mixing genetic strains can produce beauty.
Or hideous dumb freaks (outbreeding depression).

It will also suppress recessive traits like eye and hair colours, many of which are *non-existent* among Africans and Asians.

"I think the horse has well and truly bolted".

No, it hasn't.
Despite all the immigration in Australia and the West in recent decades, the vast majority of the population in all Western countries is the traditional one.

If non-White immigration stopped, the "ethnic" numbers would reduce to about a third of their current level, due to natural deaths, non-procreation (half are too old to have kids) and emigration (a quarter leave. I wish we knew the ethnicity of emigrating "Australians". Many are probably minorities returning to ancestral homelands).

"my wife was Aboriginal"

And immigration policy has no effect on White-Aboriginal relationships.

"those relatively younger people contribute to Australia's well-being by working and paying taxes"

Do they? Look at the unemployment rates in some communities!

Contribute? So would *any* White people, and they'd do so much quicker and easier.
They're already familiar with a similar people/culture/language, part of the same civilisation, and don't have a big chip on their shoulder about "Whitey".

"a lop-sided population, a shrinking population of workers."

Nonsense. Wealth creation (and therefore taxation) is not determined by a head count.
Creativity, strategy, efficiency and profitability create wealth.
A business with only a dozen staff can produce millions in income.

All arguments favourable to immigration still don't justify an "anything and everything all at once, no matter what" policy.

This policy is *dangerous*.

If one wants it all, at least do it incrementally.
And with democratic consent.

Slowly, and I mean slowly, expanding the range over *centuries*.
We started to do this with the "wogs", but then just took the whole door of the hinges.

But I never hear Multopians promote a democratic/gradualist policy, so I cannot support them.

Hi Shockadelic,

Forgive me, I misunderstood your position, I thought you were opposed to migration and therefore one if its corollaries, inter-marriage.

I don't know that inter-marriage has ever produced 'dumb freaks': perhaps you have evidence of that ?

But yes, the horse HAS bolted on the issue of inter-marriage: just watch kids coming out of a high school, with Asian and African and Indian and Hazara kids mixing freely with Anglos. Inter-marriage can be expected to follow in due course.

And Australia will never stop immigration from non-Anglo coutries. You might just have to get used to that :)

As for contributions, you may notice that non-Anglos are very often at the forefront of new ideas, scientific breakthroughs, brilliant new ideas. After all, immigrants tend to be, almost by definition, get-up-and-go people. That's one of the lessons of history.

No, it's not all sweetness and light, many immigrants, particularly genuine refugees who would perhaps rather be back home, but circumstances preclude that, may find it difficult to adjust, but most give it their best shot, I would suggest.

My point about a shrinking body of workers, in the absence of immigration and the prevalence of a lower 'domestic' birth-rate, a relatively growing older, non-working population has to be supported by relatively fewer workers.

As you say, 'All arguments favourable to immigration still don't justify an "anything and everything all at once, no matter what" policy.' I don't know of anybody who is advocating such a course, whatever it may mean.

And when you suggest that 'If one wants it all, at least do it incrementally. And with democratic consent..... '

one could apply that principle to population reduction generally as well. Or do you have more drastic 'solutions' ?

Cheers,

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Loudmouth "I thought you were opposed to migration and therefore one if its corollaries, inter-marriage."

I'm concerned with the cause, not the symptoms.

It's like banning the burqa, instead of restricting immigrants likely to wear them.

"I don't know that inter-marriage has ever produced 'dumb freaks'"

Outbreeding depression is an accepted concept in biology.
It is the evil twin of hybrid vigor.
The crazy uncle Multopians hide in the basement.

"Lower fitness" can result from interbreeding dissimilar "populations" since there is no precedent for their mixing.
Outcomes can vary wildly.

For thousands of years, Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid populations had almost no interbreeding, except in borderlands between the Caucasoid and the others (There is no borderland between Negroid and Mongoloid).

Sometimes the first hybrid generation benefits from mixing (your "beautiful" people) but deteriorates with subsequent generations (especially hybrids who breed with hybrids).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreeding_depression

"Asian and African and Indian and Hazara kids mixing freely with Anglos."

What I see on the street: Asians with Asians, Middle Eastern with Middle Eastern, White with White.

"And Australia will never stop immigration from non-Anglo coutries."

Never say never.
Once upon a time, they would have said it would "never" start.

Political policies are choices, not inevitabilities.

"often at the forefront... immigrants tend to be get-up-and-go people."

Maybe the *first* generation.
They *chose* to be here.
It's the subsequent generations that often have, and are, the most trouble. They made no such choice.

"relatively fewer workers"

Head counts don't matter. Look at The Beatles.
Just *four* men (five if you include George Martin).
Billions were generated from their creativity.
They even wrote a song about being taxed.

"I don't know of anybody who is advocating such a course"

No need to advocate what we've already got.

A democratic-gradualist approach, no matter how sensible, will never be acceptable to Multopian fanatics, as it would require:
(1) reverting to a very restricted range to begin with, and
(2) democratic approval could mean Australians say "No" to some ethnicities. Shock horror!

That's why "Australia will never stop immigration from non-Anglo countries".
Not until "The Troubles" start.

Hi Shockadelic,

Actually, I can look up Wikipedia too, it's amazing what you find there.

For example, yes, there is a phenomenon called 'outbreeding depression' and there is also one called 'inbreeding depression'. Take your pick.

All humans share the same basic DNA, there is no ill-effects from the inter-mixing of anyone from one population with anyone from another. Not an issue.

Of course people associate with other people from their own groups, but also as time passes, and especially through the media of school and work, with people from other groups as well. This sounds like a conversation from the fifties !

And on the whole, the children of immigrants are statistically more likely to attend university than us Skips. Perhaps you would like to complain about wogs taking 'our' university places ?

"relatively fewer workers" for the growing number of older people needing to be financially supported. 'Relatively". Do you understand the concept ?

I'm happy with any democratic approach, particularly one which encourages mixing. I'm happy and confident that our politicians and courts will never recognise something as backward and reactionary as Shari'a - unless the Greens someday capture government, that is. But that seems less likely with each passing day.

Nice talking to you.

Cheers :)

Joe
www.firstsources.info

What a shame you can't *read* Wikipedia.

The referenced topic is about breeding *within* a species.
Having "human" DNA isn't the issue.

No, you don't want "inbreeding" either, but that requires a very close, direct relationship, not simply the same general "type".

A Dutch man breeding with his Dutch sister = Inbreeding depression.
Breeding with unrelated Dutch woman = Hybrid vigor.
Breeding with other Germanic woman = Hybrid vigor.
Breeding with non-Germanic European woman = Hybrid vigor.
Breeding with other non-European Caucasoid = Hybrid vigor/Outbreeding depression.
Breeding with Mongoloid/Negroid = Outbreeding depression.

You don't want too close or too distant a strain.

Hybrids are unpredictable.
That's why breeders keep original "pure" samples on hand.
And they don't breed hybrids with hybrids and expect superstars.

If mixing produced greatness, the Middle East (historically centrally located) would be world leaders in art, science, philosophy.
Instead they spend more time bombing hijacked planes than any other people.

Brazil has been mixing European, Negroid and Mongoloid (Native Americans) for centuries with average results.

There isn't just the issue of genetic incompatibilites, but cultural ones too.

Cultural memes are like genetic alleles.
They'll *compete* for "expression" and dominance.
They can't all just co-exist harmoniously.

There is no "human" history, only the history of particular peoples and their respective cultures.

We shouldn't have to compete with memes or genes *imposed* on us from outside our own history.
We have the right to exist as a *distinct* people.

Minorities are possibly overrepresented in university (and some occupations) due to the impact of anti-discrimination law and internal bias to "progressive" ideology.

Who's going to reject the coloured applicant and face a potential lawsuit?
Reject the White applicant? No problem.

Yes, I understand "relatively".
And I say it's irrelevant.
Wealth is not generated by head count (Echo?).

There'll be *no* human labour in the future.
Robots, computers and machines will do all "labour".
Economic models based on paid human labour will be ridiculously redundant.
That day isn't too far away.

We should be planning for that future, not propping up a fading system with ring-ins in equally antiquated headwear.