I didn't believe the above about the Greens even considering a name change, (and on their site it states the two alternative views on the topic were views put down as their own).

Regardless - the two views are on the Greens website - with 154 comments on the page.

I did an internet search and it's titled "A green by any other name" and it can be found at:

http://greens.org.au/magazine/national/green-by-any-other-name

What a misguided rant, Malcolm

There is a lot of material on the SPA and SPP websites, but you put up nothing to substantiate your wild accusations, because you can't. You are right up there with the people who believe that the British royal family are involved in the drug trade or that 9/11 was an inside job.

If you care about people, then you also have to care about the health of their planetary life support systems, even if you don't see other species as having any value on their own account. If you doubt that we are doing serious damage to them, see the summary in this paper from Nature (not Green Left Weekly)

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

open version

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

also
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/

The problems cover a wide variety of scientific fields, but an agricultural scientist like Jane O'Sullivan (whose work with yams is likely to benefit humanity far more than anything you do) would understand the big picture a lot better than a run of the mill economist.

My own views are no secret. What I personally want is not the extinction of humanity, but a population (and general management) such that all people, not just the rich, can have good, free lives, in a healthy environment where the other species can live too.

To be honest, no one inside or outside of government cares about population rising or falling, Divergence.

When I hear anti-immigrationists such as you bleating on and on about population, I know that I’m close to the epicenter of ignorance.

Not one of the SPA has experience in demographic projections. None have worked in the APS or private industry, researching the labour market or population dynamics. None have worked in generational change, population ageing or youth unemployment. When I worked in DEEWR, the so-called anti-population movement was called the ‘tin foil hat club’. Rightly so.

Your guru, Dr Jane Sullivan, made up the figures re infrastructure in Australia from a 1986 article published at MIT. Shocker. And her research expertise is in yams. That's right, yams. Your most published thinker is a poet. And you wonder why I don’t you seriously.

The SPA’s hyper selectivity of doubly dodgy references and eye picking quotes to duck and weave around criticism, is laughable.

Indeed, last year the SPA had to institute tougher monitoring laws re members posting race hate messages on its Facebook page. You’re just a small cluster of freaks in a sideshow.

Malcolm,

<To be honest, no one inside or outside of government cares about population rising or falling, Divergence>

Nonsense. Why did the major parties put Stop Population Growth Now last on their preference list at the last SA election, behind real white nationalist parties? Why did Julia Gillard lie about not believing in a Big Australia? Why did they ignore the 1994 Australian Academy of Science Report and ignore or censor a number of other reports on our carrying capacity that they had commissioned from the CSIRO and others? They (or their FIRE sector backers) want the population growth and know that it is unpopular.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/big-australia-vision-goes-down-like-a-lead-balloon-20100803-115g7.html

<Not one of the SPA has experience in demographic projections.>

Profs. Bob Birrell and Katherine Betts? She is a member. His work is cited by SPA, although I don't know if he is a member.

So far as the folks who work for government and industry are concerned, there is a good living to be made in telling rich and powerful people what they want to hear and in justifying what they do to the masses, much like the astrologers at 17th century courts. The US, where there is less in the way of government transfers, is a good example of how this sort of advice works out for ordinary people. Most men have lower real wages than in the 1970s, and there have been massive increases in social inequality, with nearly all the benefits of economic growth syphoned up to the top.

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

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1#lets-start-with-the-obvious-unemployment-three-years-after-the-financial-crisis-the-unemployment-rate-is-still-at-the-highest-level-since-the-great-depression-except-for-a-brief-blip-in-the-early-1980s-1

Quite a few scientists and engineers belong to SPA. Jane O'Sullivan is just one of them and no one's guru, but she has done the numbers on infrastructure. She did her own calculations for her paper, which wouldn't have passed peer review at Economic Affairs unless it were original and presented a reasonable argument.

Some people do want less immigration because they are racists. So what? Should SPA let them post illegal racial vilification on its Facebook page?

If anyone needs fitting for a tinfoil hat, it is you with your secret agendas

A few rhetorical why's there, Divergence. Always asking questions, never answering them. The major parties put the SPA last because they'd never heard of them or maybe they knew they the SPA were a front for John Tanton's disciples like Roy Beck.

Betts and Birrell are sociologists. Sounds the same: sociology and demography but quite different. Sociology allows you to pontificate on any subject you like by producing the thinnest research. As you know, both Betts and Birrell are past authors for Tanton's anti-immigration Social Contract magazine. But still, they are better than yam experts.

But only marginally better than the SPA's previous Qlds candidate, Tom Diamond, who works building the software for electronic gaming machines. Up there for thinking. Sustainable too.

I'm just about through here with the anti-pops. Enjoyed writing the articles and alerting the readership to just how riddled they are with far right froot loops, bearded gnome engineers and Dr Strangelove scientists, who for either prurient or political reasons, want to control women's reproductive organs.

Lying again, Malcolm?

<just how riddled they are with far right froot loops, bearded gnome engineers and Dr Strangelove scientists, who for either prurient or political reasons, want to control women's reproductive organs.>

There is absolutely no evidence that anyone in either of these organisations wants coercive population control, as opposed to making contraception available to people who want it. You are taking advantage of a loophole in the defamation laws to indulge in baseless slander.

From your evasiveness on the subject of planetary life support systems or what we are doing to Australia's environment, you, and maybe your friends, are pig ignorant of the threats we are facing. I suggest that instead of sneering at scientists and engineers, you try to educate yourself a bit. You might start with the Do the Math blog and the thermodynamic limits to growth.