Reading his eminence Suter's self-written OLO author description http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=185 :

"Dr Keith Suter is a futurist, thought leader and media personality in the areas of social policy and foreign affairs. He is a prolific and well-respected writer and social commentator appearing on radio and television most weeks."

I'm not so conceited.

Never heard of Ronald Higgins, but he sounds like the pessimist, Paul Erlich. Everyday since the latter stopped gabbling, all his doom and gloom is exposed as bullshite. Who cares about population growth, anyway? The growth is with stone-agers who can't feed themselves – the West just has to stop feeding them – problem solved. How stupid can we get, aiding people to breed and overpopulate. That's globalism for you.

The process of recovery could be started with the cessation of funds to meddling NGOs.

T.S. Eliot “warned” did he. I'll tell you about the only warning we need listen to from T.S. Eliot – the one where he wrote that progressive liberals will lead us to totalitarianism, as they march from what they want to leave behind to absolutely nothing.

Awakening a global conscience is usually code for having a seared personal conscience. Sort of like husbands who refuse to be faithful to wives and father their kids. sort of like the putried feminist vagina heads pretend to be moral agents, sort of like the gw high priests who have been proven wrong on almost all predictions but have made millions/billions from their lies. Its personal conscience breakdown causing destruction not some pseudo political global conscience which is usually some socialist pushing marxism.

First, they took away our heritage and traditions, then our land, our marriage, and now they want to dissolve our borders and cancel the national day. Well, excuse me if a bit sceptical, lol

Clearly and without question there are solutions and we could implement them, but for the seventh enemy already in our midst!

Those enemies are those folk implacably opposed, who act in deliterous ways to prevent the, as plain as the nose on our face, solutions being applied!

I mean our mob called for a report into thorium, written by an expert in non thorium energy.

And you guessed it, because thorium harms the business model of nuclear fuel fabrication, the reports these alleged experts produce are hardly ever glowing reports.

But rather ones, that from where I sit, having read the scant report, over emphasise a couple of very minor technical easily solved difficulties.

Thorium promises everything fusion promised but couldn't deliver and now quite deliberately suppressed by the seventh enemy!?

Ultra cheap power being a critical part of any solution! The other being affordable water. As promised by deionisation dialysis desalination.

Already proven to be a viable means of bringing affordable water to thirsty crops. And made vastly more affordable with walk away safe, molten salt thorium.

We teeter on the brink of an extinction event or Armageddon. Yet the recalcitrant, intransigent, seventh enemy refuse to do more, than spend vastly more on weapons, some of them weapons of mass destruction!

A global conscience may be awakening? But unless it includes our alleged leaders, all of them, it's worthless!
Alan B.

Hanrahan was indeed correct.
Homo Sapiens has evolved well and truly past the limits of his intelligence.
Not only shall we breed ourselves out of house and home but what sensible species would deliberately destroy their own life support system for their own greed and gratification.

Humankind, and indeed all of Earthkind certainly needs the emergence of a collective global conscience, which is of course primarily a heart matter and the felt-Realization that everyone and everything is arising in a condition of Prior Unity.

Such seems to be almost an impossibility with the completely amoral/immoral "reality-TV" (and Beavis & Butthead) cartoon character that is now the leader of the "free" world.

People are overpopulating the planet! Not all populations, just those bowed down in extreme poverty and consequent abysmal ignorance. And there in numerous examples, improving the socio economic circumstances of those populations and improving universal education outcomes has resulted in a progressive decline in population pressure.

And supported by factual examples rather than the fact free ranting of the fifth enemy within!

How might this be achieved? By providing affordable energy, cheap enough to make some large scale irrigation projects viable! And a better less costly alternative to placing these drought displaced and climate change affected folk in refugee camps. That now hold over fifty million people the world over.

Look, folk can build massive hydro schemes if they have water and guaranteed rainfall, then using miles of energy wasting, highly vulnerable transmission lines, reticulate energy to humble hovels schools, hospital and fledgling industries alike.

But particularly if extreme poverty is the order of the day and debt laden, tax avoiding, price gouging, profit repatriating foreign firms, [the sixth enemy,] can flock there to take advantage of low energy prices, low labour costs and low taxes.

Just so they can undercut fair and reasonable prices, massively inflate the eternal profit curve, shareholder dividends, boardroom and executive salaries.

Alternatively we can selectively aim our foreign aid dollars at improving the lot of folk where they are now! And only prevented by the enemies of humankind and difference, within.

We can do two things, endlessly bitch about the greed of impoverished people and those who most shamefully exploit them!?

Or just crack on build a few thorium powered power plants and use that energy initially to water several uninhabitable deserts! And in so doing, the developed world can change the planet, drawdown CO2 emission, feed, clothe, house and educate as many as 50 million displaced persons. And all we need is a well directed, tiny tobin tax!
Alan B.

The seven enemies?:

1. Population explosion. Well we already know how to solve that issue. It has been resolved in most of the planet. The solution is economic growth. Economic well-being leads to lower birth-rates. The problem is now confined to the economic basket-cases and if/when they get their act together the problem will disappear there also. Even so, the UN predictions are that population levels will stabilise and then fall later this century. The 'Population Bomb' alarmists of the 1970s were hopeless wrong. Alarmists almost always are.

2. Food: production continues to increase. World-wide food production per capita is higher now than ever before and substantially higher than the 1970. The neo-Malthusians of that time (eg Higgins) were hopelessly wrong on that count. Why trust their other predictions?

3. Scarcity of resources: name one resource we have run out of since 1970. Indeed name one resource we've ever run out of. Indeed name 5 resources that are more scarce now than in 1970.

4. Environmental degradation: a subjective evaluation. I'd argue the environment in the rich nations is vastly improved over the past half century. Environment improvement follows economic improvement.

5. Nuclear abuse: another failed prediction.

6. Misuse of science and technology: by 'misuse' he means using it in ways he disapproves of.

7. Political inertia: by which he means politics isn't doing the things he wants them to do. Is there political inertia in the USA at the moment?

Come off the grass Keith, the club of Rome research could not have been more wrong. If it had been right, half the current population would be dead of starvation by now.

You have also got the Global Warming thing about as wrong as the Club Of Rome got the food supply subject.

With you having promoted 2 totally wrong subjects, I can't see much sense in looking any more of your fairyland rubbish.

Try to get a bit scientific before you burst into print again old mate, this stuff is utter garbage, with no basis in fact.

Misuse of science and technology means using highly polluting planet damaging, environment damaging and vastly inefficient ultra expensive
examples, When other less harmful examples are simply treated as waste that present none of the stated problems, but rather produce the complete opposite!

Including the financial failure of those who misuse technology and trust, just to pad personal bank accounts! And they are indubitably served by the seventh enemy within?

"Leaders" allegedly putting the people and the nation first, but instead sell them, their future prospects and their best most prosperous futures down the river of no return?

And filling the airwaves with lots of pious BS, as they seek to fool the mugs out there in mugsville. Wasting billions in pork barrelling and welfare for the rich, as they spend other folks money/maxout the nation's credit card.

And I know you know exactly who I'm referring to. And simply has to include former (glib speakers) ministers of the crown, who retire from politics "earning" hundreds of thousand of dollars as fees for consultancy/cash for comment/professional lobbying?

We've always needed foreign investment they say? True? Perhaps? But at no time have we needed to sell the farm, heirloom silver or our freedom to get it!

Particularly when we could raise more venture capital with government guaranteed thirty year self terminating bonds! Which would if cleverly crafted, allow most of our two trillion dollar super fund to stay here working for us and our future prosperity, rather than those we compete with for global market share!

People who retire from politics ought do just that, and live like the rest of us retirees on the personal super and savings they've squirreled away! Anything else smacks of bought and paid for influence/The seventh enemy?
Alan B.

yep we saw the global 'conscience' in action yesterday with calls by regressives for the burning of Australia. Aren't you glad these conscience bearers hold prominent positions in universities and the education department.