Mass clearing, Mass extinction and fisheries colapse is the reality I live with in Australia.
A rise in the average temeprature of the entire globe, and a halving of the average house block in SE queensland.

Yet this article suggests the ecological arguments argainst unsustainable population increase are not as powerful as the economic arguments for.
The Author is living in a theoretical fantasy land.
Australia's population is practical at < 10 million.
Immigration rates of > 30,000 are unsustainable in the long term both ecologically and economically.
This kind of population growth must come at a price, through sacrifice of natural heritage, water usage, land usage, transport usage.
The arguments for cramming more people in to increase GDP are thin at best.

Better read the article one more time. I'm not promoting population growth.

We live in a political world. Policies are made on a political basis. Until political forces, such as public awareness and public pressure lead our elected repressentatives to new policies, we will continue to have the existing policies. We will even have the existing policies, despite government reports saying that the claims of economic disaster with falling population growth, are wrong. We live in a political world.

Good article Eric.

Pity about the lack of respondents. Perhaps it is time to repost this or something similar now that OLO has vastly more contributors than it did in Dec 04. Peak oil has become a big subject on the forum and there is an absolute imperative to address our domestic population growth in this context. (I haven’t read your other articles yet, but they all appear to be quite different)

I agree with your analysis of why governments push population growth, but I don’t agree with your statement; “However it is not fair to simply criticise Steve Bracks and John Howard. They are responding to the wishes of voters”.

I think they deserve condemnation for their population-growth stance. It is fundamentally their jobs to protect quality of life and environment now and into the future, until long after they are dead. They are not there to pander to the vested-interest pro-growth lobby (or are they?).

They are not responding to the wishes of voters, they are responding to the all-powerful profit motive. Most people to whom I have spoken about population growth since I became concerned about the issue in 1988 agree that it is a major problem. I hardly ever encounter anyone who agrees with high immigration or continuous unending population growth. I converse with landholders a lot, on their properties. I am amazed by the number of times that graziers and cane-farmers have expressed concerns about continuous population growth (while at the same time being concerned about population decline in rural areas), completely unprompted by me.

Bracks and Howard are from the economic growth old-school, as are practically all of our politicians (except for Bob Brown, but then what has he ever had to say about population growth?) They follow the path of continuous growth for two reasons; it is innate to them and they are much more influenced by vested-interest big business than they are by Suzie and Jo Bloggs