eclipse, one last try.

Presenting a catchy slogan, "Resources / population = lifestyle!" as an accepted fact, when it is patently false, is lazy thinking, and progresses the discussion not at all.

However much evidence you present, however trustworthy your sources, however convincing your arguments may be, hanging your hat on a silly slogan diminishes your credibility, at a stroke.

I find it puzzling that you cannot see this.

What makes it critical is that when we need to ask the population to make the sacrifices necessary to maintain life on earth into the future, we are going to need every ounce of credibility available. Trite, empty and eminently disprovable slogans are not going to help. They will hinder.

You provide another example of woolly-headedness with:

>>The exact upper limit is vague, but it is better to be safe than sorry!<<

Try to imagine a situation where you need to persuade a fat and lazy population that it needs (for example) to become vegetarian, in order for the human species to survive. Or where you need to introduce a “one child” policy. Or where you need to dissuade the health service from keeping people alive artificially to stop them being a drain on the economy or the environment. How convincing will you be, telling them that you don't really know what you are talking about (“the exact upper limit is vague”), but you'd like them to make the sacrifices anyway (“better to be safe than sorry!”).

Let us postulate for a moment that your David Pimentel is correct, and that to survive in comfort we need to target a maximum population of 2 billion. What can bring about this change? Strong leadership? Cogent, well-researched arguments? Far more likely is a purely Darwinian process where the weak go to the wall, upsetting as that may be.

One thing is for absolute certain. Marching along with placards saying “Resources / population = lifestyle!” or “better safe than sorry!”, complete with their pathetic little exclamation marks, is designed to build resistance to your theories, not understanding.

The tubley table indicates that production of flesh for human consumption involves handling a lot more water than if grass and such-like were to be ingested directly.
Fair enough, but there are well-documented problems associated with monocultures pushed to the limit continuously. That applies to wheat, and to people: we are not God's chosen species - just a unique development of spare parts accumulated over a few billion years of biological associations.
During the last two million years we adjusted our dentures, and gut's microflora, to handle on average a diet of about a third each of fruit, meat, and vegetable matter. It is naive arrogance to demand an immediate change towards a diet paralleling that of our cousin the Gorilla with the big fermentation tank of a belly. Yes, humans are adaptable; can even be a Murray Rose if there is sufficient dedication, and unlimited access to the best that vegetarianism offers. But leading our species towards the ege of its developmental niche is a leap of blind faith into the fog of future uncertainties.
Australia's water-guzzling population increases by a million in 4 years, and is pressured to increase while degradation remains unchecked for water supplies, agricultural land, and city society. Given a chance, enhancing biodiversity in our soils would be of great assistance - but flogging them with monocultures of potatoes, wheat etc. to their limit continuously is crazy. And for what purpose - a great experiment to see how many battery-chicken human lifestyles can be crammed, briefly, into the country?
"A child dies of starvation every 2 seconds". And "people who will starve to death this year: 60 million". Yes, terrible. But will world vegetarianism enable their survival, and if so what is the outcome? At present world population increases by 80 million a year; under a vegetarian rescue plan, perhaps it would be 140 and continuing to increase indefinitely.
There are no better prospects for humanity's tenure than that of wheat in a paddock while the hazards of monocultures and forcing the limits of production are ignored.

Well said Colin!

Now, Pericles, you are not making sense.
Take a deep breath.
Count to 10.

Now look at your arguments.

One minute my formula is “patently false”, and the next minute I am “quoting evidence”, “trustworthy sources”, “convincing arguments”.

You even appear to have agreed that continually growing the population will one-day demand significant changes. You mention Pimentel, and while I know you disagree with the 2 billion figure, you do admit the need for a campaign whenever we do hit the final limits to growth. You are hung up on the semantics of the formula, even though you have basically admitted it is true.

I am not that worried how it is said, but I will fight vigorously to defend the truth it represents. We can abandon a dry (but true) formula easily for another image if you really wish. How hard is it to visualize sardines?

You seem to want to argue both that we cannot proceed with a campaign until we have a scientifically certain final figure, and yet want to argue about all the vagaries and options with that final figure. You cannot have it both ways. You’ve basically illustrated the truth of my formula for me! “How many people” depends on “how we want to live”. I don’t care how it is expressed, as long as you acknowledge that truth.

You hate the slogan “It is better to be safe than sorry” and yet want to cram as many people onto this planet as possible. Let’s clarify something… I wasn’t writing a campaign slogan, I was just rephrasing the “Precautionary Principle” in case you did not get that either. You apparently didn’t.

So tell me Pericles, as the hottest new copywriter for our population campaign, how would you market it? ;-)

We live in an entertainment-induced hypnosis. We need a strong advertising campaign to smash through this “consensus trance” that {{{everything is fine, consume like there is no tomorrow}}}. Because with peak oil imminent, if we continue on our current trajectory there may not be one!

Try Andrew McNamara, Labor MP.
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/people/andrew_mcnamara

Hi Colinsett. You are correct; voters don't have much choice. But, though you may disagree with my view, I don’t think it is based on "a wild and poorly tested assumption". Recognition of the multitude of statistically supported outcomes (inflation, unemployment, higher housing costs, lower quality of life, energy shortages, degraded environment, lower crop yields, loss of agricultural land, more pollution, ad nauseam) stemming from a too-rapid expansion of population numbers, is a fact. It has been around for many decades.

And though there has been countless fireside chats and political posturing to go along with scientific studies on population dynamics, politicians are reluctant to discuss the topic. The reason is simple: politicians are little more than a buffer between the public and the corporate world. They are corporate middlemen and the corporate and public worlds won’t tolerate a political will that might run interference in the marketplace and profits.

If political will had somehow managed to escape corporate and public censorship you would think it would be possible to point to a case where a reduction in the rate of population growth, as a response to political legislation and incentive, has actually worked. So far the evidence to support the notion of political will is lacking: and the null hypothesis is verified.

I would like to think Reverend Malthus was wrong when he claimed humanity is doomed to procreate itself into destitution, but in the last two centuries there’s been little change in human behaviour and thinking to alter his claim.

I am getting the strong impression that you are a politician, eclipse. You have a politician's ability to draw dubious conclusions from unrelated facts, and generally dissemble.

That isn't a compliment, by the way.

>>One minute my formula is “patently false”, and the next minute I am “quoting evidence”, “trustworthy sources”, “convincing arguments”.<<

Both are reasonable positions. The formula – or slogan – is patently false. I have laid out the proof, and you have cannot refute it.

That in no way contradicts my recognition of the evidence that you do present. To pretend otherwise is being wilfully obtuse. Which makes your admonition "Now, Pericles, you are not making sense" snide and patronizing.

Sophistry, eclipse, and deliberately mendacious sophistry at that.

Wait, there's more.

>>You hate the slogan “It is better to be safe than sorry” and yet want to cram as many people onto this planet as possible.<<

Where, pray did I say that I am pro-cramming? Polly-speak again, attributing a patently untenable position to another, then scoffing at it.

>>We need a strong advertising campaign to smash through this “consensus trance”<<

Only a politician would imagine for a moment that advertising is part of the solution. If advertising worked at the level that you need it to work, there would be no AIDS in Africa. But it doesn't, and there is.

Population control cannot be achieved through a warm and fuzzy education programme, conducted by a bunch of well-meaning tree-huggers.

You recall the damage the Club of Rome inflicted on the cause with “Limits to Growth”? They were so smugly certain that there models were right, that they allowed their opponents a massive advantage when they proved wrong.

One of the criticisms levelled at the time by Hermann Kahn, was that interfering with the growth process would disadvantage the poorest in society. This still applies today.

Intervention on the scale you advocate would be a highly political act, the most likely outcome of which would be another world conflict, this time between the haves and have-nots. Effective in population reduction, but messy.

Pericles

I am not saying that you are an idiot.

But if you cannot see that the world would in all probability be better off if its population had stabilised in the 1950s at 2.5 billion, then you are as thick as two planks and any further correspondence is not warranted.

Think about it. Global warming and peak oil might at least have been postponed for a few more decades. The huge juggernaut of resource depletion gulping up everything from fish stocks to forests and minerals might not be crashing ahead so fast, the mountains of rubbish, pollution and sewage would probably be smaller, the aquifers would probably not be being sucked up so quickly, nor the topsoil be being stripped off at such a rate, there would not be such galloping loss of biodiversity, the soil degradation and salinity would not be so serious and there would probably not be 25,000 people a day dying of starvation and 2 billion living in absolute poverty (not in a world of only 2.5 billion!), and there might have been some chance of sustainability, i.e. a global population living with modern technology and leaving some hope for future generations. AND there would not be all this mullarkey about water shortages and how we will have to drink our own piss so that more high rises can be built. The Club of Rome was essentially right even if not in some details and only people in total denial can maintain otherwise.

One thing is absolutely certain - Surfer's Paradise was a much better place in 1955, with a few fibro shacks, than it is today. Pericles it is clear that you, like the property developers who are running this country and most of the western world, want to see all the places which today consist of only a few fibro shacks turned into new Surfers Paradises ... to what purpose, may I inquire?