Thought I'd better get back into the debate that I started...

Xist claimed that there is little political will to enforce smaller family sizes because those with large families will suffer. You certainly don't want a child to suffer because he/she has been born into a large family, but there should be plenty of incentives around (carrots rather than sticks) for people not to have those large families in the first place eg. in Vietnam, you can't get a government job if you have more than two children.

Tubley suggests we can have more people if we go vegetarian, or at least cut down on meat. This is partly true though it has to be kept in mind that a lot of animals in Australia are grass and not grain fed and a lot of that rangeland is not suitable for cropping. And it may be that in the future a lot of cropland may have to produce crops for ethanol, not food, as the world runs steadily out of conventional oil. We'll then be grateful for the lamb or kangaroo that graze on steep hillsides.

Herman Kahn apparently claimed the poor would be hurt most if we interfere in the growth process. The opposite is true if it means population growth. And population growth is not necessary for economic growth, if that's what you want. Most of the countries ahead of us on the wealth table (GDP per capita) are small nations with stable populations - the exceptions being the US and Canada.

And Jared Diamond has been discredited? By whom? Michael Duffy? Don't make me laugh. One should be judged by one's peers and Duffy is no peer of Diamond. Diamond's only shortcoming as far as I'm concerned is that he seemed to backtrack on ABC radio recently on his statements on Australia. And that he barely touched on Peak Oil in Collapse. But surely this guy is one of the great minds of the age - a true polymath who has expertise across a whole range of disciplines

So Jared Diamond got all his facts right and Michael Duffy isn't a peer of Diamond's? Something Michael would be very pleased and reassured to hear. Jennifer Marohasy has had a detailed look at Diamonds fantasy world, outlined at;
www.jennifermarohasy.com/articles41.html

Or does your pathological pessimism rule out any chance of you retaining any of this material?

Whatever the merits of his views on Australia, it should be remembered that Jared Diamond is not an archaeologist. When he wrote about Easter Island, the Greenland Vikings, etc. he was merely reporting on the work of others, which appeared in the scientific literature long before he wrote 'Collapse'. Does Perseus think that all the archaeologists Diamond refers to who spent big chunks of their lives studying these places are uniformly fools and liars? Where is his evidence that collapses never occur?

Perseus

You may or may not be right about Diamond's section on Australia containing some howlers, I haven't read it. Morhasy's piece was certainly not a "detailed look" as you described it, more of a quick hit and giggle - but I should know by now that what you call a "detailed look" probably involves about 3 nanoseconds of attention from your attention-deficient brain. If Diamond did say our agriculture is poor he is wrong - anyone who is even vaguely informed knows that Australia produces more than enough food for 60 million people, albeit while leaning pretty heavily on the environment - that is not the point. The point is that globablly 2 billion people are living in a state of chronic malnourishment and you don't give a fig. This has happened while population has undergone a huge growth, from 2.5 billion to 6.3 billion in just half a century. ALL countries must stabilise their populations, EVERYWHERE on the planet, if we are ever going to seriously tackle the problem of 25,000 people a day starving to death. You seem to imagine that everyone in the world lives in a state of material ease like yourself and there is therefore nothing to worry about. This brings me to the stupid point you made about us being "opposed to life" - it's actually exactly the opposite and brain-dead clowns like you who have a death wish by wanting to see the numbers multiply to bust

AND FURTHERMORE

I ALWAYS mistrust people who accuse me of NEVER doing anything - you reckon we NEVER take into account technology well you are dead wrong ... technology is going to be vital to get us out of the mess we are in (I call 2 billion people living on less than $2 a day a mess.

But as a previous poster has put it, simply but well, if technology can reduce the environmental impact of all our activities by 33 per cent (which is a big ask, but maybe it can) and our population goes from 6-9 billion, we are in the same place we were before.

Perseus you had nothing to say about Club of Rome, I presume because it showed up just how wrong you were. We NEVER hear an acknolwedgement from you when you have been proved wrong, becuase you are pathalogically incapable of reasoned thought. Please start taking your medication again.

Although my views on the topic of population dynamics are heavily slanted towards the pessimistic I keep hoping I’ll come across the occasional “Ah ha” insight, the light bulb will flicker and some of my pessimism will “see the light”.

The questions: What to do about ever-expanding human populations? or Is human population growth self limiing; and at what cost? are extremely interesting because they draw together the entire spectrum of human constructs: politics, economics, religion, sociology, etc, etc. I have enjoyed and benefited from the varied and opposing views expressed on this list, and others.

Unfortunately, like most of the ‘on-line’ discussions I’ve followed, there always seems to be a tendency to degenerate into using ad hominem attacks as a method of highlighting propositions: it is an extremely discouraging and unnecessary argumentative technique. I suppose it merely points out that the hurdles, to be overcome when delving into questions that are minefields of confusing value judgments and emotion, are complex structures, and sadly, it reinforces pessimism.