What a breathtaking bit of ignorance KAEP. Australia already provides the food for 80 million people, the clothing for over 300 million and the electricity for more than a billion people so your estimated population limit of 23 million is looking like roadkill.

Our biggest problem is that only 20 million of all the people we support actually pay GST and other taxes. So we are unable to pass the costs of environmental management and sustainable agriculture on to the people who's needs created those costs.

And your theories on New Zealand being able to carrying 60 million are probably correct but you forget that Victoria is only a bit smaller than NZ. New Zealand also has a desert in the middle of the north Island and snow covered mountains over much of the South Island. So how come Victoria couldn't support 40 million but NZ can support 60 million. Please explain.

By world standards, our population is overly concentrated (85%)in our state capitals and this is producing needless congestion problems. The cost of creating new state capitals is only a fraction of the congestion costs of continued growth in the existing capitals.

Optimum population obviously depends on technology and culture, as well as on how rich and forgiving the environment is. It may not be possible to specify it in advance, but there is clearly a tipping point between Pericles' little band of pioneers who are too few to make effective use of the resources they have and a Malthusian hellhole where every additional person makes life that much worse for everyone else. If a country really is underpopulated then it should be possible to show that additional people are making life better for the average existing resident. (I don't dispute that some people at the top are getting very rich out of land speculation.)

On the world scale, the world average environmental footprint (a rough measure of consumption) is 2.13 hectares according to the Redefining Progress Calculator, and the sustainable capacity per person is 1.89. Once you get much below the European average of 4.5 then human well-being starts to suffer. Just compare the footprints with ranks on the UN Human Development Index.

The draft Productivity Commission report on immigration shows no significant per capita economic benefit from mass migration, even if you don't consider extra pressure on the environment, more crowding, and other non-economic negatives. This is in line with 'The New Americans', the 1997 report of the US National Academy of Sciences. (See refs. to this and other reports at www.cis.org). For US men under 35 the median wage is 19% less than in 1970 in real terms, and the minimum wage is worth less than in 1960.

Pers,

Over beers with the boss when I was transferring to the UK to work, I asked if it really rained every day in England. He promptly replied, "Nothing could be further from the truth, we have 3 or 4 sunny days every year". UK has plenty of water and plenty of heat, courtesy of the US originated Gulf Stream. It is currently around 65 million people and when I drove around the country all you ever saw off the motorways were farms and desolate hillsides. Everyone is crammed into big cities, but they do have water to spare.

NZ does not have a desert. Shame on you! The Nth Island has a central geothermal zone, with lakes and lots of fresh water. The snow cover in the Sth is Water when it melts in the summer months and that translates into more PEOPLE. The heat source is principally geothermal but NZ does have ocean current warming systems like Britain as well.

Victoria like the rest of East Australia is experiencing DROUGHT. Get the message: Water equals population. Drought equals deserted.

Australia has abundant heat from internal deserts but not sufficient water for more than 23 million. How do I know this? Because Morris Dilemma has told me so from his actions in Sydney. And how does he know? Because the market in and the electors of Sydney have bloody told him so in no uncertain terms. All other capitals are converging to the same overcrowded positiion and so are all small country towns, so there is nowhere to make your magical new big cities. To build them you would have to buy water and you can't buy the water if it isn't there to buy. You can't use desal as we don't have enough power stations NOW, can't build any more due to Kyoto and can't use nuclear because Australia's population isn't and NEVER will be enough to justify one single plant at current plant 'cradle to grave' costings.

Well blow my mind…..Perseus has actually used the S word…. “sustainable”!! I never thought I’d see the day.

“So we are unable to pass the costs of environmental management and sustainable agriculture on to the people who's needs created those costs.”

He acknowledges that there are costs of environmental damage. Yahoo!

But he considers sustainable agriculture to be a cost compared to …business-as-usual unsustainable agriculture. He still has a log way to go to get his head around this sustainability business, apparently.

Of course we aren’t able to pass the costs on. We are fully in charge of these resources, not those to whom we sell them. Gee whiz, what a revelation!

Overseas markets have not created the cost of environmental management in Australia. Those costs have been created entirely by us, through mismanagement and over-pandering to the profit motive generated by huge overseas markets.

We have pandered to these markets entirely for our own gain. The fact that we provide food, clothing, minerals and power for millions overseas is incidental, from the point of view of the Australian government, farmers, graziers, miners and the vast majority of citizens.

The combined ecological footprint in Australia is based on 20.5 million, not on 80 million or whatever the number is when considering all those that Australia provides stuff for around the world.

Thus, if we continue to increase our population, we will continue to increase the footprint or suffer a continuous decline in standard of living or most probably both, which will continue to exacerbate the already highly obvious decline in the health of our overall resource base.

For as long as we have rapid pop growth, technological advances will always be chasing the tail of ever-bigger domestic demand for product and export income and an ever-worsening supply capability.

The last thing to do under such circumstances is to continue with rapid population increase, especially when the rate of increase can easily be greatly reduced.

Creating new cities or “state capitals” or ‘boosting’ regional towns in order to relieve congestion is just dumb for as long as rapid pop growth continues.

Ludwig has inadvertently highlighted the fundamental flaw in the so-called 'ecological footprint' theory. He, and many others simply cannot get their heads around the fact that the people who live in other countries, but import our products to do so, are actually importing part of their ecological footprint from us as well.

It is an inescapable fact that this country supports 80 million people and to divide the total ecological footprint of the country by 20.5 million and allocate that area to each Australian is a gross distortion. And it is most unfair to then blame Australians for having too big a footprint.

So when two people arrive from overseas they not only bring home the two footprints that we have exported in the past, they also bring an average of one new job with them as well. They will need a house but they usually move into someone elses house while the past owner has traded up to a new house. And that new house, if it has a decent water tank, will supply all the water that is needed by the people who live in it. It is all going down the storm drain at present anyway.

I thank Perseus for taking me up on a reasonable point of debate.

The issue of ecological footprints can be seen in two ways. Firstly, as I elucidated in my last post, it can in Australia be seen as the footprint of 20.5 million people, given the fact that all of our resource exploitation has been undertaken for the benefit of the domestic population.

It can also be seen as the impact of many millions more, who have benefited from our exports. Which is correct? Both are, depending on definitions.

The fact remains; as far as Australians are concerned, our impact on our environment and resource base is that of 20.5 million people, and the extra 60 or whatever million overseas is incidental. We are in charge of our resource base, so we are make up the numbers that count.

As our population increases, so does the ecological footprint, for as long as we continue to operate in the same manner. And technological innovations, improvements in efficiency, etc, just don’t cut it for as long as we have this absurdly rapid population growth. This is what really counts.