I Thank Perseus. Had to wring it out of him though. Why on earth didn’t he quote this first up, or upon the first request?

Now it is patently obvious to all readers that this quote is not within a million miles of his assertion that “Ludwig is on record of discouraging innovation for the express purpose of bringing the population "day of reckoning" closer.”

Obviously what he has quoted indicates that I think it is pointless to continue pandering to ever-increasing populations without putting a good deal of effort into stabilising populations. This is a perfectly logical, fair and reasonable position, and does not in any way indicate a discouragement of innovation….does it Persy.

Nothing I have ever written indicates a discouragement of innovation. I am on about achieving sustainability so that we don’t have to face a ‘day of reckoning’.

Can’t Perseus see that this sort of thing amounts to direct defamation? Asserting that people hold views that they patently do not is defamation. He does this with almost pathological regularity. Asserting that someone is on the record as expressing views that they patently do not hold, is completely overstepping the line. This is evidently all too easy for some, while hiding behind a pseudonym.

It is time for Perseus to admit that his quotes of mine do not in any way indicate a discouragement of innovation and that he has lied to the forum in saying that they do. An apology please. If not, I think it is time he was booted off this forum.

I think the moderators should be willing to enter lines of discussion for the express purpose of requesting justification of statements from posters. There has got to be accountability here. We cannot have this sort of completely spurious stuff on this high-quality forum.

Yawn, Ludwig, Yawn. Well said Pericles.

Perhaps we could all get back to a bit of science. As Divergence said, the average ecological footprint is almost 2.2 hectares per person (hpp) but the world can only sustain 1.8 hpp if the population is (from memory) 6.2 billion. We're up to 6.5 billion so that 1.8 figure drops as population rises. Australia's ecological footprint is 7.7 hpp, in other words, four times what it should be on a per capita basis. So let's say we each cut our footprint down to 1.8 h but the population (national and global) keeps rising by another 50%. It means our individual footprints will have to be cut by a further third, to 1.2 h. Now that's pretty borderline in terms of delivering needs - 1.8h was bad enough.

The basic lesson is: if the pie is the same size (though it's probably lessening as climate change and rising oil prices are starting to bite)then there's less per capita if populations grow. The world is not a magic pudding - natural systems are only so big and can only supply so much. Wackernagel and his team back in 2002 determined that we passed global biocapacity back in 1979 and we are exceeding it by one percent more every year. That is, we are now 26% over the carrying capacity of the Earth. Expressing it in another way, the 2.2 hpp ecological footprint is approximately 26% over the 1.8 hpp biocapacity figure mentioned above. (I say approximately - haven't got the figures to two decimal places in my head).

You can extrapolate back to Australia - this big but fragile place. Remember we won't be feeding or clothing nearly as many as oil prices and temperatures rise. Dr Mary E White, author and paleoenvironmentalist, says we won't be feeding even our domestic population within a generation.

"It is utterly pointless to moan and bitch that "someone should really, really do something" if you don't have a plan. That simply puts you in the category of background noise."

Every bankrobber, rapist, and criminal you can mention has said that very same thing to themselves before committing heinous crimes.

To now this attitude in Politicians, CEOs and puny capitalist aspirants has been a necessary, venal crime in order to stimulate global progress.

Now on a planet of 6.5 billion people with climate change, environmental catastrophe, peak oil and terrorism all escalating and mankind in the throes of internecine conflicts across all social spectra from tweens to baby boomers, such million dollar a day CEO criminality is attracting an accountability that is going to shock the very core of the global economy.

The background noise mentioned is the democratic majority voice and politicians, CEOs and aspirant flunkies had better learn to respect it lest they too fall foul of its wrath as demonstrated in NSW recently.

O dear, Pretentious needs a good lie down.

He must have exhausted himself trying to think of a better response than “Yawn, Ludwig, Yawn”.

.
Jenny

Australia provides at least one major resource to a couple of hundred million people overseas, which is the equivalent of providing a complete livelihood for perhaps double our own population. Allowing for some decline in soil fertility, increase in salinity, etc, etc, as well as continued improvements in yields and general efficiency, we should be able to sustain this sort of output, should we not?

Couldn’t Australia then support 40 or 50 million people on this continent… sustainably?

KAEP, this is a bit of a stretch, even for you:

>>Every bankrobber, rapist, and criminal you can mention has said that very same thing to themselves before committing heinous crimes<<

You might need to explain a little bit more clearly what that has to do with my observation "It is utterly pointless to moan and bitch that 'someone should really, really do something' if you don't have a plan. That simply puts you in the category of background noise."

Simply muttering threats under your breath doesn't help either

>>politicians, CEOs and aspirant flunkies had better learn to respect it lest they too fall foul of its wrath<<

(I particularly enjoyed the "lest", for some reason.)

Let's do a quick recap. Blind Freddie can see that at some point consumption will exceed production. That is a mathematical certainty. There is also evidence that the "Y" chromosome is in a process of decay from generation to generation, and will cease to exist in a few million years. We also have the inevitability of the death of the universe as we know it in ten to twenty billion years time.

The point is not to spend time bickering about the obvious, but to come up with coherent and workable plans to combat it. This has been the history of useful human endeavour - doing, not talking.

What to do about the death of the universe? Not a lot, there's a kind of inevitability about it that prevents meaningful activity.

What to do about the degeneration of the Y chromosome? There's a bunch of scientists working on it right now. But that's pretty easy, because there are already laboratories, scientists and governments to fund them.

What to do about population growth? Not so easy. We are dealing with human beings and the societies they live in, not thermodynamics or genetic engineering.

Surprisingly, there is a difference.

And the problem will not be easier to solve if we all march around carrying stupid, meaningless and ultimately inaccurate slogans. It will become more difficult.