If Perseus thinks that someone as progressive in his thinking as Tim Flannery has “spent his entire life looking backwards”, then prey tell whom does he think is forward-looking?

It seems that he just wants to completely block out the looming crises and continue in just the same manner that led us to the brink of such crises as peak oil, climate change, water stress, pandemic, terrorism and massive civil strife, chronic environmental and resource-base damage, etc.

Jenny Goldie has been lobbying on population issues for many years. She ought to be heartily commended. My 18 years is nothing compared to her effort. It has been a long hard road, but those who are devoted keep at it.

I find that ordinary people can nearly always appreciate the absurdity of continued high population growth, not least rural people who don’t experience crowding or population pressures directly. It is interesting that these are the people to whom Perseus most strongly associates himself. Governments, state or federal, lib or lab, continue to be chronically out of touch with this predominating mindset.

But it is just a matter of time before commonsense prevails and those in favour of endless human expansion, or populations 50 or 100% larger than they are now, fall by the wayside and get recognised for what they are – either ecologically clueless or self-centred and greedy, or both. It was an amazing thing to discover so many like-minded people on OLO.

Perseus says “33% improvement will support another 10 million people without a single extra dam”. Yes….and it is not that far beyond possibility to actually improve water-use efficiency by 33%. But the thing is, we will have gained precisely nothing by the time we add 10 million people, which is in a pretty short timeframe at current growth rates.

So what is he really saying? That he wants us all to be much more frugal so that we can squeeze in another 10 million? Sounds like it. And then of course growth will continue just the same if he has his way.

Continued

We also would have to be 33% more efficient with every other single resource in order to just remain at the same state that we are now, a state in which we are clearly consuming a lot of resources unsustainably.

“Limiting population will never buy us time because it also closes off options that rely on scale.”

You can’t look at economies of scale without considering diseconomies of scale. Many things will worsen as they exert more demand pressure on resources. Diseconomies of scale associated with continued population growth are now much more significant than scale advantages. We broke even somewhere back in the early seventies or very probably a lot earlier, given the very long delayed-action factors associated with much of the damage that we have inflicted.

“And new technology constantly lifts the population thresholds”

Again, he considers this in isolation from the other side of the coin; our constantly worsening resource base. In all probability new technologies are battling to keep pace with the ever-declining aspects of population pressure and thus are not lifting population thresholds at all. Besides, shouldn’t new technologies be geared towards improving quality of life rather than facilitating ever-more people?

It is a pleasure to uphold some sensible debate with Perseus. I sincerely hope he sees fits to respond to all or most of the points that I have raised here, and not pick out one or two in isolation and not level any personal slander.

Please.

Hi Xist,
I’m encouraged that you and many others here seem aware of the many converging crisis about to impact on our way of life. As to our ability to limit population growth, surely one day the crisis will become so apparent that the many scientists raising the alarm now will finally be recognized? Surely there is some hope that we will be able to provide some kind of economic incentive to have smaller families, or even legislate a response?

To the others here that are in denial — we are rapidly approaching the limits to growth of this finite planet, if we have not overshot them already (by using our fossil fuel inheritance as an artificial “growth medium”). Just like bacteria breeding in a Petri dish, we have increased our population according to the laws of arithmetic progression.

For example, if it takes 24 hours of bacteria doubling every hour, when is the bottle half full? At 11pm! Nothing significant seems to happen until 10pm when the dish is suddenly a quarter full. Then it doubles again, and by 11pm it is half full. At 12 midnight the dish is full, the growth medium is overloaded and consumed, and dieoff occurs. (See www.dieoff.com.)

We are not bacteria. We are sentient beings with the capacity to understand our environments and respond accordingly. However it does appear that we are ignoring the ecologists we placed in charge to watch this trend. They are telling us that it is 11.59 pm. 11pm may have been back in 1957 when our population was about 3 billion. If we had put the breaks on then, we may have had the resources to maintain industrial civilization with a decent lifestyle. After all, it’s a simple equation. (Continued....)

Resources / population = lifestyle!

I was quite alarmed to see posts here arguing that if we use efficiencies to thwart Liebig’s law on one issue, then we could increase our population by 10 million without considering the other limiting factors! Liebig’s Law maintains that of the many critical resources that support life, it is the lowest that sets the population. EG: It does not matter how much food you have if water is limited.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebig%27s_Law

Some here seem to want to bloat our populations and test Liebig’s Law on every front simultaneously. They throw out the common sense “Precautionary Principle”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

They argue that we will achieve more with greater economies of scale!? Huh? Did they not read the UN sponsored “Millennium Assemnet report” written by some 1200 expert scientists? In summary, it says…

“A landmark study released today reveals that approximately 60 percent of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth – such as fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water regulation, and the regulation of regional climate, natural hazards and pests – are being degraded or used unsustainably. Scientists warn that the harmful consequences of this degradation could grow significantly worse in the next 50 years”
http://www.maweb.org/en/Article.aspx?id=58

What is it Perseus wants to achieve in such a hurry? We are destroying the planet just fine with our current populations, thank you very much!

Resources / population = lifestyle! Go figure.

Perseus wrote: "What we actually need is a system of guest worker visas so we can import a portion of cheap labour to maintain jobs in threatened industries. So instead of watching a whole factory with 200 local jobs get shipped overseas, why not bring in 50 lower cost temporaries so at least 150 of the local jobs remain viable?"

The reason factories get shipped overseas is that the saving in labour costs outweighs the expense of moving the business. By that logic, you arrive at: Why not bring in 200 'lower-cost-temporaries' and save the expense of moving the factory overseas?

Homo-Sapiens is the only species that can change it's behaviour proactively. Infinite growth in a finite environment is impossible. Either we (as a species) take the steps necessary to keep our population at a level where it has a sustainable ecological footprint, or nature will do it for us.

Why not bring in 50 lower cost temporaries so at least 150 of the local jobs remain viable?

Because its the thin end of the wedge to lowering Australian living and working standards to Asian norms. It is not a bootstrap to economic preeminence. Economic preeminence comes as it always has through history, to nations that invest in education and technology. Nations in contemporary terms such as Sth Korea.

The moral of the history lesson here is that Howard must be forced to retract all HECS fees on higher education that leads to upgrading skills in a very competetive and fast changing jobs market. He must also be pushed into a massive redirection of funds away from useless surpluses and tax cut, carrot and stick bribes to a massive investment in R&D centered around a CSIRO based on Sth Korean excellence and a strong and rewarded public involvement and imagining in all the sciences. It does little good to bring migrants with skills to our shores to find that in 5 years they end up on the dole because they, like the rest of us can't afford educational upgrades.

It may be Howard's way to lower our standards to increase his chances. But it is history's way that this leads to decline and bitterness and the absorbtion of Australia into Asia on THEIR terms and NOT OURS.