Pericles 2

It is not at all lazy thinking to simplify this into “more people = bad”. In fact it is lazy thinking to just accept the status quo and give up and accept business as usual. Business as usual is what has got us into the environmental and social mess we are in now and is what will aggravate the problems into the future.

Stable population is an entirely new paradigm that will take a huge amount of careful adjustment to wean off current practices onto a more sustainable model. Lazy thinking is to keep going and leave the problems to future generations to work out. Sooner or later the population music has got to stop – it can’t keep growing forever. So when? Now, or just leave it till later? Put it in the too hard basket?

I would humbly urge you to think carefully about these issues – and also check your facts before saying the stable population argument is “out the window” because the facts actually don’t bear your argument out.

I have checked out Equatorial Guinea and you are right – I am not busting to go there. However I think that country is probably better off with 500,000 population than it would be with 5 million. Your point is essentially vexatious however as there are plenty of examples where runaway population growth is causing abject misery and environmental destruction at unprecedented levels. Please try to see the big picture. 25,000 people a day are dying of starvation. Clearly, world population growth has not led to any kind of improvement since the population was 2.5 billion in 1950 and it’s pretty safe to assume this trend will continue as it races towards 9 billion by 2050

It’s always amusing to read “discussion“ about climate change and population control in this forum. As a scientist who has spent his entire working life, figuring out how to feed more people for less input I am amazed at the ignorance of those that think continued population growth is OK?? A human can physically occupy about half a square meter standing. When you have filled the world with so many people that the last half a square meter has been taken were do you think you are going to put the next person?? It makes no logical sense to actively grow a population indefinitely. In fact that has never happened, there is always the inevitable population crash. Australia has a carrying capacity no matter what the argument is. There is only so much water, food, clothing and shelter that can be found or produced. Technology has been fixing our problems for some time….or have they? Go and spend some time on Google Earth and see the mind bending destruction of our human footprint! Technology has allowed us to buy time and our planet’s biosphere is paying for it. We should commit to being 2 billion people globally. We can achieve this if we start now and it can be done by simply educating people. This in the western societies has had the affect of lowing birth rates. Even the looniest of Jenny Goldie’s critics must have noticed the growing discomforts of commuter traffic, water restrictions, increasing food prices, increasing average temperatures, increasing intolerance and crime, loss of green space and air, water and ground pollutions?? Hello people the technology fixes can happen but what are you going to do for energy?

Thermoman, don't think for a moment that humility lets you off the hook.

However much you protest, "more people = bad" is lazy thinking in its purest form.

Let's put this statement under some pressure and see what happens.

At one end of the argument, (presumable “zero people = best”) there is no population, and therefore there is no economy. Increase that number by two, and you have a massive amount of resource shared by two people. Are they well off? Hardly. They are unlikely to have the means to exploit the tiniest fraction of their riches.

Increase by several orders of magnitude, and you start to see the emergence of an economy that can take advantage of the resources... and so on, until - when?

Start at the other end of the scale, and envisage an infinite number of people. You cannot divide anything by infinity, so once again you have a situation where there is no recognizable life as we know it, and no economy either. Back off a little, and we will eventually arrive at a point where the available resources are insufficient to be divisible into the population. This is clearly where “this number of people = bad”, but it is still not identifiable.

Simply comparing Australia's position relative to other developed economies over a short period of time doesn't prove anything either. To see the logic of this, look again at your argument:

>>our standard of living has actually declined compared with the rest of the world as our population has grown<<

Well riddle me this: has the population of the countries against which you make the comparison a) grown, b) declined or c) remained static?

If a), how does this affect your argument?

If the population of the comparable countries has risen over the same period, once again your argument crumbles into dust. Population simply isn't the only determining factor.

As I said. Lazy thinking.

One more point. What evidence have you that the world was “better off” when its population was only 2.5 billion?

Pericles,
I asked for some calm and Thermoman complied.
You have not answered Thermoman's arguments, and instead throw dust into the air discussing populations of zero or infinity.

In case you hadn't noticed, we already have a functioning first world economy here in Australia. What do you think we would achieve better with more people? Do you acknowledge any of the posts above? A scientist just responded to your arguments.
I've quoted forums of 600 scientists (the Union of Concerned Scientists) and 1200 scientists (the UN sponsored MA report) and you insist on raving about 2 people not forming an economy!

Thermoman, you may again take of the gloves.
The previous post really seems like so much noise with so little engaging of the facts or content of arguments.

In other words, it's trolling.
Pericles, look out, you're creating a new name for yourself.

Where do we put them? asks woodyblues. We find a big saltpan out Cunnamulla way and dig down to make a nice big salt water lake. We stock it it full of fish, and add canals and jetty's for a waterfront housing estate where the sun shines almost every day. You see, you don't need to water a back yard if it is already full of water. And we could borrow some of Cubby Station's water for drinking and washing and then send it back to them with nutrients added.

And when that one is complete we'll find another salt pan. It should keep us busy for a couple of centuries at least. For some people life is a problem while for others, life is an opprtunity.

eclipse, I responded to Thermoman's rudeness, but as it was your trite and meaning-free statement "Resources / population = lifestyle!" that started this particular exchange, it is only fair that I ask you - again - to justify it. So instead of lecturing me about "not answer[ing] Thermoman's arguments", how about you do me the courtesy of a response?

"Resources / population = lifestyle!" is merely a slogan, and provides absolutely no insight into the problem, or any solution. I pointed this out by taking the population variable in your equation, and observing that it cannot possibly be true for all values of population, therefore as a contribution to the debate it is meaningless.

As a slogan too, it can be challenged. Whatever Thermoman says, Australia's standard of living, however you choose to measure it, has improved steadily over the past fifty years, along with the growth in population. For this timeframe, the facts directly contradict the statement.

The observation that we have done less well than other countries over that period – whose population has also increased steadily – adds another dimension to the argument. It is even possible to argue that our performance might have been impacted by too slow a growth in our numbers.

But the bottom line is that at some point, there will occur a marginal decrease in prosperity with each additional head. Neither you nor I can determine, from any genuine statistics, whether this point has been reached. Pretending it has, and painting doomsday scenarios from it, does the cause a disservice, and drains credibility.

What the discussion does not need is high-school sloganism and spurious logic.