Merco,

Eric's article was groundbreaking and if you know how to read you will have noticed a slew of articles in Australian newspapers that have arisen directly from discussions here.
Unless you and other private enterprise units want to go belly up, I suggest you pay more attention.

As for: "As a caricature of a foaming-mouthed fortress-Australia moat-builder"? Congrats Merc, you just pissed-off Half of Australia
THAT's the REAL punchline!

Bloody foreigners ARE causing all the problems. Look at the branch stacking, immigrational gerrymandering NSW Itlalian state Government. It a 'mene mene tekel'. The writing's on the wall and Australians do know how to read.

The rest of the world will do what it wants without any assistance from you Merco and the Australian public will rightfully choose a life of quiet enjoyment free from unsustainable population farming and shoehorn Westfield immigration strategies. Its your laying of cheap-shot guilt trips on a very savvy Australian public that will go to hell in a handbasket. We aren't cattle and you make a pathetic cattle dog. You sir Should have been drowned at birth!

We can even have a comedy routine doing the RSL clubs - "The cattle dog that couldn't get it up" or maybe the "The Crossed up Sydney funnel tunnel that couldn't get it on".

KAEP, I think you might have inadvertently posted your application to join the Liberal Party to the wrong address.

I'm sure the Libs will be delighted to learn that the NSW government consists of foreigners, since that would automatically disqualify them from serving in government. In fact, while we're at it, let's de-register the ALP just to ensure that this country finally gets the government it deserves.

Could you kindly re-send your correspondence to: foreignersout@liberal.org.au

Please also CC:Alexander Downer and he will be only too happy to assist you with what will undoubtedly become the fifth failed preselection bid against Petro in Kooyong.

PS - My parents tried to drown me at birth, but since I can talk under wet cement, it was sadly to no avail.

Alright Mercurius, you have put up two mercurial posts that have attempted to knock the stuffing out of poor old Eric and KAEP everyone who agrees with them on this thread, which is the vast majority of respondents. But there is not an iota of substance, just empty sarcasm.

Can you address the issues that you apparently so vehemently disagree with (or appear to disagree with for the sake of a stir) with some logical argument?

Come-on, let’s see the depth of your understanding of this huge issue.

When rail bureaucrats in Sydney declare “if we had fewer customers, there’d be fewer problems with the rail system”, everybody rightly recognises it for a cop-out. But when Eric C gets up and says, in effect, “if we have fewer people who used less stuff, the environment would be better off,” his cheer squad hail it as an insight of staggering genius, instead of the trivial truism that it is. Here’s another idea with the same inherent logic: if we removed children from their parents at birth, we’d prevent parents abusing their children. Now, where’s my round of applause?

A trained monkey could improve the environment by capping the population and forcing people to use less. But a humane solution is one that aims to do less environmental harm, even with more people.

At least Eric has the intellectual honesty to admit that his piece was “just for fun” and a “dream”, but his supporters seem to mistake it for a serious policy option. Which is why their “dream” remains condemned to irrelevance amongst public policy in Australia.

A government and a society worthy of the name will find policies and solutions that lead to better environmental outcomes even with lots more people living even more prosperous lives. If everybody today heated their homes with wood or coal fires like we did a century ago, Sydney would be uninhabitable even with one-quarter of the population. Guess what? We found a better way. And we’ll do it again, if we first stop blaming Australia’s entrenched problems on people who got off the boat five minutes ago.

Eric, and (most of) his supporters are smart people, they certainly know more about the science of these matters than I do, and I’ve no doubt they could come up with some workable solutions if they really wanted to. But since what they actually want is simply get rid of the bloody foreigners, this is merely the most convenient platform to call for it.

I’d have more respect for their views if they were honest about their xenophobia and stopped dressing up in green camouflage.

Mercurious, your analogy is misleading since immigration is a highly debatable issue, with strong opposition that is swept under the carpet by our leaders. For a business, having customers is not debatable. For a mother, being pregnant is not debatable. The fact that Australia is the driest continent in the world is not debatable.

Are you Mercurious Goldstein? I suspect I know why you are pro immigration. Revenge for the holocaust? This is not Germany mate.

I might add, how come any discussion of immigration ends up a sledging match of xenophobia and racism, white Australia blah blah blah. This alone suggests we are a very fragile multicultural society, if it can't be debated openly.

As mentioned before the holocaust is always used as a benchmark for the evils of racism by people like Mercie. Fortress Israel mate.Racism is bad, mass immigration counters racism so the logic goes. Perhaps this debate is about what kind of society we want, not the environment. But with obvious water shortages, droughts here there and everywhere, rising salinity combined with our country having the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the developed world we should live more sustainably rather talk about it. Your right Eric, as if.