..and here's me, thinking, it will be "God's" punishemnt.... for all that sex (not babies) we were having! Now you tell me its OUR fault for having too many babies who grow up to be greedy.

For quite a few years now, I have had the opinion that the increasing level of population is the root cause of many of the emerging problems with our earth. It worried me somewhat when Costello urged us all to go forth and multiply.

It's not population, it's consumption. 1.4 billion Indians use 2.4 million barrels of oil a day - and so do 36 million Canadians. Around the world, 307kg of grain are produced for every man, woman and child. 184kg would satisfy all caloric and protein needs. In Australia, we consume 150kg of grain each annually, but we also consume 103kg of meat, which required the livestock to consume 286kg of grain, so we end up with 436kg of grain consumed, directly or indirectly. More than our fair share. That 129kg extra per Australian could feed 14.7 million other people a full 184kg ration.

The world is not under stress because of the high population countries like India or China, but because of (relatively) low population countries like Australia, the UK, France or the United States. Our impact on the Earth may be described as,

Impact = population x consumption (of non-renewable resources)

Population changes only slowly, consumption changes more quickly. We call it "economic growth". If the 1.4 billion Indians achieved Canada's lifestyle, instead of 2.4 million barrels of oil they'd need 1,400/36 x 2.4 = 93 million barrels of oil a day... the world produces 84 or so. But why shouldn't they want that? We have wasteful and greedy consumption, why shouldn't they? Because it might destroy the Earth? Funny how we didn't think of that earlier... when it was just us doing it.

Kyle Aaron,

With a lot of capita, it doesn't matter if per capita consumption is low. China has now passed the US as the world's greatest greenhouse gas emitter. This is not because the average Chinese is living high on the hog.

The Redefining Progress site has the environmental footprints of most countries as calculated in 2006. (Environmental footprint is a way of expressing total consumption in notional hectares of land.) The global average per capita footprint is about 22 hectares, already above the sustainable capacity per person, while the US footprint is 109. This leaves an average footprint of 18 hectares for the rest of the world. Now lets assume that all those 300 million high consuming Americans were raptured up into the sky, leaving their resources to be shared among the rest of the world. This would raise everyone else's footprint to 23 hectares. However, the global population is growing at 1.3%. Assuming no increase due to the bonanza, and ignoring further environmental deterioration, peak oil, the pumping dry of aquifers, etc., it would take 20 years of population growth at 1.3% to bring the average footprint back down to 18.

It is undeniably true that you could accommodate more people if they all lived like battery chickens. The problem is forcing them to accept this. I suggest that it would be a lot easier to persuade people to have fewer babies than to give up eating meat. I agree with you that reducing waste and wasteful consumption is a worthwhile goal, but it is wrong to see it as a panacea.

There's only ONE Earth.

Is any point for going around-let’s be sharp to IT.

A dominant vision of London-masters was manipulating of a world at a stock-exchange locally and by food supply Australia and Canada supposed to be the most substantial producers of.

Climate change corrects this predicament dramatically, and dependence on Muslim oil adds a pepper.

Moreover, a world outside of some European places supposes using more energy than originally calculated by Lawrence of Arabia’s chiefs.

Actually, introducing the nuke power in traditionally pastoral places and shifting to energy-exporting food-importing entities are next realistic steps by "first world" traditionalists.