Ahhh haaa hahahaha. Well I’m so pleased that you have convinced yourself that you know what you meant Junksy. But from my viewpoint you’ve presented a perfect contradiction!

.
Banjo

“The integration prospects of both immigrants and refugees has to be considered, along with health checks, when selections are made. It would be quite wrong for us to bring a whole heap of people here, from anywhere, knowing there is little chance of them integrating into our society and they will be very unhappy.”

But given that the refugees that we accept should only be the most needy, who are in grave need of evacuation from their homeland for fear of their lives, and given that the total numbers that we accept must always be very moderate, I think that we can basically relegate your concerns to the level of very minor considerations.

Bronwyn,

Did you read the link I provided? Completely eliminating US consumption altogether, not just reducing it to, say, the European level, and making all the US resources available to be shared by the rest of the world would increase the average footprint (i.e. consumption) of the rest of the world from 18 hectares to 23. Most of this increase would be due to the reduction of overconsumption, but part would be due to there simply being fewer people. However, global population growth at the current rate would completely eliminate the bonanza and bring everyone back down to 18 hectares in 20 years. After that they would get even poorer.

Obviously "consumption" is at the root of our problems, but the fish don't care whether they are being eaten by rich Westerners or poor Asians. The only way to completely eliminate consumption is to be dead. You could pull all of the developed world back to consumption at the global average and any improvement would be completely wiped by population growth in very short order. It there are sufficient capita, it doesn't matter if per capita consumption is low.

Divergence

It might further your insight if you understand the difference between a selfish pig and a selfless person. A selfish pig is a welfare dependent person who discovers that several hundred refugees are being brought into the area, and is angry that no provision has been made to increase services to meet the extra demand. A selfless person is a politician who promotes the 300kpa+ immigration program so his mates can make a few bucks. So selfless is this fellow that he is willing to put cities at risk of running out of water for the sake of this act of kindness.

It is sad to see the developing world suffer from the consequences of corrupt agricultural markets and a lack of skills. It is sadder to see people arguing that poaching the few remaining skilled people is good for these countries. But saddest of all is to see people not comparing the efficiency of bringing a minuscule fraction of the world's destitute within our boarders with other forms of aid. I would rather see the money spent on research into biofuels and solar thermal power. These at leaast may offer us all a future.

"Ahhh haaa hahahaha. Well I’m so pleased that you have convinced yourself that you know what you meant Junksy. But from my viewpoint you’ve presented a perfect contradiction!" (Quote: Earwig!!)

And THAT is from an expert!

Ahhh haaa hahahaha.............,sheesh.

And that is your fifth post on this thread Ginxy that is not in any way related to the topic of the thread!! Tch tch tch. Naughty naughty.

.
Bronwyn, I think there is a simple misunderstanding between you and Divergence.

You are thinking of overconsumption as per-capita consumption multiplied by the number of ‘per-capitas’. In this sense, it certainly is the greatest problem, of which population size is a huge component.

But Divergence is talking about per-capita overconsumption.

You are both right, given your interpretations of this term.

Ludwig

I'm sure you're right. I don't think I have any real argument with Divergence; we seem to share a lot of common ground.

The comment I honed in on was "..overconsumption is a relatively unimportant contributor to global problems.." To me that is plain wrong and I don't think it really matters whether you're talking about per capita consumption or per capita overconsumption. I've looked at the link given to the other thread but I still can't see how anyone can argue that overconsumption doesn't count.

To me, it's the overconsumption of the West (both per capita and overall), and the way we're exploiting the world's resources to feed it, which has both directly and indirectly created the majority of the world's refugees.