I do hope she is taking her own advice and eschewing procreation.
Perseus,
maybe Sheila could move in with Bob Brown ? well, it would be a start wouldn't it ? And Ludwig, yes the very people who rave on about saving the planet are the ones who don't subscribe to poulation control. Yes, let's build more rehabilitation clinics etc. so we can keep more & more of the useless alive & crowd the planet. I went out of Cairns to the reef the other day & observed Mr & Mrs Average Tourist. On average each tourist slapped on a 100 ml of sunscreen before jumping into the water. Now, out of North Qld you get an average of 6000 people a day out on the reef. 100ml sunscreen X 6000.. know what I mean ? three 44 gallon drums of sunscreen everyday over the Jewel of Oz, the Great Barrier Reef. I bet 90 % of those tourists get all uptight because Howard's not ratifying the Kyoto protocol.

The human race has now become a rediclus mass! The world does not have the space for all these people. We are the contradiction to life its self. Look people! I don't know if I have the fortitude to keep telling you where we are going wrong, but this world has been in balance for 4.6 billion years. Try and learn it! Yes! its has had its ups and downs, and if you know this, you can understand that this planet will kill! Its call extinction. We are, and have become ignorant to the fact. Think about this! With only one hundred million people, this is the most you can have. But on the other hand, if you want to screw up this planet, Grow a brain and find another place were we can put all the normal people on it! Like ME!LOL. Look! All jokies aside! The stupid will destroy us. And thats a fact!

Perseus,

You have had some sensible things to say on the nuclear thread, but with your Yellow Peril argument, you have come up with a real "scarenario" here.

Having a dense population is no guarantee against invasion. Before and during WWII, Japan invaded Korea, China, Indonesia, and a number of other densely populated Asian countries. Germany invaded Belgium and the Netherlands, which were both densely populated and ethnically similar to the invaders. If what mattered in modern conflicts was having a great mass of cannon fodder, then Israel would not have lasted one year, let alone sixty, since the Israeli's enemies collectively outnumber them many times over. Modern states are defended by technology, not numbers. A small, rich population with the best military technology money can buy is in a good position to defend itself. No country with nuclear weapons has ever been invaded.

China and India have been importing vast amounts of minerals and agricultural products from Australia in exchange for a consumer trinkets for a relatively small population. Why would they want us to consume everything ourselves? If one regional power looked like it was going to invade and grab Australia's resources for itself, what would the other(s) be likely to do?

The problem with cheap labour is that it introduces huge class and ethnic divisions. The agricultural workers (and certainly their children) would soon get tired of toiling in the hot sun for a pittance while others enjoy huge wealth. Many of them would be co-ethnics or co-religionists of potential enemies. The import of a lot of cheap labour has not done much for the harmony of Fiji or Sri Lanka.

Dozer,

You are correct when you say that raising per capita incomes to developed country levels will stop or drastically reduce population growth [unless governments override their people with mass migration]. Where are the resources to do this going to come from? There is an article by Daniele Fanelli in the Oct. 6 New Scientist which shows that it would take the resources of three Earths to give everyone a Western European standard of living, even if all the resources were divided equally.

The new United Nations Global Environment Outlook-4 Report featured on the front page of the Friday, Oct. 26 Sydney Morning Herald says that unprecedented ecological damage being done, with water, land, air, plants, animals, and fish stocks "all in inexorable decline". The 6.75 billion world population "has reached a stage where the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available". Rwanda has given us a preview of the likely outcome.

Our own government's Measures of Australia's Progress reports have been showing large and growing environmental damage. Of course, overconsumption is an issue too, but how are more people going to make any of this better?

Great article Sheila Newman, as is the first edition of the Final Energy Crisis, and, as I keep reminding people, your Masters thesis on the insidious effect of Australia's growth lobby (downloadable form http://candobetter.org/sheila) which is driving population growth and the destruction of biodiversity.

I think the challenge we face is to find the combination of natural and man-made systems which will cause the least overall rate of the increase in entropy (low entropy -> order, high entropy -> disorder). Even the most perfect system will still see entropy inevitably increase until we reach the heat death of the universe, where no more energy flows will be possible as all available energy will have been evenly spread everywhere.

The extreme we see to day of rampant uncontrolled growth of profit-driven industrialisation, globalisation, population growth and human immigration is clearly close to the worst that is possible. Another extreme, that of voluntary human extinction (http://vhemt.org), whilst it would be better for the planet as whole than the current situation, is one I don't personally feel great enthusiasm for. Other solutions include:

* The return to hunter-gatherer society.
* An agrarian society based upon sustainable Permaculture-like principles as espoused by David Holmgren and Bill Mollison.
* Perseverance with industrialised society whilst we have the necessary non-renewable resources, but based on a steady state economy with the private profit motive severely constrained.

It has been argued that the latter two alternatives would merely be a stage of transition back to hunter gatherer society, which has proven be tho only truly sustainable form of society thus fur.

Personally, I would like to see the human colonisation of space as TA Heppenheimer foretold in the 1970's. However, it is debatable whether this can be achieved without destroying the biosphere, even if we were to find ways to constrain the corporate sector.

Whatever course we choose, we have to accept that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for human intelligence to recreate, the essential environmental services performed for us by relatively unspoilt areas of wilderness which has evolved over hundreds of millions of years.

Further to Divergnce's argument, Australia with a stable much samller population of 7 million did deter the Japanese from invading in 1942 and paid a very substantial part in their subsequent defeat.

Although contrary to the prevailing myth that the US saved us, this has been shown conclusively in Andrew T Ross's meticulously researched "Armed and Ready" of 1995.

This was because Australia had become an advanced industrialised nation and was virtually self-sufficient and capable of arming 8 divisions by June 1942, the earlient possible date at which an invasion could have been launched. Australia also had a modern air force that would have prevented a Japanese invasion force from being able to achieve air supremacy.

That is why the Japanese Army in March 1942 before the Battle of The Coral Sea vetoed a Japanese Navy plan to invade. I wrote more about this in the forum "Can Australia ever be self-reliant for national defence?" at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=860