Divergence and Dagget,

Although I never like admitting it, I think we agree on a lot of essentials. However, I disagree with you on some major points.

First,

I remain unconvinced that the consumption figures you discuss, (ie, 3 earth’s resources, per capita footprints,) have taken into account how much waste our societies can reduce:

* In many summer jobs, (hospitality, retail, warehouse,) I witnessed enormous waste, and that was just the small end of town; OHS laws that prohibited giving leftovers to charity (although now several non-profits are getting past that one.) Stupid knick-knacks people give me for Christmas, (ok, that’s just off the top of my head- what can you come up with?);

The extent that current and future technologies can reduce this footprint:

* houses, and even skyscrapers designed to use as little energy as possible, (see http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/695,) and development of alternative/ non-polluting sources of electricity generation is still in its infancy;

The incentive to use less oil, (particularly in the US,) provided by higher oil prices, and peak oil; And whether the UN HDI indicators judge things we don’t need as necessary to a good standard of living:

Second,

There appears to be an assumption that somehow the Western World “doesn’t get it” about population growth. This is completely wrong- the West has actually stopped reproducing itself at sustainable levels. The average European and Japanese woman bears 1.3 children. In Australia this is 1.76. (http://www.eoearth.org/article/Human_population_explosion.) The US has the highest in the Western world, around about the replacement level of 2.1. (It is also experiencing the highest population growth in the West, due to immigration.) Although a number of factors inherent in modern society have contributed to this decline, it would be over-simplistic to point to factors such as a lack of religion or industrial relations systems see- http://bp2.blogger.com/_2-oDfgGpQKg/RxraAQ9RjvI/AAAAAAAAA34/mn4Q0wCGmv8/s1600-h/Fertility+Rate.jpg, - the similarity in birthrates between secular, socialist France, (just under 2.0,) and religious, free market USA, (about 2.1.) (My own opinion at the end.)

I am astounded that an article and forum on population growth has not, after 41 posts...

had at least one specific reference to the unsustainably low Western birthrates. Not even a cheerio to Europeans and Japanese to keep up the good work, or lack of it… but political correctness has contributed to little more than an abortive discussion the main cause of population growth in the West - immigration. If you really want to stop population growth in/ reduce the population of the developed world, reduce immigration to a trickle, (a few thousand a year, even in Europe and the USA,) and we can quibble over whether to be practical (runner) or ethical (CJ Morgan.)

Apart from a few posts there has been little recognition that to reduce the world’s population would require great cruelty. The necessity to reduce consumption in the developed world, (if you disagree with my efficiency argument,) would trump the desire/right of most of the Third World’s potential immigrants to a better life in it. There would not be enough taxpayers to support the huge pension system we will soon have. Women having to choose between a career or kids- that would be the whole idea.

The author appears to ignore the fact that, overall, the population of the developed world is declining, and avoids a rigorous discussion of policies to sustain this. Instead we are fed a message of existential guilt. We are told that our very presence on the earth is destroying it. Without contextualisation by the fact that the West’s population is declining, the argument appears a Trojan Horse. It disregards the exciting possibilities of what human ingenuity can achieve, and instead looks backward. As with the simplistic guilt-tripping we are submitted to by “whiteness” studies at universities, the mantra that “the fewer of us, the better for the planet,” appears designed to convince us in the West that the best thing we can do for the planet is commit civilizational suicide.

Europeans have most thoroughly bought this message - that is why they have the lowest birth rates. Like an anorexic who starves themselves to death, they are slowly, as a civilization, committing suicide.

Dozer wrote:
“As with the simplistic guilt-tripping we are submitted to by “whiteness” studies at universities, the mantra that “the fewer of us, the better for the planet,” appears designed to convince us in the West that the best thing we can do for the planet is commit civilizational suicide”.

The principle outlined in the article provides a technical basis for understanding that civilization as we know it is suicide.

This equation should prompt us to reference the breadth and depth of anthropological history and realise that the intrinsic worth and sustenance of humanity does not depend upon this form of civilization. That there are other ways to be fulfillingly human, and some of these do not require us to eat the floor from under our feet. If we can do that we might survive.

However if we hang onto our current pretensions about growth and the technological innovation needed to drive it and bandage its gaping dysfunctions, we are in progressively deepening and ultimately irreversible trouble.

If civilization has no room for nature do not be surprised when nature finally arbitrates that it has no room for civilization.

BTW Australia has a positive, and rising, fertility rate AS WELL AS a high and increasing immigration rate. As has both the USA and Canada.

"Europeans have most thoroughly bought this message - that is why they have the lowest birth rates. Like an anorexic who starves themselves to death, they are slowly, as a civilization, committing suicide."

Has it ever occured to you that Europe might be a far more pleasant
place to live, with 2-300 million, rather then 450 million?

Why would anyone, crammed into a tiny apartment, costing huge
rent, where space for a house is a luxury, think of having a
tribe of kids?

If Europe is short of people, there are no end of migrants from
other overcrowded parts of the world, willing to live there.

Or is the issue for you that Europe needs to stay white?

EVOLUTION. What do think this means! I just hate running over old works. Let me quote. During his\ hers 5000-6000 million years, and I still think some of us are still rubbing sticks together, but man has traces that run back as far as 1.3 million years ago. Homo erect us! What a fantastic creature! Reading from books, will just lead you in a round and around way,but because life is a never ending story which was viewed and written and thought about by the hand of man,this is why evolution wins all the way. God is the easy way out and you know it. But it is far more complicated. RANDOME! I don't think so. Too many things are working as one. So it must be a act of god? There is still a question to where life begins, and it comes back to the big old question,is the big bang thing real. I am just thinking out loud, I still think its always been here. But maybe, we are not in a evolutionary position to grasp our minds around it. But the facts are the facts. Its all about population. Let me give this thought. If you put ten rats in a box, they will fight! If you put two rats in the same box, they will multiply.

Too cut it short, the earth has to many rats in it. And people, they are eating everything, and too see them all, All you have to do is to turn on the T.V.

The answer is! OVER POPALUTION! How to fix it! I know, but the people will just not understand.

I was going to wait, but lets not mess about. I know I will be shot down for this, but here I go! In the future, people who want to bread, will have go though a DNA test to show that they will not bread anymore sick people. Lets face it! They are costing the world money. We are for getting the laws of nature, and the laws are, only the fit will survive. YES! there are our love ones. Its hard, and I know it myself. But if we keep breeding and keeping the DNA flawed to make more sick to people, WELL! I think you get the point.

Why are we so dumb?