This kind of thinking is extremely dangerous.

Authoritarian government are relatively free to do good things - but also to commit genocide or send their people to re-education camps to eradicate their 'erroneous' thinking.

As always the problem is that those governments think they know best and anyone with a contrary perspective is 'incorrect'. This can lead to them making horrendous mistakes such as Mao's Great Leap Forward, which is estimated to have brought about between 14 and 43 million deaths.There is no self-correcting mechanism that can prevent such disasters.

Has David Shearman not noticed, for heaven's sake, that Peter Garrett is considering the exact same measure - banning plastic bags - which he raises as an example of a radical measure that democracies couldn't contemplate?

Dangerous-whom for/to?

Please, do not threat us with commies: last 11 years in Australia were not much better.

Scientific Consensus, and equally important engineering consensus relative to implementation methods and procedures, exists for the following.

1. Nuclear irradiation of all organic food would save lives and reduce the resources needed to produce foodstuffs by reduction in food wastes.

2. Nuclear power is at present the best alternative fuel source to fossil fueled base-loaded electricity production.

3. Genetically modified food crops have the same benefits as listed in 1 above.

4. Use of biomass crops to reduce consumption of oil for transportation has adverse impacts on the environment and on human populations through higher costs for food necessary for health and safety.

5. The proper use of DDT can significantly reduce unnecessary deaths in less-developed countries.

6. Development of lesser-developed countries through easy access to abundant electricity will significantly reduce unnecessary deaths and reduce unnecessary use and destruction of natural resources.

It is interesting that some (many?) of the people who constantly remind us of the dangers of continued destruction and use of natural resources are the very same people who object to the Scientific Consensus listed above. Very much more importantly those listed would result in a significant reduction of the loss of human lives and the suffering associated with those who do not have access to the riches of developed Democracies.

This is especially ironic given that the author of the opinion piece state: "If you say “yes” then you fly in the face of a track record of persistent failure in a wide range of environmental management leading to depletion of natural resources and fresh water, biodiversity and ecological service loss, loss of productive land and depletion of essential food sources such as ocean fish."

I do not know which, if any, of these the author might be in agreement with, but as none have been implemented almost everyone seems to be in disagreement.

In contrast to the list above, for which implementation plans are readily available, there is at present no proven methods for reduction in CO2 emissions to a level that even begins to approach those that are said to be necessary.

Owen,

There are only 13 countries that are actually experiencing negative population growth right now. Apart from Germany, they are all in Eastern Europe, where economic conditions have been difficult, to say the least. For most of them the rate of decline is only 0.1 or 0.2%.

http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/zero.htm

Having a birth rate below replacement level only results in an immediate drop in population when the country already has a stable age structure and there is no net immigration. In a country like Australia where there was strong population growth for a long time, it can take up to 70 years for population growth to stop or reverse, even with no net immigration, and 100 years for the population to drop below what it was at the time when fertility dropped below replacement level. This is because of the skewed age structure. The deaths are mostly occurring in the small elderly generation and the births in the big young adult population. Believe your lying eyes about whether Australia, or much of Europe, is running out of people.

Biker Trash,

No problems with most of your list. You are correct about economic development ending population growth, but don't say where the resources are to come from. It would take the resources of three Earths to give everyone worldwide (even with just the existing population) a modest European standard of living, even if all the wealth were divided equally. (See the Redefining Progress site and p. 10 of the 6/10/07 New Scientist.)

“Strong population growth in Australia”: does this Australian statistics presents local Afro-achievers or, as most references on these pages, deals with Anglo-offspring only?

Back to an article, both Hitler and Howard were elected democratically with the same outcome for environment – paramounts of excrements after both of them.

Climate change—what anger! From David Shearman, author

I believe that authors contribute and argument to “On-line” in the hope of receiving constructive counter-argument. Let me make the argument simpler. Firstly I cannot counter the climate change deniers. Denial is a form of defence to major issues that we cannot cope with. Some of us react that way when we get cancer. Climate change scepticism like any form of questioning the evidence is helpful but the evidence must be presented with the source so we can all look at the facts from which the conclusions are drawn.

The argument that I make in my article for those who accept that climate change is occurring is that the science tells us we are not mitigating fast enough. We therefore must examine where we are failing and an examination of how our governance system is working to deliver decisions is an essential part of the exercise. If some of the responders feel that liberal democracy cannot be improved then there is little more I can say. Within Australia to take one example are you satisfied with the democratic wrangling over the demise of the River Murray over the past decade? Many are now suffering with loss of wealth and health. There are times what decisions have to be made with more urgency than this. We all surrender liberties everyday in the interests of our own heath and safety and that of the community. Let us have some suggestions as to how we proceed. We don’t have to support Mr Mugabe to be able to use some authoritarian decision making processes when necessary. In relation to over population, of course it is related to climate change, but you cannot say this is the problem rather than climate change.