Thanks Ludwig.

The problem with the sustainability school is that they are not making a coherent argument, and they don't understand that they aren't. I have been following these threads, and they simply ignore the arguments that show their arguments are false. But perhaps you can do better.

The starting point seems to be invicible logic itself: you can't have indefinite growth on a finite base. Fair enough.

But nothing that they are contending for follows from that. There are so many gaps in the reasoning between the premise and the conclusion that it's hard to know where to start. But surely the onus should be on the people making the argument to make it, and not leave it to others to make it for them, and then show the defects in it.

Can you see any fundamental objection, any fatal flaw in the methodology, epistemology, ethics, logic, metaphysics, economic, politics of the argument?

1.
For example, implicit in the argument is the idea that people, acting voluntarily through the market, are too stupid to have any interest in the future, but *the same people*, acting through government, suddenly become possessed of superior wisdom and prudence. Huh? Make sense!

2.
Implicit in the argument is that government has not only the superior wisdom, but the *capacity* to co-ordinate the necessary use of resources. But we already know that *total* government control does not have the necessary capacity. So answer the question: how is *partial* government control going to be in any better position? Where are they going to get the competence from? How are they going to know out of billions of transactions which particular resource use is to be sacrificed for which particular purpose? Make sense.

3.
The resource uses that the greens want to ban are currently supporting many millions of human lives. Please answer the question and stop evading it: who is to decide what human life is to be sacrificed to the value of conservation, and how?

4. How is future value to be accounted relative to current value? Is a person expected to deny food to their baby now, so as to leave enough for a hypothetical human being stranger in ten million years time? If yes, then why permit any resource use at all? If not, then how is the fair amount to be calculated? If by total government power, how is it to be stopped from degenerating into ecological and economic disaster. If by partial government power, how is that any improvement on the original problem? Please answer the questions!

5. In calculating it, what value are we to give future resource use, future human happiness? According to the logic of inter-generational equity, if future generations live better than we do now, owing to technological improvements in the meantime, then that means we have a moral right to use *more* natural resources now, so as to get even with them. Yes?

6. Seriously, why don't the sustainability school just kill themselves? They think there are too many humans, and some or all resource use is unwise or immoral. Well? What makes them think that any amount of resource use is reasonable? But if it is, then how are you to judge which particular human action is okay, and which is not? How is that any improvemen to on the original problem?

Underlying the entire belief system is the double absurdity of
a) yearning for a steady-state world, a static ecology, a static economy, a static climate. This is so far from the nature of reality, so far from any reasonable expectation that it can only be characterised as religious mysticism: a holy paradise in which the scarcity of natural resources, and therefore all economic problems, have been permanently banished, and
b) the real hilarious part is, it's to be acheived by political action! The Nathan Rees's, the George Bush's, the Kevin Rudd's, the Robert Mugabe's of the world are to lead us to this promised land. What a joke! What an absurdity!

Wing –

I can’t speak for Ludwig or divergence. These are my ideas alone. These are ways that would lead us to being more sustainable. They are easily within the power of the Australian government that is now in office.

1) Net zero immigration. If 60,000 people leave Australia in 2009, the target immigration for 2010 is 60,000.

2) Discontinue the baby bonus.

3) $20/tonne carbon tax increasing $5/tonne each year for five years. This would raise about $10 billion so decrease income tax by $10 billion in the first year, and then by $2.5 billion each year after that for 5 years. Australian economy is over $1000 trillion so not likely to be a significant factor.

4) 2% of all government purchases (federal, state local) be recyclables. Slowly increase.

5) 5% of all government vehicles that are in cities (including Canberra) be electric. Slowly increase.

6) All government electricity use be 10% renewable, slowly increasing each year.

7) Fine people (appropriate to the clean up cost) who increase salinity and erosion on their land, when it damages other land or impacts watercourses.

Wing Ah Ling

My goodness how does someone like yourself who is obviously immensely impressed with his/her own intellectual superiority come up with phrases like "just kill yourself" as a solution to overpopulation and sustainability.

Yet this minor concession: "The starting point seems to be invicible logic itself: you can't have indefinite growth on a finite base. Fair enough."

I think Ludwig has a point this poster is welcome to his views and if he can debate with reason why we are not overpopulated and why sustainability is not a worthy goal by all means do. Otherwise it is nothing more than trolling (I think that is the cyber term) or baiting.

Wing Ah Ling your own assumptions are false. You have assumed that the advocates for sustainability are about killing people with ridiculous statements like "How many people should have to die to fulfil your dopey concept of a sustainable world?".

The only dope around here is the one looking back at you from the mirror.

But welcome anyway - best of luck with your machine-gun approach to debate.

The author says “there is a lack of informed public questioning of Australia’s population goals”.

Not so – there has not, even over the course of the whole of the last century, been a lack of questioning. What has been lacking is the ability to have it given a fair airing. The goals have constantly been set for ever-expanding numbers in the face of evidence and rational argument against unlimited growth – of human numbers multiplying whatever consumption patterns they adopt.

The genuine evidence has been both downplayed and distorted out of self-interest by influential lobby groups and politicians – with strong bias to their benefit by almost all media groups. The most blatant example of this in recent years was the conduct of Rudd’s 2020 summit, where participant Ian Lowe found that development of discussion on the issue was prevented by the moderator of that section (Penny Wong).

One of the most successful of those lobbyists has been the Vatican, which has striven hard, for so long, to deny women the right to control their own fertility. The success of others has also been evidenced by Rudd’s massive increase in immigration (with no pre-election commitment) since coming to power – as indicated by his manipulating that increase into a reason for abrogating his election commitment to counter global warming.

As long as the antediluvian growth lobbyists successes continue, our numbers will go on expanding. Consequently, even without induced global climate change we will be left with less and less capacity to deal with adverse weather, let alone the ever-restless climate in the longer duration.

Ludwig
The posts by Ericc and Pelican are perfect examples. They assume what is in issue, and when someone shows them what the issues are, they either don't understand it, or deal with it by just ignoring it, and go back to insisting on the original fallacies. I think you all need to answer WAL's questions.

Ericc
You are assuming what is in issue. That is circular argument, which is a logical fallacy, which means the argument doesn't make sense.

Recycling, electricity and so on, will only be more sustainable if they use less resources than the original alternative. For example, if recycling something uses double the natural resources than making it new, recycling will be less sustainable, not more. Private businesses figure out whether something wastes resources through profit and loss. But there is nothing about governmental provision of these services that enables one to know. How would governments know? Try answering the question specifically.

You simply assume that government has the knowledge and capacity to solve the problems. But then total government control would fix the problem, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it?

Pelican
You are assuming what is in issue. The onus is not on Wing Ah Ling to disprove a negative, it's on you to make sense in the first place. The Malthusian theorem is not enough.

The world's population has greatly increased since modernisation, powered by fossil fuels. It is a perfectly reasonable question to ask, if greens want to reduce the availability of these fuels by 50%, how is that not going to have a cost in human lives? It surprises me that you don't seem to have thought of this.

You are conspicuously failing to answer WAL's questions. Why don't you try answering them? They are numbered. Try. Make an honest try.