KAEP

That just about sums it up.

David

The benefits of a constant flow of people to Australia is not about "skills shortages" that could easily be adjusted by increasing the range of educational programs and incentives. It is about strengthening the economy through a "brute force" method by boosting the demand for goods and services. More people means a bigger labor force, and ultimately cheaper wages. "Sustainability" is just ignored, and any addressing of climate change is just negated! The fact that a global population blow-out is more serious than climate change is being ignored by businesses and our government. They are selfishly aiming to maximise profits and taxes at the expense of future generations who will find it more expensive to live when limited resources cost more, and their liveability is compromised.

'The baking summer temperatures of February 2009 have southern Australians thinking about climate change and their limited water supplies.'

The author loses all credibility when he tries to use the climate change myth to further his argument. Why not start with North Queensland where enough rain has fallen to supply Australia's needs many times over. Why not speak of the fires in Victoria 100 years ago that covered much more of the State with a far lower population. Thankfully many scientist are now at least questioning the 'settled science' which is still to be produced.

No, like every other barrow pusher Michael uses emotive crap to justify pretending to have some sort of scientific base to support his arguements.

If we are going to reduce population why not start by killing a few more animals. It would increase the food supply and decrease water usage? Of course the earth worshipers would violently protest this decision. They would rather save the sharks and whales and kangaroos and murder unborn babies.

Like all that sprout off the overpopulation mantra no data is ever given as to how much land is still unoccupied on earth, how much food is wasted and how unevenly distributed resources are spread. All we hear is spin, spin spin. Lets worship the creation at all cost seems to be the mantra

Tendentious, over emotional clap trap. Feertility in Australia is 1.7 per female. That means we're BELOW the death rate. That's why we have immigration, skilled or not.

Much of this tripe is being driven by Jonathon Porritt in the UK who is calling for zero population growth. He praised Clive Hamilton's laughable book, Growth Fetish.

The writer of this article has taken a biological tack and fails completely to mention any recent studies that the earth has gone through warming and cooling many times in its history. What we have here are Willy Lomax's or Holden Caulfield's who never quite made it with capitalism and have decided the shoot not only the market but the people.

What do you call anti-immigration nationalists? What do you call people who want to sterilise men and women for the sake of the future? I mean we're not far off zeig heil are we? And these people call themselves the greens. Jeez.

I'm a big fan of the apocalypse movies: Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, ZPG, Planet of the Apes, but the writer and his supporters should think carefully about turning fiction in to fact.

"When we reach 30 million people at the end of my third term we will have enough GST collected to buy a new Environment."

LOL

* * *

What I find unsatisfactory about this article, and the entire approach to population that it signifies, is the lack of any real theory or understanding about the state. The 'population problem' is treated as a positivistic issue, much as a scientist might look at a population of mice in a laboratory cage and observe a tendency toward over-population.

The problem is of course, that you are not that scientist, and the rest of the human population are not just mice for you to manipulate their lives and reproduction in a manner than you find intellectually or otherwise satisfying. They are human beings with their own values.

This is where the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the green approach becomes clear. The state is the sub-group of society claiming a monopoly of the use of force. The state means the use of force. Policy means 'police-y'. It means what you are proposing to use tasers and handcuffs and assault weapons and prisons, or threats of them, to solve.

But from the fact of over-population, even assuming you have established it which you haven't, *nothing follows*. Why? Because science doesn't supply value judgments. Even assuming that there is a problem from people over-populating, it doesn't follow that you have either the ethical justification to violate people in order to manipulate them into a configuration more pleasing to *your* values, and it doesn't follow that just because there's a particular problem, therefore government can make it better. The reason you were called an eco-fascist is because you are an eco-fascist. You regard people as a species of noxious pest, and believe that if you can just concentrate enough lethal force behind arbitrary power you can achieve a final solution.

Before going too far down the "People concerned by population are really Nazis" track again, could you think a little about where you are headed?

e.g.<What do you call people who want to sterilise men and women for the sake of the future? I mean we're not far off zeig heil are we?>

Funny that, Hitler was always a population growth junkie as far as I know. (or Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam; in fact I cant think of any piece of despotic filth who wasn't a population growth junkie). So instead of taking the moral high ground and likening contributors concerned by population growth to Nazis, shouldn't one more logically be using the Nazi epithet for population growth junkies?

e.g.<Even assuming that there is a problem from people over-populating, it doesn't follow that you have either the ethical justification to violate people in order to manipulate them into a configuration more pleasing to *your* values, and it doesn't follow that just because there's a particular problem, therefore government can make it better>

Can anyone spot the irony in the statement? The reality is that the government considers there to be an underpopulation "problem" according to the consensus of values of the pollies, and they are involved in a manipulation via immigration and the baby bonus to correct this "problem". Is this any less unethical or justified by *your* own measure?

I mean really, this can be a civil discourse, yet time and again, with any topic on population, it gets spoiled with chookhouse floor scrapings.