“Obviously, Adelaide has reached the limit of population that is sustainable at current standards of living and that limit is set by the particular critical resource that is currently least available – water”.

Yes. The idiot Premier, Mike Rann, is still squawking about population growth, and the only attempt at providing more water is a pip-squeak desalination plant which will provide only 25% of CURRENT WATER USE. If the population is increased as the maniac envisages, the suburbs of Adelaide will look like Baghdad.

Australia’s current population growth is insane. The people driving it are insane.

Excellent stuff Michael.

Anyone who considers the points that you have expressed in this article and your previous one can’t help but realise just how absurd rapid continuous population growth is in Australia.

So the great question is; how do we get our government to take up a policy of very low immigration, population stabilisation and a little further down the track, a steady state economy?

You mentioned one of the major obstacles in your last paragraph: the political donations regime, which so very strongly sways governments towards the vested-interest desires of property developers and other big business entities. This is so serious that it profoundly and fundamentally corrupts our governmental system.....and corrupts our future by leading governments to take us down a strongly unsustainable route at a time when the achievement of a sustainable society is of vital importance.

I think that if we could just get past this factor… and the influence of big business entities on public opinion if governments don’t do what they want, then we’ll have the problem solved.

Governments no matter what their persuasion would then follow a sustainability path, with overwhelming support from the community.

Community support for the achievement of sustainability is there, if latent in most people. With a bit of the right sort of leadership, it could be brought to the fore.

Ludwig
"You mentioned one of the major obstacles in your last paragraph: the political donations regime, which so very strongly sways governments towards the vested-interest desires of property developers and other big business entities.

It is ironical that the one thing holding back those who favour population policy for reasons of sustainability is the institutionalised legal corruption that characterises democratic government: the very institution they presume to be trustworthy and capable of fixing the problem. Can't you see, if the original problem is that people in general are too dim or too bad to do the right thing, that same problem cannot be corrected by giving it to government, because government is made up of the same people and takes its entire justification from the claim that it 'represents' them.

"Community support for the achievement of sustainability is there, if latent in most people. With a bit of the right sort of leadership, it could be brought to the fore."

Translation: if we can just bring enough police to bear, we can force people to comply with our opinions and pay for our values by sacrificing theirs.

Fester
You have evaded, but not answered, my question in the last post: Why not make your response one that is decided by voluntary action, not by violence or threats?

This is the issue. Please answer it directly on point without evasion of any kind

So the author would seriously suggest a one child policy and try to reduce immigration along the lines suggested in the article? Wow! It would be almost worth electing the author to Parliament to see him try. Good for a few laughs. Fortunately it is unlikely to come to that. There is a lot to dispute in this article but "starving to death". Look at the agricultural production figures produced by ABARE www.abare.gov.au - agricultural production has been increasing, with the occasional, temporary reversal due to drought, for decades (actually, probably since the first fleet).. Best to look for something else to worry about.

Michael,

You have written two of the best articles on this issue that I have seen yet. People who are concerned by the environmental and limits-to-growth issues that you have raised and want further information should take a look at the site of the Worldwatch Institute, which is supported by a number of respected US foundations, the German government, the Norwegian government, and the UN Population Fund.

http://www.worldwatch.org/

Another place to look is at the site of the UN-sponsored Millennium and Ecosystem Assessment, which presents "the consensus view of the largest body of social and natural scientists ever assembled to assess knowledge in this area".

http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/About.aspx#2

Additional valuable sites are the environmental footprint sites of Redefining Progress and the Global Footprint Network. It is obvious to anyone who looks at these even casually that limiting consumption cannot be the only answer, that if we stopped overexploiting the environment (burning the furniture to keep warm) and divided all the resources equally, that we would all be as poor as the average person in a poor Central American country. These are people so poor that many are sneaking into Mexico as illegal immigrants to "do the jobs that Mexicans won't do".

Those who want to think with their emotions about these issues need to reflect on the hundreds of thousands of people who died prematurely and horribly from tobacco because politicians and other members of the elite were in denial about the dangers, as Bernie Masters appears to be on this issue, or simply willing to tell lies for money.

Peter Hume,

You assume that violence and threats are only to be associated with governments. A libertarian system can only be anything other than another sort of tyranny if there is a very high ratio of resources to people. Poul Anderson understood this, and so does Col Rouge on this forum. In a socialist system, a man gives me orders, and I have to obey because he speaks for the government and is ultimately backed up by another man with a gun. In a libertarian system, a man gives me orders and I have to obey because he control the resources that I need to survive, and his property rights are ultimately backed up by another man with a gun. In the libertarian system, the property owners ARE the government. Ownership of critical resources gives them enormous power, which they can then pass on to their children. No one else will get a look in, unless perhaps they are extremely talented. People who do own a small amount of property will also often be forced to sacrifice long-term interests in preserving that property for immediate survival. Ordinary people can only acquire bargaining leverage in such a system if they go on a reproductive strike. It is no accident that a great many libertarians want open borders.