Michael,

I am definitely on your side regarding the population growth problem but could not quite get what you were driving at in the section "Education of women is the key to reducing fecundity".

It may not be the key but it is one of many ways of attempting to address the problem and of course needs to be backed up with the provision of the wherewithal to actually allow them a choice in the matter.

On a different tack, all those concerned about population growth in this country should consider joining Sustainable Population Australia (Google it). Having a peak body with a strong following can only improve the chances of being heard and listened to.

Michael,
I have some concern that the results of your articles were someway short of their intended objectives. Apart from being fatally flawed in a number of areas it was base on at least two egregiously myopic assumptions. In so doing the conclusion was a bit of an anticlimax.

That the world isn’t a magic pudding (never ending) is clear and incontestable but in the short to medium context your next assumption was never proven i.e. that we have too many people.
One is therefore entitled to ask on what basis do you make that assumption?

Presumably you assumed ‘as we live today’.
You then assume that we need less people…. Not if you consider 1st world rich consumption and carbon foot print. Monstrously disproportionate.

Estimations by UN bodies concerned with such issues have said that world is currently producing enough food to feed every one. Logically then the problems are of distribution and our version of capitalism. Change the system then that will change the conclusion.

Unrealistic? Far more achievable than infanticide and a successful out come of international population control.

The straw argument on education ignores the rest of that equation that BOTH affluence and education tend to curb fecundity.

The argument does include arrogance, chauvinism, and moral hypocrisy in that you wouldn’t sacrifice your family but you’re prepared to sacrifice others presumably because you don’t know them and they’re not like you or Aussie.

Why else would you ignore the kiwi invasion that in reality are not fleeing abject poverty or threat of life as many other immigrants are? (African, Tuvalu)

The examples you gave of one out one in are furphies on a number of grounds in that both are small communities.

Then the argument that immigration at current level is going to make a fig’s difference in the more pressing problem of ACC.
They didn’t help your cause or make your case.

PS I do agree (qualified) with the premise we as a world are close to fullup and believe something needs be done….BUT WHAT & HOW?

Curmudgeon?

Troll would be more appropriate.

Examinator,

One way or the other we have too many people on this planet. Whatever area you look into we are using up our resources at an ever-increasing rate. Each resource is finite and bottlenecks are appearing everywhere. Potable water, wild fish stocks, arable land, oil, phosphorous, forests, atmospheric, marine and terrestrial sinks etc. They are being depleted at the rate they are a) because of population numbers, b) because of the each individuals consumption of resources and c) I add, technological capability.

How does one define “too many people”? I for one would understand it to mean that at the current AVERAGE rate of resources consumption the complex society in which we all live cannot be sustained for more than a couple of generations (ie not couple of centuries or millennia but a timeframe with which we can all relate as there are probably people alive today who may still exist when the “end” comes).

In my view it serves no useful purpose to argue about whether population or consumption growth is unsustainable as clearly both are and we need to address both wherever and however we can. In the first instance using force or coercion to get people to produce fewer offspring or reduce resource consumption may not be desirable or even possible but eventually there may be no alternative other than to apply some form of force to avoid a free for all and violent scramble for the limited resources that remain.

'We need to decide which human right is more important - the right to unrestricted reproduction or the right not to starve to death.'

What a load of emotive crap. We have enough food in this country to feed 10 times our population.

So the best response to having too many people on the planet is to keep as many of them as possible out of Australia?! Good way to encourage people to think globally!

There isn't enough space to counter all the logical and factual flaws in this piece, so to pick just a few:

"there is one very important difference between growth of consumption and growth of population. Consumption growth is easily reversible but population growth is not."

I haven't seen any sign of Australians reversing the growth in our individual consumption - and if we keep shifting the blame to migrants, we can keep pretending we don't need to. Still, if we just keep those Bangladeshis poor (and in Bangladesh), there's obviously no problem.

"birth rates fall when perceptions of plenty are replaced by perceptions of thrift."

So the problem all those starving sub-Saharan Africans with high birth rates have is their perceptions of plenty! They obviously need to be made even poorer until they develop appropriate perceptions of thrift, then their birth rates will drop.

"Believe it or not, it is actually possible to have immigration without population growth. One simply operates a “one in, one out” policy."

So any Australian who wants to marry a foreigner has to tell them to wait in a queue until enough people die so they can be allowed in? True love waits, I suppose. Though if they already have children, the kids will have to wait a bit longer. And another few years for parents and siblings. Not that we'll have enough nurses or doctors to treat them if they get sick anyway, because they'll be sitting in the queue.

And every refugee we bring in from a refugee camp in Africa will mean everyone has to wait that bit longer for the fiancee, child, parent, sibling, doctor to enter - which will really endear refugees to the Australian public. Still, those refugees suffer from perceptions of plenty already, so best to leave in the refugee camp. They'll never develop the appropriate perceptions of thrift if we allow them into Australia.