Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

Will the Knack's of this world who roam in their mechanised tri-pods destroying everything with their heat rays eventually fall to simple bacteria?

“There are so many things wrong with this Malthusian proposal that it’s hard to know where to start. First of all, it’s not the number of people … it’s the first world’s consumption.”

What utter rubbish Malcolm King. You’ve got it totally wrong at the most fundamental level. It is very much BOTH numbers AND consumption.

“Indeed, the type of family planning that Ms Kanck suggests will rip birth control out of the hands of women and place it in the hands of the state..”

It seems that you don’t have a clue as to what Ms Kanck is suggesting. The policy revolves around incentives to have fewer kids. In other words, financial encouragement that is the opposite of the baby bonus and all sorts of other tax breaks that we have at the moment that support an artificially high birthrate in Australia. There’s nothing draconian about it.

And as for taking our population back to the order of seven million, the idea is put us onto a very slow track of negative population growth, with the birthrate and immigration rate being just a little bit less than the death rate and emigration rate, until we eventually reach a population level that sits well within the ability of the resource base and environment to support it in an ongoing manner.

Ms Kanck’s comments sound a bit radical at first impressions, but then a group like Sustainable Population Australia has to put out a message that it is a bit sharp or else just won’t get noticed by the media, public or politicians.

Malcolm, do yourself a favour and stop trying to find fault with the argument. Instead, why don’t you do what you inner self surely tells you to do, which is to side with SPA and fight against the future-destroying continuous growth paradigm, where endlessly rapidly increasing population and consumption is not only not tackled, but is strongly facilitated by our grossly irresponsible politicians.

Tragically the author of this article has fallen victim to the beat-up on Sandra Kanck propogated by News Corp's Advertiser newspaper in Adelaide. The Advertiser has been out to get Sandra for a long time and she cannot even open her mouth to discuss China's one child policy (which she would be expected to do seeing as she is now the president of Sustainable Population Australia) without being jumped on and mis-represented. Comments sent my me (and probably others) to the Advertiser's online site complaining about the mis-representation have been blocked.

The newspaper media (dependent upon real estate advertising revenues), the property developers and the Labor/Liberal parties (who get enormous donations from the developers) form an unholy triangle of self-interest that pushes very hard to increase population despite the fact that it is the core factor that undermines all other efforts to protect the environment. Australia's very high rates of consumption make its stunning rate of population growth (higher than Asia!) very damaging and unsustainable. Our leaders - including Sandra Kanck - must be allowed to speak out on this core issue.

<”Ms Kanck seems to have a knack of adopting “whacko” causes. A few years ago she advocated the regulation and decriminalisation of Ecstasy in South Australia. But her source credibility is not the issue here yet.”>

I see an ideological agenda here, coming from a politically correct source related to continuing along the same path as we are now. More and more people, unfettered consumption and bugger the consequences. Lunacy in the extreme.

<”It’s curious that the most striking manifestation of the loathing they have for every human can be seen in the idea that we need a significant reduction in the number of human beings from people who purport to love nature.”>

Nature consists of every life form on the plane, even those consumed with gluttonous greed by those feeding of the public purse. Why should humans be above other life, when they can't fit into any form of harmonious and responsible approach to nature.

Articles like this make me laugh, as they can only be brought to the light of day by those directly aiding and abetting, those responsible for the current world dilemma of starvation, war and collapsing ecology.

I find it fascinating that Malcolm Kirk joins the ranks of those who promote the false dichotomy of consumption vs population as a way of trying to discredit the global Green movement - of which they are clearly terrified.

Ludwig's quite correct that we must address both sources of resource and habitat depletion, and ultimately of anthropogenic global warming. It is not misanthropic to advocate a gradual reduction in the Earth's human population for the sake of its own ultimate survival.

While Kirk is correct that profligate first world consumption is probably the major driver of climate change, the planet simply cannot sustain population increases of the order that are now occurring, particularly if the developing world aspires to similar levels of material affluence that are evident in developed countries.

Anti populationists 0, reasoned opinion 4.

I wonder why the Unsustainable People lobby, full of bio-fascists and IT systems theorists selected Kanck? Did she select them? Were they drawn to each other?

King could have gone in harder here. It's too rhetorical but I get the drift. The anti-pops think this is a backlash, whereas its pretty much the standard line.

I wonder what the Greens think of this? Would they make this an election policy? Remember the Democrats and the GST. This is the Greens GST.

I checked out Kanck's press release. King got it right.

These people are 'life boat' theorists. Chuck out the Asians, blacks, aged and infirm. One would have thought democracy might have progressed a bit more than this. Maybe not.