Lester Brown is a flake who continually fudges data to try and prop up his endless litany of failed predictions.

I have read Jared Diamond, and he's an engaging enough writer, even if he does have a curious approach to scientific method: I just know that I'm right, and it's up to the other guys to prove me wrong.

"Collapse" was an interesting study, but its problem was its inherent bias: Focussing on a handful of - usually extremely isolated, pre-technological - societies that did indeed collapse, but ignoring the majority that didn't.

Rhian wrote, "We’ve been over this ground before, ..."

We have indeed, in discussion at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6326&page=0 in response to my article "Living standards and our material prosperity" of 6 Sep 2007 at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6326&page=0

Rhian wrote, "A better measure might be real per capita consumption, ..."

I don't think so. As one example, a family that can afford the two cars that are typically needed to meet its transport needs in today's polluted and badly congested cities can scarcely be said to be better off than a family of a generation ago that could cope with only one car.

I would suggest that if Maddison argues that the English, who had been forced to work in the Satanic mills and hellish mine pits of 19th century England, had a higher quality of life than did their forefathers before they were driven off the land, then he is mistaken.

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Clownfish wrote, "Fossil fuels and metals were supposed to have run out decades ago, according to the Malthusians, but we pesky humans just keep finding new reserves and better technology."

Nevertheless the new reserves we find are vastly smaller than those already discovered and largely exhausted. Oil geologists have a fairly good idea of how much oil is left to be discovered. Even if their most optimistic estimates are correct -- and I hope they are -- we only have a decade or two at most before the rate of petroleum extraction declines, so we will face difficulty maintain current living standards for the earth's 6.7 billion inhabitants let alone for the 9 billion that world's population could reach.

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It's noteworthy that mil-obscurantist adamantly refuses to tell others the source of his profound knowledge of the diabolical Malthusian/neo-liberal/globalist world conspiracy (being so well noted, myself, for my own outspoken support for economic neo-liberal globalisation).

I had actually thought the Larouchians had a few worthwhile ideas, but if, as Sancho suggests that this may be the origin of the content of mil-obscurantist's inflammatory rantings, then that would cast them in a somewhat different light.

[ROFL! What creative little muffins, conjuring the accusation: "mil-observer conspires to plot conspiracy theories with scary conspiracy theorists". They'll probably feather-duster me with equally inventive youtube "research" next.]

(*Neo-Malthusianism by Numbers*, cont.)

Many of these free-trade speculative effects were inter-related and, unsurprisingly, compatible with the callous disregard for human welfare as espoused by neo-Malthusianism. A conspicuous example came with bourse gambling around "biofuels" i.e., inefficient and intensively processed extractions from food crops, promoted as substitutes for fossil fuels. Biofuels expanded the futile indeed destructive inflation of fuel prices directly into the wider market of foodstuffs. In turn, the unnecessary expansion of biofuel industry encouraged the delusion that such fuel sources were indeed necessary to cover presumed crude oil and other fuel shortages (some added outlandish claims about "biofuels' environmental friendliness"). Generally unaddressed for the corrupt scandal it so clearly was, such speculative, monetarist futility and greed intensified perceptions among the more gullible that demand from populations exceeded reserves of both food and fossil fuel.

But the barbarism of such mismanagement and immorality was clearest when many developing countries reported increased malnutrition where diversion into biofuels smashed staple food stocks. Again, neo-Malthusians either ignored such events, or quietly celebrated them.

When monetarist speculation on world bourses drove crude oil to absurd prices of USD100 and higher (seemingly set to reach USD200), neo-Malthusians crowed instead about "peak oil", convinced the situation proved simple supply problems. Of course, speculators from the parasitic, non-productive realm of hedge and equity funds never contradicted such claims: to do so would endanger their freedom to profit as the fickle inflation strangled productive businesses and workers alike, while liberalist state apparatchiks discreetly played their passive looter's role, taking advantage of speculation by increased consumption tax revenues. However, later much-reduced crude prices described no significant oil shortage, even though the oil cartels themselves (like the banks too) refused to reduce prices fully, preferring to use higher price plateaus to feed their own speculative interests and residual debt obligations. In all these processes, corrupt liberalist states were complicit, guided by notions of self-interest as facilitating, opportunistic pirates.

[cont.]

Nonetheless, significant later falls in crude prices after that spectacular binge in fuel speculation never shook neo-Malthusians from their dogmatic passion for ideas about teeming, beastly humanity made inevitably more savage and debased by some notionally vast deprivation from the natural environment itself. They held their mantras of "peak oil", "peak food", etc., to be just as sacred as their shibboleth "peak humanity" - a "peak" they wish to see cut down to mere foothills (as expressed gleefully by one of the more openly psychopathic neo-Malthusians KAEP: "their feet...walking them into dangerous ways, like...[having] too many more CO2 profligate children and grandchildren...chop them off").

4. HOSTILITY TOWARDS THE FERTILE POOR & WOMEN. A favorite preoccupation of Malthusian imperialists is the matter of birth rates among the poor (obsession common to the later pseudo-science of "Eugenics"). Today's neo-Malthusians unashamedly adopt the same arrogance and contempt, regarding reproduction among the poor as a problem similar to plagues of cane toads or locusts.

Posing concern for "women's control over their own reproductive systems", neo-Malthusians insinuate their vile misanthropic hostilities into faux-feminist assumptions! But the implication is a condescending one i.e., that women will naturally choose to avoid pregnancy and childbirth as yet more acts of primordial male oppression, and not possibly a progressive, healthy or well-adjusted choice by the pregnant woman herself if she is significantly educated. Unsurprisingly, neo-Malthusians spit more toxic venom still towards poor women, especially in developing countries. By such views, high rates of childbirth do not reflect the hard conditions of areas experiencing uncertainty around life expectancy. Yet such are the classic motives behind human beings' choice to create more offspring, just as some disadvantaged people choose to gamble in lotteries often as a more selfish, non-generational effort to overcome their misfortune.

In fact, development, technological advancement and responsible, compassionate but strong and highly-principled government have always been the most reliable, long-term sources of population stability. The opposite of such civilized preconditions are: cultural degeneracy via encouragement of self-interest; prostitution of public services, and; enslavement by fanatical monetarist illusions meant to be untouchable for community and government.

Mil-observer, do I understand you correctly when I interpret your point 4 that you think poor women 'choose' to have more children in the hope that at least a couple will survive as there are poor survival rates of children reaching adulthood?

"[ROFL! What creative little muffins, conjuring the accusation: "mil-observer conspires to plot conspiracy theories with scary conspiracy theorists". They'll probably feather-duster me with equally inventive youtube "research" next."

No, I surmised that you're a member of the Citizens Electoral Council, and asked if you agree with their bizarre conspiracy theories. The answer is, apparently, "yes", although you've chosen to dodge the direct question rather than defend your beliefs. It looks dishonest.

Why should we pay attention to your arguments if you won't own up to your philosophy and political allegiance?