Rhian,

The survivors of the Black Death undoubtedly did have the advantages of previously accumulated capital and infrastructure, but you are ignoring land per person and other considerations. You might recall that there was massive emigration from Europe to the New World in the last two centuries (and not the other way around), even though the infrastructure, etc. had to be built up from scratch. Likewise, no one disputes that the industrial revolution raised living standards, just the capacity of our technology to go on supporting unending growth in population and consumption.

Mil-observer,

Why do you think that people worried about limits to growth, who can range from the Far Right to the Far Left in their political views, automatically agree on anything else and are part of some conspiracy? If our water problems (outside of Tasmania and the tropical North) are entirely due to the politicians' (very real) neglect of infrastructure, why are they building expensive, power hungry desalination plants and buying back irrigation water, even though it will cost agricultural production? See Asa Wahlquist's "Thirsty Country" for the details on this.

Cheryl,

If people listen to Ludwig and future generations decide that he was overly cautious, they can always increase the population later. If they listen to you and you are wrong, it means a high probability of dying in the famines, epidemics, and communal violence that accompany a collapse.

Mil-observer, you haven't answered my previous question. Fair enough. A single post is easy to miss.

Just to confirm, your group, The Citizen's Electoral Council, believes that Martin Bryant carried out the Port Arthur massacre on orders from the British Royal Family. Do you share that view?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Electoral_Council

It would be nice to know the sort of things you'll believe before taking your arguments seriously.

Whether or not one believes the earth is heating up, its not a bad idea to reduce carbon emissions. That's a starting point.

If though, you load the equations with the maximum values, as some people have done, the results will allow some reprehensible people to run scaremongering campaigns as the Unsustainable Unpeople have done.

The notion of reducing population means enacting sterilisation campaigns that we saw in India, China and South America, as King has pointed out. I'm old enough to remember the reason why - people in the first world feared a population explosion in the third world.

So we stood back and watched women's rights be handed over to the state. The Unsustainable Unpeople lobby have a monoploy on unscientific scare campaigns. Their motivation is quasi-religious - apocalyptic visions of a world burning, floods, fire, famine, etc.

In short, they are the lunatic fringe who have, in this little blog, done more damage to Brown's Green Party than they can ever hope to repair.

Whether or not one believes their feet are walking them into dangerous ways, like showing up to have too many more CO2 profligate children and grandchildren, its not a bad idea to chop them off.

Now THAT's a starting point '.'!

Lester Brown has published an article in the May Scientific American on the potential of the global food crisis to cause breakdown of public order in certain Third World countries and turn them into failed states. He is mainly concerned about very low levels of world food stocks, shortages of fresh water and the pumping dry of aquifers under major food growing regions, loss of topsoil, population growth, and the potential for real trouble from climate change.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=civilization-food-shortages&sc=WR_20090428

Brown is an agronomist and the head of the Worldwatch Institute, which is supported by grants from a number of US foundations and the German and Norwegian governments. Hardly your garden variety lunatic.

Divergence

There has been steady and sometimes massive migration to the USA in the past 400 years, but during the first 250 years of that average living standards in the USA were well below those in Western Europe. This was not in spite of, but because of, the USA’s low population density. Read John Locke’s second treatise on government published in the late seventeenth century, which draws some fascinating comparisons between (then) land-rich people-poor America and the UK. Locke says:

“There cannot be a clearer demonstration of any thing, than several nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in land, and poor in all the comforts of life … This shews how much numbers of men are to be preferred to largeness of dominions.”

http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr05.txt

It was only in the 20th century – when its population had reached 75 million - that the USA overtook the UK’s per capita GDP.

I accept that the world’s population can’t continue to grow indefinitely. I just don’t think that policy intervention to stop growth are necessary, feasible or desirable.

It’s not necessary, because the evidence suggests that population growth is slowing and population will probably peak anyway within a few decades.

It’s not feasible because policy interventions don’t have a major effect on fundamental demographic variables unless they’re horribly draconian and intrusive (e.g. compulsory sterilisation, one-chid polices).

And it’s not desirable because growth in population in the past 200 years was mainly due to falling mortality rates and consequent longer life expectancy. Birth rates have fallen too, but not quite as fast as death rates. I think the falling death rate is a good thing, and am not concerned that it causes population growth.

See demographic transition here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition