This article was like a cold shower on a frosty morning. It explains the silence from groups I would've expected to be far more vocal than they have been - they 'wuz' bought. Even David Suzuki had a price.

I can only concur with CJ Morgan's sentiments:

"My feeling is that the population/materialism bubble will eventually burst, but it will be involuntary and calamitous, and will only happen after the environmental destruction of the planet gets much worse.

Meanwhile, of course, it will provide people everywhere with plenty to fight about."

What I find so infuriating is that we could achieve a biologically diverse and self-sustaining environment starting now, but we're not going to are we? We're just going to continue as we are till there is nothing left to argue over.

Rick S

I find your parallel between the creation/evolution debate most apt.

Maybe I should just go back to my old bad habits as well.

What is most obvious from the anti-populationists is that they didn't expect such an immediate and hostile reaction about their half baked ideas. Blame Kanck and the Unsustainable UnAustralian Unpeople lobby.

They have failed to provide a methodology to explain how they would reduce population. They have produced some end of millenium style cult responses to why poopulation should be cut. eg, the a sunset for me is pretty, for them is a blazing ball of hydrogen explosions. They're operating on a level not much above Aztec blood sacrifices.

Their posts have a real Heavens Gate feel about them, which says more about their apocalyptic belief systems and psychological predispositions.

They can't work out whether this de-populating should start in Australia or be a global phenomenon.

Many of their posts say the focus shouldn't be on reducing the population in Australia but cutting our immigration program. Hmmm. I went to Baxter in SA and saw many of the 'illegal' immigrants as well as people who saved everything to come here and came by plane. The two things they share is poverty and hope. Measuring their potential in terms of energy consumption is obscene and reeks of Fortress Australia.

They are anti-capitalist. They have put sustainability before the economy which is why much of their strident language sounds like we're heading towards Year One in Kampuchea. Like the Khmer Rouge, they are basically agrarian socialists with beards and goatees.

How they can claim the moral high ground is baffling as they are instrumentalists with people's value measured by how much energy we consume. Talk about a dystopia.

Shaz/Baz said.......

"Amie : In response to ShazBaz Water Desalination ;" We haven't got Time" .

I am not sure what you have in mind to achieve your rapid Population decline ; is it local or World wide ."

Shaz/Baz, I doubt you actually read my post properly. What part of population overshoot, as a result of peak oil, don't you understand?

There have been numerous reports to world wide Governments stating that unless we do something to mitigate the disruption of peak oil at least 20 years before the peak, the chances of 'business as usual' simply will no longer be possible, so if world oil supplies truly peaked last year as many experts in that field believe, then your desal plans will never get off the drawing board.

Shaz/Baz, I've spent over three years studying the phenomenon of peak oil and the future for our children and grandchildren is frightening. It's only because of the cheap and abundant energy contained in oil that's allowed the human population to grow from approx. 1.2 billion in the mid 1800's, when oil was first pumped, to almost 7 billion today.

I very much hope I'm wrong, but once peak oil really begins to bite, I can see major wars fought over dwindling supplies, after all, wasn't the war in Iraq all about the US trying to secure it's oil supply? Since oil and oil alone has caused the population overshoot, what do you think will happen once the general population no longer has access to oil products? Hint! We'll have no need to artificially reduce the population. That will be done for us on a frightening time scale and yes! It will be world wide!

Pericles wrote: "What would you anticipate the impact of any population reduction policies to be on our economy?"

Well, I'm not actually advocating "population reduction" per se. Rather, I'm in favour of population stabilisation at around current levels. I don't see why one has to choose between one extreme or the other, that is, a significantly reduced population, as advocated by Tim Flannery, or a massively expanded population, as demanded by the big business groups which effectively dictate immigration policy in this country. Demanding that one decide between halving the population or doubling the population is a false dichotomy.

Do I believe that stabilising the population would have long-term adverse effects on Australia's economic prosperity? No. Europe and Japan have not only survived, but prospered, with stable populations. Growth zealots here in Australia may claim that economic progress depends on population growth. Research shows, however, that there is no correlation whatsoever between population growth and prosperity. While it may increase the overall size of the economy, population growth does not raise GDP per capita.

Maybe in the past there were economic benefits to be derived from having a bigger population and being able to attain economies of scale, but this no longer applies. With globalisation, the world has become our marketplace. The challenge today is to create export industries, not to stimulate internal demand.

In reality, economic wellbeing depends on increases in productivity, innovation, effective use of labour and capital, and trade, not domestic population size or growth. If population size and continued growth were the key to economic success, countries such as Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Finland would all be impoverished basket cases.

We do not need an ever-expanding population in this country, as the growth zealots claim. Our long-term prospects for environmental sustainability, social and cultural cohesion, political freedom, and a high quality of life will be much improved if our population were stabilised at around current levels, instead of doubling by mid century and then doubling again by the end of the century, which is what will happen if immigration continues at current rates.

Pericles wrote: "How would any population reduction policies be enforced, by whom, and what would be the penalties for non-compliance?"

Another straw man.

Who would enforce national immigration and border control policies? The same people who do now.

"And for extra marks, how would this impact our international relations? With China. With Indonesia. And with the United States."

Last time I checked, Australia was a sovereign nation with an inalienable right to determine the size and composition of its own population. Australia's policies on immigration and population are its own affair and should not be dictated by the phantom of "international opinion" which the pro-immigrationists like to conjure up.

I'm not sure where this "all eyes on Australia" notion originates from, but the idea that the whole world is closely scrutinising our immigration policies, just waiting to condemn Australia the moment we reduce immigration, is very silly.

Japan has a zero immigration policy. As do most Asian countries. As does most of Europe. It hasn't hurt their international relations.

After reading through the "arguments" put foward by the boosters, most of which are nothing but shrill, seriously unhinged, nonsensical rantings about the evils of opposing population growth (are Cheryl and mil-observer by any chance roommates in the same lunatic asylum?), I'm still left wondering why exactly Australia must continue to double its population every forty years.

How does this staggering rate of deliberate population growth, driven by the largest per capita immigration intake in the world, benefit the existing Australian population? Will continued population growth improve our quality of life? Will it alleviate our environmental problems? Will it reduce our carbon emissions? Will it address our water shortages? Will it solve our current account and foreign debt problems? How will it effect agricultural output as urban sprawl eats up the best remaining farmland? How will it effect the myriad of other problems already facing our citizens, such as urban congestion, overburdened public services and infrastructure, housing shortages, worsening socio-economic inequality, growing ethnic and cultural tensions, declining social capital and so on? When, exactly, is enough people enough?

Cheryl, if we don't concentrate on sustainability, then we won't have any economy to worry about. I'm not too sure how all you population growthists think we are going to feed all these extra people around the globe. We are having trouble feeding them all now and it will only get worse as the world's supplies of fertilizer run out. Here in Oz particularly, our low fertility soils need added nutrients in considerable quantities. You can't just rely on organic farming to produce anything on a broadacre scale. We also need water, which has been squandered in the past, and which will be in even shorter supply for farming even in non-drought years, now that the Federal government has decided to finally do something about environmental flows in the Murray-Darling system.

David
That is why we need to do more than think about maintaining population and we should see what can be done to reduce it as time goes by. If we don't do it here in Oz, then we can't expect the rest of the world to follow suit.

Once again, let me state that we live in a world with finite physical resources and once we use them up, we won't be able to sustain anything like the global population we currently have. The anti-Malthusians will then find they have been backing the wrong horse.