Efranke
You grossly misrepresent the argument of Kippen and McDonald. They found that the effect of migration on the aging population is asymmetrical. While increasing migration will not ameliorate the aging population, decreasing migration will retard the aging process. Hence, they argued for continuation of migration at about current levels:

“Given current trends in fertility and mortality, annual net migration to Australia of at least 80 000 persons is necessary to avoid spiralling population decline and substantial falls in the size of the labour force. This level of annual net migration also makes a worthwhile and efficient contribution to the retardation of population ageing. Levels of annual net migration above 80 000 become increasingly ineffective and inefficient in the retardation of ageing.”

Apologies that should have read

“… decreasing migration will ACCELERATE the aging process …”

You are right that Kippen and McDonald introduce a note of much-needed realism into the demographic debate, by showing how hard it is to engineer significant changes in the direction of population levels away from underlying demographic trends. Hence both massive increases in population (say, to 50 million by the middle of the century) and significant decreases (say, to the 8-12 million advocated by Tim Flannery) are equally unrealistic.

It’s worth looking at what these demographers say would be needed to cut the population to 12 million (the upper end of Flannery’ s estimate of a “sustainable” population) by the middle of the century:

… to achieve the aim of this projection, we would have to remove 100 000 persons net from Australia every year for the next 50 years. However, to keep the population at 12 million once that target had been reached, we would have to switch to positive immigration from 2048 onwards. …. The age structures of this projection are interesting in that initially the population becomes much older than the standard (36 per cent aged 65 years and over in 2048 compared to 24 per cent for the standard). However, after 2048, the population becomes younger again, ending in 2098 with a very similar age structure to that of the standard. Thus, this projection leads to severely fluctuating age structures.

They conclude:

“Substantial population decline is difficult to achieve in anything but the very long term because of the momentum for population increase inherent in Australia's present age structure.”

So, I echo Pericles’ challenge

How do those of you who advocate a reduction in population to Flannery’s estimate of about 10 million plan to remove 100,000+ people net a year from Australia for the next 50 years?

and how do you propose to cope with the massive increase in the dependency ratio (the proportion of the population not of working age) that this will generate?

Given the 350 word limit here, and the length of my response to the requests about how to reduce population, I have posted it on my blog and here is the link:

http://sustainablesalmonarm.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-to-reduce-population

Rick

Seriously, Rick S, is that all?

>>how to reduce population, I have posted it on my blog<<

Allow me to summarise (and you could easily have fitted this within 350 words.)

1.“Let Mother Nature take her course”
2.Halt immigration.
3.Halt overseas aid, except where it is linked to contraception
4.Remove financial support for having children

That's it.

There are a few obvious holes here. But the most glaring must be the admission that in fact, you have no plan.

To quote from your blog, “If anyone reading this has other ideas, I welcome them.”

Which was, kind of, my point.

There are an awful lot of holier-than-thou self-righteous people out there preaching to us about the need for population control, none of whom has even the sketchiest notion of how this might be brought about. You have just qualified yourself into the second category, at least.

If you ran a business, you would understand the need to quantify the results of any action before you pitch a plan. You will need to use estimates, since – being something new – you won't have history to rely upon. But at least you have to try.

Your blog entry fails to address any of the key issues. I'll re-state them here, and renew the request to the solution-deniers for some input.

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

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

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

And I make absolutely no apology for responding to any airy-fairy “oh dear, there's too many people” Chicken Littles with the same request.

Is there an answer, or is there not?

If there is, what is it?

If there is not, how should we change our conduct as individuals, since we have admitted that we are unable to change the big picture?

Pericles’ strawman arguments are easy but tedious to dismantle. For instance, he ominously warns us that any attempt to curb population growth would result in Australia becoming a scary, China-like dystopian state, replete with punishments for unauthorised pregnancies. Evidently nobody pointed out to Pericles that it is immigration, not natural reproduction, which is driving Australia’s population growth. If it weren’t for the ridiculously high levels of immigration that the major parties have imposed upon the country, Australia’s population would be in the process of stabilising, much like the population of Europe. So natural increase isn’t the problem – immigration is. That means that if we want to stabilise our population, we need to permanently reduce immigration levels.

Fortunately, cutting immigration is a relatively easy thing to. If natural increase was the prime driver of Australia’s population growth, then yes, the solution wouldn’t be so simple. However, we aren’t facing that problem. All that we need to do is reduce immigration to much saner levels, thereby bringing Australia in line with the rest of the industrialised world.

Pericles states: “If population is the problem, what is the answer? Stop. Having. Children.” Australians, by and large, already have. Our national birthrate is below replacement levels. But, as I’ve already stated, it isn’t natural reproduction which is driving our rapid rate of population growth. Thus, Pericles is barking up the wrong tree.

[Continued below..]

Of course, Pericles thinks that reducing immigration is somehow immoral. It is Australia’s obligation, he informs us, to accept the world’s poor, miserable masses.

He states: “What happens to the people we turn away. Are we happy to condemn them to an early grave, so long as they go and die where we can't see them? I guess that's all right then.”

By using such emotive language, Pericles positions himself as a great humanitarian, a true champion of the underprivileged, while making the rest of us who want to reduce immigration seem like heartless, selfish brutes.

There are two main problems with this argument. The first is that the vast majority of foreigners settling in Australia are not destitute refugees, but economic migrants. Given that most of these economic immigrants are education and skilled, they are hardly the type of people who would be living in abject poverty back in their old countries. They are merely economic opportunists

The other flaw in Pericles’ argument is that Australia cannot save the world, no matter how many people we import. Even if we opened our doors to unfettered immigration, it would make no difference whatsoever on a global scale. All it would do is destroy our own civilisation and transform our country into a water starved, food scant and quality of life nightmare.

Needless to say, turning Australia into another overpopulated Third World dump is not going to save the world’s poor from an “an early grave.” (Incidentally, does Pericles not realise that the only way to prevent people from being turned away would be to grant everybody on the planet the right to migrate to Australia? Is that what he is advocating?)