Hi Rick,

I guess the problem with Utopias is that they all turn fascist: they all propose an idyllic solution to the complexities of the world, which could be brought about 'IF ONLY' one group or other - Jews, capitalists, rich peasants, priests, intellectuals, [insert out-group of choice here] - were 'extracted', liquidated, transmigrated or otherwise removed from the scenario.

So let's hope that we don't ever have any more Utopias, no more Nazi Germanies, or Pol Pots, or Leninist New States, that we have only the real world to deal with. What do we do about it ? How can we minimise, if not eliminate, all of the major problems of the world - global warming, racism, sexism - without picking on some out-group like immigrants and people who have more than one child in the time-honoured fashion of demagogues and fascists everywhere, Left and Right ?

Joe Lane

Ah, so here we have this oft-proclaimed Utopian age of prosperity; driven by economic growth, population growth, immigration, and no shortage of apologists proposing other idyllic solutions (IF ONLY the neo-Malthusians would shut up, IF ONLY the neo-Luddites would disappear, IF ONLY people opposed to eliminating borders would hive off, and so on). Your statement says unequivocally that it is destined to degenerate into a fascist dystopia (and some claim that it already has). Thanks for making that clear.

I don’t think you’re saying that we should just give up on our problems, and I agree that there has been too much collateral and direct damage in past attempts to solve problems. However, if it is clear that our sheer numbers our creating problems (and you may or may not agree with that), then what should we do?

Rick, mate, if there is one failing in the anti-pops it's the 'sheer numbers' argument. Not proven. Not by a long shot. Look, here's a clue that will give your argument some traction.

Focus on the urban pull of people in Africa. It's a shocker. There you have families of six and seven people people with no hope. Go with the Greens and aothers and crack down hard on corporate excesses and the rampant greed of some capitalists.

As it is now, you guys look like loonies. Yes, I know you can say you're 'dreamers' who will one day be proven wrong, but so far you're so far off message that you appear to be some sort of post millenium cult.

...infrastructure has left government very heavily indebted. This seems in conflict with the "Growth is good" ethos.
Posted by Fester

Hi Fester, You are correct. The voo-doo economics of population growth means that it is good for real estate agents but bad for the economy. Our national debt in 1980 was around 8 billion. It has climbed to around 640 billion now, even with massive asset sales. Those houses you see being built are largely funded by debt. That is, each one of us on average, are consuming well above what we are producing. As the population grows, our debt spirals upward.

To Bernie, Jo and Cheryl, it is a matter of what do you want left of the natural world ? It reminds me of a Catholic priest who screamed at me as a fifteen year old , "that until the last tree is chopped down........there is no such thing as overpopulation".

The "reduce consumption" and everything will be "OK" people, need to realize that this strategy is a monumental failure. I realize that it is hard to throw away your cultural baggage.... but we are not down to our last breeding pair. It is time for a reality check and help those species and the planet, we are destroying.

Rational argument will never change many ...we need to appeal to emotions. The " road kill" of tortured mammals, displaced by new housing starts? After a few months, there is none left to kill and this uncomfortable sight is removed.

Population boosters, eyes shut to the misery caused to the native world, have trouble with their moral compass. Population stabilisation helps reduce poverty, by making people scarcer and hence more "valuable". That is, their labour is worth more.

Big business loves population growth as not only do they sell more units, it also keeps the price of labour down and it enslaves the workers with huge housing costs.......hence a compliant workforce.

Muddled thinking from green left boosters, combined with the power of land speculators to corrupt the political process, is resulting in an economic and ecological mess.

Cheers everyone.

“an unthinking mouthpiece for industry and fundamentalist religion.”Ha, now THAT’S funny!

I can assure you that I am no fan of Big Industry, and if you’ve read any of my posts here on the subject, you’d also know that I am likewise no fan of religion.

On the subject of Big Industry, I might add that your assertion regarding the Wikipedia entry sounded like something the tinfoil-hat brigade would come up with.

I’m curious though about your reference to the Australian – is there a false Clownfish at loose in the world?Apart from a few comments on the brilliant Jack Marx’s sadly-now-silent blog, I don’t think I’ve ever commented on the Australian. Perhaps you mean the ABC news site? The only Age blog I comment on is Steven Walker’s music blog.

Sarcasm may indeed be the lowest form of wit, but if I occasionally stoop to mockery, it’s because I long ago learned, that the one thing that po-faced dogmatists, be they gibbering Creationists or deep-green Gaiaists, really can’t stand is being made fun of.

Besides, in the face of outrageous nonsense, sometimes you just have to be like my great sceptical heroes Penn & Teller, and stand up and say loud and clear, “Bu11sh!t!”

Call it for what it is.

...cont'd

cont'd ...

As I’ve said elsewhere, if it seems like I’m overly hard on the “green left”, it’s only because I’m the more sorely outraged by the egregious betrayal of my sincere beliefs, by educated – and not-so-educated –fools like Hansen and Brown, and by groups like Greenpeace, hypocrites who trade on their assumed mantle of virtue to get away with outright lies and deception (one only has to look at their ads on this very site to see they’re still telling whoppers).

But I’m not so much outraged, as truly alarmed by the witterings of the sustainable population lobby. These krancks might like to argue that they’re genuinely altruistic, but their own writings betray their peculiar and deep-rooted misanthropy, which seems to admit of no fundamental distinctions between a human being and a beetle. At least some of these miserable environmental Calvinists are finally admitting their desire to exert the ultimate control – life or death – over the recalcitrant hordes of humanity who stand between them and their utopian ideals.

The problem with utopias, as both Orwell and Huxley knew only too well, is that they have a way of turning ugly. 20th century history has shown us only too well how the terrible faith of dogmatic idealists has merely paved the road to the gulag and the killing field.

“Nothing is evil in the beginning,” as Tolkien wrote of Sauron, his own fictional personification of perculiarly 20th century evil, “he was not indeed wholly evil, not unless all 'reformers' who want to hurry up with 'reconstruction' and 'reorganization' are wholly evil, even before pride and the lust to exert their will eat them up".
And that, Sancho my friend, is exactly where I fear the terribly certainties of the deep-green misanthropes will end.

As Tolkien’s fellow inkling, Lewis, so wisely said, “those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.”