Clowbfish,

You appear to be against nearly everything. Are you? If not what exactly are you for?

Are you for perpetual population growth?
Are you for increasing consumption ad infinitum?
Are you for forest destruction?
Are you for aquifer depletion or exhausting fish stocks by extracting resources at a rate much faster than the resources can regenerate themselves?
Are for believing that Earth will expand to meet the desires of the human population filling it?
Do you believe that by growing and exploiting resources as noted you will improve your own well being and if so for how long (to the nearest couple of decades will do)?

Perhaps I exaggerate but it would be interesting to find out exactly where you stand on at least some of these issues.

Perhaps I do you an injustice and you are simply after the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If so you may never be satisfied as none of these things are simply black and white.

mal-observer comments "These guys pose a clear and present danger, the disastrous and murderous results of which the world has seen before."

Yes, absolutely. The shrill overpopulation deniers, coupled with growthists around the world, pose a danger to this civilization similar to the dangers underscored by Ronald Wright and others in past civilizations. He documents the parallels, and points out that, unless we change our ways, we will be doomed by our own success, and fall into the largest "progress trap" we have ever created.

Ronald Wright, Jerrard Diamond, Paul Ehrlich, Meadows et al who wrote Limits to Growth 30, 40 years ago to get a picture of what is going on on the planet.

Can anyone on the pro growth side provide some researched literature that provides any sort of convincing arguments that supports ongoing population growth.

I'm not referring here to some religious ideology as per the pope, Christian and Islamic or neo conservative fundamentalists. I'm looking for evidence based arguments.

Unfortunately, the pro-growth side has no convincing arguments, so they resort to "the sky is falling" scare tactics -- "we have to support an aging population," and "our economy will collapse," and "without more minds to work on them, we cannot solve our problems," and on and on. They are so darned negative about everything. Overpopulation deniers, to refer to the title of this thread, are the true wannabe imperialists in the crowd. Little do they suspect that Mother Nature holds the trump card.

But ask away. I'm not optimistic that you're get a convincing answer, or even an answer at all.

kulu: consider Jared Diamond 100% discredited. Fish-and-chip wrapping. I easily detonated his dodgy, self-contradictory thesis on 1994 Rwanda in an earlier OLO cross thread (see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8838#140663 ). It's time Diamond confessed his crime against historiography and stuck to relatively more harmless pursuits like coffee, croissants and gasbagging among other Ivy League snobs. What did Diamond do? Slick marketing? Opportunistic trend surfing? Telling stories to salve the consciences of a pseudo-aristocratic diplomatic circuit with whom he sympathized? Probably a bit of all three motives.

But he actually did not, by any conjuring of imagination, "do history"; certainly not when he presumed to lecture on modern history, but could only insinuate causality in a most passive, implicitly genocidal, and politically gutless manner.

And Diamond's offence is not the common liberalist academic misdemeanor of pushing mealy-mouthed "uncertainty" on some facts, as if pledging the fake "intellectual humility" that is in inverse proportion to their own grant- and advance-grabbing avarice, bureaucratic ruthlessness, and preoccupation with hierarchical rank. Any self-proclaimed "historian" making such wildly oscillating and claims on "causality" - as Jared Diamond does on Rwanda - is rather like a purported "surgeon" feeling very unsure about what that scalpel-thingy is for. The impostor-surgeon cannot make a proper *in*cision, if at all; Diamond could only make a *de*cision to get something together for publication to a targeted audience in the marketplace.

Of course, maybe you claim to have some substantial defence for Diamond's incompetent attempt at modern African history; it would be a first, because all we got on the earlier thread was some toadying genuflection to a well-publicized celebrity toff.

Ehrlich is probably a worse case of professional ineptitude, though apparently Ehrich was a much braver example than the clause-dropping each-way-better Diamond. Nonetheless, to make such grand predictions and then be proved 100% wrong should properly annihilate a writer's reputation, career and royalties.

But somehow there's a groupie cult sticking to Ehrlich! To paraphrase from recent English Cricket commentary (on their team's loss to the Netherlands): "that'd be like a bookmaker setting a rocking horse as odds-on favorite to win the Grand National"...

Have you stopped beating your wife yet, kulu?

That's pretty much the calibre of rhetorical question you've presented me with, but I'll answer: No, of course I'm not "for" any of those things.

I stated quite clearly, on an earlier article on this topic, that of course overpopulation is a concern - but that it's one that the world can and is addressing.

As I pointed out then, world population growth has slowed dramatically since its peak in the 60s, and is expected to stabilise some time this century. Will we be able to feed everyone? Thanks to the work of heroes like Norman Borlaug, I think the answer is yes.

But don't just take my word for it. It gave me no end of amusement to point out that even the IPCC implicitly accepts this probability, if one examines its assumptions about global income in its scenarios.

The IPCC expects income in the developing world to at least *equal*, if not exceed current developed-world incomes by the end of the century. This will be a fantastic achievement, not least because it is simply good that more people will enjoy the sort of living standard as us, but because history shows that well-off, well-educated women almost invariably *choose* to have smaller families. History also demonstrates that it is invariably wealthy countries that can afford to protect their environment.

I did, and do, concede that in some ways Australia is a special case: Our geological history means that this continent is less able than almost any other to support a large population. However, given our birthrate is naturally negative, such measures as a one-child policy are extremist and unnecessary. Careful - and non-discriminatory - adjustment of our immigration intake is all that may be needed.

What I am most certainly *against* is a group with a cultic, profoundly misanthropic, ideological obsession wanting to assert control over people's reproductive choices. Whether its the Church telling people to have more children, or green groups telling them to have less, I think the admonishment to "get your rosaries off our ovaries" is most apt.