(With the word limit on responses, I continue what I began yesterday)

Only six percent of Australia’s land is arable, so how do the proponents of population growth propose to double that amount of land to support the food production needed by that number of people? Indeed, how will we prevent that number of people putting houses on that scarce arable land?

We are struggling now to provide enough water in the Murray-Darling Basin for all those who need it to survive. It’s a worldwide phenomenon – check out Fred Pearce’s “When the Rivers Run Dry”.

Population growth is fuelling 80% of Australia’s increasing greenhouse gas emissions. The resulting climate change, including decreasing rainfall and increasing temperatures, which will create intolerable living conditions in some parts of Australia (where presumably King might want these extra 22 milion to live), is not spurious science as King asserts. It comes from our best scientists in the CSIRO.

A basic principle of Sustainable Population Australia is that the size of any population must be kept within the limits of its natural resource base. Sure, we can import food and energy then claim to have solved the problem of our larger population, but in doing so we will have irresponsibly transferred our problem to other people and future generations.

If we as Australians are to accept our ethical obligations, we should take the actions required to stop growing our population and to live sustainably within our own resource base. If we do not, then it will be forced upon us by the limits that nature sets, but on its timetable, and in much more draconian ways.

It is a clever tactic to invent a term “anti-populationist”, and then use it to deride those who want to limit our population, but the reality is that Sustainable Population Australia is pro-planet. And that is surely not a bad thing when we don’t have a replacement one.

Sandra Kanck
National President
Sustainable Population Australia

Divergence-Kanck, back with an avenging abacus! Unfortunately for them, the abacus just repeats the same simple, long-discredited equations...

Yes, clownfish states simple historical facts about reduced surpluses; “free-trade” fanaticism since Thatcher steadily diminished protectionism – and thereby European agriculture in general - as if food surpluses were intrinsically evil. Of course, neo-Malthusians and their more overtly fascist comrades indeed regard them so, because surpluses allow for fairer distribution, industrial and employment diversification and, last but not least, leisure and learning. As Cheryl notes, none of that registers the slightest blip on the imperial-revanchists' radar screens.

Divergence “seems to think” that I “seem to think” that I “won an argument” over Diamond's bogus historiography on Rwanda. Well no, I rather *know* with calm, cognitive certainty that I annihilated Diamond's pretensions by exposing his confusion, inconsistency and disingenuous approach to the subject. A simple exercise in logic, clear as algebra and flowcharts, and on record.

But that hasn't stopped Divergence from trying the same three-card tricks over data from Rwanda. Indeed, the same warped entymologist views on humanity came about during the mid-19th century Irish case (and since, retrospectively), when facts first revealed most emphatically that Malthus was the dangerous fraud we understand him to be still. Of course, febrile anti-catholic bigotry like protag's comes into its own there, because blaming genocide on its victims is a favorite imperialist-fascist pastime, enjoyment of which the British Empire did not avoid.

Perhaps Divergence's most outlandish claim and red herring is: “Growth of coffee means nothing, as ~60% of smallholders grow it too.” On Divergence's hacienda, he thereby gives priority to the growth of straw, thus to produce nothing more than a poor imitation of a humanoid with a sign scrawled “Mil-Observer”.

While we're at it, how did Ireland's population reach its recent heights when Malthusian genocidalists and other degenerates claimed (as their latter-day acolytes still claim) that Ireland's population outran its “sustainable limits” in the mid-19th century? Let's see (they've tried answering it before): because modern Ireland's population apparently eats petrol and microchips...or, yes, they didn't know about “peak oil”...etc.

Clownfish I have obviously wasted my time in responding to you in an adult manner with reasoned argument and referrals as I get back the same emotional trash many of the the other idiotic posters keep spewing out.

Did you take the few minutes needed to look at the video link I provided? Have you actually read Lester Brown or any other recognized authority on any of the issues you so confidently presume to judge?

Yes Chinese dams have taken water away from communities further downstream (and I'm not sure this applies to the Ganges) but this evidence does not at all contradict the evidence of the melting Himalayan glaciers.

Until you can provide any sort of decent contra arguments to those claiming overpopulation is a serious problem that needs addressing I cannot take you seriously and you certainly will not convert anyone who has considered the problem to your way of thinking unless you do replace your insulting and derogatory rhetoric with reasoned argument.

Milob

"“...the massive immigration over the past decade or so seems to have left governments with huge infrastructure debts, incurred by providing for the extra people”.

Since when? How did it “seem” so? The question is not “which country are you in”, but more “what planet/drugs are you on?”"

I should be asking you what drugs you are on. Take Queensland, for example. It will have gone from no debt in the late 90s to well over 70 billion by the end of the current parliamentary term. All coinciding with the federal governments massive immigration increase. All incurred in a period of great prosperity and massive revenue increase. All incurred because of the massive infrastructure required by all the extra people.

Pretty clear to anyone who looks at the facts. Clearly the facts come a distant second to your dogmas, and are invisible when they conflict.

Your funny Milob,

I got sucked in by you, thinking you might be "human". But you appear to be just a paid stirrer, a mercenary for the growth lobby....and/or religious vessel who believes in the means justify the ends. Anyhow, keep up the posts devoid of truth or reason....they are hilarious.

I love your hate comments ".... reducing their populations to dysfunctional, grey, gay and drug-addicted decrepitude" and your admiration of "any other devout group that reproduces at healthy and competitive rates".

A beautiful insight into your murky mind, uncluttered by compassionate reason, full of hate for this world and the longterm health of the planet. But I guess you think "god" will reward you for your lies with "heaven"................you can't wait for the world to "stuff" itself....the faster the better.

As some have worked out here, the anti-pops are not environmentalists. They are radical functionalists born and bred from the socio-biological paradigm. They are anti-people.

Not once have they discussed reducing consumption through price point, distribution or reallocating resources. Modern economics is dead to them. They don't subscribe to capitalism.

They have no policy implementation program except to reduce people, ie, the consumer. For them we are simply economic animals. They are the anti-thesis of the Greens in that they direct the blame not at the corporates - the Enrons of the world - they simplistically blame you and me. And one of us has to go.

When you peel away their obscurantist dogma and dodge the backflips, you see them for what they are: the lonely people. They are as TS Eliot said, the Hollowmen, head pieces filled with straw.

They are bleating now because King set them up. So not only are their arguments silly, unsustainable and exhausted, the anti-pops themselves are embarrassed. It's the embarrassment of the irrelevant.