Malcolm, you said that "anti-pops say we are eating the future." But it's not just the "anti-pops" that are saying that! Now I know you won't agree with anything I say because for some reason that can only be explained by genetic predisposition, you won't stop ranting long enough to take in the full picture. All you growthists seem to take great delight in shooting the messengers in order to prop up your narrow view of the future, however, I'll try once again.............

The "future" you depict relies on cheap and abundant energy. For the past 150 odd years, that energy has come from cheap and abundant fossil fuels. mostly oil and coal. We have passed, or are very close to having passed peak oil. Next will come peak coal as oil supply become severely restricted and coal usage ramps up to fill the void. Next to peak will be natural gas. Don't forget that by then, LPG will also be severely depleted.

Then there's Phosphorus. That marvellous substance that is 100% vital to life. All life! Currently, the Western and developed world is flushing it down the toilet and into the seas. Can it be recovered when we need it? Certainly, but only using massive and I mean MASSIVE amounts of energy. The trouble is, the energy from oil and coal and perhaps even gas has depleted to the point whereby that massive energy will no longer be available.

Can technology saw us? Absolutely, but not without abundant energy. Nuclear? Too late. Time of commission to full power is 20 years. Solar? Possible, despite the energy involved in making the plant, but we'd require major upgrades to the distribution lines. Because of commercialisation, nobody will act yet because there's no big money in it for them! By the time there is....... too late!

I hold no illusions that we're already in population overshoot and there's nothing that can be done to avert a disastrous future. Even if I could convince the "growthists," like everything else I've mentioned (and I've barely touched the surface), it TOO LATE!

"If are politicians are given a choice between desalinisation plants and a one child policy, I know which one they will choose."

Well, they are currently doing more of both.

We are not China, so nobody will ever tell you straight in the face that "you are not allowed to have [more] children". Instead, the Australian system is to overwhelm you up with red-tape: "Oh, you want children, that's great, just sign here please and here and here and here... fill this questionnaire in triplicate, wait for the lab's genetic tests, make sure you have read and understood all the department's brochures about raising children (it's only a matter of time before testing is introduced as well). Of course you know that children need this, and that and this and that, and you do understand that if you fail to provide them with everything up-to-our-standards we will take them away (and you will be liable for the costs)" ... ad nauseum, more humane and not less effective than China.

Considered having children? time to find better and cheaper hobbies.

The simple reality is that the operation of our civilization entails irreversibly using us the limited natural capital. That capital includes many other components than oil, fertile soil and aquifer water. It is becoming scarce. Society will have to power down because there is nothing they can do to stop this natural capital from declining. There are already too many people consuming this natural capital too rapidly.

The article didn't say much about the core argument of the anti-pops: depletion of natural resources. Here in Canberra, the insanity of encouraging more people to come when we are running out of water is plain to see. The local environment is deteriorating, but more houses go up. Encouraging more people is part of the growth mantra, just keep building, forget about the future.

There are some who envision a more compact, but happier population for Australia and the world, but their voices aren't heard. And what does the author think we should do about the Murray Darling, while building up our population base?

Malcolm King loftily declares something he disbelieves to be “blatantly untrue”, and accuses people concerned about over-population of getting their information from You Tube and Facebook, and accuses us of being “creative in sampling and citing (our) causes”.

What a cheek from anyone taking notice of the ratbag Democrat (retired) Sandra Kanck. She is the only person I know of who has called for a one-child policy, and a population of 7,000,000. Most people wanting a population policy for Australia have started off by asking for a cessation in immigration; a far cry from Kanck the Krank’s blathering. “Sustainable Population Australia” is a bunch of navel gazers who have never been listened to since their inception; hide-bound lefties.

King should be thinking more about the 13,000,000 Flannery came up with and pushed until he was given the Australian of the Year award. And, King’s old tired old claim that 20% of the world’s Anti-humanist and imperialist my eye!
population consumes 80% of recourses might be true, but only because the 20% haven’t made a hobby of breeding as many people as they can, like the 80%, who have proved that high population is a killer. King and his kind also overlooks that if it wasn’t for the wealth of the 20%, most of the 80% would be dead anyway. The new world needs an efficient use of resources to supply a small population. The current burgeoning population is killing off the planet.

The presumption by King that all people concerned about growing populations are all left-wing tree-huggers who hate capitalism is absolute rubbish. But King, so critical of where others get their information, is as wrong as he claims other people are.

It is not capitalism or industry themselves that are the problem; it’s the sort of dumb capitalists we have in Australia and the wrong industries.

How does King explain the many relatively lightly populated (compared with Australia) countries who are doing very well for themselves because they stick to intelligent industries, not the dumbo peasant ones Australia relies on:

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digging stuff out of the ground and letting others manufacture the goods and, for pity’s sake, the building industry which is one of the main reasons for our stupidly high immigration intake at present. And, let’s not forget the education “industry” screaming out for more overseas students so that they can supply Australia’s managerial and professional needs to the detriment of Australians.

There is very little stamped “Made in Australia” anymore; there are no bloody jobs left, but still we import more and more people to a country which is two thirds desert! We refuse to take the education of our own seriously; we are too lazy to investigate clever, modern industry. We would rather rely on bringing in more and more people to buy foreign made goods and, if there are no jobs for these immigrants, they can rely on the dole and their cultural networks to look after themselves, as the rest of us will have to before the century is out. Australia is stuffed.

Australians, led by our politicians, are a bunch of ignorant boofheads to be cheering on immigration and importing foreigners to a country that is two thirds desert!

King brings up another old chestnut: technology will provide. Hell’s bells! Australia is too terrified of technology to use it, preferring to stick primary industry and mining and sport. Kids these days don’t want to learn anything; they want to be sporting ‘heroes’. Few of make it, so they get the few crap jobs left to them by our wonderful politicians who have not, and will not work for a new and modern Australia. One would have thought that smart industries would be at the forefront of what passes for minds with politicians – they have, after all, let all the manufacturing jobs go overseas. But, no just bring out a couple of hundred thousand non-English speakers each year, and she’ll be apples.

Kings seems to have got himself a catchy new phrase of people looking to reduce populations: “anti-pops”. One old word does for him and his scientist friends – idiots.