Tsk, tsk, if only all those nasty brown people would stop having so many children, we white people could go on living in the style to which we have become accustomed.

But who'll clean the pools?

Anyway, one good DK's lyric deserves another:

Now (we) can go where people are one
Now (we) can go where they get things done

Mr King you omitted to advise that pro-population advocate, Betty Hartmann, received her PhD, at the London School of Economics and Political Science, was Project manager for the Economic Development Bureau, Training Course in Petroleum Economics for Third World Officials, New Haven, CT and was Visiting Lecturer, Department of Economics, Yale University.

In 2007, “anti-pops” David Pimentel, Cornell professor of ecology and agricultural sciences, and a team of Cornell graduate students examined data from more than 120 published papers on the effects of population growth, malnutrition and various kinds of environmental degradation on human diseases. Their report is in the journal "Human Ecology."

Of the world population of about 6.5 billion, 57 percent is malnourished, compared with 20 percent of a world population of 2.5 billion in 1950, said Pimentel. Malnutrition is not only the direct cause of 6 million children’s deaths each year but also makes millions of people much more susceptible to such killers as acute respiratory infections, malaria and a host of other life-threatening diseases, according to the research.

Among the study’s other main points:

Nearly half the world’s people are crowded into urban areas, often without adequate sanitation, and are exposed to epidemics of such diseases as measles and flu.

With 1.2 billion people lacking clean water, waterborne infections account for 80 percent of all infectious diseases. Increased water pollution creates breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitoes, killing 1.2 million to 2.7 million people a year, and air pollution kills about 3 million people a year. Unsanitary living conditions account for more than 5 million deaths each year, of which more than half are children.

Air pollution from smoke and various chemicals kills 3 million people a year. In the United States alone about 3 million tons of toxic chemicals are released into the environment – contributing to cancer, birth defects, immune system defects and many other serious health problems.

Be careful what you wish for Mr King - do not defile the land where you live and 6.7 billion other humans dwell.

King's post is an assertion that there is no such thing as science or it should be totally ignored . I have no idea where he obtained the ludicrous idea that anyone was trying to propose forced population reduction . He really should have a good read of Liebig's Law

I found the argument so full of rubbish I could not dredge up the energy to read all of it. Suffice to say this planet is a finite resource. I repeat that: - A FINITE RESOURCE. It is (or should I say was) like a Petri dish filled with a food source in which a tiny number of bacteria are placed. Very soon the bacteria are no more. They've behaved like we humans are doing and kept multiplying and multiplying until their entire food source has been exhausted. What happened to them then pray tell us Mr King and Mr Masters?
What is true of the world is also true of Australia where our population growth rate has exceeded 1.6% pa in recent years. At this rate we are set to double our population in only 41 years.

When I was born 60 odd years ago there were 2.5 billion people on earth and Australia accommodated only 8 million of those. Now there are 6.6 million overall and Australia’s population is about 23 million. The planet has remained exactly the same size and shows no signs of expanding to meet the challenge of more people.

On top of this average per capita material consumption has also grown exponentially over the period. How much longer can this sort of growth continue and can we really, really expect to achieve sustainability by reducing consumption only and allowing population to go on expanding unchecked until it reaches a staggering 9 billion in only 40 years time.

And Bernie Masters claims family sizes in the undeveloped world will fall to levels prevalent in developed countries as these 3rd world economies become richer. How? Where are all the resources going to come from to satisfy the aspirations of all these extra billions?

Bernie, exactly who is advocating interventions to forcibly reduce family sizes in developing countries?

Ah yes, Malcolm.

You are an absolutely typical overpopulation denier. Perhaps if you cared to look around you at the devastation the human species is causing this planet, you might shuck off just a bit of your speciescentric arrogance.

In my mind, the best thing we can do for this planet is VOLUNTARY population reduction through education and contraception, but the cornucopian cliched rants of the likes of Malcolm don't give me cause for hope. It is indeed sad that Malcolm and his ilk hate humans so much that they wish to leave behind a crowded, polluted, and resource depleted planet for future generations to deal with. That is the real misanthropism here.

We are just one species on a finite planet and, like the story of the boy who cried wolf, the overpopulation wolf will eventually come. Malthus and Ehrlich and the many other sane and civilized voices who tried to warn us were not wrong, they were simply a bit ahead of their time.

“I am always amazed at these populate or perish advocates who pick the extreme end of an idea (ie. one child policies, forced sterilisation etc) and tar the whole sustainable population movement with one sordid brush. I suppose it serves its purpose in stopping reasonable and balanced debate in one swoop.”

That’s about the size of it Pelican. And there can be no doubt that it is deliberate and hence totally dishonest and scurrilous.