Thanks Baygon,

I'm afraid Wing ah Ling has demolished the anti-pops here. His first two posts expressed it so succinctly that anything I could add would be superfluous.

I find it amazing that the intellegentsia comes up with this nonsense.
The statement that we live in a finite world is just wrong.
The Earth receives energy from the sun, through photosynthesis that energy is used to create carbohydrates which over time becomes hydrocarbons. Meteorites and other extraterrestial bodies continually add mineral resources to the planet. As technology increases the world economy has the potential to utilise extraterrestial resources, but nevertheless we do not live in a finite world any more than the earth is flat.

Wing and Cheryl welcome to the "anti-pops" and glad to have you on board. With no government intervention that means no baby bonus to encourage women to have children. Point one of the Sustainable Population Australia wish list. No government intervention means net zero immigration. Don't encourage more, don't encourage less follows on to net zero immigration very easily. That is point two on SPA's wish list.

Promoting the many economists that don't want infinite growth on a finite base, that's a great help too. You could be a valuable member of the team.

Rhian promoting renewable technologies and low energy solutions to the problems caused by wasteful outdated methods, you should sign up as well.

Wing ah Ling and others seem to be of the opinion that growth or no
growth is an optional decision.
It is not, no growth is being imposed on us whether we like it or not.
The basic restriction is energy, although while lots of energy comes
from the sun it is not in a form that will allow us the growth rates
of the current era.
The conversion technologies are limited by minerals and other materials.
So face up to it and live with it.
Growth, except for a small amount for a short time is over.

A graph of human wellbeing over time looks far more like a roller-coaster than a steadily rising slope. Conditions improve when a new crop or technological advance expands carrying capacity, as with the Industrial or Green Revolutions, or when there is a big die-off among the humans competing for resources, as with the Black Death. After these peaks, conditions slowly deteriorate again. Paolo Malanima's website is a good corrective for the idea of unending progress (www.paolomalanima.it, but many of the papers are in English). The graphs at the end of this paper show how living standards deteriorated in Italy between the Black Death and the rise in the late 19th century.

http://www.paolomalanima.it/default_file/Articles/Wages_%20Productivity.pdf

"Over the centuries, Italian workers had to work more and more. The 'industrious revolution'... in Italy did not aim to raise the standard of living and introduce the population to the modern world of consumer goods, but it aimed to offset the worsening in the standard of living under rising demographic pressure."

Malanima estimates 500-1000 hours of work a year were required for bare survival in the 14th and 15th centuries, but 1500 in the 19th.

Graph 3 in this paper by Sevket Pamuk shows real wages from 1400-1800 in a number of European cities, making it clear that ordinary people were better off in 1400 than 1800, despite considerable technological progress.

http://www.ata.boun.edu.tr/faculty/sevket%20pamuk/publications/pamuk-black_death-final.pdf

Average heights were also decreasing over this period.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/medimen.htm

And then there's the question of infinite growth of the population.