Yabby: "I am for giving them all (women) that choice". As am I. However the difference is that I am for giving all people a choice, not foisting a green dictatorship that smugly assumes it knows best on them.

I note you use the typical environmentalist's trick of employing carefully winnowed data to try and argue your case; in this instance, using some of the poorest areas on Earth to claim that voluntary family planning has failed. I somehow think that the average Somalian has higher priorities than trying to scrounge up a box of frangers.

But you're deliberately avoiding my point: even if we attained the admirable goal of all women in the world having equal and free choice in reproduction, it still would not meet the "absolute priority" set out in this article. Hence my concern, not so much with what is said, but what is being - deliberately or not - unsaid: be sure that when the dog-whistle is blown, someone less scrupulous or principled than you or I will sit up and bark.

"Ergo": "(A) Latin word meaning 'therefore'; usually used to show a logical conclusion". You argue, in a forum discussing an article that claims that human overpopulation is an imminent threat to all other life on the planet and that people in the developing world are having too many babies; you further argue that sending them food aid only causes them to have more babies. Sending them "modern family planning methods" would seem to be a waste of time, as you also argue that cultural and religious prejudices prevent people in the developing world using contraception. It would be logical, therefore, to conclude that we should forego sending food aid to developing countries.

I agree, pelican, that we can have a rational discussion about population sustainability; but only if antipopulationists refrain from making hysterical claims about The Very Future Of Life On Earth.

cont. ...

cont. ...

VK3AUU, as much as it pains me to be pedantic ;), even decimation of the world's population won't be enough to satisfy John Reid's "absolute priority": he wants the world's human population reduce by some 70%, not a measly 10%.

Divergence, there have been several posts in Online Opinion which have either directly advocated a Chinese-style One-Child policy or quoted approvingly politicians like Sandra Kanck, who have done so. A One-Child policy, ipso facto, necessitates enforced abortion. Others have pointed approvingly to China's "success". All of which conveniently ignores the fact that China's one-child policy was essentially a draconian knee-jerk policy to cover the heinous failures of the Communist dictatorship's agricultural policies.

"If you want to condemn China for forced abortions and executions, you also need to praise them for the people they have obviously saved."

Should I also praise Adolf Hitler for improving the lot of many, many German people in the 1930s? I prefer not to indulge in such amoral relativism. Wrong is wrong is wrong.

Clownfish, I suggest you go back to the dictionary and find out the meaning of the word "decimation", but to save you the bother I will explain.

It actually means "reducing to one tenth of the original"

One wonders what is your solution to the problem of overpopulation seeing that you have rejected all the suggestions of your socalled anti-populationists?

David

*As am I. However the difference is that I am for giving all people a choice, not foisting a green dictatorship that smugly assumes it knows best on them.*

Well that's great Clownly. In that case I wish you would speak up,
when it comes to the rights of third world women, to have legal access
to family planning. So far hardly a peeps from you, just lots of
paranoia about green dictatorships.

*in this instance, using some of the poorest areas on Earth to claim that voluntary family planning has failed*

They simply mostly don't use family planning, no wonder they are
poor. If you had 10 children to feed, how would you cope? Without
cushy Australian family payments? My point is we should provide them
with family planning, which they can choose to use or not. All the
info shows that third world women want to use it, but don't have
the luxury of choice, as you do.

*But you're deliberately avoiding my point*

I'm not deliberately avoiding your point, I'm make a better one.
Fact is we know that when given the choice, women will have alot
less children. If all women had the choice that Western women have,
we would not have a population problem. That is a frigging good
point, think about it!

*as you also argue that cultural and religious prejudices prevent people in the developing world using contraception*

Not at all. My argument is that religious nuts from the West,
who control the money supply and influence politics globally,
prevent third world women from making their own choices.

George Bush, who controlled billions of $, told them to cross their
legs for Jesus. The pope tells them to burn condoms. Catholics
have a huge say in third world politics, as well as running many
hospitals. So if a woman in say the Philipines, wants the
snip after 8 kids, a Catholic hospital won't do it for her, its
against the popes beliefs. It stinks.

Er, Clownfish - Yabby may be many things, but he's certainly no lefty environmentalist greenie.

Indeed, that description probably applies more to me, but I'm not anywhere near as extreme about population as are these disingenuous, misanthropic frootloops.

Divergence: "On Iran's success in bringing down fertility rates ..."

A very heartening link. Thanks.

Clownfish,

I am in Europe right now. This story is one the first I saw on arriving: http://ionglobaltrends.blogspot.com/2009/09/iraq-iraq-accuses-turkey-syria-and-iran.html I see it hasn't got much press in Australia, but if this drought continues people in Syria and Iraq will start dying. What is interesting about this isn't so much the drought, but rather the dams Turkey and Iran have built to reduce its impact, at the expense of the countries downstream.

CJ Morgan: start babbling on about "Gaia"

If life on this planet viewed as a game of chess between species, then Gaia is the name I gave the rules by which the game is played. I wasn't ascribing any magical properties to them, and I highly doubt Ludwig was either. These rules have been around for an eternity. Our species is but an insignificant blip at the end of that eternity.

CJ Morgan: has no chance whatsoever of being addressed

The point of the discussion between Ludwig and myself the rules of Gaia mean there is no way to address it. Whatever proposals you might have in mind can only work for a few generations at most.

Think of you and yours as pictures. Each generation we make a new photocopy and throw away the old, the catch being random errors are introduced in each new copy. Under natural selection, we make 10 copies, let the 4 horsemen reap all but the best - and perhaps end up with something better than the original. What you all others propose here is replacement rate, meaning we take only one copy. Thus we avoid the 4 horsemen for now, only to see our images reduced to mush over time by those random variations.

Ludwig and I were discussing was the impetuosity of Reid attributing these rules of Gaia to mankind, a defect in our character that must we must fix. The only place they have ever been in the history of our planet is in works we call science fiction.