Whilst I generally disagree with "Big Australia" ideas, the opening sentence lost me straight away.

Just as Umberto Eco noted noted that "the lunatic is easily recognised. Sooner or later he brings up the Templars," the pseudo-scientific twitterer is just as easily recognised by their spurious recourse to the Laws of Thermodynamics.

I also take issue with typically elitist attitude that we of the lumpen masses would think Correct Thoughts if our superiors would only take the trouble to re-educate us properly.

We should be shedding people, not encouraging more of them.

This reads like a vacuous response to a vacuous statement by a vacuous politician.

Pretty much an attack on Rudd. Long on rhetoric. Normally it's the UnSustainable People faction who start off sentences quoting Newton's Law on Thermodynamics. Means they're thoughful - and barking mad at the same time.

Funny, just four years ago Costello's Intergenerational Report said we didn't have enough people to adequately fund health and social welfare from 2020 on. Now we're packed to the gills. Are our women pumping out kids by the score? No.

So in four years we've gone from having too few people to too many. This fact vacuum plays in to the hands of the loonies who'd rather save a tree than save a baby from drowning.

Clownfish - since thermodynamics set limits on everything we do quoting it almost any argument can't hurt - but the author did not really connect it to the rest of her essay.

Cheryl is now useing the pro-growthist propaganda from "Demography is Destiny" Costello's Intergenerational Report as an argument against the anti-growthist "loonies"? Seriously Cheryl, with former-breadbasket Australia now consuming more than half the food it produces where is the capacity for it to double its population (within 37 years at the current rate) in a climate change and oil-restricted future? Some of us just want to make sure that our children have something to eat in future. Maybe you are one of those people who don't care because they figure they will be dead by then.

Amen Michael.

If anything it tend to prove the fallibility of the Economic based solutions to anything.
In truth it requires the 3 'e's Energy,Economics and environment.

Likewise current monetary economics' reliance on endless growth in a finite world is the stuff 'magic pudding' fantasy.
see http://www.chrismartenson.com this link for a simple to understand perspective of the *economic* risk of world if human growth continues unabated. It's impact on AWG is bleeding obvious as is the futility of world current business as usual approach neither the Lib or Labor offer a realistic solution