I think it will soon be apparent that with 6.8 bn people the world already has more than enough people for fair sharing of resources. The middle classes are already losing their homes and their disposable income. Those below them want to mobilise up. As we speak China and India are blaming the West for the lion's share of climate change. Perhaps what they really mean is that the West should volunteer for lower living standards so their own rural poor can take up the slack. I suggest they are doomed to stay poor as there will never be enough resources.

If you want to ban coal fired power stations or desalination plants and have renewable energy supply then we must forego a huge amount of retail consumption and make massive investments instead. There is no point then going backwards as population increases. I also suggest that we train urban youths to work on big projects like Gorgon and not import workers who then want to stay on with their families.

I don't like the sound of all those people moving to Tasmania. Not in My Backyard! Ha.

It's another demolition job on the anti-populationists. He sounds like a rabit (rabbit?) supporter of foreign aid, which I'm not totally for.

Malcolm, congratulations on a nearly incomprehensible rant dripping with contempt and false assertions such as "The anti-pops have two aims: sterlisation programs for both males and females, starting with the most populous countries in Asia and tying carbon production with family birth numbers in Australia". What your "contribution" lacks is any comprehension that the limits imposed by Nature are, actually, inescapable. About the only "fact" you present is actually false - the rate of world population growth has now stopped decreasing and we are seeing a linear increase of 79 million people per year. There is no longer any levelling off in sight:

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6262

At Australia's current growth rate its population would double in 37 years. (BTW that is a mathematical fact.) The "projections" from the Australian Bureau of Statistics have previously been wrong and the current projection of a decreased rate of growth in future are not based on any government policy - someone at ABS just decided it will probably happen.

I guess the reason you do not use facts to support your slanderous assertions about those concerned with population growth is that the facts all point the other way.

From your bio you are supposed to be a professional writer and your piece sounds like the shrill and desperate recent statements coming out of the Property Council trying to dismiss population growth fears. Are you writing for them also?

A possible explanation as to why we as a species altogether deem it necessary to reproduce ourselves endlessly.

"Basically, the human race is yet functioning within the realm of the threatened existence of beings who are eaten by other beings. We stressfully and chronically continue to animate the urge to reproduce, because we feel that everybody is in danger of being eaten. We feel, bodily, that everyone is prey to someone else. in fact, we continually witness the drama of hunter and prey all over the world. Listen to the daily news! People are being killed all over the Earth every day---simply murdered in weird personal and social or political conflicts. Such a dreadful circumstance is a natural part of the unevolved and lower state of Man.

We are threatened, is the message of the news.It reminds us of our chronic situation. We teach each other and we pass on to our children all the tecniques for living as a stressful personality.

Everybody asks, "Why are we doing this?". We could just as easily change our circumstance. Why dont we just change them then? It is because the threatened animal still lives in our hormones. Our bodily chemistry is yet stimulating us to live like the vital-elemental creature. Thus, we MUST have conflicts and opponents. We must eat and be devoured ourselves."

And the solution!

To create a human sanctuary for higher adaptation and the ultimate transcendence of Man is the true urge, even the primal human urge. We inherently desire a human scale and natural environment in which we can live without the chronic production of stress chemistry. We want to be cured at the heart and thereby be transformed bodily. And we know, deeply, psychically, that we cannot realize that transformation until we can create a culture in which people can live without degenerative stress. Thus, sanctuary, or spiritual community, is the motive in Man that contains the genetic secret of the next stage in human evolution.

We do not live a life of love and blissfulness and peace and harmony, in which the basic requirements of ordinary physical and social life are mutually granted. We must thus find ways to overcome the stresses of our lower unevolved adaptation, to transform the chemistry of the body-mind literally, so that we can live a daily life without personal, social, cultural, and chemical stress. Such a life is not possible for a group of people until they manage to create sanctuary with one another---a mutually protected, stable, basically unthreatened way of life.

“While the Sustainable Population Lobby and their Trotskyist and Luddite followers are few in number, their racist propaganda has found considerable sympathy in middle Australia.”

I am not sure I would describe the notion that those who see excessive human population numbers as the root cause of issues of avoidable pollution and resource sustainability for the human race, as “Malthusian”.

Certainly I do not consider myself “Trotskyish”, in the least. The notion of perpetual revolution and the inevitable social turmoil and pointless hardship leaves me feeling quite chilled.

It is not “Luddite” to garner the attributes of new “population management drugs” or techniques, still to be invented.

Indeed, the “Luddite” view would be to destroy the laboratories capable of developing such chemicals.

So, now we are past the name calling, lets look at the practicalities

If we accept that “resource depletion” and “pollution” are not “good ideas”

What should we do about it, bearing in mind every environmental nazi tells me (and I do actually agree) we have a duty to maintain the planet ?

Increase the population of the world to pollute and degrade at an even more rapid rate than before

or

rely on the innovation and inventions of the first world to produce new solutions to resource recycling, energy needs and food supply?

Or

Attempt to limit human numbers?

Whilst I am an optimist (something which Malthusians Trotskyites and Luddites never were), I do see a real issue in resolving the imbalance caused by the innovations in medical research and products of previous generations, to improve child mortality rates and extend general life expectancy.

When you reduce child mortality rates and extend life expectancies but do nothing else:

“population explosion” is what you get, regardless of its desirability or sustainability.

Regarding “greens”

I do not consider myself to be a “greenie” either emotionally or politically,

We should work to fix the causes of

Deforestation
Fish stock depletion
Resource depletion
Pollution
Environmental degradation

and if that means –

Limit/Reduce world population numbers

then we should do it!

I await Ludwig’s view