The author claims to write for a living. Let's hope that nobody
paid him for this bit of nonsense.

I know of nobody who is promoting forced sterilisation, but plenty
of people who support the concept of good old family planning,
so I'm not sure who the targets are.

The author, along with Cheryl and a few others, does not seem to
grasp the basics of biology, so let me try and explain with an
example.

Fishing has been a great resource for humans since the year dot,
but due to limited population and limited techology, it was sustainable. We took the surplus, easily caught.

Times have changed. More and more people, more and more technology,
means that oceans are being plundered like never before, so
its absolutatly unsustainable. The result is that the population
of certain species have collapsed, others are on the verge of
collapse.

Short term, humans solve the problem by plundering another species,
but eventually the crap hits the fan, for there are limited fish
species to plunder and exploit.

If we look at say the bluefin tuna, Japan, a claimed intelligent
nation, was seemingly cheating for years and years, when it came
to trying to preserve the species. The "tragedy of the commons"
comes to mind.

Now its about to bite them in the arse.

http://www.news.com.au/weird-true-freaky/sumo-sized-jellyfish-throwing-japans-fishing-industry-into-chaos/story-e6frflri-1225806901682

Suddenly Japanese waters are infested with enormous numbers of
gigantic jellyfish! Everyone shakes their head and blames climate
change etc.

Fact is that all those tuna and other fish species used to eat
baby jellyfish, but if you clean out the oceans, jellyfish will of course thrive.

Clearly humans are not as smart as the author thinks. We may be
good an plundering, but we arn't much good at living sustainably

Some soft centre lefty comments here and some shoot the messenger stuff. Typical of marshmellow urban types who have no idea about contructing realistic policies on population - policies that won't see them killed by those they call 'the ignorant middle class'.

One of the good things about OLO is that it 'outs' the fringe dwelling cranks and their anti-population ideas. It's a shame that the conservative forces in politics mine these forums for wedge issues and they have rich pickings in the comments here.

Yes, well I shan't bother reading the article but that's no reason not to have the conversation.

Again, if I may refer to a simple calculation from my experience in Indonesia, and as of when I last checked, if you take the "published" GDP of Indo and divide it by the number of people you pretty much get the minimum wage. (though lots of people clearly get paid less)

In fact, outside the money for work system you have the system of a roof over your head and three meals a day system for long hours of hard yakker.

Worse still, and especially for those of you have enjoyed hotel accomadation in Bali, you may care to know that all the staff, waiters and waitresses etc in the majority of cases actually have to pay for the priveledge of "job training" in the facility, and yes, all they get for upwards of 6 months hard yakker, after having in some cases exhausted their families life savings to get them there, is a feed and a bed and long, long hours of work.

We were in a local warung sometime ago. A bus load of Golkar members roled in for a feed post a locally held conference. By co-incidence, a local Bali girl all of 18 oddd and fresh out of high school came in exhausted and sat down with my wife and I at the last available seat and soon enough began pouring out her heart about the torrid conditions of her "employment."

My BeLoved *Bidadari ... Sri* (my wife) a vocal supporter of feminine equality quickly fired up and the previously raucous environment suddenly went deathly quiet .. with me gently pinching her under the table, and a toast followed by a local joke or two and things returned to normal. (cough)

Certainly, the pressures of excess population in conjunction with repugnant economic practice are heart breaking to say the least.

I'm sitting looking at the history of Australia.
Up until 1901 there was litte control over the population, immigration, the economy and very little regulation of business.

In 1901 Australia was the richesty country in the world.

A little over 100 years later we've managed to regress to the point of being 15th richest country in the world.

Government has done this to us.

It started with the White Australia policy, as well as, having the luddites wanting to protect us from free trade.

Those protectionist policies ran us into the ground.

In the last couple of generations Australia started to reject that type of govenance and we've boomed.

Not only that but the opening up to multi-culturalism has lead to a great diversity and a sometimes great ambivalence to acceptance of difference within our community.

Altogether though the community has tended to acceptance and embracing greater openness and managed change.

The green movement in Australia is the rearguard rump of those who'd seek to keep Australia poor.

I say openness with greater immigration, less intrusiveness in governance and a rejection of norms being foistered onto us by foreign entities and organisations would see us expand and grow as we'd develop those things we'd need to ensure environmental security and maintenance of a higher standard of living.

Anti-pops is only one element of the greens and their backward striding co-reactionists in the Labor Party, who are desperately hanging onto past values.

You're so precious Col, seems we're getting through :)

Now, how about YOU proffering an answer to YOUR own question.

Or is that asking too much?

I for one am grateful to King for this article. I don't believe I can ever remember so many antagonists agreeing with each other as in this post.
I have gone on record on many occasions with my belief that the best solution to over population is prosperity, and resultant education. I have put forward my belief that simple household economics plays a vital role, in that when children become a cost (through compulsory education) rather than an asset (cheap labour), families have fewer children.
What disturbs me most is the recent trend to actually encourage people to have more babies for the sake of the economy. Costello's blatantly stupid policy to pay people to have children is a slap in the face to all countries battling overpopulation.
Having a third child 'for the country'? To support our aging population? Presumably all these 'third children' will cooperatively jump off a cliff when they hit forty, so they in turn don't become part of the problem.
History has demonstrated time and again, when it comes down to ecology or economy, economy wins every time. If we continue to pursue growth economics, populations must continue to grow, until we run out of resources.
Currently, humanity is demonstrating about as much intelligence as yeast, which effectively eats sugar and defecates alcohol; and continues to grow and expand until it is killed by it's own waste product.