Tapp, at the moment you would have a hard time finding water to lead your horse to!

Ludwig, I am afraid that I have been critisised before as being too direct. I must remember to ;) in the future. In truth I figured the comment outlandish enough for most to dismiss it. But many a true word said in jest. Our current world population is too high for conventional food production to support. Natural disasters are one way that mother nature seeks to restore the balance. This includes earthquakes, floods, famine, volcanos and tsunamis. Yes these wreak terrible devasation, and I donate to support appeals when these disasters strike. But the truth is that nature is a harsh beast, and these events are necessary in thinning the population. The only other option is regulated birth control, and we know how successful that has been in China!

CG, population control has been pretty successful in China, to the extent that they have a couple of hundred million people less than they would have had by now. But it has come at an awful cost - female infanticide and a skewed sex ratio which is bound to have adverse consequences in the near future.

It has helped lay the foundation for the ‘westernisation’ of China, which is presumably raising the average standard of living (but whether this means it is also raising the average quality of life as well is highly debatable)…. and leading to greatly increased CO2 emissions, which continue to rise rapidly, to the extent that they just completely overwhelm even the most optimistic CO2 reductions that we could ever make in Australia.

It has also largely contributed to our booming economy, which if properly managed, could really set us on the right course towards sustainability, but which if managed as it currently is being, will take us more rapidly towards the precipice.

So it’s a complex story.

You could actually mount an argument that in China, population growth reduction has led to and increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

But in Australia, and the US and other countries, the story is very different. Population growth leads directly to increases in GHG, and dilutes or cancels out or completely overwhelms efforts made to reduce them.