Dickie, the investment in the Doomsday Vault seed stocks and GM crops seems pretty ethical to me if we appreciate the motivation, which is no doubt to provide genetic stock to rebuild humanity’s agricultural base if do suffer catastrophe due to climate change and overpopulation, and to provide a gene bank for GM crop development. Involvement in GM is presumably motivated by the desire to quickly bring foodstocks up to par with demand and thus hopefully avoid a global crash event, which GM crops have a much better chance of doing than non-GM crops.

Sure GM has its downsides and I appreciate the view that to even engage in it at all can be seen as unethical. And sure, some of the companies that Gates is going into cohoots with leave a lot to be desired ethically. But it is still a good thing overall…much better than to not engage in any of this sort of action or financial support, I would think.

The Gates Foundation should very much be pressuring its own government, that of Australia and other developed nations to reach population stabilisation. It is indeed very hard to deal with this issue in the Third World while the West blunders on with rapid growthism.

If only Bill and Melinda could see it in their hearts to say to our little Kevvie; sport, you’re terribly off-track with your huge boost to immigration and your approach to nation-building predicated on high population growth and endless economic growth. Get you tooche into gear mate.

“Governments who endorse and encourage population explosions today and philanthropists who remain indifferent, will wear the lepers' bell tomorrow!”

Yes. Philanthropists that ignore this vital issue will not be thought of well in the end, no matter what efforts they put into other things.

Foxy, you wrote; “Don't blame Bill or Melinda Gates too much however, they're at least doing something through their Foundation to help the poor…”

I do blame them for not dealing with population growth. They’ve got the power to make such an enormous difference. And in not doing anything, they are being seen to support the continuous human expansion paradigm, which really does sit at stark odds with everything else they are trying to achieve…and their overall goal of greatly improving the lives of three quarters of the world’s people.

Sorry, but what they are doing effectively amounts to tinkering around the edges of the main problem. They are simply not going to achieve their goals if they don’t address the core sustainability issues directly.

Well that’s four posts in 24 hours. Examinator, I’ll have to wait til late tonight or tomorrow morning to address your points.

Ludwig,
Congratulations for raising this issue and it needs to be raised often to get the message through. Someday, someone will come up with, at least, a partly workable solution. I like the idea of making spermicides available to women of poor countries. That is a start.

Foxy mentioned the 'one child policy' in China! I have been told that to get past that policy, couples are now using multiple birthing techniques to have more children in the one pregnancy. As this goes against the governments idea, I wonder how long before a stop is put to that. To overcome the gender imbalance in China, I would not be surprised if polygamy was allowed so that a woman could have multiple husbands.

Our governments have been saying on many issues that we can set example for the world. We have to press them to set example on population by reducing immigration here to 'zero net'. So I for one will continue to raise the immigration issue with the polys, but there are powerful interests that keep pushing high immigration.

Dear Banjo,

We were told decades ago that Australia could
only sustain a population of 20 million, currently
its 21 million and rising. Our water and other
resources are decreasing, so you're right to
be concerned about immigration, as is Ludwig
about our population growth.

Ludwig You and I have agreed on the topic, over-population, being the biggest single threat to future sustainability and the root cause of many other maladies facing life quality, frequently in the past and we will continue to agree on it into the future.

I find considerable wisdom in Roberts suggestion “People who have some confidence that they can provide for their own future may not feel the need to breed so many kids in the hope that some will provide for them in their old age.”

And do think it is in the political “too hard basket” because it is counter-thinking to most politicians who seem to believe a larger electorate increases their personal authority.

Hence, I think that as a cause, “population reduction” is in the same mis-named basket as “smaller government” as both being extremely desirable for everyone, except those who believe in their divine right to rule us.

The label on the basket should not be

"too hard"

it should be

"of counter interest to political and central government control".

That notwithstanding, I suspect the philanthropic distributions made by the Gates and their foundation will be better assessed and of greater direct benefit to the recipients than equivalent amounts gifted by governments largely because the political shenanigans which lurk within the hearts of bureaucrats and behind the closed doors of government, will more likely be transparent with the Gates foundation plus Bill Gates has some experience in building a business and understand “accountability”, something which most politicians and their civil servant mechanics are at pain to avoid.

As for Bronwyn’s concerns for the source of the Bill Gates wealth, it is simple, he can thank IBM, they are the ones who opened the door for Microsoft, at a time when computer companies thought solely in terms of hardware and considered the software a bit of a joke. I would further suggest the IBM list of charitable beneficiaries is far slimmer a tome than Bill Gates’ list.

A bit of thought might be given to the dependence of the military on computer systems to target human beings for extermination. How much of the Gates fortune has been built on more efficiently dealing death?

That's one expensive and inhumane way of dealing with overpopulation.