You ask what Ludwig is doing apart from blogging. What can anyone do? I refused the pleadings of two women to have children with them, solely for the reasons of population unsustainability and the destruction of the biosphere... do I get any credit for that?
Surely, the question is now academic? The end is nigh and I consider my refusal to breed to be one of the best things I've done in my life. To bring a child onto this poisioned planet appears to me to be an act of great cruelty.

For any child of yours, I'm sure it is. ;)

“On the contrary Ludwig, I wish your ‘simple’ plan to succeed”

Very pleased to hear it Bugsy.

I’ve had plenty of experience with apparently simple things turning out to be bloody difficult, but I will maintain that the issue of population stabilization in Australian and of redirecting the nation onto a basis a hell of a lot closer to sustainability than at present would be relatively simple, given the right leader and the right approach.

But at present we in Australia are not ‘conditionalised’ into even starting to address real sustainability. And as for third-world countries with entrenched religious / cultural practices and beliefs, and intractable poverty, well I say we may as well forget it.

It is easy in Australia, but next to impossible on the world scale to address population growth, at least in the short or medium term, and that basically means within a meaningful timeframe.

“I am not here to be your cheerleader”

Well why not Bugsy? If you agree with me about this whole issue and you can see the magnitude of it, how can you not be out there championing it? How can you possibly be concerned about important issues such as water recycling or whatever and not be concerned and active about the bigger picture?

Anyway, I thank you for your in-principle support.

“…what are you actually doing about it? More than blogging I hope?”

Bugsy, you ask questions of me, but you just don’t answer the questions I ask of you.

Anyway, I’ll answer:

More than blogging? Nope, not any more, apart from continuing to harp about the issues at work and at occasional public meetings….and boring the couple of friends I’ve got left sh!tless on a regular basis (:<()!

But since 1988 when I first started to address sustainability issues, I have pushed the message as president and long-time committee member of the North Queensland Conservation Council, president and long-time committee member of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, Townsville branch, president for twelve years of Sustainable Population Australia, North Queensland branch, prolific writer of letters to the editor of various newspapers for ~13years before internet forums came along, producer and presenter of an environmental radio program on community and indigenous stations for three years, presenter of many talks at NGO meetings, presenter of occasional conference papers and university lectures, and long-time professional environmentalist, ecologist, botanist and geomorphologist with the Queensland Government, starting off at a lowly rank nearly twenty years ago. And I haven’t had kids and I ain’t gunna.

I’m inclined to think that I have achieved as much on the Online Opinion Forum in the last year and a bit that I’ve been on it than I did in the 18 years before it. I don’t feel the need to broaden my activities. Anyway, my studies with plants, birds and related things take precedence these days.

So what about you? What issues are you into?

Well, I said i'm not here to be your cheerleader and I meant it. There are many problems with just banging on about population levels, real solutions to stresses already felt need to be addresssed, otherwise you run the risk of people just ignoring you. However, by addressing the potential failings of any plan, can we not make it stronger? Population may be the root of the problem, but trying to cut immigration in the short term won't be the solution. Local shortages are already putting pressure on cities and large townships affected by lower rainfall. To reduce local pressures means at least 2 measures can be taken, as I see it. 1) Redistribution of the population, which won't happen easily since houses already built tend to get lived in. 2)increasing resources.

I think recycled water has a great advantage that if people are afraid of it, then they can move to an area not affected by water shortages. If water recycling can repel people from moving to areas under water stress (as Clive Berghoffer from Toowoomba seems to think it can), then I'm all for it! It's one of those win-win situations. The cities need to be less attractive, that at least can help.

For sustainability's sake there are a whole mess of measures that can be taken from water and food production to energy. And many of them are applicable with or without a population policy. They are very do-able, especially since one can avoid theological and philosophical entanglements when trying to get them working. Thats what I'm interested in.

You are perplexing Bugs.

And still you don’t answer the direct question that I have put to you.

I’ll just address one of your statements and give a more comprehensive response tomorrow:

“Population may be the root of the problem”

Well no, it isn’t necessarily the root of the problem. The root of the problem is the frigging lack of regard for sustainability, and the absolutely insane push to keep on expanding our economy, rate of resource consumption and waste production, and population….. and pretend that we can maintain this full-on wank indefinitely!!

Population growth is just part of it. But it’s the bloody part that gets left out all the time… that’s what makes it so significant.