Csteele, I think it's rather more than 'intuition' which leads me to believe that riots and water wars are acomin'; largely for all the reasons Yabby et al, have outlined.
It would be nice if we could 'focus globalisation'; but the fact is, it ain't gonna happen.
We have thousands of years of history to learn from. Unfortunately, we never do; we just have the luxury of (in hindsight) seeing where we went wrong.
We will continue to expand until we hit a crisis point. then there will be a major reshuffle, lots of recriminations, vows to 'never do it again' (did you honour your minute of silence yesterday?)...
and then we'll do it all again.
This time will be the worst, simply because there are more of us.

Dear Bazz,

Much of our standard of living in the developed world is tied to our energy usage per capita.

If I were to sit across the table with a Chinese (or other developing nation) father with the same family size as I and ask him to hold his family's CO2 contributions to where they are now wouldn't he have the right to say;

'A good part of your country's prosperity has come from your use of resources both domestically and internationally.'

'All we are asking is for parity for our citizens.'

'And for example if you want us to preserve some of our rainforests instead of exporting the timber that is fine but surely we should be compensated since in your state you have cleared over 85% of it for production.'

I think it is a fair ask.

Dear Grim,

From Ehrlich's The Population Bomb;

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate...”

His population predictions were not that far off but instead of food shortages we have had dramatically less famines, the world death rate has also dramatically fallen and we have billions lifted from starvation levels with the risk of starvation greatly diminished for so many.

Why are your predictions any sounder when the historical evidence is to the contrary.

Dear Yabby,

You are a hard task master. Okay compared to Australia's domestic use figures of 176m3/p/y South Africa's is 82, Egypt is 70, Iran is 24, Israel, the dirty guzzlers, are 92, Jordan is 37. I'm not sure how much snow there is in these countries but I don't think it is any more than Australia. If mirrored all would allow Australia to provide water from current stocks for domestic use to a population of 35 million.

The difference between the 70's and now is peak oil and peak phospates.
We saw a dramatic increase in farm productivity through the 'green revolution'; achieved largely through high fertiliser/water inputs.
These increases have now plateaued, and are very likely to start to fall -especially as they are heavily oil dependant.
Just for fun, add to the mix climate change, rising sea levels (remember some of the most fertile soils in the world are generally also the lowest) and a lot more refugees...
Despite the cold war, I remember the seventies as a time of optimism and hope. I don't recall anyone taking Ehrlich very seriously, even through fuel rationing (remember only being able to fill up every second day?).
Today, not so much.

"Just for fun, add to the mix climate change, rising sea levels (remember some of the most fertile soils in the world are generally also the lowest) and a lot more refugees..."

Let's hope that between then they might overcome the salinity problems tht we brought about by too much land-clearing and too much water boring.

I assure you, it won't be totally solved by the rising sea levels.

As an afterthought, we really need to be looking at this Inland Sea solution. The salt lakes being 30+ feet below the sea levels of 1997, and with the good labour we have available now that the WA mining boom is slowing down, and all the chances we have to get off our cushy office chairs, get out in the Sun and BUILD that 250m wide canal between the bight and the saltlakes, we could improve the preciptation over the centre of this once long ago wonderful continent and within fifty years ACTUALLY MAKE IT RAIN IN THE DESERT, but and the fertilityh of those desert soils are like instant coffee, waiting for the rain.

We must be sure that the salinity is carefully planned and managed, however, and it won't happen overnight, but trust me when I quote Matthews in saying that it WILL HAPPEN - it will rain.

One little trench, one little bulldozer, one little decade, one great big fertile, Australia. 35 million is a losers bet. We can have 100,million happy Australians living here in 50 years, but we need to make use of our inland sea, our Great Lakes, that dried up before Flynn explored the Never Never.

Goodnight my friends and bountiful dreams.

Call me CY O'Conner if you like. I'll bet my life on it.