Belly, you’ve certainly highlighted just how hard it would be. Even to achieve a population of 4 billion, or to keep it below 7 billion for that matter, would be simply beyond the powers of humanity.

It’s totally in the laps of the gods, or Gaia or Mother Nature.

But not so in Australia. We DO have the power to control our national population and preserve a decent quality of life…..and to put ourselves in a very good position of riding through the population crash event(s) relatively unscathed.

Ludwig,It would not be difficult to reduce the world's pop by billions with weaponised diseases.The only thing stopping the nutters is that they too could become victims unless they have access to an effective vaccine.

If a whole lot of people can get together and fudge climate statistics,then they can certainly create new human diseases to kill many people.While one virus may not be a threat,a whole series of different ones would have devestating effects.

Consider this.Many people like youself see the world to be way over pop.Those who have enormous power have been considering for decades a solution to the problem.They have no intentions of going down with the ship.

They can move in many ways.ie Have a totalitarian world Govt under the guise of saving the planet from AGW that Monckton revealled and then do it by economic means, ie extreme austerity,or have wars,use land for growing fuels instead of food,instigate new diseases, or monetary means, ie create even more debt and inflation to destroy currencies and people's earning capacity.

It is all happening now to some degree,but is it just just atrophism ie, the way the plant reacts to light,or is it planned?

People rave on about lunatic conspiracy theories being farcial.Well the intentions at Copenhagen of a World Govt financed by our Carbon Taxes were not fanciful or farcial,they were an intended reality.

Ludwig in relation to Australia I agree with you, we should control and limit our population.
To no more than its present numbers.
But if we do, and we will not, we will still be seen as vacant land in comparison to some of our near neighbors.
And our efforts will be in vain.
Commerce, governments, all of them, want to increase our numbers.
Others wrongly for generations have said grow or perish.
We rightly, strive to stop suffering in other country's, illness diseases, hunger and earth quakes see us help.
If we said ok we are not doing enough, lets levee every tax payer, let us end world hunger, if we did?
World population would sky rocket.
Too many will say let us let them, any one but us, die.
Horrible, I could never live with it, but nature one day will force just that on humanity.
We must plant two trees for every one we cut down.
Find at all cost sustainable fuels.
reward people for having less children.
It is a huge task but mankind if we work at it, can improve if not change our fate.

Belly wrote: "We must plant two trees for every one we cut down."

Dear Belly.

Planting trees is no panacea. Consider one aspect of environment destruction. That is the loss of biodiversity. Probably the chief cause is the loss of habitat. If we plant trees in an area where there has been habitat loss we may cause greater habitat loss because the trees we plant may be unsuitable habitat. Planting trees may cause extinction of the endangered species. We need to determine the best land use considering water table, climate patterns, biodiversity etc. It may or may not be the best decision to plant trees.

Ludwig,
That's the country boy in you.You think too local.
-Let's assume in western Tibet,the major feeder glaciers continue to retreat and disappear (indisputable fact) and the four rivers dry as predicted. Those rivers include The Ganges and the Yellow river.
- the sea rises or nature make more serious storms and more of
Bangladesh/India floods, Indonesia floods

Net result: Where do you think the refugees are going to go?
best we get involved to sort out their problems so they stay there.
Fortress Australia is a bit of Aussie wishful thinking.

As is stopping businesses driving government they need consumption to survive. The economic model is the problem.
Regardless of the reason for a population crash Australia would not be immune simply because we rely on other nation for more than just consumer toys.
I.e. Some GM food has suicide genes. So long as we can get new grain we'll be ok but if the economic system collapses under debt we have a problem to put it mildly as with products we no longer have the ability to manufacture or grow.

If China crashes because of growth issues so will its industries and 30% of our export and god know how much imports .
We will have problems not survive unscathed.

My point is if we cap or reduce our population it will alter the whole way we survive and do business.
First things first we need a better system and be more self reliant.

<< Ludwig,It would not be difficult to reduce the world's pop by billions with weaponised diseases. >>

I don't think it would be all that easy Arjay.

I thought of this when I was writing my last post. I had originally written:

Population stabilisation or reduction << …would be simply beyond the powers of humanity, unless we do the unthinkable >>.

Ok, so to think about the unthinkable - it would be pretty hard to do it with weaponised diseases as any released pathogens wouldn’t stay where the releaser wanted them to stay, they’d very likely end up in the country or part of the world that the releaser specifically wanted to remain unaffected.

There would also be the great potential for one country to launch nuclear weapons at another if they are suffering a devastating pathogenic deathrate and suspect a particular country of releasing it.

Eeergh, that’s enough of that sort of stuff.

I can’t see how a totalitarian world government would solve the problem, and I certainly don’t buy Monckton’s assertion that AGW is just one huge power grab or attempt at world domination!

I think Belly is right: Mother Nature is by far the best bet for dealing with this issue.