Ludwig, Stephany seemed to get what I was saying and didn't seem to ask what I meant by sharing the pain, but if you read closely all the answers are in my posts. If you need further help just ask.

30 million because there is no reason not to. Certainly not just because our main cities are short of water, and nonsense about poor soils and being an arid nation limiting such a number.

You didn't address a question to me about your assertion re: external aid. I thought it was your opinion and didn't really disagree. Wouldn't the money be better spent accommodating new Australians and remaining in our economy? A common complaint about immigration is cost to our standard of living yet you would happily give away an amount which could have no other effect than to reduce that standard. If it remains in our economy at least it circulates

Rojo

"I'm not suggesting we will have 10 million people in Kununurra but it could be done using that water supply as an example."

Again I would refer you to this Australian Government site on water availability and use.

http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2006/publications/report/inland-waters-1.html

Assuming an average population of 19.25 million (a slight overestimate).

http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/e8ae5488b598839cca25682000131612/4274f3e53c143e57ca256d46008193a0!OpenDocument

you can estimate the annual water requirement for 10 million people. I calculated this as follows:

Manufacturing 450Gl
Electricity and gas supply 877GL
Water supply, sewerage, drainage 932GL
Household 1133GL
Environmental flows 238GL
Annual Evaporation from Lake Argyle 1400GL

Total Annual water requirement 5030GL

You stated that the annual inflow for Lake Arglye was 4000GL, but what you didn't note was the 1400GL annual evaporation

http://www.connectedwater.gov.au/framework/water_efficiency.html

or the huge range in annual inflows:

http://www.environment.gov.au/water/rivers/nrhp/ord-river/results1.html

From 1984 to 1989 for example, the total inflow was less than 14,000GL. Less 1400GL annual evaporation for the six years, this would leave the 10 million with about 900GL per annum, or less than 20% of their requirement.

The calculation also makes no provision for their food. You state:

"The food can be grown elsewhere."

With much of Australia's food producing areas predicted to get drier, this could pose a problem.

Do you still think that Lake Argyle can support a population of 10 million and give them a decent standard of living? My own calculations suggest that a figure of 1 million is optimistic.

This is an extraordinary column. only one person, in my quick scan of all posts, approached the true problem -- global overpopulation. Oligarch told us to "Go and spend a week in the slums of India if you want an example of the misery inflicted by unfettered population growth." Go to Darfur, Central and South America, China, South East Asia, just about anywhere in Africa and see the same things -- degradation of land, water and air. See the horror that is the lives of about 60% of all humans. See the extinction of animals, birds, plants - the starvation caused by pollution, over fishing, over cropping, the application of poisons to the soil. Australia's population should never have gone above about 8 million to be truly sustainable. the planet's population should never have gone above one thousand million, for the world ecosystems to be sustainable.
Everyone on this forum writes as if population increase is not only inevitable, but not a bad thing. It is an unmitigated disaster! But humans only respond to catastrophe so the impending cataclysm that is climate change, can only be beneficial in the long term for the planet. With a bit of luck enough life will remain to revegetate the planet and perhaps a wiser animal than humans will eventually rise to the top of the 'pyramid'; one that will not overpopulate and foul it's own nest and destroy the very basis of life.

Rojo, your reasoning for 30 million is indeed flimsy; “because there is no reason not to”.

There are enormous reasons not to. But even if there weren’t, why would you want our population to grow any bigger than a level at which we could easily stabilise it? Surely the onus should be the other way round; 30 million only if there is a very good reason for it.

“…nonsense about poor soils and being an arid nation limiting such a number”.

My goodness! I explained in my last post why our northern half (and indeed the whole continent) is so relatively empty; directly because of poor soils and low rainfall.

I’ll extend this one step further; A European cum multicultural society would not have come to exist in Australia if the north had been at all wet and fertile, because it would have been occupied by Asian agricultural peoples centuries ago. Europeans could not have declared Terra Nullius and could not have invaded without a full-on war.

Most of our agriculture is based on the exploitation of poor soils, including the whole wheatbelt. Just look at the state of salinity in our intensive agricultural areas. Salinity is a huge factor in poor soils.

Our agricultural areas are in decline. Oil supply is going to go into decline in the near future with resultant price hikes. This will have a huge effect on our economy and indeed on the economics of harvesting food from areas of poor soils. These factors along with several others make it well and truly time to head towards the lowest level stable population that we can easily achieve, if not take stronger measures to reduce it.

We most definitely don’t want our population to be any bigger than it needs to be.

“Wouldn't the money be better spent accommodating new Australians and remaining in our economy?”

No Rojo. As just explained, we should be heading directly towards population stabilisation, which means that the accommodation of new Australian immigrants is not a good idea, except on a net zero or less basis. It is a much better idea to do our humanitarian bit via international aid projects directed at the problems that generate refugees that it is to bring them here.

It would be good if the money remained in our economy if it was not in conjunction with the support for immigrants. But then we wouldn’t be fulfilling our international humanitarian obligations.

If it remained in the economy in conjunction with immigrant refugees, the increased demand for resources generated by this population increase within our ever-more stressed resource environment would be more significant than the circulation of this money per se. The net effect would be strongly negative.

Immigration is pretty well neutral to our per-capita conventional economics (without even considering the impact on finite and stressed recources). But the support of destitute immigrant refugees is certainly economically negative. And in times of stressed life-support systems on this continent, it would be very strongly negative.

Ybgirp, I can’t speak for anyone else but the reason why I don’t go on about global population to any extent is because it is toooo biiig to deal with. It’s beyond us, just as I feel climate change is.

But we CAN deal with it, and with genuine sustainability, in Australia.

Everyone can see the issues with population at the global level. But there are still some who just don’t get it at the national level. So that’s where our focus must be.

“Everyone on this forum writes as if population increase is not only inevitable, but not a bad thing.”

Really?! Who is saying that it is not a bad thing?