Ybgrip

I am very concerned by population growth and sustainability issues in Australia. While I agree with your heartfelt sentiments, I would point out that there are others with similar compassion and regard for the world who think Australia and the world as capable of sustainably supporting a much larger population. That is why I think it better to look at population growth and sustainability from a logistical perspective rather than a moral one. I know this is somewhat off topic, a discussion of planetary physics in fact, but I like the way this scientist sets the ground rules:

http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/pseudosc/flipaxis.htm

"A Note to Visitors

I will respond to questions and comments as time permits, but if you want to take issue with any position expressed here, you first have to answer this question:

What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?

I simply will not reply to challenges that do not address this question. Refutability is one of the classic determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific. Moreover, I have found it to be a great general-purpose cut-through-the-crap question to determine whether somebody is interested in serious intellectual inquiry or just playing mind games. Note, by the way, that I am assuming the burden of proof here - all you have to do is commit to a criterion for testing. It's easy to criticize science for being "closed-minded". Are you open-minded enough to consider whether your ideas might be wrong?"

Perhaps I should of said pointless instead of stupid.I also said that we don't know what the future holds, if you had of thought about about that instead of the stupid bit, you might have got my point.
Just one scenario.
Imagine sea levels rising, Idian Ocean countries going under, nowhere for these people to go and here we are a vast emty land, how could we say no.
Imagine huge solar power stations 10000sq. kms.in the desert.
Factories next door.
Vertical gardens 50 stories high to produce food.
Water would be recycled.
All this is possible, the technology is there, all we need is men and women of vision willing to go for it and endure the riddicule and unbouded negativism of the naysayers.
We could be the new industrial centre of the world,as we have loads of sunshine going to waste.
It won't be the Australia we have now but so what, I am 62 yrs old and the Australia we have now is nothing like the Australia I grew up in, most of the time it seems like a dream.The Australia (and the world) of the future will be nothing like the one we live in now.
Most of your arguements are about the past and the present, none of you have even attempted to cast your mind into the future except in the terms of today and yesterday.
Some of you have said that that the world can't support any more population, but in the past they said 6 billion and it would fall apart, it hasn't, its in a pretty bad way but it hasn't fallen apart yet.We produce enough food and clothing for every body its just not distrubuted evenly or fairly, mainly through the greed of the West.
I am not advocating an increase in world population just a fairer way of distributing wealth.Oh and by the way if we don't do something about global warming and fast, we will probably have a couple of mega famine's, that might well cut the world population in half in the next 15 to 30 years

alanpoi

As you probably know, there is lobbying for solar thermal power systems with the claimed potential to produce 40 litres of freshwater per kwh of power generation from the waste heat.

http://www.trecers.net/downloads/GCREADER.pdf

If the technology works as claimed then it has a great potential to change things. What concerns me are claims that Australia can support far higher populations when the diminishing water supplies and environmental stresses are all too apparent. Rojo's claim that Lake Argyle could support 10 million and follow up comment that their food could be grown elsewhere is the kind of careless thought that could make Australia's predicament worse.

Ludwig, I wish I shared your sanguine certainties that Australia will be able to deal with population sutstainability -- Howard still isn't convinced climate change is a problem. You ask: Who is saying that it is not a bad thing? No one... my point was that few are saying it is a bad thing... the general consensus appears to be an acceptance of continuing human population increase.
Fester: You say...I think it better to look at population growth and sustainability from a logistical perspective rather than a moral one. The trouble with that is it gives tacit permission for humans to go on breeding. It's the same as offering passengers in a sinking lifeboat a tube of silicone so they can raise the sides a few centimetres. "Oh goody," they will say. "We can let a few more people into our boat."
A most interesting site -- thanks. http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/pseudosc/flipaxis.htm
Alanpoi asks us to... Imagine huge solar power stations 10000sq. kms.in the desert. Factories next door.Vertical gardens 50 stories high to produce food.... We could be the new industrial centre of the world,...
Is this the sort of logistics you are advocating, Fester? Would any sane animal want to live in such an environment? there have been many Sci-Fi novels describing such scenarios, and all are horror tales.
What's the solution apart from voluntary extinction? We could support governments that do nothing to combat global warming and climate change in order to hasten human extinction? No - not nice. There's nothing to be done except prepare ourselves and our loved ones for the trials to come. It is too late, even for Australia.

“Ludwig, I wish I shared your sanguine certainties that Australia will be able to deal with population sutstainability”

Ybgirp there are no certainties. I’m not saying that we will be able to deal with it, only that we potentially can. Currently it is not looking good.

“I think it better to look at population growth and sustainability from a logistical perspective rather than a moral one.”

Yes

“The trouble with that is it gives tacit permission for humans to go on breeding.”

Well of course we want to go on breeding, but at a rate that leads to a stable population. I presume you mean that it gives tacit permission to go on increasing our population.

Yes it does. If we were to demand population stabilisation tomorrow, we would have to put a moratorium on immigration and implement immediate measures to see that the birthrate didn’t exceed the death rate. Of course no government is prepared to do that nor are the public prepared to support it. So we will have to accept an increase in our population to some extent.

The important thing is to get ourselves onto the right road towards population stabilisation….and that means knocking immigration back to at least net zero, progressively over a period of about five years, killing off the absurd Costellian baby-buying lump-sum bonus… and accepting our excellent below-replacement birthrate as being a very good thing.

Talk to just about any third world refugee, or a Bangladeshi who's home gets flooded every year, who lives without telephone, internet, electricity, running water, sewerage, a steady income, education for his kids, only the rags on his back and no tenure over his humble dwelling, and my horrible scenario would sound like nirvana, and in fact the middle class in places like Hong Kong, Singapore and much of the world live roughly that way.
In fact that way of living leaves a much smaller footprint than our wasteful way of building Macmansions (on valuable fertile farmland) hours away from our places of work.
The fact is we live an indulgent unsustainable lifestyle, and future generations will probably have to live like the rest of the world (in vertical cities).
What I put forward as one scenario, the more I think about it the more inevitable it seems. Using this self sufficent scenario there doen'st seem to be much of a limit perhaps 100__250 million, thats only 25 medium size cities of about 10 million each, which is only 0.1666666% of the worlds present population a mere soupcon.
Now don't get me wrong I am not advocating that, but is probably closer to mark than anything else I have read here