Foxy lists the various places where she thinks there are problems....

"...the rapidly developing cities in the
poorer parts of Asia.....the
urban slums and water-borne diseases in
many of those countries....sub-Saharan Africa."

All poor undeveloped parts of the plant. Notice she doesn't notice problems in the US, Europe, Australia etc. Wealthy means good for the environment. Every rich part of the planet shows REforstation not deforestation. Pollution is either gone or massively reduced in these places. Famine? A thing of the past. Ditto water-borne disease. Ditto slums. The major disease killers of 1900 are no longer a problem.

So what's the solution to the problems in those countries Foxy et al fret about? Development. As nations become wealthy they conquer pollution. They conquer famine. They improve their water supply and eliminate diseases therein. And (the BIGGY) they stop population growth.

Every rich nation on earth currently has fertility rates below replacement. Want to reduce world population. Develop the poorer nations.

Without the slightest thought of actual evidence Foxy asserts that "The more each one of us consumes, the less there can be of us". But history and a little enquiry shows that to be utter rubbish. We've been consuming more per person for at least the last 200 years. And not only hasn't that resulted in less of us, its resulted in more of us. A lot more. Yet, on average, those extra people are better off than the generation before. Better fed, better educated, better life expectancy.

The doomsayers have a ready audience in those who panic rather than think. Try being one of those who do the opposite.

Different nations have a different impact on the environment- that's why "a one size fits all" policy doesn't work. Australia's population density has increased from 2 - 4 people per square kilometre over 50 years- whereas between 1950 and 2000 India's population increased by 100 million every 10 years now at 1,400 Million and very soon to gain the dis-respectable qualification "the most populated nation". Africa though not a nation (continent) is also at 1.4 B. Adding up China, India, Africa gives a population of about 4.5 B. The western nations especially the Anglo-Sphere are the more responsible actors. It's been argued that the Anglo-Sphere production mean more impact but without the populations the production is redundant- so the population problem takes primacy.

Also these irresponsible nations want to send their nationals to Australia- reprehensible.

Sorry mhaze-
I like the ideas of Malthus but care must obviously be taken in it's interpretation

mhaze- You said before that rivers aren't dying.

What's your view of the claims of the lowering of the Cartesian Basin in WA, the dam situation in Queensland, and the issues of the Murray-Darling System- including the dredging of silt and low water flow at the headwaters.

I understand that your views often have nuance on these issues. Sometimes inaccurate claims are a shorthand to highlight issues- other times the issue is grossly misrepresented.

Patrick Deneen in book "The Death Of Liberalism" makes the point that Liberalism on both the Left and the Right (mainly the Economic Globalists) are contributors to Global Tyranny and Collapse. Both the Left and the Right are industrial systems based on production growth. The "Traditionalists" OTOH stand opposed to Liberalism on both the Left and Right and make up sections of the Australian Liberal Party.

Any organization needs to grow to survive however growth in theory doesn't always have to mean more resource requirements and great population growth.

Generally I think that the Anglo-Sphere is doing a good job- but there are always power struggles- and arms and resource races

mhaze,

Firstly, deforesting has been an ongoing issue. It is an attack on the natural environment, in terms of clearing naturally occurring forests, not simply clearing pine plantations etc. In fact many of the plantations you refer to came at the expense of native forests, so that's hardly anything positive.

<<Forests provide a home to millions of diverse flora and fauna around the world, but, the benefits of forests extend far beyond the wildlife who live there. They play a vital role in the world’s carbon cycle by balancing greenhouse gas emissions, making the air in our atmosphere breathable, and protecting against climate change, but, as companies cut down more and more of our forests to make room for agriculture and industry, the whole planet suffers the consequences. Deforestation threatens our environment, impacts human lives, and kills millions of animals, every year.>>

http://thehumaneleague.org/article/effects-of-deforestation

Secondly, in terms of this discussion topic, some talk about planting trees in terms of carbon credits for farmers for example. The problem with that is that planting a few trees doesn't address the issue of greenhouse emissions or the fact that farmers for exmaple who have cattle, often have such cattle on land which has been cleared in the first place and cattle is responsible for large amounts of greenhouse emissions.

The average tree takes around 20kg of carbon dioxide a year. If a person planted a tree every year for 20 years – and each one survived, which is unlikely – those 20 trees would take up about 400 kg of carbon dioxide per year.

The average person in the U.S produces around 7kg of carbon dioxide a year. If each person in the U.S. planted one tree per year it would offset only about 3% of the carbon dioxide they produce each year, after all 20 trees had matured.

Planting trees is certainly part of the climate change solution, but there are more important ones, like saving existing natural forests & going though a huge lifestyle change. We can only do that when we better connect with nature & the environment we live in.

Canem writes: "Sorry mhaze- I like the ideas of Malthus"

Me too. And he had the good grace to recognise he was wrong when it was clear he was wrong. We find little of that these days.
But the fact is that Malthus was initially wrong about population and is really the first of a long line of chicken-littles who fret about population to the point where people like Nathan says things like "we are over-populated" as though its a demonstrable fact rather than a largely discredited theory.

"What's your view of the claims of the lowering of the Cartesian Basin in WA, the dam situation in Queensland, and the issues of the Murray-Darling System- including the dredging of silt and low water flow at the headwaters."

Much of these issues are cyclic. The world and all regions in it go through cycles of high relative rainfall and low relative rainfall. The trick used by the doomsayers is to pick the low point in the cycle and declare that that is the new normal. It is how we end up with declarations that the dams will never fill or the salinity in the Murray will destroy the Riverina. If Nathan was writing this a few years back he'd be talking about the low dam levels in Sydney that applied then.

But the IPCC admits that there is no evidence that overall world rainfall has changed over the last century. So if its lower than normal in one place it would be higher than normal in another. Picking this or that place at one particular point in time is invalid.

Now of course sometimes the cycles run over decades and its easy to be deceived into thinking the change is permanent. But its not. Rainfall in western NSW was high and land that up to then wasn't viable became viable. The cycle has now turned and that land is now becoming unviable. But people assume that the conditions in 1960s were normal and this is not. But that's just wrong