Um, Western nations don't need extra energy to grow. Energy use on the west has been falling for the last 4 years as gains in efficiency (driven by new tech) outstrips new business use.

Growth is the only way debt can be repaid. Loans are expected to be repaid with future discounted dollars, not with today's full-value dollars. When growth stops, gazillions of dollars of debt will simply evaporate, as will the banks holding the debt. Oh dear, how sad. I'm keeping my $2.50 in savings under my mattress, not in no dirty, rotten bank! Even if they ask nicely, they won't get my pocket money ...

"I see no reason for this to stop, unless, of course, we have social and educational policies that militate against learning"

Then you will be dismayed at the Republican Party in Texas having a plank of their platform being to disallow the teaching of Critical Thinking is schools: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html

Note to Editor- Can you put a spell check thingo on this site?

Hi Clem

How do you mean a 'finite' world?

Things grow - and humans work out how to get more from things. Once we used uranium to colour glass. We didn't know how to breed plants. We used coal for jewellery.

I'm not denying resources can be scarce. But it's not a case of 'there's stuff, we use it up, that's it'.

James, you really need to study biology and ecology if you don't get it that we live in a finite world.

"Things grow"

But fossil fuel energy does not grow at any where near the same rate that we are consuming it at!

And everything we grow, or more precisely the scale on which we grow them, at present is dependant on fossil fuels.

E.G. To fuel tha massive plows and harvestors, to fuel b-double trucks that get the grains to the processing plants and then the processed foods from the processing plants to the super markets. Nitrogen fertlisers come from natural gas.......

With out fossil fuels we would not be capable of growing any where near as much food as we currently do. Without them, likely in the near future, a very great many of the current 7 billion humans on earth would starve to death. Including many in the west.

"With out fossil fuels we would not be capable of growing any where near as much food as we currently do. Without them, likely in the near future, a very great many of the current 7 billion humans on earth would starve to death. Including many in the west".

Exactly. I continued to be baffled by the ignorance of people who cannot see such obvious issues in our future. Peak Oil combined with probable global warming will place impossible strains on our agricultural economy and the negative impacts will not spare the populations of wealthy countries.
\
Dislocation of food production systems is a real threat, that has not been adequately addressed yet. It will be too late to react, by the time starving millions start migrating to areas where food is available, or besieged governments go to war over food supplies.

Imagine if any of the nuclear fringe-dwellers in our community of nations decided to launch their missiles, in a crazed attempt to secure food for its people. The prospect almost makes climate change pale into insignificance.

I'm not sure how easy it is Doug - this being the Anthropocene period and all - to separate out the physical consequences of global warming with our likely responses. And given the history of these things I'd be buying sharies in razor wire makers and the folks that make Bushmaster "assault rifles" myself.

Unless of course we try a more sensible and co-operative approach.

Sadly Greg has opted for the former - especially when it comes to refugees - less so when it comes to Kiwis who are apparently less of as burden on our "carrying capacity". But I reckon it is both inevitable and desirable that we continue to let "foreign folks" like Greg come here and make a life for themselves. We just shouldn't take much notice when they tell us to shut the gates.

I don't really want to live in a world we rich must defend ourselves from the poor like that - especially an Australia like that - no matter how "green" the arguments.

Is environmentalism compatible with selfishness? Do we really want to build ourselves into the world's largest dryest loneliest gated community? As if we could. Horsefeathers, all of it.

" Is environmentalism compatible with selfishness?'

Nah, selfishness is what created this mess.

Australia is not a separate planet, it is a part of Earth and it can afford to take on refugees - that is not a part of increasing the world's population, merely spreading it around. In fact if we take in more people, those same people will be able to access the education and health services that aid in limiting population growth.

At the same time we can afford to aid overpopulated countries by providing the infrastructure for the same health and educational foundation we have here.

Put simply, there is no single answer. As we need a diverse range of renewable energy sources, we need to have a range of actions to help our people - by which I mean people of Earth.

Closing borders is part of the same mindset of those who fear losing power.

As I have stated previously we have the means, the technology.

Look at this:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/01/24/afghanistan-fertility-rate-declines/1824009/

Which is great, but... brings with it the conundrum of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Is there a way of leaving professional people rather than soldiers to help Afghanis?

Diana I sypathise with you on this to some degree but there are some facts that I believe to be so and that I would like you to comment on.

1) Humans are inherently selfish with some capacity to act alturistically in some circumstances, particularly when there is something to be gained long term, either financially or socially. Selfishness is a behavioural pattern hard wired into our neurocircuitry, through evolution and natural selection, that cannot be changed. We can suppress it to some degree particularly when we are well educated.

2) Australia is 'ecologically challenged'. Our soils are among the most ancient and impovershed on earth. We do not have reliable surface water supplies while energy intensive water supplies like desalinated water are not an option if it is your belief that Australia should reduce its energy consumption and CO2 emissions. This continent is not capable of supporting a population much larger than at present long term. A number of capital cities came very close to running out of water at the end of the last prolonged drought. If their populations are significantly larger then they will likely run out of water far sooner during the next prolonged drought.

3) Given the above, Australia cannot solve global poverty and injustice through immigration. Even if we increased our immigration intake to a million per year, at great cost to future generations of Australians, it would be a mere drop in the ocean as far as alleviating the suffering of current refugees around the globe, let alone the likely number by 2050.

4) If Australia is to have any impact on global nover population and refugees then it will be through setting an example on the world stage with a well managed zero net popoulation growth policy, followed up by cuts to our own wsteful consumption and provision of a great deal more foreign aid, particularly free contraception and family planning services.

5) It does not serve the interests of refugees around the globe, nor future generations of Australians, to push Australia's population further beyond long term sustainable limits and thus reduce Australian society to similar levels of misery and political instability.

Koalas in SE QLD are under real risk of going extinct due to urban expansion, in turn due to population growth in that region. Is it your view that extinction of koalas and other native fauna is an acceptible price to pay in order to allow more immigrants into this country?

The fact is that you have to have some means of regulating the flow of 7 billion souls across this planet.

IF we don't have borders then potentially a signficant proportion of 1 billion chinese could move to Ausralia or britian or else where when their economy goes bust.

If you think that this sort of movement of people from one region to another is sustainable Diana then I suggest you need to fundamentally need to re-think your views. Because the vast majority of Australians would simply not agree with you.

Countries, borders and visa are the best way we can regulate the flow of millions of people. IF you can think of a better means of discouraging the flow of hundreds of millions of people in a short time span then I would like to hear it Diana!

I cannot reply to such value laden "facts".

Not all humans are inherently selfish.

We have the technology and skills to live compatibly with Australia's climate and soils.

We can, along with other first world nations aid others. There is no magic bullet, but closing our borders could well be the most dangerous action we take. There is no safe way to close our coast line.

I agree with setting an example, no point preaching unless we practice. That includes permitting refugees as well as sending aid to less fortunate countries.

We are not pushing our population beyond sustainable levels if we act now to implement sustainable agricultural along with energy technologies.

Your final point is ill thought. Part of managing our environment includes maintaining it. Loading a comment as you have done is a straw-man argument. Quite absurd to equate extinction of koalas with immigration. Far better to place some much needed regulations on developers, miners and others making fast dollars out of carving up our land.

Humans are naturally empathic and are taught the idea of 'us' and 'them' in a group sense later. Young kids dont see any difference between any humans until they're taught to. You only have to look at Australian aboriginal culture to find examples of how extremely social and inclusive they were to their tribe. Nobody starves.

Your notion of selfishness is the lie fed to the western world by capitalists trying to justify their own shortcomings.

http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-the-empathic-civilisation

Australia does have terrible soils, it's true. So this should be a trigger for technical innovation rather than giving up and saying it cant be done. Israel is doing amazing things with greenhouses in deserts...oh hang on...so is Australia already.

http://hydroponics.com.au/free-articles/issue-107-territory-lettuce/

http://www.eco-business.com/news/australia-miracle-greenhouse-grows-food-in-the-desert/

Australia doesn't need to solve global poverty and injustice. Who said we did? By pretending the problem is too immense, you justify doing nothing. Now the sensible approach is to continue immigration and work on finding space and food for even more people here. You know the north west of Australia is very fertile and could support a lot more people, but is underdeveloped now.

4. Zero net growth population is an interesting idea and frankly is one that seems to happen quite naturally in rich, educated societies globally. You seem to be operating in a vacuum of information to say we need even more restrictions. If you want zero net growth, give wealth and education to as many people as you can.

Now wasteful consumption is another matter, that is something we have to face head on in our move to be a sustainable society on every front.

And you finish with a false choice argument based on false logic. The two have nothing to do with each other, please return to logical fallacy school and start again.

More imaginative 'arguments'.

So now we should be afraid of the population of China moving to Australia? China is FAR more fertile than Australia, it makes no sense at all.

This is starting to sound more like the domino effect argument by each posting. It sounds like you want to 'protect' Australia from the yellow hordes. Racist bunkum.

Furthermore, instead of telling ME to rethink MY views, how about you expand upon your own?

You have finally discovered what many have already been aware of for a long time; that the financial sector is/was founded on nothing. Well done.

Try this:

" 1. From human evolution.

Leaky (Richard) points out that the circumstances in which humans evolved over millions of years, especially having to survive in small tribal bands on the dangerous grasslands of Africa, required strong bonding and cooperation between people. Had humans been competitive and individualistic we would not have survived. This suggests that if anything we have evolved to be inately cooperative, not aggressive. Richard Leaky says,

“Humans could not have evolved in the remarkable way in which we have unless our ancestors were strongly cooperative creatures...there must have been extreme selective pressures in favour of our ability to cooperate.”

The theory of evolution is often taken to mean that organisms struggle to survive in competition against each other. However it can be argued that the fundamental theme in evolution is the survival of the species, not the individual, and often species have developed cooperative and altruistic behaviours which increase the chances of survival for the species. For example in some bird and animal species the individual who first detects danger will give the alarm which helps the group to flee quickly but actually reduces that individual's chances of escape (because it draws he attacker's attention, and because the individual could have sneaked away leaving the others to be attacked.)
In The Origins of Virtue Matt Ridley argues that we have “moral” instincts; tendencies to be friendly, cooperative and helpful, built into our genes by evolution (…and we have nasty tendencies too…the task is to facilitate the former.)

2. Altruism exists, in abundance.

Even if humans did have an innate disposition to be selfish, competitive and aggressive, it is obvious that most people at least also have a strong disposition to be helpful, cooperative, friendly and to care about the welfare of others. Many humans will go to great effort, and in fact will sacrifice their own welfare, to help others. This is most obvious within families (the "selfish gene" theorist might say this is only a mechanism which increases the chance of survival of those with the same genes as the helper), but many people are also powerfully motivated to be cooperative, helpful, sympathetic and altruistic to strangers. How can this be if we are basically selfish, competitive and aggressive. Even if we have both sorts of dispositions why can't the nice one be encouraged to be predominant.

Even though there is much warfare, selfishness and violence in the world, the important fact is that the ordinary person spends about 99.99% of their time not trying to harm others, or to intentionally grab. They spend far more time cooperating with, helping and living peacefully with others than trying to attack, harm or steal. Why then don't we conclude that humans are basically nice but occasionally do nasty things to each other?

3. From Anthropology.

There are about 30 societies known to anthropologists in which people are very peaceful, cooperative and friendly and not selfish, competitive, aggressive or violent. This mean that humans are not by nature nasty. Some tribes are intensely aggressive, but some are not. Some groups in modern society, such as the Quakers and the Amish are very peaceful and cooperative. These observations reinforce the claim that behaviours such as cooperation and aggression are due to cultural factors, not to our biological inheritance.

Anthropologists recognise that ”primitive” societies can have much internal violence, arising from conflicts over women, status etc. This leaves open the possibility that better rules and arrangements might avoid such conflicts, but more importantly, below this aggression/conflict is distinguished from the propensity to undertake wars of conquest and plunder against other societies.

4. War is a recent invention.

Human history is such a terrible record of warfare that it is tempting to say we humans are naturally warlike. But this seems to be quite incorrect because organised wars of conquest and plunder and lasting domination of another society appears to be only an activity we have engaged in over the last 8000 years. The archaeological record seems to show clearly that before that time humans did not wage war, or at least that it was not prevalent or important (e.g, no evidence of walled settlements.). There would probably have been the occasional inter-tribal fighting (remember that for millions of years we lived in very small scattered groups that would rarely have come across another group) and it seems that there was and still is considerable violence within many tribes (disputes and murders), but there seems to be no archaeological evidence of organised battles or armies until around the time when humans settled and developed agriculture. This enabled the accumulation of surpluses. When it became possible to get food and wealth by raiding grain stores etc. rather than growing it then it evidence of warfare, armies, fortified villages etc. becomes apparent in the archaeological record. Also, hunter gatherers have little property and share a great deal, whereas agricultural people tend to inevitably have more private possessions and property (e.g., stored harvest), making it more likely that disputes would arise. The evidence is that there is more aggression in such societies.)

In other words it seems that in general war is a fairly recent human invention, not something that we have always engaged in. The Twentieth Century was the most warlike in human history, with over 160 million people killed in war. This indicates that the explanation for war lies in our social institutions and structures. "

Excerpt from: http://socialsciences.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/HumanNature.htm

Diana, technology cannot override fundamental ecological limits.

Take water. Yes we can increase the supply of fresh water, but at the cost of a signficant increase in energy consumption, i.e. desalination.

And desalinated water is extremely expensive. If Australians were to become reliant on delsalinated water then the inequities in our society would be greatly exacerbated. There would be water rich and water poor with far worst social consequences than wage rich and wage poor.

Technology is not the sole answer to sustainability. technology combined with population/fertility amanagement is the only answer.

Well as far as you open borders attitude Diana, you are out on the same limb as Peter Ormande. I and a clear majority of Australians, and indeed the majority of citizens of all other countries, simply will not accept it. So you and Peter can continue to dream your unattainable dream.

You assumption that humans are not innately selfish is based on religious premise that humans are apart from the rest of the animal kingdom in having souls that are seperate from body and thus indepednant of evolutionary imperatives. This is demonstrably not true.

Unless we recognize our fundamental biological and behavioural limitiations, that are subject fully to evolutionary imperatives as with the entire animal kingdom, then we will be doomed to repeat the same mistakes that have lead to our current social and political problems.

Human biology and neurophysiology can only be managed at a societal level. But it can't be fundementally altered or ignored.

Many school children may not recognize ethnic differences but often nor do they have much innate empathy until they are punished for allowing their base instincts to control their behaviour.

I am of course referring to school bullying.

Strawman arguments with an assumption that the majority support you is the preserve of the religious and the US Republicans.

I suggest you try your luck there.

Alternatively you could attempt to support your opinion in any way.

Despite being presented with actual evidence, you ignore it to continue to respond with baseless opinion. Not good enough.

I could have said the same thing about Britain or New Zealand Dhugal. I chose china because their population is 1 billion or so, they are at the peak of an economic bubble and any mass movement of people out of china will have enormous consequences for the destination countries.

It does not matter what colour their skin is, mass movement of people in a short time period cause political and social instability in the destination countries and is not sustainable in the long term.

You can hurl racist slurs at me all you want Dhougal but I deny you accusations and you wont succeed in shutting me up.

Again, your starting point is not connected to your finishing point.

How does this apply to Australia again?

Sure, mass migrations change history. When China was starving many times in history there were huge amounts of people who left. Same for any country. Lots of people left Europe to colonise the Americas. Yup, gotcha.

So now you're telling me that it will make sense for our near neighbours to migrate to Australia suddenly and en masse?

Still not making any sense there. The logistics and cost involve are phenomenal and dont match up to other options: like staying on land.

How on earth will our immigration policy have the slightest effect on such an event?

These are meanderings of someone who is desperately trying to validate a baseless opinion.

Facts and evidence please.

I'm not trying to shut you up, I'm trying to make the slightest sense from your meanderings.

Sorry Dhougal but, based on Gillard's backflip on offshore processing, I would say it is entirely reasonable to conclude that by far the majority of Australians are very uncomfortable with an open borders approach to uninvited asylum seekers

So you're saying selfish bullies are the model citizens our society should be based on?

I think we should focus on the empathetic, cooperative people who form the actual majority.

You only have to travel outside western countries and away from tourist traps to discover that people all over the world today are 95% friendly, helpful, empathetic and delightful to strangers. I have lost count of the number of amazing stories of help and hospitality from around the world - it is the standard, not the exception. The exception is bullies and despots.

We took a wrong turn giving too much power to bullies in the finance and political realm. Time to take it back and reform the cultural basis again.

Reply to Dhugal

..."You know the north west of Australia is very fertile and could support a lot more people, but is underdeveloped now."...

We need not to confuse the prolific end of wet season growth of spear grass (annual sorghum's) that wave over our heads and sometimes infests our armpits with prickly seeds, with innate fertility.

If it was that fertile, we would have had a population of people from SE Asia settled there long ago. There were enough visitors - Trepang traders, the Dingo people etc.

If to be developed much more R&D and practical local experience is needed, plus a huge reduction in transport costs. To quote a boss of mine during my time as an agronomist in the public service working out of Darwin, 'The North Will not Be Mocked'. Not that it cannot be done, but take care.

Look up the histories of :Vesty's and the meat works in Darwin, Humpty Doo, Tipperary, Scot Creek, or Camballin to name a few. Most of these grand schemes, similar to efforts like the 'ground nut' project in Africa, did not use or develop locally adapted expertise. I watched some projects fail and despaired at the stupidity of those who could not / would not understand the limitations of the local environment.

Smaller scale projects like your territory lettuce can succeed. It being in the desert and not dry savanna tropics would be probably easier to manage as there is very a very different disease, pest, temperature and transport (river flooding) profile in the North or Kimberleys.

The soils do need plenty of P etc.

Dhougal you sound EXACTLY like the property developers!

"Population growth is inevitable so we may as well accept it and get on with life"

I believe they have largely become resigned to the fact that the vast majority of Australians do not accept their preferred future population size/customer base.

I believe the gillard government is making a reasonable attempt at dealing with uninvited asylim seekers, i.e. loading the Sri Lanken ones on planes and sending them back to Sri Lanka.

I am sure they could deal with greater numbers quite easily if Australian voters / people smugglers put enough pressure on them. E.G. Perhaps charter ocean liners to send them back to the source countries en masse.

What do you mean by 'open borders' in your new strawman hypothesis?

If you're seriously going to use that as an example, I'm profoundly disappointed.

Refugees were unashamedly used by Howard to manufacture consent to his terrible world view. Borrowed, like all of his playbook, from the US republicans to divide and conquer by giving simple answers to complex questions. the fact Labor are too pathetic to reverse it tells you why they cant form a majority government.

But you like manufactured consent it seems, so now I can use anything that any country rife with propaganda and tight media control justifies.

Great... North Korea says you shouldn't have immigrants..and you agree with them. That's working out really well for the North Koreans. We should totally follow everything they do.

I cant believe you support despotic regimes! You want Australia to be North Korea !

See, this is the kind of logic you're presenting, I'm trying to illustrate the point for you.

You are really going to have to slow down on putting words in everyone's mouth. Instead or arguing what you'd like to argue, you might try listening to the responses and thinking about them.

Peter, you're not funny.

That's an interesting point. A bit ozymandias ( originally my iPad spelled this as 'oozy manias', how apt) perhaps?
I was originally going to say'i wonder if all the slaves that built the pyramids thought that it was worth it' ,but then I remembered they probably weren't all slaves, a lot were tradies and engineers, and there was an industry of accommodation, eateries and prostitutes to support them.
Perhaps the pyramids were an Egyptian financial crisis stimulus scheme?

Do you mean that Peter isn't humorous or that he isn't peculiar? No matter, I don't agree with either proposition.

The solution is a simple as it is hard. We have to leave the finite world.
Gerard K O'Neil was right on the money when he said

"It is important to realize the enormous power of the space-colonization technique. If we begin to use it soon enough, and if we employ it wisely, at least five of the most serious problems now facing the world can be solved without recourse to repression: bringing every human being up to a living standard now enjoyed only by the most fortunate; protecting the biosphere from damage caused by transportation and industrial pollution; finding high quality living space for a world population that is doubling every 35 years; finding clean, practical energy sources; preventing overload of Earth's heat balance.
—Gerard K. O'Neill, "The Colonization of Space"[26]"

You don't like it? Then I suggest that you try the alternative.

The best we've done so far – following billions of expenditure and using some of the best brains available – is a little tinpot space station orbiting just beyond our thin stratosphere with half a dozen people cramped inside. From that point you are suggesting that human civilisation, tens of millions of us, can simply pop into space and colonise it – and all this before climate change or financial breakdown bang us on the head?

It's not a matter of liking the idea, it's a simple matter of basic physics. But I can't blame anyone for romantically dreaming of such a seemingly joyous and risk free escape.

I enjoy science fiction too, with thanks Arthur.

That was yesterdays technology.
What advice would you have given to the early experimenters of flight who used hot air balloons?
My guess is that you would have said something along the lines of

"The best we've done so far – following billions of expenditure and using some of the best brains available – is a little tinpot space station orbiting just beyond our thin stratosphere with half a dozen people cramped inside"

Now we have colossal carbon nanotubes. And further research is being done all the time on materials.
http://www.gizmag.com/threadlike-carbon-nanotube-fiber/25777/

Professor Gerard K O' Neil et al developed a business model for lifting millions of people off the planet using yesterdays technology.
We preferred to spend the planets wealth bombing some rice farmers in Vietnam.

To blow all progress off as techno-fantasy is to leave yourself wide open to the ridicule of future generations.
Can anyone remember the names of the people who ridiculed Marconi's techno-fantasies of sending a wireless signal across the Atlantic? At that time it must have seemed like an unbelievable lot of gumph to the uneducated mind.

Seeking to solve sustainability problems on planet earth by sending millions into space colonies or what ever is a very naive pipe dream.

Even if it could be done in the 60s and 70s, those space populations would still be dependant on resources from earth for the foreseeable future.

They would need to be sent, food, water and oxygen. Even now we are decades or perhaps centuries away from the technology necessary for TOTALLY self sufficient off earth colonies.

So space colonies are no different to sending millions of people to live in antartica. They will still consume earth resoruces behind sustainable limits.

I suppose there is a possibility of getting ourselves deeper in to the poo by floating human permanent habitation on/in the oceans. Fair bit of energy available in sunlight, wind, waves and in the temperature differences between surface and deep ocean temperatures. Also considerable nutrients in the deeper waters if brought to the surface and exposed to light.

However, what has not been discussed much is the sigmoid curve that describes among other things population growth in biological systems. At present, we do not seem to have a tacit agreement that we do not have such limits.

The population in Australia was relatively quite small prior to the intrusion of the British Empire brought a new set of tools. Was part of the limit to population growth the lack of biological resources in the for of large domesticated animals, and domesticated plants. That parts of our continent have soils with extremely low nutrient levels is probably a factor as well.

Note that on some of these very nutrient deficient soils, there is a considerable diversity of flora with its associated organisms. Is this part of the shape to come. Very few if any very large corporations, but many small units which are specialized to exploit small niches.

William - you see technology but not enormous energy cost that is required to manufacture it. As someone in IT, this essay might interest you:

http://energyskeptic.com/2012/computer-chips-after-peak-everything-collapse-impossible/

G'day Ms W...

"Conflict-ridden nations are unlikely to experience economic growth..."

Not necessarily true sadly. Depends on where you do your conflicting.

Been doing some reading of late - back to the sacred texts of Keynes - regarding the value of pyramids in managing an economy, creating demand but not actually making anything that interferes with anything remotely useful.

I'd suspect that military spending - the military industrial complex - fits this model like a sock. Massive public expenditure but which is disconnected from the "real economy".

Having wars on one's home turf is probably bad news economically - at least in the short-term - but having one's wars somewhere else and wrecking someone else's infrastructure on the other hand probably doesn't do any damage at all back home - in fact the reverse.

So one can be "conflict-ridden" with massive investments in military hardware, science and personnel ... a militarised state ... and, on paper at least - be doing quite nicely out of seeing enemies and threats under every bush.

War is an excellent export economically speaking.

Horrible isn't it?

Jason I suggest you watch this documentary about how our money system has evolved since antiquity to the impossible economic situation we now find ourselves in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8

Now there are some details in this doco that jave been questioned but essesntially it is entirely accurate.

Before I watched this doco I might have said exactly the same thing as you have just said. But after watching it, what the author has said here makes perfect crystal clear sense to me.

It is why I insist on the necessity to fundamentally reform our money system, including possibly rescinding the federal reserve act and replacing it with something else, if we are to break out of this impossible situation where growth of debt (and population growth) is necessary in order to avoid the total collapse of our economic system into depression.

It is astounding to me at the level of utter ignorance as to how how money system REALLY works in modern times, including among many respected politicians. I hear politicians like Joe Hockey crapping on about national debt and I now just shake my head because he CLEARY has no clue as to how the system is working!.

And until I watched this doco I was well and truly among the ignorant.

Thanks for the link.

Even though the doco did not explicitly state, it goes a long way to reveal why the push for small government/low tax by the big end of town. They have successfully created a mistrust of government which is, ironically, aided and abetted by most politicians of most political stripes.

Keeping the public ignorant and indentured (from the time of serfs to the wage slaves of today) surely has to be the true oldest profession.

You are welcome Diana. Please spread it around to all your friends, family and colleagues. The more people that understand this the mopre hope we may have of breaking out of the downard cycle and the more immune voters will become to the economic crap that oozes from the mouths of our politicians.

I don't know whether the various conspiracy theories about a banking ellite deliberatel set out to keep us economic serfs indentured through personal debt are true, but it is certainly the way the system has evolved through time and population growth.

Perhaps this sort of pattern of affairs is an inevitable in any economic/social system when the population reaches a certain critical mass and it becomes essential in order to maintain political control and civil order.

I like to joke about conspiracy theories. In the case of the banking industry and the finance sector in general, those in power do not need to conspire, not when they have a common goal that has been intrenched for centuries.

People with power fear losing it. They see any move towards equitable societies as a direct threat to their status.

They believe that all other people think the way they do; it is incomprehensible that it is possible to spread wealth in the form of food, shelter, education, health and equality of opportunity. Any group of people who attempt to stand up to the powers-that-be, for example Mabo, a little girl in Afghanistan wanting an education (holding power is not exclusive to first world nations), homosexuals, as threats.

I thought the GFC may have been a wake-up call, instead the finance sector was bailed out by tame governments and the least able to shoulder the burden placed under "austerity measures".

No wonder they infiltrate media to self promote and fear change, dispute impacts on environment, use whatever means such as religion to maintain what has worked so well for so few.

Greg, I watched the doco', thank you.
While it was interesting and informative, and definitely should be required viewing by anyone who 'works' for a living, its lessons were largely familiar to me - I realised the flaws in our economic system long ago because I asked the very questions put forward in it.
My references to 'conventional ideas about development and poverty', and the 'cultural richness and social stability reflected in many traditional cultures. . .' were quite deliberate and specific.
I am convinced that nothing short of a complete shift in our social and economic paradigms will secure living standards, reduce poverty and promote social and human development. We must define exactly what these things mean to us as a society, and what benchmarks we should use to measure our success if we are to have any hope of achieving them.
I am new to 'the conversation' and am heartened by the level of discussion that takes place and desire by most to share ideas rather than simply 'win arguments'.

Greg, I replied to myself, dah. The above reply was intended for you. Thank you for the link.

With human nature is as it is, perhaps the whole notion of an entirely equitable society is a fallacy.

I believe that the only way we can have an at least close to equitable society is with a very small population relative to available resources.

So that the would be ellites cannot gain economic advantage through high demand for scarce resources.

"'win arguments"

Trust me, there is plenty of that in here as well.

A common means of winning immigration/multiculturalism related arguments is via the traditional racist slur. Even some of the credentialled accademics in here seem to engage in this, many times where it is not justified.

I take particular exception to this sort of behaviour so I am afraid I have been involved in many arguments in here.

Dear Greg

The racist slur is something that I have been thinking about for years.

I have come to the conclusion that the only racists are people who accuse another person of racism. They are the true racists.

I have an Ozzie flag hanging in my window. This led to me being accused of being a racist by a person who I think was a Pakistani.

I replied that I was born in India of British stock. I became an Australia at the age of 9. My wife is Polish, my daughter in law is German, and my friends come from all the continents. I explained to this bloke that I have a lot of trouble deciding which cricketr team I am backing.

The racists are the people who think race is very important. I don't think it is.

Even worse Giles - "race" is a rubbish notion ... quaintly Victorian, like phrenology. Dodgy science, dodgy assumptions and indefensible conclusions.

I'm Irish... a mix of celtic, saxon, scandinavian, french, spanish, jewish and with any luck some moorish stock. That's just the stuff we know about. If we do enough digging we'll probably pick up some neanderthal all built on a solid slab of someone like a Kalahari bushman - as do we all.

So what are we looking at when we are looking at "race" ... skin, eyes, hair? Or is the critical set of differences "cultural"? What is "significant"?

The Victorians were taxonomically "splitters" ... lots of categories, lots of sub-categories, species, subspecies ... differences were emphasised over commonality. Ideally - from the viewpoint of Imperial science - "race" would have been synonymous with "species".. but there was far too much miscegenation going on for that to be true. So we get this facile science of the superficial.

When it comes to humans I'm a "clumper" both taxonomically and politically. Like it or not we're the same and also we're in this together. And we will determine our future - if any - together.

And that's where I part company with Greg Boyles and others who advocate shutting people out, wrapping the place in razor wire and trying to go it alone. Not possible. Not feasible. Not desirable. It's just the National Front wearing a greenie t-shirt.

Happy Australia Day.

Look Giles, I don't deny that there is a great deal of xeonophobia going on around the globe and among all ethnicities.

It might be reasonable to describe some of my views as xenophobic to some degree, particularly my views towards americans (as a nation).

It is my view that xenophobia and social cohesion are opposite sides of the same neurophysiological coin. You can't have one entirely without the other. And it is my view that xenophobia, as it is literally defined (fear or mistrust of strangers or outsiders or foreigners), is rife throughout white Australia. Mostly it is low level and largely good natured but they is never the less forms of xenophobia. Examples would be rivalry between Collingwood and non-Collingwood supporters and between construction workers and Grollo etc.

A lot of what these people describe as racism is in fact more accurately described as xenophobia, and I have no doubt that they are as guilty of xenophobia as those they incorrectly accuse of racism.

I believe that there is very little genuine racism (similar to the nazi attitude towards jews) in Australian society. Even with some australian attitudes towards aborigines.

With the respect to the images we often see of dysfunctional aboriginal communities in the media. I wonder how different the attitudes towards them are to the attitudes towards the residents of housing commission areas with their chronic welfare dependancy, excessive fertility, teenage deliquency etc.

How many of those Australians truly believe that aborigines are sub-human and that welfare recipients in housing commission areas are not? I posit that, if carefully examined, very few Australians who are critical of aborigines would hold this view, that there is little or no difference between the attitudes towards both groups and that it is more akin to 'classism' than it is to gebuine racism.

You were right to challenge the doctrine of your economics professor.

That is what intelligent people do and what science is all about - questioning the status quo and the correctness of those who perpetuate it.

It beggars belief that there are still supposedly educated university economic professors that still believe you can have perpetual economic growth on a finite planet with finite resources.

Any scientist will tell you this, but much of economics is thus far a long way from rational evidence driven science.

The more rational of economists will probably tell you that the likely results of reaching the ecological and resource limits of the planet will be a pertual boom bust cycle.

We will have economic collapse when the limits of a critical resource are reached and some recovery as we switich to an alternate resource or otherwise adapt to some extent to the shortage.

Then we will hit the limits of another resource and another economic collapse willl ensue........and so on ans so forth.

There will likely be a gradual wind down of our global economy and population as we exhaust the richest of our resources and must switch to less productive ones.

A good example is fossil fuels. So far no one has come up with an alternative energy source which has an equivalent of better EROEI and is economicall viable on a large scale.

As our collective energy supply diminishes there will likely be increased conflicts and famine (including in the west).

Just stop and think which parts of our economy, agriculture, industry and faily lives that are not critically dependant on fossil fuel energy to maintain the current high output that 7 billion plus humans are currently dependant on for survival.

Thanks for your thoughts Greg. I agree. "So far no one has come up with an alternative energy source which has an equivalent of better EROEI and is economicall viable on a large scale" I am optimistic that we will, what changes to society and population security in the meantime is the next big question. Cheers

I actually hope that we don't succeed in coming up with a new viable energy sources or, if scientists do come up with one, then they withold the technology.

If we re 'bailed out' with a new energy source then it will once again provide an excuse not to deal directly with human over population, the stakes will grower yet larger as over population worsens resulting in and even worst population crash when that new energy sources is exhausted in the future.

And worse - we will see "our" culture diluted with immigrants and foreigners, won't we Greg --- that's the real problem - the real gut fear - innit?

Hehe interesting view. You could be right. However, I do truly believe after much research in a future of energy supply derived from a strong combination and reliable mix of existing and future Renewable Energy sources. It will be a long time before the sun explodes and the wind stops blowing, tide stops flowing , waves stop crashing, rain stops falling, geothermal stops heating , algae stops processing, hydrogen stops carrying.

What human population that combination of Renewables alongside conventional gas as a transition can sustain I am not sure about. But whatever that number ends up being, will be the number. Some will die, some won't, those are the inevitabilities of evolution and I accept.

Goodnight mate

Hehe that's a funny one Pete, a bit off topic but lets go with it. It seems to be your big gut fear, and I'm sad you are confused in that way. Let's see "Ormonde", where is that name from, Ireland? I have read a few good books about Ireland and its history but to save time, it's late, let me cut out of Wikipedia some info for you :

"The Iron Age in Ireland began about 600 BC. The period between the start of the Iron Age and the historic period (AD 431) saw the gradual infiltration of small groups of Celtic-speaking people into Ireland,[5][6] with items of the continental Celtic La Tene style being found in at least the northern part of the island by about 300 BC.[7] ISBN 0-7171-2829-6[8] The result of a gradual blending of Celtic and indigenous cultures would result in the emergence of Gaelic culture by the fifth century.[5][9] It is also during the fifth century that the main over-kingdoms of In Tuisceart, Airgialla, Ulaid, Mide, Laigin, Mumhain, Cóiced Ol nEchmacht began to emerge (see Kingdoms of ancient Ireland). Within these kingdoms a rich culture flourished. The society of these kingdoms was dominated by an upper class consisting of aristocratic warriors and learned people, which possibly included Druids."

So there you go, we have looked into just a few waves of "immigrants" into Ireland and all have contributed to what you would now call "Irish" culture, and let's not even get started on what Christianity did to the minds of the Irish..... Or sorry are you Australian?

Michel...

No no not my fear at all - hence the quotes. Greg on the other hand hides a very ugly racism and "culturalism" in pious rhetoric about sustainable population. We have a history Greg and me - and I want people to know what this bloke really thinks and the implications of his fear and hatred.

Now speaking of history - thanks for the "roots" instalment. My lot were from up around Munster in the North ... a tough lot by all accounts ... local warlords with a sideline in fighting the neighbours.

There's an Earl of Ormonde still and even a castle but the Earl is and has always been called Butler ... put there by the Normans after they'd finished with England.

I am most aware of the absurdity of the notion of "race" and "national culture" ... always been a moveable feast... al;ways hybridised and - as Greg would see it - "diluted". Those Norsemen really put themselves out there ... hence my blue eyes and what was once blonde locks.

We are a lovely soup of a culture ... world cuisine. And I'm quite happy to be diluted - provided people see what is good and important in a place and seek to add to it rather than "protect" it by force as Greg advocates... as he puts it - "whatever it takes". That will destroy everything precious about Australia and how we live and see the world.

So the short answer is I agree with your point - and indeed it is the very point I try and make with Greg every time he sticks his shaved head up here.

Sorry for the misunderstanding Peter. Yes I was a bit confused, because without going back over all your other previous comments, I seem to remember thinking of you as a good guy.

Yes I do notice a hint of an underlying strain in Greg's shoulder. Perhaps we can help him heal it. Have a good day!