One End Of Spectrum There's China; and At The Other, Australia

[Dr Strangelove]

Isn't Australia something like 90% desert? What is the size of the non-desert portion of Australia? Isn't the habitable part of Australia something like approximately the size of New England?

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Isn't Australia something like 90% desert? What is the size of the non-desert portion of Australia? Isn't the habitable part of Australia something like approximately the size of New England?

A quick search of the Australian government websits says their arable land is 461,211 km², which is about 10 times more than Japan and 1/4 of the US'.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Sprayber
Perhaps some people here should take one for the team and do their part in decreasing the world's population

They're too big of a coward. I've already asked them before.

[JohnT]

It's easier to whine than do, DD.

[Az]

This is a perfect timing to take over the world with my army of semi-clones (children)

[Japher]

Not entirely. People themselves also do a lot of damage to the environment, if just for the fact the more people use up more resources, and you need to get resources from somewhere. Then you have things like slash-and-burn agriculture practices in various places such as Brazil, health problems caused by people living in certain areas, and so forth.

It's the not entirely that gets you trapped. Since we know that slash and burn type treatment of the environment is not entirely "needed" it would then again fall on the part of industry and not population.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by General Ludd


Just going to shrug off my argument, then? Ppretend that you didn't just cite something that is based on an assumption of declining growth rates to argue for increased growth rates?


But I'm not going to sift through pages and pages of overblown stastistics to find their methodology. You seem to have alot of faith in their projections though, so surely you can give me a summary?

Ok, back during the time of the revolution in the US the birth rate was about 8-10 children per women, now we are down to about 2.07, what happened?

[Imran Siddiqui]

You're going too fast for him Whoha .

It's funny how Ludd is a total dunce on basic economics. As the value of a woman's time goes up, the less children she will have as that will take away from her working (and if her value is higher, then that time being taken away will be harder to bear).

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Whoha
what happened?

People did what I'm suggesting and stopped having so many kids.

[David Floyd]

9 billion people far exceeds the carrying capacity of the earth.

In terms of what? Food production? The solution is simply to produce more - if Russia and the Ukraine produced as much grain as they could, they'd outproduce the US (assuming they had equal technology).

In any case, Australia has food surpluses. If they want to expand their population at the cost of reducing grain exports, fine by me. I live in a free country - you know, the type of country that doesn't rely on grain imports.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by General Ludd
Damage to the environment, pollution.

I repeat my question, what damage?

And despite that it still isn't enough. We're just amazingly efficient like that.

There's PLENTY. Distribution is the problem.

[Starchild]

Yay! I'm the first person that gets to shout out that this is discriminatory against those that cannot/will not produce offspring (ie, my team. You know how we hate being left out of the fun).

A fairier way would be to assign every adult citizen a quota of 1.5 children linked to the payment for having the kids. That way, couples can have their three kids with government payments while those that don't want to have children can sell their quotas to people that want more government-funded kiddies.

So completes my now pointless two cents.

[Dauphin]

Everyone knows there are no homosexuals in Australia. That whole thing about Sydney being second only to San Fran in the gay population stakes is a slur against red blooded Australian heteros.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Starchild
Yay! I'm the first person that gets to shout out that this is discriminatory against those that cannot/will not produce offspring (ie, my team. You know how we hate being left out of the fun).

A fairier way would be to assign every adult citizen a quota of 1.5 children linked to the payment for having the kids. That way, couples can have their three kids with government payments while those that don't want to have children can sell their quotas to people that want more government-funded kiddies.

So completes my now pointless two cents.

are you sterile? Gay people have been known to have been married with children.

[Dauphin]

And those that do are often not living the life that they want.