The Elephant in the room: Us.

Stemming from the Breaking News thread I posted a couple of days ago, $1m for person who reduces population, I decided to start this thread to discuss what's being presented by Dick Smith.

Now, when I first heard about this, the eugenics idea popped into my head, then I looked into it more, watched his documentary and have a debate on the documentary to watch still too.

I will admit that I underestimated Dick's research and dedication to this subject.

This is a man who puts his money where his mouth is:

In 2005, Dick Smith gave public support to the asylum seeker Peter Qasim. Qasim was released later in 2005 by the Australian Government after seven years in detention. This support included the offer to visit India seeking evidence of Qasim's claims.

Smith donated AU$60,000 in February 2007 towards the campaign to secure a fair trial for Australian terrorism suspect David Hicks who had been held in a U.S. military prison in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay for five years, saying he wanted Hicks to get "a fair trial, a fair go". Fresh charges, including attempted murder, had been filed against Hicks earlier that month. Hicks pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in March 2007 as part of a plea bargain, and was released from custody in December 2007.

He paid a large share of the ransom to free Australian photojournalist Nigel Brennan and Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout who were both being held hostage in Somalia.

Smith is a founder and a patron of the Australian Skeptics. In July 1980, Smith collaborated with renowned skeptic James Randi to test water divining, offering a prize of $40,000 for a successful demonstration.

In response to a large increase in pertussis cases during a 2008/09 outbreak, Smith funded a national ad in The Australian encouraging parents to "Get The Facts" and derided the Australian Vaccination Network as an anti-vaccination organisation.

Smith came to the financial rescue of Australian Greens leader and Senator Bob Brown after he was left with a $240,000 anti-logging court bill. A failure to pay would have resulted in Brown having to declare bankruptcy, and therefore lose his seat in the Senate.

Now that we have established who Dick is, let's look further into his Population Puzzle.

Like many Australians, Dick Smith just accepted the mantra that a Big Australia was a Good Australia. But a fateful phone call from his daughter, Jenny, changed everything.

Jenny asked why nobody was talking about population in the lead up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. After all, she queried, wasn't it people who created carbon emissions? Population was the elephant in the room that no one was discussing. And it set Dick off on a journey of discovery for six months to explore how rising population was changing Australia and the world. The answers, as revealed in the film, came as a shock.

A preview of the above mentioned documentary:



And here's a lecture he held at the Kelvin Thomson's Population Reform Breakfast:







I post this lecture because I think only Australians can watch the full documentary and the message is the same anyway.

The full documentary can be found here:

www.abc.net.au...

Scroll down to Documentary.

Other links:

dicksmithpopulation.com.au...
www.abc.net.au...



[edit on 14/8/10 by Chadwickus]

I'm withholding my commentary until I watch the debate and welcome all comments and thoughts on this subject.

It may be talking specifically about Australia but the problem is replicated all over the world.

Population control was the end result of the global warming farce from the beginning. Too bad the tree huggers were too focused on CO2 to understand what the big picture has always been.
We must all understand the “powers that be” think they know what’s best and they will implement ways to reduce the population. They encourage division and arguing to keep us focused away from “them”.

reply to post by Chadwickus


I think Australia is a different situation to say India,China or Indonesia.

We have abundant inhabitable land and resources.

Our biggest concerns are,

Lack of infrastructure.
High density in cities.
Raping resources for export.
Lack of planning. Decentralization..
Immigration (to a lesser extent)

IMO, if the Goverment planned properly, we would be fine for many years with natural population growth.
In fact, are birth rates are dropping with most having children much later in life or not at all.

reply to post by CynicalM


Immigration plays a huge part in this.

It's no secret that Australia was created on the back of immigration, but the growth and capitalism needs to be reeled in.

250,000 new people arrive or are born here every year.

Two thirds are immigrants!

Eugenics (population control) is the heart of the issue behind:

Global Warming
Cap & Trade
Abortion
Gay Marriage
Mass Vaccination
GMO foods
etc...etc...etc.

Humanity is forced to use outdated fossil fuels as a method of controlling wealth. Multinational Corporations rule nearly every country on earth.

The Earth could sustain a population of 35 Billion people if we lived in harmony with nature, and ended this fal$e dependence on fossil fuels.

I think if we’re going to reduce the population, then we should use the oppurtunity to accelerate the evolution process. Therefore I agree with Eugenics as long as it’s voluntary i.e. through incentives like lower tax’s (even if taxs only become lower, by raising them first).

Don’t Co2-gas the debate…
However whilst climate change is, (and always has been) very real, I’ve come to believe CO2 global warming is largely the product of politically biased funding.
CO2 makes 0.0387% of the earths atmosphere. en.wikipedia.org...'s_atmosphere
The global warming effect of C02 is very small compared with e.g. methane which is around 20 times more potent.

All the greenhouse gases make up only 2% of the atmosphere, and CO2 represents only 3.62% of these gases.
www.ncpa.org...

However…
As over 30 percent of the world’s species have gone extinct in the last 30 years, www.rain-tree.com... as the rainforests and seas become more populated, there is an argument for population reduction (since better government is always a pipe dream). However the population reduction should be in the places where it’s causing the most problems (which are almost exclusively third world).
The Western world’s population is already in decline (birth wise) and grows only because of immigration from over countries.

Problem is that all these facts, are against the self-hate the media wants to teach us. If you destroy a person’s ego, then (generally) they’re easier to bully. Same thing goes with a population, verses the government.

reply to post by Chadwickus


You DID read my post right?

One of the concerns I pointed out was "Imigration"
so not sure what you are trying to tell me..

reply to post by CynicalM


And you put in brackets to a lesser extent.

I am pointing out that immigration doesn't play a lesser role in this at all.

It plays a massive part and the documentary covers this.

You obviously haven't watched it yet.

reply to post by Chadwickus


I watched the preview..
Australia has control over imigration so its an easy fix.
They say we need skilled workers but if we stopped exporting our resources we wouldn't need more workers.

But you are looking at world population..
Therefore imigration is a none issue...

Its easy to blame population, its easy to introduce ways to slow down population, its even easier to reduce population.

However the best way is to have worldwide peace and move forwards as a single superior species without population control border.

Theres plenty of resources and space, yet we all live in vain, all of these is because of greed and fear.

Look up for UMMO story and learn how to live as a whole. It might be fiction or truth, but there are lessons to be learn in the story.

We dont even have a worldwide highway and we already claim we are THE civilization. Humans is so full of themselves, until they saw a planet with 6 artificial moon.

Life change at the precipice, I wonder how its gonna be.

I'm a solid supporter of Zero Population Growth (ZPG) in Australia. Those who aren't, whine on about infrastructure and so forth and turn a blind eye to deforestation, salination of our soils through over farming the land and dwindling reserves of drinkable water. Australia is an arid country. Sure it's big but most of it is inhospitable.

If you support 50+ million people in this country, then I hope you don't mind drinking recycled urine and faeces because that's the way we are going. It's being proposed as we speak. Hell, if you want to live around so many people, do me a favour and go and migrate to India or China now.

Also, infrastructure costs money. Money we don't clearly have otherwise we'd be bursting at the seems with infrastructure.

In any case, why do we need to grow? What's the end game? To what cause? To feed capitalism? So the rich can keep getting richer? Nice! The world has finite resources. Sooner or later we have to say "enough". The world can no longer support any more people. If you keep sipping from a glass of water, eventually it will be empty. That's the nature of all that is 'finite'. It's a relatively simple concept.

The more people we have, the further we have to spread resources and the lower our standard of life will become. Again... another simple fact.

I'm not prepared to lower my standard of life. I'm not prepared to drink recycled urine and faeces. I'm not prepared to sacrifice my country because people in other countries like India continue to breed in a non sustainable fashion.

This country is fine as it is thanks. It's other countries that need to get their sh*t correct!

To all you pinkos... have at it!

IRM :shk:

[edit on 14/8/10 by InfaRedMan]

reply to post by InfaRedMan


Great reply.

It's pretty much where I'm at as well.

BUMP!

I thought I'd bump this thread as it's an important topic that concerns not just Australia but all of the first and developing countries.

IRM