"Professor Chris Rapley argues that the current global population of six billion is unsustainably high."

In that case, his personal duty is clear, so long as he doesn't do it in the faculty lounge and spoil the carpeting.

One of the reasons the Right can't coopt the environmental issue is that this is its logical conclusion.

Also, don't misunderestimate the excellent job public schools have done in propagandizing kids on environmentalism over the last 20-30 years. Environmentalism is the one Religion public education is allowed to promulgate. Poll results on abortion that you've recently mentioned are somewhat heartening though.

David:

Yes, that's the point on which Far Left and Far Right agree, that man is incapable of being both advanced economically and respectful of Creation. But it's a marginal view politically.

Well, if I spent too much time in Antarctica, I might think the same.

But I wonder how Prof. Rapley would react if those of us who have seen March of the Penguins called for penguin population control to protect the pristine Antarctic environment.

The reasons the right can't coopt the environmental movement is because it is anti-thetical to it support from the worlds biggest polluters, and runs contrary to its policy of maximizing their profits.

Grog:

Are you referring to Chinese chemical plants? Russian industry near the (formerly) Aral Sea?

Jim, you left out their primitive oil industry.

And what about India, grog? Ohh, and Canuckistan?

In fact, we already have co-opted the movement, look at all the squawking over Kyoto and the fact that we, Australia, China and India have decided to attack it another way.

I have long said that enviromentalism is the last socially acceptable form of racism. Its fundamental postulate is that there are too many brown babies in the world, and they need to get rid of themselves for our sake.

There's no dumber notion in wide currency than that the globe is overpopulated. I didn't bother to read the "most dangerous ideas" from the post a couple of days ago, but that'd be near/at the top of my list.

When blessing and cursing, life and death, are set before them, the Greens choose death.

This Chris Rapley is willfully ignorant if he is unaware (as this implies) that all the current studies show that population will peak mid-century may even be smaller it is now come 2205, all without the massive non-Chinese gov't intervention he seems to desire.

As for Grog, once again he demonstrates not only thathe's stuck in his dream decade, the 70s, but that he believes that if you repeat your slogans enough times, and enough of the gullible believe them, they become true.

Raoul, don't blame Grog too much, if it weren't for Gore inventing the internet, his slogans would be cast in bronze by now and we'd be fuming alone in impotent fury instead of meeting here to learn the truth from those who know of what they speak.

The desperation of the trollery is palatable.

Professor Rapley, Director of the British Antarctic Survey, acknowledges [population] is a thorny question, invoking the spectre of forced population control and even eugenics.

Well, duh! On the other hand, I suspect he'll be remarkably snaguine about even the most drastic "population controls" as long as all the "right" people are left standing.

OJ: I think that we can advance economically and be respectful of Creation. I think we're doing a pretty good job of it. But to value nature for nature's sake over the interests of human beings is, necessarily, anti-human. (This, of course, assumes that environmentalism exists other than as a disguise for the Left, which is an open question.)

by far the worst polluters are leftist countries like the cccp and the prc. don't let the facts get in the way of your save-the-planet fantasies though.

Ditto David. "Nature" is a changing balance of players, there is no preferred lineup of species. We are as much a part of Nature as penguins and fruit flies. We are the only parties in Nature that have the capacity to care about what impact we have on it.

David:

Yes, the value of Nature is to human beings, not to itself.

toe:

Yes, only Christian-capitalist countries can do anything about pollution. Actually, pretty much only America. We'll innovate if forced to.

We've been here before, maybe "experts" on population are in some sort of 30 year +/- cycle.
Sunspots?
Idiotarian Paul Ehrlich gave us his "expert" opinon thirty years ago in "The Popluation Bomb".
Much like the Club of Rome's well hyped expectations of stone age society resulting from the lack of any resources after 1980 something.
Mike

OJ: Having made that concession, you cannot have a conservative environmentalism that resembles modern environmentalism. A nice example of this is drilling in ANWR, which is fully consistent with conservative respect for nature, as we've defined it, but entirely inconsistent with environmentalism.

David:

Duh? Why would conservative environmentalism resemble modern environmentalism? Does conservative justice resemble "modern" justice? Do you therefore think conservatives shouldn't pursue justice?

What concession?

Robert:

Not to care, to impact.

That "the value of Nature is to human beings, not to itself," which is the opposite of environmentalism.

Let's continue on: what about the Endangered Species Act. Could it survive conservative environmentalism?

OJ,
No, every part of nature impacts every other. African elephants deforest areas by stripping the bark off trees. Termites produce vast amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas. Species displace each other. Extinctions didn't start with human activity.

There is no right or wrong balance in nature, no acceptable level of co2 in the atmosphere. Nature doesn't care. We are the only ones that care.