Barry Soper reports:

The coalition lifeline that National will need if it’s to have a chance at the next election looks set to come in the form of a Christian party led by one of its own, former Cabinet Minister Alfred Ngaro.
Talk within the party’s been rife for weeks now with Ngaro’s plan being well received and with the possibility of National standing aside, possibly in the Botany seat, where it has the strongest party vote by far.

National got a whopping 61% of the party vote in Botany and Labour 29%. It would be a sensible seat to target. The 5th highest party vote in the country for National, percentage wise.

The seats is 46% European, 40% Asian and 12% Pasifika. Half the electorate were born outside New Zealand. It also has the highest proportion of two parent families in NZ.

Ngaro, in his third term, would slip comfortably into the electorate which saw National commanding more than 20,000 party votes at the last election, well ahead of Labour with less than half that number.
A father of four in his early 50s, he was the first MP of Cook Islands descent and began his working life as a self-employed electrician before studying for a theology degree and becoming a pastor.
National would have to agree to giving up the safe seat, like it’s done with Act in Epsom, and it would have to agree to allow Ngaro to stay on in Parliament, representing his new party rather than invoking the waka jumping legislation which is highly unlikely anyway.
Ngaro wasn’t returning calls last night but has confirmed privately he’s exploring the possibility. The party’s leadership is aware of it, realising that it will need an ally if it’s to have any chance of coming close to knocking the Labour, New Zealand First, Greens coalition off its perch.

I’m not a natural supporter of conservative or Christian parties, being socially liberal. But if there is to be in Parliament, I’d much rather someone like Alfred led it, than some of the previous contenders such as Capill, Tamaki and Craig.

This gives you a good insight into what the Government really thinks of people who like driving cars and think that the petrol tax they pay should go on roads.

Now people do tend to throw around terms such as fascists and nazis without meaning it literally. You hear references to health nazis sometimes. I’ve not heard the term car fascist before, but presume Genter means it like someone means health nazi – a zealot.

But here’s the thing. Genter is a Minister of the Crown and Associate Transport Minister. She is not some nobody on Twitter. Could you imagine say a National Minister of Health referring to public health activists as health nazis. There would be an outcry and calls for resignation. A Minister should not be using such terms to describe people who just have different views to herself.

Guest post by John Stringer.

CHRISTIAN POLITICS in NZ, National and 2020.

The conservative “family values” vote is the largest unrepresented block in NZ. It’s often bigger than the Maori roll vote results and has polled strongly (4.2-3.9%) and consistently (1996-2014) when viable leadership has been in place. The ‘Christian vote’ on occasions in the past achieved 4x that of combined smaller parties who were ‘elected’ to parliament on coat-tail arrangements but remained unrepresented. The system is worked and accommodated, but so far Christians have remained unrepresented at party level (although many MPs share these values inside other parties). One of the issues is the reticence of mainstream parties to accommodate the contentious issues such as abortion or gender-politics at party level.

I’ve been at the forefront of this for many decades while still a National supporter and even staffer. I was seconded by National to assist the Christian Coalition in 1996 (the first MMP election) and was one of the pioneers of the Christian Democrats party set up under National minister of Internal Affairs Hon Graeme Lee. His daughter is now a National MP and ex-president of the United party (an ostensible Christian entity) under Dunne who eventually absorbed the remnants and morphologies of the Christian Democrats (United, Family parties etc).

I was Campaign Director of the Coalition campaign in 1996, and a List candidate for the Conservatives in 2014, so I’ve seen up close and personal with the interface of Christian politics and progressive liberalism in NZ. In 1996 the Christian Coalition got 4.2% of the party vote in a high turnout election, which worked against them; as did Rev. Graham Capill’s undesirable co-leadership (eventually jailed for sex crimes).

In 2011 and 2014 the new Conservative party got 2.6% and 3.9% of the List vote, hindered by Colin Craig’s leadership. I finally blew the whistle on Craig, after much long suffering, in 2015 after trying to salvage the Conservative party and build a stronger team leadership model internally for 2017, to help offset some of Craig’s excesses and give him space to attend to his private life and family. He simply sued me, not once but twice, as Capill also tried to do.

As many political commentators and media have agreed, there remains a place for a Christian values type party in NZ, as there is in Germany and Israel (both of whom have MMP). But the 5% threshold in NZ is too high for our population base, as the Electoral Commission review noted, which has effectively kept a Christian voice out of party politics here. A seat accommodation is the only prospect, as sought quite strongly by the Conservatives in 2013-4 but mismanaged by them with John Key.

Of interest is the growing conservative movement against abortion amongst young people in America that transcends Republican or Democrat tribal affiliations. Millennials see abortion essentially as a human rights issues. Liberal legislative moves to effectively allow infanticide under the umbrella of abortion, has polarised opinion. Montana State’s legislative ban this week on abortion after eight weeks, is perhaps a milestone of that growing development in the US. It may spread inevitably here and to Australia. 

Like Dunne and Seymour, if National MP Alfred Ngaro was to be supported in Botany by National, and won that seat, then there is a 4-5% List vote block available in the spectrum for a party with perspectives on abortion, cannabis reform, gender politics, euthanasia, smacking bills, family politics and other issues of distinct interest to conservative, religious and values-minded NZers. The Israel Folau debacle in Australia, with obvious ties to us here, has added ‘freedom of religion’ to freedom of speech debates, so the spectrum of interest has only widened, enlarging the potential voter pool. In 1996, many voters, including Jews, Buddhists, Mormons and Muslims, joined the Christian Coalition as it was a political base they wanted and could support.

Watch this space.

John Stringer is a long-time advocate of a conservative/Christian model in NZ politics; was a National candidate in 1999 against NZ’s first openly gay MP; founded the widely supported special interest group Christian Voice inside National in 2000s; Campaign Director of the Christian Coalition in 1996 (seconded from National); and a ‘make-up-the-numbers’ Conservative list candidate in 2014.

The Herald reports:

State-owned Kiwibank will stop accepting cheques by February 28, 2020 and won’t issue new cheque or deposit books after September 28 this year.
Chief executive Steve Jurkovich said it was a tough decision to make but for the past five years the use of cheques had been steadily declining.
“With less than one per cent of Kiwibank payments now made by cheque, we’ve come to a tipping point.

I think it must be close to a decade since I wrote a cheque. And if people send me cheques I normally take around six months to bank them. They’re a pain which should be exterminated.

My reaction to Newshub labelling this breaking news.

Stuff reports:

A $6.4 billion plan to fix Wellington’s traffic congestion problems has been announced.

The media have fallen hook line and sinker for the spin. What they should do is ask questions like:

1. How much money has the Government allocated for the next financial year
2. How much money has the Government allocated for the rest of its term of office?
3. If the Government got a 2nd term, how much money have they allocated to spend then?
4. If the Government got a 3rd term, how much money have they allocated to spend then?

The answer to 1 is zero. The answer to 2 is zero. The answer to 3 appears to also be zero. The answer to 4 is $600 million.

So forget the $6.4 billion. 90% of that is for stuff that “We may do this in the future one day”.

Contrast that to National that actually made things happen. After 50 years of debate, they made Transmission Gully happen. They put in the Kapiti Expressway.

Labour is saying they will do some minor tinkering at best in the next seven years.

Most of what is in the announcement is stuff that at best will start in a decade or so, and not conclude for two decades.

Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke has died aged 89.

I regard Hawke as one of Australia’s best Prime Ministers, arguably their greatest Labor Prime Minister.

He served as Prime Minister for almost nine years, forced out of office effectively by Paul Keating in 1991. He won four elections in 1983, 1984, 1987 and 1990.

Hawke established APEC, floated the Australian dollar, deregulated their financial sector, abolished tariffs, sold off state owned companies, reformed the tax system and generally transformed the Australian economy. Today’s NZ Labour Party would probably regard Hawke as a neoliberal traitor.

His election majorities were significant. They were:

• 1983: 75 – 50
• 1984: 82 – 66
• 1987: 86 – 62
• 1990: 78 – 69

Hawke had very high approval ratings, reaching 75% approval in November 1984 – a record for any Australian PM.

Bob Hawke and John Howard are probably the two most consequential Australian Prime Ministers of the last 50 years. Hawke’s reforms made Australia a far better place.

This is not a prediction for the final episode. In fact I am 99% certain none of this will happen. This is merely how I’d like it to end, after last week’s episode.

Feel free to comment below how you would like it to end.

• Dany is unrepentant over her tactics in the battle. She again claims it was necessary to secure the future
• She proclaims Tyrion guilty of treason and prepares to execute him. Tyrion demands a trial.
• All the major characters gather for the trial. Then as in his earlier trial, he demands it be trial by combat. Dany chooses Grey Worm to fight for her. Bronn is there but refuses to fight for Tyrion this time as he hasn’t got his castle.
• Jon shocks everyone by offering to fight for Tyrion. He tells Dany that Tyrion was right and she was wrong.
• An epic battle between Jon and Grey Worm, which Jon finally wins
• He stands before Dany asking permission for him and Tyrion to depart, to leave Westeros.
• Dany refuses, saying she won’t let Jon become to her what she was to Robert Baratheon – a monarch in exile. She stuns everyone there by saying “Dracarys” with Drogon perched above her facing Jon.
• Drogon does nothing. She repeats the command twice more, but Drogon still won’t flame Jon. In fact Drogon lowers his head towards Jon. She then commands Drogon to flame Tyrion but he again does nothing.
• As this is happening, suddenly Bran leaps up from his wheelchair and stabs Dany from behind. It is a mortal wound. She stumbles into Jon’s arms and dies, asking for his forgiveness.
• Bran removes his face to reveal he is actually Arya. The Stark siblings planned for this.
• The real Bran comes forward and explains Tyrion is also a Targaryan which is why Drogon wouldn’t attack him. Dany tried to kill her own brother.
• Jon is proclaimed King Aegon VI by Sir Davos. But Jon declines. He says he has made too many bad decisions to be King, especially trusting Dany. He says that the King should be the person who has shown the best judgement, and proposes Sansa as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.
• Sansa accepts so long as the High Council (all the great lords) supports her, and the High Council becomes the arbiter of future monarchs, which is the start of a transition to democracy.
• Sansa appoints Tyrion as Hand of the King and head of House Lancaster
• Arya is offered a place in the Kingsguard but declines and says she must go and serve the Many Faced God. As she leaves, she is joined by Jaqen
• Bran is appointed Grand Maester
• Jon decides to turn the Night’s Watch into a home guard that defends all borders against any and all invaders, and returns to them as the 1,000th Lord Commander
• Davos becomes head of the navy
• Sam returns home as head of House Tarly
• Bronn gets Highgarden and starts House Bronn
• Sir Brienne is appointed Head of the Kingsguard

The final ends with Sansa’s coronation on the Iron Throne and Jon flies off on Drogon.

Again I doubt any of this will happen, but for me that would be satisfying endings.

David Seymour writes:

Finally, Ghahraman says we should protect religion under the Human Rights Act.
But it isn’t obvious that religion should be treated in the same way as something like race. Race is an immutable characteristic, whereas religion is a set of ideas. Including religion in the Human Rights Act won’t reduce violence, but it could restrict debate about, and criticism of, religion.

I agree that religion is different to the other characteristics.

The HRA already makes unlawful speech that is likely to excite hostility against any group of persons on the ground of colour, race, ethnic or national origins.

You can’t choose your colour, race, ethnicity or nationality.

Golriz wants to include “gender, sexual orientation, religion, or disability.

You basically don’t choose your gender, sexual orientation or disability so I agree there may be a case for including those. I suspect if they do, the majority of complaints will be people alleging speech attacking white men should be prosecuted so be careful of what you ask for.

But religion is a choice. Billions of people around the world choose whether or not to follow a particular religion, or none at all. Sure in some countries there is great cultural pressure to be of a particular religion, but in NZ we have true freedom of religion.

A religion is just a belief system, just as political ideology is. Having a law that says you can’t incite hostility towards a religion is like having a law saying you can’t incite hostility towards National Party supporters.

The Human Rights Act is about protecting people from discrimination for characteristics they have no control over. It is not about protecting religions from criticism.

We sometimes forget some of our huge successes. Human Progress reports:

In 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) was founded to administer the vaccine worldwide. When the GPEI began its efforts, polio paralyzed 10 children for life every 15 minutes, across 125 countries. Since 1988, more than 2.5 billion children have been immunized and incidents of polio infections have fallen by more than 99.99 percent. That is, they fell from 350,000 annual cases, to just 22 new cases across 3 countries in 2017. Next year, Africa is due to be declared free of polio – that is, if no new cases are found in Nigeria, which is the last country in the region to report new polio infections.

Amazing stat. Basically a child being paralysed every minute and a half, to almost eradicated.

Stuff reports:

A couple who left the United States to live on the West Coast were told they were too old to become New Zealand residents. 

Lisa White, 58, and Dan Butler, 63, moved to Greymouth from Tennessee in 2015 for a slower pace of life. 

It is correct they are too old. Residency is a privilege and given to people who can make a net positive economic contribution to New Zealand. People near retirement age are unlikely to do so.

But their application for permanent residency was instantly rejected by Immigration New Zealand because they were both over 55.
The couple ticked all the boxes in terms of education, experience, character, health and time spent in New Zealand. They could have applied if they had $10 million to bring to New Zealand. 
“That to me is so absurd. You can buy your residency,” White said.

No you can’t buy residency. But having a large sum of money which you can invest in NZ increases your chances of qualifying. Likewise if you are broke, you have less chance of qualifying.

They believed New Zealand immigration policies were written for Auckland, and had no relevance to areas like the West Coast, which needed people to boost its economy. The Coast suffered huge job and population losses since the downturn in the mining industry. 

NZ does not require internal passports like South Africa used to. One immigrates to a country, not a region. People can move around once they are here.

Audrey Young writes:

The two decision-making ministers have varied throughout Governments since the Overseas Investment Act took effect in 2005 but never before have two ministers come up with different decisions, until now, and such wildly differing reasoning.
On May 3 Sage decided to decline OceanaGold’s application to buy a couple of farms in Waihī to enable the construction of a tailings storage facility that would extend the life of the mine for a further nine years. Clark approved it.
Because decisions require both ministers’ approval, Sage’s decision was effectively a veto.
The decision has shocked the miners’ union, the Labour-affiliated E Tū union, the Employers and Manufacturers’ Association, and Sage’s colleagues in Government.
At stake are 350 jobs, about 250 full-time equivalent direct employees and about 100 existing contractors.

So the Greens have managed to kill off 350 jobs in Waihi. Yay. But this is only a start!

In the document outlining her decision, Sage said that not only was nine years sufficient time to establish new employment opportunities, she criticised the fact that despite the mine having been in operation for some time the median personal income in the Hauraki District was only $23,000.
“This suggests that the applicant’s investment and operation has not necessarily generated substantial and identifiable benefits for the immediately affected community at Waihī.”
Kit Wilson, OceanaGold’s senior community adviser, says the average wage at the mine is $110,000.

Sage seems to have no understanding of median. One employer can’t impact the median wage in an area. And as it happens they pay an average of five times the median income – something you’d think a party that talks about higher wages would want.

His plan is here.

Separate the Ports of Auckland business operations from the land owned by the Auckland ratepayer

Sell the Ports operations through a Request for Proposal, and lease the current 77 hectares of prime land to the new port operators for 25 years. This will ensure a guaranteed financial return to Auckland and de-risk the Auckland ratepayer from the cost of relocating the port over time. At the end of the Ports lease, the land can be developed for public and other uses that make the best use of the prime waterfront real estate.

I like this idea. Free up the land for eventual public use, but remove the risk to ratepayers by selling the company.

The incoming Mayor to chair a Stakeholder Forum to agree on immediate solutions to chronic ports traffic congestion by encouraging trucks work off peak hours. If this forum cannot agree within 12 months, trucks will be congestion taxed out of the Central Business District between 9am-5pm

This part is nuts though. Trucks have to be able to get to the Port. A congestion charge for the CBD is a good idea, but on all vehicles, not just trucks.

The Herald reports:

Foreign Minister Winston Peters is making positive sounds about a long sought after free trade agreement between New Zealand and the world’s biggest economy, the United States.
New Zealand does not have a free trade agreement with the US, despite various attempts over the years to secure such a deal.
But speaking to RNZ this morning, Peters hinted that recent progress had been made.
He said there was still life in a US/NZ free trade deal.

This is arrant nonsense. The chances of a free trade deal with the US are somewhere between zero and nil.

Peters said he’s had conversations with US Vice-President Mike Pence about this very matter, who assured him work was being done to progress the deal.

The Vice-President has no say on trade policy. Neither for that matter does the Secretary of Commerce or the Trade Negotiator. The only policy setter is the President.

And the NZ Government failed miserably at even getting an exemption to Trump’s steel tariffs. This shows how out of favour we are.

The Herald reports:

Students will face more emphasis on exams and less on internal assessment in an overhaul of the NCEA system unveiled today.
There will also be a sharper focus on literacy and numeracy skills.
The changes, to be phased in over four years from next year, also remove the qualification’s $76.70-a-year fee and the $30 fee for each Scholarship subject.
The Government’s final decisions on reforming the National Certificate of Educational Assessment (NCEA) will increase external assessment for all achievement standards from 30 per cent now to a standardised 50 per cent across all subjects – even those that have traditionally been fully assessed internally such as Physical Education.

I’m pleasantly surprised. These changes look like a move in the right direction, away from low quality NCEA credits.

But they represent a sharp shift back to the rigid subject-based systems of School Certificate and University Entrance that existed before NCEA was introduced in 2002.
The system will still include the opportunity to take “unit standards” in vocational areas such as trades, which accounted for just under a fifth of all NCEA standards assessed in 2017.
But “achievement standards”, which made up the other four-fifths of the standards assessed in 2017, will be grouped into 20-credit subjects in which half of the standards will be internally assessed and the other half externally assessed.
The new structure appears to leave no room for extras, such as driver’s licences or first aid courses, which many schools encourage students to take on top of their main subjects to get them over the NCEA pass mark each year.

Again this is good. The focus should be on academic or trades skills, not getting your driver’s licence.

The changes, announced by Education Minister Chris Hipkins at Mana College in Porirua this morning, are a dramatic lurch in the opposite direction from proposals released a year ago by a ministerial advisory group, which proposed abolishing external exams at Level 1 and substituting 20 credits for literacy and numeracy and 20 credits for a project of the student’s choice.
The advisory group also wanted to allocate 20 credits out of 80 required for each of Levels 2 and 3 to “pathways opportunities” such as projects and internships.
Those proposals have been completely abandoned after an outcry from principals of traditional schools such as Auckland Grammar.
Hipkins quickly agreed to set up a “professional advisory group” of principals chaired by former Wellington College headmaster Roger Moses to “work alongside” the ministerial advisory group.

This is why the changes are such a pleasant surprise. They are what the traditional schools have been arguing for.

Hopefully Hipkins will also abandon the daft proposal to neuter boards of trustees and have ministerial hubs run all schools directly.

The Herald reports:

Families who have lost loved ones to drugged drivers came together at Parliament today to ask the Government to hurry up and introduce roadside saliva testing for drugs.
Among them were the families of Ian Porteous, 80, his wife Rosalie, 76, his sister Ora Keene, 84, and friend Brenda Williams, 79.
The four died in a head-on crash with Jeremy Thompson, 28, his 8-week-old daughter Shady and Nivek Madams, the 8-year-old daughter of Thompson’s partner Ani Nohinohi.
Nohinohi was the sole survivor of the crash at Waverley in Taranaki in June last year.
A coroner’s inquest last week into the Waverley crash, at the time one of the country’s worst, was told that Thompson and Nohinohi had been smoking synthetic cannabis before the crash.

The Porteous and Keene family members joined Christchurch mother Karen Dow at a meeting with National leader Simon Bridges and his MPs to push for the Government to take swifter action on its plan to tackle drugged drivers.
Dow’s 23-year-old son Matthew was killed in a crash with a woman who had been drinking and taking drugs before she got behind the wheel near Nelson on New Year’s Eve 2017.
Dow presented a petition calling for random roadside saliva testing to Nelson MP Nick Smith last week but the petition has been reopened for a week to seek more signatures.
The Government has prepared a discussion document but it has not yet been released for public consultation despite Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters telling Parliament last week it had been signed off by Cabinet last September.
National claims the Government sat on proposals from police and transport officials for 17 months.

I can’t work out why the Government is taking so long to move on this issue. A discussion document is merely the first step in the process, and if it was prepared last September, why on Earth is it not out?

Stuff has done an excellent analysis of the 1,000 or so homicides in the last 15 years. Some of the many stats:

• Half of the women killed are killed by their partner or ex-partner. Such a tragic stat.
• Half of intimate partner homicides have “overkill” where violence is inflicted beyond that necessary to kill the victim (think Clayton Weatherston). Evil bastards.
• Only two women a year are killed by strangers
• However one in four men who are killed, are killed by strangers
• Half of men killed by strangers die at the weekend
• One in eight homicides is of a child under 15
• Over half the children killed are by a parent or caregiver
• For 15 to 17 year olds, homicide by car crash is the most common form of homicide
• Alcohol is a factor in 31% of homicides and two thirds of homicides where the killer is a friend
• Around 25% of homicides occur in the decile of areas which are most deprived and 2% in the least deprived areas. On average just one homicide a year in the 10% least deprived areas
• Otahuhu West has the highest levels of homicide in Auckland
• Two thirds of gun homicides involve shotguns or 22s

The Herald reports:

Government aims for $1 billion cuts to ‘low priority’ spending, clip fees free scheme

That was the headline which got me excited. I thought the Government had finally seen sense that the massive spending on free tertiary fees was a waste of money that wasn’t increasing tertiary enrolments.

The Government has reallocated almost $200 million from the fees free policies as part of Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s push to cull $1 billion of low priority spending.
The money was cut as the enrolments were not as high as the Government was expecting.

That’s not a cut. The policy hasn’t changed. It is simply reflecting the reality that the policy has failed to boost enrolments, so hence hasn’t cost as much.

To portray this as some sort of sign of fiscal discipline is quite wrong.

Stuff reports:

It is meant to create 10,000 jobs and unlock the potential of the New Zealand’s regions. But after allocating hundreds of millions of dollars, halfway through the electoral term, the Provincial Growth Fund has not yet determined the measure of success.

Actual jobs created appears to be around 100. They’re giving away three billions dollars of our money and there are no criteria for how they measure if such grants are successful.

So far, when the PGF is attempting to measure success, it goes to the groups that it has awarded millions of dollars to, and asks them to tell it how they are doing.   
“As part of contractual arrangements we have with every successful applicant, they’re being asked to provide us with data, on a regular basis, about the benefits that they have seen or are directly attributable to their projects,” Pigou said.
Asked if the recipients, as the recipients of taxpayer funds may have an interest in providing positive feedback, Pigou agreed.
“Yes. We are getting very positive feedback.”

It’s almost an obscene joke at our expense. The companies and organisations that get the handouts of taxpayer cash get to arbitrate if giving them the cash has been successful and provided benefits.

Magic Talk reports:

Greenpeace Executive Director, Dr Russel Norman, says The Zero Carbon Amendment Bill has no ability to enforce its climate change targets. …

“The Bill sends some good signals, until you get to the section at the end that negates everything else you’ve just read. This section states there is no remedy or relief for failure to meet the 2050 target, meaning there’s no legal compulsion for anyone to take any notice.
When asked to what he thought of the bill Russle told Ryan that he would rate it a “zero out of ten.”

The former leader of the Green Party says the legislation held up by the current leader as world leading so so flawed it is a 0 out of 10.

I’m amazed this hasn’t had more publicity.

Human Progress writes:

Unwarranted panic about overpopulation is a big problem that has led to human rights abuses and much pointless suffering.
 
Consider the long history of overpopulation alarmism, and how the doomsayers’ fears have failed to materialize again and again. Two centuries ago, Thomas Malthus’s Essay on Population warned that out-of-control population growth would deplete resources and bring about widespread famine. His preferred solution was to decrease the birth rate by delaying marriage, but if that didn’t work he endorsed some rather extreme measures to slash the population. To prevent famine, he thought it was morally permissible to “court the return of the plague” by making the poor live in swamps and even to ban “specific remedies for ravaging diseases.” After Malthus died, the Industrial Revolution brought about unprecedented prosperity that funded the construction of safe water supplies and sewage systems at a scale never before achieved. Living standards were transformed and lifespans lengthened. As farms mechanized, food became more plentiful even as the population grew. Famine became rarer. Yet Malthus’s ideas proved enduringly popular.
 
By the 1970s, overpopulation hysteria came fully back into vogue. Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968, which opened with the lines, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” Shortly thereafter, in 1972, the Club of Rome issued a report called The Limits to Growth. It bolstered the old argument that population growth would deplete resources and lead to a collapse of society with evidence from computer simulations based on dubious assumptions. Those jeremiads led to human rights abuses including millions of forced sterilizations in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India, as well as China’s draconian one-child (now two-child) policy. In 1975, officials sterilized 8 million men and women in India alone. Were these human rights abuses necessary? No. Instead of facing widespread starvation and resource shortages, humanity managed to make resources more plentiful by using them more efficiently, increasing the supply and developing substitutes.

Huge suffering has happened because people believed the prophets of doom.

Today the population is at a record high, and famines have all but vanished outside of war zones. Even in Sub Saharan Africa, the poorest area on the planet, the food supply now exceeds the recommended 2,000 calories per person per day. Yet overpopulation fears still exert a powerful hold on the public imagination. Earlier this year, a survey by Negative Population Growth found that “American high school students are very worried about overpopulation.” Many prominent environmentalists — from Johns Hopkins University bioethicist Travis Rieder to entertainer Bill Nye “The Science Guy” — support tax penalties or other state-imposed punishments for having “too many” children. Bowdoin College’s Sarah Conly published a book in 2016 through Oxford University Press advocating a “one-child” policy, claiming it is “morally permissible” for the government to limit family sizes through force to prevent overpopulation.
 
Even if overpopulation were to prove to be a problem, it is one with an expiration date: due to falling global birth rates, demographers estimate the world population will decrease in the long run, after peaking around the year 2070. It is now well-documented that as countries grow richer, and people escape poverty, they opt for smaller families — a phenomenon called the fertility transition. It is almost unheard of for a country to maintain a high fertility rate after it passes about $5,000 in per-person annual income. Alarmism and extreme measures to combat “overpopulation” are entirely unnecessary.

The Green Party used to have a population policy because they too believed that human beings needed to stop breeding so much.