And the winner is…
‘Overpopulation’: Dick’s Myth

The winner of the Citizens Electoral Council’s $1,000 Dick Smith bumper sticker competition is Paul Harry from Toowoomba, Queensland. Congratulations, Paul!

Paul’s entry, above, was chosen from among hundreds of entries, the very best of which made a short list that can be viewed on the CEC website.

Paul’s winning entry will now be made into a bumper sticker, and 5,000 copies will be distributed Australia-wide.

Isherwood/Smith correspondence

Following his donation of $500 to the bumper sticker prize money, and his correspondence with CEC leader Craig Isherwood over a potential public debate, Dick Smith went strangely quiet… until the end of last week.

In response to an email from Craig, which asked Dick, “Have you been told to shut-up?”, he replied that he hadn’t answered Craig’s previous email, because Craig hadn’t answered his earlier question, which was:

“Do you think there would be advantages from our population in Australia going to, say, 100 or 200 billion?”

Here is part of Craig’s reply:

“I don’t think there is any worry of that whatsoever, presuming that we as human beings act rationally. To put it in perspective, in 1963 Australia’s population reached 11 million and 46 years later (2009) it had doubled to 22 million. If we kept doubling at this rate, then we would hit 100 billion in 2568. But, you also asked me, in your email of 30 August, regarding a hypothetical 1 trillion Australians, ‘Are you seriously suggesting we would have already colonised other planets ad infinitum?’ Yes, I absolutely am suggesting that we will have colonised at least some of the other uncounted hundreds of billions of planets out there; in fact, given the rather dicey prospects of mankind being limited to only one relatively vulnerable planet, this Earth, and the fact that the Sun is for sure going to blow up someday, we in any case have to get up off the Earth sometime. So let’s make a virtue out of necessity and start now, aiming toward a Moon-Mars colonisation program by the end of this present century. We not only have to do it, but we will receive enormous benefits from doing so. For instance, the U.S. space program of the late 1960s and early 1970s returned $10 for every $1 dollar spent on it, before it was irrationally shut down. But perhaps even more importantly, we will give our children, our grandchildren and generations beyond them the prospect of an exciting and noble future. Can you seriously say that children growing up today have any such exciting prospect?”

You can’t have it both ways, Dick. If you are indeed worried about the Earth becoming “overpopulated”, how can you not be in favour of actually solving the “problem”? Not by killing billions of people as Prince Philip and his Green hordes propose, but by taking the next giant leap for mankind, into the Solar System, on into the Galaxy and into the vast reaches beyond?

Click here for the full correspondence.

Click here for more Dick Smith/population debate cartoons.