Crime, population, oil and storm clouds.

I'll be on vacation for a week so I thought this would be a good time to tie up some loose ends.

- According to many readers, I have a warped affection for criminals and don't give a damn about their victims. I must admit to being unaware of these feelings. But apparently they are revealed by the fact that I have criticized the Conservative government's plans to adopt tough, American-style justice policies.

In reality, my criticisms of the government's policies are limited to one simple fact: They won't work.

They won't cut crime. They won't make our streets safer, but they will cost a lot of money and they are likely to have all sorts of destructive, unintended consequences.

Agree or disagree, my conclusions aren't the result of my feelings about criminals and their victims. They're based on my reading of the evidence. That's it. For the record, I have always believed that retribution is a vital part of justice. I want criminals caught and I want them to be punished in proportion to the pain they inflict on others.

Imagine that.

Of course, tabloid journalists and right-wing politicians have convinced many people that criminals are not being punished. That's why we need tough, new sentences. They may not make us safer, but they will inflict more pain.

But this is a myth. It's simply not true that the criminal justice system is one big marshmallow: In most cases today, serious criminals are seriously punished.

Yes, I know that's hotly debatable. So let's debate it. But please drop the cheap shots about misplaced feelings.

- George W. Bush looks increasingly like a man genuinely puzzled about why people don't see that he sincerely wants to spread the blessings of freedom and democracy.
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I think it has a little to do with the friends he keeps. And oil. It has a lot to do with oil.

Last week, Dick Cheney blasted Vladimir Putin for taking Russia back to authoritarianism and then flew to Kazakhstan for a chummy meeting with Nursultan Nazarbayev, the authoritarian president of the oil-rich former Soviet republic. A few days earlier, President Bush welcomed the authoritarian president of oil-rich Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, to the White House. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently had an official and decidedly friendly chat with Teodoro Obiang, the vicious dictator of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea.

Just a hunch, but less time talking oil with thugs might do wonders for Mr. Bush's image.

- There was lots of response to my columns on Canada's disastrously low fertility rates. Most of it made one of two points.

First, there were those who said the problem is caused by legal abortion. Ban it and we'll have lots of babies.

Sorry, I can't agree. Banning abortion wouldn't mean the end of abortion any more than banning drugs meant the end of drugs.

But more importantly, fertility rates in Canada and across the developed world have been dropping steadily since the 19th century (the post-1945 baby boom being the only exception). Clearly, falling fertility rates reflect profound shifts in the nature of modern society. Legal abortion has little or nothing to do with it.

The second comment readers had was, in effect, what's the problem? There are already too many of us humans and our consumption is unsustainable. "An ordered reduction might be for the best," one person wrote.

I have some sympathy for this view. Modern economic growth is largely based on growing populations, galloping consumption and -- fuelling it all -- cheap energy. It's a Ponzi scheme that has worked well for a long time but can't continue forever. Sooner or later, we have to move to something more sustainable.
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The problem is collapsing fertility rates won't get us to sustainability. Instead, they'll give us rapidly aging societies in which fewer and fewer productive people will be called on to support more and more non-productive citizens. Economies will suffer. People will suffer. And when people fear for their economic security, all other concerns are left at the side of the road.

We will become even more short-sighted than we are today. Not only will there be less wealth in the collective kitty, there will be less willingness to spend it on anything but the immediate needs of the day.

The dream of a sustainable future will vanish over the horizon.

- I came away from the Tories' first budget feeling the same as I did after every Liberal budget since the deficit was erased: Is that it? Fiddle with this. Jig that. Pat yourself on the back and call it a day.

Canada has huge challenges coming in the near- to long-term. Population aging. The end of cheap oil. The rise of China, India and Brazil. Failed and failing states. And perhaps biggest of all, climate change.

The budgets of the last several years haven't really prepared for any of this. The economy is humming. Surpluses pile up. But aside from debt repayment -- always a good idea -- the money gets frittered away on little programs and minor tax breaks that will not prepare us for the storms ahead.

I can't help but think of the summer of 1914. It was described as one of the loveliest in memory.

You can contact Dan Gardner at the Ottawa Citizen.
E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com

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