Overpopulation Solutions Global and Local

April 2nd, 2008 at 03:47am Mike McGarry 214

Overpopulation Solutions Global and Local

So where the Hell are the Enviros?

“The bigger the population gets, the more serious the problems become…The United Nations, with U.S. support, took the position in Cairo in 1994 that every country was responsible for stabilizing its own population…In the U.S. it is phony to say ‘I'm for the environment but not for limiting immigration”’—the late U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, Father of Earth Day 

(On Wednesday, April 02, Leon Kolankiewicz*, co-author of the Journal of Policy History 2000 publication, The Environmental Movement’s Retreat from Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization (1970-1998,) will appear on CON Games, KNFO, FM,106.1 during thee 8:00am-9:00am hour.)     

During the Aspen Institute/National Geographic Magazine’s Aspen Environmental Forum, the legendary Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute listed stabilizing the world's population growth rate as one of the crucial requirements to saving planet earth and its inhabitants from self-destruction. And while casual lip service was paid by other forum attendees to this overriding issue, no “solutions” to overpopulation, in the U.S. or globally, seem to have been proffered. Instead, the usual reducing of consumption, developing alternative sources of energy, mitigating greenhouse gasses and the like expectedly got all the attention.

That figures, because American environmental movement has totally abdicated when it comes to U.S. population stabilization. Thirty-five years ago Americans were much more aware of the threats overpopulation posed to the country and the world. Stabilizing U.S. population was integral to the ideals of the first Earth Day in 1970, and virtually every environmental organization officially endorsed the need to halt U.S. population growth as necessary to meeting sustainability goals.

The 1970s were also, ironically, the years the U.S. began showing a noticeable population weight gain from what was the beginning of an unprecedented mass-immigration binge. Since 1970 we have engorged ourselves with a dyspeptic 100 million additional consumers, a number greater than the populations of most of the countries of the world. Nearly 70 percent of that growth came from immigration.

Indeed, fast-forward from 1970 to now and you might not recognize the place. American population growth has soared by more than a third (203 million to 304 million), making the U.S. the third most populous nation in the world, with immigration levels several times our historical averages. By now most environmental organizations had dropped U.S. population stabilization from their priorities, and what formally were convivial coffee-shop discussions about overpopulation became nasty, accusatory shouting matches.

Meanwhile, the U.S. population-consumption juggernaut was gaining momentum. For example, total U.S. energy consumption in the 1990s grew by 13 percent, exactly the percentage of our population growth that decade. The decade of the ’90s makes clear the numbers of consumers cannot be isolated from the amount consumed. Even if Americans were to significantly reduce consumption levels and continue to improve resource technology—as we must—most gains would be lost to immigration-fueled population growth.

The many influences causing our national population priorities to about-face over the years were discussed in the Journal of Policy History’s “The Environmental Movement’s Retreat from Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization (1970-1998)”, by Roy Beck and Leon Kolankiewicz. It is important to note is that within that timeframe the guiding population principle of Earth Day 1970, Think Globally — Act Locally, was supplanted with, “Population is a global problem (exclusively) requiring global solutions.” Thus was born and promulgated an intellectual dishonesty.

Deforestation is a global problem, but nobody would suggest we wait for the world to tackle our nation’s deforestation challenges. Moreover, there are nearly 200 countries and thousands of cultures and subcultures in the world. International bodies are notorious for their inability to agree on even the nature of a problem, never mind the nightmarish prospect of imposing global one-size-fits-all solutions.

The nation-state is the only practical and effective unit of community and therefore of public policy implementation. International cooperation and assistance do not suffer because of that fact, just as respecting and acting on the primacy of family does not mean families are uninvolved in their greater communities.

Not to be ignored is the research by Dr. Virginia Abernethy of Vanderbilt University showing the opportunity to emigrate for the citizens of nations and members of cultures with unsustainable population growth rates keeps them from taking the necessary steps to stabilize their populations.

Hence, Mexico, which has more than tripled its numbers over the last 50 years (and is currently projected to add 45 million more by 2050), has no substantive population policy. It also explains why the president of Bangladesh has said matter-of-factly he would just send his nationals to the “under-populated” United States to ameliorate the effects of his country’s projected population doubling within 50 years.

Is a sustainable future possible? No, not when 6.6 billion people continue to annually add  nearly 80 million more desperate souls to the planet's numbers—to a U.N. projected 9.2 billion by 2050—and, no, not when  the United States continues its immigration-driven exponential population growth of millions of resource consumers.

Yes, if we heed the words of Gaylord Nelson and immediately take to heart those of the former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment and Population Lindsey Grant (“Elephants in the Volkswagen”): “Most of the world’s and the country’s environmental and social problems can be solved—but only if population policy is an integral part of the solution.”

*Leon Kolankiewicz is an environmental scientist and national natural resources planner. He has a B.S. in forestry and wildlife management from Virginia Tech and an M.S. in environmental planning and natural resources management from the University of British Columbia.  His professional experience includes stints with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, University of Washington, University of New Mexico, and as an environmental planner with the Orange County, (Ca.) Environmental Management Agency.  Mr. Kolankiewicz is the author of Where Salmon Come to Die:  An Autumn on Alaska’s Raincoast.

Entry Filed under: Environment, Books, Immigration, Aspen, Colorado, Con Games, The West