Earth Day founder disappointed in followers for neglecting overpopulation
Sen. Gaylord Nelson's biggest letdown was establishment's failure to address this tricky issue, says environmental scientist Leon Kolankiewicz.
Tue, Apr 20 2010 at 9:40 AM EST
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SMOKING SENATOR: Sen. Gaylord Nelson smokes a peace pipe after meeting with Native Americans in 1971. At right is Wisconsin Gov. Patrick Lucey. (Photo: Wisconsin Historical Images/Flickr) This month, America celebrates the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, founded in 1970 by the late U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.), one of our greatest environmental heroes of the 20th century. Yet few of the multitudinous articles, exhibits, parades and speeches will dare — or bother — to broach the one issue that worried Nelson perhaps more than any other: human overpopulation.
I know this because I collaborated closely with Nelson on several projects during the last decade of his life.
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Nelson and many other activists of his generation viewed these problems as symptoms of too many people consuming too many resources and generating too much waste. In an influential 1971 paper published in the journal Science, biologist Paul Ehrlich and physicist John Holdren (now President Obama’s science adviser) quantified this understanding by introducing the IPAT equation: Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology.
Environmentalists of that era largely endorsed this formulation, which explicitly included the population factor, and even wide segments of the broader American public were receptive to it. The outspoken Ehrlich appeared several times on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to hammer home his “zero population growth” message to millions. And for a variety of reasons, the fertility rate plummeted by about half from its baby boom high down to replacement level — 2.1 children per family — by the early '70s.
After two centuries of continuous exponential expansion — from a puny 4 million in 1790 to a bulging 200 million in 1970 — America seemed poised to voluntarily and humanely halt population growth before it overwhelmed our environment. With U.S. population stabilization, our beleaguered environment could have begun to breathe a sigh of relief from ever-increasing demographic demands for land and resources.
Yet this hopeful vision did not come to pass. Instead of stabilizing, America has added more than 100 million new voracious consumers, each brainwashed daily by powerful commercial interests that through conspicuous consumption we can achieve nirvana, or at least keep up with the Joneses.
Americans now number 310 million, and the Census Bureau projects another 130 million by 2050, pushing us to 440 million. And we would still be growing rapidly with no end in sight! Under this crushing pressure, virtually every environmental goal becomes unattainable, from reducing our national ecological footprint and carbon emissions to rescuing endangered species and ecosystems. Achieving these will be mission impossible, as much a pipe dream as losing weight and getting fitter all while eating more and more.
And yet today’s environmentalist leaders are strangely silent in the face of this unfolding demographic disaster. Why? Because immigration, or “the i-word,” since environmental groups dare not utter it, is now pushing our population upward. Over 80 percent of the projected increase to 2050 will be due to directly and indirectly to immigration. Fearful of alienating progressive allies and growing numbers of Hispanics and Asians, and loath to be lumped (however unfairly) with repugnant xenophobes, the largely white, liberal, and yes, squeamish environmental establishment either opts to look the other way on population — or they insist it is a “global problem that needs global solutions,” thereby abrogating the need for any meaningful action on their part. Never mind that, on a planet dominated by sovereign nation-states, there are literally no realistic means available to work at a “global” scale.
But liberal, Democratic icon Gaylord Nelson did not flinch or look the other way or frame the problem so vaguely as to preclude national action. His many speeches on environmental sustainability continually highlighted the U.S. population problem. A newspaper article describing one Earth Day speech began: “Senator Gaylord Nelson spoke to a standing-room only audience advocating that the U.S. limit immigration before U.S. resources are depleted.” At a Washington press conference, Nelson bristled at the notion that limiting immigration is inherently racist.
In a March 2000 speech, Nelson warned that the U.S. could become as overpopulated as China and India. “With twice the population, will there be any wilderness left? Any quiet place? Any habitat for song birds? Waterfalls? Other wild creatures? Not much,” he said.
Chatting with Nelson before a 1998 news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, he startled me by announcing that when all was said and done, he considered himself a failure because the U.S. was moving away from, not toward, sustainability. And out-of-control population growth was a major reason why.
But Nelson did not fail. His followers failed him … and the nation’s environment they purport to defend.
Leon Kolankiewicz is an environmental scientist and natural resources planner. He has been interviewed on or quoted in NPR’s The Morning Edition, Public Radio International’s The World, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time magazine. Kolankiewicz is married to an immigrant Honduran he met during his Peace Corps service. He has two children and a vasectomy.Do you want to be a guest columnist one day? Send a pitch to bcohen@mnn.com with "I want to be a guest columnist" in the headline.
Thumbnail photo: U.S. Senate Historical Office; MNN homepage photo: Franck-Boston/iStockphoto
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Comments
ProfBob
12/18/2010 06:36 AM
I find in reading those sites that say that population problems are a myth that their evidence is very sparse and inconclusive. Recently I read Book 1 of the free e-book series "In Search of Utopia" (http://andgulliverreturns.info), it blasts their lack of evidence relative to their calling overpopulation a myth. The book, actually the last half of the book, takes on the skeptics in global.... More
Jim C.
07/30/2010 02:06 AM
Note the hypocrisy of those on the Right who decry immigration, yet constantly try to de-fund foreign family-planning aid for "moral" reasons.
Birth control assistance is one of the few concrete things the U.S. can do to reduce external population pressure. Border controls are analogous to using sparse sandbags against unlimited floodwaters.
It's also a heck of a lot cheaper to distribute contraceptives than to coddle immigrant overpopulation after the fact. Same goes for sending.... More
Frank the Underemployed Professional
07/17/2010 21:30 PM
It's a shame that so many self-proclaimed environmentalists fail to understand the relationship between population, environmental strain, resource depletion, quality of life, and standard of living. A few religious and/or free market dogmatist groups even claim that we don't need to worry about population issues at all and that Malthus was essentially a maniacal Nazi.
Sadly, our intellectual battle will be fought uphill. Saying that it is possible for humans to reproduce themselves.... More
Elle
04/27/2010 20:38 PM
Just my two cents - we're overpopulating ourselves out of work because robots are cheaper than people, and people are reproducing like rabbits even though there aren't enough jobs to support them all. Granted, some folks need to work two jobs to keep a roof over their heads and others work to keep a giant flat screen tv in every room...
- proud wife of a fixed spouse and pet
Phil Cafaro
04/24/2010 15:36 PM
Excellent article, that pulls no punches. But the real problem isn't that environmentalists are letting down Gaylord Nelson, who fought the good fight for so long and has gone to his reward.
The real shame is that we are letting down nature, and future generations. Instead of dealing with the roots of our enviornmental issues, such as population and overconsumption, we are happy to support feel-good solutions that won't solve our problems.
A few more wind farms, or even a lot of.... More
Loch David Crane
04/21/2010 19:05 PM
I'm a child of the 1960s who, like thousands of White students, believed in Zero Population Growth and never made anyone pregnant. But look at the unwanted pregnancy rate of minorities here and over seas, and you will see who breeds the problem. Writers, readers, and thinkers take steps to make things better; ignorant people who don't read or think about the planet reproduce for lack of anything better to do. You need to address minority child bearing both here and overseas to slow the.... More
Lathasa
04/22/2010 10:09 AM
Well who in God's name is putting blame on you.First off This here land we live on belonged to people of Not Your Kind.To be honest that is the problem.You's are still talking like this here land belongs to you.This is the land of the Indians and the World of the Lord.Immagration started way before the problem got out of hand. I feel that if people stayed where they started off , then yes this here country would have been a great place.
Brent Lane
04/21/2010 11:34 AM
Sadly, the environmental movement continues actively promote two mutually exclusive beliefs: that we can reduce our impact on the environment, and especially our output of greenhouse gases, while simultaneously increasing our population.
What makes it even worse is that virtually all of the people coming to this country, with its 19 metric tonnes of per capita carbon emission (a rate that has remained rock steady for the nearly two decades it has been measured), are fleeing nations.... More
