Cousteau

This is getting to be habitual. Two years ago I wrote a eulogy to explain why three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, David Brower, quit the Sierra Club, shortly before his death. Since the former club director had played a pivotal role in hoisting the club from marginality to a potent lobbyist, I likened his resignation to the Pope renouncing Catholicism and taking leave of the Vatican. Among other things, Brower was very upset over the refusal of the Sierra Club leadership to address the role that immigrant-driven population growth was playing in the environmental degradation of America. As I wrote then,

"... after 67 years this great crusader felt compelled to resign, ‘with no regret and a bit of desperation’. Brower, you see, had a problem. He had a problem with corruption, bribery, political correctness and myopia. He knew that demography drives not only human destiny but the destinies of the species we impact, and that unchanged immigration policies would double America’s population by 2100, or if liberalized, add as many as another 700 million by that time. He also knew that post-1970 immigrants and their descendants would be the decisive force fuelling American population growth. If unchecked, it surely meant ecological Armageddon for the country. In resigning Brower stated that “Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of the problem. It has to be addressed.”

Following the posting of this fact, Brower's daughter Barbara contested it as a "gross mischaracterization" of her father's position, and insisted that immigration was "a very small" part of his frustration with the Sierra Club. His primary concern was with "the inequitable and unsustainable greed underlying American consumer society.", and while he was worried about " inflating the number of consumers in America his approach was to work on the 'push' factors that drove immigrants to America." It was apparent that her father's unequivocal remark was not convenient for the times or for her social-justice agenda. The David Brower she would like to remember is obviously not the one who praised the lifeboat ethics of Garrett Hardin on the front cover of Hardin’s 1968 book, “The Voyage of the Beagle”.

Now it seems that Phillippe Cousteau Jr. is also distancing himself from a family legacy. One of the more notable things his grandfather Jacques-Yves Cousteau said was the following:

"We must alert and organise the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today. "

Fast forward to May 28, 2010, and Phillippe Cousteau Jr., appearing in an interview with popular comedian Bill Maher on his program “Real Time”, managed to speak eloquently about the collapse of our oceans without even mentioning population growth. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/28/phillipe-cousteau-jr-to-b_n_594308.html Now, eight minutes is certainly not enough for anyone to catalogue all the environmental dangers that threaten us. And since the interview was prompted by the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it was natural that the quest for oil and the state of the oceans would be the focus of the conversation. Phillippe Cousteau’s mission had to be make viewers understand that the oceans can’t take it anymore. They couldn’t take it 50 years ago, and it was nonsense to believe that they could take it now. Dead zones are popping up all over the world while a sea of plastic—a petroleum product---is dominating a portion of the Pacific the size of Texas. As he said, we are becoming victims of our self-mutilation, amputing the limbs of our life-support system. Nevertheless, it would not have been too time-consuming for him to mention, just in passing, , that the growing number of humans—particularly in affluent America---- has had at least something to do with the negative human impact on marine biodiversity. Grandfather Jacques thought so. Why don’t the environmentalists of Phillippe’s generation think so----or at least think it warrants mention? Instead they take the safe bet and play to the gallery with remarks such as Phillippe’s: “I think people have too much faith in big business.” Now that’s really going out on a limb, isn’t it? Even a conservative audience would applaud that one.

My, how the environmental movement has changed since the first Earth day in 1970. Population growth was once on centre stage, but now that we have twice as many consumers wreaking havoc upon the world as we did then, it is hardly to be seen on the green radar. Even the sons and daughters of those environmental icons who did take it seriously will not pick up the torch. Their passion is laudable but their comprehension is incomplete. This recalls the generation gap that nineteenth century Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev wrote about in his classic, “Fathers and Sons”. The young man accuses the middle-aged man of having content but no force, but the middle-aged man counters that the young man has force but no content. Things haven’t changed much since then it seems, as the cycle repeats itself at the most critical phase of human history.

As George Bush the lessor might have put it, I think we have a Zeitgeist-change situation on our hands here. This is a generation gap that we can’t afford.