Environmentalism

Have you ever seen the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It encompasses a floating island of plastic debris out in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas, about 60 to 90 feet thick, 1,000 miles off San Francisco. It kills millions of marine creatures and avian life in our oceans across the world annually. Over 46,000 pieces of plastic float on every square mile of Earth’s oceans.

By Frosty Wooldridge

Part 2: Does the rest of life on Earth matter? Not to humans. Impacts of destructive population momentum, why the silence on population? The great backtrack.

Have you ever seen the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It encompasses a floating island of plastic debris out in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas, about 60 to 90 feet thick, 1,000 miles off San Francisco. It kills millions of marine creatures and avian life in our oceans across the world annually. Over 46,000 pieces of plastic float on every square mile of Earth’s oceans. (Source: Whitty) Humans created it, but humans refuse to enact simple 10 cent deposit-return laws to stop it. Some estimates show humans tossing 2.5 million more plastic containers into the world’s oceans every hour.

http://www.greenster.com/magazine/files/2012/11/img_Great-Pacific-Garbage-Patch_2.jpg

Such a gross contamination of the oceans continues unabated because humans refuse to clean up after themselves. It brings the question: does any of the other life on Earth matter to human beings?

In the end, do we even care about our own species as we explode our numbers across the planet? Even as 10 million children starve to death annually around the world, we gallop recklessly forward to adding 3.1 billion of ourselves within 38 years. (Source: World Health Organization)
Canadian Reid Westland said,

“There are some really unbelievable temperatures and fires in Australia with no let up in sight. Yet, no direct talk about global warming and no word on human numbers and behaviors contributing to it. We are going to have to be struck solidly between the eyes before any real concerted action is taken. Can you imagine the unrest when wheat hits $10.00 a bushel and corn holds a similar high, not to mention soybeans at $18.00 a bushel? Egypt is a hell hole now and they can't feed themselves. How are they going to buy food? On credit! If there is insufficient grain and credit dries up, they will consume what little is left of the "natural world". From 10 million elephants in 1900 to less than 470,000 in 2013, can you imagine as we eat and carve up the last of them for trinkets? We are at war with global warming and the enemy is us! We just refuse to face up to our actions and profligate numbers. We are at war with the natural world to keep our numbers growing! Wolves, grizzlies, mountain lions, deer, moose, elk and big horn sheep have lived in a dynamic state of equilibrium for eons. The great jungles and Serengeti's of the earth weren't denuded by any creature but man.”

In Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation by Professor Philip Cafaro of Colorado State University and Professor Eileen Crist of Virginia Tech, we find the top authors and scientists in the world attempting to alert humanity to its impending future viability on this planet.

Apparently, we humans lack the common sense of a Canadian goose. We fail to act on our present realities of pollution, poisons, cancers, scarce water supplies and dwindling energy sources on our breakneck race to add another 1.1 billion of ourselves every 12 years.

“At this point, it’s almost certainly too late to manage a transition to sustainability on a global or national scale, even if the political will to attempt it existed, which it clearly does not. Our civilization is in the early stages of the same curve of decline and fall as so many others have followed before it. What likely lies in wait for us is a long, uneven decline into a new Dark Age from which, centuries from now, the civilizations of the future will gradually emerge.”

That quote does not warrant manifestation if we take action in 2013. It will certainly manifest if we fail to act.

Crist and Cafaro said,

“The explosion of humanity has decimated many animal and plant populations, extinguished species and sub-species, and caused collapsing ecologies and the shrinking and fragmentation of wild places. Ocean life has been reduced to food and by-catch; rainforests razed for meat and soybeans, boreal forests cut down for wood, mountains detonated for coals and natural gas and grasslands overgrazed and converted strictly into human breadbaskets while freshwaters are dammed, dumped into, overfished and channelized.”

All of these actions destroy animal habitat and reduce wildlife to penury on a scale that few understand or see. Both authors submit that humanity must change course and make radical changes in the human population equation.

Cafaro and Crist said,

“We have to make revolutionary changes in how we live on Earth—including limiting how many of us inhabit it.”

Less than 150 years ago, we humans counted a total of 1.5 billion of our numbers. Today, at 7.1 billion and adding 80 million net gain annually, 1 billion every 12 years—none of the other creatures on this planet stand a chance as we devour everything in sight—water, energy, land, food, resources and more.

Our greatest challenge stems from the fact that most of us cannot and do not “see” what damage we wreck upon the Earth. Not 1 percent of humanity has seen or knows about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Not 1 percent of humanity knows that human encroachment on habitat causes the extinction of 80 to 100 creatures daily in 2013 and that’s been proceeding for over 30 years as our numbers explode. Not 1 percent of humanity is doing anything about it.

This book will bring it home to you. It will prove one of the most important books of the 21st century. Let’s learn and let’s change course.

“We've poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit…and we go on gobbling them up. It's hard to imagine how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody's really doing anything about it. It's a problem our children will have to solve, or their children.” Daniel Quinn

At some point, the problem will become unsolvable and irreversible. Which means all life on Earth will suffer enormous consequences.

Part 3: Destructive momentum by Catton, Population growth by Bartlett, what we face if we fail to change

Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation

Authors: Philip Cafaro, Eileen Crist

Publisher: The University of Georgia Press, www.ugapress.org

ISBN: 978-0-8203-4385-3

Price: $24.95 www.amazon.com

The author of this article, Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents - from the Arctic to the South Pole - as well as eight times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. In 2012, he bicycled coast to coast across America. He presents "The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it" to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He speaks all over the United States on his latest book: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World. Copies at 1 888 280 7715.

Programs click: HowToLiveALifeOfAdventure.com

Kindle Edition

“Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die” Gore Vidal.

We in the population movement lost a very great ally in Gore Vidal. See this interview and see how far ahead of his time he was: www.firstpost.com/topic/person/gore-vidal-gore-vidal-video-Ax5agwHo-Gw-2381-1.html

Vidal talks about the need for compulsory birth control, and the role that malnutrition plays in hindering mental development. He was never afraid to take on taboo subjects.

“There is no longer any room at the banquet of life” Gore Vidal 1968.

I don’t know if I ever heard him say anything I disagreed with. He was witty and caustic, and a damn good novelist by the way. I don’t , as a rule, like fiction. But his historical novels were top notch. His novel about Julian the Apostate was among my favourites----but his other work were good reads too.

I guess the most lasting memory I will have of him occurred when I was glued to the televised events surrounding the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, when tensions were high. Both MLK* and RFK** had been recently murdered, the Vietnam war was raging on, the students of France and Germany had taken to the streets and Soviet tanks had swarmed in to crush the Dubcek experiment. Quite a time. In the wake of the police riot, when Mayor Daley’s cops savagely beat up demonstrators, reporters and doctors attending to them—all before the cameras, Gore Vidal squared off against the smug, arrogant and hitherto unflappable William F. Buckley. He managed to get under Buckley’s skin, provoking Buckley to “lose it”, calling him a “queer” and threatening to punch him in the face. Great theatre!

Vidal was a superb talk show guest, pushing the envelope with cutting-edge comment delivered with wit.

What ever happened to his kind? First Hitchens, now Vidal. Who is next, Richard Dawkins? God forbid (pun intended).

What happened since then to make so many people so timid when objective circumstances have only gotten worse? Vidal’s analysis of what was wrong with America and the world forty years still seems valid today. But the difference is, few are willing to stick out their necks and say what he did then without fear.

Once upon a time it was the Left who carried the banner of free speech. Now they are the most ardent advocates of censorship. In 1968, I could never have imagined it. Nor could have I imagined that one day that I would be called a “fascist” by “progressive” people who make common cause with jihadists and turn a blind eye to the human rights violations of the Castro regime they admire from afar.

And not one of them seem to give a hoot that population has nearly doubled since Gore Vidal’s warnings. Vidal was a giant.

Tim

NOTES inserted by Editor

* MLK - Martin Luther King
** RFK - Robert Francis Kennedy, the younger brother of JFK, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was murdered in 1963.

Jill Quirk (President Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) Victorian and Tasmanian Branches, and National Representative) will host Dr Geoff Mosley to speak at the AGM, this Saturday, 7/7/2012, at 2PM. Dr Mosley was Executive Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation from 1973 to 1986 and is currently the Australian Director of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy. Given the raging population growth and six new suburbs bearing down upon our Green Wedges, SPA Victoria's AGM is of great importance to Victorians.

Sustainable Population Australia (Victorian and Tasmanian branch) Annual General Meeting

On- Saturday July 7th at 2.00p.m.
At -Balwyn Library Meeting Room, 336, Whitehorse Road, Balwyn, Victoria.

There will be an election of office bearers for 2012-13- at the meeting. Financial members are invited to nominate for any of the following positions- president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, or committee member (5 positions)

Guest Speaker, Dr Geoff Mosley

Following formal business our Guest Speaker, DR GEOFF MOSLEY, will reflect on his 60 years of involvement with conservation, the lessons learned, and the way ahead.

John Geoffrey "Geoff" Mosley (born 14 September 1931) was Executive Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation from 1973 to 1986 and has had a lifelong interest in preserving wilderness. His contributions were acknowledged in 2005 when he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in the Queen's Birthday Honours. In June, 2008 he was named as the Individual Award winner in the Australia World Environment Day 2008 Awards. In 2008 he also became the Australian Director of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Mosley

“Westerfield” –destroyed in 2010 for the construction of the Frankston By-pass in 2010.

Venue details: 336 Whitehorse Rd
Balwyn VIC 3103, Australia
Tram number:109
Melway ref. 46E8

Contact: Jill Quirk- 0409742927 jillq[AT]optusnet.com.au or vic[AT]population.org.au

The late Michael Crichton was partially right. The environmental movement in an increasingly secular society has assumed the mantle of Christianity. This is most particularly true, I would submit, in its obsession with motivations and intentions, as if nature gave a damn what we "intended". Too often those in the "environment justice" coalition choose politically correct pursuits and ignore their ecologically incorrect consequences.

"Noble intentions are a poor excuse for stupid actions. Man is the only species that calls some suicidal actions 'noble' ".
Garrett Hardin

Noble intention: Help the starving masses of Haiti, Central Africa, Afghanistan, Philippines, etc.
Stupid action: Sending them aid without making it conditional on birth control, thereby doubling their misery in a generation.

Noble intention: Encourage people to cut their personal waste and consumption.
Stupid action: Oppose effective measures to reduce the number of people who are doing the wasting and consuming.

Noble intention: To concentrate on ending income and wealth disparities within nations and between hemispheres.
Stupid action: To allow that focus to be exclusive of concerns about the total human footprint, which is largely unaffected by wealth redistribution. The equal distribution of rations on an overloaded lifeboat facing a Perfect Storm far off shore will not suffice to save it.

Noble intention: To fight racial injustice.
Stupid action: To assuage white guilt by assigning all responsibility for overshoot to the rich "North" and relieving the global poor of any responsibility for their irresponsible fecundity and its resultant environmental degradation.

Noble intention: To fight 'Islamophobia' and ensure that all Muslims are not categorized and treated as 'terrorists'.
Stupid action: To frame concerns about the impact of Islam on women's rights, democracy and most importantly, fertility rates, as "Islamophobic" and off the table.

Noble intention: Not to be sidetracked from the main task of reducing global population by religious or ethnic mud-slinging.
Stupid action: To let the Catholic Church in particular, and other denominations in general, off the hook for their criminal responsibility in pushing humanity to the brink of ecocide by fighting against birth control measures. Culture matters. And harmful cultural practices must be mercilessly attacked---whomever practices them.

Noble intention: To keep people focused on issues, not personalities or blame.
Stupid action: To let environmental organizations off the hook for their collusion with corporate donors who have paid them "not to understand" the role of immigration-driven population growth in environmental degradation. Ignorance is one thing, corruption is another. Nor is it smart or ethical to not to call green NGOs and fem-green left out for their despicable race-baiting, McCarthyist tactics in smearing and isolating those who try to put the "P" back into the IPAT equation where it belongs. Their tactics must not be rewarded with silence. Bullies thrive on passive non-reactions. I am from the east end of town. If Sierrans and Hartmanites push me, I push back. Only twice as hard.

Noble intention: To serve the interests of all humanity.
Stupid action: To frame the effort to restrict migration, control borders, and prevent national population overshoot as "parochial", "trivial", "selfish", "nativist", "xenophobic" or "racist" when open borders are a proven fertility stimulant to nations who treat North America, Australia and Western Europe as a safety valve for their burgeoning population and as a source of remittances. It is also supremely stupid to ignore the fact that migrants to North America---a major resource glutton----on average quadruple their GHG emissions upon arrival and similarly multiply their consumption to the cost of the whole world.

Noble intention: To worry about climate change.
Stupid action: To make climate change such a fixation that it hogs the stage so that more imminent catastrophes (overpopulation, Peak Oil, Peal Soil, water shortage, biodiversity collapse, atomic/chemical or biological war and terrorism) do not get the attention that they need. Systems collapse is consequence of all these disasters acting upon each other, but why nominate climate change as the only meaningful metric of overshoot when other unfolding disasters are poised to kill us first?

Noble intention: Foster women's rights.
Stupid action: Support only 'voluntary' family planning even though that alone won't get us to sustainability, and even though nothing is more coercive of women's rights than making women live in an overpopulated environment. That is, an environment of inadequate housing, inadequate water, inadequate food and nutrition, poor air quality, poor educational opportunities, and more violence. No Chinese Communist Party apparatchik could be as tough on procreative "rights" as the environment would be on us if there had been an extra 400 million Chinese people born because the Chinese government lacked the resolution to enforce a One-Child-Per-Family law. That's 1.8 billion metric tonnes of GHG emissions per year not added to the global atmosphere and billions of barrels of oil and tonnes of coal not consumed thanks to the OCPF law. Still wish that the Chinese government had not infringed on women's 'rights'? Would you prefer extinction to a curb on procreative rights? Species suicide is noble? And you call your position "ethical" while my prescriptions are "monstrous", "inhumane", "intrusive", "undemocratic" and "disrespectful of women's rights"?

Noble intention: To tell me how to write. To tell me to “tone it down a little”, not to be so “abrasive” or "caustic", to walk on egg shells and tip-toe around people’s sensibilities so that my message will be received by a wider readership.
Stupid action: To promote the idea there is a “one-size-fits-all” writing style that appeals to everyone. Wrong. It takes a variety of approaches to reach different people with the same message. One writing style may not be to your taste, but it may well be what grabs the attention of others. Instead of trying to drive one style off the stage, concentrate on getting the message out in a different way--- your way. There is room for all styles and approaches, and many are complementary. If you don’t like playing the “Bad Cop”, then by all means, be the “Good Cop”----but don’t pretend that we don’t need bad cops. There is a time and a season for being undiplomatic. Especially when the stakes are so high and danger so imminent.

Tim Murray
June 26, 2011

You hear people like Rob Adams and Marcus Spiller saying there is nothing you can do about population growth in Victoria and Australia. Wrong. For a start the government should cancel the Live in Victoria website that invites people to come to Victoria and which explains how to get a visa. There is one in every state (Qld, NSW, the ACT, Tasmania[1], SA, WA, NT). They should all be pulled off the web.

Results of Melbourne population poll, added to this article on 16 April 2011.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/citys-population-explosion-20110331-1cng1.html

Having been involved with trying to save Melbourne from overdevelopment for many years, numerous conservation and environment activists are convinced that no government can manage the speed and magnitude of growth.

It's bleeding obvious.

So tell them at The Age. Comment and vote via the link supplied to a poll in The Age today. And stop buying property. That only lines bankers' and developers' pockets and gives them more power over politicians. The Age is not Melbourne's 'better' newspaper, it's just a a huge international property developer and financier. So is the Australian, with www.realestate.com.au. That's the real news. Sadly it's a long time since there was much real news in those papers.

Then tell the Feds that we want to reduce Melbourne's population so stop importing so many immigrants. For years now Victorian Premiers have been demanding more immigrants of the federal government in order to please big business. Make our leaders care about democracy.

Nothing is inevitable unless you let it be so.

The Victorian Coalition has admitted that funds don't exist to finance the infrastructure needed to stuff all these new people in with a giant shoehorn - so why do we want even more people?

The answer is that we don't want them; the property developer and financier-run government does.

Tell those parasites to get the infrastructure fixed and then ask us again and listen to the answer.

Global capital exploits overpopulation so we must regulate global capital to get democracy.

What is to be done? What should be done? What can be done?

Who are we and why do we write? And for whom? Should we be addressing environmentalists, or a broader readership that is not captive of their myths? If so, how can we reach them?

Hope Sells

A friend of mine, "Barry", is a Jehovah's Witness. He is a sincere and decent man with the best of motives and intentions, filling his day with small acts of kindness and good works. But like me, his motivations and efforts are most probably for naught. We obviously share a burden. The burden of being Cassandras who have a vision of doom that few wish to embrace. Yet despite his tribulations, he and his brethen seem to be attracting more support than I am. Upon further discussion, he confided that he and his fellow missionaries get an overwhelmingly hostile reception---- yet his denomination is the fastest growing sect of any religion. Why? "Because after we tell people that this system of things will soon end, we tell them that there is hope for them and the people they love." That is the clincher. People don't want to be sentenced to a diet of bad news. Even those who take it in look for escape hatches. They grasp at straws. The Sierra Club and other religious organizations thrive only because they fire with both barrels of the shotgun. One convinces people that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, while the other offers them false solutions. It is a proven combination. "This is going to kill you, but this can save you". The Green Merchants of False Hope tell us that we have a terminal illness but that their elixir of green living, land-use planning and tech fixes are a miracle cure. It is a message that reaps donations and membership dues, and encourages New Society Publishers to publish a bushel of their books. Hope sells.

Self-Delusion

Bottom line: People want religion. They want comfort food, not the castor oil of unvarnished truth. So the question is, how much of a liar are you willing to become to gain a hearing? You have already swallowed your own lie---that is the first step to becoming a successful salesman. If the audience doesn't believe that you believe in your product, they will not buy your vacuum cleaner. So you have convinced yourself that you have a solution, and that it will eventually be adopted and implemented.

Now you must put on a happy face, and win over a literary agent with your charm. You buy him or her dinner, ask them about their kids and their hobbies and then present your message of doom wrapped up with Disney ending. Something Chris Clugston, in his book, "Scarcity", didn't do and refuses to do. Any more than a lab technician would doctor the results of my blood test to buoy my spirits and allow me to forget about my mortality. Some people have integrity, while the rest of us make compromises. We do that either because we are delusional or egotistical. We think meaningful change is possible and that we have a significant role to play in it.

Are We Truth-Tellers Or Salesman, Objective Analysts or Motivators For Change?

The question to consider is, why would we want to write a book? Do we want to effect change or do we want to want to tell the truth? Are we politicians or objective analysts? If we find that there are no practical solutions that have a reasonable expectation of success, do we want to broadcast that conclusion? Is there any point in writing an autopsy report on our civilization? Do we write so that we can eventually say "I told you so"? Is writing about the coming collapse just a release, an outlet for frustration? If we write to motivate change that would mitigate or prevent the catastrophe even though we believe the probability of change to be remote, does that not make us merely spin-doctors and propagandists? Are we comfortable with that?

What Do Our Half-Solutions Accomplish?

I am thinking out loud here because these are the recurring questions that have bedevilled me with increasing frequency for the past two years. I am apparently not content just to be a spectator to an unfolding disaster---I want to do "something". But isn't that part of the problem-- that too many sincere people---environmentalists----in an attempt to do "something" by pushing half-solutions, are actually making the problem worse? What did Norman Borlaug actually accomplish---other than allowing our species to add another 2 or 3 billion to its numbers? Was that not his fear? What does 'smaller' living by the rich accomplish? What does smart growth accomplish? What does the introduction of more efficient technologies accomplish? What would population stabilization accomplish? What would egalitarian redistribution of wealth accomplish if there are not enough non-renewable resources to sustain all the passengers on our overloaded global lifeboat for the whole voyage? What would absolutely air-tight borders and gated communities accomplish? What would a steady-state industrial economy accomplish? What would a one-child-per-family regime in only one or ten countries accomplish? Is slowing growth enough? Will Mother Nature grant us a reprieve or a consolation prize for simply not growing any more?

Rick Belfour bowed out of an Internet debate provoked by Dirk Becker with the lament that it was demoralizing to witness such rancour among people who essentially are on the same side--or words to that effect. The point is, however, we are not on the same side. The prescriptions that environmentalists offer are, in truth, growth-enablers. They promote growth by making more room for it. Their message is, "Move over and squeeze tighter to make room for more and more incoming people, either from the maternity ward or the airport (it makes no difference)." That is what land use planning, frugal living, and technology improvements do. They create space for continuing growth. It is not coincidental that the title of the book that formed the plot for Charlton Heston's movie, "Solyent Green", was "Make Room! Make Room!" That would be an apt slogan for the environmental movement. Their goal is to essentially manage the environment to accommodate population growth. Mine is the reverse. To shrink the population to accommodate the environment. Yet they have assumed the mantle of "environmentalists". A more appropriate description would be "growth-managers".

The source of our difference is a matter of speculation, but I have a hypothesis. Their worldview---and mine---has been typically fashioned by different educational experiences and the biases inherent in each discipline. And we continue to live in different silos. I did not take a course in biology, yet somehow I ran the gauntlet of a liberal arts education with a conceptual grasp of "limits" still intact---- but that was in an era when universities were an oasis of intellectual tolerance. Statistically, I should be parroting the same line as the "environmental justice" movement, as if nature cared about human notions of justice. But here's the point:

The Fight For Sustainability Is A Golf Game, Not A Juggling Act

Environmentalists and Malthusians are at ideological loggerheads. Ours is not a sectarian division, but a fundamentally unbridgeable chasm. There can be no alliance between us. There can be no fellowship between lightness with darkness. Or in less Biblical terms, between clarity and confusion. If that sounds arrogant and presumptuous, let me add that confusion is not a character flaw. It is just a point on the learning curve---- and hopefully we are all on a learning curve with an ambition to learn more. I was once confused--- and I am still confused--- but much less so than I was, I believe. My curve was not a continuum. I had that famous "paradigm-shift", and it was a "quantum leap", not an incremental progression. I leapt from one decompression chamber to another one, closer to the surface. Rather abruptly, I came to the realization that saving the environment was not a juggling act between causes and factors that demand equal attention, but more like a golf game. In golf, you don't begin by trying to figure out how best to sink the ball in 18 holes, by dispersing your attention to all of them simultaneously. You focus on the first hole. Without sinking the ball in the first hole, all other holes are irrelevant. In terms of environmental degradation, achieving a sustainable population level is that first hole. It is a pre-requisite of ultimate success, not a variable that must be balanced off with other variables. Thinking about the rest of them is a counter-productive distraction. Without rapid population decline, all other good destinations --- human rights, lasting peace and equity, sensible planning and durable zoning limits, or gains from technological improvements---are unreachable. The problem must be treated as one of priority and sequence, not balance.

In deference to political correctness and the sensibilities of corporate donors, the environmental movement took the "P" (population) out of the foundational formula, the "IPAT" equation, making nonsense of their project. Initially, I took the conventional view that the P must be re-inserted to restore the IPAT filter. But that reflected another kind of misunderstanding. "A" (per capita consumption) and "T" (technology) are not equal partners with "P" because a shrinking human population is a pre-condition for meaningful improvements elsewhere. Now I am putting it back in and putting the "A" and the "T" on the shelf, at the back of the queue for future consideration---where they belong. Let's focus on the first hole.

No Longer An Environmentalist

I was once an environmentalist who attacked symptoms, rather than address root problems, and for all my zeal, I did not make a difference,----unless, in my own small way, it was to make our problems marginally worse. Now I am an ex-environmentalist, still struggling to forgive those who have not followed my path, too often forgetting that I was once on theirs. If I know what they do not know, it is still a small fraction of the whole truth---which is unknowable. In the end, we may all prove to be inconsequential. In fact, that is a certainty. One day the human experiment will end---like that of every other species. But it would be nice if it didn't happen so soon.

Tim Murray
March 14, 2011

It has almost become commonplace now for prominent environmentalists like David Suzuki to declare that economic growth cannot continue in a finite world. Even Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May has been heard to quote Paul Ehrlich's old line that "growth is the ideology of the cancer cell". The problem is, however, that they do not follow this insight through to its logical conclusion. What does economic growth consist of? If population growth is a critical ingredient of economic growth, then what drives population growth? And if migration to affluent countries promotes population growth in both the nations of emigration and the recipient countries, must not any credible strategy to fight economic growth involve tightening borders and restricting this flow?

"We have come to believe that growth is the very definition of progress. You talk to any businessperson or politician and say, 'How well did you do last year?' And, within a picosecond, they will talk about growth in the GDP and the economy in profit, jobs or market share. And, anything in a finite world cannot grow forever. We live within the biosphere, that cannot grow- it's fixed." David Suzuki

At long last there is a growing consensus among environmentalists that growth must not simply be managed, but stopped, before nature does it in a more ruthless and arbitrary fashion. Nevertheless, while it takes little insight or courage to identify and attack the problem in broad terms, it requires bold persistence to follow that commitment to its logical conclusions and ruffling politically correct feathers in the process. Unfortunately, not many anti-growth advocates are so audacious. So far there seems to be seven subsets of anti-growth consciousness that must be treated as stages toward total comprehension of the issue.

1.Those who recognize that economic growth cannot continue in a finite world.

2.Those who realise that economic growth must not only be stopped, but reversed. There must be “de-growth".

3. Those who understand that global population growth is a critical component of economic growth.

4. Those who understand that population growth in affluent nations or nations of growing affluence is more dangerous than population growth in undeveloped countries.

5. Those who understand that immigration has become a key driver of population growth in many affluent nations like the United States, Canada, Australia and the UK.

6. Those who understand that mass migration to affluent nations is a spur to global population growth. Open borders are a fertility stimulant to countries of emigration and relieve the pressure upon their governments to pursue sustainable population levels, while affluent nations with immigration-driven runaway population growth lack the credibility to lobby for lower birth rates in developing nations.

7.Those who understand, then, that reducing mass migration to North America and similarly affluent regions is crucial to any effective effort toward pro-actively reversing global economic growth, if for only the reason that migrants from poorer nations greatly magnify their ecological footprints upon arrival. At the same time, we understand it is the practical and moral obligation of affluent countries to address the “push” factors which drive migrants of poorer nations out of their countries.

Lamentably, the great majority of environmental leaders who have “gone out on a limb” to denounce economic growth, or even to declare that it must be reversed rather than simply stabilized, will not go out any further. Perhaps they reason that their constituents are not yet ready come with them----or that corporate donors will de-fund their organizations if they did. It is clear that from the investigations of Washington Post, Johann Hari, Christine MacDonald, Michel Chossudovsky and Cory Morningstar---to name but a few---that corporate foundation money has played a decisive role in taming environmental NGOs and channelling them down paths that our less consequential to the corporate bottom line. But whether it be for mercenary reasons or simply deference to political correctness, Canadians remain puzzled why David Suzuki, for example, can tell Australians on their public radio that their country is over-populated, but is apparently unable to say the same thing in Canada about his own country on the CBC. If Dr. Suzuki—and other prominent green voices---are sincere in their determination to see economic contraction, then they must climb up all of the steps outlined above. They must take special note of Herman Daly’s ninth policy proposal for moving toward a steady state:

"Stabilize Population. We should be working toward a balance in which births plus in-migrants equals deaths plus out-migrants. This is controversial and difficult, but, as a start, contraception should be made available for voluntary use everywhere. And while each nation can debate whether it should accept many or few immigrants, and who should get priority, such a debate is rendered moot if immigration laws are not enforced. We should support voluntary family planning and enforcement of reasonable immigration laws, democratically enacted. A lot of the pro-natalist and open-borders rhetoric claims to be motivated by generosity, but it is “generosity” at the expense of the U.S. working class—a cheap labor policy. Progressives have been slow to understand this. The environmental movement began with a focus on population but has frequently given in to political correctness." http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/556

Tim Murray
January 5, 2010

If one checks the policies of the Australian Greens Party ('The Greens') on its website the non-environmental conservation ones are shown with a * (see below).

Of The Greens' 44 policies, some 28 are NOT directly about environmental conservation. Many policies are about Left social justice issues such as civil rights. Nothing wrong with caring for people, but what's happening to the commitment to care for the forests - The Greens bread and butter?

The benefit of taking on a broader policy platform is that The Greens have shrugged off the stigma and core criticism of being only a single issue party (an environmentalist ('green') only party. In doing so, The Greens have become more mainstream.

The problem is that the 'green' effort has been diluted toward human issues with Left socialist and civil rights agendas, which means 'The Greens' label has become a misnomer. 'Green' has become 'Pink'. Many of its policies are now human pink.

Many environmental conservation groups seeking active support from The Greens are invariable disappointed by the thin on-ground support. The Greens do not have a mandate on conservation politics. They don't even in many cases have a contributing presence.

The Greens origins in 1972 with the United Tasmanian Group started out supporting the Lake Pedder Action Group (LPAG) in trying to save Tasmania's Lake Pedder from being flooded for hydro-electricity.

Lake Pedder was eventually flooded. The Tasmanian Greens went on to save the Franklin River in Tasmania

and on to bigger and broader causes. Many of the current policies have now nothing to do with environmental conservation and in so doing have diluted their commitment to environmental conservation.

It's no wonder that many traditional Labor voters are now aligned this political party. Conversely, it is no wonder that The Greens' dilution of conservation has created a political vacuum in environmental conservation politics in Australia.

But you be the judge...

GREENS POLICIES

(as at Halloween 2010):

* = policy has nothing to do with environmental conservation

Agriculture & Natural Resources
o Genetically Manipulated Organisms
o Natural Resources
o Sustainable Agriculture

Care for People
o Childcare*
o Children and Young People*
o Disability*
o Drugs, Substance Abuse and Addiction *
o Education*
o Health*
o Housing*
o Immigration and Refugees*
o Indigenous Australians*
o Multiculturalism*
o Older People*
o Sexuality and Gender Identity*
o Social Services*
o Sport and Physical Recreation*
o Women*

Climate Change and Energy
o Climate Change and Energy
o Nuclear

Environment
o Animals
o Biological Diversity
o Environmental Principles
o Marine and Coastal Areas
o Population
o Waste
o Water and Inland Aquatic Environments

Human Rights & Democracy
o Community Participation in Government*
o Constitutional Reform and Democracy*
o Global Governance
o Human Rights*
o International Relations*
o Justice*
o Overseas Aid*
o Peace and Security*

Media, Arts & Science
o Arts*
o Media and Communications*
o Science and Technology*

Sustainable Economy
o Corporate Governance*
o Economics*
o Employment and Industrial Relations*
o Global Economics*
o Sustainable Planning and Transport.

I make four summary observations of The Greens as follows:

1. The original environmental conservation effort of The Greens has been steadily diluted and distracted as the Party has (1) sought more mainstream acceptance and (2) invited under its wing those with non-environmental conservation agendas - I have collectively branded these 'pink' - which is intentionally open to interpretation - 'pale Red', 'alternative lifestyle', 'liberal values', 'civil rights activists', but distinguishably human focused, not environmentally focused!

Hence much of The Greens polices are now grouped under 'Care for People', 'Human Rights & Democracy', and 'Media, Arts & Science.'

The Greens are suffering a classic 'quality for quantity compromise' and in seeking mainstream popularism have become a clichéd jack of all trades and master of none. Worse, they risk alienating their original environmental conservation ideological support base.

2. Scores of socialists and humanists disaffected within Australia's dominant Left-wing party - the Australian Labor Party (ALP) have become disillusioned by Labor's gradual Center-Right direction and by its corrosive factional politics. Many have defected to The Greens. In turn they have influence the direction of The Greens and the Greens in their conciliatory habit have modified their policy effort to adopt more and more 'pink' social justice agenda. With this 'accommodation' The Greens core environmental conservation focus is being diluted by increasing 'pink' 'Left-leaning', social justice policies.

3. The core driver of environmental degradation (including pollution, habitat loss, species extinctions) is the exponential human population increase and the unchecked encouraged consumerism per capita. More people in the same area causes more pressure on the environment - simple logic!

Climate change is merely a background broad incremental consequence; it is the consequence, not the driver of the environmental problems!

Brown and his Greens have sided with the population control lobby but only in vague in-principled support. Reason for the token support is that the new pink allegiances and policies adopted by The greens have inherently compromised the ability of The Greens to achieve a consensus on a population control policy that would be effective in reducing its environmental impact.

The Greens are now beholden to its 'pink' policies on social justice, yet have failed to recognise that both social justice problems and environmental problems are compounded by excesses in human population.

4. The genteel, academic and legalese make up of The Greens leadership has shaped a group think culture of idealistic passiveness with any change management specifying a conciliatory approach. A lack of effective principled 'balls' has meant a failure to take the conservation fight to the protagonists - the selfish property developers, property speculators, stock market, the banks, the growth lobby, the big corporate exploiters, the self-sustainable captains of industry and industrialisation.

Is it then any wonder, with The Greens beholden to a 'pink' agenda displacing their environmental conservation core, that conservation groups are disaffected with The Greens and that we are experiencing the emergence of a fresh wave of political groups fill the political void?

* Australian Protectionist Party
* Stable Population Party of Australia
* Australia First Party (NSW) Incorporated of which I acknowledge being an active member.

Conclusion

If The Greens continue down their popularist vote grabbing 'pink' path, it is only a matter of time before the critical mass of environmental conservation disaffection in The Greens realises a need for an alternative genuine 'green' party to emerge. Personally, a political wing of The Wilderness Society has best chance of achieving that. There is logic in this assessment, but that is another article.

Awareness of population overshoot is a process, not a revelation

Seeing that the volume of humanity has quadrupled in the past century with the addition of more than 5 billion more consumers, it continues to be a source of amazement to me that the majority of people I encounter do not see the obvious necessity of rapid human population decline (RPD). More amazing though, is that those of us who are passionate in our conviction that it is RPD is both a necessity and an inevitability proceed to argue as if our audience is already reconciled to our position. We forget that most of us arrived reluctantly to our unhappy conclusions after going through several mental decompression chambers until finally, we were able to burst upon the surface and see the broad visit above the water.

Don't assume that people know the basics

It is as if we were teaching a class of undergraduates, and began with the fourteenth lecture rather than the first. We assume that those we are attempting to reach come equipped with a rudimentary ecological literacy, but we are mistaken. Even most environmentalists come to a discussion without knowledge of Boulding’s Three Theorems, Hopfenberg’s law, Liebig’s Law of the Minimum, Abernethy’s axiom, the Jevons Paradox or any of Bartlett’s laws of sustainability. These are the building blocks of ecological understanding and the sine qua non of informed debate. Without them we find ourselves having to reinvent the wheel in response to the clichéd criticisms that resurface over and over again.

Common ideological obstacles

How many times must we defeat the Demographic Theory of Transition or send the Replacement Rate Fallacy packing? How many times must we counter the promise of tech fixes and more efficiency with a lesson on efficiency paradoxes? How many times must idiotic Monbiotisms be refuted with the simple observation that economic growth requires people and that if climate change is a consequence of human activity then the number humans must be part of it? How many times must we point out that without the “P”, the IPAT formula is rendered meaningless and incapable of achieving any comprehensive ecological understanding? How many times do we have to demonstrate that smart growth palliatives, land use strategies, green living guides and conservation measures in the context of continued growth are futile?

Radical change requires patience

The truth is, as alarmist as environmentalists are accused of being, they are still the soft soap salesmen of delusional optimism, cornucopians with a green conscience. No wonder Malthusians and those with apocalyptic visions come across as wild-eyed extremists --- our audience or readership does not see that our predicament is extreme and the environmental movement has done nothing to sufficiently enlighten them. Extreme predicaments call for extreme measures, but if we shout fire in a crowded theatre when no one but us can even see smoke, we become instantly marginalized. We must step back and appreciate, as urgent as our agenda is, those beyond our circle are unprepared for it. We must rewind and re-evaluate. We must proceed one step at a time, as impatient for change as we are.

Step one, in my view, is to convince them that there is a fire. Clugston, Heinberg, Ruppert, Goodchild,---any one of a cluster of doomsayers can make that case more effectively than we can. Step two is to present them with options on how the fire can be put out. Here is how I frame my position, in riposte to the human rights coalition. There are four stages to ascend before the right mechanism for RPD can be found. Each stage is a platform to climb to the next. This is not a process of “balance” and trade-offs, but of following steps in the right sequence. The survival of our species cannot be balanced off ethical inhibitions. Ethical considerations must wait their turn, not muddy the waters at the beginning.

Four stages to finding the right mechanism for RPD

1. Stage One--- Base camp. Before beginning the climb we must ask, is RPD necessary? If it isn't, fine. Proceed no further. Climb cancelled.
2. Stage Two—Coming to a firm resolution. If RPD is necessary, it is necessary. It must be effected. By hook or by crook. By hook if possible, but by crook if necessary.
3. Stage Three---The realization that since RPD is necessary, the question as to whether it can be effected humanely is irrelevant. It must be effected regardless. If my leg is infected with gangrene, it must be amputated immediately--with or without an anaesthetic.
4. Stage Four----Therefore only one question remains. What is the least inhumane of effective options?

I would prefer that you use an anaesthetic before amputation, but if none is available, then you must do a cost-benefit analysis. Is allowing me to die in agony over the next 48 hours more humane than chopping my gangrenous leg off without the benefit of drugs so that I may live on? It is only at this juncture of the discussion that competing ethical perspectives can be entertained. Before swinging an axe, perhaps first clubbing me into unconsciousness would be the least inhumane of effective remedies. I am open to suggestions. Mount your high horse and be as ethical as you want to be, but get it done.

Before swinging an axe, perhaps first clubbing me into unconsciousness would be the least inhumane of effective remedies. I am open to suggestions. Mount your high horse and be as ethical as you want to be, but get it done.

Morality has little utility for an extinct species

The mistake that most environmentalists, humanists and theists make is to attempt to "balance" ecological and biophysical imperatives off against some sacrosanct ethical code—be it the tenets of Judeo-Christianity, Islam, Scientology, Wiccan , humanism, Socialism or Democracy or anything else on the ideological buffet . But sustainability and species-survival cannot be a question of "balance" but of priority. After all, what can be more immoral than to allow the extinction of our species--together with the millions that we take down with us---in order to remain faithful to an "ethical" standard? What good is morality to an extinct species? Critics say that we must not lose our "humanity" in an effort to achieve a sustainable population level. What they really mean is that we must not lose a set of ethical principles that evolved in the last few thousand years of human history---a relative eye-blink compared to the eons of our hominid existence.

Ethical codes are expendable---but our species is not

We can indeed lose our traditional set of ethics. Culture is dynamic and ethical standards are a work in progress, as Baby Boomers can attest in reflecting upon the changing mores in their lifetime. Civilized conduct itself is a thin veneer that is easily stripped off in an emergency of short duration. Katrina should have taught us that. But civilization does not define our "humanity". We have always been "human". We were human when we practised cannibalism, infanticide and ritual human sacrifices, or waged wars of tribal genocide. We have always been both selfish and altruistic, empathetic and cruel, compassionate and callous, aggressive and passive. All of these traits are part of the human make-up, and will endure even if we return to a hunter-gatherer state. As long as we survive as a species through the coming tribulations, we have the potential to recapture the best of our nature and rebuild an ethical system more to our liking. But the priority must be on sustaining our race, not on sustaining the number of people who happen to be alive now thanks to unsustainable agriculture and to our unsustainable consumption of non-renewable energy resources. We can lose our civilized manners but we cannot afford to die off as a race. For some reason, even many of those in our own movement cannot grasp this difference. Lester Brown is a classic case in point. Our project should not be framed by the question he poses, by asking "How can we feed 9 billion people" but rather by asking, "How can we save the core of humanity that is necessary to establish a viable population base before an imminent population crash denies us that possibility?”

Playing God by Not Playing God

The lifeboat is more important than any of its passengers. A callous statement perhaps, but not any more than the proposition that we play God by not playing God, that is, by not taking doing what is necessary---no more, no less---to reduce population rapidly. A passive spectator to the unfolding sixth extinction is a silent partner to the crime of our epoch. The institution of coercive population control measures that are effective and necessary are no more the mark of someone playing "God" than is the intervention by anyone of us to stop a mugger from killing a stranger or brandishing a pistol to stop a crowd from trampling hundreds in their panic to escape that which panics them. "Leaving it up to God" is a bizarre position for anyone who claims to be motivated by the conscientious attachment to ethical principles. Consistency should require that they follow through with their logic and advocate the abolition of law enforcement and the judicial process. We can’t have judges, juries and policemen “playing God”, can we? Who are they to make decisions that affect the fate of others? Who are we to judge, or to intervene? After all, isn’t intervention of any kind contingent on presumptions? Who am I stop that mugger? It is not my job to “fix” anyone is it? Let God---or karma---sort it all out. Justice will come in the next life. Some kind of ethical system that.

Wanting omelettes without breaking any eggs

Passivity is a pathology, and it comes in many forms. One form is the position taken by many so called “activists” and armchair revolutionaries would espouse the attainment of a utopian order or a radically different economy or social structure than the one that is killing us, but qualify their support for these goals by insisting that it must be done “democratically”, or non-violently, or respectfully, or with sensitivity, or in accordance with the UN Charter on Human Rights, or some Holy Text. They believe in making an omelette, but are morally opposed to cracking an egg. In practical terms, theirs is a de-facto laissez-faire posture. Announce your determination to fight for a New Jerusalem but attach ethical conditions to that commitment that ensure that it never comes about. Again, these caveats belong to Stage Four of the process. Park your democratic or Christian sensibilities until then-- then weigh in.

All options must be on the table

Those organizations and blogs which promote population reduction, are quick to insist that they advocate “voluntary” family planning, or “reproductive” rights for women, or mutual coercion “mutually” agreed upon. And if ever one of them entertains my argument, they are careful to dissociate themselves from it with a disclaimer. This may be a political necessity. We are presently stuck at Stage One, and until the need for RPD is broadly accepted, the methods required to achieve it must take a back seat—especially if the mere mention of seemingly unsavoury alternatives carries the risk of chasing away potential supporters or presenting a big fat target for the Christian right and the birth-dearth lobby anxious to smear them with the brush of misanthropy. Nevertheless this should not foreclose consideration of draconian measures when the time comes. A Plan B or C must be on deck.

Does that mean that I would favour dictatorship, violence, disrespect or insensitivity in the pursuit of the necessary? Absolutely---if necessary. But I am not there yet, and neither should you be. I would prefer that things be done democratically, but I do not make a fetish out of democracy---or the Ten Commandments or the pronouncements of the Pope or the Delai Lama, for that matter. My support for any means to achieve RPD is provisional. As it happens, I believe that the success of most revolutionary change depends on wide, grassroots support. But failing that, all remaining options must be on the table. The job must get done. I would naturally prefer that it be done democratically, peacefully, rationally, justly and humanely--- but only if that works. I suspect however, that we have run of time. Building a constituency for RPD policies is a tortuous process, and electing a politician who promises to shrink the economy is about as fanciful as finding a mob who would riot for austerity. Quite possibly we haven’t the luxury of waiting upon democratic verdicts---or anaesthetics. Time will tell.

Tim Murray
September 22, 2009

illustration from http://www.elzpublishing.com/index.html

(Thanks to editor Jim Stiles and author John Feeney for permission to reprint this article, that was originally posted at Zephyr Canyon at http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/html/aug10-20.htm)

Modern environmentalism

So how's all that modern environmentalism working out for us -- the green living, the carbon credits, reduced consumption, development in the Third World, better solar panels? If it all seems hopelessly inadequate, even laughable in the face of today's global ecological crisis, perhaps that’s because it’s rooted in denial of the origins of the ecological drama now playing out.

It's a drama of which climate change is only a part. It goes back ten thousand years and farther into the human past, confronts us with how we relate to nature, and brings reminders of abandoned civilizations.

We turn away from this drama because it raises troubling questions going straight to the foundations of our way of life. But grappling with converging environmental crises and the specter of widespread ecological collapse, for the sake of the human future it's time we face it. [1]

The big switch

Pull back and consider the whole of human history. For perhaps 2.5 million years, well over 99 percent of our time on Earth, we lived in small bands or tribes, foraging and hunting for food. With baskets and tools of stone, bone, and wood we walked the bush, blending gracefully into Earth's ecosystems.

Then around 8,000 BC we began the transition to agriculture, growing and storing our own food. That changed everything. Arguably, there have been only two fundamentally different phases of human existence: before and after agriculture.

Why the switch? Why quit something which had worked for us for thousands of millennia? We have only partially informed guesses. Perhaps changes in climate made hunting less productive or the domestication of grains in some areas more attractive. No one mentions, though, that only a few people had to make the initial change for it to take over the world. Nor do many observers acknowledge that the adoption of agriculture was not as nice for us as we've been led to believe.

At what cost?

Examine it closely, in fact, and agriculture emerges as a springboard for most of today's environmental and social problems.

Yes, it made possible civilization with its cities, jet liners, and corporations. But at what cost? Its most immediate impact was the elimination of all who stood in its way as farming cultures spread around the world. Part genocide and part culture killing, the process continues today as the handful of remaining hunter-gatherers on earth struggle for survival. [2]

With farming came a large increase in work and a steep decline in health, the latter discovered by archeologists examining the bones and teeth of people living in the same regions before and after agriculture. It brought social hierarchies, sexual inequality, famine, slavery, time clocks, money, and a massive upscaling of violence. [3] Jared Diamond called it "the worst mistake in the history of the human race." [4] More recently, anthropologist and geneticist Spencer Wells provided his own list of some of the costs of the shift away from hunting and gathering: "diabetes, obesity, mental illness, climate change." [5]

Less publicized have been agriculture’s ecological impacts. History texts glorify civilization, based on agriculture, as the pinnacle of human existence. They don't mention it required an end to living in harmony with nature as contributing members of local ecosystems. Author John Zerzan has said of agriculture, "The land itself becomes an instrument of production and the planet's species its objects." [6]

Trying to live apart from nature carries a price. Why don’t we take more seriously the many peoples, such as the Maya and the Anasazi, who adopted farming only to see their civilizations fall apart as drought, depleted resources, or too little arable land for a growing population sent a recurring message from nature? Why don't we hear about those who simply walked away and returned to hunting and gathering? [7]

Circumventing nature’s limits

The problem of agriculture is in part a problem of human numbers. Before farming human population size had been regulated by the same process that works for black bears, dingos, bonobos, rainbow trout, and long-tailed parakeets. It works for all species, generally keeping their numbers within carrying capacity. It’s simple: Population follows food supply. Normal oscillations in available food exert multiple small, cumulative, typically painless influences on fertility and mortality. With agriculture we circumvented this process. Growing and storing food we could go on growing our food supply. The result has been predictable: more humans.

In publications ranging from peer reviewed journal articles to novels, analysts such as Russell Hopfenberg, David Pimentel, and Daniel Quinn have described a continuous cycle of human population growth followed by expanding agriculture to feed our growing numbers, followed in turn by more population growth. [8] [9] In less than one percent of our history our numbers shot from perhaps five million to 6.7 billion, an increase of 134,000 percent.

This cycle of growth explains how agriculture spread around the world. It was not a matter of hunter-gatherers observing farmers and eagerly adopting their practices. It was the spread of farmers themselves. [10] Their ever increasing food supply meant ever more agriculturalists who needed more land and took it, often violently.

The resulting environmental impacts of human population growth are well known. From species loss and climate change to the global spread of chemical toxins and the death of coral reefs, human numbers figure as a fundamental driver of nearly all environmental degradation.

Some insist those problems are mainly the result of excessive per person resource consumption. Population does multiply with per person consumption to determine total consumption. But individual levels of consumption only became a global issue as the number of consumers grew large enough to make them so. Agriculture made it happen. It links with human population growth to destroy the biosphere.

The sixth mass extinction

Chief among the destructive impacts of agriculture are today's alarmingly elevated extinction rates. Just as agriculture has crowded out hunter-gatherers, it has pushed out other species. Most biologists agree we are today in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event in Earth's history, the fifth having eliminated the dinosaurs. This time one species -- our own -- is the cause.

Fossil evidence suggests an increase in extinctions even before agriculture. Anthropologist Paul S. Martin has championed the "overkill" hypothesis, arguing the cause was the spread of human hunting out of Africa to continents containing large mammals unaccustomed to human predators. Other investigators such as Donald K. Grayson dispute his conclusions and point to evidence implicating changes in climate. What we do know is that extinction rates have accelerated greatly since the advent of farming. [11]

A primary cause of extinctions is habitat disruption. And what better way to disrupt, to destroy habitat than to level a piece of land, eliminating all life on it, then to plant a single crop exclusively for human use. That's agriculture, and it has spread over more than a billion hectares of the earth. Indeed, any human-caused environmental damage prior to agriculture pales in comparison to what has come after.

The industrial age and our use of oil has meant yet another acceleration of the Sixth Extinction as far more land has been put under cultivation and the human population has skyrocketed, obliterating habitat to make way for cities, subdivisions, shopping malls, and highway systems.

We hear all about resource consumption, particularly energy consumption. Why don't we hear about our consumption, through agriculture and the human population growth it drives, of the very web of life on which we and all other species depend for our survival?

Paleontologist Niles Eldredge writes, "Agriculture represents the single most profound ecological change in the entire 3.5 billion-year history of life.... Indeed, to develop agriculture is essentially to declare war on ecosystems." [12]
Author Lierre Kieth says, "The truth is that agriculture is the most destructive thing humans have done to the planet... [It] requires the wholesale destruction of entire ecosystems." [13]

Once the cycle of agriculture and population growth was underway, of course, there seemed little choice. We did what we could to keep feeding our growing numbers. We've trapped ourselves. As Keith puts it, "Except for the last 46 tribes of hunter-gatherers, the human race is now dependent on an activity that is killing the planet."

Soil mining

Further making crop cultivation unsustainable on anything like a scale to feed billions is its often inevitable erosion of the soil and depletion of soil nutrients. This happens at rates far faster than natural rates of renewal.

Soil microbiologist Peter Salonius writes, "The simple shallow rooting habit of food crops and the requirement for bare soil cultivation produces soil erosion and plant nutrient loss far above the levels that can be replaced by microbial nitrogen fixation, and the weathering of minerals." [14]

Already we have lost perhaps one third of all arable land worldwide. [15] We are using it up just as we are coal or oil. Keith coins the term "fossil soil." It may have taken ten thousand years for us to see it, but that is barely an eye blink in human history.

Some hunter-gatherer societies have long included small scale gardening in their repertoires. But once we upped the scale, clearing land and increasing production to produce food surpluses, we committed to agriculture proper and the trouble began. While a more ecologically sensible option such as permaculture moves farming in a more sustainable direction, it was never intended to feed increasing billions of people. [16] If it were it would still run into the problem of transforming wilderness, turning the land excessively to human consumption with all that implies for the web of life. Planting crops on any large scale means seriously damaging ecosystems. Agriculture cannot be sustained.

Overshoot and collapse

The historical view of humanity's ecological path leaves no doubt we long ago overshot human carrying capacity. Our numbers are today supported only by temporary measures such as our use of limited stores of fossil fuels and, more fundamentally, the use of agriculture and our consumption of our own life support system. In his classic text, Overshoot, William Catton calls such supports "phantom carrying capacity." [17] They are not carrying capacity at all; they cannot last.

Contrary then to the popular notion that our technologies have increased carrying capacity, we have created only a carrying capacity illusion. We're a species which evolved to live in the millions, yet here we sit, well into the billions. It's basic to ecology that when a population overshoots carrying capacity it must inevitably return to a lower number, often via a crash.

It is of course not only our numbers which will come to an end. Civilization is made possible by agriculture. Agriculture is unsustainable. If it weren’t obvious already, you can see where this is going. There's no predicting the timeline of civilization's collapse. Techno-fixes and any resiliency industrial society possesses may draw it out. No matter, a better future, indeed the only future for humanity and the rest of Earth’s inhabitants is one beyond civilization.

What we could do, what we might do

Few people want to hear that agriculture is unsustainable. Fewer still care to consider that the civilization it supports will therefore come to an end. Who wants to hear their whole world is going to go away? Yet as surprising as it may seem, there is room for optimism. The way out will be difficult, but will open to a new beginning.

Ideally we could begin systematically scaling back agriculture and gradually dismantling civilization. We could turn instead to small scale, localized horticulture and then to tribal, non-industrial and non-agricultural ways of living. The transition could include a concerted worldwide effort to support humane, voluntary measures enabling our numbers to decline gradually and dramatically. Perhaps most importantly, we could work to spread a different view of our place in nature, acknowledging that we are of the earth, just one of millions of species, as much subject to ecological laws as any other. At some point, the few surviving hunter-gatherer groups on Earth might serve as mentors rather than objects of academic study. This, however, would be an exquisitely delicate undertaking, as the last thing such groups need today is the increased intrusion of those of us in civilization.

But despite converging ecological catastrophes we show few signs of such a massive, voluntary shift. Those with vested interests in the status quo see to that. So writers such as Zerzan and Derrick Jensen advocate a purposeful resistance movement designed to hasten civilization's end. [18] In this they owe a clear though too seldom mentioned debt to Edward Abbey. The Monkey Wrench Gang opened multiple generations' eyes to the option of direct action against perpetrators of environmental destruction. Says Jensen today, "Systems of power are created by humans and can be stopped by humans. Those in power are never supernatural or immortal, and they can be brought down." [19] Though this raises the frightening specter of triggering loss of life before it would happen otherwise, the argument is that bringing down civilization sooner would leave more life intact than would a delayed and drawn out collapse. We face hard choices.

The first daunting challenge, though, faced by those against civilization lies in disabusing enough people of the ingrained message that our way of living is a great thing. Perhaps, in the end, our best hope lies in building resistance as we work to soften the landing through efforts, for instance, to address population growth and to protect biodiversity.

Meanwhile, participants in the growing "rewilding" movement work today to prepare for a post-civilization world. No gloom and doom in this group, rewilders like Peter Bauer (AKA "Urban Scout"), Jason Godesky, and Emily Porter acknowledge a collapse of civilization is inevitable and work with zest toward a shift to a tribal, wild way of living. [20] [21] [22] Learning aboriginal living skills and exploring ways of creating more genuine connection with the earth and those close to them, they strive to "undo domestication."

Critics argue they're romanticizing a lifestyle Thomas Hobbes rightly characterized as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Others insist "we can't go backwards." These are predictable responses, imbued with the same pervasive cultural message to which we are all subject. It tells us constantly that the development of civilization was an amazing improvement and that its course has been one unbroken line of progress. Everything's getting better all the time, isn't it? A look at our ecological plight alone suggests it's not, and Marshall Sahlins, among other anthropologists, easily debunked Hobbes's view beginning in the 1960s. [23]

It is difficult, as well, for most people to appreciate what a tiny moment of human history civilization has occupied. Without perspective it’s natural to assume this way of living will and should continue for eons to come. Debate continues, but the notion that the hunter-gatherer life is a terrible one is as absurd as suggesting the gorilla life or the lion life is terrible. It's wrong on its face. [24]

How much evidence do we need to see that civilization is not the ultimate expression of human existence after all? It has been a momentary detour, the fleeting, cameo appearance of a dysfunctional approach to life, the result of straying from living at one with the natural world. Whatever the path to civilization’s wind-down, if we can preserve enough biodiversity, those coming out the other end will have the chance to enjoy anew a different, yet satisfying way of living, the only way proven sustainable for humans. Racing toward a precipice, can it be wrong to embrace once again a life which worked for over two million years when it has become obvious the current approach is an abject failure? We don’t have to go backwards; we need only nurture who we really are. Whatever our course, we have only to consider the agricultural origins of our ecological crisis to understand civilization is an unsustainable trap.

References

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7078857.stm
[2] http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/1786
[3] http://www.primitivism.com/future-primitive.htm
[4] http://hthttp//www.mnforsustain.org/food_ag_worst_mistake_diamond_j.htm
[5] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10257679.stm
[6] http://rewild.info/anthropik/library/zerzan/demon-engine-of-civilization/index.html
[7] http://tinyurl.com/34y6fyu
[8] http://www.springerlink.com/content/u4x1r416w5671127
[9] http://www.ishmael.org/Origins/Ishmael/
[10] http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%252F10.1371%252Fjournal.pone.0006747
[11]http://tinyurl.com/3xrskxe
[12] http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html
[13] http://tinyurl.com/296j57c
[14] http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6048
[15] http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;267/5201/1117
[16] http://www.energybulletin.net/node/19334
[17] http://tinyurl.com/2altxhd
[18] http://www.endgamethebook.org/
[19] http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/5340/
[20] http://www.urbanscout.org/
[21] http://tobyspeople.com/anthropik/thirty/index.html
[22] http://trackerofplants.com/
[23] http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html
[24] http://tobyspeople.com/anthropik/2008/01/noble-or-savage-both-part-1/

I =P x A x T

( Environmental impact= Population level times Affluence or per capita consumption x Technology)

I came upon an orchestration, the environmental movement, and all the musicians were playing violins to the tune of “Overconsumption, overconsumption, overconsumption.” They refused to play any other tune or use any other instrument to compliment that narrow repertoire. Apparently some corporate donors were paying them to be a one-trick pony.

So I immediately resolved to sound out the missing tune that would make an effective chorus. It would be “overpopulation, overpopulation, overpopulation”, and I would use my voice to sing that message loudly because, frankly, I can’t afford or take the time to learn to play another instrument. As soon as the Environmental Establishment Orchestra includes my tune in their program, and gives it the prominence it deserves, I will stop singing solo and apply to join them. They after all have the resources to go on the road with their act, while I can only sing in the shower or yell out the lyrics on the Internet.

But until that day, I will specialize in the one half of the equation, population level, without which there can be no comprehensive understanding of our environmental predicament. I will play left wing on a hockey team overstocked with centre forwards and right wingers. Under new management and coaching, perhaps my team, the “IPATs, will demand all-around players—“two way” players who can play the complete game. Like golfers who don’t try to win the match with “hole-in-one” strokes.

It is people who consume, not ghosts. Reduce their numbers and each can consume more sustainably if they recognize their limits and are rewarded for obeying them

Population growth is the great multiplier of evils. Solve it and so many other problems of secondary concern become easier to solve. And it is much easier to solve alone than challenging popular consumptive habits. Many more people can be reconciled to lower fertility and lower immigration than are willing to see their standard of living drop to comply with lower consumption targets. The vast majority of Swedes, the world’s most affluent nation, are wanting to see immigration cut and a low birth rate persist, rather than sacrifice their standard of living. In 2006 the Dyskos poll revealed that 60% of them were not willing to make any material sacrifices to fight global warming. The working class majority there and here, are skeptical and intolerant of environmentalism that speaks with a middle class voice, and uses the same moralizing sermon that that voice gave them in the 1930s and other challenging times. The voice that cried “Hold the line on inflation” , or “suck it up for the boss”. Sermons given by preachers who preached chastity then drove off in a limousine to the whore house. Green yuppies won’t impress the working poor by putting solar panels on their 4000 square foot waterfront homes and taking their hybrid cars to the airport for their annual overseas trips to Mexico or Bali. If you never had to drive a “beater” to keep food on the table you have no moral authority to prescribe a carbon tax or a Prius. And no credibility if you have sired more than two children.

“Too many people consuming too much. consumption. Neglect one factor and you neglect both. You are in denial.” But “too many people” is the Achilles heel of growthism, and the one that deserves priority attention.

Tim Murray,

February 19/09

The illustration above, of the Virgin Mary, would be a good poster for promoting small families and women's rights to education. Detail from The Virgin and Child before a Firescreen by Master of Flémalle, (b. ca. 1375, Valenciennes, d. 1444, Tournai)

The Virgin Mary had a small family

This article looks at some statements and assumptions made by Daily Mail (UK) journo, Melanie Phillips, in what I would call a reactionary article, "Why do Green zealots think they can dictate how many children we are allowed to have?" (03rd February 2009)

The caption under a stock photo of a slim, attractive woman playing with a baby in a clean bedroom on a double bed, in "Why do Green zealots think they can dictate how many children we are allowed to have?" reads,

"The Government's 'green' advisor Jonathon Porritt said couples who have more than two children are 'irresponsible'".

Did he? Implicit in his remark, I think, was consideration of human impact on climate change and other environmental problems which threaten human survival.

Melanie seems to be taking this all down to the personal, when it is clear that Porritt is looking at a big picture.

She writes,

"So the deepest green of them all turns out to be not so much a friend of the earth as an enemy of the human race."

Seems pretty amazing that she can accuse Porritt of being an enemy of the human race without being sued for defamation. She is equating him to a Hitler. Where is the evidence?

"Apparently this is all because people have to accept responsibility 'for their total environmental footprint'. That's what having children amounts to, apparently, in his mind. The blessings of a large family and the contribution this makes to prosperity and progress don't figure at all," she continues.

Prosperity and progress

Some of us don't believe in this idea of prosperity and progress which is supposed to accompany increasing populations and large families. To some of us it looks like we are all getting land-poor and that the rich excuse their high consumption (and large families of consumers) by pretending that it's all going to be shared... one day ... with everyone. Not much evidence that this is happening.

Instead, children are to be measured solely by their burdensome impact on the planet.

Is Jonathon Porritt really reducing children to this alone? Or is he making a valid argument about population policy needing to adapt to a fragile environment?

"What kind of sinister and dehumanised mindset is this? It is no coincidence that the country which comes nearest to Jonathon's ideal society is Communist China, which imposed a murderously cruel policy of restricting families to one child apiece. For the desire to reduce the number of children that parents produce is innately totalitarian."

It isn't innately totalitarian. It was normal in all societies to limit family sizes to within what their environment could comfortably support. Then the English speaking countries, from the 13th century, came to be known as the nation of orphans, because they dispossessed all but the first child, and contributed to a stock of landless labour, without the vote and without the right to refuse to labour for the landed. This socio-economic aberration was then exported throughout the British colonial world. This is what progress and big families in the same sentence really mean.

"Reproduction is humanity's strongest instinct", Phillips asserts.

I'd like to see her defend that indefensible statement. How about food, water and shelter? In every generation, large numbers of people have never reproduced. Why does she utter these baseless generalities? Oh yes, she is a mainstream journalist. That is her job.

"To seek to curb it is to interfere with one of our most fundamental freedoms and desires," she rants.

Hunger, thirst and land-poverty curb all our fundamental freedoms and desires, including procreation. Porritt is offering us a choice. Melanie Phillips sounds like she is defending ignorance and lack of choice. A dictatorship of unknown options.

Then Phillips starts to hurl mud hysterically at a man who simply urges us to choose a safe route through danger.

"To do so on the basis that Jonathon Porritt possesses unique insight into the needs of our world which is denied to the lesser mortals who inhabit it is not just monumental arrogance - it is also the delusion of totalitarian tyrants from Stalin to Hitler to Mao."

But Hitler gave out prizes to women who had the biggest families and Mao said that "Every child that is born has two hands to feed himself." Mao caused overpopulation in China. Hitler wanted space for Germany's population to grow. Is Phillips a professional ignoramus?

"But then the green movement is essentially totalitarian in outlook. It sees people as a nuisance which has to be controlled. Accordingly, green interference in our lives now stretches from turning the ordinary lightbulb into an endangered species, telling hospitals to stop serving meat on patients' menus, and sending round the garbage police if someone commits the crime of putting a tin can or plastic bottle into the receptacle designated for paper."

If we had not so massively increased our populations then perhaps people would not be so worried about consumption nor go round policing garbage.

This 'green movement' Phillips talks about must be some creation of the mainstream press. I'm an environmental sociologist and I find that the problem is that governments and big business force countries of the first world to have bigger populations, by breaking down their land-use planning laws, and their local democracies. Such alliances also mislead naive men and women into having children in the absence of security, by giving out small sums of money and fostering cornucopianism. Thus the demand is maintained for the endless suburbs that cover the nature that protects us from our own pollution. And denying other creatures even the right to exist, let alone have big families.

"Now," she writes, "by pointing out what he says is the population 'ghost at the table', Porritt has blown environmentalism's cover. For he is not some maverick sounding off. These views are mainstream within the green movement, and they are growing.

Actually, Melanie, the population of Britain and the English speaking countries is growing, and candobetter.org has blown its cover. Melanie Phillips sounds like a propagandist for growth and she is working for the corporate press, so she probably is. Have a look at http://candobetter.org/PropagandaWatch Melanie; it's a mirror.