Overpopulation - Gaylord Nelson's fight...

The People Problem: Will Anyone Take Up Gaylord Nelson's Fight Against Overpopulation?

Gaylord Nelson, a former Wisconsin governor and three-term U.S. senator, died on July 3 at age 89. Known as Father of Earth Day, he had sterling environmental record. But he was less known for the issue to which he devoted the last decade of his life: overpopulation. "I don't think most people understand where we're headed," he said in 1994, talking about the perils of overpopulation - not only a critical issue for the future of mankind, but the most compelling issue of them all. He'd always try to get people to understand what the local impacts would be if the U.S. population were to double by 2060. His biographer, Bill Christofferson, said: "He'd say, 'Imagine what that will be like. We're not just talking about twice as many people, we're talking about twice as many everything. Twice as many highways and twice as many schools. Twice as many parking lots and twice as many hospitals." ..." 'If that happens, what will the quality of life be like for the people living here?' ".

The world's population has grown by 11.2 million in the eight weeks since Nelson's death, but no one has accepted Nelson's challenge to have the much needed debate to provide a "road map for the future," Christopherson says people avoid the debate because to talk about overpopulation means confronting such hot-button issues as birth control and family planning - which conservatives and most religious groups adamantly oppose. And to talk about the mushrooming U.S. population, you must address the issue of immigration, which now accounts for about one-third of the 3.2 million people our country adds every year. Then you will be labeled a racist.

Gaylord Nelson was a man of impeccable credentials, a man who commanded an all-black company in the segregated Army in World War II and took immediate action to integrate the Wisconsin National Guard when he became governor. Nelson's 2002 book, "Beyond Earth Day," says the "real issue" is numbers of people and the implications for freedom of choice and sustainability as our numbers continue to grow. He wrote that discussion on the .. "Rather, the issue must be brought forth and explored in public hearings and discussions, precisely because it is a subject of great consequence." "It is nothing short of astonishing to see the great American free press, with its raft of syndicated columnists, frightened into silence by political correctness."

Nelson was an advisor to Carrying Capacity Network, a population stabilization group. David Durham, chairman of the board of that organization related that the global population was 3 billion in 1966 and doubled to 6 billion in 1999 and is expected to hit 9 billion by 2054, with 90% of the growth occurring in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Enormous strains will be placed on our natural resources, particularly fresh water. Approximately 800 million humans are starving or seriously malnourished, and 700 species of plants and animals are endangered from destruction of habitat caused by population growth. And the population of the United States could go from the current 292 million to 500 million by 2050 and 1 billion by 2100, if we don't stablize our population.

Carrying Capacity Network and other slow-growth organizations are pushing Congress to enact a five-year moratorium that would cap legal immigration - now at 1.2 million a year - at 100,000 annually and reduce illegal immigration to about 50,000 annually. "Most of our newsrooms today are guided not by traditional journalistic values but by marketing values.

Gaylord Nelson was painted as the Earth Day founder and environmentalist who never did anything too controversial, but in reality he was a militant foe of the Vietnam war who took strong, bold positions on all sorts of politically dangerous issues throughout his career. George Archibald, world traveller and co-founder of the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, says there is no better example of overpopulationnthan Haiti, "where the forests have been removed, the soil has washed away, people are starving and the quality of life is terrible." In contrast, he points out Bhutan, a small country sandwiched between China and Nepal on the southern slope of the Himalayas. "Here's a very stable country under a traditional political system - a monarchy merging into a democracy, with an elected assembly - that has a low population at 2.2 million, and conservation of culture and biodiversity," he says. Its national motto is "Gross National Happiness" - its economic objective is to boost the health and overall satisfaction of its citizens rather than the growth of its Gross National Product. Dr. Dennis Maki, head of infectious diseases at the UW-Madison Medical School, says that "Anybody who's had a reasonable education understands this (immigration) isn't a racist issue," he says. "I mean, any Hispanic immigrant realizes that mass immigration will affect the quality of life that their kids and their grandchildren are going to have. They see that, and it's in their own self-interest to get on the bandwagon for population control." There is no question that many of those who favor restricting immigration are racist, but it's wrong to suggest that anyone who opposes uncontrolled immigration is a racist and notes that there are also racists on the other side of the issue; namely, the many U.S. companies that exploit immigrants - especially illegal immigrants - as cheap labor. Maki is against tightening immigration quotas.

NAFTA forced 1 million smaller farmers in Mexico off their land, and a great number of them became immigrants to the United States because NAFTA didn't work in Mexico. Our "policies put people in a situation where they faced the threat of starvation, radical dislocation, all sorts of other crises. To then impose an immigration quota and absolutely bar those people from coming into this country either legally or illegally is irresponsible." Recently we voted for the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which will do more to cause illegal immigration and legal immigration to the United States than anything else done this year. Nichols said that, if we "address trade, if we address foreign aid, if we address international family planning and other issues in a responsible way, we can dramatically decrease immigration."

Nelson liked to tell the Garret Hardin story, the "global pothole problem" - if you can't fix every pothole in the world, there's no sense in trying to fill the one right in front of your house. If you try to solve another country's problems by having them send their extra people here, it doesn't do anything to encourage them to find a solution of their own. August 22, 2005 The Capitol Times

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