Stopping Growth or
Sustainable Growth
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines--hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.
Paul Ehrlich in The Population Bomb (1968:i)
ithout population control environmental degradation can only increase. The Malthusian prediction that population growth will finally be limited by war, pestilence, and famine seems likely to be realized.
Physicians for Social Responsibility (Chivian 1993:173)
Recycling is not enough. We are just in denial, the psychological term for "a defense mechanism against negative information from the outside world" (Zovanyi 1998:29). Forget China. Forget India. Those are issues of poverty and politics. "We have seen the enemy and it is us" says Pogo Possum, comic strip character and erstwhile philosopher from the 1950s. As long as we focus on the developing countries, we do not have to look at ourselves. The United States is the most overpopulated country in the world in terms of environmental impact because of its growth imperative (Zovanyi 1998). In terms of per capita gross domestic product consumption, the developed world, specifically the USA, dominates the world average and the average of developing countries for consumption (See figure 1). Our consumption rises two percent per year and we encourage other countries to develop by encouraging them to emulate us (Schor 1995).
From Eberstadt 1995:35.
Using the term sustainable growth is an oxymoron. Growth is our problem. We need to stop growth. Strategies need to be developed in order to stop growth in the United States and wisely use the resources available. To stop growth, we have to change our ideology as a nation. Ideology has several components: one child per family; caps on immigration; and rejecting "the idea that human fulfillment is attainable through materialistic satiety" (Zovanyi 1998:28).
On Family: One Child
The US needs to limit its population by embracing the notion of one child per family. While reproductive freedom is a benchmark of our freedoms, nevertheless, it is a most important way to slow growth. If the US had instituted a one-child-per-family ideology in the early 1970s, there would have been a cessation of population growth by the year 2000.
Social action would be needed to embrace a new family size philosophy. We are prohibited from acting on this because it conflicts with some religious doctrine and people hold religious freedom as prime. Others might see little incentive to limit their families, if they know others will not do the same. We might also say, why limit our population when the rest of the world is increasing theirs.
Limiting Immigration
The immigration replacement level of our country is 200,000 people, based on the number of people who leave each year. Yet the Immigration Act of 1990 increased the limit by 40 percent over previous levels. This makes it possible for immigration quotas to rise each year. In the early 1970s we were admitting 400,000 legal immigrants per year and in 1990s 800,000 per year--twice that number. With natural increase in birth and not counting illegal immigrants the US is growing by 3 million people a year (Zovanyi 1998).
Limiting immigration goes against our founding principle of "a nation of immigrants." This sacred belief has rationalized our inhabiting a nation already occupied when European settlers arrived in the 1600s and later. We praise our great diversity and state that it is what has made us great, yet we retain stereotypes about our countrymen, deny access to resources to some, and even have blatantly racist actions and attitudes. Why be hypocritical--limit immigration.
Consumerism
Given that the United States is a top consumer of resources, we must readjust our beliefs that have prevailed in the past regarding spending. In politics, stability in the nation is seen as "prosperity" or "growth" and has spelled political success (Schor 1995). When consumer indexes are up and unemployment is down, the nation readily attributes the "health of the nation" to political leaders, helping them retain offices. Our reference words to our economy reflect the growth and "growth" is viewed as positive. Others agree.
Schor suggests that because rising consumer credit allows for greater consumption that we pare back on "credit" purchases. It is my opinion that since the 1950s, women have entered the workforce in greater and greater numbers. Two income families have claimed that they both must work to "make ends meet." We have been sold a bill of goods by advertising and the "American dream." Status and self-esteem are now being linked with an outward display of consumerism, neat lawns in good neighborhoods, gadgets and appliances to make us work free. The irony of the "labor saving devices" is that we are forced into the work market to pay for them. Our children are being raised by someone else, which means we have to "get ahead" to afford good childcare. Schor presents an alternative to stop our cycle of work and spent. She suggests that we trade our consumption for time. Time to relax, enjoy our families, and do things that please us. We have been wrapped in our "business" spending far too much time working two jobs, having both parents work, or denying ourselves good health from a balanced life.
Summary In conclusion, I hope I have brought attention to more unpopular aspects of overpopulation. They are more unpopular because they deal with ideology. They attack our most sacred icons of democracy and "freedom." We pay lip service to environmental protection by recycling and a few other minor practices, but in truth we deny the prime factors in environmental degradation--overpopulation and over consumption. Perhaps we are short sighted and denial helps us live with what we are doing or our feelings of helplessness, perhaps our brain has not evolved past the hunter and gatherer model (Ornstein and Ehrlich 1989) and we cannot see past today. We are horrified and shocked about a recent plane crash, yet fail to identify with that number times 100 whom die each day in traffic accidents. We lack perspective to address the problems, which do not capture our imagination as being serious enough to organize and insist that we change. Our prophecy may be to fulfill the Malthusian prediction.
Bibliography
Erlich, Paul. 1968. The Population Bomb. New York: Sierra Club--Ballantine.
Everstadt, Nicholas. 1995. "Population, Food, and Income: Global Trends in the Twentieth Century." In The True State of the Planet. R. Bailey, ed. Pp. 7-47. New York: The Free Press.
Ornstein, Robert, and Paul Ehrlich. 1989. New World, New Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Physicians for Social Responsibility. In Chivian, Eric, et al., 1993. Critical Condition: Human Health and the Environment. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Schor, Juliet B. 1995. Can the North Stop Consumption Growth? Escaping the Cycle of Work and Spend. In The North, The South and the Environment. Pp. 68-84. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Zovanyi, Gabor. 1998. Growth Management for a Sustainable Future. West Port, CN: Praeger.
