THE CROWDED PLANET ZERO POPULATION GROWTH OF GREATER BOSTON Volume 10, Issue 2 March/April 2000

Table Of Contents

Next Meeting

For those of you driving, Peter Ames' home is located near the Charles River, in the northeast corner of Brookline, which is a section of Boston, about a ten minute walk west of Fenway Park. It is just two blocks north of Beacon Street between Carlton Street and St. Mary's Street. Peter's phone number is: (617) 731-0512 should there be any questions. The meeting starts promptly at 7pm.

Please see the meeting schedule for general information and other meeting dates.

Planet Earth: A Turn For The Better?

    It's quite a stretch to apply the headline "A turn for the better" to recent data about the health of our planet (Health and Science, Nov. 22). That's a bit like saying that things were looking up for Thelma and Louise as they headed for the cliff because they weren't pressing quite so hard on the gas pedal anymore.
    What they needed wasn't a matter of pushing less hard on the accelerator or even easing off the gas entirely. They needed to apply the brakes immediately and forcefully while turning the car in a completely different direction. And so do we.

Rick Leskowitz
Needham

My Vision of Post-Y2K

We live in a country that is on a course of surpassing a population of one-half billion within the lifetime of today's younger Americans. (We are now at 273 million, growing at a California per decade). My vision: yet more traffic, crowding, pollution, and political dilution. In other words, a lower quality of life for our children. We don't have to let this happen. But we do need to wake up and smell the roses - or they will be gone.

Mike Hanauer, environmental activist.

We Can't Stop The Growth

Time To Operate?

Thursday's lead editorial ("Trying to preserve communities in the midst of change", 12/30/1999) points out several negative effects of growth on our scenic mountain community. However, you conclude by saying, "We can't ... stop the growth that's occurring."
    Can nothing be done? Is growth inevitable? Try telling that to Zero Population Growth, whose 60,000 members have been effectively using education and political lobbying to slow growth for 31 years. (Call 800-POP-1956 if you'd like to join or contribute.) Tell it to Negative Population Growth, whose ad campaigns and scholarly research make the case that our numbers have grown too much already. Tell it to Population Communications International, which produces soap operas with population subthemes that are highly popular in third world countries. Tell it to Population-Environment Balance, or Carrying Capacity Network, or the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), or any of dozens of other population organizations.
    Tell it to Portland, Oregon, which has had an urban growth boundary in place since 1974. Tell it to Orlando and Miami, or to 18 cities (and counting) in California; all of them have followed Portland's lead.
    Tell it to the voters of this country, who passed nearly 200 state and local anti-sprawl ballot initiatives in 1999. Tell it to Al Gore, whose Livability Agenda aims to preserve green spaces, ease traffic congestion, and restore a sense of community.
    Just don't tell it to your advertisers. Advertisers profit handsomely from the growth machine; they want you to believe the myth that growth is an unmitigated good. The big corporations and developers don't care what happens to the community as long as their bulldozers can roam freely.
    "We can't ... stop the growth that's occurring." I wonder if you would still feel that way if you stopped accepting advertisements from developers.
    Growth is not always healthy. Obesity is growth; so is cancer.

Gregory Wilcox
Candler, North Carolina

Time To Put Brakes On Growth

Bravo, Gregory Wilcox, for daring to say (in a letter to the editor) no growth may be a sensible alternative to what is happening in and around Asheville.
    Mountains are being pushed into valleys to create yet more flatness for megastores and strip malls. Do we really need them?
    Our traffic at rush hour is still moving, albeit slowly. Do we really want horns blaring and road rage?
    Town Mountain is losing more trees to big structures that look like apartment buildings. Do we really want it to look like one of the treeless hills of San Francisco?
    I believe the mix of cultures here and the environmental balance are at a critical juncture in and around Asheville, and it is time to tell city councils and chambers of commerce to start putting the brakes on growth before we destroy what beauty we have left.
    I totally agree with Gregory Wilcox that growth is not always healthy.

Aldina Nash-Hampe
Weaverville, North Carolina

Letters To The Editor

Christina Gordon
ZPG of Greater Boston

Editor’s note: In the past, Republican administrations have been some of the most concerned about population pressures and family planning. (Sadly, that was not true of the past two.) President Eisenhower said in 1965, “If we now ignore the plight of unborn generations which, because of our unreadiness to take corrective action on controlling population growth, will be denied any expectations beyond abject poverty and suffering, then history will rightly condemn us." President Nixon, in a “special message to the U.S. Congress on problems of population growth” wrote in 1969, “...growth will produce serious challenges for our society. I believe that many of our present social problems may be related to the fact that we have had only fifty years in which to accommodate the second hundred million Americans...” In 1972, he appointed the Rockefeller Commission to study the consequences of population growth for our country. He concluded that the U.S. should welcome a population policy and plan for a stable population.
    Today ZPG continues to work with family planning and population policy supporters in Congress from the Republican party. Representatives Connie Morella, John Porter and Tom Campbell have been strong supporters of our work, as have Senators Jim Jeffords, Arlen Spector and the late Senator John Chafee. ZPG has been critical of both Democratic and Republican legislators who have opposed family planning domestically and internationally. It is important for ZPG members in all political parties to ask candidates how they stand on critical population issues—from the international gag rule to support for Title X (domestic family planning). ZPG doesn't bash parties, but it does take issue with opponents of family planning and sustainable development. –GW

This is in reply to the comments by Ed Verosko and Walter Branson concerning the transfer of wealth via taxation from the childless to those with large families.
    I believe we should be careful to distinguish between being opposed to unsustainable population growth and being against children. I strongly support non-coercive measures to limit population growth. However, the children present in our society, as well as in the world at large, are everyone's responsibility. We all have an obligation to ensure that they are clothed, fed, educated, housed satisfactorily and that they are treated with dignity and respect. I am not opposed to governmental programs to achieve these goals; in fact, I quite strongly support them. While we work for sane population controls and family planning, we should also be willing to bear the burden of providing care for the children of those who cannot provide that care themselves. This is not only a moral obligation but an investment in a better and more sustainable future for us all.

Len Gosule
ZPG of Greater Boston

Walter Branson responds:

Of course, it is impossible to disagree with what Len has said. But I distinguish between being against children, which I am not (I have two myself) and being against unlimited government subsidization of child-bearing, which I am.
    This is something ZPG doesn't talk about much. However, I believe that we will not achieve population stability, either in this country or abroad, until we convince people that it is in their interest to plan smaller families. While creating educational opportunities for poor women may hold great promise in the third world, we also need to convince middle class families in this country to plan smaller families. I personally know of many people who are having four and five kids. As population activists and American citizens, we should be concerned about the fact that the United States has the fastest population growth of any developed country.
    Let's acknowledge that people in this country respond to economic stimulus. Our child-subsidizing tax code may not encourage large families, but eliminating the economic benefits of large families may encourage people to think smaller. This is not about whether we will feed, clothe and educate poor children. I am in favor of that. This is about whether we will require those who can pay their own way to be responsible for the cost of raising their own children.
    NPG is an organization that has had some good thoughts on this. I would like to see ZPG, the organization that coined the phrase "stop at two", play more of a role in this area.

Editor's note: You're both right—children are our most important human resource. They are our future, and their care is critical to our survival as a species. However, said species has been engaged in a protracted bout of navel-gazing over the last millennium. We have lost the ability to care about anything other than our own arrogant selves. This has led to an imminent crisis that threatens to obliterate us. A new century has dawned, but it will surely be our last if we don't do a swift and forceful about-face. At this point, human resources—as precious as they are—must take a back seat to saving what natural resources we have left. Perhaps ironically, learning to tune into the rest of creation may represent our best hope of raising progeny capable of sustaining it.