THE CROWDED PLANET
ZERO POPULATION GROWTH OF GREATER BOSTON
| Volume 10, Issue 6 | November/December 2000 |
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THE CROWDED PLANET ZERO POPULATION GROWTH OF GREATER BOSTON
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Up Front |
Special Section: Election 2000 |
In The News |
About Us |
LONDON (Reuters) — The West's failure to invest all the money it promised into world population programmes has resulted in a deadly shortage of condoms in the developing world, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
In a sharp rebuke for the world's biggest economies, the retiring head of the UN Population Fund said her biggest regret about the job was the crippling lack of resources.
"These are large countries which should be doing a lot more," said Dr Nafis Sadik, executive director of the UNFPA.
"The resources are just not there and especially for the products that require foreign exchange," she told reporters. "Condom supplies are getting disrupted" at a time when demand is soaring.
Sadik spoke on the release of the UN's annual population report—her last such appearance after 13 years in the job.
Alex Marshall, who wrote this year's population report, said the UN, the world's biggest international supplier of condoms, had to halve the number of condoms it distributed last year because of funding problems.
"We're rolling back programmes because of it. It's really tragic. It means people are dying," he told Reuters. Condoms prevent the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV.
Sadik criticised the big powers for lavishing huge amounts on military campaigns while offering only small change to vital health and reproductive services.
Sadik said industrial donor nations had themselves agreed in 1994 to come up with $5.7 billion for the Population Fund by 2000, yet less than half of that had actually come through.
By comparison, developing nations where most of the money is spent had pledged some $11.3 billion, most of which was forthcoming, she said.
"Some of the major donors are underperforming as far as contributions are concerned," said Sadik. "Developing countries are actually pulling their weight better than donor countries."
She said the global demand for condoms was now soaring, yet from Mozambique to Indonesia, the UN could not keep up.
"Condom demand is increasing very rapidly all over the world, but particularly in sub-Saharan Africa," she said. "We are unable to supply them because of a lack of resources."
Sadik named the worst offenders as the United States, Germany, France and Italy. Japan was also not doing enough, while Britain was a consistent donor—but still low.
The Nordic nations and the Netherlands, by contrast, are strong supporters of the Fund's programmes, which aim to cut family size and slow the spread of sexually transmitted disease, Sadik said.
Take action: tell Congress to adequately fund international family
planning programs. Go to ZPG's Legislative Action Center at http://congress.nw.dc.us/zpg/elecmail.html
Most of the surveys we do are just for fun, but this one is for real. The responses will be gathered and analyzed by the Population Coalition, who will then publicize the results. They encourage you to do the same in your local community.
If you have Internet access, please try to take the online version of the survey. It is longer than most: 65 questions in all. However, feel free to do as much or as little as you like.
The survey has three sections. Part A: Community Cohesiveness asks questions related to how well the community meshes together. Part B: Population Pressures looks at how growth is affecting the community. Part C: About Yourself and Your Household contains the standard personal information queries. The base survey was developed by researchers at Claremont Graduate University, while the population section comes from the Escondido, CA chapter of the League of Women Voters.
For more information, contact the Population Coalition, PO Box 7918, Redlands, CA 92375, email mhempel@earthlink.net
The ‘Life In My Community' survey is on the Internet at http://forms.flashbase.com/forms/
lifeinmycommunity.
You can also link to it from the ZPG/Boston website (address in the masthead
on page 6).
The article "Big families a Christmas memory" (December 25, 1999) highlighted some of the nice aspects of large families. Unfortunately the big families of the last few centuries have also resulted in an incredible growth in population which has exacerbated practically every social, economic and environmental problem. The ongoing population explosion in most parts of the developing world and the United States threatens to erode the quality of life and devastate the environment. Poor countries cannot break out of poverty when their population is doubling every 20 or 30 years. World population is doubling and quadrupling in what is a blink of an eye in historical terms, but like the mythical frog in increasingly hot water, we fail to notice it.
What is needed without further delay is a one-child policy throughout the world. Impoverished countries must be provided with the information and technologies for birth control. An elevation in the socio-economic status of women is no doubt also a fundamental precondition if population levels are to be stabilized.
Peter Lisbon
plisbon@fas.harvard.edu
24 Woodbridge St
Cambridge, MA 02140
Telephone 617 491 0895
Peter, you make some excellent points. However, please reconsider the worldwide one-child policy. China had such a policy starting in 1979. It was a dismal failure, and was recently “softened”. It resulted in millions of female infanticides and un-told human misery. India began a similarly draconian policy of sterilization in the mid-1960s; many women died because the procedure was done improperly. It set back family planning efforts in that country by 40 years. The lesson learned was that coercion does not work. There is a much better strategy that does: education and empowerment of women. It improves people’s lives while lowering growth rates dramatically. —Editor
To ZPG:
I received the lovely letter from you—the Washington based ZPG regarding Wal-Mart's decision to ban selling Preven. What a joke you all are! First of all, I am not a right-wing extremist, but I do have morals. I am also a physician assistant, and know firsthand what medications like this do to women. They don't just prevent conception; they have all kinds of effects on our bodies that are serious. Just because the FDA says something is okay to prescribe does not mean it is safe.
Secondly, this is a free country. Wal-Mart has the freedom to choose not to sell this drug.
And most importantly: we, as human beings under our Creator, have no business thinking we can and have the right to control the birth of human beings. You are messing with Mother Nature—and remember, IT'S NOT NICE TO FOOL WITH MOTHER NATURE. And I say that after working in the medical field.
All the more power to Pharmacists for Life—they are not a disgrace. You are, but that's beside the point. Everyone who is involved in this organization ought to sterilize themselves, before shooting off their mouths about everyone else overpopulating the earth.
Good-bye!
Sandra Fimbres PA
g.markle@worldnet.att.net
P.S. I will offer up Mass this Sunday for you.
Sandra, thanks so much for writing. We understand your confusion.
Next time, try adding the coriander before cooking, and stir often.
—Editor
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Send your comments, criticisms, praise, and pans to The Editors, The Crowded Planet, 31 Overlook Drive, Candler, NC 28715, or gwilcox@charter.net and shpsbll@shore.net |
Helpful Points Made By Presenters In Dealing With Local Growth Issues
Summarized by Mike Hanauer
| Speaker | Related Work Area |
| Dorothy Green | Watershed management |
| Mike McGarry | Aspen Population Stabilization Resolution, Aspen CO |
| Tom Reitter | Land protection, Livermore CA |
| Joyce Tarnow | Halting growth, Florida |
| Gabor Zavonyi | Growth management; planning; land-use laws and regulations; national and various communities |
| Mike Hanauer | Managing growth and open space, Lexington MA (moderator) |
To reach presenters, contact CAPS (Californians for Population Stabilization) at caps@cap-s.org
We sent a short survey of six questions on population issues to eight candidates (including all of the ones in the chart). Only one responded: David McReynolds of the Socialist Party. He also graciously consented to what resulted in a thought-provoking and insightful interview.
The issues chart shows the positions of the candidates on two issues related to population: abortion and the environment. We wish all the candidates would address overpopulation directly. However, an extensive search of their websites and many others yielded absolutely nothing.
Unless indicated otherwise, all statements are taken from the candidates’ statements to the League of Women Voters, as published by DemocracyNet (www.dnet.org).
Please note that ZPG is a non-partisan organization, and does not endorse or oppose any candidates for office.
We hope this section helps you decide who is best qualified to lead
us into this new century. Please don’t forget to vote on November 7!
| Candidate | Abortion | Environment |
| Patrick J. Buchanan | As a committed, no-compromise pro-life President,
I will:
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| George W. Bush |
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Governor Bush is committed to a new era of environmental protection. The 30-year-old federal model of "mandate, regulate and litigate" needs to be modernized: it has yielded benefits in the past, but it encourages Americans to do the bare minimum to protect the environment and fails to reward innovation or results. Therefore, as President, Governor Bush will maintain a strong federal environmental role but will return significant authority to states and local communities. Under Governor Bush, the federal government will set high environmental standards and provide market-based incentives to develop new technologies and approaches so that Americans meet—and exceed—those standards. He will also ensure that the federal government, which is the country’s largest polluter, complies with all environmental laws. |
| Harry Browne | Regarding abortion, until science can prove
otherwise, I must assume that life begins at conception. Thus I believe
abortion is wrong—very wrong.
I believe that the federal government should never overstep the bounds of its constitutional authority. The Constitution grants the federal government no authority to legislate against common crimes—murder, theft, etc. In fact, only three crimes are mentioned in the Constitution: treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. So I must oppose the idea of having a federal law against abortion. But I also oppose federal funding of abortions. It is wrong, as Thomas Jefferson said, to compel someone to pay for a cause he finds immoral. As President I would have vetoed both the "Woman's Right to Choose" bill and the partial-birth abortion bill—no matter what my personal feelings about either of them. It would be my responsibility to do so because the President takes an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. And the Constitution gives the federal government no authority to be involved in abortion in any way. |
Most environmental pollution to date has occurred
because governments have allowed industries to pollute government property—rivers,
streams, lakes, roads, and lands. Most clear-cutting and strip-mining occur
on government property because the offenders have no stake in the future
value of the land. Pollution seldom occurs on private property, because
property owners are concerned about the future value of their property.
Obviously, pollution would diminish if more property were taken out of
the hands of government and turned over to private owners for protection.
Toxic wastes are an inevitable and necessary byproduct of the production of the chemicals that make our life safer and easier. To eliminate the chemicals would return us to a primitive existence with a much shorter life expectancy. Toxic wastes—even when disposed of carelessly—cause far fewer deaths than would be caused by the absence of the products for which the toxic wastes are a byproduct. And in fact, the natural environment itself is full of toxins. After all, dangerous elements such as arsenic, lead, uranium, and other substances are widely distributed throughout the environment, and the natural life processes of plants and animals also produce toxins. |
| Al Gore |
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From his leadership in the House to protect air and water quality and pass the original Superfund legislation to clean up dangerous toxic waste sites; to his pioneering House and Senate efforts to fund research into global warming, long before it was widely recognized as a serious threat; to his best-selling book about the environment, "Earth in the Balance"—Al Gore has been a leading champion of environmental protection for more than two decades. It is a commitment that began when he was a young boy, learning the importance of preventing soil erosion on his family farm in Carthage, Tennessee. And it is a commitment he has carried to the White House, working with President Clinton to produce the cleanest environment in decades—with cleaner air, cleaner water, and a safer food supply; a record number of toxic waste dumps cleaned up; millions of acres of precious natural lands protected; and a strong international treaty to begin combating global warming—in a way that is market-based and realistic, and does not lead to economic cooling. |
| John Hagelin | The Natural Law Party is committed to substantially
reducing the number of abortions in America. However, the Natural Law Party
holds that the best way to reduce abortions is through education—not through
legislation.
The Natural Law Party's "antigovernment" stance regarding abortion—neither subsidizing abortions nor legislating them away—is the only defensible position from the standpoint of the U.S. Constitution, which states in the 10th Amendment that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." |
I am committed to increasing both energy efficiency and the use of renewable, safe, and nonpolluting energy sources, such as wind, solar, and biomass. This approach will protect our environment, create energy self-sufficiency, and add to the economic prosperity of the nation. Through programs that will create new jobs and new industries in energy conservation and renewable energy sources, I will move away from our hazardous and wasteful dependence on fossil fuels, while saving the nation hundreds of billions of dollars in health and environmental costs. |
| Ralph Nader | "I don’t think government has the proper role in forcing a woman to have a child or forcing a woman not to have a child. And we’ve seen that around the world. This is something that should be privately decided with the family, woman, all the other private factors of it, but we should work toward preventing the necessity of abortion." (Source: Meet the Press) | Prevention [of industrial violence] is pursued in three ways. One, by eliminating the offending ingredient…You just ban it…The second is to find substitutes that are environmentally benign, to replace toxic materials that are part of chemicals or other products that serve useful purposes…The other big one, the third method of prevention, is solar energy. It’s the closest thing we have to a universal solution to pollution problems…So that’s the agenda for a Green Party Presidency. It means using the government procurement arm to stipulate standards that will foster the purchase of motor vehicles that are more fuel-efficient, with new kinds of engines. Recyclable paper without chlorine…The government is the biggest consumer in the country. (New Texas, Candidate For a Green Planet, April 2000) |
1,
6: I suspect the United States could comfortably support a great many
more people than it does now but . . . leaving aside that question, the
fact is the resources of our planet are limited and population growth is
a problem. Much less for us than for India, South America, Africa. The
poorest nations are growing at the fastest rate, compounding grave problems
of hunger, disease, and political unrest.
The best ‘weapon' we have seems to be industrialization and technology. I understand (figures and sources not at hand) that both Japan and Italy are now "zero growth" nations which may have to import labor to get their work done.
I remember fondly the bean fields and vacant lots, filled with weeds which, to a child, are forests and jungles beyond imagination. Now all gone, paved over.
4: I'm less worried about our immigration policies than the general hostility from some in the religious community—particularly but only the Catholic Church—to birth control and sex education.
3: We should strongly support domestic and international family planning efforts.
2: Yes, a Socialist President would have a conscious population program.
5: Yes, I would address these issues very firmly.
Lee: David, as you know, our thing is overpopulation. ZPG is all about minimizing growth rates so that we can get a handle from that end on the ecological crisis, which we think is very imminent. What would you like to say about this issue vis-à-vis your campaign or your candidacy?
David: It is not the key issue in our campaign; I’ll be frank about that. There are a number of related issues that are central, including of course the right of a woman to make a choice of abortion, making birth control contraceptives available widely, and education for kids.
The issue of population has a kind of a double edge, because in both Italy and Japan, there’s a negative population growth rate at the moment, and I think they’re going to have to import immigrant labor in order to get a lot of the work done. It seems to be the pattern in industrializing countries that at a certain point the population growth levels out.
Lee: I think the statistics are clear. Europe now has negative population growth.
David: I think it’s the result of industrial technology, and part of this is the long-range history going back thousands of years. If you were—it doesn’t matter where you lived—a European or Indian or African, there was no social security, there was a real shortage of labor, and children provided your security in old age. If you had no children, there was no one basically except an extended family to take care of you, and you were relying on strangers or distant family. Children also provided labor. And the death rate was so high among children that people needed to have large families just to reproduce. Now as you get into an industrial period where labor is not handled in the same way—you’re not farming; you don’t need so many people to work the farm—and where there is a pattern of social security brought in by the state to cover everyone, there’s less and less need to have many children. Consequently, very few families in America plan to have more than three children. Probably many of them are happy to have only two, many only have one, and there’s some who have none. Here you run into problems of culture, where Catholic families tend to be more populous, although that’s also diminished. As you know, their birth rate is declining too, and the Pope is basically being ignored by many Catholics. So the old pattern of having ten or eleven or twelve children in a Catholic family, or at least five or six, has really given way to much smaller numbers.
Lee: Right. In fact, Italy in fact has got negative population growth right now.
David: I know. But their Catholicism has always been a little bit—not suspect, but a little bit different from Irish Catholicism. So it depends on what culture you have. The Catholic culture is up against the wall now; in Italy it’s not really reproducing that much. And in America women are using birth control pills.
Lee: You know, they just passed legislation three weeks ago approving RU-486.
David: Yes; there were big headlines in Newsweek, and the New York Times, and everywhere.
Lee: What do you think of that?
David: It’s not a birth control pill; it’s an abortion pill. It’s actually two pills, and it’s not something you really want to do. It’s like having a very severe menstrual period. But this is really just a safer form of abortion; it’s an early form of abortion in the first six weeks or something, I don’t have the figures … But it’s not quite a day-after pill, which is a different thing … This is not it. This is a pill for someone who is pregnant, and in the very early period of pregnancy, in the first few weeks, it terminates a pregnancy. So it’s denounced by the Catholic Church as being an abortion. However, the fetus is barely formed, it’s very early in the term, and it has none of the controversial aspects of late-term abortion. Of course, this doesn’t cover the problem of what you do about overpopulation.
Lee: Many of the concerned activist groups—ZPG, the Sierra Club, and a new group, Center for a New American Dream, among them—tend to think the population issue has two major aspects; population and consumption. If you factor in the rates of consumption in the industrialized countries, one baby here is worth a lot of babies somewhere else in a developing country. So if you include that perspective, it’s all part of the same ecological problem.
David: I don’t know that I would buy the business of "one baby here equals several elsewhere". In terms of crowding people out of the land, it doesn’t. In terms of consumption, however, that’s a good point.
Lee: Yes. New Dream in particular is focusing on consumption, on the material resources—often unrenewable—that we expend per capita. And I’m bad: we just went out and bought a lot of wonderful steaks yesterday! That’s one of the least good things you can do for the ecology, supposedly.
So how might you translate any of this into campaign policy? Let’s say, hypothetically, you became president and we got past the abortion issue; that it was resolved peacefully somehow.
David: We’ve gotten past it, barring a Supreme Court decision that would reverse Roe versus Wade. [Editor’s note: the issue may be settled politically, but access is still a major problem. 84% of the counties in the US have no abortion provider.]
Lee: And if you were President, or Gore, that would remain the case. But we’re not sure about Bush, are we?
David: I doubt that even Bush is going to overturn Roe versus Wade. I don’t know, and you never can predict Supreme Courts, but I don’t think that it is likely.
Lee: Right. I agree with that. So let’s say that that issue is put to rest. But we still have the crisis issue I mentioned earlier. Do you think that we are facing—and my bias you can hear—an unprecedented ecological crisis, whether it be about oil, about water, about equity? I don’t know if you’ve read much of Paul Ehrlich, but for him, the inequities around the world are as much a part of the ecological crisis as the environmental issues. What kinds of things in your platform would try to address this crisis—if you even think there is one?
David: Yes, I do. I think that we have been in one for some time as a result of industrial development, air pollution, water pollution, ozonal air depletion, and the use of non-renewable resources. But I’d probably put overpopulation rather low on the list; it’s a less immediate crisis.
Lee: So you think it would be sufficient for us to solve all of these other problems. Hmm, but even if we do, don’t we still need to check the growth of raw numbers? We’ve got six billion people now. If we wind up with eight billion in 25 years, isn’t that going to put impossibly difficult pressures on us anyway? [Editor’s note: the United Nations medium population projection for 2025 is 7.8 billion.]
David: I don’t know. Since this is your area, you know that people have been predicting an end of things since Malthus’ prototype thesis. I think we’ve proved that you can increase the population much more than we had thought. You can do intensive farming; you can do many many things. And if you could solve the other questions of the environment, then I think the population could expand much more than I would like to see it expand. I’d miss the open spaces, but I think those would go. There are large parts of the world that are not very well populated.
There are a number of things that, if they were done, you could probably double the population and we wouldn’t have a disaster. You could find alternative energy sources; you could use solar power; you could farm on areas that are not presently farmed; you could shift away from a meat to a vegetarian economy. I think the problem is much less in controlling the population than in the fact that we are expanding the population without controlling any of the other things, until you have the enormous population density in India, and in China, and in parts of Latin America where there’s really no space and not enough food. I don’t think we’re going to solve the problem of food and energy; I don’t think we’ve worked it out. If we could, why then I think the problem of population is really secondary at the moment.
Lee: You don’t think the growth in the raw numbers also puts a lot of pressure on the institutional structure? Institutions under pressure are much more difficult to change, and you certainly do want to change some of those institutions fairly dramatically. Do you think there’s a connection there?
David: I think we probably have a disagreement, and I’ll be frank about this. I don’t think the numbers themselves worry me. This is not my area, but I think you could double or triple the number of people on the planet and that would not be the disaster. I think the problem is that areas like India, you’re doubling and tripling the number of people without their being fed, and without them being given medical care or housing. So what you get are explosive political contexts, and you get explosions of mob rule. But we’ve had those benefits, and this country has expanded its population many times over what anyone would have thought we could sustain. We also maintain a democracy—more or less—with lots of faults. But those faults are much less due to overpopulation than they are to corporate rule. My concern is less "Oh my God, don’t have children" than "Oh my God, deal with the environmental crisis" which is very real and very dangerous.
Lee: I agree with everything you said about the environment, except for that one part about the population numbers. I think if you saw the statistics on exponential growth, you might modify your view a little bit.
David: I might well; it’s not my primary area.
Lee: In the last twelve years, we’ve added a billion people. It took a very very long time to get a billion people not that long ago. [Editor’s note: 1830, according to the United Nations Population Division.]
David: I understand that. I’m just saying that if you could feed them, if you could house them, if you could provide medical care and transport for them, the fact that they were there would not be the problem.
Lee: Let’s talk a bit about issues more central to your platform. Do you think we’re ready for world government?
David: No. Nowhere close to ready for it.
Lee: I agree with that. Next question: your platform says that the enemy is the corporate state. Could you define what you mean by the corporate state?
David: It’s the point at which corporations have such an accumulation of economic power that they dominate the state. In classical Marxist terms, the state has always been nothing but the executive of the ruling class, and I think Marx put that very well. If you divide state and government, that’s two different things. The state being that which executes people, and goes to war, has a flag that you have to give your allegiance to above that of your church and anything else, or you’d be executed or put in prison. If you separate the government fm the state, the government is fine. It doesn’t do any damage. It educates kids, builds roads, collects garbage, and so on. They’re not a problem; we need a government. However, the police power of the state has always been the executive hand of the ruling class, and it’s used that way—to close borders or open them, to wage wars or end them, to control the population when it’s restless, and to control the political process. There has never been an independent political structure. I think liberals want to think there is an independent political structure that’s above the state. There is not; it’s subordinate to the state.
Lee: The state being the ruling class.
David: The state and the ruling class are pretty much synonymous.
Lee: So you think that we’ve never really gotten away from oligarchy, essentially. Is that a fair statement?
David: America is much too complicated to say we’ve always been run by an oligarchy. We haven’t, but we certainly are now, at this point.
Lee: Do you think that that has anything to do with ecological or demographic changes, in the sense that we’ve run out of room to run, physically speaking?
David: No, we haven’t run out of room. We have a lot of room to run.
Lee: Where are we going? Mars?
David: Good Lord, no! When you travel across the country, there are large areas that don’t have anyone on them.
Lee: But isn’t this mainly nonarable land that wouldn’t sustain life? [Editor’s note: that didn’t stop a lot of cities. Phoenix and Tucson, for example, are in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, the largest desert in North America.]
David: If you solved the energy problems, it would be arable. If you solved other problems, it would be usable. We haven’t run out of space; we’ve run out of other things. We’ve run out of energy. You have to look at what it is you need. If we continue using oil as we’re using it now, then even if we diminish the population significantly, we would still be in a profound crisis, because we’re not going to have any energy. [Editor’s note: this analysis is correct but simplistic. It ignores the concept of ecological footprint. We take many things that nature provides for granted, without realizing that they are finite. True, some resources are renewable, but only within Earth’s capacity to regenerate them. There is a limit to the number of people (or any species) the Earth can support. If we go beyond that, biological diversity suffers, followed inevitably by mass extinctions.]
Lee: That’s right. If we still need one barrel of oil and we don’t have it, we’re in a crisis.
David: Yes. The number of people is not what is bothering me. Maybe if I read the literature, it would bother me more than it does. But if you could do this, this and this, then the number itself isn’t so dramatic. You can grow plants in conditions that we think are impossible, if you have the energy. If you don’t, you can’t. And we’re running out of the sources of energy that we have relied on. That is a major crisis.
Lee: The Green Party says some of these same things, but you claim that Nader’s group has fallen short, and we need even more radical change.
David: On the environment, I think that the Greens are much better informed than the Socialist Party is.
Lee: Then maybe where you think where they fall short is in terms of fundamental reorganization.
David: Nader is not a Socialist, and I am. Nader does not believe in the social ownership of the means of production, and Socialists do. So that is the very basic difference.
Lee: You talk a lot about getting us out from under the domination of the corporate state. How do we get there from here? How many of our precious freedoms would be in that tradeoff? How do you propose to form a government that people don’t feel dominated by? And last, how do you enforce such changes on people who are used to "capitalist freedoms", or alternatively, how do you get capitalists to give up the entrepreneurial mindset and behaviors that have largely characterized our national sense of identity for the past 300 years?
David: First, a Socialist government could not occur unless it was voted for by a majority of the people. That would require really serious value changes in the American public. So we’re not talking about a government that is going to trade off your freedoms; we’re talking about a government that is freely elected by people who want a Socialist reorganization of the economy. Number two, the capitalists will never willingly give up their power at all. I think it’s possible to do it peacefully, but not without some very real struggle, and struggle in the streets.
Lee: When you say "struggle in the streets", does that mean peaceful protest?
David: Yes. The government that was elected would probably have to call a million people to Washington to make sure the Pentagon got the message. You’ve got agencies of the state, such as the FBI, the CIA, the National Guard, and the Army, which are not at the disposal of the Socialist Party, but are at the disposal of the ruling class, and will be used if necessary—they always have been.
Lee: David, thank you so much. Is there anything else you want to say?
David: People who want to get more information should go to our campaign website at <www.votesocialist.org>. And that will be up even after the election.
But I don’t want to leave you without making it clear that as I travel around the country, I look at places I was in 20 years ago, and I find that the space, the movement, and the freedom of empty space is going. I miss that empty space, and I’m sorry about it. It’s happened in my lifetime. So I’m not unaware of the pressure of population, and I am more concerned about that than I have implied. But it’s not the key point of the campaign; I have to be honest about that.
Lee: And win, lose, or draw, we’ll be happy to send you some ZPG literature.
David: By all means!
Lee: Thank you so much for your generosity. It was nice talking with you.
David: Not at all. Thank you.
When Greg suggested last month that for this issue we interview a political candidate, someone with sufficient credibility running for president or vice president of this month, I agreed. It seemed the right and timely thing to do. Even though as ZPG members, we can’t come out in support of any one candidate, we can certainly talk to them concerning their stand on the issues that are most important to us.
Consequently, adhering to our usual (inequitable) division of labor here at the newsletter, Greg used all his high-tech proficiency to contact the major candidates, asking them their positions on a few key questions relating to the population problem, while I sat back and waited to interview one of them. By major candidates, I mean not just Republicans and Democrats, but all those who any fairly well informed person may have heard of. Moreover, many of the candidates’ views on many topics are available online, and these we perused in hopes of finding someone with something interesting, not to mention agreeable, to say about overpopulation. While we waited for the majors to respond, we discussed the viability of interviewing one of the lesser-knowns who might have something to say. In one case, I nixed a highly articulate doctor running for president whose simpatico views on the environment were marred only by her tendency to see little green men on her hard drive. In another, I finally let Greg go ahead and contact the Socialist party candidate, who sounded quite happy to talk to us.
Well, the weeks rolled by, and nothing happened. I got on the phone, and left a message with the Green Party vice presidential candidate’s press secretary. I even overcame a few misgivings, and personally tried to reach our socialist. He was the only one who responded. As to the rest?
Nothing. Not even an "I’m sorry, but I’m just too busy."
As the newsletter deadline draws ever nearer, and our "candidate interview" less and less likely, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep to my resolve about not complaining. Don’t any of these people know what’s going on? These are the ones who want to run the country. Do they all have so little concern for us and for the issue of overpopulation that they can’t even find the time for a polite response? Have any of them ever even really thought about it?
Well, at least one of them has. Listen to this: "No goal is more crucial to healing the global environment than stabilizing world population. The rapid explosion in the number of people since the beginning of the scientific revolution—and especially during the latter half of this century—is the clearest single example of the dramatic change in the overall relationship between the human species and the earth’s ecological system. Moreover, the speed with which this change has occurred has itself been a major cause of ecological disruption, as societies that learned over the course of hundreds of generations to eke out a living within fragile ecosystems are suddenly confronted—in a single generation—with the necessity of feeding, clothing and sheltering two or three times as many individuals within those same ecosystems."
Or, how about this: "…consider that the world is adding the equivalent of one China’s worth of people every ten years, one Mexico’s worth every year, one New York City’s worth every month, and one Chattanooga’s worth every single day. If these increases continue at the current rate, the impact on the environment in the next century will be unimaginable."
Sound familiar? Well, it should. It was written by the Democratic candidate for president, Al Gore. In 1992 he published these and many other very good thoughts in a book entitled, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. So the fact that most people probably wouldn’t immediately connect such ideas with Al Gore right now is particularly disheartening, and probably indicative of the grueling effect the day-to-day political process in Washington can have upon even the clearest vision. In a recent talk at Harvard, Paul Ehrlich, who knows the candidate personally and has discussed population issues with him, made more or less the same complaint I am making now. He said we could only hope that, if elected, Al would really do something about our ecological crisis in time.
At the time of this writing, I’ve already heard all but the last presidential debate, and apparently so far no one has even brought up the issue of overpopulation to the public at large. True, Gore and George Bush did quibble a bit over who cares more about global warming, and what the best way to resolve that problem in the United States might be. And Jim Lehrer, the moderator, did ask Gore "Vice President Gore, on the environment, in your 1992 book you said, quote, ‘We must make the rescue of our environment the central organizing principle for civilization, and there must be a wrenching transformation to save the planet.’ Do you still feel that way?" To which Gore responded "I do." I suppose that’s something.
But the Democratic candidate’s position today seems a far cry from what a reader in 1992 might have thought was that of the real Al Gore. Here’s another excerpt from his book:
"Some theorists maintain that the demographic transition (to a stable population) is a nearly inevitable process that will occur sooner or later in all countries as they develop economically. But they make two crucial errors. First, the process they describe can take centuries, presuming intervening events do not reverse its direction. Second, with populations now as large as they are, the momentum of further growth already built into the population is pushing many countries over the brink of an economic cliff as their resources are stripped away and the cycle of poverty and environmental destruction accelerates. Clearly, it is time for a global effort to create everywhere on earth the conditions conducive to stabilizing population."
At the end of Earth In The Balance, Gore proposes that what we need is a Global Marshall Plan for the environment. Its first section is titled "Stabilizing World Population"; the quotes used here are from that section. You really have to read the book to see just how good and fair-minded—and intelligent—Gore’s ideas on the subject are. Or were. Has he changed his mind? If so, I missed his public disavowal of these ideas.
But if that Al Gore is still inside the political shell we now see posturing in front of the television cameras, I sure wish he would give me some hint of his continued existence. That might help me to forgive his campaign for not even calling us back with a polite "Sorry, too busy." Or the fact that the Green party apparently thinks that as long as the earth is green enough, it doesn’t matter how many people are on it. Or the fact that the Martians are apparently more worried about our ecological problems than we are.
Okay, okay, I know what I said about putting the search for solutions before complaining. So let’s just make this the exception that proves the rule. And hope that by the time our next issue comes out, we have a new political administration in Washington that is favorable to our cause.
Money has always been a corrupting influence in politics. Money from individual donors, from corporations, from political action committees. It washes over every candidate and every office. And the higher the office, the bigger the flow.
Over the years, the trend has only gotten worse. Every election, new records are set for the number of dollars raised.
I believe it has finally gotten so bad that we've hit rock bottom. Money is no longer just a corrupting influence; it is the only influence. From now on, the candidate with the most cash will always win. In other words, you can predict with certainty who will get elected based only on the size of his campaign fund.
There is one exception to the rule: the money must be from outside sources. If it's your own money, it doesn't count. Why should it matter? Because elections have become like auctions: the prize goes to the highest bidder. The corporations and the PACs who bid highest can claim their prize; they now "own" the candidate.
But rich people are not for sale; they can't be bought. In the eyes of the big money donors, they are unreliable; spurious; uncontrollable. They can't be counted on to act the way the donors want. Their votes, rulings, policies and priorities are their own.
For example, consider the 2000 presidential race. The billionaire exception automatically rules out people like Ross Perot, Donald Trump, and Steve Forbes. These high rollers may shake things up, but they won't affect the final outcome.
The only other candidates with serious money are Al Gore and George W. Bush. Gore has raised $126 million so far—most of it from federal campaign funds. Bush handily trumps that with $177 million. Bush's federal share was much less than half; his largesse came mostly from industry.
But what about the voters? Don't they ultimately determine who wins? In theory, yes. In the real world, voter participation has been steadily declining for decades, making it ever easier to influence the vote. The mass media, being in effect a wholly-owned subsidiary of the corporate world, has become extremely skilled at this. They know how to spin the voters to produce the desired outcome. The media's preoccupation with the bottom line, money and ratings turns the news into mere soundbites, emphasizing daily activity while ignoring issues, insight and substance. The result is confusion at best, and disinterest at worst.
And their task is greatly simplified by the Commission on Presidential Debates. This bipartisan corporation—funded by huge corporate sponsors—effectively locks out all third-party candidates by requiring them to meet an arbitrarily high 15% threshold of support in national polls. Only then are they allowed to participate in the televised debates—the primary (and in many cases only) source of information for most voters. This threshold effectively guarantees that voters will see only Democrats and Republicans.
In contrast, candidates need only 5% to be entitled to federal campaign funding—a level that Ralph Nader achieved, despite minimal media coverage. But since he is excluded from the debates, that federal funding is virtually worthless. Media exposure is essential in modern presidential politics; without it you may as well concede up front. That means we can also forget about other third-party candidates like Pat Buchanan and John Hagelin.
So in the end, it comes down to a dog-and-pony show featuring two almost indistinguishable corporate lackeys, hyped as a momentous event in our national life. And the game is rigged almost from the start to favor the more servile of the two. As Tom Cruise said so famously in the movie "Jerry Maguire", "Show me the money!"
Case closed. Bush wins.
Figures
are from the Center for Responsive Politics, 1101 14th St., NW, Suite 103,
Washington, DC 20005-5635, telephone (202) 857-0044, http://www.opensecrets.org/
