Volume 8, Number 4 |
July/August 1998 |
"Think globally; act locally". The phrase has a nice ring to it. Too bad it doesn't seem to be helping us to find solutions to our damaged environment. Why is this? It is true that people are spending increasing amounts of time working to achieve some sort of localized global or globalized local cooperation. Their motives may be well intentioned. But many more are seeking only to make a profit from global or otherwise high-tech networks. The total effect seems to be an ever-increasing sense of loss of control at the local level. Say good-bye to "mom-and-pop" everything; the locally owned neighborhood store has become a charming bit of history. Meanwhile, most of the rest of our systems seem to fluctuate between chaos and rigidity, with not much in the middle.
The reason? Our economic, political and social institutions are increasingly merging and enlarging. As a result, 'think globally, act locally' today usually translates into its opposite--namely 'act globally, think locally'. This practically guarantees continual fragmentation in almost all matters of the ecology. And there is no truly effective organization at a global level--particularly in such matters as population, natural resources, and health care. Until one exists, our lives as local people will continue to remain perpetually overshadowed and disrupted by the raging unpredictability of the goings-on above us. For many people, the newly spawned locally-minded competition between titans results in displacement, destitution, or worse. We attempt to cope by our memberships, affiliations, or even leadership in large corporate enterprises. This may offer us some necessary protection from the worst effects. But it does nothing to offset the psychological or long-term consequences of our failure to change.
What seems to be missing is the kind of intelligent cooperation that can effectively bond local groups to larger corporate enterprises, and vice versa. In this way, their combined energies may be focused on solving our ecological problems. Such unions are critical to everyone's survival, since they would enable us to think and act at both the local and global levels simultaneously.
It is not enough for myriad government and grassroots agencies to periodically get together in half-baked, isolated attempts at problem-solving. Today, the global constituencies currently vying for economic political survival and dominance are awesome in their sheer numbers and complexity. Without the empowerment of international and well-publicized mandates, these constituencies quickly overwhelm even initially successful locally based problem-solving efforts. It is as though all of these relatively new "global" enterprises are still acting like small competing bands of tribal peoples in caves and rainforests. Except, of course, that they can now link up with each other over worldwide computer networks.
Lots of people everywhere, even in the United States, are still giving birth. As if anybody really needed more people! Obviously, we always will need and want some more people--but how many, and where? Suddenly, such questions are becoming not only truly relevant, but critical to everyone's survival.
We in the U.S. are legendary for our profligate and highly materialistic lifestyle. We eat at the very top of the food chain; we transport ourselves in metal boxes fueled by the liquefied remains of ancient biomass. Each individual's actions have a significant ecological effect, disproportionate to the rest of the world. And the effect is multiplied by the huge and growing number of people in this country.
This has already greatly affected the ecology of the United States. One thing that we can no longer count on (or even expect) is a normal season called spring to occur in the months that we used to think of as falling between winter and summer. Last year, for example, we were hit with two feet of snow out East, on April Fool's Day! (What do you suppose that meant?)
Our weather is getting strange: summers are unusually hot and springs are unusually cold. Winters, depending on where you live, are either absent of snow or deliver horrible tonnages of the stuff.
Many of these changes could probably be traced to the sheer amount of carbon dioxide and other waste products we constantly pump into the environment. Given all this, one might say that we are in danger of losing our battle with nature only a fraction of a second after having finally won it. This is simply by virtue of our being unable to shift gears and change old behaviors.
Enough is enough. There is absolutely no ambiguity to our situation. It's time to get organized on a global level! We have to learn to think in a cooperative, rather than competitive, mode. If we can do this, we will create a powerful, cohesive force to combat our environmental woes. Otherwise, we will wind up choking on the countless material and psychological ill effects of an ever-upwardly-intensifying spiral of glut, rut and fragmentation.
Admittedly, and in our defense as a world, the sudden ecological disaster has caught us by surprise. What had for centuries been a technological problem has overnight become an ecological one. Many people are working overtime in response to it. Some of their efforts are truly noble and inspiring. Unfortunately, we may fail to act effectively enough and soon enough. If so, none of their efforts will matter.
reviewed by Ed Glaze, III
An environmental writer tends to think about the future more than most of us. His stock in trade is what is happening to the world around us and the probability trends describing what is to come. But that investigative concern is heightened by having a child--it becomes much more personal. Bill McKibben is just that kind of environmental writer and his young daughter inspired the research that led to his book, MAYBE ONE: A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single-Child Families.
Unlike many environmental books, this one is a quick and easy read. It touches on the personal, social, economic, and ecological aspects of starting a family that all of us should discuss. The book keeps a positive tone even though the facts presented warn of a future in which few would wish on their child. The book is both educational and a call to action on a personal and societal level.
The theme of the book could be his statement that we may live in a special time. "We may live in the strangest, most thoroughly different moment since humans took up farming 10,000 years ago and time more or less commenced. Since then time has flowed in one direction--toward more, which we have taken to be progress. At first the momentum was gradual, almost imperceptible, checked by wars and dark ages and plagues and taboos; but in recent centuries it has accelerated, the curve of every graph steepening like the Himalayas rising from the Asian steppe. We need to see if we're finally running up against some limits."
McKibben thinks part of the answer to our growing population will be to encourage single-child families. With additional children there's a dilution of family resources. "Money, yes, but more important, the parents' time and emotional and physical energy."
In many ways smaller families will benefit us all as we move into a future of population pressures, overconsumption, environmental degradation and climate upheaval. This is especially important for Americans because of their much higher ecological impact. "We need in these fifty years, to be working simultaneously on all parts of the equation--on our ways of life, on our technologies, and on our populations. It's a point in time poised uniquely between hope and fear. It is possible that we face unavoidable calamity, but it's also possible that we'll see remarkable change."
As McKibben examined the current environmental predicament, he found that the perpetual expansion in the size of our economies is at least as damaging as the expansion of our populations. The government costs of aging, dying, and retirement will become unmanageable in the next century. Though he reluctantly deals with immigration, he recognized that "it's clear that no more than a tiny minority--one half of one per cent, will ever get to live in the United States even if we double our immigration levels, even if we decide our borders could contain half a billion people." But the best thing to benefit the environment is to stabilize the number of people living in this super-consuming nation. "Wildness doesn't disappear in a day. It erodes so slowly that you don't notice it going. But it does go."
His conclusion is that, because there are so many of us, and because we have done such a poor job of planning for our numbers, we no longer have the luxury of not planning. "In a crowded world, not planning has as many consequences as planning. No decision any of us makes will have more effect on the world (and on our lives) than whether to bear another child. No decision, then, should be made with more care."
The Titanic was the technological marvel of her day and was thought to be unsinkable since she had segregated, watertight compartments. These were expected to keep the Titanic afloat no matter what calamity might lay ahead. In short, the confidence in the technology was so great that there were not enough lifeboats to accommodate all of her passengers.
Today, there are those who feel technology will provide and that there are no limits to growth on earth. But in a finite world, infinite growth is impossible. There is a limit someplace, and spaceship earth doesn't have ANY lifeboats.
The Titanic was rigidly segregated with each class in its place but, when it went down, there were few survivors. The segregation of the poor to their assigned quarters did not save the rich. They all went down together.
Control of immigration into this country gives the illusion that something is being accomplished. However, when a few critical resources of our finite earth are exhausted, we will all go down together. So, the debate about immigration into this country creates the illusion of accomplishment, but in reality is doing more harm than good. This is because over-population is a worldwide problem and preventing people from moving from one place to another does not address that problem. Isolating the advanced nations from the developing ones is as futile as separating first-class passengers from steerage passengers. We'll all go down together.
See Phil's letter to the Boston Globe on the back page.
| Special Population Issue!
Wild EARTH for creatures who care about their habitat |
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| overpopulation
biodiversity land ethics |
The quarterly Conservation journal Wild Earth has dedicated its winter
1997/1998 issue to the problems of human overpopulation. Featured are articles
by:
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Re "A hard sell for Earth Day message" (page B1, April 26): It always has been a lost cause. The Earth Day message has always been about treating symptoms. "Clean up the rivers", "Save the whale", "Recycle", and all the rest are treating symptoms.
All environmental causes are lost causes as long as we continue to treat the symptoms rather than the disease of human population growth beyond a size that the environment can sustain.
PHILLIP MORSE
Chelmsford
The GRHF is a clearinghouse website that provides women around the world with access to critical information about their health and bodies, in addition to serving as an electronic space where women can come together and voice their opinions in the global debate around reproductive health and rights.
Contact Ra'eda S. Al-Zu'bi for more info: ralzubi@hsph.harvard.edu
The next meeting will be held at 7 p.m. on the second floor of 25 West Street in downtown Boston. Either the Park Street or Downtown Crossing stops of the "T" will bring you within two blocks of the office. West Street runs between the Boston Common from Tremont Street to Washington Street, southwest of the "T" stops. Either take the "T" or look for free parking after 6 p.m.
The meeting will be held in the office of the Immigrant Workers Resource Center. We will be setting goals and planning activities for this coming year at this meeting. What the Boston area chapter of ZPG is able to take on for this coming year will be largely determined by how many members attend this meeting, so mark it on your calendars now, be there and be ready to volunteer.
Please see the meeting schedule for general information and other meeting dates.
Please see Jeff's column on page 2, Call for Activists.
Dear Members,
Many thanks for having elected me chair of the Boston area chapter of ZPG for the next year. I accept the position as a great honor and will need the help of all of you to accomplish the following specific goals for the chapter.
The first goal is the passage of Senate Bill 717 in the State Legislature of Massachusetts. That bill would require health insurance companies to provide birth control pills or devices to their female clients who request them. (A better bill would have also provided vasectomies for men.) Passage of the bill would lower insurance costs and reduce overall government expenditures as it is less expensive to not have a child than to have one. The bill is stalled now in the Senate Ways and Means Committee and needs to be pushed along with constituency pressure and lobbying, both of which are readily available.
Next, we need to see the proliferation of ZPG chapters on all the college campuses in this area. Boston, as you know, is the "Athens of America," with the greatest concentration of universities in the world. We need to tap the potential of the many campuses with an issue that should be of primary concern to its students, today's youth, tomorrow's leaders. Members of our chapter who are currently enrolled as students should take this on.
Finally, I would like to see ZPG organize a public demonstration in cooperation with the many other activist organizations who agree that population stabilization is a needed public priority. We need to confer with these organizations and decide on a plan of action that will publicize the issue to the public at large. The time is ripe for such a public event, and its value cannot be underestimated.
So, please think about what you would like to help organize. Let's not think of ZPG as a club of concerned citizens which meets every two months in order to enjoy the company of like-minded individuals. I would like to see ZPG become an active force in addressing the issue of over-population in this area. Over-population is the most serious issue ever to have faced humanity. Let's get a move on.
We need you to come to the next meeting to fill these positions. Be there and come ready to volunteer.
Jeff Herman Chair, ZPG of Greater Boston
On May 30, 1998, at the Immigrant Workers Resource Center in Boston, a group of ZPG/Boston members met to discuss the goals and direction of ZPG's Greater Boston Chapter for the 1998-99 year.
The first discussion topic was the philosophy or mission of Zero Population Growth, and each attendee was given the opportunity to express a personal perspective on what drew him or her to ZPG. Some of the inspirations that drew us to ZPG were: