Excerpts from White Refugee's
First Amicus Filed in Concourt
[III] Population Policy Common Sense Principles
- Thou Shalt Not Transgress Carrying Capacity Prophets
- Eco-Numeracy: Exponential Functions and Carrying Capacity
- Tragedy of the Commons: Limited World, Limited Rights
- Overpopulation: Resources Scarcity and Resource War Violence
- Demographics and Violence: Youth Bulges
- Population Pressures, Resource Wars, Terrorism and National Security
- How and Why Journalists Avoid the Population – Environment Connection
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[III] Population Policy Common Sense Principles
“Are we really going to be able to give these extra people jobs, homes, health care and education?” -- Official in Uganda’s Ministry of Finance, August 25, 2006[105]
A. Thou Shalt Not Transgress Carrying Capacity Prophets:
34. One of the most commonly used words In the Bible, Tsedeq[106] -- found in Psalm 72, 85, etc; -- in its fullest sense, meant “world in balance” both ecologically and politically[107]. This was not only the responsibility for the Gods, but also kings and people, and when this carrying capacity law was ignored or violated, Prophets Isaiah, Habakkuk, Joel, Hosea and Nahum warned of pestilence, war, famine and death.
35. In the The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia[108], Garrett Hardin writes that Tertullian, a Father of the Christian church shocked many traditionalists over the centuries, by asking why is the human population so vast [perhaps 150 million then] that we are a burden to the earth, which can scarcely provide for our needs?What most frequently meets our view (and occasions complaint), is our teeming population: our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly supply us from its natural elements; our wants grow more and more keen, and our complaints more bitter in all mouths, whilst Nature fails in affording us her usual sustenance. In very deed, pestilence, and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race....
36. The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS, was an Anglican clergyman who thought that the dangers of population growth would preclude endless progress towards a utopian society. Malthus saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour, as did Rev. Martin Luther King[109], and the Public Affairs Commission of the Anglican General Synod of Australia, Key Issues for Australia’s future in the global context and actions for us to take[110], they argue the relationship between ‘Though shalt not steal’ to ‘Though shalt not breed’[111].
37. According to Robert McNamara, Former World Bank President: “Short of nuclear war itself, population growth is the gravest issue the world faces. If we do not act, the problem will be solved by famine, riots, insurrection and war;” and President Nixon:“We must help break the link between spiralling population growth and poverty. ...Where they have been tried, family planning programs have largely worked. ...Many pro-life advocates ...contend that to condone abortion even implicitly is morally unconscionable. Their view is morally short-sighted. ...if we provide funds for birth control ...we will prevent the conception of millions of babies who would be doomed to the devastation of poverty in the underdeveloped world.” [112
38. In World Scientists Warning to Humanity, Issued November 18, 1992, signed by 1700 leading scientists from 70 countries, including 102 Nobel Prize laureates in Science; Union of Concerned Scientists[113]; they warned:The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth's limits. Current economic practices which damage the environment, in both developed and underdeveloped nations, cannot be continued without the risk that vital global systems will be damaged beyond repair.
Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future. If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth.
[105] Population Explosion Threatens to Trap Africa in Cycle of Poverty, The Guardian, 25 August; Rice, X. 2006 [PDF]; High birthrate threatens to trap Africa in Cycle of Poverty, Guardian, UK; 1 September 2006, by Xan
Rice [PDF] See also: UB: [A.8] Exponential Functions, Carrying Capacity Limits & the Laws of
Sustainability [PDF][106] Stairway to Nowhere, by Yakov Rabinovich: “Tsedeq comes from a Semitic word meaning to be firm, straight, “like steel,” a determined integrity that goes to one's core. In Arabic, this means that one is fully developed, balanced and mature. Although tsedeq is often translated to mean “judgment,” this does not mean evil retribution or a legal judgment, but justice and righteousness, incorporating right living.” [PDF]
[107] UB: [A.9] Lysistrata Tsedeq: Eco-Law 101: Laws of Sustainability [PDF]
[108] Hardin, Garrett: The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia [PDF]
[109] “Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victim.” ML King, May 5, 1966
[110] Key Issues for Australia’s future in the global context and actions for us to take, A discussion paper prepared by the Public Affairs Commission of the Anglican General Synod of Australia, February 2009 [PDF]
[111] Thou Shalt Not Breed: Anglicans, by Josh Gordon, The Age, Australia, May 9, 2010 [PDF]
[112] Richard M. Nixon, Seize the Moment (Simon & Schuster, 1992); In National Security Study Memorandum 200: World Population Growth
and U.S. Security, by Stephen D. Mumford; The Social Contract, Winter 1992 – 93 [PDF][113] World Scientists Warning to Humanity, issued 18 November 1992 [PDF: www.scribd.com/doc/33707614] A World Scientists Warning Briefing Book is available from Union of Concerned Scientists, which provides the citations to support their WARNING.
B. Eco-Numeracy: Exponential Functions and Carrying Capacity
39. In various Arithmetic of Growth (PDF)and Living within Limits articles[114] Professors Al Bartlett and Garrett Hardin, explain the basic principles of exponential functions, which can be applied to population, fiat currency, resource depletion, etc. An exponential function describes the size of anything that is growing steadily, over a fixed period of time: eg. 5% per year. To calculate the doubling time, i.e. how long it would take to grow 100%; you take the number 70, divide it by the percent growth per unit time: 70 ÷ 5; and you find the doubling time: 14 years.
40. Adverse economic factors which generally result from rapid population growth include: * reduced family savings and domestic investment; * increased need for large amounts of foreign exchange for food imports; * intensification of severe unemployment and underemployment; * the need for large expenditures for services such as dependency support, * education, and health which would be used for more productive investment; * the concentration of developmental resources on increasing food production to ensure survival for a larger population, rather than on improving living conditions for smaller total numbers.[115]
41. In Ethical Implications of Carrying Capacity[116], Garrett Hardin defines carrying capacity of a particular area as “the maximum number of a species that can be supported indefinitely by a particular habitat, allowing for seasonal and random changes, without degradation of the environment and without diminishing carrying capacity in the future”. In From Shortage to Longage: Forty Years in the Population Vineyards[117], he further clarifies the total impact equation of carrying capacity on a particular area: “Impacts of a population on the environment are of two sorts: the reduction of wanted resources and the addition of unwanted wastes. The fundamental equation connecting the variables can be expressed in simple words: Total impact = (per capita impact) x (population size).
42. Carrying Capacity is an absolute necessity for honest bottom line of ecological accounting.[118] According to Hardin: (a) a laissez-faire birth control (B.C.) policy + No Social Welfare, would provide for an equilibrium carrying capacity; whereas laissezfaire (B.C.) within a welfare state, results in Runaway Growth, and ultimately greater misery. Legislators can have either, but not both; if welfare policies are too precious to be abandoned; they will have to introduce limits to the right to breed[119].[114] * Arithmetic of Growth: Methods of Calculation I, by Al Bartlett, [PDF]; * Arithmetic of Growth: Methods of Calculation II, [PDF]; * Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101 [PDF]; (iv) Living within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos: Growth: Real and Spurious, by Garrett Hardin [PDF]
[115] National Security Council, NSSM 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests, Washington, DC December 10, 1974 [PDF]
[116] Ethical Implications of Carrying Capacity, by Garrett Hardin, 1977 [PDF]
[117] From Shortage to Longage: Forty Years in the Population Vineyards, by Garrett Hardin, Population and Environment, Vol. 12, No. 3. Spring 1991 [PDF]
[118] Perpetual Growth: The Next Dragon Facing Biology Teachers, by Garrett Hardin, National Association of Biology Teachers Address on 10 November, 1990 [PDF]
[119] From Shortage to Longage: Forty Years in the Population Vineyards, by Garrett Hardin, Population and Environment, Vol. 12, No. 3. Spring 1991 [PDF]
C. Tragedy of the Commons: Limited World, Limited Rights
43. In Tragedy of the Commons[120] Garrett Hardin refers to a Limited World, Limited Rights[121] legal dilemma in which multiple individuals, acting independently and solely and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen. Harden predicts that the tragic problem of human population growth’s overuse of the carrying capacity of the commons can only be solved with a change in human values or ideas of morality. He accuses the legal and political nanny welfare state of providing financial incentives to procreate poverty stricken voting cannonfodder for the power-greedy welfare parasite elite:“If each human family were dependent only on its own resources; if the children of improvident parents starved to death; if, thus, overbreeding brought its own “punishment” to the germ line--then there would be no public interest in controlling the breeding of families.”
Hardin also refers to Lifeboat Ethics[122] as another metaphor for the application of the logic of the commons.[123] The problem of the commons has been evaded in the exploitation of all from fisheries to rain-forests to the question of human populations. “Both require for their rational resolution a clear understanding of the concept of carrying capacity and a willingness to fashion laws that take this concept into account.”[124][120] Tragedy of the Commons, by Garret Hardin, Science, 1968 [PDF]
[121] Limited World, Limited Rights, by Garrett Hardin, 17 May/June 1980 [PDF]
[122] Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor, by Garrett Hardin [PDF]
[123] Carrying Capacity: As an Ethical Concept, by Garrett Hardin, [PDF]
[124] Ethical Implications of Carrying Capacity, by Garrett Hardin, 1977 [PDF]
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D. Overpopulation: Resources Scarcity and Resource War Violence:
44. In Environmental Change and Violent Conflict[125] Scientific American authors document how the predictions of NSSM 200 were already occurring around the world:Within the next 50 years, the human population is likely to exceed nine billion, and global economic output may quintuple. Largely as a result of these trends, scarcities of renewable resources may increase sharply. The total area of highly productive agricultural land will drop, as will the extent of forests and the number of species they sustain. Future generations will also experience the ongoing depletion and degradation of aquifers, rivers and other bodies of water, the decline of fisheries, further stratospheric ozone loss and, perhaps, significant climatic change. As such environmental problems become more severe, they may precipitate civil or international strife."
To examine whether these problems are currently causing civil or international strife, the authors assembled a team of 30 researchers to review a set of specific cases.
[Their findings were then summarized] The evidence that they gathered points to a disturbing conclusion: scarcities of renewable resources are already contributing to violent conflicts in many parts of the developing world. These conflicts may foreshadow a surge of similar violence in coming decades..."
45. Other studies on Overpopulation, Resource Scarcity and Violence include:
- The Demography of Armed Conflict, edited by CSCW researcher Henrik Urdal
- The Devil in the Demographics: The Effect of Youth Bulges on Domestic Armed Conflict, 1950-2000; Urdal, Henrik, 2004
- Population Dynamics and Local Conflict: A Cross National Study of Population and War, by Nazli Choucri, Massachusetts Institute of Technology[126]
- Population and Conflict: New Dimensions of Population Dynamics, by Nazli Choucri, United Nations Fund for Population Activities[127]
- The Security Demographic – Population and Civil Conflict After the Cold War, by Cincotta, Engelman and Anastasion, Population Action International, 2003
[125] Environmental Change and Violent Conflict, by Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, Jeffrey H. Boutwell & George W. Rathjens; Scientific American, Feb 1993 [PDF]; The Life and Death of NSSM 200 [PDF]
[126] Choucri, Nazli: Population Dynamics and Local Conflict [PDF]
[127] Choucri, Nazli: Population and Conflict: New Dimensions of Population Dynamics [PDF]
E. Demographics and Violence: Youth Bulges
46. Numerous reports provide details how population age structures have significant impacts on a countries stability, governance, economic development and social wellbeing.
Put differently, countries with large populations of idle young men, known as youth bulges, account for 70 – 90 percent of all civil conflicts. Additionally a wealth of historical studies indicates that cycles of rebellion and military campaigns in the early modern and modern world tended to coincide with periods when young adults comprised an unusually large proportion of the population. Youth Bulge Reports:[128] The Shape of Things to Come: Why Age Structure Matters to a Safer More Equitable World; by E. Leahy with R. Engelman, C. Gibb Vogel, S. Haddock and T.Preston, Population Action International [PDF]
[129] YouthQuake: Population, fertility and environment in the 21st Century, by John Guillebaud, Optimum Population Trust, 2007 [PDF]
F. Population Pressures, Resource Wars, Terrorism and National Security
47. The Kissinger Report, also known as National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications for Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests[130], commissioned by President Nixon, and undertaken by the National Security Council, the CIA, the Defense, Agriculture and State Departments, and the Agency for International Development. It was authorized into law by President Gerald Ford, in NSC, National Security Decision Memorandum 314[131] on November 26, 1975, detailing the sense of national security emergency:There is a major risk of severe damage [caused by continued rapid population growth] to world economic, political, and ecological systems and, as these systems begin to fail, to our humanitarian values [Executive Summary]. [132]
...world population growth is widely recognized within the government as a current danger of the highest magnitude calling for urgent measures [Page 194]. ...it is of the utmost urgency that governments now recognize the facts and implications of population growth, determine the ultimate population sizes that make sense for their countries and start vigorous programs at once to achieve their desired goals [Page 15].
The threat to security briefly summarized, ...population factors are indeed critical in, and often determinants of, violent conflict in developing areas. Segmental (religious, social, racial) differences, migration, rapid population growth, differential levels of knowledge and skills, rural/urban differences, population pressure and the spatial location of population in relation to resources — in this rough order of importance — all appear to be important contributions to conflict and violence... Clearly, conflicts which are regarded in primarily political terms often have demographic roots. Recognition of these relationships appears crucial to any understanding or prevention of such hostilities [Page 66].
Where population size is greater than available resources, or is expanding more rapidly than the available resources, there is a tendency toward internal disorders and violence and, sometimes, disruptive international policies or violence [Page 69].
Nightline (2000): CIA & Pentagon: Overpopulation 1/2 Nightline (2000): CIA & Pentagon: Resource Wars 2/2 |
48. Other executive actions by President Nixon included Public Law 91-213: An Act to establish a Commission on Population Growth and the American Future[133]; 91st Congress, S. 2701; March 16, 1970; and consequently Population and the American Future: The Report of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future[134]; John D. Rockefeller 3rd, March 27, 1972. In The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy[135], Dr. Stephen Mumford, details the in-depth role of the Vatican to scuttle America’s population policies. Additionally Life and Death of NSSM 200 summarizes and discusses one of the most important population documents ever written The World Population Plan of Action[136] adopted at the UN World Population Conference at Bucharest in Aug, 1974.
49. The Public Report of the Vice Presidents Task Force on Combatting Terrorism[137] concludes that a fundamental root cause of terrorism is the collision of youth bulge overpopulation with scarce, depleted and finite resources; namely too many idle young men fighting over too few and depleting resources.
50. In 2000, a Nightline documentary by Ted Koppel, detailed the CIA & Pentagon's Perspective on Overpopulation & Resource Wars; warning about future wars over water, as a result of lack of political will to address population growth factors.[130] National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications for Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests, [PDF] Pres. Nixon’s Cover Letter [PDF]
[131] National Security Council, National Security Decision Memorandum 314, Washington, DC, November 26, 1975. 4 pp. [Ch. 4: The Life and Death of NSSM 200, by S. Mumford] [PDF]
[132] National Security Study Memorandum 200: World Population Growth and U.S. Security, by Stephen D. Mumford; The Social Contract, Winter 1992 – 93 [PDF]
[133] Act to Establish a Commission on Population Growth and American Future [PDF]
[134] US Rockefeller Report: The Report Of The Commission On Population Growth: [PDF]
[135] The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy, by Stephen D. Mumford; Center for Research on Population and Security, 1996 [PDF]
[136] World Population Plan of Action was adopted at the UN World Population Conference at Bucharest in August, 1974; Appendix 1 to Life and Death of NSSM 200 [PDF]
[137] Public Report of the Vice-President’s Task Force on Combatting Terrorism, February 1986. [PDF]
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G. How and Why Journalists Avoid the Population – Environment Connection
51. In How and Why Journalists Avoid the Population-Environment Connection[138] Dr. Michael T. Maher, concludes his study as follows:“As we have seen, both land development economists and environmental experts acknowledge population growth as a key source of environmental change. But journalists frame environmental causality differently.
Why? Communication theory offers several possibilities. First is the hegemony-theory interpretation: reporters omit any implication that population growth might produce negative effects, in order to purvey the ideology of elites who make money from population growth. As Molotch and Lester (1974) put it, media content can be viewed as reflecting "the practices of those having the power to determine the experience of others" (p. 120). Since real estate, construction and banking interests directly support the media through advertising purchases, this interpretation seems plausible. A number of media critics (e.g., Gandy, 1982; Altschull, 1984; Bennett, 1988) have suggested that media messages reflect the values of powerful political and commercial interests. Burd (1972), Kaniss (1991) and others have pointed out that newspapers have traditionally promoted population growth in their cities through civic boosterism. Molotch (1976) even suggested that cities can best be understood as entities competing for population growth, with the city newspaper as chief cheerleader.
Certainly most reporters would be incensed at the suggestion that they shade their reporting to placate commercial interests. But Breed's classic study of social control in the newsroom (1955) showed that news managers' values are transmissible to journalists through a variety of pressures: salaries, story assignments, layout treatment, editing, and a variety of other strategies that effectively shape news stories in ways acceptable to management.
Another possible explanation for why journalists omit population growth from their story frame is simple ignorance of other explanations. Journalists who cover environmental issues may not be aware of any other possible ways to frame these stories, thus they derive their framing from other journalists. Journalists frequently read each other's work and take cues for coverage from other reporters, particularly from the elite media (Reese & Danielian, 1989). Perhaps the pervasive predictability of the story frames examined in Part I is another example of intermedia influence. On the other hand, it seems difficult to believe that journalists could be ignorant of the role population growth plays in environmental issues, because media coverage frequently ties population growth to housing starts and business expansion. Furthermore, "Why" is one of the five "W's" taught in every Journalism 101 course. A public affairs reporting textbook, Interpreting Public Issues (Griffin, Molen, Schoenfeld, & Scotton, 1991), admonishes journalists: "A common journalistic mistake is simply to cover events—real or staged—and ignore underlying issues" (p. 320). The book identified population trends as one of the "big trouble spots," and listed world population as the first of its "forefront issues in the '90s" (p. 320). Hence, we cannot say that reporting basic causality is beyond the role that journalists ascribe for themselves. Indeed a panel at the 1994 Society of Environmental Journalists discussed "Covering Population as a Local Story" (Wheeler, 1994). But ignorance remains a possible reason, for not all reporters have training in environmental issues.
A third possible explanation comes from the "spiral of silence" theory by German scholar Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1984):The fear of isolation seems to be the force that sets the spiral of silence in motion. To run with the pack is a relatively happy state of affairs; but if you can't, because you won't share publicly in what seems to be a universally acclaimed conviction, you can at least remain silent, as a second choice, so that others can put up with you.
According to Noelle-Neumann, “the media influence the individual perception of what can be said or done without danger of isolation”. Media coverage legitimates a given perspective. Lack of media coverage—omitting a perspective consistently from media stories—makes the expression of that perspective socially dangerous. Noelle-Neumann also suggested that the media serve an articulation function: “The media provide people with the words and phrases they can use to defend a point of view. If people find no current, frequently repeated expressions for their point of view, they lapse into silence; they become effectively mute”.
[138] How and Why Journalists Avoid the Population-Environment Connection, by T. Michael Maher, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Population and Environment, Volume 18, Number 4, March 1977. [PDF]
|| Intro || Part I || Part II || Part III || Part IV || Part V ||
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