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The Environmental Movement's Retreat from Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization (1970–1998): A First Draft of History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Roy Beck
Affiliation:
Arlington, Virginia
Leon Kolankiewicz
Affiliation:
Arlington, Virginia

Extract

The years surrounding 1970 marked the coming of age of the modern environmental movement. As that movement enters its fourth decade, perhaps the most striking change is the virtual abandonment by national environ-mental groups of U.S. population stabilization as an actively pursued goal.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2000

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References

Notes

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8. PL 91-190; 83 Stat. 852, 42 U.S.C. 4321.

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11. Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, Population and the American Future (Washington, D.C., 1972).Google Scholar Excerpt above from transmittal letter.

12. Sierra Club Board of Directors policy adopted, 3-4 May 1969.

13. Resolution sponsored and circulated by ZPG; adopted by the Sierra Club on 4 June 1970.

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21. Ibid.

22. In 1970, the “black and other” Total Fertility Rate (TFR) was 3.0 (National Center for Health Statistics, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 [1976]). By 1997, black fertility had fallen to 2.2, slightly above the general population's replacement rate of 2.1. Overall Hispanic fertility even in 1997 stood at 3.0, well above replacement level. That of Mexican-born women residing in the U.S. was 3.3 (National Center for Health Statistics. 1999. National Vital Statistics Report, vol. 47, no. 18)—actually higher than the fertility rate of women in Mexico itself (2.9 in 1998 according to the U.S. Census Bureau at http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbsum).

23. See note 11 above, pp. 72-73.

24. See note 11 above, p. 72.

25. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the TFR of non-Hispanic white females was 1.8 in 1997 (compared to 2.1 for replacement level). Using Census Bureau data, it can be calculated that in 1970, non-Hispanic whites comprised 83 percent of the U.S. population and accounted for approximately 78 percent of the births. By 1994, non-Hispanic whites comprised 74 percent of the population and accounted for 60 percent of the births. With immigration included (approximately 90 percent of which originates from non-European sources), the non-Hispanic white share of current population growth drops well below 50 percent. According to medium projections of the Census Bureau and the National Re-search Council of the National Academy of Sciences, non-Hispanic whites will account for 6 percent of the nation's population growth between 1995 and 2050, blacks for 18 percent, Asians for 20 percent, and Hispanics for 54 percent (Smith, James P. and Edmonston, Barry, eds., The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration [Washington, D.C., 1997], table 3.7.)Google Scholar By 2050, non-Hispanic whites are projected to have declined to 51 percent of the U.S. population from 87 percent in 1950 (table 3.10, The New Americans).

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35. Celia Evans Miller and Cynthia P. Green, “A U.S. Population Policy: ZPG's Recommendations.” Zero Population Growth policy paper, 1976.

36. Alan Kuper, “ZPG or ZCG?” E-mail to list, 10 April 1999. Kuper, a long-time Sierra member and one of the population activists who spearheaded the 1998 referendum, pointed out that seven out of ten questions on ZPG's latest Earth Day quiz related to consumption. “Based on what I have, I'd say ZPG is promoting in classrooms across the US, reduction in consumption more than reduction in numbers.”

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44. A 1998 fundraising letter from PEG claimed that “Sierra grassroots leaders told us that ‘The Sierra Club would not have won this vote without PEG,’” an assessment that PEG's adversaries would probably agree is not far off the mark.

45. Brad Erickson, personal interview, May 1998.

46. See note 40 above.

47. Camarota, Steven A., “Immigrants in the United States—1998: A Snapshot of America's Foreign-born Population,” Backgrounder (Washington, D.C., 1999).Google Scholar

48. Poster Project for a Sustainable U.S. Environment, 1998. Based on Census Bureau data.

49. Jacoby, Susan, “Anti-Immigration Campaign Begun,” Washington Post, 8 May 1977.Google Scholar

50. Sierra Club Board of Directors, “U.S. Population Policy and Immigration.” Adopted 6-7 May 1978.

51. Sierra Club Population Report (Spring 1989).

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57. Carl Pope, on-line post to Sierra members, 1997.

58. Club leaders appeared unaware of or unimpressed by the numerous surveys over the years which have indicated that majorities of most minorities favor reduced immigration levels. For instance, in a February 1996 Roper poll, 73 percent of blacks and 52 percent of Hispanics favored cutting immigration to 300,000 or fewer annually. The 1993 Latino National Political Survey, largest ever done of this ethnic group in the United States, found that 7 in 10 Latino respondents—higher than the percentage of “Anglos”—thought there were “too many immigrants.” A Hispanic USA Research Group poll (1993) found that three-quarters of Hispanics believed fewer immigrants should be admitted. A majority of Asian-American voters in California cast ballots in favor of Proposition 187 in 1994. Findings such as these should have allayed the Club leadership's ostensible fears that even a principled stand against (what Club icon David Brower termed) “overimmigration” strictly on environmental grounds would spark a minority backlash. But they did not. It may well be that the Club establishment cared more about the opinions of minority elites and self-appointed “leaders” than they did about rank-and-file minority opinion.

59. See note 37 above.

60. Personal communication from an individual present at the conference, 1999.

61. DuBose, Georgia C., “ZPG official says law, local action can cut population.” The Journal (Martinsburg, W.Va.), 29 March 1998.Google Scholar

62. Peter Kostmayer, letter to ZPG member, 30 March 1998.

63. A prime example of this global view is Al Gore's 1992 book Eartk in the Balance (Boston, 1992).Google Scholar In 1998 Vice-President Gore again explicitly linked population growth to global issues when he touted increased family-planning support as one means of combating global warming.

64. Carl Pope, post to on-line Sierra Club population forum, 16 December 1997.

65. Brock Evans, “The Sierra Club Ballot Referendum on Immigration, Population, and the Environment.” Focus 8.1 (1998). Evans is the executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition, and a former vice-president for National Issues of the National Audubon Society, associate executive director of the Sierra Club, 1981 recipient of the Club's highest honor (the John Muir Award), and a 1984 candidate for Congress from the state of Washington.

66. Pope, Carl, “Think Globally, Act Sensibly—Immigration is not the problem.” Asian Week (San Francisco), 2 April 1998.Google Scholar The irony of using the Titanic analogy to represent over-population and immigration is that if the HMS Titanic's bulkheads had been sealed and reached all the way up (a standard feature in ships nowadays) instead of just part way, the ship might have been saved from sinking because in-rushing ocean water would have been confined to several compartments instead of spilling over the top of each bulkhead into subsequent ones. (The Titanic could flood four compartments and still float. It breached five.) Thus, the oppo-site conclusion can be drawn from this maritime tragedy, namely, that barriers between distinct nation-states may well be essential to preventing one country's failure to address over-population from becoming the whole world's failure. Economist and philosopher Kenneth Boulding (author of “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth”), in another of his insightful essays, wrote that what really disturbed him was the possibility of converting the world from a place of many experiments into one giant, global experiment.

67. Hanauer, Michael, “Why Domestic Environmental Organizations Won't Visibly Advocate Domestic Population Stabilization,” draft of unpublished manuscript, 1999.Google Scholar

68. See note 43.

69. See note 67 above.

70. See note 67 above.

71. Beck, Roy, “Sorting Through Humanitarian Clashes in Immigration Policy,” paper presented at the Annual National Conference on Applied Ethics, California State University at Long Beach, 1997.Google Scholar

72. For more detailed descriptions and critiques of corporate globalism, see Sir Goldsmith, James, “Global Free Trade and GATT,” Focus 5.1 (1995)Google Scholar , excerpted from his book Le Piege; Daly, Herman E., “Against Free Trade and Economic Orthodoxy,” The Oxford International Review (Summer 1995)Google Scholar ; idem, “Globalism, Internationalism, and National Defense,” Focus 9.1 (1999); Mander, Jerry and Goldsmith, Edward, eds., The Cose Against the Global Economy: And for a Turn Toward the Local (San Francisco, 1997)Google Scholar ; and Korten, David, When Corporations Rule the World (West Hartford, Conn., and San Francisco, 1995)Google Scholar.

73. In a 1998 post to the on-line Sierra Club population forum, Executive Director Carl Pope cited a hypothetical example of 100,000 peasants moving from the Guatemalan high-lands to the Peten rainforest (also in Guatemala) versus their moving to Los Angeles, and concluded that the former was worse for the global environment. Similarly, environmental filmmaker and author Tobias, Michael (World War HI: Population and the Biosphere at the Millennium [Santa Fe, 1994])Google Scholar , when questioned after a 1994 Los Angeles speech on overpopulation, said he would favor relocating people from rapidly-growing tropical countries with high and threatened biodiversity to countries like the United States with less biodiversity, although he admitted this idea was “quixotic.”

74. ZPG Reporter, February 1998.

75. Branigin, William, “Sierra Club Votes for Neutrality on Immigration: Population Issue ‘Intensely Debated,’” Washington Post, 26 April 1998Google Scholar ; Cushman, John H. Jr, “Sierra Club Rejects Move to Oppose Immigration,” New York Times, 26 April 1998Google Scholar.

76. Quinn, Daniel and Thornhill, Alan D., “Food Production and Population Growth,” video documentary supported by the Foundation for Contemporary Theology (Houston, 1998).Google Scholar

77. Kennan, George F., Around the Grogged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy (New York, 1993).Google Scholar

78. Cushman, John H. Jr, “An Uncomfortable Debate Fuels a Sierra Club Election,” New York Times, 5 April 1998.Google Scholar

79. Zuckerman, Ben, “Will the Sierra Club Be Hurt If the Ballot Question Passes?” in Population and the Sierra Club: A Discussion of Issues About the Upcoming Referendum, ed. Kuper, Alan, Schneider, Dick, and Zuckerman, Ben (1998)Google Scholar , 8-page discussion paper distributed by Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization.

80. Santos Gomez, op-ed in San Francisco Chronicle, 17 November 1998.

81. Home Builders Association of Northern California, “Behind the Sierra Club Vote on Curbing Immigration: Do Environmentalists Risk Alienating the Fastest-growing Ethnic Group in California?HBA News 21.1 (February 1998).Google Scholar

82. Rochester, N.Y., Resources for Global Sustainability.

83. Hardin, Garrett, Living Within Limits (New York, 1993).Google Scholar

84. Gleckman, Howard, “A Rich Stew in the Melting Pot,” Business Week, 31 August 1998.Google Scholar

85. Alan Kuper, personal communication based on meeting with Sierra Club executive director, 1998.

86. See note 81 above.

87. Mazur, Laurie Ann, ed., Beyond the Numbers: A Reader on Population, Consumption, and the Environment (Washington, D.C., 1994).Google Scholar

88. Mark Krikorian, personal communication, 1999.