[This was posted today to PHYSOC, the listserv on physics education and
societal issues. Art Hobson is the originator. To subscribe, write Art at
<ahobson@uark.edu> . - Jane Jackson)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 20:58:27 -0600
From: Albert Bartlett <Albert.Bartlett@COLORADO.EDU>
Subject: Re: President's Council on Sustainable Development
I met with the Executive Director of the President's Council [on
Sustainable Development] on one
occasion, and I have had a couple of contacts inside the Council and the
Task Force on Population and Consumption. The downplaying of the importance
of population growth within the Council is most distressing. The Task Force
Report is straightforward but elusive. Their public policy recommendations
(Pg. iv) include
* public health outreach on contraception,
* increased education for adolescents,
* work in a public-private partnership to reduce poverty and to produce
* greater opportunities for all, especially women,
* "Develop immigration and foreign policies that reduce illegal immigration,
while researching the links between demographic change and sustainable
development." and
* "A national commission should report on changes in the national population
distribution that affect sustainable development prospects."
Notice how exquisitely they dance around the clear problem of too many
people. There is not much need to "research the links between demographic
change and sustainable development" when it is pretty clear that in today's
world, population growth is the principal thing that stands in the way of
sustainable development.
In the Task Force report they deal with unwanted pregnancies and then say
(Pg.8) that "Whereas natural increase supplies two-thirds of U.S. population
growth annually, one-third comes from immigration." The facts are that if
you include the births to immigrants, (these children would not have been
born here except for the fact that their parents immigrated) the
contribution to population growth in the U.S. is two-thirds due to
immigration, and one-third to the excess of births over deaths. This is
just the reverse of what is quoted in the report. And most of the
immigration is legal.
Population growth is central to our present national unsustainability.
Population growth has two components, excess births and immigration. The
Task Force stressed the excess births and downplayed immigration. When
their report went to the Council, I am told that the Council did not want to
have population growth as any part of the final report, but that one person
of prominence on the Council insisted that it had to be there. So,
apparently reluctantly, they made stopping population growth their eighth
out of ten recommendations.
They totally ignore the First Law of Sustainability:
Population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption of resources
cannot be sustained. (This is from my 1994 paper on sustainability.)
This downplaying of population growth as a problem developed at about the
same time as the organization Zero Population Growth changed their stated
published goal from zero population growth to "slow population growth and
sustainability." Note that slow population growth can't be sustained. This
also is discussed in my paper "Marginalizing Malthus." I simply resigned
from the organization ZPG because this change in goals was intellectually
dishonest. It was not discussed with their citizens' advisory board, of
which I was a member, nor with the membership. After the Board of Directors
of ZPG made the change, there was no announcement to the public or to the
membership that the change had been made. They just changed the fine print
in the masthead of their newsletter, and it was several issues after the
change before I chanced to read the fine print and notice what had happened.
I then wrote a long letter to the Chair of the Board of ZPG protesting
1) the false advertising: ZPG advocates slow population growth
2) the internal conflict: you can't sustain slow population growth
3) and the fact that they used to say the goal was zpg in the U.S. and the
world, and in the new statement, they only say in the world.
The chair of the Board wrote a long reply, which was very disappointing, so
I resigned from ZPG.
I have no idea of the motivations that caused ZPG to make these changes, but
they took place at about the same time as the Task Force on Population and
Consumption was developing its watered-down recommendations. Some of the
same people were involved in ZPG and in the Task Force.
If you want an honest group that deals with population, try Negative
Population Growth at NPG.ORG They have the best set of monographs on
population of any group I know.
The great disappointment to me is that scientists almost universally
downplay or ignore the central role that stabilizing population has to play
in any efforts to achieve sustainability. There are a few scientists who
speak out about this, but I don't have to take off my shoes and stockings to
count them. Garrett Hardin and David Pimentel are prominent among these.
So we see people talking sustainability earnestly and extensively, without
putting population stabilization at the top of the requirements. Population
stabilization is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for
sustainability. As long as scientists and others continue to ignore this
simple fact, we will continue to make things worse. People will assume that
population growth is no problem if scientists fail to point this out.
I can send copies of my papers on sustainability, and on marginalizing
Malthus to any who are interested. I also have a paper showing how
planning, as practiced in the U.S. is designed to make problems worse, and a
paper showing how democracy can't survive overpopulation. I can send copies
of all of these.
Thanks and best wishes to all.
Sincerely,
AL
ALBERT ALLEN BARTLETT
Professor Emeritus of Physics
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, Colorado, 80309-0390
E-Mail: Albert.Bartlett@Colorado.EDU
THOUGHTS TO REMEMBER
Every increment of added population, and
every added increment of affluence
invariably destroys an increment
of the remaining environment.
Population growth and increases in affluence
make it impossible for reasonable increments
of improved efficiency in the use of resources
to enhance or even to preserve the environment.
You cannot preserve the environment
by accepting the population growth
and the increased affluence
that are destroying the environment.
*******************************
Jane Jackson, Co-Director, Modeling Instruction Program
Box 871504, Dept.of Physics & Astronomy,ASU,Tempe,AZ 85287
480-965-8438/fax:965-7331 <http://modeling.asu.edu>