Vol. 3 No. 4 (August 2004)
Uncommon Denominator
The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org
"It should be
the open and universal demand of the American people that those who represent
us shall place the relations we sustain to other nations permanently on the
same plane of frank honesty, generally prevailing among individuals ."
-- Edward Griggs, The Soul of Democracy (1918)
CONTENTS
Talking
Points: Gone forth and multiplied
Wit and Wisdom:
Teenagers....or Al Qaeda?
Dispatches:
Bilingualism in
Featured
Article: John Carey on global warming
Check It
Out: Bring out your votes
Quoted! Porter
Goss on his qualifications
Happenings:
Still talking politics
Endorsements:
Nancy Pelosi
Get
Involved: Spread the word; become a contributor
TALKING POINTS
It didn't take the Biblical injunction to "Be fruitful and multiply; fill
the earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28), for humankind to go about the
task of filling and subduing the earth. It did take a few centuries, however,
before some people began wondering about the implications of doing so.
In his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population, the British
political economist Thomas Malthus argued that the future rate
of human population growth would increase exponentially while the rate of
agricultural food production could only increase geometrically. The result, he
predicted, would be an inexorable divergence between population and resources,
entailing an inevitable train of grim consequences: poverty, famine, war,
misery. The theory underlying this depressing scenario has been frequently
challenged over the years, but its haunting power and intuitive plausibility
suggest that Malthus was not completely off the mark.
Certainly, the implications of population growth exerted a strong influence on
the nineteenth-century imagination. Debates about national identity, slavery,
westward expansion, urbanization, evolution, and even the possibility of space
exploration, were all inflected by theories of human "increase."
In his "Thanksgiving discourse" on the U.S. census of 1860, for
instance, the American minister Horace Bushnell noted that the
American population had grown six-fold since 1790 and estimated that the 1950
census might count as many as 400 million people: "Are we thus to rush up,
in a tide, upon the great dike of Mr. Malthus, the dike of starvation, and so
come to our limit?" Although he argued that an educated and independent
people would never let that happen, Bushnell did stress the fundamental social
changes wrought by population growth. "A people greatly increased by
numbers is not that same people, simply magnified. They become inevitably
another people, in many respects. They pass into migrations, change their modes
of culture and production, their polity, policy, character, public bearing, and
the whole tenor, in fact, of their history."
Perhaps this change would really be one of forward evolution. In his 1859 Origin
of Species, Charles Darwin suggested that competition for
scarce resources creates a natural limit to population growth and a selection
mechanism for the more fit members of a species. In 1876,
But others, of a less empirical cast of mind, wondered whether there might not
exist intriguing safety valves for excess population. The eccentric reverend C.
L. Hequembourg, for instance, in his Plan of the Creation
(1859) speculated that "the earth may not be spacious enough, under its
present laws of reproduction, to contain its future and long-lived populations.
In such an event, the families of man may be outspread over the other members
of our solar system."
Fast forward to the twentieth century, with its countless science fictions
exploring such themes and possibilities. There's no end of fantastic scenarios,
to be sure, but where there's smoke we should look for fire. The crowded filthy
industrial megalopolis of film, with its Malthusian herds lined up for the next
shuttle to the Jupiter colony, is not that far removed, when you think about
it, from New York, Mexico City, Bombay, or Jakarta. The only things missing are
the colony and the shuttle.
The statistics of human population growth are sobering.
"Although the human species emerged perhaps 150,000 years ago, most of its
growth in numbers has occurred in the last 40 years," observes Michael
Teitelbaum in "The Population Threat" (Foreign Affairs,
Winter 1992/93). "It took scores of millennia to reach the first billion
humans, around 1800; over a century to reach the second billion, somewhere
between 1918 and 1927; about 33 years to the third billion, around 1960; only
14 years to the fourth billion in 1974; and 13 years to the fifth in
1987."
In 1999, the 6 billion milestone was reached, and the current figure is 6.4
billion people, with an average yearly global growth rate of 1.14 percent. By
2050, industrialized nations are projected to increase their population by
about 4 percent, compared to 55 percent for developing countries, especially
those in Asia and sub-Saharan
Humanity appears to have already exceeded the carrying capacity of our
planet, if one looks at the effect of both population and resource consumption
combined. The concept of the "Ecological Footprint" is
instructive. According to Redefining
Progress, the Ecological Footprint "represents a quantitative
assessment of the biologically productive area (the amount of nature) required
to produce the resources (food, energy, and materials) and to absorb the wastes
of an individual, city, region, or country&..[T]he footprint (i.e., a
measure of human consumption), can exceed the planet's ecological
limits, but only for a limited time, by using resources more quickly than they
can be renewed&.[B]etween 1960 and 2000 the combined Ecological Footprint of
nations steadily increased to what appears to be an unsustainable level in the
1970s. Much of this growth has been due to the increase in human population and
the concomitant demand on natural resources." The footprint of the
Other species, during periods of successful expansion, can achieve or even far
exceed similar growth rates, but what distinguishes human beings is a
remarkable (if too often unfulfilled) capacity for forethought -- and a
tendency to consume more resources than we need. We need to ask, then,
where all this is heading, whether anything can be or should be done, and if
so, what the possible approaches are. Not to do so is to fall short of
our tremendous potential.
So what are the threats posed by overpopulation or excessive
population growth? Answers to that question are not far to seek. A strain on
natural resources such as wood, earth, water, and food. Conflicts and social
instability produced by competition for those resources. Dangerous levels of
pollution and garbage. Widespread extinctions of other species. Transnational
migrations of poor or starving people. Underlying all of these, as Bushnell
suggested, are the subtle, and not so pleasant changes, to the character of a
society, whether it is on the "winning" or "losing" end of
the struggle. All of our debates about population growth need to be understood
in that context.
Optimists do exist, however, and their arguments usually rely on the premise
that the human capacity for resource production will outdistance
resource depletion. Sheldon Richman, Senior Editor at the Cato Institute, told
Congress in 1995, "people are not problems; they're problem solvers,"
and asserted that this problem-solving should involve free-market solutions and
economic development rather than government intervention. (Read Richman's full
testimony here). More recently, Vaclav Smil, in Feeding the World: A
Challenge for the Twenty-First Century (2000), has argued that if we take
advantage of our technology and scientific know-how, it would be possible to
feed 10 billion people, which he takes as a levelling-off point for the global
population.
But why should we expect the global population to stop growing at 10 billion?
And why should we expect the problem of feeding more people to be the only or
even the most important challenge? Since humanity's impact is a combination of
absolute numbers and lifestyle, shouldn't we be looking at both? Isn't it
better to get ahead of these issues, and take the vital steps now rather than
later? And why think that population stabilization needs to take some dark form
of government "intrusion" into reproductive freedom?
That mis-characterization is just one of a number of obstacles to developing
effective policies for population stabilization. Others include religious
prohibitions against contraception and women's rights; charges of racism (given
the lower growth rates in Western countries); the economic importance of
children in agricultural or developing societies; and the simple fact that
people are hard-wired to make more of their own kind.
What we have is the familiar, and too often predictable, clash between
short-term needs or desires and long-term thinking. It is also an example of
the "tragedy of the commons," a concept describing the conflict
between individual and communal interests. The idea is that if every individual
serves his own needs (such as taking more than his share of the common land, or
having 10 kids rather than 2), the collective result is not that every
individual benefits, but that everybody ultimately loses.
The problem of excessive population growth is a real and very difficult
problem, and it is deeply linked to questions of economics, environment,
religion, and psychology. Effective policy approaches, therefore, need
to be broadly and carefully conceived. Among the most important:
Access to family planning information and resources.
The
Economic assistance. A strong correlation also exists between the
economic health of a country and its ability to reach a sustainable population
growth rate. Intelligent economic assistance does not mean "throwing
money" at the problem, but managing the aid in such a way that it
contributes significantly to a society's infrastructural, educational, and
institutional strength.
Reduced resource consumption. The industrialized democracies, which
consume far more than the rest of the world combined, must do several things.
First, in the words of Lester Brown, founder of the World Watch Institute , develop
a "comprehensive reuse/recycle economy" rather than our current
"throw-away economy." Second, accept the possibility that our current
standard of living may need to be lowered. Third, develop cleaner, more
efficient technologies. Fourth, encourage the adoption of these technologies by
developing nations.
More enlightened attitudes toward life. For their own good if nothing
else, people should recognize that human beings exist in a complex web of
interdependence with other people and other species on this planet, and that we
have a moral imperative not to grab more than our share or to live
parasitically. A respect for life means a commitment not just to the quantity
but to the quality of life, and a commitment not just to human life, but to all
life.
These approaches would
represent vital steps toward a livable and sustainable future for humankind and
our fellow species. What is important to recognize, moreover, is that these
policies are good and worthy whether or not they help to reduce or stabilize
the global population growth rate. Standing in their way are inertia,
ideology, denial, ignorance, and self-interest. But -- and here's the real
optimism -- we as individuals are also able to come together with others to
discuss and take action. As a topic of public conversation, it is time we
address what we want the future of our world to be, and how to make that vision
a reality.
We need to take our heads out of the sand and get our act together -- lest we
discover that by going forth and multiplying so successfully, we have lost our
granted
WIT AND WISDOM
Local Sheriff Suspects Al-Qaeda or Teens
"
-- from The Onion. Read more.
"Every time you look at the world and life and humanity through the key, which is language, you discover another profile, another vision of the same world & So, learning another language makes you bigger, gives you a wider vision, makes you feel subtleties that you don't get in one language." -- Antonine Maillet
On July 6,
This amusing anecdote conveys more, of course, than the tribulations of a
French-speaking man and his French-obeying hound. As both
Another anecdote, also from July, is somewhat less amusing. A union of workers
at the
In
In the 1960s, a revolution found political expression in
But persistent, difficult questions remained, and in 1965-66, at the
Eventually, the Commission decided that the French and the English constituted
the two founding nations and made these the two official languages, but it
thereby gave its stamp to an inaccurate and unfair notion of
Nevertheless, official bilingualism and biculturalism have broadened to
encompass a larger principle: appreciation of and respect for multiculturalism
(even though it's not always so clear how to translate this principle into
action). A February 2004 Environics poll, undertaken for the Centre for Research and Information on Canada
(CRIC) found that English-speaking Canadians outside
It appears that bilingualism and, increasingly, an acceptance of ethnic and
linguistic diversity, have become a point of Canadian national pride.
For decades, staid Canadians have secretly envied the overflowing expression of
American patriotism, especially when great Canadian opinion leaders such as
Marshall McLuhan opine: "
The
-- J. Lindsay Kellock
"Taking action
brings a host of ancillary benefits. The main way to cut greenhouse-gas
emissions is simply to burn less fossil fuel. Making cars and factories more
energy-efficient and using alternative sources would make
"For businesses, [global warming] presents threats -- and opportunities.
Insurers may face more floods, storms, and other disasters. Farmers must adjust
crops to changing climates. Companies that pioneer low-emission cars, clean
coal-burning technology, and hardier crop plants -- or find cheap ways to slash
emissions -- will take over from those that can't move as fast."
Click here to read the whole article.
CHECK IT OUT
If you're worried by low levels of voter turnout and want to do something about
it, take a look at Votestar.org, a
non-profit group calling for "flash mobs" of people to get the word
out -- and the art out -- about the importance of voting. On Sept. 1, Oct. 1,
and Nov. 1-2, they want progressives to get out there in the streets and
display the word "Vote" in one way or another.
Their call-to-arms: "The Rush Hour VOTE Show is a nationwide series of
'flash mobs' plastering VOTE every way we can think of, launching during the
RNC Convention and culminating the eve of the 2004 election -- right through
the close of polls November 2nd. So grab your cohorts and spread the action.
Just show VOTE publicly at rush hour the first of each month, whether you paint
it or print it, wear it or hang it."
You can download "Vote" art from their website, as well as submit
your own contributions. Check it out.
QUOTED!
"I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified." -- Rep. Porter
Goss (R-Fla.), President Bush's nominee for Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
Goss made the comment during a March 3, 2004, interview with Michael Moore for
the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11." This revealing portion of the interview
was not included in the film, but can be seen on Moore's website.
HAPPENINGS
On July 31 and Aug. 21, Dr. Katherine Forrest delivered the Talking
Politics with People Unlike Ourselves workshop to overflow crowds in
In response to a number of requests from across the country for these workshops
and printed materials, the Commonweal Institute is creating a user-friendly,
self-instructional Talking Politics manual, which we expect to have
ready for release by mid-September. For more information, please the
Commonweal Institute website. Donations to support creation and publication
of the manual would be much appreciated.
ENDORSEMENTS
"In these challenging times, we need an advocacy think tank like
Commonweal Institute to communicate our principles and programs in ways that
will resonate with the broad public and empower citizens to take a more active
role in our democracy. Commonweal takes a strategic approach to advancing
issues in a way that will help decision-makers be proactive in confronting the
challenges of the future." -- Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-San
Francisco, 8th CD-CA, Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives
GET INVOLVED
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© 2004 The Commonweal Institute
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