www.RogerWendell.com
Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic Evolution^SM

Are you a Populationist??

In September, 2008 I had the pleasure of conducting a radio interview with author Edward C. Hartman about his book The Population Fix (Breaking America's Addiciton to Population Growth). Mr. Hartman suggested that although there are no hard and fast definitions for the word "populationist," it is an umbrella term for people with concerns about population issues in general. And, although populationists can have all kind of opinions and concerns, there's general agreement that America's (and the world's) population needs to be either stabilized or reduced. Populationists can think of all kinds of ways in achieving these goals with some options including the improvement of education and/or governance in developing countries, increasing family planning funding domestically and/or internationally, and reforming immigration policies here in America. Either way, our country and planet are in deep trouble so I hope you, too, will consider yourself a "Populationist" as I have for myself! - Roger J. Wendell Golden, Colorado - fall 2008

Click Here for the VHEMT YouTube "Fertco" baby factory video...

The United States is the THIRD most populated country on Earth [Ed. note: The U.S. hit the unconscionable/unsustainable population mark of 300,000,000 in 2006...] with most of its growth coming from immigration! However, I can't blame immigrants (illegal or otherwise) for wanting to come and make a living for themselves and their families. Nevertheless, U.S. population is out of control and is taking its toll on the rest of the planet. The burgeoning population of our country, and that of other countries around the planet, is the biggest threat against the environment, freedom, and everything we hold dear. - Roger J. Wendell, spring 1999

THE GREAT CHALLENGE:

Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?

        - Dr. Albert A. Bartlett: January 8, 1996
          Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Colorado at Boulder
          (In 1998 I had the good fortune of interviewing Dr. Bartlett on my radio program in Boulder)

Click Here for Dr. Bartlett's population page...

• Asimov:

  "In the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation.  Human dignity cannot survive it.   Convenience and decency cannot survive it.  As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears.  It doesn't matter if someone dies.  The more people there are, the less one individual matters."
  - Isaac Asimov from page 276 of Bill Moyers' book, A World of Ideas

• Brower:

  Population is pollution spelled inside out.

  - David Brower, 1971

• Finley:

  "The underlying problem is not so much how we live; it is that there are so many of us."
  - Russ Finley in his book,
  Poison Darts (Protecting the biodiversity of our world) p. IX

• Goodall:

  "...a million wetland rice farmers in Bangladesh, china, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam changed their farming methods to nonchemical sustainable agriculture, and increased their yields by about 10 percent.
  But there is a danger here. Increased food yield must be balanced by an optimization of the population in a given area. However carefully farmed, no land can produce enough food, by any method whatsoever, to keep pace with human population growth as it exists today in many parts of the world. When the number of people living in a given area is too great for the carrying capacity of that area they will try to move to new places. In many cases this is already impossible - there are simply too many people."

  "If we do not impose limits on our population growth, life as we know it, on this planet, will no longer be possible. Even if we could, theoretically, feed many more times the number of people than those on the planet today, how many of us would like to live on a planet where villages, towns, and cities meet and merge in one great urban sprawl across the face of the globe?"

  - Jane Goodall in her book,
  Harvest For Hope pp. 210-211

• Lamm:

  "Do we really want to live in a country with the population of India or China?"
  - Former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm
  on Peter Boyles' KHOW radio talkshow, 02/01/2000

• Kunstler:

  "So, I hazard to assert that as oil ceases to be cheap and the world rserves are toward depletion, we will indeed suddenly be left with an enormous surplus population - with apologies to both Charles Dickens and Jonathan Swift - that the ecology of the earth will not support."
  - James Howard Kunstler in his novel,
  The Long Emergency (Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and
  Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century)

• McPherson:

  "...basically I think that we - humans I mean - are destroying the planet, and the more of us there are, the quicker the destruction is taking place."
  - Colin Macpherson in his novel,
  The Tide Turners

• Naess:

  "In deep ecology, we have the goal not only of stabilizing human population but also of reducing it to a sustainable minimum without revolution or dictatorship.  I should think we must have no more than 100 million people if we are to have the variety of cultures we had one hundred years ago."
  - Arne Naess, (founder of Deep Ecology,
  as quoted from a Los Angeles Zen center interview in April, 1982

• Nixon:

  "One of the most serious challenges to human destiny in the last third of this century will be the growth of the population.  Whether man's response to that challenge will be a cause for pride or for despair in the year 2000 will depend very much on what we do today.  If we now begin our work in an appropriate manner, and if we continue to devote a considerable amount of attention and energy to this problem, then mankind will be able to surmount this challenge as it has surmounted so many during the long march of civilization."
  - Former President Richard M. Nixon, 07/18/1969

• U.S. Government:

  "...in the long run, no substantial benefits will result from further growth of the Nation's population..."
  - Commission on Population Growth and the American Future
  in its 1972 Letter of Transmittal to the Presdient and Congress.

• Edward O. Wilson:

  "Human beings - mammals of the 50-kilogram weight class and members of a group, the primates, otherwise noted for scarcity - have become a hundred times more numerous than any other land animal of comparable size in the history of life. By every conceivable measure, humanity is ecologically abnormal. Our species appropriates between 20 and 40 percent of the solar energy captured in organic material by land plats. There is no way that we can draw upon the resources of the planet to such a degree without drastically reducing the state of most other species."
  - Edward O. Wilson
  The Diveristy of Life, p. 272

Immigration:

"Our immigration debate misses the point: It's not about race, but the sheer number of new Americans. Sprawl, the loss of open space, challenges to water resources, all these are aggravated by the million new arrivals who become legal permanent residents each year."

Fertility:

According to the Census Bureau, U.S. population will double within the lifetimes of children living today [circa 2000]. About 90% of this doubling will be due to mass immigration. This doubling is attributed to recent immigrants and their descendents. Native born fertility rates are at near replacement levels, however, the fertility rates of recent immigrants is considerably higher. As a result, both fertility and immigration numbers need to be addressed in order to achieve population stabilization in the United States (The world's third most populated country!).

Birth Control:

"What I hope you will discover in reading this book is that the pro-life movement is really no longer the anti-abortion movement, if it ever was. Its agenda has lately become much broader, and to the average American it will appear much more sinister. In recent years it has turned itself into the anti-birth control movement, the anti-sex movement and, indeed, the anti-modern family movement - whether it avows this or not. These transformations have been largely hidden from view, since the national focus is almost always on abortion - and the pro-life movement, so adept at controlling the rhetoric and symbols of this debate, certainly prefers that. Yet the pro-life movement is almost diametrically opposed to some of the foundations of contemporary life."

"You'd think that people who are profoundly and sincerely against abortion would do everything in their power, including promoting birth control, to prevent unwanted pregnancies. But there is not one pro-life group in the United States that support the use of birth control. Shouldn't the American people, pro-lifers included, wonder why, if a group's aim is to end abortion, spreading the contraceptive message isn't a central part of its mission?"

Carrying Capacity

d = death rate        b = birthrate

"Resources for a population are finite. Examples of resources are food, water, shelter, and habitat. As a population grows it contains more individuals that in turn use more resources. As fewer resources become available the number of births in a population usually decreases and the number of deaths eventually must increase, which slows population growth and eventually decreases population. The point at which birthrates balance death rates is called the carrying capacity or K. Before K there are plenty of resources, births exceed deaths and the population grows. After K there is overcrowding and limited resources, deaths exceed births and the population decreases. At K birth rates and death rates are equal and the population is at equilibrium with its resources, assuming that there are no deaths due to predation or disease." Dr. C.N. Slobodchikoff, Prairie Dogs (Communication and Community in an Animal Society) pp. 96-07

Dr. Alan Kuper

Me and Dr. Kuper, September '05

Dr. Alan Kuper, of Cleveland, passed away at the age of 84 in December, 2008. Dr.Kuper was the founder of CUSP (Comprehensive US Sustainable Population) and worked tirelessly to reverse America's out-of-control population problem. In addition to appearing on my radio show, I had the pleasure of working with him (albeit briefly) at a large Sierra Club gathering in San Francisco (see photo at left) in addition to some interesting email exchanges. We need more activists like Dr. Kuper - he'll be missed by anyone concerned about the huge impact overpopulation is having on our quality of life... - Roger J. Wendell, December 2008

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