There are many advocacy groups that have an influence on the American west and elsewhere. Each of them has its adherents and critics, and some of them actually contribute to the benefit or harm of the planet and its inhabitants. That is, at some level they are effective. Among the groups that come to (my) mind are: Sierra Club, Wise Use Movement, Smart Growth, National Rifle Association, Idaho Rivers United, The Aluminum Association, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Wyoming State Snowmobile Association, Planned Parenthood, National Right to Life Committee, Snake River Alliance and the Pacific Logging Congress. There are others too numerous to mention, and every person could easily make a different list.
I oppose the tenets of half the groups listed and am in favor of most of those of the other half, but all of them neglect what Professor Chris Rapley, Director of the British Antarctic Survey, terms the “Cinderella” issue of the environmental debate, so called because its implications are so controversial that no one is comfortable raising it. The issue is that more than 7 billion evolved descendants of gorillas who we call human beings live on planet earth; About 50 million new people arrive each year. The U.S. is the fastest growing industrialized country on earth, expanding at a rate of 58,000 additional people a week or about 3 million a year. The earth, the original mythic Garden of Eden with its finite and diminishing resources, is not expanding and cannot support this many people.
This is neither new nor difficult to access or process information. It’s just that, like sex in a Puritan society, homosexuality in a macho/red neck one, or the lies of the majority of world leaders and their corporate masters in every country in polite ones, it’s a distressing topic that raises so many other issues that it’s easier to pretend it isn’t there. This, of course, as the pop adage has it, is like ignoring the 500 pound Silverback gorilla sitting on the kitchen table.
Thomas Malthus, among the first to address the obvious, wrote in 1798, “It is an obvious truth, which has been taken notice of by many writers, that population must always be kept down to the level of the means of subsistence; but no writer that the Author recollects has inquired particularly into the means by which this level is effected: and it is a view of these means which forms, to his mind, the strongest obstacle in the way to any very great future improvement of society. He hopes it will appear that, in the discussion of this interesting subject, he is actuated solely by a love of truth, and not by any prejudices against any particular set of men, or of opinions. He professes to have read some of the speculations on the future improvement of society in a temper very different from a wish to find them visionary, but he has not acquired that command over his understanding which would enable him to believe what he wishes, without evidence, or to refuse his assent to what might be unpleasing, when accompanied with evidence.”
When Malthus wrote those words there were about one billion humans on earth, just over 5 million of them in America. In 1950 there were two and a half billion of us. In about 40 years it is expected that nine and a half billion humans will live on earth. That is several billion more than “the level of the means of subsistence.”
The phrase “Don’t Californicate Colorado” was popularized at one time by Coloradoans who got there first. Similar sentiments are expressed every day (with understandable reason) in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon and Arizona, among others. The Minuteman Project and the Yuma Patrol are civilian groups devoted to keeping Latin Americans from illegally entering the U.S. Such “gated” community/state/nation solutions to over population cannot and do not work.
Rapley estimates that over the long haul the earth can reasonably support between 2 and 3 billion people at what he calls “a good standard of living.” He means that the 500 pound Silverback gorilla really weighs 1500 pounds and is moving down the table to see if there’s any food at the other end. All the sound and fury of the advocacy and activist groups mentioned are the sounds of the table breaking.
Meanwhile, as mentioned, 76 million new people arrive at the breaking breakfast table every year.