I have authored about 15 books to date, but none has received the attention of my Move Upstream, A Call to Solve Overpopulation book. This 104-page primer to the solvable, albeit tortured problem of the burden of human numbers was published by the good folks at Freethought House Press in 2015. I am one lucky author. How many authors/activists get offers to have their book sent out to those who need to wake up on this issue? Well, I have had two, totaling $13,000.00. Two concerned citizens were willing to donate to the task of sending my book out to CEOs of NGOs and news organizations so that they would start working on spreading the word about the problem we have collectively ignored for a dangerously long period of time.
This is not a thank you note to them, however. Indeed, I am eternally grateful for the way my book inspired their willingness to open their wallets. But as an activist I have to ask myself, would this action really work? How and who would do the legwork to mail out the book and how would we keep track of the efficacy of this effort? Population groups are the only ones willing to do it and yet with their small staffs and tight work schedules this becomes problematic, besides where is the guarantee that they will read it? Who reads the books they order themselves let alone an unsolicited one? This then begs the question, if you had a significant amount of money just waiting for the perfect benefactor, who would that be? If one deeply cares about overpopulation, growth and the way it is exacerbating climate change, traffic, unemployment and wildlife issues to name a few, how could one most appropriately donate money?
There are population groups with a focus on the very global nature of this issue and discuss the importance of supporting small families with women’s empowerment and access to birth control worldwide. There are other population groups which focus on changing our narrative in the US toward one of stabilization and the reduction of our numbers to lessen the pressure of human numbers on our environment and infrastructure. Then there are those who are working both to change the narrative and have a presence on the ‘Hill’, as they say, getting their hands dirty in the legislative policies which will shape our future.
We are living the results today of many legislative decisions made long ago. For example, the Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928 authorized construction of a dam in Boulder, or Black, Canyon. Before that the Colorado River flowed uninterrupted along its 1,450-mile course from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California. Today those river dams are showing their wear and demonstrating why their construction was fraught with problems from the very beginning. But this is not the place to go into all of that, just suffice it to say that long term change for the better or for the worse begins and ends in Congress. While it’s important to be a part of groups which are trying desperately to articulate a de-growth narrative, it is not going to be productive unless it is ultimately tied to good legislation and its enforcement.
When it comes to US overpopulation, my country of birth which has added approximately 204 million since I was born, there is a problem with too global of a focus when it comes to the wrath of overpopulation. The well-worn slogan, THINK GLOBAL ACT LOCAL applies to our current state of overpopulation and growth in the US. If you are concerned about the American Ocelot, the multiple lanes of clogged freeways, the scarcity of water and the draining of our national budget, more people will make things so much worse. Adding more people to the US in our current state of overshoot is like pouring gasoline on a fire in your home and expecting your house to be in the next edition of Parade of Homes.
So, the question I come back to for those focused on US population is rather than sending my book out to a myriad of resources what else could be done? The answer to me is clear, give the money, your hard-earned money to an NGO already neck deep in the fight to protect America from the onslaught of growth both by helping to change the narrative and by monitoring the legislation which could help stop our continued growth. Our growth is mostly happening by both legal and now mostly illegal immigration, the NGO which is engaged in this battle must be the focus of donations since they have their focus on the pulse of our continued unsustainable policies. We must go beyond looking at this issue from a downstream individual perspective and focus on the long-term results of our actions today. Legal or illegal, from whatever country, the US is already deep in overshoot and needs to put an end to policies which are essentially dog whistling to migrants that we have an open door or at least an unenforced door at our borders.
The NGO which has been actively doing this honorable work is NumbersUSA. The employees of Numbers work tirelessly on the Hill, online, and behind the scenes to do just what people who read and love my book desire. They are already highly skilled and motivated and just need dollars that are untethered to projects like the distribution of my book. Started in 1996, by founder Roy Beck, its motives are stellar and not nefarious as some would claim. Roy and the team he has built around him, including the new highly qualified CEO now running the organization, are all about maintaining the quality of life of Americans. That quality is diminished, every time we dance around the issue of immigration limits because it is and can be weaponized to hurt people. The staff of NumbersUSA are trained ‘dancers’ and they know how best to use donations to help achieve the goal of addressing overpopulation in the way it needs to be addressed. They work on both sides of the aisle and need to because that is how legislation gets passed.
While I have no say in where folks deeply concerned about US overpopulation send their donation dollars, I would like to strongly and most confidently suggest that instead of putting time, effort and funds to distributing my book, they give it directly to NumbersUSA then sit back and watch how a well-run NGO gets things done. That’s what they have been set up to do and to me that is the most effective way of making sure our mutual goals of a better, more ecologically and economically sane America can be attained. At very least I recommend to stop supporting US population NGOs which continue, along with so many others, to ignore the driving force of untethered mass immigration, for they are asleep at the wheel.