So many touching stories, so many good feeling promises, so antithetical to the return of the dark ages promised by Project 2025. That is the difference between the speeches at the Democratic National Convention, held in August in Chicago, and the lies and angry energy and name-calling being spewed by the other side.
Everyone having access to health care and kids getting fed at school so they can learn better. Old barriers of misogyny and racism being torn down and stepped over. The common good was the common thread from Oprah to Obama, from Walz to Harris. They made it clear, this is the team that must win unless we want to suffer under the policies of a world where social security becomes ancient history, abortion is paired with jail time and billionaires rule the world more than they already do.
But the common good is not only a story about fairness and kindness it is a story about the commons itself. Decades ago, biologist Garrett Hardin wrote his essay called, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Hardin refers to the commons as what we all share in a given society. Because resources cannot keep up with exponential human growth, widespread reduction in all we hold dear will inevitably be threatened. The commons and the common good are both determined by recognizing that we have limits and that sustainability matters. The common good is served when we match what the earth can produce for us without damage to its wild world, the world that forms aquifers, generates pollinators, and allows our rivers to run free. The common good is served when we can move from place to place without cursing traffic or waiting in long lines.
I will not apologize for trying to prevent the squalor that accompanies overpopulation. I will always try promoting policies and ideas which fight its wrath. The US is where I live and it is not immune to the ravages of overpopulation that have already started to unravel the promises of democracy, and the ideals of hope cheered on by the crowds at the DNC. The policies for dealing with overpopulation are created within the ‘hallowed’ halls of the Whitehouse and Congress, but I also recognize the zeitgeist in which politics lives. No one who wants to win an election dare address it. Nixon had his knuckles rapped as he was told to shelve the Rockefeller commission on population, which found that allowing our population to grow beyond our means was a threat to America and its prosperity.
Good intentions to help people cannot keep up with what overpopulation does to the commons and our desire to improve the common good. Overpopulation is the ratio between a specie at the top of the food chain which requires over 80 gallons of fresh water a day, for starters, and what the earth can actually provide. Overpopulation turns well-intended politicians into the liars they rail against, for located in the underpinnings of their promises is the lie of limitless possibilities of America. Policies can make a huge difference in people’s lives. YES, it would be better to have the super-rich pay their fair share of taxes, and having health care benefits for all is a no-brainer, but the earth has policies too and they are written in stone, most likely in a language only few can read, so its lessons will be harsh and unrelenting.
The US lives under the policies of the Earth and those policies cannot be saved with more technology and certainly not with more people. Every techno-‘fix’ requires limited resources, energy to remove them and space to contain the waste they produce. Humans teeter at the top of the food and energy chain and nature teaches us that the top of that pyramid requires the least numbers not the most. As our climate continues to heat up, many parts of the world will become and are becoming unlivable. To add more people is not only ludicrous, it turns promises of helping people into eventual lies, because demand will continue to exceed the ability of services and resources to soothe our societal aches and pains.
Neither party will address the deeply unsustainable nature of our immigration policies, or how they actually undermine the promises just made at the DNC. What we will hear in the political banter will just be about securing our border. They don’t focus on how our total numbers must head in a downward direction, but instead will either scare us with criminal crossings or kids in cages. Discussion might get to be about jobs but never in a way that spells out the complexities of who is displaced or what kind of jobs remain in America and how salaries are reflected in the lowered expectations of new migrants. What we need are political advocates for a sustainable border and bills that do not add to the total numbers of Americans like some of the recent bills do. We must ask ourselves, how secure can a country be when we set the stage for the destruction of the commons by allowing our resources to be continue to be overrun by millions?
I will always choose kindness over harshness, and decency over anger. But I want that paired properly, like a fine wine with dinner, with the kind of sustainability that will allow those promises to be realized.