Conservation Was Easier Back Then

This is a love letter to a woman is responsible for preserving a beautiful oasis near the home where I grew up. Eloise Butler lived at the turn of the last century. She worked hard, trying to preserve and protect an area which has ended up being an iconic wildflower oasis in my hometown. I have always identified with this school teacher and her conservation journey. I too taught school and wanted out of the noise of the classroom so that I could work in and protect my beloved world of nature.

In the 1980’s I found myself burnt out from teaching which led me to seek healing and direction for my life as a volunteer in the Martha Crone Shelter in the Eloise Butler Wildflower garden near my home. I loved photographing wildflowers and talking to visitors. It was an experience which led to my career as a naturalist and nature center director.

 To pay homage to the goals of this woman, who in spite of the unfair treatment of woman in careers at the turn of the last century, was able to achieve so much, we owe her memory and life’s work a new discussion.

 This new discussion is about the forces that work against conservation. Often framed as a fight between greedy developers and conservationists, there is one more player involved. This player is best introduced by looking at the world in 1907 when Eloise was fighting for the garden which was named after her. The United States had just reached the 87 million mark in population and the global population was 1.75 billion. In Minneapolis where the garden is located, just next to the suburb of Golden Valley where I grew up,  the population was just over 200,000. The state of Minnesota had not yet reached 2 million. If those numbers had stayed the same, life would be immensely different and conservationists would be on easy street.

If we can for a moment,  divorce ourselves from any unkind and often undeserved implications, the very fact that Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden now exists in a world of 429,000+ Minneapolis residents, 5.68 million Minnesotans, 331 million Americans and nearly 8 billion people globally is a game changer.

Eloise Butler did not have it easy. There was much to be learned about conservation in her day, after all the once abundant Passenger pigeon became extinct during her day, with no hunting regulations in place. But conservation is so much harder when pressures from population growth force compromises which never favor the natural world on which we all depend.

The first lessons we learn and teach as naturalists are all about the food chain and how the plants as producers are the foundations of life. As one travels up the food chain those dependent on these food and oxygen makers must be less in numbers. Much of what we are experiencing in our failures to protect the natural world can surely be attributable to greed and lack of land ethics, but we cannot keep ignoring the sheer force of our numbers perched precariously as we are on top of this rigid structure. We act as if adding over 244 million Americans since this visionary conservationist lived, had little impact on wildflowers and wildlife. Even worse we act like overpopulation is an overseas problem, when our growth in the US is also out of control and fueling the way development destroys our flora and fauna. Those who might consider it as an issue, often choose to focus on encouraging people to use cloth bags, avoid pesticides and ride bicycles. Although all good suggestions, we must remember we are apex predators and just our water demand, our use of sanitation and energy and our need for food and shelter acts as a giant bulldozer locally and globally. Even a 1000 Eloise Butlers could not stop this stampede.  

I doubt whether the destructive force of overpopulation was ever on Eloise Butler’s mind, but she was smart and courageous, and I would bet if she were alive today, she would be taking up the reins on this issue like so many of my colleagues have done. She would not stand for green-washing nor would she stand down on tough issues. Nothing would honor her legacy more than to find ways to bring overpopulation back to the conservation table before it’s too late.

From Aristotle to the Dalai Lama : Happiness as a precious, threatened resource.

I was taught in some long forgotten high school class that the Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that happiness was the driver behind all of mankind’s activities. If indeed that is true, then perhaps it behooves us to unpack what it would take to make 331 million Americans happy. Indeed, what would it take to make nearly 8 billion humans happy and do we have enough resources to do that? Perhaps in addition to looking at copper, oil, water, lithium, titanium and others as limited resources, we should start looking at happiness as a limited resource as well. Eudaimonia, Greek for happiness ,was Aristotle’s answer to the question: What is the ultimate purpose of human existence? Aristotle believed that in order to achieve happiness one needed to have both the physical goods to live and time for intellectual contemplation. One’s needs had to be met and they also had to be virtuous. According to Aristotle, happiness consists in achieving, through the course of a whole lifetime, all the goods — health, wealth, knowledge, friends, etc. — that lead to the perfection of human nature and to the enrichment of human life.

 Modern day Buddhist leader and philosopher the 14th Dalai Lama would concur. He also has said that the purpose of life is to seek happiness the common era. The highly respected Dali Lama, referred to as his Holiness, is a present-day leader and yet they landed in a similar philosophical place.

 Aristotle realized that our enrichment was attached to virtue as well as tangible goods. Once someone had enough, he could contemplate the more perplexing issues of the day. Where Aristotle uses the word virtuous, the Dalai Lama uses compassion. Essentially, they are in agreement that our actions towards others is attached to our happiness. “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” At the time Aristotle promoted his ideas the world, I doubt he comprehended the hurdles to happiness presented by numbers of humans that we are experiencing in a world bulging at nearly 8 billion. At the time this Greek philosopher walked the earth, the whole planet had 162 million people on it.

For reference, that is the same amount of people that were in the US when I was born in 1954. Not only has the world experienced incredible modernization between the time of Aristotle to Dalai Lama, it has experienced the kind of growth only computers can comprehend. While humans are biologically the same as they were 2363 years ago, we now live in a world where we have to share the resources on which we depend with nearly  8 billion more people.

 Assuming Aristotle, and the Dali Lama are on to something here, it just may behoove us to treat happiness as a precious resource that is at risk in an overpopulated world. I propose that access to happiness is just as much at risk as our non-renewable resources. Our deficits can be measured, and Ecological footprint network does a great job letting the world know what is happening with our natural resources. They describe this deficit as a bio-capacity deficit. “if a population’s Ecological Footprint exceeds the region’s bio-capacity that runs a bio-capacity deficit. Its demand for goods and services that its land and seas can provide….exceeds what the region can regenerate

 We are also experiencing a happiness deficit. The two go hand in hand, even though happiness is difficult to measure. It’s hard to be happy when you run out of water and you are scratching for food. Long ago an experiment was done with rats. Given adequate food and water, the rats exhibited all kinds of mental illness when they began to live in overcrowded conditions. We share ¼ of our genes with rats, so we may be subject to the same consequences of loss of happiness in our overpopulated state.

Growth based capitalism is based on the narrative that to be happy we have to have lots of material things. One can never be happy without the newest car, the biggest boat and a larger home. We literally buy into the system that demands our throw away habits. From built in obsolescence to fiscal year pressures, this unsustainable economic system is making the planet wither under our feet.

 Now anyone who has watched the series, “Behind the Music” knows, extreme wealth and fame are recipes for disaster not happiness. Biographies of poor musicians who became wealthy with their hits, more often than not, discovered how unhappy fame and wealth got them. Many ended up leaving us too soon at the end of a needle. Why bring this up? Because many will say that you do not need money to be happy ala the riches some accumulate. But Aristotle wasn’t talking about needing 5 Rolls Royces that Maurice Gibbs of the Bee Gees once owned, he was talking about enough wealth so one didn’t need to worry about one’s basic needs and have the luxury of time for contemplation. Besides, he lived 2218 years before the internal combustion engine was invented .Happiness is not available to everyone now and will be in even less supply in the future. Why? Because the very basics all humans are challenged by our overwhelming demand and out of control global greedy systems.

 Could we distribute our resources more equitably? Colonialism and its sister sinister force, globalization, are still in operation around the world. Many try to fight a world in which the rich and powerful take from the poor and vulnerable. In theory we could do a better job, but that too is threatened by overpopulation as we wake up in a world with over 200,000 more people in it every day, and those all of those people need resources.

 According to Habitat for Humanity, 1.6 billion people live without adequate shelter, 1 in people currently live in a slum, and they also predict that 1 in every 4 people will live in a slum by 2030. Living with adequate housing and food is not a guarantee of happiness but it sure is a prerequisite for the opportunity to become happier.

Growth of slums is directly tied to growth of our numbers as resources will keep falling short in a closed system. Nobel efforts exist to make the world a happier place. A quick Internet search finds that there are 45 main NGO’s devoted to ridding the world of poverty. While this is an impressive effort to end global poverty, the billions who still suffer remain higher than anyone would desire due over-demand of limited resources caused by overpopulation. It is of course is also the way the irrational accumulation of money rules the world instead of the laws of physics and ecological principles. Corporations have globalized their neo-capitalistic earth gobbling ways and the continual growth of 80 million new passengers to the closed system every year contributes to keeping poverty a growing problem.

The access is to happiness is crippled when we continue in our rigidity and keep acting as if the earth and its biosphere were limitless. To continue to fuel growth in a closed system is beyond foolish, it is suicidal. Happiness does not flourish when the earth and its life-giving biosphere is ignored. According to the World Wildlife Fund, “Only 3% of the world’s water is fresh water, and two-thirds of that is tucked away in frozen glaciers or otherwise unavailable for our use. As a result, some 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water, and a total of 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year. Inadequate sanitation is also a problem for 2.4 billion people—they are exposed to diseases, such as cholera and typhoid fever, and other water-borne illnesses. Two million people, mostly children, die each year from diarrheal diseases alone.” It is impossible to be happy in a water scarce world.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama (born 1935) has been around the world witnessing both our progress and our population growth. He teaches that to be happy is to have compassion, but unlike Aristotle he has also witnessed the earth warming in his homeland of Tibet and the earth gaining 6 billion people in his lifetime. The way those additional people take away from the possibility of happiness is not lost on him. He said, “One of the great challenges today is the population explosion. Unless we are able to tackle this issue effectively, we will be confronted with the problem of the natural resources being inadequate for all the human beings on this Earth.”

Though he did not go as far as saying that happiness dwindles as overpopulation overwhelms the earth, he did say, “The growth in population is very much bound up with poverty, and in turn poverty plunders the Earth. When human groups are dying of hunger, they eat everything: grass, insects, everything. They cut down the trees, they leave the land dry and bare. All other concerns vanish. That’s why in the next 30 years the problems we call ‘environmental’ will be the hardest that humanity has to face.”

We need to start to see happiness and the opportunity to contemplate a more virtuous life, as a precious and dwindling resource. It is just like water, oil, copper, tin, lithium and the rest. Realizing this, we just might understand at a deeper level the change that is needed. We need to change our story. Tell someone we are about to run out of silica and they may not understand the implications. But tell them they are going to run out of happiness now and for generations to come and a whole new audience may awaken to the thief that is overpopulation.

 To quote novelist James Baldwin,” Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Egypt's Ironic Past and Uncertain Future

There is much irony in the newest information that the population of Egypt is skyrocketing. Mostly a Sunni Islam nation, birth control is a touchy subject as babies are seen as a gift from god, and sex is strictly forbidden outside the institution of marriage. Boys are favored in the culture adding to the birth rate. Egypt is mostly a desert with its growing population dependent on the richness of the ever-diminishing Nile river valley. Egypt is a relatively poor country. Unlike much of the Arab world, Egypt’s landscape is not dotted with oil fields.The deck is stacked against a prosperous future for Egyptians as they continue to grow with a fertility rate of 3.1 per woman (2018) on average in an already water-stressed environment.

The irony comes in because Cairo was the scene for an unprecedented effort to discuss and debate the impact of population and its projected rapid growth on the countries of the world. In 1994 the UN International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was held in Egypt’s ancient capital. It brought together 11,000 representatives from governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), international agencies, and citizen activists. But those various activists had different agendas. At the end, the conclusions had shifted focus away from the original mission of the conference. “The long international document from Cairo made no mention of the connections between population growth and the environmental ills of countries with growing populations” 1

It’s very unfortunate that the broader discussion of policies and education which could be implemented to flatten the hockey stick human growth curve, was sidelined at the conference. Feminist activists were successful in hijacking the mission of this massive effort and made the conference all about women’s empowerment. This was a downstream shift from the bigger upstream issue of how population’s rapid escalation negatively impacts the economy and the environment, to issues surrounding maternal health. Women’s issues are great to champion, but Cairo failed to address the broader issue of the pressure placed on countries when there are excessive demands on infrastructure and resources.

Looking back now in 2020, those activists who wrestled away the upstream mission of the Cairo conference cannot say with any honesty that this was a successful move. If their strategy was a good move, we would have seen better results. Using the conference host country as an example, in 1994, Egypt had 61.1 million people, and it has now reached 101 million with the last million being added in just the last 8 months. Now a country twice the size of California, has to manage 40 million more people and provide them with housing, clothing, education and jobs. How’s that decision to dodge the broader overpopulation challenge working? Not well at all. There is nothing empowering about overshoot. According to the United Nations,(Sept 2018), Egypt is facing an annual water deficit of around seven billion cubic meters and the country could run out of water by 2025. We have failed those who are now suffering under the weight of the menace of overpopulation. Ironically, we have failed the women those activists set out to protect.

Comprehensive governmental and non-governmental groups paired with religious leaders needed to come together 26 years ago to create a better future for all Egyptians. They were trying to do just that. If that had succeeded, we wouldn’t be witnessing such despair created by those who took up all the air in the room for what they thought was most important. I wonder how many of those activists have looked back to honestly reassess what they did. Imagine what could have been done instead of gambling away the future of the people of who live in the “cradle of civilization.” Political correctness cannot continue leading us around by the nose. It started long ago and continues to pile up its victims. We need to be less afraid of the implications of possible solutions, and worry more about the consequences of doing nothing, something we are really good at. Policies which encourage sustainable populations are easy to write but harder, much harder to pass. That is because like the activists at Cairo nearly three decades ago, we keep our focus downstream and away from the bigger issue.

This is not a problem exclusive to Egypt. Our failure to address overpopulation in a comprehensive way is an international crisis. Doing the right thing means listening to the earth, not the latest flavor of the month issue which squeezes out other voices in its arrogant misdirection. Ecological realism needs to be the new force guiding our way out of this ever-increasing mess in countries around the world, including and especially our own.

1 Beck, Kolankiewicz, The Environmental Movement’s Retreat from Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization (1970–1998): A First Draft of History Journal of Political History 2000.

The Moral Imperative of Being An Overpopulation Activist

In his book, “The Moral Arc:  How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom(2015),” Michael Shermer makes a well-supported argument for how the secular world has done more good for the world than the world of religion. He believes that, “The scientific revolution led to the Age of Reason and to the Enlightenment and that changed everything.” He further states that,”…these changes reversed our species historical trend downward and that we can do more to elevate humanity, extend the arc and bend it forever upward.”

Not so fast, I say to the founder of the Skeptic society, I am skeptical. The moral arc of humanity cannot continue to go upward when the trend of the human population arc is also going upward.

As a science writer, Shermer knows the earth is a limited place and that humans are at a trophic level that is meant to be inhabited by a very limited number of individuals. As our numbers continue to climb in a hockey stick -like upward curve, our resources decline, our density increases and along with it an increase in scarcity. This is hardly a situation where our collective morality will be incubated well.

Morality which includes an equal treatment under just laws, equal job opportunity, equal access to healthy food, etc, are all threatened by the far-reaching tentacles of overpopulation. Simply put, when demand exceeds supply there is an immoral scramble for getting one’s fair share.

Why are water wars a concern in the not too distant future? Because humanity has done a most superb job using up the fresh water supply faster than it can renew due to our ever-growing numbers. As our population grows so does how much water we consume for us, our livestock, manufacturing and transportation.

I am a fan of Shermer and his work in the field of skepticism and secularism. He refers to many examples of how science has contributed to an improvement in our morality. But science is not benign, it has contributed to both sides of the overpopulation predicament. It has contributed both to increasing our numbers and the increasingly scary ways in which we die. Science has increased our longevity with medical procedures and drugs and also made birth control available. Science has made the nuclear war possible and created carcinogenic chemicals and created a whole scientific field around solving infertility. At the end of the day the birth side has won, putting unrelenting pressure on the biosphere as we continue to add over 1 million in less than a week on the planet.

I am not naïve enough to think that the world would be instantly more moral if our numbers were suddenly in line with the finite supply of our minerals, energy, water and soil. Furthermore, I know that in immoral hands, a doctrine with overpopulation as its main storyline would be disastrous.

What I am saying is that overpopulation itself is a roadblock to any kind of moral progress. Extending the moral arc of humanity, no matter how secular and scientific we become, is impossible in a world of nearly 8 billion growing by 80+ million a year.

Each country has a moral obligation to its citizens and resources to assess its own limits. Science and reason must be used to determine what the ecosystem can sustainably afford to offer each person. The scientists at the global footprint network,

( www.globalfootprintnetwork.org) have already done the homework for us, and it doesn’t look good for the moral arc. I am making the argument that the moral arc will continue go down, and even crash as the population of our country and the world goes up.

If you accept my premise that scarcity, brought on by too much demand on a limited planet, is a petri dish for disorder and immorality, then opposing growth is our collective moral duty. My colleagues and I come from a place of wanting to prevent chaos and helping the biosphere. We have taken on the ever more treacherous mantle of screaming about overpopulation because we see the big picture. I have asked people why they work on this issue and they all say basically the same thing, they want to save the biosphere that supports us and the wildlife and open spaces they love.

 As “8 Billion Angel” filmmaker and overpopulation activist Terry Spahr says,

“Global warming, food and water shortages, catastrophic storms, extinction of species, plant and animal habitat loss…. The list of environmental, social and economic catastrophes affecting our planet with greater frequency and severity goes on and on. If there was a simple root cause and a fundamental solution, wouldn’t you want to know?” The answer he goes on to say, is unsustainable human population.

I would add that if you are dedicated to stopping those catastrophes, that you exhibit some pretty hefty moral chops. 

Indeed, overpopulation activists are the ones holding on to the reins of morality and justice. The world that Shermer discusses can certainly benefit from more rational thought, but that must include thought and work on overpopulation.

Unless we start see working on this critically important issue as a moral imperative, then morality itself will be rendered irrelevant, for it will be flattened by the thundering feet of billions of desperate people.

Salt in the Wound: Why Thinking Bigger about US Population Growth is Con

It seems that we have three general responses for the deep wounds which need to be healed in our country: 1) find a politically acceptable band aid which won’t fix the problem long term but makes those involved look good 2) Find a suitable cure involving the proper gauze/tourniquet in the way of public policy or whatever is truly required to begin the long-term healing and 3) con-artists who rub salt in the wounds and make them worse while claiming that this snake oil will bring a quick reliable fix.

The latest in the line of rubbing salt in the wound is gobsmacking in its premise. In the US where we are already destroying rivers, draining aquifers, killing off our remaining wildlife and shortening our lives while stuck ever denser housing and freeway construction, there is an excruciatingly horrid proposal on the table to accelerate population growth.

Apparently, author Matt Yglesias has never been stuck in gridlock on an LA freeway, or had to drink the water from a tap in Flint Michigan. He has never seen tents and cardboard boxes of our country’s over 550,000 homeless or seen the news showing how the US is suffering from the effects of climate change with larger, more powerful floods and devastating wildfires. He must be sociologically tone deaf about the millions who have lost their jobs due to automation, the shipping of jobs overseas, all exacerbated by the current pandemic. Against this backdrop of overpopulation-driven pain and suffering, he wants to welcome hundreds of millions more American consumers. According to his upcoming book, I am loathe to mention, he thinks we should think bigger and welcome more population growth until we reach 1 billion Americans -- jobs, wildlife, open space, fresh water, clean air and traffic be damned.

I am hoping he is secretly doing this to start a conversation about a truly sustainable population for the US, which the scientifically sane calculate to be about a third to half of our current 330 million. That could indeed have positive results, but right now it just feels like he is enjoying finding a niche to exploit by rubbing salt in the wound of our over-consuming, overpopulated country. 

There is great risk that he will be successful in making this salty con stick to the public discourse so averse to paying any real attention to the whole idea of sustainable US numbers. Based on an older salt- in-the-wound idea, I still hear people say that we could fit the world’s population into the state of Texas as if that has any ecological relevance. I could fit 1,000 rats in my cupboard, but they would be dead by the time the sun rose the next day.

Due to intellectual laziness, lack of ecological education, and a paucity of those predisposed to critical thinking, we have a population full of people who can be susceptible to con-artists, even when their ideas are ridiculous. Thankfully there is already a great deal of pushback on Yglesias’s preposterous pro-growth proposals, consider this one more.

If Trees Could Vote

I want to send a bill to Washington  

That will allow trees to vote

And birds to cast their ballots

The fine print will allow bees

their choice for insect justice;

a world with enough poison-free flowers.

Let the wild rivers splash

and the clouds rain down on the proper box to check

So they too can live uninterrupted lives

While the wild and not so free four-leggeds

Head to their voting booths

To scratch in their favorite choice

For a leader who will take into consideration

Their rights for a change.

Everyday is Overshoot Day

My informal survey of friends revealed that few have heard of Earth Overshoot Day.

 I explain it this way: It’s a calculation.. It’s basically what the earth can produce in terms of bio-capacity minus what we consume. According to the smart folks at Global Footprint Network, “Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity has used all the biological resources that Earth can renew during the entire year. Humanity currently uses 60% more than what can be renewed – or as much as if we lived on 1.6 planet. From Earth Overshoot Day until the end of the year, humanity grows the ecological deficit which has been increasing steadily since the world fell in ecological overshoot in the early 1970s..”

 This day is designed to shed a light on how we are taking more from the Earth in the course of a year than it can produce. Kudos to GFN for trying yet another creative way to innovate a much needed soapbox from which to pontificate that indeed the well is running dry. Earth Overshoot Day has a bit of good news to report, commemorated on August 22 in 2020, it is three weeks later than 2019, due to the economic slowdown caused by the corona virus pandemic.  However, we are still running way too short due to both our overpopulation and its evil twin; overconsumption.

 The problem is that Earth Overshoot Day is a model and essentially an abstraction as most models are. On the surface it seems like we are better off at the beginning of the calendar year than we are on some pre-determined date, when really every day is overshoot day and has been for a very long time. The earth’s cycles do not follow some human determined schedule. Its cycles are mostly very slow moving and over billions of years has stored much of what it has produced in the form of minerals, soil and fresh water.

 Humans were defined by the author Daniel Quinn Ishmael series as either Takers or Leavers. The leavers were the hunter gatherers who left something for the future generations and the takers do just that, they just keep taking and taking from the earth. I think that all humans are essentially takers, not because we are intrinsically evil, but because that is our niche in the food web. Long before elitists were promoting neo-capitalism during their martini-laced power lunches, humans were altering the earth with slash and burn agriculture. Centuries before industrialization darkened the skies and polluted our lakes and rivers, we were pushing some of the greatest species ever to evolve into the abyss of extinction. The Dodo bird’s extinction happened before the first plastics arrived on the scene, it succumbed to the way human livestock overtook their habitats. The passenger pigeon which once darkened the skies in its migration was last on anyone’s menu in the early part of the 20th century due to overhunting.

 Humans must rely on the plants to photosynthesize as producers, and the first and second level consumers of plants make up the protein we then consume for our nourishment. Some of us can rely on mostly plants to produce our food but in no way does this mean that we can pardon ourselves from our position as takers of the planet. We are a needy bunch, from our perch as an apex predator, and our needs have now been exponentially exacerbated by an incredible increase in the production of highly processed products which are both toxic and carbon producing in their production and problematic in their disposal.

Every week or so, I take an informal survey of the products I own and use. I ask myself which of them was made or shipped to me without the use of fossil fuels? I also ask myself what is their ultimate destiny?  From the dental floss in our bathroom, to my framed photographs on our walls, from the bananas on our counter to the hairbrush on my nightstand, the answers are always the same. Everything I buy, own and use, no matter if it was bought used or not, came from the earth and will go back to the earth. In between carbon gases were burned in their production and transportation and trapped in the atmosphere. The greenhouse gas effects, which are now altering weather patterns, and with it altering our ability to grow food, come from all of these not-so-innocent products. Landfills are multi-colored with non-biodegradable plastics, wires, batteries and other leftovers from our infamously throw-away society. Early hunter gatherers may have altered landscapes, but they left mostly bones behind.

 We modern humans have become the most egregious takers for we leave behind products that the earth has no idea how to accommodate, while carving up our biosphere in the pursuit of our insatiable appetites for more. Even if we were to wake up and stop the merry go round of ridiculous consumption, for which there are too many examples to mention, our numbers would have to calm down too, to an extraordinary degree.

 So why is everyday overshoot day? Why should the word overshoot be on our lips and in our public discourse and in our news coverage? Because we are on a highway to hell, paved with the actions of limitless demands of a planet with limited capacity. Because at populations which have grown by millions in the ever-consuming US and billions in the world, we have been too successful and nature always punishes the animals who step out of their ecological boundaries.

 We need to put on the brakes, (reduce our population in every country especially those with ‘guilty ‘on their consumption scorecards) wear a seatbelt ( stop our love affair with economic growth) and have airbags installed (learn and value the way we depend on healthy ecosystems ) in a mission to reverse the trajectory of crashing into the earth’s limit to support a specie that is busy creating its own epitaph: Here lies a specie smart enough to know it was headed off a cliff, but not wise enough to turn itself around.

Green Roots podcast: Interview by Josh Schlossberg August 2020

https://greenrootpodcast.podbean.com/e/overpopulation-the-third-rail-of-environmental-politics-with-karen-shragg/

Open this link to listen to a discussion about how Overpopulation cannot continued to be shoved under the rug under the misnomer of its toxicity. This is an invitation for intelligent discussion about how ignoring it is causing so much suffering.

It's Hard to Socially Distance in an Overpopulated World

My first video produced through my LLC MUSEC can be found here.

Time for some ethical critical thinking by Karen I. Shragg

 The “politically correct” or PC world came knocking on my door in the late 90’s when I was getting my doctorate in critical pedagogy. Our multi-cultural co-hort full of smart and interesting people, ascribed to the notion that searching for language that would not offend was one of our critical goals. In my opinion they  spent way too much time trying to figure out which group had experienced the most marginalization, instead of focusing on how to go about eliminating discrimination. One day I specifically remember that I whispered under my breath that I was disappointed that my classmate, just called on, was going to take a long time answering a question. My motivation? It was 1 pm, I was hungry. I just wanted them to hold their question till after the break. I was called out for being a racist by a white co-hort member who was trying very hard to be the most PC in the class.

The focus on political correctness has only made us less resilient problem solvers, for every story has both a small and larger focus. Every story has a history and will only have a better future if it is grappled with in the context of ethical improvement for the short and long term.

When the politically correct police silence people, they get a temporary feeling of euphoria that they have accomplished something. But it is a destructive act. They have only taken a broad judgmental brush and canceled what they determine is a ‘bad’ opinion. Making people afraid to speak their minds is not only undemocratic and even fascist, it does nothing to improve the issue at hand. It has only gotten worse in the 18 years since they put a Dr. before my name. It is now CC or cancel culture and is reminiscent of the “love it or leave it” chants of the sixties. I am learning a hard lesson. The “left” can be equally obstinate and steadfast that they own the only truth on the block. Shutting out other voices, they know to be sincere, is hurting their own cause. 

Instead I would like to offer a different approach and perhaps to coin a new word: “E.C.T.” stands for Ethical Critical Thinker. We need to rid ourselves of the PC world and adopt an E.C.T approach. First, we have to be ethical which means we have to have the goal of improving the world in a way that causes the least harm.  The second is that we must consider all aspects of a problem in both the short and long term. We must realize that we rarely get a perfect choice, just a better one. To the best of our ability and with the latest scientific information, we need to consider the long-term consequences of our actions for us and our rapidly deteriorating biosphere.

To be PC is like painting a rotting house with a fresh coat of paint. It temporarily may look better, but it still rots from within. If you are E.C.T. you do not rush to judge. You try to listen to everyone’s story. You ask critical questions and look out for impacts to those other than yourself and your species. An E.C.T.person also realizes that the personal and global goals can be diametrically opposed to one another at the same time and that dynamic needs a deep dive if it is ever going to resolved.

An E.C.T. person does not think quick fixes for long entrenched problems are ever a good idea. An E.C.T. person also tries to link our problems to false narratives which have to be questioned at their core. An E.C.T. person sees a lot of gray in issues yet also knows when something is intrinsically evil and must be stopped in its tracks. To truly be an ethical critical thinker is to avoid jumping on to the current bandwagon which haven’t fully been vetted.

It seemed like a great idea when Canada geese were brought into a suburban nature center in the 70’s until they did so well, they started flying into airplanes. It seemed that DDT worked well to kill off pests until its residue endangered raptors. We can’t always know the consequences of our actions, but we can try to forecast impacts before they are initiated so we can avoid expensive fixes in the future.

I have been to many ribbon-cutting ceremonies for large corporate developments with smiling officials getting whiplash for patting themselves on the back for a job well done. An E.C.T. person would wonder, what about the traffic that will bring to our area? They would question the further demand on the limited local water supply and the wisdom of the bribery of delayed taxes (TIF financing) that corporations were given, delaying any tax benefit to city coffers. An E.C.T. person would wonder where the wildlife was supposed to live and what kind of energy demand the new structure would make and add to our global emissions. A countering PC person would deny their right to even ask these critical questions, wondering why they want to stop progress and all of its “benefits”.

I may start my overpopulation talks in the future with something like this. “I am an ECT person, and as an Ethical Critical Thinker I am here today to invite you to explore a different way out of many of our problems. The issue I am bringing up has been thrown under the bus so many times by the PC police that it has deep tire treads all over it making it taboo for all but the most determined activists. But I would like to ask rhetorically, how is that working for us? Hopefully you too want to be open to a broader context of why we cannot seem to get ahead on environmental issues.  If you can join me using this E.C.T. approach, perhaps we can get there together.  That is what I want to say to the loud critics of the profound film Planet of the Humans. Filmmaker Jeff Gibbs has a perspective that is worth discussing in an open and non-judgmental way. His film is an invitation to rethink our assumptions, which is what all movements and cutting-edge films are trying to do. An E.C.T. person listens and asks questions, they do not accept any idea at first blush, nor do they cancel it in an act of pure cowardice.

An E.C.T. person knows how to prioritize their time and efforts. They know that debating the kind of sunscreen used by passengers on the boat deck is not as important as the fact that the boat has a hole in it.  They know that it is not time to fuss over a clogged drain spout when smoke is pouring out the windows. They weigh all possible outcomes and are not trigger happy with their responses. Do protests work? There is a long history that they do. The anti-war protests of the sixties certainly helped to end the Vietnam war. But are even the most well justified protests likely to be putting our overall health and the livelihoods of so many in jeopardy in the midst of a pandemic? An E.C.T. is not afraid to answer, YES and wait to see if the data confirmed that notion.

Name the touchiest of subjects and you will see it has been ruined by the PC police. Not only do they claim to be offended but dig even deeper and they may have something to lose economically if something new comes to light. Name-calling ensues just by trying to have an upstream discussion. When looking at the US through the lens of sustainability, on all kinds of measurements it is clear we are in overshoot. Although still operating under the mantra represented by the poem on the plaque inside the Statue of Liberty, we are running out of water, open space, forest and wild habitats for the animals that need them. Life is becoming less fun and more dangerous in our overcrowded cities whose answer to growth addiction is either sprawl or high rises. Magnificent animals from the Florida panther to the mountain lion are endangered with extinction due to human overpopulation and our continued growth. But try to have an upstream E.C.T. discussion about population growth, overpopulation and its primary driver, legal immigration, and watch the accusations start to fly.  An E.C.T person who wanted to have a discussion about carrying capacity on our landscapes frequently ends up discussing the value of immigrants to this country’s history. E.C.T.’s do not conflate unrelated issues, only PC people do.                                                                                            

There is one more thing that E.C.T.’s believe: you focus on the message, debate its merits and do not waste everyone’s time by focusing your critique on hating the messenger, unless that messenger has provable ill intent. Propagandists can certainly be scorned for both their message and intent, but someone making a heartfelt film or writing a book rarely deserve the often-heard cries of the morally offended. It’s time to start a new and more helpful era where we can build new bridges of understanding rather than spend all of our energies bashing each other just for having a different perspective.