D.A.R.E. to Have Difficult Discussions On Taming the Overpopulation Beast

“A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.” Garrett Hardin

We now live in a world that is so polarized that it’s hard to navigate complex issues with tools of nuance and well-established evidence. It is even more challenging to have difficult discussions when we can all live in our own ‘news’ bubbles and miss out on the kind of truth which is always more complicated than presented on bumper stickers and sound bites.

It is an either/or landscape and rarely a narrative that can accommodate two seemingly opposing truths. We want to know if something or someone is good or bad and the answer is often YES. As Ken Burns in this latest documentary, “The US and the Holocaust” articulated, some of our most favored heroes were also virulent antisemites.

Fortunately, several thought leaders are trying to carve out a new way forward. Andrew Yang and Christy Todd Whitman have actually formed a political party called ‘Forward’, trying to chip away at the entrenched two-party system with more moderate views. Author and podcaster Sam Harris suggests we discard the duality of the right and the left framework and create what he calls the “Radical Center.” In 2017 Harris posted a definition of Radical Centrism on Reddit, “Being a Radical Centrist is not about hitting the middle of both sides. It's about being open to ideas from either side and not wasting time with unpractical discussions… The "radical" in the term refers to a willingness on the part of most radical centrists to call for fundamental reform of institutions. The "centrism" refers to a belief that genuine solutions require realism and pragmatism, not just idealism and emotion. Thus, one radical centrist text defines radical centrism as "idealism without illusions.” 

It is time to bring this concept to the overpopulation beast. We are all victims of overpopulation’s reach, every single one of the 8 billion we are just about ready to ‘welcome’ to our rapidly overheating planet. We all suffer because of our numerical success. Whether you have to walk more miles to access fresh water or spend much of your week in a traffic jam, we experience overpopulation’s wrath every day and it’s just getting warmed up, literally. The more people, the more carbon and we are learning to recognize climate’s calling cards in the reports of melting of glaciers, rising oceans and longer and longer wildfire seasons.

Human rights, especially for those with the least resources and respect, is also vital for a world that is worth occupying. Each person no matter their ethnicity needs to have his/her humanity respected. Hatred of the other, based on made up nonsense of inferiority has no place in a world I want to live in. So how do we reconcile these two truths? As individuals we need respect but as a whole, our species is just too big. We have become a force which acts like a bulldozer, mowing down forests and creating pollution in our wake. We begin this arduous task by unbolting the doors to difficult discussions. We elevate the significance of ecological understanding through an ethical lens with no hatred in our hearts.

To even mention the word population is to raise concerns and accusations of racism from the fringe on the left. In contrast, those on the right chomp at the bit to advocate for more border control to support their despicable supremacist diatribes. As I wrote in a piece last year; “The Right drives me nuts and the Left Drives Me Crazy.” Mention how we mostly grow in the US and other developed countries immigration, and watch the doors close to all but xenophobic discussions, leaving me politically homeless.

That is why I am creating a new acronym for myself. I am calling myself a D.A.R.E. activist. That stands for Degrowth Anti-Racist Environmentalist. I am not an advocate that we de-grow the human enterprise because I hate people, I am an advocate for lower population numbers because I love people. I am not against immigrants; I am for them. I want tightly controlled borders not because I hate those desperate to come here, but because I love them, empathize, and understand their predicament. BUT at the same time, I also realize that the US has its limits especially in a climate changing world. To invite people into your home you had better be prepared to give them all that they need. We can no longer guarantee there will be an America left when we go so far over our carrying capacity, especially our water supply. I can sympathize with all wanting to come here, recognize the way many have even been victims of US policies and still want to control the number of people let into a country with ailing economic and ecological systems. We can look to finance more home-grown solutions. I also love those citizens who have been struggling for years in the US and adore the natural landscapes we still have left, without any bigotry towards those who are knocking on our doors. As a D.A.R.E. activist I can straddle that fine line because to do anything else is to give in to either the jaws of hatred or the poison of creating further ecological and economic instability. Neither choice is acceptable to me. 

I would love to have the power to bring women’s empowerment to country’s lacking in awareness and birth control like the NGO Population Media Center is doing all over the world. Bringing down fertility rates also must happen in humane and voluntary ways. Nature is already aggressively ruthless when large families try to eke out a living in water and food deprived landscapes, our solutions cannot add to that ruthlessness. Those solutions must be discussed with all consequences on the table. The forecasted growth in the US, now topping 333 million, is not due as much to high fertility as it is to high immigration rates. Something, theoretically at least, much simpler to solve. Solutions start at home whether we are trying to fix potholes as Garrett Hardin talked about or population growth. While I am busy inventing acronyms, I have one more. In the name of all that is sacred, water, land, freedom, job security, wildlife, lower crime rates, less homelessness and more, we must become “H.E.R.B.alists ‘too. That is, we must rally to demand Humanely and Ecologically Restrained Borders. When we recognize that taming the overpopulation beast must be done where and when we can, and without an ounce of hatred in our hearts we will be on the right track, the one that runs right down the middle.

Thanks for Saving the Wolves : an Open Letter to Population Groups unafraid of addressing HOW we grow.

Dear Population NGO unafraid of addressing Immigration as the way the US population is mostly growing and is forecasted to grow ( Fill in the blank)

My enclosed donation is to thank you for saving the wolves. No that is not a typo. You see I was recently canceled from presenting my talk at the International Wolf Symposium (IWS). I was poised to methodically and with supportive research demonstrate how US population growth is harming the future of these amazing mammals. The word apparently got out that I was going to point a well-deserved, humanely articulated finger at the main reason the US is growing so fast, our outdated and unsustainable mass immigration policies, and afraid that I would offend some people, they declined to allow me to speak at their conference in Minnesota this October. I offered to let them put a disclaimer on the door after watching my new and improved talk now called, “Sprawling Over America, Why the endangered Species Act isn’t enough.” But due to my principles, I would not agree to alter my talk unless it was for scientific reasons. The verdict came back from one irate board member in particular, I am told, that I was not to even say the word ‘immigration. I asked for my registration fee back, especially when they could not be troubled to see my improvements in the latest rendition of my presentation. I am using that refund to make donations to fine NGOs like you who are doing more to save the wolf than this group. They say they love them, promote studying them and fill their website with great photos of them but stop at doing what would really help them, humanely keep our increasing footprints from encroaching on their territory. I claim that there can be no diversity in a world which tramples on biodiversity.

A wolf pack territory averages about 50-60 square miles, depending on prey density. According to the head of the IWS who had to break the news to me, there is no more room to release wolves in the lower 48.  In my talk I address why that is, but overpopulation, population growth and for sure immigration, the main cause for our continued growth, are now not only taboo topics they are taboo words. I feel sorry for the wolves which not only have suffered over the years from negative mythology and the effects of climate change but from the last nail in their coffin, political wokeness and cancel culture. I know that you will spend my donation well and continue to press for awareness on how unsustainable our overpopulated country is both for us and wildlife. I know many in the IWS agree with my research, but until they find their collective spine and allow the truth to be told about overpopulation and growth, I will continue to spread the word where I am allowed, which is getting more and more difficult to do.

With thanks for your courageous work,

Dr. Karen I. Shragg

Sole proprietor of MUSEC, MoveUpstream Environmental Consultants, Board Member of (SEPS) Scientists and Environmentalists for Population Stabilization, Board Member of CAPS (Californians for Population Stabilization) Advisory board member of Earth Overshoot.

I Am the Walrus* The Impact of Short-term Thinking in a Long-term World

The story goes that John Lennon wrote the words to the weirdest song ever, “I am the Walrus,” in protest to the way everyone was trying to attach meaning to Beatle lyrics back in the day. I found meaning in this intentionally meaningless song, when I heard about the fate of Freya the walrus in Norway. She had to be put to death when warnings of staying away from her went unheeded. I am the walrus, and I am crying because we keep treating wildlife with the kind of curiosity that often ends up killing them. Could this 1300-pound walrus have been relocated? Perhaps, but only with great expense and trauma with no promise she would have survived the move.

It reminded me of the efforts I was involved in for decades as a nature center director to get people to leave wildlife alone. They fed deer, ‘rescued’ rabbits, birds, and squirrels because they had a twisted relationship with nature. I have always admired and shared the love of wildlife that these actions represented at their core. But like so many human actions, they represented tunnel vision about the long-term results of their actions. Save an English sparrow and watch it destroy bluebird nests. Rescue a goldfish by releasing it in a marsh and witness the annihilation of the whole ecosystem. The most vivid story I can remember involves the forbidden hand feeding of Canada geese which got so tame they lost their natural fear of people paving the way for teenage boys to hand spear them to death one morbid afternoon. Those families who brought leftover bread to hand feed these beautiful birds had no thought as to the way the bread effected their health or how it artificially raises their numbers. They certainly never considered that by feeding the geese they were sentencing them to death. The lesson here is that we must stop acting in the way that feels good in the moment without considering the long-term result.

Just about everything about the state of our environment fits into the narrative that short term desires often result in long tern ecological pain. It feels good to buy something brand new and not consider the resources it took to make it or the overflowing landfills where it will end up. When you are thirsty a drink that comes in a ubiquitous plastic one-use bottle is refreshing. Few think that 1,000 people are doing that every second in the US resulting in 500 billion bottles that will have a heinous second life polluting our land, ground water and oceans.

It seems fair in the moment to put out a welcome mat on our southern border and to those around the world in need of a better life or just more opportunities today, but the impact of an increased demand for housing, jobs, and healthcare on our already stressed country is as delusional as it is ignored. Sharing one’s wealth is admirable but there is no wealth to be found in today’s US. Our rivers are running dry, our health care systems are failing, and the open space that serves wildlife and the water cycle is being gobbled up by our continued population pressures. The figures are astonishing. America lost 17,800 square miles of open space to population pressure and its resulting development between 2002 and 2017, according to a study released by NumbersUSA.

But my experience is that figures do not matter when we refuse to adopt an ethic of long-term thinking. We must open our eyes to the misery our short term, feel-good thinking and behavior is causing and will create in the future. Feeding white tail deer will increase their population so that they will be hit by cars and require them to be culled, a kind word for killing. Welcoming more Americans to our bare table is not an act of kindness when it will result in more misery and suffering in the long run. It is analogous to those who enjoyed photographing Freya, the popular walrus which condemned her to death. It all makes about as much sense as the lyrics, “I am the egg man, I am the egg man, they are the egg men, I am the walrus Goo goo g'joob.”

Tiger Lily Magic

On this tiger lily morning

Of a black cherry day

as late-nesting goldfinches

camouflage in towering cup plants,

Nature announced the time of year

for anyone able

to read its low-cost calendar.

I gleefully absorbed the orange and yellows

of its delicious summer pallet

wishing July had permission to linger

like snowdrifts on a future winter’s day.

Dragonflies announced their welcomed presence in silent pride

of the miles logged on their see-through wings.

I directed my garden hose at the cumulus-dotted sky

and watered rainbows with a gentle spray

while robins neared, hopeful

that a worm or two would surface.

Cardinals announced their ruby triumphance

from my great smoke tree

refusing to let the woodpeckers dominate the day’s cacophony.

Bumblebees acknowledged their satisfaction

with choices of native blooms

By showing off pollen-laden legs

as dwarfing swallowtails swooped in

on their territory.

The unfolding drama

nourished my heart

replenished my senses

and filled me with gratitude

for figuring out long ago

that we need to be more like Muir,

Behave as if we lived at Waldon Pond

with Thoreau peering over our shoulders

if we want a life far more satisfying

then whatever awaits us

on our phones.

Confessions of a Growth-A-Phobe

Does the sight of a large bulldozer send shivers down your spine? Does your heart skip a beat when you see that new high-rise popping up in your neighborhood? Do the traffic increases that can’t be explained away by construction zones and accidents give you sleepless nights? Do you feel nauseous at ribbon cutting ceremonies? Then you just might be a Growth-a-Phobe. I know I suffer from GAP. I am deeply fearful of our runaway human numbers and our love affair with growing our cities and sprawling over land which used to be for wildlife.

According to a quick Internet search, A phobia is “an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal.” “Phobias are more pronounced than fears. They develop when a person has an exaggerated or unrealistic sense of danger about a situation or object.” Most phobias harm just the individual and their immediate families. Deep fear often causes them to become reclusive. Some, as in homophobia, have the power to harm entire groups of innocent people and should be shunned. The only thing incorrect about being growthphobic is that the sense of danger is very real and dangerous to all living things.

Growth, as the writer Edward Abbey once said, is the philosophy of a cancer cell. Growth, love of growth, promotion of growth in America has set us up for doing just that, and we have become a parasite eating our host. It is a narrative that ties new, bigger, shinier, and better to progress. Politicians run on the promise of new growth. At the promise of new malls, wider freeways, bigger downtowns, new dams for our rivers, we all run, well maybe walk, to the ballot box to usher in their power to take our tax dollars and steal from the earth. It is a story that doesn’t end well and until more catch the GAP, those of us who have it will wake up each day in more and more frustration.

All construction, all technology, all additional people take resources which are polluting during extraction, use and disposal. The earth has become a dumping ground for both our needs and our insatiable desire for new toys. Nature does have the ability to recycle some waste and renew with regrowth but not at our rate of consumption and not at the size of our population. Those two are inseparable and the time is overdue for debating which is worse. In the process of becoming the force of 8 billion, and still growing by 80 million/year, we are also raising the temperature of the earth. In 2022 our carbon rate is still growing at 412 ppm (parts per million) a level of carbon so high we are becoming an inferno of heat, drought and wildfires creating great instability in our food and water supplies.

Still we haven’t changed our tune. Some of our leaders and the big polluters who fund them still deny the very possibility that all of the exhausts from our vehicles and factories trapped in our atmosphere since the 1800’s are to blame for climate change. Our leaders and their minions still operate within the cult of infinite growth as though there will be no price to pay. Growth of our numbers is so silenced by the powers that be, that people are shocked when they hear how quickly our population has exploded. When I tell them that when my parents were born we had less that 3 billion people on earth and only 106 million people in the US, it seems impossible that our species with all of our wars, diseases and maladies could take over the planet so quickly.

Money and power are as addictive as heroin and crack cocaine and just as dangerous. Although many, like Herman Daly who recently wrote in the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/18/magazine/herman-daly-interview.html  have offered alternatives to growth in his steady state economy proposal years ago, few are listening. They are sent to the back of the room, swept under the rug by those who worship their portfolios and just can’t see a way forward under a de-growth scenario. They can’t fathom that water is more valuable than a vault full of gold.

Commercials let us know that Wall Street wants us to keep shopping with their offers 0 % financing for shiny new SUV’s, and the latest smart phones go on sale and their salivating customers prove they are becoming smarter than us. Offered in a myriad of new colors they sell us on the notion that the newest phones must be purchased immediately if we are to be on top of the newest technology. When the resources they consume and the pollution they cause are an environmental travesty. https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/environment/the-hidden-environmental-toll-of-smartphones/

Solutions to curbing our growth addiction have been readily available for decades. But endless bickering has been throwing a monkey wrench into much needed intelligent and biosphere- focused conversations. Fingers are pointed back and forth between the rich and poor countries, when all are harmed by growing human numbers and their demands on limited resources.

I witnessed this in the 28 years I was in charge of a small 150-acre nature center surrounded by a growing urban area. Every time a high-rise went up across the street or a lane was added to our bordering freeway, our wetland had to take on the extra storm water.

I stood firm on not allowing deep holes to be dug in our prairie, and pointed out the fallacy of thinking we could keep taking on more and more acres in our watershed without consequences. In spite of my efforts, over 2,000 acres were added over the years, and the center’s 3 miles of trails kept flooding especially on high rainfall years. It was my initiation into the downsides of growth. There was no full cost accounting of the development projects, especially the federal funding of freeway ‘improvements’. Oh, they would throw a few dollars our way but was never enough to cover the long-term costs of the damage done by growths evil ways.

There are three basic solutions which must be worked on simultaneously and in each and every country, developed or developing. 1) Work towards a steady state economy, (see https://steadystate.org/ .2) Strive for normalizing small families and providing accessible reproductive health care  and education for women (see any number of NGO’s like population media center https://www.populationmedia.org and https://fairstartmovement.org/  3) and working on the policies which would address the sustainable limits to mass immigration (see www.numbersusa.com  and Sustainable Population Australia  https://population.org.au/) for this is the fastest way to stop localized, country based growth in its tracks. But these answers which have proven track records in several countries are thrown under the bus because we continue to be married to our toxic growth story and get mired down in downstream distractions and accusations of injustice.

When our global culture, led by the developed world, believes in the infinity of resources and the glory of growth, there is no need to even try these solutions on for size. Just imagine if de-growthers were in charge, we would get busy taking our foot off the growth pedal and working to align our demands with the capacity of the earth to support us. Just think of the resources we would save, the wild animals who could still have a chance and the human suffering we would prevent not to mention money we would save in red ribbons. I wrote extensively about the need to change our narratives in my latest book from Freethought House Press, Change Our Stories Change Our World (2019) But I did specifically suggest just how we go about poking holes in our unsustainable stories. So how do we proceed from a growth-based GNP overpopulated world which operates on an unsustainable scale to one that heads us in a direction of less?

To do this I think we need to take a page out of two books, full of adaptable advice. Woke Racism, How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America (2021) by John McWorter and How to Have Impossible Conversations by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay (2019). These authors roll up their sleeves and encourage us to take on dominant narratives. McWorter profoundly states, “There is room in society for speaking the truth and living to tell about it.” He gives many examples of where we can say no to the dominant forces and come out ahead. What do Chicago, New York City and Hawaii all have in common? They have all said no to allowing Walmart to come in using a variety of legal strategies. Growth and its negative impacts are not inevitable, but they do take a lot of energy to fight.

When I read the Impossible Conversations book, I immediately thought it had value in showing us how to decouple our world from the growth train. Their advice would be to address growth-based belief system believers respectfully and with deep concern. Those who are promoting growth really do believe they are making the world a better place. It our task to break open that story and expose it for the ecological nightmare that it is. We have to have this seemingly impossible conversation with our leaders and the media. In order to intervene in the growth narrative, Boghossian/Lindsay invite us to poke holes in their story by asking direct questions about their beliefs and then ask them at to put their opinions on a scale of how much they believe their convictions. Then the next key question is to ask; What would it take for you to change your beliefs? What kind of evidence would be convincing enough for you to consider changing your mind?

An example directed at city leaders might look like this: Do you believe that the new development in our city will make an improvement in our lives when completed? How will traffic and water consumption be impacted? Are you aware that we are already water stressed? On a scale of 1-10 how strongly do you believe that this project will benefit our city 5 years from now? If they say anything less than 10 there is room for then asking, what kind of evidence would you accept as proof that embracing growth is harmful to our city? It shouldn’t be too difficult from there to provide any number of statistics to demonstrate the growth ship has sailed. https://www.numbersusa.com/msp/numbersusa-sprawl-studies

It sounds cruel, but we truly do need more growth phobic people in our country and the world. I wish I could spread it by not wearing a mask for it is the one phobia which, if acted upon, could help bring us back from the brink of disaster. The only other healthy phobia I would like to infect us with is my phobia of assault weapons, but that is for another essay.

For Your Consideration: To be Anti-Growth is to be Pro-Humanity

For too many years unjustified accusations have flown at those of us who have been beating the overpopulation drum. At best we are told we only care about trees and wildlife at the expense of human rights at worst we are labeled racists and just plain anti-human. This is an expedient way to shut down a much-needed conversation, avoid the truth and any hope of solving what is behind our booming environmental crisis.

Just label the ecologically aware as unfair to the poor and marginalized and you don’t have to pay attention to what they (we) are saying. As Dana Carvey’s Church Lady character would say, “Isn’t that special!” or more appropriately, “How conveeeenient”. If our intentions as overpopulation activists are deemed nefarious, no one has to listen or accept blame for things going south so quickly. The truth is, If we truly were anti-human and racist our best approach to this issue would be to remain silent and just watch the collapse of all we hold dear progress.

Paraphrasing Isaac Asimov, the overpopulation issue operates under its own weather system and is so detrimental to humanity that the best way to keep it on track to wipe us and our fellow creatures out is to do nothing. He points out that at least with nuclear war we have to do something. We are very busy doing nothing, and even busier making up reasons why we can’t have decent, effective policies, many of which have been in the pipeline for a long time.

Without ecologically and morally justifiable laws in place to keep us in balance with the resources needed to survive, we will continue to grow to such an outrageous population size that conservation efforts will become increasingly ridiculous. We keep telling the public to be sure to wash out their peanut butter jars and shop with reusable bags, meanwhile we add over 200,000 new customers net gain to Mother Earth’s limited store each day.

In the US it is becoming ‘green’ window dressing to put in community gardens and roadside wildflowers, while we put out the red carpet for thousands of new residents to our shiny, new government subsidized apartment units. While we smile at ribbon cutting ceremonies these relocated earth customers will be in the process of draining our already stressed aquifers and adding to our traffic jams. We have alternate days for watering lawns in place while encouraging the addition of hundreds of new residents each year in arid, drought stressed states who will be needing 82 gallons of fresh water per day just to live a decent modern life. We must be locally sustainable before we can ever hope to be globally so.

The time is overdue to call out these social justice warriors. I would mention them by name but not only are they growing in numbers it is their story I am trying to poke holes their story. Anyone who is alarmed at the growth rates of our population which is mainly due to mass immigration is NOT I repeat, NOT an automatic white supremacist.

If you want to help mankind, and prevent suffering, misery, and early death of humans you can do many things. You can be against the death penalty, pedophilia, sex trafficking, the sale of assault weapons to the public and the promotion of illicit drugs. You can question the ease with which we go to war with no game plan for ending the invasions of sovereign nations. All these positions reflect my deeply held values. How is it that I can I suddenly become anti-human by promoting the idea that overpopulation is killing our future? I can’t because I am not. I am the opposite of a racist. I am not the enemy of all things human. Overpopulation causes ecocide, which is an umbrella incorporated the ills of genocide. It is the unnamed, unblamed enemy of our present and future. It stresses resources, eliminates pollinators, adds to our carbon footprint, creates traffic, obliterates our scenic views, and overcrowds our cities and parks. Trying to prevent this collective tragedy is nothing but noble.

We have all seen the photos of trains in India so overstuffed with passengers that over 33,000 people are killed each year just by falling overboard. Do we think we will somehow be protected from their fate in the developed world? If you have been around for a few, you have already witnessed the diminished quality of life brought about by overpopulation. More crowds, more pollution, more anonymity, less community, and more crime are all the result of the US population growing beyond the carrying capacity of our precious and irreplaceable resources including our now mythological wide-open spaces. The real finger pointing should be at those selling the fallacies that the US is limitless with much to offer newcomers. Decay is all that lies ahead for a country unwilling to put its ecological foot down. Yes, we indeed may owe certain groups a lifeline because of our past or even current unfair and even evil acts, but we cannot offer up our country’s future as penance. That lifeline needs to be in more sustainable forms. Once we recognize that the US cannot be the release valve for the hundreds of millions who would like to come here, there are endless possibilities for being helpful. For instance, we could send in teams of health care providers and educators to help relieve women saddled with the burden of having to provide for unsustainable numbers of children. We could try to negotiate with leaders attaching trade policies to lowered fertility rates.

An article in the Journal of Future Studies, (Sept. 2020, 25(1): 93–106) addressed the motivations of those advocating to take our foot off the growth pedal. “Environmental scientists and scholars who point out the danger of overpopulation do so for two key reasons. The first is that this is causing ecocide and the extinction of life on Earth. The second is that the first reason is likely to lead to famine and war, and the major loss of human population….Thus, talking about overpopulation is not anti-human but pro-human. Population activism seeks to avoid mega-death (both human and nonhuman). Similarly, it wishes to avoid a situation where international conflict and war are increased. The ‘anti-human’ claim thus has no evidence or logic to support it.”

In my 2015 book, Move Upstream, A Call to Solve Overpopulation, Freethought House Press, I invited people to consider the big picture. I did not tell them to leave their values behind, but to accomplish them with a wider vision. An upstream view is to see not only what we are doing but why we are doing it. If I didn’t care about the biodiversity of this planet and its capacity to support us, I would take the George Carlin approach. I would get a lawn chair and make a big bag of popcorn and just watch the circling of the drain. I would nod my head and say to whomever wanted to listen, “What did you expect when we add millions each year to a country which already can’t manage to provide for its citizens?” I do deeply care about this planet and its creatures and so do my fellow overpopulation activists. I am ready to go to the mat to challenge those who cannot see beyond their limited worldview. When their narrative of shame is examined through the lens of sustainability it becomes tarnished and is not just damaging to activists but to the future of those they think they are trying to protect.

Overpopulation activists must address growth in all of its forms, both locally and globally. Growth is cultivated by high fertility rates and lack of women’s empowerment, immigration policies and capitalism which is increasingly better referred to as oligarchic capitalism due to the way in which a handful of billionaires are running the country’s economic policies. Those who claim to have a stake in the social justice of the most vulnerable would do well to take a few ecology courses and see that they are setting up a house of cards which is destined to collapse and fall hardest on those with the least resiliency.

Tiny Tombstones a Poem for These Times

Tiny Tombstones by Karen I. Shragg

Tiny tombstones dot the landscape

But I refuse to be numb

There isn’t enough granite in the world

To make room for my grief I must experience anew

With enough disgust and embarrassment for good measure.

The dash between their years inexcusably close together.

They weren’t allowed to live long enough to have done much

But break our hearts at their sudden annihilation,

woven into our now common, eerie tapestry

We have to own and quit denying

That our finger of inaction was on the trigger too.

Each murderous thread woven with our love affair with guns

and the elevation of the 2nd amendment beyond its intentions.

Teachers who signed up only for low pay and long hours

forced to be heroes by those who offer them more weapons as a patronizing answer that will only keep lining the pockets of those whose blood-stained hands cannot be washed clean with platitudes of thoughts and prayers.

Whose deaf ears refuse to respond to those who scream to sign up for the real solutions already in the pipeline from countries

Whose leaders aren’t funded by the weapon salesmen

Whose guilt hasn’t found an escape hatch

Paved with self-righteousness and twisted Christian values

Just to keep their party in power

At the price of keeping the orders coming in

for more tiny tombstones.

Growth as Our Narrative is just a Superstition And it’s Bad for Us.

The Britannica Dictionary definition of a superstition is “a belief or way of behaving that is based on fear of the unknown and faith in magic or luck.” I think our faith in growth as progress toward a better world is on that level. It is pure superstition to believe that we can keep adding to our population with all the demands on our resources that it brings and believe that life will be better for all. If one further defines superstition as a steadfast belief which causes unintended or intended suffering, then the addiction to a pattern of endless growth in a limited place certainly fills the bill.

We know for certain that superstitions harm our most amazing and rare wild animals. It is estimated that 37 million seahorses end up in the black market due to the superstition in much of Asia that these remarkable and unusual fish promote virility and are a symbol of good luck. In India more that 17,000 owls are poached each year because according to Hindu mythology, the owl is connected to the Goddess Lakshmi and some who practice the occult still believe in appeasing the goddess by killing the owl. These beautiful birds are also killed due to a superstition about its ability to bring good luck and prosperity to those who possess its bones and feathers. Not so lucky for the owls themselves who need them more.

The monitor lizard experiences the same precarious fate because of superstitions attached to its ability to help a woman conceive. No proof of this exists yet those who stand to profit from nonsense need only to perpetuate the superstition to collect from those who will soon find themselves poorer and in the same predicament.

Viagra and Cialis sales reps need to find their way to the villages in India where the spiny tail lizard, called ‘Sanda’ in local language, is in high demand for its mythological ability to do what insurance pays for in this country.

The oil, which is extracted from its tail, makes money for the perpetrators and by the time the duped customers figure out the scheme it is too late for this nearly extinct lizard. Due to extensive poaching this species is on the verge of extinction. Myth and legend are the real killers of spiny tailed lizards for they do not contain magical powers to heal bone diseases and erectile dysfunction any more than throwing salt over your shoulder protects you from evil, a superstition which lives on some of the families I grew up with.

From Pangolins to Bengal Tigers, I could unfortunately go on and on about how these nearly extinct species are being killed for the superpowers they are believed to have but do not possess. https://wildhub.community/posts/how-myths-and-superstitions-are-fueling-illegal-wildlife-trade-and-driving-wildlife-to-extinction?channel_id=capacity-development

Their superpower does exist, but it is in the way they add diversity, beauty, and function to the natural world. They have proven they can survive the worst of storms but are dying because of our ways, our numbers, and our ridiculous and destructive superstitions about the way they have more value to us dead than alive.

Superstitions are so dangerous to wildlife and yet they hang on despite well-researched scientific data. Take shark-finning, please take it, please make it go away. This horrid process of killing sharks just for their fins is rooted in ancient times when dominance over sharks was a sign of prowess in China and when it was thought that they had medicinal properties and were a status symbol due to their expense. Now driven by billions on the Asian continent with a taste for it, multiple species of sharks have been reduced in number by 80% in the last 50 years. We know that sharks are critical predators to balancing ocean habitats. We also know that eating them will not bring health benefits. Yet on top of having to contend with warming oceans due to climate change, this theoretically stoppable harvest remains an unsustainable and deadly practice.

Growth of the human enterprise must be lumped together with all these wild beliefs as a superstition that is bad for us. Growth as a narrative pushes for the carving up of landscapes to make room for more housing, spurred on by increases in population, which in turn means more office space and stores will be built over aquifers that are already stressed. The worship of growth is a more prolific superstition for it is embraced by nearly all cities, counties and countries wishing to attract development dollars to spruce up their landscapes with new high-rises and shopping malls. Empty spaces cause real estate developers to salivate, without understanding their value as open land. We know that conservation has a better pay off. According to the Trust for Public Land https://www.tpl.org/how-we-work/fund/conservation-economics  $4 are returned to a community for every $10 conservation dollar investment. Stopping development creates a reason for staying in a place while developing creates a reason to leave. People want to attract development but then their overcrowded clogged cities create a need to escape because humans do not thrive in crowded places. On the contrary they become frustrated and even mentally ill. The density we promote with our growth superstition leads to more noise, more smells, more disarray, more pollution and more confusion. (https://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/how-the-city-affects-mental-health.html)

Ending this growth inspired train wreck is clearly what we must do but because so many benefit and because it is all we have known for decades it remains an excruciatingly difficult task. At the very least we can quit believing the snake oil salesmen who tout its benefits while ignoring the price we are all paying. By almost every measure, our superstitious attitude toward the promises of growth is a failure. It is like rubbing oil on our skin instead of sunscreen wondering why we’ve been told to make a date with the skin cancer surgeon.

Next time you drive by a new development ask yourself a few questions, where will the water come from? How will the traffic be impacted? How will crime rates be affected? How will the next virus spread through them? How many taxes will be levied to pay for the services now required? Where will the new jobs come from and who will become disenfranchised because of a new supply of workers?

Growth fails our society on all fronts. There will not be enough water, there will be more traffic and accompanying road rage, more crime will flourish, and taxes will be higher while services will not be covered by the monies raised. We know this to be true. Truth is not the problem, letting go of superstitions is.

The latest sprawl studies reveal the sobering news that nearly 18,000 square miles (11.4 million acres) have been gobbled up by development between 2002 and 2017 alone. A deeper dive into the data reveals that 2/3 of this is related to population growth. An even deeper parsing of the data reveals that most of our growth in the US is now driven by immigration. 

(https://www.numbersusa.com/resource-article/vanishing-open-spaces-national-study)

Thanks to our relative prosperity and a great public relations job it is said that upwards of 160 million would like to move here from around the world for various reasons, mostly for opportunities for a better life. There is no way to keep that door open and expect that our country won’t collapse under the weight of all of those additional citizens. As Senator Gaylord Nelson said long ago, “It’s phony to say I’m for the environment but not for limiting immigration.” If we can demonstrate that the growth is the enemy to a decent future, we cannot continue to dismiss how we are growing. Americans need to be spending time addressing the hard choices we face reasonably and with decency and quit wasting precious time slinging arrows at the immigrants or those who hate them from a racist point of view.

Our superstitions continue to keep us away from the truth. The enlightenment is trying to knock on our door, and we keep sending it away. We do this every time we ban books, try to rewrite history with textbooks edited for both liberal and conservative audiences, and ignore the ramifications of our superstitious ways. We keep being told and sold tales with no grounding. We keep getting false choices too. We can have a less populated US and we can do so without economic blowback, disparaging rhetoric, or despicable policies.

 The millions more people headed our way as we continue to promote the growth train, will only destroy our country, and the ecological ability to support us. Yet we are more afraid of triggering backlash than doing the hard work of coming up with fair and balanced policies that address population stabilization in a country already overpopulated by millions. Many have done the legwork and the required research. We don’t need any more proof that adding one million more people a year due to legal immigration and untold millions more due to illegal immigration is not sustainable, we just need to look out the window, and down our blocks. We can see that growth is choking us. But we do need to let go of growth as our number one unexamined superstition first. If we don’t it will be a lot like saying we love the oceans while dining on shark fin soup.

A Call for Deep Justice: Why Overpopulation is the Real Enemy of the Kind of World We Seek

Decades ago, a movement called ‘Deep Ecology’ appeared on the scene and attempted to redefine our relationship with our life-giving earth. The movement was inspired by Rachel Carson’s stinging expose’ on the proliferation of pesticides, the now classic Silent Spring. But Carson didn’t only mourn the unnecessary deaths of birds and insects she challenged us to shift our modern world thinking away from domination.

Enemies of deep ecology and James Lovelock’s sister theory, the “Gaia hypothesis” admonished followers by calling them ‘Tree Huggers’. These movements were nobly trying to pry us loose from our anthropocentric view of the Earth. Instead of viewing resources from serving a utilitarian viewpoint these movements tried to provide a more holistic view. They proposed that everything from trees to mushrooms have intrinsic value beyond their usefulness as porch furniture and gourmet food.

The goal of Deep Ecology is to give nature a seat at the table. According to the Foundation for Deep Ecology, “Nature must be seen as a partner and model in all human enterprise in order to attain real and permanent change.” Indeed, the world would be in a much better place if valued nature were a guiding principle for the decisions made by world governments and the corporations which run them.

Deep Ecology which see humans as no different from other life forms and Gaia theorists which acknowledge the importance of humanity but not beyond a value that can be sustained, have new neighbor: the Nature’s Rights Movement. This newer movement has taken their game changing philosophy into the judicial system. Nature’s Rights is all about advocating for the legal rights of ecosystems, giving more muscle to those who fight for all things conservation. Neither of these movements have stellar reputations for naming and blaming overpopulation for its crucial role in creating the very problems of overshoot but their sentiments are in the right place.

It is easy to see why the greedy want to kick nature in the teeth for short term profit. It’s harder to see why those who claim to be in favor of social justice join them in putting up hurdles to true sustainability. Social Justice ‘warriors’ get in the way of real justice by scrutinizing policies with the singular lens of cultural diversity without consideration of the larger context of sustaining the ecosystems which support us all. Social justice pretends to be the only key to making the world better for the disenfranchised, but it is not. Ecological justice is the other side of the justice coin. Social justice alone is a weak tool which always ends up hurting people in the end.

Let me explain. Let’s say that millions of people were allowed to migrate to a city which initially had more employment and favorable resources to share. They built roads and housing but, in the process, added millions to a limited fresh water supply. Within a few decades due to a combination of overpopulation and increased drought, people began to suffer due to severe water shortages. Setting up rules to look into the future and try to prevent such shortages operates on a deep justice level. Truth be told, this scenario isn’t fictitious.  Just ask any of the 4.6 million who are now scrambling to provide water for their families in Cape Town South Africa, a city which had a population of just 1.6 million in 1970.

It is unquestionably sad and maddening that hard won voting rights, civil rights, woman’s rights and LBGTQ rights are losing ground all over the US in exhausting battles that seem to take three steps backwards for every one step forward. But our righteous march toward righting these wrongs must not ignore the ability of the earth to sustain growing human numbers and resource demands. Ecology barely achieves a whisper in our national conversation while the shouts for justice from the streets take up all the oxygen in the room.

The bottom line is that there is no social justice on a dead planet and those who claim to want a more fair and just world better start making room for ecology in its mission and activities. The fragile layer of life represented by our biosphere will soon be unable to support any human life no matter our class, race, or gender. Those already in trouble will be the first to suffer as they have no buffer zones.The social justice movement has been running roughshod over the principals of Deep Ecology for a long time but it has ratcheted up its protests lately, claiming that nature and the goals of conservation must take a back seat to issues of inclusion, equity, and the dismantlement of racism, classism, and sexism.

Overpopulation as a concept has become a trigger word for them and they have lashed out to say that behind this idea are those who wish to flush the remaining rights of the needy down the drain.  I give you Exhibit A: the news from Conservation NGO board room that leaders are being dismissed not for eschewing their duties as protectors of biodiversity by ignoring overpopulation, but for tardiness in increasing the gender and cultural diversity of their boards. I envision what will happen if this direction continues to manifest: we will finally achieve equality on the Titanic just before it sinks.

Do not despair. I may have a solution. Perhaps from now on we refer to Deep Ecology and similar theories, as Deep Justice. Deep Justice is a much-needed broader reframing of our relationship to nature. Justice for the natural world is ultimately justice for humans. The state of the world is in perpetual crisis and scarcity abounds, the kind that technology cannot fix. It might be time to ask the question of social justice warriors, “So how has ignoring overpopulation been working for you?” It just might be time to dial back the indefensible name-calling rhetoric and look at justice through a bigger lens. This must be a lens which relies on the physics of the biosphere as well as acting in support of those who have struggled under the weight of discrimination. Deep Justice acknowledges the need to focus on ecological integrity in all policy matters, so that the goals of social justice have a chance to work.

Deep Justice has one basic, scientifically and morally defensible premise: We cannot have a just world when the principles of ecology are ignored, altered or in most cases trampled upon. Overpopulation drives scarcity, pollution and general destruction of our life-giving ecosystems. The growth of the human enterprise quickly becomes the tinder of injustice.

Nature moves slowly and needs time for renewal and humans grow and move quickly to destroy mountain tops, drain rivers and pollute ground water. There is a boomerang effect to growing faster than nature will allow: more suffering, more misery, and early death.

Once nature’s limits are exceeded suffering occurs. Few are versed in ecology, and it is no wonder, it is rarely taught in our school systems anymore, and many of our so-called leaders in Washington are loathe to even agree that evolution is the real deal. It is politically incorrect for them to admit that the US is a limited place and deeply in overshoot ( see www.earthovershoot.com ). The MVP (most valued planet) map is a great resource to demonstrate that every country in the world is overshooting its resources in various ways and more growth will just exacerbate the growing problems of pollution, poverty, traffic, and more.Overpopulation manifests in both birth rates and

mass immigration. Both must be addressed when trying to hold the reigns on population growth and yet immigration has become a red flag for those who think they are advocating for the marginalized of this world.

We must acknowledge that there are those in power who are full of hatred and xenophobia without an ounce of ecological knowledge or care for the rest of humanity cursing in their veins. They have weaponized the immigration issue to promote their nefarious agendas. They wish to close the doors to immigration from a perspective of supremacy and nationalism. But there are those of with righteous motivations who look at immigration from a place of numbers and overshoot who undeservedly get lumped into this offensive group. Just because I like grapes does not make me an alcoholic. And just because I believe that we need to greatly restrict mass immigration in our bloated country, does not make me a racist. I am simply saying that the progress gained in promoting small families loses ground when millions are allowed to perpetuate population growth with loosely enforced immigration laws.

In an environmental impact statement co-authored by Leon Kolankiewicz, he stated that “The Population growth was responsible for 67% of the loss of open space, for the U.S. as a whole, though the percentage differs from state to state.”

(https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/04/21/kolankiewicz-environment-bears-the-brunt-of-migration-growth-in-u-s/ )

When scientific researchers have gone to great lengths to demonstrate the harm that overpopulation is doing, it is time to start listening to them and those of us interested in a better and balanced world. I used to be offended to be lumped in with those who would use overpopulation as a weapon of injustice and paranoia. Now I am just weary. Thank goodness there are other leaders with the same mindset. They too are on a quest for Deep Justice. Among them is Roy Beck author of the 2021 book, Back of the Hiring Line, A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth, a read that could stop the nonsense if enough people would take the time to absorb its well-researched message

Undoubtedly the discussions we need to have will be challenging but have them we must. Once we are able to sign on to the ideals of Deep Justice we will be on the right path.  

After we eliminate the distractions of unfair accusations of racism, where there is none to be found, we can begin to have the kind of success that will satisfy all seekers of a just world.

Where Will All the Woke People Live, Examining the Efficacy of Wokeness in an Overpopulated World

I believe a lot of things that are currently unpopular. I agree with comedian/commentator Bill Maher who says he is not a member of any tribe because he wants to think for himself. I agree with him that it is a political miscalculation to keep borders open in the interest of skewing votes to the side of the Democrats. I further believe that growth inflates our country like a balloon ready to pop, and the pieces of that burst balloon are affecting us like pieces of actual balloons which, mistaken for food, choke wild animals.

I concur with the opinion of professor/author John McWorter (Woke Racism 2021) that the woke movement, strict in its view that everything is racially biased, is ultimately dismissive of the Black community. Like McWorter, I agree the Left’s attachment to wokeness does little to actually improve the lives of Black people.

I am a fan of Roy Beck and his book, Back of the Hiring Line (2021). I agree with his historical take on the effects of mass immigration being detrimental to the gainful employment of Blacks. I believe it continues to haunt their economic progress.

I find author and Newsweek editor Batya Ungar-Sargon’s take on wokeness and its harm to democracy in her book “Bad News”(2021) required reading for anyone who cares about our form of government. I even wish to expand her theory about the downsides of wokeness to include how we deal with growth in this country. You see I believe that sprawling up or building out as a response to continued growth is detrimental to life itself and will ultimately destroy all we hold dear about our country. It may be unpopular and unacceptable to say by those who want to appear like they care, but the evidence is just too solid.

I believe that change is hard. It is won out of sweat and sacrifice because no matter how justifiable, the rich and powered elite are always invested in the perpetuation of iniquity. It is therefore critical that our collective efforts are focused on adding up to real change, not just the kind that makes its appearance on center stage and then dances off never to be heard from again.

If you are newly awakened to the horrors of what has been done to native peoples throughout North and South America, you can change street and school names and take down statues or you can donate to groups like the Native American Rights Fund which works to provide voting rights and legal advocacy in the community. I believe I know which one has the most potential for making a real difference. I also believe I know which one makes us think we are erasing past tyrannies while doing no such thing. If you really care about helping the Black community you will do more than put up a sign, you will help them by insisting we fight for voter’s rights, end the hangovers of red lining and tackle mass immigration which just increases competition in the job market.

My biggest ‘sin’ is that I believe that if we take care of the natural world, it will take care of us. Unfortunately, we are doing just the opposite. We are on a self-destructive path as we continue to pollute, sprawl and demand from the earth more than the earth can provide. What happens when the bees, who we need to pollinate our food, are all displaced by our insatiable need to cover their plants with cement? What happens when our farm fields are all converted to housing and our aquifers are emptied? If we only care that our board rooms finally meet all representation and inclusion goals, where will we live and how will we survive? I always like it when Hollywood has more diversity and more women producers and directors, but what about biodiversity? It is one of my biggest fears that our long overdue efforts to right the wrongs of our past transgressions toward marginalized groups will be successful just in time to run out of water, food, wildlife, and open space. The environment is our foundation for life, and it is crumbling under our feet.

Elon Musk and others are eyeing our neighboring planet, as an option if we run out of room on ours. Again, I agree with Bill Maher, what a bad idea. Mars is void of air, soil and livable temperatures, plus it takes a lot of fuel to get there. How many rockets, how much fossil fuel will it take for it to be a true release valve for our country which is already about 150 million people over the amount our resources can support? (https://www.footprintnetwork.org/)

My unpopular position remains not only that we must stop growth, we must see it as the enemy of a viable future for our country and all who live here. We must stop the silliness of wokeness which has only served to distract and send more voters to the other side of the aisle in disgust and distrust that real issues that need addressing are being forfeited for the appearance of caring for those who are currently in the bullseye of bigotry and despair.

We may have countless sources of so-called news but they seem only capable of highlighting the absurd and focusing narrowly on one issue at a time. As Ungar-Sargon points out in her book, news agencies are now serving the elite who want to think they are changing the world for the better by emphasizing how triggered they are when something admittedly awful happens. Big picture thinking when it comes to really preserving our water supplies and organically addressing our traffic jams by taking our foot of the gas pedal of growth is off their radar screen. If it’s not reported in the major media outlets, only those who read ecological literature and pay attention to the deafening drone of bulldozers will understand importance of getting off the growth train. Thanks to a paucity of stories on the dangers of growth, more Americans can cite verbatim who won “Dancing with the Stars” than know relevant US population statistics.

Extensive Sprawl Studies, (see below) prove that growth even more than per capita consumption is harming our country. The West is running out of water while the developers are doing the devil’s handiwork but selling shiny new homes to those able to think only of square feet and fancy appliances. We are not only willing participants in draining our precious life-giving resources, we are also simultaneously increasing competition for scarce human resources too. More people require more hospitals, social services, schools etc. and those all require more natural resources. Instead of fighting growth and its advocates to stop sprawl, many propose to pack and stack people into already overcrowded cities. But density is sprawl’s evil twin. It harbors its own set of issues as we witnessed during the early days of the pandemic. It concentrates more consumers in one area often demanding more water from one resource which becomes unsustainable.  

When growth is the deity we worship, those already hurting are first in line to feel the pain. If we truly want to help those who have been historically brutalized and are currently marginalized by undeniable institutional racism, we need to wake up to the real problems perpetrated by those who benefit from growth, the corporations who do not care who they hurt as long as their offshore bank accounts keep expanding. Because we have been woefully unsuccessful in keeping money out of politics, our political leaders follow the growth mongers right into their next bid for reelection.

History has demonstrated repeatedly that when resources become scarce, autocratic leaders jump in to inflame society’s fissures and scapegoat scenarios become our default button. As a person of 100% Ashkenazic Jewish ancestry, I know something about the ramifications of a world fighting to stay afloat. Hatred of the ‘other’ becomes more prevalent and justifiable in the eyes of those who see their future opportunities and way of life threatened. Antisemitism in the form of hate crimes and vandalism is already on the rise; how will we act towards each other when water no longer comes out of the tap?

No matter how inclusive we try to be or how triggered we are on our campuses by speech we do not wish to hear, our prejudices and our need to just survive will be amplified in proportion to our dwindling water supplies and increased competition for all our other resources. In other words, no matter how righteous you think you are today, it will be a brutal world of fighting for your own when we hit the wall of scarcity harder than we are today.

 The mantra of wokeness is in response to the obvious need to reckon with the persistence of racism and racist policies, sexism and sexist policies and all the ways in which members of the LBGTQ community are still maligned. But it is the pendulum swinging too far the other side with nothing to show for progress. That progress is further interrupted by our ecological system’s inability to handle more and more of its top predator, us. Ecology needs a seat at the table of justice for it holds all the cards. We need to start fighting the real problems day instead of picking at scabs, watching them bleed and then asking for Band-aids. We need to listen to those trying to tell us the truth about the horrible ramifications of growth especially to those already struggling economically.

Sprawl study after sprawl study has warned about how when it comes to resources, we are eating our own. The ever-popular retirement destination, the desert southwest, is experiencing the kind of growth which is strangling the area’s ability to support life. “Arizona’s population growth of 4.2 million between 1982 and 2017-8 was responsible for 12 times more sprawl than all other factors combined.” (https://www.numbersusa.com/news/population-growth-and-diminishing-natural-state-arizona) 

Reading these extensive studies is a sobering experience but just think of it as sacrificing an area the size of Maryland to population growth in just eight years on land that is otherwise needed for farmland, wildlife, and absorption of rain to replenish aquifers and you get the unsustainable picture. Layer that with the inability to even discuss these limits due to a time of super sensitivity and ‘shooting the messenger’ and you have the kind of inertia on fighting growth that will further undermine the issues of the woke.

This unsustainable parade is heading off a cliff and joining them in unison are many climate activists. Their denial that population growth has a relationship to growing carbon footprints, something that seems so obvious even before the clear data is examined, is being washed away in a sea of wokeness. They drank the Kool-Aid of the hour: say nothing about population growth for fear of being called out as racist. Someday when it is way too late, they just may see that this was a cowardly mistake. 

When scholars wish to discuss the need to seriously restrict immigration and promote small families so that we are not setting ourselves up for more and more suffering down the road, we need to listen to them, examine their evidence and not assume nefarious agendas. Every population scholar that I know has their moral fiber intact with no motive other than holding up the flag of ecological sustainability.

Think of the US as a giant ship with the rich and privileged people at the top and those in steerage down below with no view and little food. It is a noble and worthy idea to make things fairer, but we can’t do that at the expense of watching out for icebergs. We must continue to press the question, at the risk of being unpopular, if we continue to encourage growth, where will the woke people live?