The Medicine of Extinction: Why the Curio Trade Has to Stop.

Wild animals are being squeezed out of their habitats all over the world because of human overpopulation. We reached 8 billion people on our limited planet last year and we continue to add over 70 million net gain each year. Countries with relative abundance continue to attract those seeking refuge and prosperity from their beleaguered countries. With that continued growth comes the devastation of wildlife habitat and the use of more and more land converted to agriculture to feed us, and land to house, transport, and power us. It brings with it pollution of our air and waters as well as the ubiquitous addition of carbon to our ever-warming atmosphere.

The one thing that isn’t automatic to our growth addiction, and that in theory at least we could stop immediately, is the practice of using these magnificent and ever more rare animals in the practice of falsely claiming to cure ailments with the skin and bones of rare, wild animals.

According to Science Review (Dec 9, 2020) 565 mammalian species have been used as sources for medicinal treatments in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Of these, 155 are considered threatened and 46 others are near threatened. That doesn’t even include all the snakes, alligators and seahorses that are being hunted for their supposed value as pills in nature’s pharmacy in what is referred to as the curio trade.

The problem is that where there is money to be made, wildlife be damned. Pangolins are the most trafficked mammal in the world. There is a thriving black market for the meat, and scales of this unique and endangered mammal in China where people have used them for centuries to ‘cure’ everything from arthritis to cancer and to promote breast-feeding for lactating mothers. The claims that they enhance male fertility is also hurting these creatures. If this worked, it would be cheaper and easier to recommend that people in need of these cures just chew on their fingernails because pangolin scales are made out of the same material -- keratin.

https://www.awf.org/blog/27-million-pangolins-are-poached-every-year-scales-and-meat.

 Some ancient traditions have much to offer the modern world. I have a daily practice utilizing the ancient traditions of qi gong and yoga which have helped me tremendously to live a more flexible, healthier life. But in a modern world where so much human pressure is already causing the extinction of our fellow creatures, the use of wild animals for medicines, based on superstitious folklore, has to stop especially where scientifically-based cures are available. It is unethical and even criminal to keep on with the traditions of killing endangered wild animals. It is creating a demand that is not helpful to us for curing diseases and certainly is harmful to them, creating one more preventable reason we are losing animals like pangolins.

Traditional indigenous practices rely heavily on cultural and social traditions of highly-revered practitioners who attach long-practiced rituals to the administration of their concoctions. They swear by the practices of their ancestors and to question them and the efficacy of the ground up rhino horn or powdered bodies of sea horses is considered to be blasphemy of the highest order. But no matter the issue, story is often more powerful than science. There are so many examples of this. We know that pesticides and herbicides sprayed on our lawns are harmful to our water supply. We know that they cause cancer and kill off insects needed by the food chain and for pollination, yet 80 million pounds are used annually in the US on lawns. There is no mayor of a US city that could honestly say that they need or want more people to house, feed and find jobs for, and yet we remain at a loss to find a way forward to curb mass immigration. Stories are not easily stopped by facts, and yet here I am again trying to do just that.

The comedian John Mulaney has a bit about how it is so much easier to stop something than it is to start something. His comedic claim is that it is 100% easier not to do something than it is to do something. I wish that were true when it comes to tradition propped up by centuries of embedded belief systems and making money from the wildlife trade. According to the World Economic Forum, illegal wildlife trading is the most lucrative of crimes, netting somewhere between 7 and 23 billion dollars each year for those who profit from the slaughter of some of our most iconic wildlife. Some of that is for items other than medicine, like elephant ivory, and wild birds and fish for the pet trade, but much of it is for the wild medicinal claims inspiring the harvesting of the creatures already suffering from the biodiversity loss caused by human overpopulation. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/09/fighting-illegal-wildlife-and-forest-trade/ 

Wild animals need to beware of being honored with a day -- it means that each has become so rare and so popular for human usage that their days are numbered. February 20th for example is World Pangolin Day, a day designated to let the world know about their unique beauty and that more than one million were illegally trafficked in the last 10 years, made easier by the use of the Internet. In 2019, 195,000 were trafficked for their scales. They are in such a precarious state that World Wildlife Day, celebrated on March 3rd, isn't enough to house its misery.

Other rare and endangered animals currently on the fake pharmacy list of traditional practitioners claim to cure everything from the common cold to fevers and from asthma to cancer. The Smithsonian lists these amazing and unfortunate animals as the top ten medicinally endangered ones: Rhinoceros, Chinese Alligator, water buffalo, Asian Elephant, Musk Deer, Sun Bear, Grevy’s Zebra, Tiger, Banteng (wild cow) and Hawksbill Sea Turtle.

Faced with climate change disruptions and biosphere destruction, it seems logical that using zebra meat to cure tuberculosis should probably stop. When aspirin has been invented it’s hard to justify killing a rare water buffalo for its supposed ability to cure fevers. Even if there were proof that this worked, aspirin seems a more ethical way to go. Sea horses are one of my all-time ocean favorites. I have yet to see one on my many dives, perhaps because the curio trade has caused over a million deaths of these horse-like fish each year. They have been sought after for their reputed cures for everything from infertility to baldness, asthma and arthritis. Wild animals need also to be on the lookout for trusts in their name. The Sea Horse Trust is helping to spread the word that this trade must stop not only to protect the sea horse but to protect the wallets of those who are still sick and poor while the animal lurches forward down the road of extinction.

This all must be looked at through the lens of time and numbers. The Zhou Dynasty of China is reputed to being the time and place where traditional medicine began. That was 3,000 years ago long long before there were modern pharmacies, when traditional medicines had only one thing to rely on for cures: animals, plants and their extracts. Back when our numbers were in the millions not billions, wild animals were so numerous that the thought of causing their extinction by the demand for using their bones, skin and meat was never in question. But numbers matter when it comes to wildlife. More people equal greater demand. When animals began their journey to our medicinal pouches and eventually to our medicine cabinets, the world had 50 million people in it. In today’s world that is just over the combined population of Toyko and New York.

Lions, for instance, used to have territories throughout Africa the Middle East, Southern Europe and India. Now they live in only 20% of their former ranges. Over 1/3 of these kings of beasts have disappeared in the past 20 years, a decline of 75% according to a study published by the University of Oxford Conservation research unit. https://africageographic.com/stories/vanishing-lions-a-75-decline-in-africas-iconic-predators-in-just-five-decades/

But the appetite for the medicines made from them have grown even more popular, creating the impetus for cat farms where wild lion and tigers are farmed for these medicines creating a new kind of tragedy. Big cat farms exploit these majestic animals for greed and money as they breed them and relegate the frightened felines to a life behind bars, in preparation for slaughter, as this video illustrates https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbJujxYMvw

When people move to other countries their customs come with them. Demand for animal parts is widespread as a result. Wildlife is not only used for bogus medicinal purposes but also for good luck or love charms.

The Audubon Society (May 5, 2022) did a story about how hummingbirds are considered good luck charms in Mexico. Since pre-colonial times hummingbirds have been considered good luck symbols for attracting love. Not so lucky for the hummers who find themselves packaged with love prayers and sold for an average of $50 a packet. Their tiny fragile body parts are sold wherever there is a demand. These illegal packages, horrifying to bird lovers, have been found as far north as Minnesota where I reside.

There are many environmental degradations which are proving hard to reverse. The ubiquitous chemicals and plastics in the oceans, air, and in our bodies, along with slowing, stopping and humanely reversing our population to lighten our collective footprint, are all exceedingly difficult to solve. But NOT killing wildlife for ancient superstitions? Let’s STOP doing that, if John Mulaney is right, we could just stop doing what is hurting them and not helping us. It seems like a win-win solution to me.

ABUNDANCE

Abundance

The kind that matters

The kind that brings joy riding in on its coattails

Is found in the most unlikely of places

It is found in less

Less numbers

Less energy

Less pursuit of landfill-bound toys

And magic bullet energy which only fuels the machinery of more.

It is hidden in  

The understated

It is written in undeveloped landscapes

It is tethered to the remaining unruly rivers

Untamed by demands to quench our never-ending thirst.

An abundance of joy

Awaits those who graft a new story on to their hearts

Who unwrap the beauty of less

And feel its wonder in the skies still able to permit rainbow views

And starry nights that humble

It opens the door to chance encounters with wild critters

The first to feel the dark side of worshipping growth

Cramming more and more into a country

never meant to hold this many without great sacrifice.

The Danger of Jumping to Solutions: How you can be humanitarian and work to curtail mass immigratio

I can see it in their eyes. I know the second I lose my audience when speaking about how to truly protect our country’s wildlife, the issue to which I have devoted my career. Speaking to groups of all sizes and stripes, I can tell when they agree with my premise that it is unacceptable to stand back while so many wild animals are threatened with extinction. When I stay in my lane and discuss the way pollution hurts every animal from honeybees to coho salmon, they cheer. When I say that we need to stop cutting old growth forests to protect critically endangered species, they applaud. When I say we need to better fund wildlife law enforcement they take out their checkbooks. When I say we need to protect rivers and riparian habitats by getting rid of dams and the notion that they were ever beneficial, I still have most of them with me. But when I say that truly protecting wildlife requires taking a hard look at the issue of overpopulation and the way population growth is undermining the best of these efforts, furrowed brows appear on their newly timid faces.

I can string them a long a bit longer by discussing how promoting small families is a worthwhile pursuit. But when I dive deeper into the main reason we are growing in the US and other developed countries, they start to squirm and even leave the room. When I tell them the unfiltered truth about the huge numbers of people currently streaming into our country, many who do so without invitation or permission, their minds shut down as they jump to possible solutions while questioning my ethics. Some even employ the most cowardly position and cancel me before even hearing me out. In our current climate of cancel-culture, it doesn’t matter how many wars you’ve protested or how many injustices you’ve stood up for, if you are going to even say the word’ immigration’ in your talk you will be canceled. That is what happened to me, and my scheduled talk called “Legally Extinct”, at the International Wolf Symposium in 2022. It was not only an act in defiance of the First Amendment it was harmful to the future of wolves.

Limits to our country’s resources are already stretched beyond recognition, yet the topic of allowing more people into our borders has become forbidden territory for most NGO’s, academic, and journalistic circles. It seems pretty rudimentary that adding more people will only exacerbate our problems. Increasing our demands for limited resources, cannot be solved with conservation measures. But no matter how many facts we can throw at this issue, the discussions are shut down when the possible solutions appear to be worse than the problem. I assure you they are not.  

Here’s a compelling fact. “America lost 17,800 square miles of open space — an area the size of New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware combined — to urban sprawl between 2002 and 2017,” according to an environmental impact study co-authored by Leon Kolankiewicz. (Boston Herald, April 2022). Sprawl, he found out, is a direct result of population growth and our population is mostly growing by mass immigration, not our fertility rates. Kolankiewicz further states that,” about 1 million legal immigrants and 2 million illegal ones last year alone — is driving our population growth, which in turn is destroying our open spaces.”

It's high time to refocus of our country’s narrative if we want to do more than appear like we care about people and want to save wildlife. It’s high time to prioritize those whose lives are diminished when more come in seeking our limited resources. It’s high time to consider the wildlife who must give up their homes in the name of trying to house millions of newcomers.

It’s more than high time to consider what ignoring mass immigration is doing to a country which has grown exponentially since the poem by Emma Lazarus defined our responsibilities to the needy of the world. In 1883, this poet penned the words which were added to the base of our iconic Statue of Liberty. As Jerry Kammer said in his book, "Losing Control" (2020), her poem made so much more sense back when we had just over 50 million people counted in our census. Now that we are bursting at the seams with over 336,000,000, these words need to be viewed as outdated and undermining the very essence of democracy and our ability to protect wildlife.

Her words, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” made so much more sense when much of America was undeveloped and climate change wasn’t as much of a threat.  

Roy Beck makes a remarkable case that the historical waves of immigration have hurt African American descendants of slaves as they were and are overlooked for jobs. ( Back of the Hiring Line A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth  2021) The rock solid evidence provided in his book begs the question, what about justice for those who have been here and oppressed for hundreds of years?

We are creating our own problems by having a schizophrenic relationship with the environment. How is the Florida panther supposed to hang on when that state’s population has been allowed to double in 30 years? We can’t keep driving around in our electric vehicles with our “coexist “bumper stickers on them, with our organic produce-filled cloth bags and think that we are doing much to rectify the devastating impact of living in a country which is deep into overshoot. I offer up as evidence that there are now 1092 species on the US Fish and Wildlife’s endangered species list, and according to Audubon more than half of our bird species are in decline. We have to do more.

At some point we have to see the negative impact that continuing to turn the other cheek on massive immigration undermines everything we hold dear. We have to open our eyes to stopping the numerical madness and see that it is an act of compassion to do so. We may be suffering from living at a time of one of the most ecologically illiterate generations ever to populate our country. Many have also been coached to feel guilty for our relative privilege. This is a horrible reason for looking the other way while millions flood our borders with demands for a broken system to serve them. There are solutions which will allow us to not only hold on to our humanitarian ideals but to be proud that we stood up for Americans and wildlife at the same time.

E-Verify, was established in 1996. This web-based system authorized by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, allows employers electronically confirm the employment eligibility of their employees. We can also pass laws to change the numbers of legal immigrants allowed in our country and better enforce limits to visa permits. These are solutions which will prevent extreme traffic increases, deter worker exploitation, reduce carbon emissions, and improve our ability to help those already without housing and jobs. Last time I checked, all of these are all important American values touted by those who claim to care about justice.

Emma Lazarus, was a poet and a Sephardic Jewish woman of Portuguese descent who may not have minded that this Ashkenazi Jewish woman of Russian descent wishes to amend her poem, for the betterment of the United States.

 “In order to preserve the intent of this great nation to care for the masses no longer wishing to be huddled, or tired or poor, who wish to live in this great land with room to roam free, with unpolluted landscapes and a future of plenty, we need to be reminded that its resources are not unlimited and its doors must not be open forever in recognition of what too many will do to our liberty.”

With laws already on the books and leaders who are brave enough to help us recalibrate our mission to one of protection of our draining resources and those already here, we will be able to truly say we are putting our best efforts toward justice for all.

When Hope Gets in the Way, the Audacity of Integrity

 Hope is in the way of progressing toward a better world. Hope feels good but it takes away our agency which is why religious institutions have used it so effectively for millennia. Without focusing on the power within us, without realizing we have critical minds and access to wise council, we become more vulnerable. Power structures like religious institutions and religion wannabees, take advantage of our hearts and reach into our open wallets.

The world is taking us down the ever-frightening path driven by overpopulation and its favorite monster-in-charge, climate change. Hope will not get us out of ever-increasing storms, drought, water scarcity, famine and everything that awaits our planet of 8 billion consumers, growing by 81 million per year, on our limited earth with its delicate biosphere. Hope did not serve the Jews of Europe well in the 1930’s. Taking action served them. Those who were the first to lose hope that Hitler was going to go away on his own were in a better position to save themselves.

Barack Obama wrote about the audacity of hope. Hope is integral to his philosophy of creating a better world. I wish to counter his message with the idea that integrity is where we need to land. Hope is sold by religion, and we know where that has brought us. Hope is why people, are still having multiple children in a world which all scientific forecasts say will make dystopian films look like child’s play. Hope is why we are giving lunch bags and bus tickets to people pouring over our borders, with complete disregard for our laws, in hopes they will have a safe landing. Hope is what male celebrities have too much of when then have children into their 70’s hoping that they will live long enough so they can see their progeny graduate high school. We need a cold bucket of ice water dumped on our heads and with it a reality check.

What we need to do is quit hoping and start looking deep into the eyes of the future which has no room for more of us and our sprawling ways. We need to live with the integrity of knowing that taking our foot off the economic and population growth pedal is the only collective act which has the power to lessen the suffering that lies ahead. It is the only thing to do which can possibly point us into the right direction. If we care at all about any kind of future for mankind and the wildlife species being destroyed by our errant ways, we must turn away from hope and turn toward integrity. The integrity of committing to the proper action also has a great dividend of creating a more compassionate world. Working to stop a development project, for instance, is a compassionate act towards those already living in the area under a cloud of scarcity.

We also don’t need to go down the rabbit hole of despair. Desperation leads to violence, and we already have more of that than we can comprehend. We need to plant ourselves in the middle of those two emotions and move forward with a mission to lessen the pain that lies ahead. We need to put on our big boy and big girl pants and quit shooting the messengers who have been warning about the dangers of anthropocentric policies for decades. We are not the problem. Hope, peppered with deep denial, is the problem. While we have been conditioned by religion to desire the discourse and promise of hope, we need to let it go. To tame our ways will be painful but it will be much easier than enduring what nature has in store for us if we continue business as usual.

We need to stop hoping and start focusing on what can be done to start moving toward a world of less. There is a laundry list of things we needed to start doing yesterday to build up our integrity. We need to do these things to lighten our footprint and help the biosphere survive, for without it we will have the same fate as the dinosaurs only this time we will be the meteor which starts the journey to our extinction.

To build integrity back into our ecological world we need to immediately stop the most egregious forms of consumption and quit incentivizing growth. Here is just some of the actions we must take:

-We have to quit building dams and take down the ones already in place for removing them improves water quality for wildlife and decreases their sediment load.

-We need to stop trying to build the tallest buildings as if we somehow win when we take all those resources of concrete and steel from the earth.

- We need to quit manufacturing luxury cruise liners, stretch limos and giant SUV’s.

-We need to stop making zip lines through the canopies of our forests.

- We need to quit building energy and resource sucking mansions and creating the class of people who can afford them with the loopholes in our tax structures and the unforgivable way we take advantage of laborers.

-We have to stop the city policies of tax increment financing, for developers and start giving tax breaks to those who live in smaller dwellings with smaller families.

-We need to stop thinking more technology is the answer to our planet crisis, for each new device takes resources and creates pollution in its wake.

-We need to override overshoot by first stabilizing then reversing population growth however and wherever it is happening within our borders for although overpopulation is a global problem it can only be solved at home. Growth happens either by birthrates which are too high for a variety of easily researchable reasons or because immigration policies are too unrestricted and unenforced. Both must be firmly and fairly addressed from a place of integrity depending on the country and each situation.

-We need to quit our religion of worshipping lottery winners and their grotesque purchases for their yachts may be affordable to their budgets, but they are too costly to the planet in both raw materials and fuel. Statistically the very rich are the largest contributors per capita to climate change, we must hold them accountable.

-We need to encourage work in the artistic sector for our creative energy is the only source of energy without limits.

-We need to start giving rivers the right to flow to the ocean and wild animals the right to live out their lives in a wilderness that must be valued.

-We need to give the natural world the right to exist for its existence is directly tied to our own.

At the end of the day, we must be on the journey of integrity as the poet Rumi once said, “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” To start this walk we must stop counting on wishbones and immediately begin concentrating on strengthening our backbones, I sure ‘hope’ we will!

Our State of the Union? We’re Overpopulated ! Why Our Rhetoric Must Match this Reality

I turned 18 in 1972. It was during the Vietnam War and I couldn’t wait to vote for George McGovern, the anti-war candidate. I just graduated high school and had little knowledge of the overpopulation issue back when the country had just over 209 million people in it. Now in 2023, with a state of the union measured in rhetoric more than reality, our population has hit 333 million and it still growing. All of those additional people need resources which cannot and have not kept up with demand for limited resources. Water scarcity in the parched Southwest is already a daunting issue.

SOTU, the State of the Union, our Union, is first and foremost overpopulated and that is behind our failure to bring about a better world and a brighter future for the next generation. Our population got a huge increase after World War II due to higher birth rates and I am a part of that baby boom generation. But the increase we are experiencing now is from the kind of mass immigration that is so unsustainable many mayors are crying for help. While we focus on what to properly call the now majority of people coming in without papers or vetting, the problem remains at the heart of our continuing decay in the state of our union.

I can think of no political job more challenging than that of a being a mayor of a major US city. While many mayors of big cities take home six figure salaries, those who take their responsibilities seriously work hard for their paycheck. They are responsible for keeping their citizens safe, addressing crime, homelessness, traffic, jobs and all issues surrounding quality of life. I think they would all agree, at least behind closed doors, that adding more people to their jurisdiction will always create more problems than it solves.

We need a dialogue that both recognizes the deeply entrenched international problems causing desperate people to pour in across our borders and that continuing to let them in is creating disastrous results within our borders. Allowing a non-stop flow of new residents to our already overcrowded cities is its own kind of cruelty. We claim in our rhetoric, particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle, to be about fairness and caring for the downtrodden. That makes for a good soundbite, but a horrible reality.

It is cruel to the working class, who live in underserved neighborhoods, many of them minorities. To try to divide our limited resources further to accommodate newcomers is a slap in the face particularly to African Americans still struggling for their fair shake of American generosity. This is best illustrated in the fine book by Roy Beck, “The Back of the Hiring Line”, A 200-year history of Immigration Surges, Employer bias and the Depression of Black Wealth.” (2021).

It is cruel to ask our working class to accommodate more people into their already overtaxed neighborhoods. The kindness in our political rhetoric must match the reality on the streets. There’s nothing like the social injustice of offering kindness to those from foreign lands at the expense of our own citizens.

It's expensive to our budgets and costly to American workers to keep trying to accommodate the demand put on city budgets by the increasing flow of mass immigration. According to an article by Erin Dwinell of the Heritage Foundation last September, the costs are real and steep. Dwinell is quoted as saying, "Last year, Philadelphia elected to budget $300,000 to publicly fund immigration attorneys for aliens facing deportation.” “The New York City Council budgeted $16.6 million the same year for the same purpose.” “Local taxpayers there should expect actual costs to exceed those budgets, as the numbers of illegal aliens, cases and appeals continue to rise."  These are only two of many examples. No city in America has an inexhaustible budget. No city has inexhaustible natural resources, yet our immigration policies currently reflect a premise of limitlessness.

Hanging out a no vacancy sign is an act of tough love and a much-needed relief for the way cities are becoming overwhelmed with immigrants. What city could possibly absorb 900 desperate migrants a day without creating chaos both to residents and to the migrants themselves? Certainly not El Paso Texas where a state of emergency has recently been declared. Shipping migrants to northern cities has been criticized as a political ploy, but it does demonstrate that this is a problem that is not just a border issue and needs immediate attention before our already ailing cities collapse under the weight of the demands of from millions of newcomers.

Mayors and the 'social justice' people who vote them in, want to be seen as caring by providing “free” services for an indefinite number of migrants. Any given city’s capacity for services is certainly not being decided by those already feeling burdened by the crush of people already living there and those working hard to provide housing for the homeless. It is a lawbreaking move that makes for good rhetoric for those who have been deluded into thinking that our economic pot is endless, and our open space and fresh water will be available forever. 

No amount of government hand-outs can increase space, decrease traffic, or increase the quality of life for those who are here already paying taxes and already needing government help. The only government action that can help our country continue to do serve its citizenry, is to do what we can to take our foot off the population growth pedal in ways that are already available to us.

How ironic that winner of the ’72 election, President Nixon, was more concerned about overpopulation than the president is today. He even created the 'Commission on Population Growth and the American Future'. That future is now and must be addressed with a new story of sustainable border enforcement if our rhetoric of caring for America is to ever match our reality.

 Reply  

How Best to Invest: Turning the Tide on US Overpopulation

I have authored about 15 books to date, but none has received the attention of my Move Upstream, A Call to Solve Overpopulation book. This 104-page primer to the solvable, albeit tortured problem of the burden of human numbers was published by the good folks at Freethought House Press in 2015. I am one lucky author. How many authors/activists get offers to have their book sent out to those who need to wake up on this issue? Well, I have had two, totaling $13,000.00. Two concerned citizens were willing to donate to the task of sending my book out to CEOs of NGOs and news organizations so that they would start working on spreading the word about the problem we have collectively ignored for a dangerously long period of time.

This is not a thank you note to them, however. Indeed, I am eternally grateful for the way my book inspired their willingness to open their wallets. But as an activist I have to ask myself, would this action really work? How and who would do the legwork to mail out the book and how would we keep track of the efficacy of this effort? Population groups are the only ones willing to do it and yet with their small staffs and tight work schedules this becomes problematic, besides where is the guarantee that they will read it? Who reads the books they order themselves let alone an unsolicited one? This then begs the question, if you had a significant amount of money just waiting for the perfect benefactor, who would that be? If one deeply cares about overpopulation, growth and the way it is exacerbating climate change, traffic, unemployment and wildlife issues to name a few, how could one most appropriately donate money?  

There are population groups with a focus on the very global nature of this issue and discuss the importance of supporting small families with women’s empowerment and access to birth control worldwide. There are other population groups which focus on changing our narrative in the US toward one of stabilization and the reduction of our numbers to lessen the pressure of human numbers on our environment and infrastructure. Then there are those who are working both to change the narrative and have a presence on the ‘Hill’, as they say, getting their hands dirty in the legislative policies which will shape our future.

We are living the results today of many legislative decisions made long ago. For example, the Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928 authorized construction of a dam in Boulder, or Black, Canyon. Before that the Colorado River flowed uninterrupted along its 1,450-mile course from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California. Today those river dams are showing their wear and demonstrating why their construction was fraught with problems from the very beginning. But this is not the place to go into all of that, just suffice it to say that long term change for the better or for the worse begins and ends in Congress. While it’s important to be a part of groups which are trying desperately to articulate a de-growth narrative, it is not going to be productive unless it is ultimately tied to good legislation and its enforcement.

When it comes to US overpopulation, my country of birth which has  added approximately 204 million since I was born, there is a problem with too global of a focus when it comes to the wrath of overpopulation. The well-worn slogan, THINK GLOBAL ACT LOCAL applies to our current state of overpopulation and growth in the US. If you are concerned about the American Ocelot, the multiple lanes of clogged freeways, the scarcity of water and the draining of our national budget, more people will make things so much worse. Adding more people to the US in our current state of overshoot is like pouring gasoline on a fire in your home and expecting your house to be in the next edition of Parade of Homes.

So, the question I come back to for those focused on US population is rather than sending my book out to a myriad of resources what else could be done? The answer to me is clear, give the money, your hard-earned money to an NGO already neck deep in the fight to protect America from the onslaught of growth both by helping to change the narrative and by monitoring the legislation which could help stop our continued growth. Our growth is mostly happening by both legal and now mostly illegal immigration, the NGO which is engaged in this battle must be the focus of donations since they have their focus on the pulse of our continued unsustainable policies. We must go beyond looking at this issue from a downstream individual perspective and focus on the long-term results of our actions today. Legal or illegal, from whatever country, the US is already deep in overshoot and needs to put an end to policies which are essentially dog whistling to migrants that we have an open door or at least an unenforced door at our borders.

The NGO which has been actively doing this honorable work is NumbersUSA. The employees of Numbers work tirelessly on the Hill, online, and behind the scenes to do just what people who read and love my book desire. They are already highly skilled and motivated and just need dollars that are untethered to projects like the distribution of my book. Started in 1996, by founder Roy Beck, its motives are stellar and not nefarious as some would claim. Roy and the team he has built around him, including the new highly qualified CEO now running the organization, are all about maintaining the quality of life of Americans. That quality is diminished, every time we dance around the issue of immigration limits because it is and can be weaponized to hurt people. The staff of NumbersUSA are trained ‘dancers’ and they know how best to use donations to help achieve the goal of addressing overpopulation in the way it needs to be addressed. They work on both sides of the aisle and need to because that is how legislation gets passed.

While I have no say in where folks deeply concerned about US overpopulation send their donation dollars, I would like to strongly and most confidently suggest that instead of putting time, effort and funds to distributing my book, they give it directly to NumbersUSA then sit back and watch how a well-run NGO gets things done. That’s what they have been set up to do and to me that is the most effective way of making sure our mutual goals of a better, more ecologically and economically sane America can be attained. At very least I recommend to stop supporting US population NGOs which continue, along with so many others, to ignore the driving force of untethered mass immigration, for they are asleep at the wheel.

The Slick Packaging of Misinformation, How Pro-growth Narratives are Hurting all of US

This essay is in response to Jeff Wise and his Intelligencer article so frustratingly entitled, “America Could Use Another Boom.”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/01/americas-population-could-use-a-boom.html .

His subtitle warns us that, “Failing to address population decline may exact a heavy toll.” Number one, we are not in decline. Number two, the US is overpopulated and deep into overshoot, a concept I don’t think Mr. Wise is familiar with at all. Overshoot means that we are demanding more than our resources can give. Just consulting the website of the Ecological Footprint Network would have been a way for him to bone up on the science of overshoot. Just glancing at the US Census Bureau’s population clock https://www.census.gov/popclock/ would counter his claim of population decline.

There is no other way of stating my dismay at the strung together narrative of lies and half-truths in this article other than attempting to ask Mr. Wise directly, “What are you thinking and from where are you getting your statistics?” This article is so chock full of misinformation and lack of understanding of where we are ecologically as we start 2023, that I don’t even know where to begin. 

Yes, I will give you that there are some small towns sadly losing population, but that can be resolved in many other more sustainable ways from within our country and is no excuse for thinking that at 332 million we need more people.

What statistics would impress you that we need to avoid a population boom? Perhaps the fact that since the first Earth Day we have added approximately 131 million Americans to our land creating a demand for fresh water that is already compromised in a world of varying climate and increasing droughts?

And may I further ask, what color is the sky in your world when you say that immigration  in is decreasing when it is the way we are growing? The New York Times ran a story in February of 2022 with the headline, “Amid Slowdown, Immigration is Driving U.S. Population Growth.” Even NBC News reported last October that “The number of undocumented immigrant crossings at the South WestSouthwest border for fiscal year 2022 topped 2.76 million, breaking the previous annual record by more than 1 million according to customs and border protection data.” Please note that these are major news sources. Is there any evidence that could get through to you and your pro-growth stance? For your eyes must be opened to the reality that mass immigration continues in an upward trend. When the resources of everything from housing to our water supplies are already in critically short supply, my claim that we cannot accommodate a boom in population is just the reality of life in the US today, ; it is simply and morally about keeping the United States of America afloat. Recommending a boom under in a country experiencing overshoot is like saying cigarette smokers could use another pack and diabetics could use a trip to the dessert bar.

It frightens me that most people don’t have the time I am taking today to think about what you and others have written, often with slick words and important sounding statistics about the false threat of depopulation. Not only are we continuing to grow by millions per year, depopulation is exactly what we need. It is the antidote to our stressed-out education systems, housing shortages, pollution, increasing traffic and deteriorating freeways  infrastructure, to mention just a few problems. The US desperately needs to stop growing. Why? Because wildlife matters, because biocapacity matters, because infrastructure is limited, because on average every American uses between 82 and 100 gallons of water a year day and water sources are already stretched beyond capacity. Because according to the US treasury, as of November of last year, it costs $103 billion dollars just to maintain our national debt, and there is currently a proposal on the table to spend upwards of $785 million to feed, house and transport even more migrants. This is happening in a country of over 500 thousand homeless Americans, ts. T, that is wrong on so many levels.

To be encouraging a boom in a country which that has tripled in numbers in about 100 years, is beyond foolish, it is dangerous. It is not only dangerous not only to the salmon which no longer run in our streams but to the people already here trying to make their lives work. Only those with dollar signs for eyes are blind to the often- irreversible damage caused by unfettered appetites for growth in our overpopulated country.

Serenity is Getting Harder fo Find

“Traveling Twice the Speed of Sound it’s Easy to Get Burned” “Crosby Stills and Nash

Serenity is what we seek and what we crave in a world that seems to move at the speed of light on a merry go round of noise and distraction. Our ubiquitous media amplifies the tension we absorb in our bones. Our brains are cluttered with loud pundits, reality shows and the constant reporting of violence which always takes a front row seat during our 24/7 news cycle. One must now travel great distances to find places where unplugging from the modern world is even possible.

I have noticed that music soundscape channels and nature videos, always chose accompanying visuals of pastoral scenes free of crowds and modern life. In fact, their scenes of mountains, waterfalls and streams are characteristically people free. There is a reason you don’t see heavy traffic and tall buildings in videos where serenity is the intention. Being overcrowded produces tension and creates irritability. Being in nature with few people and lovely breezes with plenty of trees gives us ‘that peaceful easy feeling’ as described by the Eagles.

More and more psychologists warn us that we need to find a way to cut out the noise of modern-day life. Being in an environment with honking cars, sirens and the general malaise generated by the hustle and bustle of city life is an unhealthy way to live. We need to put ourselves into peaceful landscapes and absorb their quiet energy.

Meanwhile we are doing everything we can to make sure that serenity is inaccessible to most people, by allowing our open spaces, where quiet resides, to be trampled with too many feet.

We promote a not-so-slow creep into these spaces with a more and more rapid pace fueled by growth and its relentless noise. In doing so we drown out the possibility of much needed quiet spaces.

The irony is that if we valued serenity and the wildlife that can more readily live there, we could do something about it. We have a real opportunity to preserve its value and its role in our mental well- being by tackling incessant growth. I used to joke that if everyone had access to a hot tub and a weekly massage that we would have less road rage and conflicts that end with a 911 phone call. But that is not so far from the truth.

Gregory Bratman, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Washington, and colleagues shared evidence that contact with nature is associated with increases in happiness, subjective well-being, positive affect, positive social interactions and a sense of meaning and purpose in life, as well as decreases in mental distress (Science Advances, Vol. 5, No. 7, 2019).

During the height of the pandemic many experts told us to get out into nature and calm our anxiety. I witnessed how neighborhood nature centers became overcrowded with increased demand during that intense time. Serenity is dismantled when too many people are in a space that needs to be appreciated in sparse numbers.

The US census Bureau recently revealed that 80% of U.S. population growth between 2021 and 2022 was due to net international migration. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that this growth from international migration is up about 40% from a decade ago.

The natural world is sacrificed when we think we must accommodate all of the demand to be in our country. Because of our character, and due to those who benefit from the exploitation of newcomers, we can’t seem to find the courage to hang out a no-vacancy sign. This must not out of hatred but out of the way we must protect our country’s viability. We hurt all the things we value by encouraging more and more people to come here. 

I have written about the way growth in an already overpopulated US hurts wildlife, but our mental health is also being threatened. By throwing up our hands when the flow of migrants stream across our southern border, we shoehorn more and more of us into a country already too noisy, too crowded and too mentally distraught making matters so much worse. Mental Health America reports that in 2019-2020, 20.78% of adults were experiencing a mental illness. That is equivalent to over 50 million Americans.

The National Alliance on Mental Health estimates that untreated mental illness costs the country up to $300 billion every year due to losses in productivity. As many as 90 percent of cases of suicide are attributed to mental illness. Add to this mess the fact that there are about 393 million privately owned firearms in the US, (according to an estimate by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey )– or in other words, 120 guns for every 100 Americans and it’s no wonder we have had over 611 mass shootings so far this year in the US.

We are making our country sicker not only by underfunding mental illness treatments, or by refusing to have reasonable gun laws, but by refusing to turn off the faucet of growth setting up the conditions under which it is more and more difficult to find inner peace. We must open our eyes to the costs of avoiding the difficult but necessary task of restricting our borders as fairly as we can.

If we are really concerned about being fair and moral, we need to consider the conditions growth is setting up for a continued downward spiral of our country’s mental health. Because when serenity becomes as rare as the animals on the endangered species list, we will not be far behind.

Legally Extinct: Why Overpopulation is the Criminal in the Decimation of Wildlife

 There are some great laws on the books to protect wildlife. They include, The Migratory Bird Act of 1918, the Wilderness Act of 1964, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and the North American Wetland’s Act 1989. There are also some iconic species which have been painstakingly saved by tireless wildlife biologists and volunteers who took advantage of the legal requirements to protect wetlands, and endangered species. But overall, these laws are palpably insufficient. Even with great laws in place they are becoming what I call, ‘legally extinct’ As the December 9, 2022 New York Times article said in its title, “Animals are Running Out of Places to live”. There is a reason they are running out of room, we can’t just keep trying to put up fences, we have to start decreasing the demand.

The World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) latest report is a sobering truckload of ice water poured over the heads of any optimistic thinkers about the future of wildlife, both locally and globally. On page 12 of The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report 2022 reports that 69% of Wildlife populations have decreased significantly since 1970 after studying 32,000 species. These laws in place are doing so poorly to protect wildlife, not only because of the loopholes developers are always seeking, but because they don’t address our overall human footprint which must include our total number of feet.

At 8 billion and growing by 81 million per year on a limited thin layer of life supporting biosphere, 332 million of which live in the US, we are forcing wildlife off the planet. Climate instability does of course account for some of the demise of wildlife. Polar bears do desperately need ever shrinking ice flows from which to hunt for seals. But it is even more difficult for a wolf, mountain lion or ocelot to hunt in a shopping center or housing development. It is even more difficult for salmon to swim upstream to spawn in a river that has been dammed to create a water supply for ever growing cities.

These population statistics need to be repeated over and over by those who have the microphone and especially by wildlife organizations. We need them to find their collective spines and tell the truth about how we need address the true crime of overpopulation for it is a ubiquitous and destructive force, like DDT was in its day. It has its name on the earth moving equipment and has our stamp of approval to run free in the world. In their silence these supposed protectors of wildlife have blood on their hands for they will not throw their weight behind a message of the need to stop growing and start de-growing our human numbers. I would bet the bank even in a year where we hit the 8 billion mark, that no one reading this could find any reference to overpopulation in their magazine subscriptions to National Wildlife, Audubon and Sierra Club among others.

Human population growth happens in two ways: from total fertility rates ( TFR) , births over deaths or from immigration. In general, developed nations are growing from immigration and underdeveloped nations are growing from high TFR’s. As in the medical field, environmental issues also need the right remedy for the right infection. If you have a cough, you need cough syrup, not a blood transfusion. If you have a rash, you need a salve, not an oxygen mask. If we want to see wildlife numbers go up instead of down we have to put the fight in the right place. The right solution to growth also has to be country specific. No wildlife biologist worth his/her weight in salt would attempt to save a non-local specie. A Minnesota based biologist can work on wolves, fishers, Peregrine falcons or Trumpeter swans. They would not think of personally trying to save lemurs in Madagascar. We can barely promote and challenge laws in the US to conform to our need to protect wildlife, we certainly have no hope of changing them on the other side of the world.

Along with laws intended to protect wildlife, all laws promoting growth must also be tackled as a crime against wildlife. Growth inspires both density and sprawl. Density requires hidden sprawl because the more people living in high rises still requires the plowing of land to provide them with food. The PEW Research Center states that 88% of future growth in the US is going to be from immigration if everything remains the same. That is on top of a population already seriously overpopulated as evidenced by scarcity of everything from water to open space. Climate change-caused droughts are already causing scarcity issues particularly in the West. Couple that with more people entering the US needing water and only disaster will be on the menu, while also taking a toll on wildlife. Wildlife need water too.

When many including the Ecological Footprint Network have determined that the US is a severe state of overshoot, it’s time to look at our attitudes and laws regarding immigration and recognize that current policies and lack of enforcement are having a devastating impact on wild lands and the wildlife that live there. While there are laws on the books to prevent some avenues of mass immigration, the enforcement is flimsy at best. This is fueled by a thundercloud of fervor over unexamined fears of racism as the only motive to stop this current reality of US growth.

Welcoming masses of people to the US often without proper vetting and paperwork, is like having a party at a mansion on a large plot of land with 500 party favors, 500 food items and 500 beverages and allowing the guestlist to grow by the thousands because you didn’t want the uncomfortable task of telling guests that you are full. Tending to your current guests with a focus on having adequate supplies is to be commended. Instead, because you are afraid of showing that you don’t care, you open the door to more suffering, when a much-needed act of tough love is required.

To make sure we aren’t aiding and abetting the legal extinction of wildlife, wildlife laws must expand to include the real culprit: overpopulation and the growth it inspires. We must put the most guilty party on trial. Working to restrict mass immigration will do more to prevent extinction of the species we say we care about than crafting any new protection laws. It’s time to stop overwhelming their habitats so we can truly protect the land in a way that matters to the future of all things wild and wonderful.  

Just in case wildlife isn’t your thing, keep in mind that the human journey off the cliff isn’t far behind. The mantra we are all connected is not just a new age saying it is a biological reality. As Albert Einstein reportedly said, “If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.”

Putting the Biosphere on the Ballot

 The biosphere is ailing, and yet it has no representation on the ballots we are begged to fill out by Get Out the Vote organizations. I don’t think that the reason we have to be cajoled to vote is that we realize that no one is representing the biosphere, but it is my reason.

 According to National Geographic, “The biosphere is made up of the parts of Earth where life exists. The biosphere extends from the deepest root systems of trees to the dark environment of ocean trenches, to lush rain forests and high mountaintops.” The mantle, inner core and outer core of our planet are doing just fine and will be here until our sun ends its life billions of years from now as grows into its red giant phase. To say the earth is in trouble is not really accurate, the earth is going to be fine, but the thin layer called the biosphere which offers life support to plants and animals is in deep trouble and has us on its endangered species list.

In a record 11 years we have added another billion to our biosphere. Who is going to raise the issue that growth is cutting us off at the knees? Who will stand up and counter the current growth narratives? On this issue, the two major parties and several minor ones that stare up at me from my pathetic ballot when election year comes around, offer no help at all. They are all pro-growth, pro housing development, pro-business development and oh yes let’s keep adding more lanes to our freeways.

 Historically the environment had been a bi-partisan issue. The Democrats can take credit for the establishment of the Wilderness Act under LBJ and the Republicans can take credit for establishing the EPA and the Clean Air Act under Richard M. Nixon. Nixon, a Republican, was very worried about the detrimental effects of population growth and can also be given credit for establishing the Rockefeller commission to look at population growth and its impacts on our nation.  This commission wisely recommended that our nation welcome a plan for a stabilized population. We know how that went, but at least he tried. Nixon left office in disgrace. What is more disgraceful is that when he left we had 213.9 million people and now by shelving that plan, we have allowed ourselves to grow to a much more unsustainable 333 million. If it was political suicide to bring that up then, it is radioactive now.

Without doing any homework on this, I know that everyone on the ballot in all states, blue,red or purple is for GNP growth. They seem to think that growth of our cities, population and structures is to be celebrated when the biosphere is screaming to us that it cannot handle our numbers and subsequent demands of its finite resources. Polluted waters and skies are the calling cards of too much growth on a finite planet.

In my area of the country, leaders who were hesitant about putting up more housing were kicked out in favor of those who want to just keep building more and more apartment buildings to accommodate population growth. I guess they have a magic wand to bring them the water we are running out of that I don’t know about. I looked for a measure on my ballot this year that would address growth where it lives in the US today, in our policies toward the eternally unaddressed issue of growth by mass immigration. I found none. It is something we could demand because it doesn’t interfere with choices of family-size and honors Americans and the lives we want to live, free from overcrowding and the problems that come with it.

It seems perfectly constitutional and democratic to me to demand that we take care of our communities first before trying to accommodate more, in a country with less and less to offer newcomers. I am also worried about global overpopulation, but my power is mostly in the ever- weakening power of the voting booth.

 When I vote I have to look downstream at social issues that matter to me. Issues like reproductive rights, anti-racist policies, education and health care, but I know that none of that will matter because voting for any of these pro-growth candidates is like making a healthy meal and then lacing it with arsenic. Growth is killing off the biosphere and that is where we live.