Israel Matters: Why Heavy Doses of Perspective are Needed Now

Secular is where I choose to live. Beyond edicts, away from doctrine, wrapped in the freedom of making up my mind based on evidence. Yes, I have belonged to synagogues, attended years of Hebrew school, and even kept kosher for decades but observance morphed into shackles long ago as more important issues came to my attention. I decided it was all a distraction from what we were doing to the planet and decided to devote my life to protecting our biosphere and wildlife from the real beast of burden, the growing human enterprise consisting of overpopulation and overconsumption.

I care deeply about what our carbon emissions are doing to the coral reefs, how our ever-growing population is expanding our endangered species list. I have been painfully aware for decades that we are heading for the cliff of environmental collapse because of our takeover of the planet. That is why I don’t regret any of my decisions. I have chosen not to reproduce and not to get distracted by things that take me away from shining a light on the plight of our planet. But I do feel I must now weigh in on the current war between Israel and Hamas because propaganda is fogging history, hate is flying everywhere and it’s just too important to ignore.

Even though I would prefer to live in a world that was secular and much less tribal with everyone treating women well and living within the parameters of mother nature, clearly that is getting further and further out of reach. If that can’t be than I would love to live in a world where antisemitism disappears into history once and for all. I would also like it if insensitivity to all victims of war ceases to exist.

Admittedly this is personal. If I were to take an ancestry test my DNA would be undoubtedly come out as 100% Ashkenazi Jew. That means that my very existence stands on the shoulders of those who suffered and survived antisemitisms’ wrath over millennia. My great uncle emigrated to Israel from war-torn Europe and he and his descendants became a part of the kibbutz movement. Beyond that Israel stands for something deeply significant. It stands for more democratic freedoms than exist anywhere else in the Mid-East. It stands for the re-creation of a homeland for those deeply scarred by a world intolerant of their presence in it. It stands for a country which has demonstrated its integrity with giving back to the world for its privilege to live and thrive even with insecure borders.

Citizens of Israel have recently demonstrated their demands for leaders who are far less corrupt. To be sure, all is not perfect in the Jewish homeland. I have often thought that citizens of Israel would be better off in a more secular country with less power offered to the very religious. Israel’s many enemies demand a strong army so everyone must do mandatory service, male and female alike unless of course you pray all day. If you are religious, you are exempt for fighting to defend your country. Why does that still exist especially now when all able bodied are needed to fight this war?

At least when it comes to the Jewish mission to conquer and convert others, well it’s not allowed. Traditionally in Judaism, if one wishes to become Jewish, a non-Jew must be turned down three times. Hamas on the other hand has not only rejected the idea of a two-state solution, they plainly have an ideology of genocide as stated right in their very own covenant. These are not two equal sides, and olive branches will only be met with violence.

Being secular offers no protection from these Jihadists. Hamas and groups like them will still see all Jews as infidels. Hamas didn’t care if the people they came to slaughter on October 7th even owned a tallit (prayer shawl) or had ever been in a synagogue, they only wanted to kill Jews. You can do nothing to appease them, for you are only good Jew in their eyes when you reside inside a coffin. They take their genocidal stance right out of the Nazi playbook. Nazis didn’t care if you were religious when they made you wear yellow stars and sent you off to death camps. They even went as deep as rounding up people whose only connection to Judaism was a grandparent. To Nazis and Jihadists, the secular life is no shield against the deep seeded hatred of genocidal antisemitism.

As an overpopulation activist I used to think that war was mostly inspired by a lack of resources because too many people were demanding limited resources, but no more.

-When Rome destroyed of the Jewish Temples of Israel, (No, Jews did not colonize the land, it was their land) and sent Jews into the diaspora in 70 CE the World Population was between 200- 300 million ( much less than the US population is now).

-During the 200-year Spanish Inquisition when over 300,000 Jews were tortured and forced to convert to Catholicism or be expelled The world population less than ½ billion.

-When my direct ancestors were forced to experience the horrors of the Russian pogroms of the 1700’s, having their small villages burned down randomly because their lives had so little value, the world population numbered approximately 700,000,000.

-By the time the infamous Nazi Holocaust sent 6 million Jews to the gas chambers the world’s population had climbed to 2 billion.

The only way population plays into this lopsided story is that 24 % of the world is Muslim and 0.2% is Jewish which translates to 1.8 Billion Muslims compared to 16.1 million Jews world wide. There are 22 Arab nations and one Jewish nation. It is also must be repeated that there are 2 million Arabs living as Israelis and Jews have been kicked out of the Arab world. Over the years 100 Arabs have been members of the Knesset verse zero in the Arab world, just saying, these are not equal parties.

And here we are again. Now that the world is over 8 billion and growing by nearly 80 million per year, unarmed Jews were brutally attacked by Hamas who celebrated all the way. Jewish enemies find ways to hate and kill Jews no matter how many people are in the world. Not that overpopulation doesn’t create suffering, misery and early death it does, but the killing of Jews for just being Jews, has been around since our world population was less than that of the US now.

Where does all of the hatred towards Jews come from? Because of the myth that Jews killed their god? Because Jews didn’t want to accept their messiah? Because people just always need some to blame for their problems? Because it’s easier to raise your children to hate than teaching them to love? Because of the myth that Jews stole the land partitioned to Israel from Arabs? It is probably a combination of all of the above.

Jews represent .2% of the world’s population and yet have won over 20% of the Nobel prizes ever given out, But no matter how many Nobel prizes Jews win, no matter how many scientists, actors, writers, doctors and even comedians can claim Jewish ancestry, no matter how many agricultural advances Israelis have invented, there remains growing antisemitism in the world which becomes the permission slip to authorize genocidal acts against Jews the scapegoat with the most longevity in the world.

There are those in America who took sides against Israel before the Jewish bodies were even laid to rest, especially on college campuses. These students were making their anti-Israel signs before all the bodies were counted and seem to understand nothing of Middle East history or the history of the Jewish people. Perhaps it is because of their own unexamined antisemitism. Maybe it has more to do with the sickness of identity politics where the title of oppressor is given out without much research and uninformed individuals fall all over themselves to identify the victim du jour. Perhaps it is because of Palestinians on campus who organize and point out the bombing of Gaza without mentioning the horror which provoked the attacks.

What is deeply disturbing is that there is zero understanding that these groups are cheering for those who do not share their ideas of equality. Why are LBGT and others lining up to side with Hamas? Allowed to make their own rules for years now in Gaza, Hamas hangs it hat on some pretty draconian rules that many Americans on college campuses are now supporting with their protests. Women and girls there still face early and forced marriage, dating is frowned upon, polygynous marriages are legal and gender-based violence is a huge issue. Homosexuality remains a taboo in Palestinian territories never mind legal same-sex marriage. Who are they cheering? Do they know that over the years of trying to make peace a two-state solution has been offered to the Palestinians and rejected five times? Do they even care?

I am lucky. As a Jew I was raised not to hate my enemy. During Passover we are not allowed to say the name of our oppressor for fear that hatred will rule our world. That is why I do feel deeply sorry for those who are suffering within Gaza who don’t support its harsh regime, the Palestinian people deserve better and deserve to be governed by real leaders interested in helping them. Some Palestinians have been outspoken about how Israel has been a better friend to them than other Arab states now shutting them out once again when they need to be sheltered. But Israel is now at war with their barbaric leadership because of what they did to its people. Jews were one questioned about not fighting back much when Hitler came to power and now are being questioned about fighting back. Hamas put their own people in harm’s way the minute they assaulted so many victims and took hostages. They increased the strength of their propaganda by not letting them leave areas that were targeted by bombs. When you poke the bear and don’t be surprised when the bear counter attacks. Hamas knew Israel would retaliate and that is what they want; misery and instability for their hated neighbor even if it means hurting their own people. Still there is room in my heart for those who are caught in this mess, who knew this was a bad move and had no power to stop it.

The other reason Israel matters is that it also ties together the things that matter most to me and should matter to the rest of us. Nature is the collateral damage of the armaments of war. If we can find a real way toward peace, by being unafraid to look at the real stories behind war, we can help the planet heal too. Military operations are not only deadly, they come at a huge carbon cost. The US army alone purchases over 269,000 barrels of oil a day while we pretend we are helping by driving electric cars.

To counter all of this we must read real books, study real history and examine our own hearts to eradicate the prejudices that infest us and damage the world. We must pause before joining protests and learn about what is really going on. Hatred is one of the biggest most unrecognized environmental threats to our existence. We need to come to grips with the cancer of antisemitism, and all the other ‘isms’ under which group hatred thrives.

What would it look like if we didn’t hate those perceived as the other? What if Hamas stopped promoting hatred of Israel and the Jewish state in its schools? We wouldn’t have to use up resources to poison the world and kill off each other with our weapons.

Since their first temples were destroyed Jews of Israel have been trying to find a way to live surrounded by those who don’t believe they should exist. As an Israeli friend said recently to a Rabbi, “Rabbi we keep praying and they keep killing us.” Answers begin in the acknowledgement that all this human suffering of attacks and retaliation are 100% human created, supernatural forces are not involved and in my book, prayer cannot continue to be our default button. We must roll up our sleeves and destroy the stories that breed hatred within the context of the stench of anti-semitism.

We, the non-zealots of the world must understand that it is a complicated conflict with even more complex solutions.

Those solutions must also include the deep understanding of the pain being experienced by the other side. Imagine if your children were kidnapped, imagine if your children were bombed. Now go forward and work to stop the additional pain which begins by insisting on the releasing all of the hostages, ceasing the bombing and letting people safely bury and mourn their dead and then go about the challenging task of getting rid of those on either side who would plan and allow such an attack to happen. Hatred only comes in the flavor of pain. We just might want to do what John Lennon demanded, we must give peace a chance.

Perhaps none of this will matter as our planet is passing so many climate tipping points for Mother Nature will have the last word and show us soon enough that she has had enough of us.

Why Policy Matters: From Social Justice to Sustainable Justice

By the time you are protesting the high rise in your neighborhood it is too late. By the time you are sitting in more traffic jams it is too late. By the time you are rationing water it is too late. By the time you are watching the dwindling numbers of wildlife turn into roadkills it is way too late.

In order to prevent overcrowding and keep our remaining quality of life, in order to maintain our open spaces and help wildlife continue to live within our borders we must pay attention to policy matters regarding growth in the US.

They say you should never watch what goes into making policy or sausage, it’s too complicated and too many strange ingredients go into them. But pay attention we must. We must learn that policy sets in motion a series of events from which will either suffer or benefit.

 Our best chance to preserve our remaining wilderness, stop the hemorrhaging of our aquifers, cease to build those giant unsustainable developments in our neighborhoods, and curtail the never-ending need to construction more freeways is to stop growing our population.

Yes, we must stop growing because we are pushing the boundaries of what the US can handle in every parameter of life. We are using up too much water, too much energy and too much open space. We cannot ‘green’ our economy while we keep growing. We are growing mostly by immigration and therefore we must focus on how best to curb our growth by tackling the political football of immigration policy. Those who are unafraid to address this important issue are the ones also unafraid to curb women’s rights and voting rights, to cut social security and foreign aid. They are the ones also challenging the last election results and offering only obstacles to sensible gun laws.

Few want to pay attention to what is happening in congress, it seems out of control and too complex, but we need to spend some time understanding that if we paid attention, we could start seeing just how we end up in too much traffic, with too many crowds, with too little quality of life. We need to see that those who otherwise might represent us to do not represent us when it comes to curbing growth and protecting America from being overrun with a kind of demand for its resources it cannot sustain.

By every important marker, the US is full and overflowing that is why we can’t fund our border without reforming our policy that recognizes our limits without demeaning those trying to gain entry. A bill which must be the beginning of sustainable justice, passed the House this last spring. It includes some of the reforms needed. H.R.2 would close loopholes and mandate the use of the E-Verify system for employers. The Senate and the president need to step up and sign and enforce this bill so that sustainable justice can begin its long overdue journey.

Social justice is a worthy goal but only when it lives under the parameters of sustainable justice. If we cannot sustain more newcomers because we have reached our limits, we are not being just to them or those already here by having policies which permit more to come in and especially to ignore those who are here without having followed legal entry policies.

If those on the Democratic side of the aisle are choosing to be weak on curbing mass immigration especially illegal immigration due to social justice concerns, they need to think twice. They must realize that there is nothing socially just about letting people into a country which will not be able to provide for them without sacrificing our remaining open space, wildlife and water supplies. Perhaps more of us speak up the Democrats would see that there is a majority of voters who want them to support sensible immigration policies.

Quenching our Thirst: Why We Need Sensible Policies to End Population Growth

The New York Times has some sobering news to report, the kind we cannot keep ignoring and the kind that technology will not solve. In its recent article, “In uncharted waters, America is using up its groundwater like there is no tomorrow,” their reporters did a deep dive into the current state of our country’s ground water supplies and came up empty. Their subtitle tells most of the rest of this disturbing story, “Overuse is draining and damaging aquifers nationwide.” Climate change is turning this bad news into an even worse nightmare in what they refer to as a “climate trap,” for our warming climate means that replenishing rainfalls can no longer be counted on to restore our life-giving aquifers.

The scientific measurements are in and with wells running dry in farm country and in our cities and with an understanding that water is the key to life, we must tell the rest of the story. Overuse is not because each person is being greedy, it is because we are already overpopulated relative to our water resources. We cannot solve this crisis by mandating shorter showers and regulating water-saving appliances. We cannot rely on the good will of the people to save water by giving up their lawns and xeriscaping around their homes. We must consider how many people will need this ever-diminishing essential resource in the future. To allow our country to keep growing in numbers is putting out the welcome mat to disaster.

We have outgrown our country’s water supplies and its time to embrace that honest truth and conduct ourselves accordingly. Allowing demand for water to increase is setting us up for a painful scarcity of wells that are running dry everywhere particularly in the desert southwest. When each person requires an average of 82 gallons of fresh water a day, adding more people to the US just makes no ecological or sociological sense.

We need to call for all political leaders to sound this alarm. America’s population of 335 million and is growing somewhat by birthrate but mostly by welcoming people from other countries into our soon-to-be water desert. This is not an alarm of hatred, it is an homage to sustainability using ground water as our yardstick.

When millions pour over our borders looking for opportunity, we need to advertise the real truth that soon it will be an opportunity to be thirsty. We can no longer claim that we are unaware of this situation, the New York Times has done the homework for us and we need to listen. We cannot afford to have our narrative remain stuck in a place that puts the need to fill jobs and help the desperate over the beleaguered future of our water supply. Unless we slow our growth to a trickle, with fairly written policies bent on conserving our remaining water resources, that is what we will see coming out of our faucets, just a trickle.

The Earth’s Loans are Coming Due

 Before the housing crisis in 2008, many mortgage bankers of high-profile lending institutions were encouraged to keep selling mortgages to those who were clearly unable to pay back the loans. The goal was to make fast money, of course. The ensuing chaos was predictable even by those who are naïve about how capitalism works. The consequences were ignored, and the truth was covered up. It’s pretty simple, you can’t take out loans if you have no way to pay it back before it comes due. There is only so much money to loan out and short cuts do not work because there is an ultimate due date, and they must be paid back with interest.

The Earth’s biosphere is letting us know that we have been taking out too many of her loans, taken without her permission, and those loans are coming due nearly all at once. We have abused the ability of the earth’s systems to absorb our pollution and provide 8+ billion of us with enough of its essential services. When we can smell the smoke from1500 wildfires all over Canada, the loan is coming due. When the Weather Channel reveals temperatures hotter than ever in places that are not used to the heat, the loan is coming due. When Phoenix Arizona puts a moratorium on new development because there is no water to promise new residents, the loan is coming due. When millions of birds are disappearing before our eyes, we are getting a painful message that our loan is way overdue.

The solutions that are offered by those who have come late to this party are afraid to address the organic reasons why all of these loans are coming due. The whole human enterprise is not just what we do but how many of us are doing it and we are making unrealistic demands on our limited planet. The growth we have experienced since the 1800’s, when we reached our first billion, has overwhelmed all of the earth’s resources.

We are a top predator, who cannot help but consume our limited resources. We tend to look to technology to get us out of our pending loan dates, but every single tech-fix comes with its own resource price tag. Every time we have a net gain of people in a world of over 8 billion, we are taking out a sub-prime loan which is coming due now, when we can least afford it.

Dialing it all back with policies of less is a good thing, something we should all applaud from both sides of the political aisle. We can encourage less growth by putting our tax structure in reverse. Reward people for having small families and buying used goods. Enforce E-verify policies to check for citizenship before hiring and incentivize citizens to fill the many job openings by offering living wages, free education credits and better public transportation. There is no shortage of real solutions, but we must first understand the reason it's so important. We must take our foot off the gas pedal of growth just like those with high blood pressure must take medication to make sure their vessels can handle the blood flow. We have to push back on all of these due dates from within our political borders. We have to have less demand so that our rechargeable resources can do just that and create less pressure to extract degraded ones.

I wore a button back in the 70’s that said, “Do you really believe in the unlimited possibilities of limited resources?” Apparently, we do and that will the downfall of every country who allows their population growth to continue to overwhelm their resources. We cannot stop growth on only one front. We cannot dismantle growth by discouraging large nuclear families while encouraging growth from migration. Imagine trying to encourage weight loss by banning trans-fat in restaurants while building a bakery on every corner. That is just what we are doing by embracing more and more immigrants to the US, but we must also keep our conversation on the collective numbers which overwhelm our resources and not on who is making up the unsustainable demand.

We must understand the nature of our planet’s limits which can only be dealt with within each country’s borders. According to the UN Environment’s Global Resources Outlook 2019, “The extraction and processing of materials, fuels and food contribute half of total global greenhouse gas emissions and over 90 per cent of biodiversity loss and water stress.” That is exacerbated by the fact that we are heading towards more billions because we are still growing by over 80 million a year. No, we are not depopulating at all, not yet.

 We must be courageous, and not be afraid to see overpopulation as the enemy. We cannot allow it all to get worse by offering up lame downstream solutions which will never prevent the knock on the door by the most frightening loan officer of all, the Earth.

The Boring Optics of Good News

If watching the news is your ‘jam’ as they say, then your view of humanity is likely to be pretty grim. News by definition is the trainwreck, not about the trains that run on time. It is the 5 traffic accidents that occurred today and not the millions that didn’t. There are over 130,000 schools in the US but you will only hear about them if one has a school shooting. Those who put on plays, won their first football game or had an art display will not become breaking news.

My husband recently treated me to a music festival in a small town in Wisconsin. A small town of ( yes mostly white volunteers) who worked their tails off to bring in talented bands from Chicago and New Orleans as well as Minnesota to entertain and create a weekend’s worth of great music. Their motto was, “Promoting Positive Change Through the Power of Music” and what we witnessed was several thousand people enjoying themselves, dancing, eating, and watching black and white talented musicians playing together. They all came with their guitars, keyboards, drums and harmonicas to Durand, a town of 1824 on the Chippewa River. There were no fights, or even harsh words. Strangers offered to watch our stuff while we danced. Local restaurants closed their doors and offered up their tasty treats in food trucks, while bars offered to have the bands perform there after their sets. “Blues on the Chippewa” with all of its great music and dancing, with people just having fun didn’t make the national news because no one shot up the place.

I was in Madrid for the COP 25 conference several years ago to speak on the role overpopulation plays in our ever-warming planet. The first week I witnessed so many people from all over the world desperate to find solutions to the existential threat of climate change. There were meetings all day with enough reports about rising oceans and expanding desserts to make your head spin, fall off and roll down the hall. Everyone inside was sincere about addressing the price we are paying as fallout from a world gone mad with growth and development all run by fossil fuel. It was impressive, even if ultimately effective, to witness such an effort. It’s true that many companies were there to benefit from the many greenwashing opportunities, but the distraught scientists were there to warn us of a future that would not welcome our presence. Not until protesters showed up during the second week, however, did the media suddenly appear to see what the commotion was all about.

It is certainly important to know about the fires in Maui. But Hawaii itself is not on fire, as so many headlines are reporting. Hawaii is made up of 137 islands and for now at least 136 of them are NOT on fire.

Of course, there are the required amount of feature stories about dogs being rescued and kids having lemonade stands to fight homelessness on the local news, but the everyday good things that are happening are just not news. Those are boring optics in the context of their mission.

I wouldn’t be the first person to say that we are looking at our phones too much. But more importantly we don’t even seem to hold any space sacred anymore where they are not welcome, where silence and relaxing from the world is the priority. I love going to my health club to swim and use its relaxing whirlpool. But now it is quite common to see people even there staring at their phones. Not only are they getting a constant stream of news, but they are no longer socializing, no longer really getting away from it all even for just a few moments.

We have volunteered to surrender to a virtual world. The skewing of our perspective about humanity by our constant consumption of news on our phones and computers is not just bad for our mental health, it’s just not the whole truth. Remember if you are watching something, someone selected that piece of reality for you to see, there was much more going on and often the boring stuff of people just getting along. So get out at witness life in real time, with real people preferably outdoors doing the boring stuff of just trying to live their lives, doing their best to be good people while having some fun along the way.

Overpopulation is Poverty's Best Friend

If poverty planned a wedding, overpopulation would be its best man and maid of honor with runaway capitalism, out of control consumerism, colonialism, classism, racism, political corruption, and greed as its bridesmaids and groomsmen. There are many evil traits in the human basket of trends that contribute to creating suffering in the world, but overpopulation is the basket itself. Overpopulation undermines the opportunity to get ahead, creating so much suffering along the way.

Let’s pretend that the US with its 331+ million and growing numbers were full of people who were all eating low on the food chain, driving less, flying less and taking the proverbial cloth bags to the store to shop for local organic food. Let’s pretend that this was also true of Canada’s 38+million and Australia’s 25+million. Each one of these developed countries would still be overpopulated and stressing out all of their basic resources.

That is because ratcheting down our consumption as individuals does not keep us from the collective damage done from our position on the food chain of life. We are apex predators and so successful in curing disease and inventing higher yields of crop production that we are now overwhelming all of our resources with our numbers alone. We seem to have lost our ability to calculate the exponential growth factor. The average person in the developed world uses over 100 gallons of water a day. So over 33 billion gallons of water are needed daily in the US in a country faced with fresh water scarcity due to pollution, climate change and overpopulation.

We depend on the world to give us water, food, shelter and energy. Even without stretch limos and private jets, without fur coats and energy-eating stadium shows we are pressuring our water resources to produce beyond their capacity. We are turning our freeways into permanent traffic jams and clogging our cities with too many who must go without decent jobs, decent housing and the like. We are creating energy demands that are literally burning our forests to a crisp, decreasing air quality and reducing our capacity to produce year-round food for our global 8 billion who are still growing by a whopping 81 million a year.

No developed country can claim innocence when it comes to using, stealing and even killing for the resources needed to keep going and growing to support energy intensive modern lifestyles. No underdeveloped country can claim that their rising numbers are not also trapping them in cyclical poverty. A woman who has to feed 7+ children with few resources and little support can never become independent. Both situations can be true at the same time and we must stop feeding the beast of growth with claims that one part of the world has taken more than its fair share of resources. It undoubtedly has, but that is not reason enough to stop looking into ways we can tame the beast of growth everywhere. Growth at this stage of our existence, with a very threatened biosphere, is the poison effecting all of our wells.

Overpopulation is also the best friend of military rule, oligarchy and autocracy. Large populations are hard to manage with democracy, it is just easier to control people with harsh rules than let them have a say in their lives. There are many examples of this but the recent ruling in Israel stands out. It is a country designed for 3 million but is bursting at the seams with 9 million people. Their leaders just voted to strip their Supreme Court of its power to block decisions made by the Knesset.

Expanding to the definition of poverty to include poverty of the mind, poverty of creativity, poverty of lack of open space, and the poverty of the loss of wildlife, the developed world is suffering from that kind of poverty right now. Wildlife is declining, homelessness is increasing, food, health care and housing prices are increasing with the higher demands. It goes without question that the US, Canada and Australia look like a shining bright lights to those seeking justice, education and freedom from dire poverty, and the disasters that climate change is hoisting on them. But those bright lights cannot accommodate the demand that will only increase in a world being crushed under our outrageous demands for even the basics of life’s requirements. Tens of millions will be seeking a better life as oceans rise and already are which will create more poverty, not less. This will sink the ship of the developed world saddled with its own limits so other answers must be sought.

Thankfully several NGO’s are trying to get this message out. Population Media Center is doing grass roots work in places like Niger to address family size in culturally sensitive ways. The NGO’s: Population Institute of Canada, NumbersUSA, Negative Population Growth and Californians for Population Stabilization are several NGO’s which I have supported over the years. They been working tirelessly for years to raise awareness about this pummeled issue, but their voices need amplification for they have the wisdom to know the right answer when asked at poverty’s wedding, “Is there any reason why this wedding should not take place?”

Independence Day Delusions; Why Sustainability Matters

Much has been written about those for whom Independence Day in the US was not cause for celebration. While our country was freed from British rule in 1776 slaves were not yet free and women had to fight for the right to vote which wouldn’t come for another 144 years. Abolitionist Frederick Douglas famously said,” I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us, I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.” Then of course there is the as yet unreconciled matter of stealing lands from those who had called North America home for thousands of years.

But I would like to offer another perspective about independence. Certainly, it is a double-edged sword when it is offered to men and not women, whites and not blacks, straight and not gays and so on down the line. Independence is a wonderful concept when offered to all. We all want our independence from tyrants, idealy we want independence without rendering other people homeless. We want freedom from the immobility of prejudice that binds us to a limited life. The first time you drive a car or travel on your own is a wonderful feeling that you are now an adult. The benefits of independence are many. You can be free to make your own decisions, your own policies. It is great not to have to pay taxes to a foreign power, or fight in their wars.

Taking a look at independence from the perspective of growth, however, brings it all into a more discerning light. Independence cannot live up to its promises when sustainability remains an elusive goal.

Independence is not a panacea by itself. The freedom from the oppression of rule is only a first step. Independence does not free a country from oppression of overpopulation and the poverty it brings, as well as the resources it destroys. Because unlimited demand for limited resources is a recipe for disaster, a celebration of independence needs to be accompanied by a simultaneous concerted effort to incorporate goals of sustainability. Let me illustrate.

When India finally gained Independence from Great Britain in 1947 its population was 340 million. Today it struggles to meet the needs of its citizens because at over 1.4 billion, it is on course to overtake China as the most populous country in the world. India has only 2.4 percent of the world’s total land area, while needing to support 14 % of the world’s population. Rates of growth are decreasing but actual numbers are still rising. The addition of 1,060,000,000 since independence was declared contributes to the fact that over 63% of Indians live in extreme poverty. Bad leadership, corrosive politics and other factors certainly contribute to India’s woes, but even with great leaders and unlimited rupees, how would the tremendous challenges of taking care of over a billion people in a land 3 times smaller than the US be resolved?

When Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa and Black people were finally free from apartheid in1994, its population was 43.27 million. Today it has grown by over 18 million people. At 61. 5 million the suffering continues. South African Poet Mongane Wally Serote once wrote “We neglect the creativity that has made the people able to survive extreme exploitation and oppression. People have survived extreme racism. It means our people have been creative about their lives.”

No doubt they have been creative but removing the shackles of racism did not prevent the imprisonment of overpopulation for it overwhelms creativity. It is the rock in the game of rock, paper scissors. South Africa is a dry country and climate change is making it drier. Adding over 18 million people since Apartheid ended has not been good for the quality of lives of South Africans. Take the town of Cape Town South Africa. It’s population, like that of all of South Africa has soared and climate change has diminished its ability to get water from its source, mountain snow melt. Why is it is rapidly facing a water crisis? Today 4.6 million people need water in this city. In 1994 half as many people needed water. If you were the mayor of Cape Town which number would you prefer to have in your city? 2.3 million or 4.6 million?  How can you have the equality promised by the dismantling of the evil apartheid, in a land overwhelmed with a demand that cannot be met no matter how well run because the limits to growth have been ignored? You don’t of course, you only have chaos and more injustice as those who are better off buy the remaining scarce sources of water. Yes, it’s true that the wealthier citizens use more water per capita, but redistributing that water more fairly is not going to solve the problem.

The US is also burdened by overpopulation but you wouldn’t know it by watching or reading any news source. The US operates under a deep but false narrative that it has no limits. These deeply ingrained beliefs direct policies of expansion and growth beyond the capacity of US aquifers and rivers, beyond the ability to sustain openlands and the wildlife they need to support. With over half a million homeless people, rising cost of living, rising pollution, rising traffic congestion, more people to manage is never the secret wish of any mayor, governor or president.

The first census data conducted when Thomas Jefferson was Secretary of State revealed a country with just under 4 million people in 1791. Today the US is not even stabilized at a whopping 331 million. It is allowing itself to continue to grow unsustainably mostly with weak policies and even weaker enforcement of mass immigration, both legal and illegal.

Every time independence is the goal, every time justice is sought this struggle must be married equally to an ideal of sustainability. Gandhi and Mandela would be horrified to see the continued poverty in their respective countries. They fought so hard for independence and equality believing that it would indeed lead to better living conditions for their people. Yet that continued growth in a finite space has undermined their idealistic goals. Both of their countries are looking at a precarious future of extreme poverty and suffering.

According to the United Nations Family planning agency, “Where rapid population growth far outpaces economic development, countries will have a difficult time investing in the human capital needed to secure the well-being of its people and to stimulate further economic growth. This issue is especially acute for the least developed countries, many of which are facing a doubling, or even a tripling of their populations by 2050.”  

 The growth of numbers within each of these countries has come within the context of being free to self-govern without the reigns of injustice to bind them to cruelty, and yet they have all grown beyond their means of self-support, thereby taking the wind out of the sails of independence.

 Admittedly, it is hard enough to fight for independence from greedy overlords, yet without a focus on sustainability the goals of a better freer world cannot be actualized. We don’t need just to fight for independence from harsh rule we need to fight for independence from crippling numbers.  Countries grow beyond limits from either high fertility or high rates of immigration or both. That growth is the enemy of Independence.

 Independence Days are often celebrated with parades, special foods and a lot of flag waving. But to truly celebrate a better world each country needs to create a Sustainability Day to commemorate laws and actions which keep them from growing beyond their limits. Now that would really be something to celebrate.

Independence Day Delusions: Why Sustainability Matters

The Drip Drip Drip of I told you so... In Celebration of National Pollinator Week

Drip Drip Drip is the sound of a faucet that can no longer access a sufficient water supply. It is also the poetic sound of trying droplet by droplet to wake up America and people around the world to how growth is a Ponzi scheme from which we must divest because it is a losing game on a limited planet. The “I told you so” is self-evident because so many of us have been harping on this message for a long, long time.

Prairie Dogs are keystone species. A keystone species means that are a species on which so many others depend. Prairie dogs tunnel underground creating homes for many animals, including one of my favorites, the burrowing owl. Keystone species provide something biologically essential for many other species and are responsible for their existence. Just like a corner of a foundation holds a building together, they are the thread that hold the whole ecosystem together. Without them, there would an unstoppable flow of consequences throughout the food chain.

A classic keystone specie is the American Beaver which creates habitat for a wide range of species from dragonflies to wolves with its ability to create dams and redirect rivers. Honeybees as well as native bees ensure the continued reproduction and survival not only of the plants they pollinate but also of the other insects and animals up the food chain that depend on their existence.

Honeybees are a keystone species directly connected to us. If you like fruit like apples and cranberries, if you like melons, or squash and broccoli, take your hat off to this member of the Hymenoptera order of insects imported from Europe. In fact, over 100,000 species of plants would disappear from the earth if honeybees were to become extinct.

We are currently celebrating National Pollinator week, June 19th-25th, a week dedicated to all of those insects who we were raised to hate and spray, but do a great service in the way they make flowers bloom and allow fruits to make their way to our plates. Native bees are in even deeper trouble, because they are not bred for use in crops. They too are needed to pollinate wild plants, but even though native bees are indispensable to the health of the natural world they are declining globally. Recent research has found that more than 40% of insect species are declining at rates faster than mammals, birds and reptiles. But if you are over 50 or so, you don’t need to read the research, you can remember the days when your windshields were streaked with dead insects after a ride in the country. Now there are no more trips to the car wash needed after a country drive, for their numbers are far fewer than in the good ole days of insect-streaked windshields.

Humans are far from being a keystone species. Certainly, domesticated animals have increased because of us as they depend on us to breed them and use them as pets or food. But wild species trend downward as we trend upward. When it comes to wildlife we are an ‘eliminator’ species, for we eliminate other wild species as we expand our presence and sprawl over the landscape. This of course will mean that we will eventually we eliminate ourselves. Conservation efforts have certainly helped bring back some iconic species and saved some critical habitat, but on a global scale we are pushing up against limits indicated by the rapid decline in insects as well as other species.

When we follow the growth model of trying to support more and more people on our land, we destroy the habitat of the very species we need. When we push limits with our destructive behavior of converting open land and farmland into subdivisions, we put cement where plants used to be. This blocks the ability of aquifers to recharge because rain just runs off the new highways and driveways into neighboring streams and rivers. When we sprawl over the landscape, we are preventing the water cycle from doing its thing

Following the bulldozers and the cement mixers are the chemical cocktails dumped on those subdivisions to be sure they are aesthetically pleasing to buyers and sellers. Rows and rows of insect-destroying sod are laid which then must be watered and monitored so as not to allow for any natural plants to exist.

It is astonishing that our public discourse allows for the pointing of fingers at climate change and agricultural production, but all goes silent when the culprit behind it all is brought up. The great lie of omission is that behind it all is our population growth. Behind all of this conversion of natural landscape to human infrastructure and its paucity of wildlife is that our numbers continue to grow fueling the way we are sprawling over the landscape. ( See From Sea to Sprawling Sea, www.sprawlusa.com)

We cannot continue to lie to people while trying to save pollinators or any other specie. To avoid the drip, drip, drip of I told you so, we need to have the courage to look at the numbers of insects going down and make the connection that it is because our numbers are going up.

 In the name of the pollinators we are losing, we must stop ignoring the most important driver of scarcity, our homegrown driver of population growth. We are running out of water and insects in the US due to both population growth and climate change, but only climate change gets mentioned, and we don’t do much about that either. The good news is that now that we are sitting at the already unsustainable number of 335 million, we do not have to worry so much about what used to drive it, high birthrates and low death rates.

What we do need to pay attention to and pay attention fast is our proclivity for encouraging mass immigration which is includes both those who come here with and without legal paperwork. It is theoretically an easier problem to solve. Making all immigration legal would alleviate only those burdened with the task of policing those without proper documentation, but  it will do nothing for the pollinators looking for nectar.

Now the drivers of mass immigration are complicated. They are historical, political and sociological. Some look only at the need for workers and see increased immigration as a solution. Others see a way to save money by paying lower wages and still others see some of the desperation and immediately want to reach out and help. Still others believe that we are being hysterically xenophobic by saying we are full, as has been our pattern throughout history.

But when you take several steps back you can more easily see that to preserve the American landscape, to honor life-giving keystone species and protect our water supply, we must get off the growth train. There are limits to growth and National Pollination Week will not ultimately be successful unless it carries this critical message: we are in overshoot. We are overpopulated relative to our limited resources as indicated by the continuing loss of keystone species. People have been criticized for saying not in my backyard (NIMBY) when it comes to growth. They are called out for being selfish or xenophobic. What we need to say is that there is no more room in anyone’s backyard in the US for ecological reasons. It doesn’t make for an easy acronym, but it is truer to the reality of life in America in 2023.

I hope that the organizers of this important week will be unafraid to connect the dots of out of control growth to the elimination of pollinators, but I doubt it, which makes me wonder how much they really care about pollinators. What I do know is that there is no glory in saying I told you so.

More Growth is NOT the Answer: Stop altering zoning laws for denser housing

Author’s note: Because our national policy is so weak on immigration, both in policy and enforcement, cities must take on the responsibility of saying no to growth. The New York Times just did a story on Phoenix, which has no water to support their growth and they are not issuing new building permits, finally, too little too late but a warning to the rest of us of what lies ahead.

When people saw kids and cages and suffering at the border, the response was, WE WILL TAKE THEM IN, and Sanctuary Cities were born. So the dog whistle to the millions who want to come to the promised land was called and now the pouring in of those in need of our limited resource threatens to make our country the one which will house the most suffering.. The needs of those hurting can't be met but hurting those who will also run out and are running out of resources. We cannot house our own, let alone those pouring over our borders now seeking our limited water, jobs, shelter and tax revenue. Remember we are at an incredibly unsustainable 339 million and if we look the other way while we allow growth to come from other countries we are destroying the very foundations of our country, which cannot take on the world’s needy forever.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?? Send a letter to your city leaders

SAMPLE LETTER TO YOUR MAYOR and City Council

TOPIC: More Growth is NOT the  Answer for our city of _____________

Dear Mayor_____________,

I'm writing to ask you to consider the effects of a growing population on our local community, in particular the water shortages we face. I know you care about our citizenry as I do, that is why I am sharing this perspective to help you in your policy making efforts going forward. 

We are witnessing the recent trends to change zoning laws to accommodate a desire to have smaller housing stock to address a very real issue of affordable housing. This sounds like a politically correct and sensitive action to take, but it will not serve our city well.

 Adding more people to limited watersheds, means we will all have to do with less and it’s not just about water. I could just as easily talk about the results of more growth in our limited city: increased traffic, more crowded parks, schools and demands for services which are already stressed.

 It is a mayor and city council’s job to serve the people who already live in the city while planning for a very different world which is knocking at our door.

 When the number of home seekers is larger than the homes available it drives up the costs. Changing zoning laws to increase density will create a never-ending cycle of construction which is also unsustainable. It takes more resources of energy and water and building supplies which are also becoming scarce as we continue to endlessly build in a world of limited resources. Construction is noisy and polluting with the added bonus of adding more carbon to our atmosphere already at a dangerously high 416 parts per million (ppm) . According to MIT, a new house construction emits anywhere from 15 to 100 tons of CO2.

I recognize there is only so much a mayor can do when federal immigration policies dictate the population projections for the country. When we open our doors wider to welcome more people, we create a Catch 22 situation where the housing prices will just keep rising. Instead, we need to create the kind of policies which will preserve the quality of life that we enjoy today for the next generation. That would be the honorable thing for us to do.