In the previous article here, I called environmental writers to task for actively ignoring the subject of population growth. I responded to David Roberts who, in a piece on Grist, provided his own reasons for avoiding the subject. A fair number of other environmental writers seem to share those reasons. They’re afraid people associate responding to population growth with such things as eugenics and various draconian and totalitarian measures. They believe critics have effectively marginalized environmentalists by drawing such associations.

I rebutted that argument, I hope convincingly, and suggested the avoidance strategy had been a setback to the environmental movement. I urged environmental writers to embrace truth rather than avoidance. It should go without saying that truth is the more effective option, clearly superior to the alternative, now usually pursued, of creating an impression that florescent light bulbs, ethanol, or the latest green building material, deserves more attention than one of the fundamental drivers of our ecological crisis.

Two secondary but still important considerations are worth another quick post. Both concern the strategic or tactical wisdom of remaining silent on population. Roberts’s argument pits environmental writers against those who wish to marginalize them. Those include population growth promoters such as some on the libertarian right and the Christian right. He’s correct that we do have to be aware of the “opposition” and their tactics. But as someone who spent a number of years writing about and playing a game of strategy professionally, I’ll offer that in choosing the silence option (even if we pay lip service to talking about underlying social and economic issues [1]) we commit two fundamental strategic errors.

Strategic blunders

First, we deprive ourselves of an important option in our available ways to counter opponents’ propaganda and to inform people about the most important issues of our time. It’s like a chess player playing without her queen, or a poker player playing without the option of raising when an opponent bets. By determining to avoid the population topic, we handicap ourselves, playing against the opposition without our normal, full array of options. You can bet the opposition is not going to handicap themselves this way.

Second, in many games of strategy, one way to identify the right play is to try to determine what your opponent wants you to do. You then do the opposite. In poker, if you have good reason to believe your opponent wants you to fold your hand (as he would if he were bluffing) your play is to call his bet. In the case of environmentalists versus the folks who cheerlead and promote population growth, it’s obvious the latter want us to be silent on the issue of population. By staying mum on the topic, then, we play right into their hands. We lose.

So once again, I submit it’s time for environmental writers to deal in truth. And as long as they have opponents to contend with, they’d best become better strategists.
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[1] How many environmental writers, including Roberts, take even his advice to talk instead about women’s and economic issues which influence population growth? With the occasional exception such as Betsy Hartmann, I don’t’ see see them doing that.
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Image source: Alan Light, posted on Wikimedia Commons, under a GNU Free Documentation License

A couple of days ago I spotted something rare — an article from the mainstream press looking squarely at the population issue. Reprinted on Alternet with the title, It’s Time to Fight Population Growth, Which Exacerbates Global Warming and Sprawl, Katha Pollitt’s piece appeared originally in The Nation, as Europeans do it Better.

Pollitt’s feminist perspective on population growth competes with, and arguably trumps that of Betsy Hartmann. Hartmann is so concerned that a focus on population will distract from such problems as women’s rights and class bias that she mostly refuses even to acknowledge that population growth is a problem. Pollitt though, judging from her article, chooses simply to see each set of problems for what it is. There are women’s and other social issues and there is population growth. Yes, they interact in important ways, but each must be acknowledged and examined in its own right to understand and approach it effectively.

Pollitt’s piece is important in part because it has a feminist writer bringing to a wider audience the recognition that the traditional drivers of population growth are disempowering to women. (That is why the need to address population growth should rightly be seen, in part, as a feminist cause.)

Isn’t it weird?

She explains that some European governments, concerned about the prospects of declining populations, have instituted policies aimed at increasing fertility rates. The traditional methods of doing this are no longer prevalent, or no longer work as well in modern Europe. She lists them: “early marriage, lack of sex ed and birth control, religious propaganda, community pressure, denial of education and jobs to women.” Seeking new methods that do work to boost fertility rates, governments are trying now to support working mothers with things like paid parental leave and better child care options. The thinking seems to be that without such support women in these countries often feel forced to chose between work and children. The hope is to make it easier to do both, thereby creating more children — the ones who wouldn’t have been born to
women choosing work over kids. [1]

This, as Pollitt puts it, is a case of government doing the right thing for the wrong reason. It’s right to make things easier on working mothers, but doing so in the hope of boosting fertility rates in a world of 6.6 billion, in countries often containing much larger populations today than a half century ago, is short sighted. Pollitt asks, “Isn’t it weird to promote population growth while we wring our hands over global warming, environmental damage, species loss and suburban sprawl?”

Governments’ concerns over population loss are, of course, purely economic. The focus is on the fear of a loss of younger people to pay into social security and to care for the elderly in the coming decades. There is little attention paid to the problem that there won’t be much economy to worry about if the ecological impacts of population growth are allowed to continue. They would do better to maintain the focus on equal opportunities for women — which is unlikely to boost fertility rates very much anyway — while examining how best to adjust economically to what appear to be smaller future populations. Pollitt suggests that in these countries “population decline looks practically inevitable… so why not learn to live with it?” Why not, indeed.

As for countries whose fertility rates are still above replacement level, look back at Pollitt’s list of the traditional ways of boosting fertility rates. Just a glance makes clear why providing options and equal treatment for women is a major step in addressing the population problem.

Where’s the racism?

Just as notable are Pollitt’s observations concerning the tinge of racism or nationalism in much of the fretting over population declines in certain historically white countries. These governments want to produce not just more workers but, as Pollitt puts it, “ethnically correct workers, too, not the troublesome immigrant kind.” (We don’t see them countering waning fertility rates by opening their borders.) Pollitt suggests they instead bring into mainstream society all those children and adults most countries now cast aside:

Poor children, for example — why can’t they grow up to be those missing skilled, educated people and productive workers? What about the children of France’s Arab immigrants who rioted two years ago to protest joblessness and social exclusion? The Gypsies of Eastern Europe, whose kids are written off at birth and who have been sterilized without their consent in Slovakia and the Czech Republic? Vladimir Putin bemoans Russia’s free-falling population, but babies are still being stashed in his country’s appalling orphanages. Get those kids out of there, or stop complaining!

Pollitt’s piece leads easily to the observation that there is complaining in the US press, as well, about declining European fertility rates. The most vocal comes from the far right in the form of free marketeers and Christian fundamentalists. Here again it is not a great stretch to see racist undertones. Clearly the promoters of free market capitalism, in their support of global corporatization, continue a long tradition of hegemony which, if you say it slowly, has a curious tendency to sound a lot like “r-a-c-i-s-m.” And while those on the Christian right may be suffering simply from faith-based illogic, one can’t help thinking of the hegemony in evangelism and missionary work.

Ironically, one of the favorite arguments of those who deny the population problem, who include some such as Hartmann on the left, is to label efforts to address it as racist or oppressive. They claim concern over population pits First Worlders against Third Worlders, or puts the blame for our problems on the latter. I’ve maintained here that this idea is misguided, that the truth is exactly the opposite, precisely because empowering women and other humane measures, such as improving childhood survival, are central to any well planned effort to reduce fertility rates. It’s hard to tell where this argument originated, but population denialists on the right are more than willing to adopt it. Is this because it distracts from the real racism inherent in their world dominating views?
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[1] How well such policies actually work is open to question. They might be seen, after all, as an extension of the very sorts of policies often suggested and occasionally used in Third World countries to empower women for the purpose of bringing fertility rates down. Clearly, though, each involves different variables and is applied under very different social and cultural conditions.
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Image source: celesteh, posted on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license

Those of us concerned about population growth and economic growth on a finite earth often feel we’re in a small, lonely minority. This feeling is intensified by the discussion of climate change. We hear plenty in that context about the need to reduce consumption. That tackling climate change will necessitate also stopping growth — both population growth and economic growth as we’ve come to know it — is the elephant in the room. It’s the huge topic we can’t avoid, but which, for now, the mainstream media hesitate to touch.

One cannot think about this without being troubled. It means the mainstream media, and in fact most of the alternative media as well, are avoiding coverage of the most destructive activity in which humans are now engaged. (No, I’m not discounting the destruction or tragedy of war at all.) So it’s always a pleasant surprise to come across an exception to this unofficial media ban on these topics.

Kiwi surprise

My most recent surprise of this sort comes from the New Zealand Herald. There, Allen Cookson, a retired science teacher, offers a guest column which reads like a condensed version of The Growth is Madness! Story. It’s a short, quick read, highly unusual in acknowledging both the problem of population growth and that of economic growth. Here are a few quotes with my own responses:

“[Population] is the crucial factor in pollution, resource depletion, global warming and loss of biodiversity, all issues central to Green politics.”

Well, consumption rates are key too, but population and economic growth are certainly the most crucial of the factors we hear too little about. And Cookson does acknowledge the latter as well.

“People must acknowledge that the Earth is, for practical purposes, finite in area and natural resources.”

That’s the gist. Amazingly, there are people who try to dispute that. They do it for financial gain, by the way. Many of them even have children and still do it. That’s just sad.

“If women are liberated from oppression, and education and health are improved, birth rates drop.”

Here we see the overlap between the view of environmentalists concerned with population growth and those, such as Betsy Hartmann, whose concern is directly for the women mentioned, to the point that population growth is seen as a mere distraction. In both cases the interventions should be similar.

“Our economic system… is unable to function without continued economic growth. Yet curbing greenhouse emissions requires cessation of growth other than that resulting from improved technology and efficiency.”

Bravo to Allen Cookson for standing up and shining the light on both population growth and the problem of ongoing economic growth. I feel a little less alone today.

Here again is the link to the article: Click here.
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Image source: Gregsdumbflickr, posted on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

In Part 1 of this essay, I began to examine Betsy Hartmann’s argument that population growth is not a serious problem, and that it distracts us from real problems of women’s rights, racism, and class bias. Assessing her critique of 1994’s International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, I touched on her arguments concerning poverty and environmental degradation. For neither does she readily accept population growth as playing an important causal role. I acknowledged her valid points, but disagreed with certain assertions, particularly concerning the environmental issue. Now let’s turn to the question of women’s issues and how they relate to population growth.

Does a focus on population work against women’s rights?

Those who study population know there is a negative correlation between fertility rates and the provision of educational, work, and other opportunities for girls and women. Efforts to improve these opportunities is thus a central part of the work of many population organizations. But Hartmann writes, “[P]lacing women’s rights within a population framework is fraught with peril. First, gender can be used to obscure issues of class and race, and inequalities between North and South.”

So she points to a risk presented by a focus on population and efforts to address it by empowering women. Understandably, she does not want to see a focus on population obscure certain human issues, hurting or failing sufficiently to help the very women it aims to assist. So she pushes us to act as though population growth were not a problem.

I would have less objection to this, if we could know for sure that in our efforts to alleviate the human issues Hartmann mentions, the social and economic factors fueling high fertility rates would be thoroughly addressed such that those rates come down. But when we do not intentionally seek out all those factors we can have no such guarantee. As I suggested in a reply to Trinifar under Part 1 of this essay, not all social and economic problems correlate equally strongly with fertility rates. So if we do want to stabilize world population, we must be sure that among those problems we address, we give appropriate attention to those most influencing population growth in a particular region. If we want to bring down fertility rates, the ways we address relevant social and health issues will vary according to whether or not we keep population itself squarely in mind.

Avoiding talking about a problem isn’t the way to solve it. Consider a doctor treating an illness. If she ignores the symptoms she may neglect certain crucial aspects of treatment.

In this case, the symptom is deadly. Millions, possibly billions of lives could be at stake. We must therefore be especially careful to face it forthrightly. It is difficult to see it otherwise as long as we remain aware that population growth in a finite world is fundamentally unsustainable.

Nor does tackling population growth head on have to lead to the problems Hartmann fears. Her argument seems to involve a kind of unnecessary “either/or” thinking: Either we address population or, out of concern for obscuring important issues of class and race, we instead address those issues directly, ignoring the issue of population.

Why can’t we do both? We can acknowledge the importance of population, acknowledge that the need to empower women is a crucial issue of human justice in its own right, and acknowledge that one of the benefits of doing so is to lower fertility rates, thus working toward population stabilization. However well intended, pushing aside the problem of population is to blur our vision of the issues with which we’re dealing. We’re better off exposing everything to the light and working with these interrelated issues accordingly.

Hartmann argues, “[T]he consensus aims to empower women — but only in a limited fashion. [It would] give women greater access to education, since female literacy has been correlated with lower fertility. Education is politically safer than advocating land redistribution and the unionization of women workers, for instance.”

I completely agree with her concerns here and would urge that they be addressed. We need not deny the population issue to do that. We can give both women’s empowerment and population the attention they deserve.

Reproductive health

Hartmann continues:

“Another important assumption of the consensus is that population policy should shift from a narrow focus on family planning to a broader reproductive health approach…” She acknowledges this is a good thing, but warns, “[I]t will be difficult, if not impossible, for Southern governments to implement a reproductive health approach in the context of deteriorating public health systems and conditions…”

So she’s saying this ideal is good, but may be impossible to make a reality. But surely we can’t opt to do nothing. Even simple family planning programs, if well planned so as to avoid less safe or otherwise problematic forms of birth control, are a positive step, giving women greater control, more options, and addressing population growth as well. Nor am I sure it’s impossible to provide at least a basic level of broader reproductive health care. In a comment here, for example, Karen Gaia Pitts described a $5 birthing kit she saw distributed to expectant mothers in Bangladesh. Yes, it’s rudimentary, but is a step beyond a family-planning-only or contraception-only approach.

Coercion

Hartmann then moves on to the problem of coercion: “Although the Cairo plan criticizes coercive population control programs… it contains no institutional mechanisms to curb abuses.”

Though I’ve not researched the influence today of the Cairo conference, the clear answer, I think, is to do what is necessary to ensure such safeguards.

What about the U.S.?

Turning to the issue of population growth in the U.S., Hartmann says, “Within the U.S., the greatest danger of the population consensus lies in its intersection with the right-wing politics of scapegoating immigrants and poor women, particularly women of color.”

Such as danger does exist. In researching the issue, I have noticed that some of the groups advocating immigration reduction, ostensibly to reduce population growth for legitimate reasons, appear, to varying degrees, to have racist connections, at least in their histories. Some no doubt pursue racist agendas today. Others do not, and act purely out of environmental concerns.

But to ignore the issue of population in order to avoid the appearance of siding with the former groups, or to avoid inadvertently furthering their agenda, is to turn away from reality at a time when scientists warn us we are near or beyond the number of people the earth can support. We must not avoid confronting population growth simply because some racists mention the same issue for completely different and abhorent reasons. (If criminals encouraged people to walk to work so they could mug them, would that mean others should avoid encouraging people to walk to work for the health and environmental benefits?) To do so only blurs our vision of the problems we must solve if we are to avoid the full impact of ecological collapse.

In the end, not so different

I’ve outlined a number of points of disagreement. Yet in her conclusion, Hartmann’s words reveal the ultimate insignificance of the difference between her views and those of environmentalists concerned with population. She says:

Instead of focusing primarily on population numbers, governments and NGOs should pursue women’s rights, including reproductive rights, social and economic justice, and ecologically sustainable development as ends in and of themselves. In the process, population growth rates will come down. Demographic data from around the globe affirm that improvements in women’s status and in general living standards are keys to reductions in population growth.

In the end, then, she hints strongly at a concession that population is a problem. She points out that addressing women’s issues is key to reducing population growth. That could as easily be a summary of my own or many other environmentalists’ views! The only real difference is that Betsy Hartmann is urging us, in essence, to pretend we aren’t interested in population growth so that we might appreciate the importance of women’s and other human rights issues in themselves. In the process, we are reassured, population will take care of itself.

I suggest, on the other hand, that we can acknowledge the importance of women’s and other social issues apart from their connection with population while simultaneously recognizing the importance of the population issue and the need to empower women if we are to solve it.

Clearly, despite differences in perspective, Betsy Hartmann’s suggestions for addressing women’s issues, and mine and other environmentalists’ ideas for tackling the population problem overlap closely. I believe Dr. Hartmann’s ideas might actually be reconciled with the views of those who call for population stabilization on environmental grounds. And that would be a great thing. Rapprochement and cooperation would only strengthen the work of both groups.
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Image sources: Erik++, posted on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license; christopherbaa, posted on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license

Readers here know there are those who argue world population growth is not a problem. Most prominent are groups with certain political axes to grind, usually from a right wing economic perspective, often advocating free market capitalism and opposed to government intervention in environmental matters. Some libertarian “think tanks” typify this group. They tout the party line with regard to the current dominant economic model. I disagree strongly with those groups, have touched briefly on that disagreement in previous essays, and will do so in more depth in the future.

A bit less prominent among critics of the environmental perspective on population is a subset of academics writing from a feminist perspective. They argue any focus on population is a distraction from the real issues, works against women’s rights, and promotes racism and class bias. One of the best known authors from this camp is Betsy Hartmann, director of the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College.

Reading some of her online writings, I set out to examine where she and I disagreed. Though I expected to encounter worthwhile ideas, I also anticipated frustration concerning our points of clear divergence. I was surprised instead to conclude that, on certain fundamentals, Betsy Hartmann and I do not seriously disagree. (That may not be at all obvious until Part 2.) Therefore these two essays are not so much a sharp refutation — as might be my typical approach — as a careful look at where and how I agree and disagree with her positions. My hope is that these essays might become a small stepping stone toward fuller agreement and cooperation between those in the environmental camp concerned with population and the particular feminist camp in which Dr. Hartmann resides. I should add, however, that I have read only a small portion of her work. I hope to read more, and cannot rule out changing my assessment as a result.

For this essay, I looked for a succinct sampling of Hartmann’s views on population. I chose her critique of 1994’s International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. Obviously, it’s not her newest work, but when comparing it to more recent brief overviews of the topic by her or her colleagues, the main points are largely the same. And this article contains a few comments which, when examined closely, reveal important points of overlap between her views and those of environmentalists who deal with population. Let’s take a look.

Is there a population-poverty link?

In her critique Hartmann explains her disagreement with several facets of what she calls “the new population consensus,” that is, the consensus coming out of the Cairo conference, which her writings suggest she equates with the views of many environmentalists who talk about population growth. The first facet concerns the relationship between population and poverty.

She points to an assumption that population growth is an important cause of poverty. She argues, instead, “[T]he inequitable distribution of wealth and power is the main cause of poverty — not population growth. According to the United Nations, global income disparity has doubled during the last three decades…”

Most of my focus on GIM has been on the link between population growth and environmental degradation. So I am less prepared to take a strong position on the issue of population and poverty. I will mention, though, that before accepting Hartmann’s argument on this point I’d like to see some evidence suggesting population growth is not one of the factors driving the growing global income disparity she mentions.

Additionally, a simple observation leads me to remain skeptical of the notion that population growth is not one cause of poverty: Does not a family of seven cost more to support than a family of three?

Finally, other experts do link population growth with poverty. Jeffrey Sachs, for instance, has pointed out, “[I]n Africa and the Middle East, high fertility rates are leading to profound local environmental pressures… thereby worsening the grave economic challenges these countries face.” One would think there is a vicious cycle at work. Poverty leads families to have more children, and population growth exacerbates poverty.

I believe Hartman is right, however, to point to the importance of inequitable wealth distribution in creating poverty; I merely think she is too quick to dismiss population growth as another important factor in the equation. (Here’s an informative article on the topic from the School of Economics, University of the Philipinnes – PDF.)

What about environmental degradation?

Here, Hartmann’s basic argument is simple. She says population growth is not a key driver of environmental degradation. She makes some valid observations on this topic, but they do not provide convincing support for such a strong assertion. For instance, she says, “As for environmental degradation, it is no secret that Western industrialized countries consume the bulk of the Earth’s resources.”

I would counter that, while its true developed countries consume the bulk of the world’s resources, the gap between developed and developing countries is closing. China, for example, now consumes more of some resources than the U.S. Despite China’s low per capita consumption levels, they beat the U.S. here due to sheer numbers. (In fairness, those particular statistics were not available at the time Hartmann wrote her article.)

Per capita, industrialized societies do tend to far out-consume developing countries. But this does not diminish the importance of population growth. As I’ve shown here previously, the relevant equation is per capita consumption times population size. In countries such as the U.S., population growth is a serious problem as each new person added consumes much more than a counterpart in a developing country. Moreover, in developing countries, per capita consumption rates are rising rapidly while, in many cases, population continues to climb as well. The product of the equation in those countries is therfore quickly increasing in magnitude.

Hartmann goes on to say, “[T]he precise dynamics of environmental degradation in the Third World are considerably more complex than the population consensus suggests. In the case of deforestation, for example, corporate logging and ranching are the main culprits”

That’s true as far as it goes. As shown here in a past essay, “In some parts of the world, local population growth is the major culprit. In the Amazon… the guilt goes to classic examples of conventional, unsustainable economic growth.” But such observations say little about the underlying role of population on a larger level. Even when corporate logging or ranching is the main culprit, we have to ask where the growing demand for those corporate products comes from. The contribution of population growth is obvious. (4/24/08, Update: See Jeffrey McKee’s work, described in Sparing Nature, for much information on the fundamental relationship between human population and species extinction.)

Hartmann says, “A critique of the dominant economic model and its impact on the environment was conveniently left out of Cairo conference… Overconsumption is part of a larger production and distribution system that puts quick profits before basic human needs and environmental protection.”

I completely agree. The dominant economic model represents a profound problem, both for the ecosystem and human justice. Discussion of this topic should be included in any serious examination of environmental degradation. Overconsumption is linked to that economic model. Again, though, that unfortunately does not let population growth off the hook. It combines with per capita consumption to determine our overall resource consumption.

It is my impression that Dr. Hartmann sees the population issue as a distraction. Her concern is that we recognize the importance of women’s and other social issues in their own right, and that we properly address them. In Part 2, I will suggest that denial of the importance of population growth is not the best way to accomplish that.

Part 2 will begin with a look at the question of women’s rights. It is the central component of Dr. Hartmann’s argument.

Here is part 2.

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Image source: posted on Wikimedia Commons as a public domain image.