Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation

345 Pages·2012·13.278 MB·English

by  Philip Cafaro, Eileen Crist

LIFE ON THE BRINK

Life on the Brink
Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation
EDITED BY
PHILIP CAFARO AND EILEEN CRIST
THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS ATHENS AND LONDON
© 2012 by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
www.ugapress.org
All rights reserved
Set in Adobe Garamond Pro by
Graphic Composition, Inc., Bogart, Georgia.
Printed digitally in the United States of America
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Life on the brink: environmentalists confront overpopulation I
edited by Philip Cafaro and Eileen Crist.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8203-4385-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-IO: 0-8203-4385-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8203-4048-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-IO: 0-82.03-4048-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Overpopulation- Environmental a~pects.
2.. Environmental ethics.
I. Cafaro, Philip, 1962-
II. Crist, Eileen, 196I-
HB87u5195 2012
363.7'01-dc23 20I20IJ925
BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGlNG-IN-l'UBLICATION DATA AVAILABLE
To Edward 0. Wilson, Tireless Defender ofN ature
'1t is not the Nature ofh uman beings to be cattle in glorified feedlots.
Every person deserves the option to travel easily in and out oft he complex
and primal world that gave us birth, We need freedom to roam across land
owned by no one but protected by all, whose unchanging horizon is the same
that bounded the world ofo ur millennial ancestors. Only in what remains of
Eden, teeming with life-forms independent ofu s, is it possible to experience
the kind ofw onder that shaped the human psyche at its birth. "

CONTENTS
List of Tables and Figures ix
Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, Foreword xi
Part I: Introduction
I. Eileen Crist and Philip Cafaro, Human Population
If
Growth as the Rest ofL ife Mattered 3
2. William R. Catton Jr., Destructive Momentum:
Could an Enlightened Environmental Movement Overcome It? 16
3. Albert Bartlett, Reflections on Sustainability
and Population Growth 29
4. Martha Campbell, Why the Silence on Population? 41
5. Dave Foreman, The Great Backtrack 56
Part JJ, Impacts
6. Leon Kolankiewicz, Overpopulation versus Biodiversity:
How a Plethora ofP eople Produces a Paucity ofWildlife 75
7. Jeffrey McKee, The Human Population Footprint on
Global Biodiversity 91
viii Contents
8. Tim Palmer, Beyond Futility 98
9. Lester Brown, Environmental Refugees: The Rising Tide 108
IO. George Wuerthner, Population, Fossil Fuels, and Agriculture 123
11. Captain Paul Watson, The Laws ofE cology and Human
Population Growth 130
Part III: Necessary Conversations
12. Eileen Crist, Abundant Earth and the Population Question 141
13. Stephanie Mills, Nulliparity and a Cruel Hoax Revisited 154
14. Tom Butler, Colossus versus Liberty: A Bloated Humanity's
Assault on Freedom 160
15. Philip Cafaro and Winthrop Staples III, The Environmental
Argumentf or Reducing Immigration into the United States 172
16. Joseph Bish, Toward a New Armada: A Globalist Argument for
Stabilizing the U.S. Population 189
17. Ronnie Hawkins, Perceiving Overpopulation: Can't We See
What We're Doing? 202
18. Amy Gulick, Salmon in the Trees 214
Part IV: Solutions
19. Robert Engelman, Trusting Women to End Population Growth 223
20. William Ryerson, How Do We Solve the Population Problem? 240
21. Don Weeden and Charmayne Palomba, A Post-Cairo
Paradigm: Both Numbers and Women Matter 255
22. Richard Lamm, Confronting Finitude 274
23. Winthrop Staples III and Philip Cafaro, For a Species Right
~~ ~
24. Roderick Nash, Island Civilization: A Vision for"Human
Inhabitance in the Fourth Millennium 301
Philip Cafaro, Epilogue: Is Humanity a Cancer on the Earth? 313
Select Bibliography 319
Resources 323
Contributors 32 7
Index 333
TABLES AND FIGURES
TABLES
2.r. World population growth to six billion following major
breakthroughs in methods of supporting human life 20
2.2. World population growth to six billion- by two categories
of humans 23
3.r. Doubling times for different rates of steady growth 31
3.2. Doubling on a chess board 33
4.1. Population growth over the last 210 years 43
4.2. Actual and projected population sizes of countries of
the Nile Basin 45"
Ip. Projected U.S. population 177
FIGURES
4.1. Trends in world population growth 44
7.1. Correlation between predicted and observed changes in
the density of threatened species per nation 94
Ip. U.S. immigrant population, twentieth century 175
15-2a. Sprawl rates, U.S. states 178
15.2b. Sprawl rates, U.S. cities 179
tX