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Good article. I also wanted to add that our nation the government/ public are starting to...
Posted by Jonathan Witt
on Wednesday, July 22, 2009
A recent Fox News piece on President Obama’s “science czar,” John Holdren, makes for spooky reading, dramatizing where well-intended intellectuals can end up when they take a zero-sum view of our planet’s resources.
In a 1977 course book that Holdren co-authored with environmental activists Paul and Anne Ehrlich, the three make an extended case for aggressive global population control. As the Fox News article explains:
Holdren and the Ehrlichs offer ideas for “coercive,” “involuntary fertility control,” including “a program of sterilizing women after their second or third child,” which doctors would be expected to do right after a woman gives birth.
“Unfortunately,” they write, “such a program therefore is not practical for most less developed countries,” where doctors are not often present when a woman is in labor.
The article provides a pdf of the relevant pages of the 1977 course book (go here). Reading these several pages makes it difficult to take seriously a statement by Holdren’s office that Dr. Holdren “does not now support and has never supported compulsory abortions, compulsory sterilization, or other coercive approaches to limiting population growth.” At best, a passage at the end of 788 and the beginning of 789 suggests that the three authors would happily opt for less coercive measures, provided those measures work to their satisfaction.
Holdren and the Ehrlichs are not alone. There’s a long history, dating back at least to the 1700s, of doomsters insisting that population growth coupled with a scarcity of natural resources will very soon ruin civilization.
What’s behind this pessimism, a pessimism apparently immune to contrary historical evidence? In Acton’s new Effective Stewardship DVD curriculum, soon to be released by Zondervan (go here), Acton president Rev. Robert Sirico puts the matter in philosophical and theological context. There he argues that the problem is rooted in a false anthropology, one in which the doctrine of the imago dei is eclipsed, and with it the powerful role of human creativity:
There are many people, including religious leaders, who say that the essential problem is a problem of resource, and that if it’s a problem of resource then it’s a problem of population. This is what I call humaniphobia.
The image in the humaniphobe’s mind is that the human person is one big mouth that is constantly ingesting, and then polluting.
On such a view, humans are the problem rather than the solution. The takeaway question is this: Do we really want to hand our health care over to the U.S. government when a science adviser like Holdren has the president’s ear?
Posted by Jordan J. Ballor
on Thursday, October 23, 2008
There are two basic errors that entrap discussants on issues related to environmental stewardship. The first error is that of the uncritical activist, who is always ready to embrace whatever faddish innovation or practice the green intelligentsia casts as the latest solution. The problem with this approach is that in it often results in negative unintended consequences. Call this the error of the “early adopter.”
On the other extreme is that of the reactive critic, who is only too willing to cast scorn upon anything new in the realm of environmental concern (in part due to the over-exuberance of the early adopters). Comfortable in civilized affluence, the conservative anti-conservationist distrusts any claim of stewardship or responsibility that might upset complacency. Call this the error of the “never adopter.”
A characteristic common to both of these extremes is a sort of knee-jerk reaction, either for or against, that is basically un-reflective. Rational argumentation comes in later, if it comes at all, after a side or position has already been chosen. A sounder approach, I believe, is a more thoughtful and reflective environmentalism, a middle way between two extremes, if you will.
This is an approach that appreciates the possibilities for new technologies and innovations, for alternative sources of energy, without prejudice towards any particular project or every prospect in general. It’s an approach to questions of particular policies that values data over nostalgia, effect over sentiment, consequence over intent, even technique over piety. So let’s not uncritically embrace or unthinkingly deride new developments and concerns in the realm of environmental stewardship.
Category: Environmental Stewardship
Related Tags:
alternative energy, Environmental Stewardship, environmentalism, policy
Posted by Jennifer Roback Morse
on Tuesday, November 27, 2007
This article at the WSJ reviews a book that purports to be about progressive environmentalism. Doomsday is out. Nobody cares. People need material well-being before they are interested in environmentalism at all.
Messrs. Nordhaus and Shellenberger want "an explicitly pro-growth agenda," on the theory that investment, innovation and imagination may ultimately do more to improve the environment than punitive regulation and finger-wagging rhetoric. To stabilize atmospheric carbon levels will take more–much more–than regulation; it will require "unleashing human power, creating a new economy."
Not perfect, but alot better than what passes for environmentalism most of the time.
Posted by Jordan J. Ballor
on Tuesday, April 24, 2007
In an Earth Day column last week that was skeptical about the gospel of global warming consensus, Glenn Shaw, a professor of physics at the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, expressed hoped that the climate change debate might spark a more comprehensive conversation about humankind’s complex environmental responsibilities.
In fact the opposite seems to be happening: the activist buzz over global warming is reducing the broader concept of environmental stewardship to a litmus-test on climate change. That’s why I wrote a piece that appeared in today’s Detroit News, “U.S. must move beyond Earth Day slogans.”
In this op-ed I examine three aspects of environmental care that show the comprehensive nature of stewardship, complex realities that belie the free and easy slogans of bumper sticker environmentalism: planting trees, compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs), and plug-in cars.
For more information about the sources used in this story, see these related items:
Category: Environmental Stewardship
Related Tags:
CFLs, earth day, environment, environmentalism, reforestation, stewardship, Tesla Motors, trees
Posted by Jordan J. Ballor
on Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Over at the Huffington Post blog, David Roberts, a staff writer for Grist.org, describes the relationship between activist causes, like women’s reproductive rights and “sustainable development,” and population control.
Roberts says he doesn’t directly address the problem of over-population because talking about it as such isn’t very effective. Apparently, telling people that they and their kids very existence is the “ultimate problem of all problems” doesn’t resonate very well. It “alienates a large swathe of the general public,” you know, the ones who still have some residual moral sensibilities.
So, instead, Roberts pursues items that he think will ultimately result in lowered populations…a subordination of these causes as means to the greater end. He writes, “Each of these — empowering women and spreading prosperity — is worth pursuing in its own right. Each is a powerful political rallying cry. Each produces a range of ancillary benefits.”
But of course the greatest benefit of them both is that they help in “scaling human population back.”
And as Roberts notes, the connection between radical environmentalism and population control has been devastating for the cause, leading him to conclude that overt population control rhetoric “is political poison.”
His concluding advice? “If you’re worried about population, work toward sustainable development and female empowerment.”
And, I might add, if you are able to similarly disguise a radical environmentalist agenda and separate out the perception of pursuing population control, why not work toward that too?
Category: General
Related Tags:
environmentalism, female empowerment, population, population control, sustainable development
Posted by Marc Vander Maas
on Friday, March 23, 2007
Hey, what can I say - sometimes in the great war to save Gaia, you have to do some… unsavory things, like killing baby polar bears so they don’t have to suffer the humiliation of being raised by humans after being rejected by their mothers. With an assist from our resident Photoshop genius, Jonathan Spalink, I humbly present this artistic token of support to our friends in the environmental movement, in the hopes that it will help them to educate the public about the importance of their quest to save this bear by killing it.
It should be noted that cooler heads have prevailed in this situation…
Update: Atomic cuteness bomb explodes over Germany; mass cases of “the snuggles” reported
Category: Environmental Stewardship
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Environmental Stewardship, environmentalism, extremism, polar bear
Posted by Marc Vander Maas
on Monday, February 26, 2007
Bjorn Lomborg has a better Powerpoint presentation than Al Gore. He’s also a more captivating speaker, and uses decent logic in his presentations. Is there any way we can get him an Oscar for the following 17 minute tour-de-force?
Via Planet Gore, where a bunch of contemptible low-lifes hang out and engage in that filthy practice on a par with Holocaust denial - Climate Change Skepticism. I shudder just thinking about it. Oh, and Jay Richards blogs there too, the disgusting little lout.
Category: Environmental Stewardship
Related Tags:
bjorn lomborg, climate change, environmentalism, global warming
Posted by Jonathan Spalink
on Monday, February 19, 2007
Last week, Marc posted audio from the Fred Smith’s presentation at the 2007 Acton Lecture Series. Mr. Smith, president and founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, spoke about Corporate Social Responsibility and the dangers associated with the socialization of the corporation. Video of this event is now available online and for download. You can watch it online, (a new window with a Flash video player will open), you can download the file via Acton’s podcast, or download directly as an MP4 file (60Mb). Enjoy our video goodness!
Category: News and Events
Related Tags:
Acton Lecture Series, Corporate Social Responsibility, corporation, csr, environmentalism, fred smith, washington
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