Our members have published the following articles and letters to the editor. These writings do not necessarily reflect the opinion of VSP but they are reflective of our diverse concerns about population growth.

Current Editorials
Read - Sammet: Planet health, woman's health and peace
Read - For the Record: Affirmers and Deniers
Read - The Triple Crises of Civilization
Read - Engage: After 40 years of Earth Day, what has been accomplished?
Read - As Vermont's population booms, we pave paradise and lose our rural values - By: Opinion
Read - I Believe: 'We are making it harder and harder for other species to exist' - By: George Plumb
Read - Politics over Science - By: Mark Powell
Read - Developing a Common Platform - By: George Plumb
Read - It's the numbers that Count - By: George Plumb
Read - Land Consumption is Not Sustainable - By: James Andrews
Read - Environment, Economics and Population - By: George Plumb
Read - Was Malthus Just Off Some Years? - By: George Plumb
Read - Shades of Green - By: George Plumb and Tim Murray
Read - Is Vermont Disappearing - By: Brian Wallstin
Read - The "P" Word - By: Marc Powell
Read - The Green Grapevine #28 - By: Daniel Hecht

Unlike the other commentaries in this section this one has not been submitted for publication in the media. However, for those who care about the environment, and life for future generations and indeed all life on earth, it is very important to know what fairly well known1 Vermont people and Vermont environmental organizations have been willing to speak out about the main cause of our environmental problems: a U. S. population that has already exceeded its carrying capacity and yet continues to grow by three million people per year. It is quite impressive how many Vermont journalists, educators, authors and organizations have spoken about the population issue. If you have any corrections or additions to this commentary please send them to George at gplumb@pshift.com.

Those who have spoken up about population without being asked:

Saleem Ali, PhD – Associate Professor of Environmental Planning at UVM and author of the
            Book, “Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed, and a Sustainable Future.
Alan Betts – Vermont’s leading climate scientist and past president of the Vt. Academy of
            Science and Engineering who regularly writes for the Weekly Planet column in the
            Sunday edition of the Times Argus/Rutland Herald.
David Blittersdorf – founder of NRG Systems and now founder and President of AllEarth
            Renewables who writes for the View From The Top column of the Green Energy Times
             and serves on the board of the VPIRG.
Robert Costanza, PhD – director of the UVM Gund Institute for Ecological Economics and
            chief editor of the book, “Ecological Economics.”
Cheryl Fischer – Executive Director, New England Grassroots Environmental Fund
Nat Frothingham – editor of the Montpelier Bridge newspaper.
Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at UVM – in their magazine “Solutions.”
Valerie Esposito, PhD – director of the Champlain College Environmental Policy Program.
Willem Lange – writes the weekly column Yankee Notebook for the Sunday Argus/Herald.
Jon Margolis – writer, political correspondent, and adjunct professor of political science at
            UVM.
Mollie Matteson – Director of the Northeast Office (Richmond) of the Center for Biological
            Diversity.
Bill McKibben – head of the 350.org organization and internationally know author including the
            book, “Maybe One.”
Nancy Mosher – past President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.
Tim Newcomb – internationally famous cartoonist who has done at least two cartoons on
            population and the environment and does art work for Vermont environmental
            organizations.
Bill Ryerson – President of the Population Media Center which is based in Shelburne Vermont.
Lisa Sammet – artistic performer, host of concerts, Hardwick librarian and president of VSP.
Paul Schechkel – senior energy analyst for the Vt. Energy Investment Corporation and author
            of the “The Home Energy Diet” and writes regularly for the Weekly Planet column.
James Gustave Speth, PhD. - former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and the Environment
            and author of several books including “The Bridge at the Edge of the World.”  He is now
            retired to Vermont but still teaches at Vt. Law School and serves on the advisory board of
            the Vt. Natural Resources Council.
Carol Tashie – owner of a veggie farm and writes regularly for the Weekly Planet column.
Nancy Taube – author of the book, “Rustle Me up Some Texas” which includes many
            references to population growth.

Several national environmental organizations with offices in Vermont including Audubon, Center for Biological Diversity, the Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation, and Sierra Club although as far as is known the CBD Regional Director is the only one who has personally spoken out about population growth.

Those who spoke out about population after being asked:

Geof Hewitt – well known Vt. slam poet who wrote the poem “Rabbits.”
Post Carbon Sustainability Network – indirectly by endorsing a steady state economy.
Smart Growth Vermont – added the words “population growth” to their web site as one of the
            causes of sprawl.
Transition Vermont – indirectly by adding a group discussion on population growth.
Vermont Reptile and Amphibian Atlas – added a great page on their web site about both
            population and consumption.

Those who have refused to speak out even after being asked, in most cases at least a couple of times:

The majority of Vermont’s larger environmental organizations.

It is interesting that so many have spoken out about population growth ranging from every day citizens to internationally famous authors but the great majority of Vermont’s larger environmental organizations, whose purpose after all is to protect the environment, refuse to acknowledge the truth.

I began asking environmental organizations to speak out about population in a land mail letter in 2006. Only one responded to that letter, the Vt. Reptile and Amphibian Atlas. Since that time I have sent other land and email requests just asking them to please simply add the words “population growth” to their web site. I haven’t asked them to do anything about the population issue, or take any position on any aspect of the population issue, just to simply acknowledge the fact some place on their web site as a matter of public education. Again no responses except for Smart Growth Vermont. I have even asked several if I could just come and talk with them personally about the population issue. All but one said no which I find amazing. I’ll bet that if these organizations were to do a survey and ask their members if their organization should acknowledge the fact that population growth is a cause of environmental problems at least 80% of the members would say yes!

To me all of us who care about the environment should be in this together and acknowledge and support the work of each other even if we don’t always agree with what they do or do not do or say. This would seem particularly true in Vermont where we all know each other. Some of us work for large environmental organizations and some for small ones. Some of us get paid for our environmental work and some donate our time. Some of us deal with the causes of environmental problems and some with the results. However, we are all trying to do our best to deal with complex and challenging environmental issues.

However when it comes to main line environmental organizations, “we are all in this together,” clearly does not apply. Although they constantly ask us to attend their events, respond to their action alerts, and donate money, when something is asked of them there is no mutual support. The organizers of the annual Vermont Environmental Conference have refused to give us the opportunity to present a session on population although their staffs are annually on the agenda as speakers. Even when they received a personal invitation from the editor of the Montpelier Bridge, with a follow up phone call, none of these organizations were represented at a free lunch Global Population Speak Out in Montpelier in 2009. And none of the above acknowledged the publication by VSP of Vermont’s most comprehensive environmental report. I could cite many other examples of our larger environmental organizations not supporting our being in this together but I’ll leave it here for now.

Going forward:

The disastrous Gulf oil spill is having a huge environmental and economic impact. Global warming is happening at a faster rate and the results are going to be much more serious than predicted earlier. Both are largely the result of population growth. These warnings will  hopefully provide a wakeup call. More and more deep thinkers are writing and talking about the mistaken growth forever concept, be it population or economic. What we are now doing is not working and we need to change the paradigm and that includes stabilizing the size of our population, changing our personal consumption patterns, and changing government policies. Just doing one without the others will not work. The evidence is overwhelming and time for action, particularly by environmental leaders is now. Without their leadership how can we expect the general public and political leaders to make the personal and policy decisions that need to be made?

1I define “fairly well known” as being known beyond the individual’s immediate community.

he evidence is overwhelming. We are facing triple crises. Global warming is already happening. We are at or close to being at peak oil (and some say as result peak money) production. We have exceeded our carrying capacity and still adding 3 million people to the U.S. population and eighty million to the earth each year. Between the two of us we have read almost all of the books below and are deeply impressed that so many prominent environmentalists, scientists, spiritual leaders, and educators have written so many books about crisis and collapse in just the last few years.

We urge all who care about the future to read at least one book from each of the categories. In this time of greenwashing by corporations and politicians there is nothing more important that we can do than to be well informed about these issues. If you only have time or motivation to read one book then James Hansen's book, The Storms of my Grandchildren, is a must read. While there are many more books that have been written in each category we have listed what we think are the best four in terms of information and ideas on how to deal with the crises. While the reading may at times be discouraging it will also likely motivate people to action as it has us.

All political, environmental, religious, and social justice leaders and followers need to come together to acknowledge each of these problems and either begin new movements, strengthen existing movements, or a combination of the two, to begin to fulfill our responsibility to the earth and future generations.

Peak oil

The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, James Howard Kunstler, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005

Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines, Richard Heinberg, New Society Publishers, 2007

Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post-Peak Oil World, Michael Rupert, Chelsea Green Press, 20092

Transition Handbook, Rob Hopkins, Chelsea Green Press, 2009



Climate change

Storms of my Grandchildren, James Hansen, Bloombury USA, 2009

Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Al Gore, Rodale Press, 2009

Earth, Bill McKibben, Times Books, 2010

Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Lester Brown, W.W. Norton Co., 2009



Population size

A Pivotal Moment: Population, Justice and the Environmental Challenge, Laurie Mazur, Island Press, 2010

Growing Pains: A Planet in Distress, Valorie M. Allen, IUniverse Press, 2010

The Population: Fix-Breaking America's Addiction to Population Growth, Edward Hartman, out of print but available through used sources at www.populationfix.com, 2006

More: Population, Nature and What Women Want, Robert Engelman, Island Press, 2008

Combined crisis

The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, Gus Speth, Yale University Press, 2008

Threshold: The Crisis of Western Civilization, Thom Hartmann, Viking Press, 2009

Endgame: The Problem Of Civilization, Derrick Jensen, Seven Stories Press, 20061

The Vanishing Face of Gaia: The Final Warning: Enjoy it while you can, James Lovelock, Allen Lane, 2009



Religious point of view

A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency, John Stanley, David R. Lay, and Gyurme Dorje, Wisdom Press, 2008

Love God, Heal Earth: The Ecological Crisis Through the Lens of Faith, Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham, SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2009

Claiming Earth as Common Ground, Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener, St. Lynn's Press, 2009

A Climate Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions, Katherine Hayhoe and Andrew Farley, Hachette Book Group, 2009



Rev. David Murphy is a retired Methodist minister and now lives his life as sustainably as possible. He and his wife Judy operate Splendid Oaks Farm in Montpelier, and are in the process of installing a solar system that will generate most of their electricity. They are the co-chairs of the Central Vermont Post Carbon Sustainability Network.

George Plumb is executive director of Vermonters for Sustainable Population and Chair of the New England Coalition for Sustainable Population. He is a long-time environmental activist and has organized a couple of Central Vermont 350.org actions. He is an active Unitarian Universalist and practices Buddhism.

Vermont government expenditures for the environment/percent of state budget
1970: $4,815,019, or 2 percent
2010: $82,304,483, or 1.7 percent

Condition of the environment

1970: There certainly were environmental problems in Vermont. Large-scale land development, including great expansion of ski areas, building of malls and large subdivisions, was just beginning. There also was point-source pollution including untreated wastewater going into our rivers and air pollution from manufacturers. However, the problems largely were local in nature and could be dealt with through environmental regulation such as Act 250 and building sewage-treatment plants.

2010: The health of Vermont environment has become worse.

How do we know this?

We know this anecdotally from the huge increase in the number of environmental organizations and environmental programs at colleges and universities. If the environment were improving, would there be such a great need for the increase in organizations and programs? Unfortunately, although we have more serious environmental problems now than we had then, the percent of state expenditures on the environment has decreased slightly.

More importantly, we know the environment has deteriorated from empirical environmental data showing historic trends. There are three different environmental reports that show a wide variety of data. The most comprehensive is the “Disappearing Vermont?” report published by Vermonters for Sustainable Population. It lists 31 indicators of environmental health, including both objective and quantifiable data and subjective and nonquantifiable measures. Of the 31 indicators, 23 show a decline, two are about the same, and only six have improved, and those only slightly. The other comprehensive reports were published by the Council on the Future of Vermont and the Vermont Community Foundation and show similar results.

Globally the environmental situation is even worse. Global warming, dead seas, clearing of rain forests, collapsing fisheries and loss of biodiversity were not a problem in 1970. Now the Data Center of the Earth Policy Institute documents the many ways the global environment is deteriorating.

Why are our environmental problems becoming so much worse here in Vermont and globally?

The most important cause is population growth. While the Vermont population increased by 177,000 during the past 40 years, the U.S. population increased by 139 million. It continues to grow by about 3 million people a year. Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of “Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization,” stated that, “Despite 40 years of Earth Day, our environmental situation has become much worse, and population growth since that time has been a major cause.”

Unfortunately, during these 40 years of trying to solve our environmental problems, we have been dealing primarily with the symptoms and not the cause. It is like dealing with a car that is leaking oil from the engine. If we just keep adding more oil we are dealing only with the symptom, and the underlying cause grows worse. On the other hand, if we fix the engine gasket, the problem stops.

In our environment we are dealing with water pollution by adding and upgrading wastewater-treatment plants. However, that doesn’t stop the silt and other pollution caused by nonpoint-source pollution from developed land. Acre for acre, developed land causes more pollution than agricultural land. And it is more than the environment that is being polluted. Research by the Vermont Public Interest Research Group shows that all Vermont human bodies now have toxic chemicals in them.

When the first Earth Day was held April 22, 1970, population growth was at the top of the agenda. A headline in The Burlington Free Press on April 23 that year read: “Dr. Gray Says Mankind Must Face Problems of Snowballing Population.” Another article detailing the themes at the UVM Earth Day lists “OVERPOPULATION” as the first item.

However, since that time environmental and political leaders have retreated from talking about the population issue. Given that the environmental situation now is so much worse, this is irresponsible to the Earth and to future generations. Our leaders should once again lead us in discussing this issue and what we can do voluntarily to deal with it.

Some argue the root cause is consumption and not population growth. This is not a valid argument. If there were only 25 million people living in the U.S., as there was in 1850, we all could be living highly consumptive lifestyles and driving Hummers around, and our ecological systems could handle both the consumption of resources and the resulting pollution.

Also, there is little evidence that people are willing to lessen significantly their consumptive lifestyles. Even this ardent environmentalist in recent weeks has bought a new laptop computer, purchased my first iPod and driven more than 100 miles round trip to Burlington to teach a class — none of which I really had to do.
Fortunately, with the combination of our increasing environmental problems, food and water shortages already happening, rising awareness of peak oil and our failing economy, people are beginning to realize unsustainable population growth is behind much of this. The human species has exceeded its carrying capacity.

Environmentalists talked about carrying capacity during the first Earth Day, after which we heard little about it. But now it is being discussed again, along with the newer concept of ecological footprint.

While discussing population growth this Earth Day likely will not top the agenda as it did in 1970, we can use this opportunity to begin to reconsider and take action on the cause of our problems and stop the imaginary thinking that only dealing with symptoms is the answer.

Note: The data on population, environmental organizations and college environmental programs at the beginning of this column all are the result of research by the author. Depending on how environmental organizations and programs are defined, the data might vary slightly. There actually are dozens more environmental-type groups such as community conservation commissions, local land trusts, river protection groups, sustainable living networks, etc., but they do not have staff. The state spending data on the environment was provided by the Public Assets Institute. The figure for 1970 is the Environmental Conservation budget, and the figure for 2010 is the Natural Resources Budget.

George Plumb is a longtime volunteer environmental activist and currently is executive director of Vermonters for Sustainable Population. Contact him at gplumb@pshift.com.

As Vermont's population booms, we pave paradise and lose our rural values
By: Opinion on February 15, 2010
Published By: VTDigger.org


Editor’s note: This commentary is by George Plumb, a long-time volunteer environmental activist and currently serves as executive director of Vermonters for Sustainable Population.

With the U.S. population having grown by over 100 million since 1970 and Vermont’s population by 200,000, the impact on the environment has been profound. We are now facing major destruction of the earth’s ecosystems, and we have clearly exceeded the carrying capacity to sustain future generations.

This is so well-documented that I won’t go into the details. Instead, I think a very important part of this discussion, and what is often missing, is what constant growth is doing to our quality of life. For me it has had a dramatic impact, and I suspect it has for many others as well, particularly those who have lived in Vermont for more than a few years.

I moved to Washington, Vermont, in 1968. At that time, Washington was a very rural community. There were several dairy farms, with each farm having no more than 50 milking cows. And the farms were economically fairly well off.  The farmer across the valley even had his own little airport known as the Carrier Airport that still shows on Vermont atlases. Everyone knew everyone else, and communities were tight-knit.

Since we have moved here the changes are almost unbelievable.

•        There are only a couple of dairy farms left and the cows that used to sometimes break out of the fenced pastures and wander onto our land are … no more.

•        The one-third mile long road which we live on had only two buildings, our late 1800s farm house and a barn. It now has six homes with a total of 13 buildings. The same thing has happened to just about every road in Vermont. We used to look out across the valley and see just a few other buildings. Now the hillside is dotted with structures. Sense of real ruralness … no more.

•        People no longer know everyone else in town and hardly know their neighbors.  Attendance at town meeting is no larger than it used to be and probably less. Most of the community organizations that used to exist are gone. Tight-knit community … no more.

•        The night sky used to be totally dark, and we enjoyed seeing the magic of the northern polar lights. Now there is a big glow of light pollution from the sprawl in Central Vermont. Aurora borealis….no more.

•        There was a wide variety of birds including barn swallows, cat birds, red wing black birds, kill deer, ruffed grouse, whip-poor-will, woodcock and many others. In their place there are turkeys. The joy of so many beautiful birds … no more.

•        None of the land around us was posted and there were no other buildings for long distances. Now much of it is posted and homes and camps are located on the fragmented parcels. Enjoying really long walks and sharing the woods … no more.

But it is not just the surrounding land that has changed; it is all of the Vermont land. The beautiful views driving from Washington to Barre have been greatly diminished or disappeared entirely as home after home has gone up in the fields, on the banks of rivers, and on the hillsides. A low traffic volume intersection of route 110 and 302 became so heavily trafficked, and with so many resulting accidents, that there is now a round-about there that feels urban.

The unfortunate thing about all these losses is that people who came along later don’t know what they are missing. If you have never heard a whip-poor-will, seen the northern lights, or enjoyed that beautiful view, how can you miss it and how can you know that your quality of life, at least in some aspects, would be enhanced if they were still there?

Vermont was a literal paradise when we moved here. It is a paradise that we are losing because of the obsession with growth that is in fact diminishing our quality of life as well as harming the environment. Yes, we have gained some positive things like more and better restaurants, cultural arts and more diversified employment opportunities. Call me-old fashioned if you will….which I readily agree to in some respects….but I’ll take the Vermont paradise that existed before Vermont and the U.S. grew so dramatically in population size.

George Plumb is a long-time volunteer environmental activist and currently serves as executive director of Vermonters for Sustainable Population. He may be reached at gplumb@pshift.com

February is the second annual Global Population Speak Out month as promoted by the Population Institute based in Washington, D.C.  And speak out we certainly should be doing as we environmentalists did so strongly beginning back during the first Earth Day in 1970 when population growth was high on the agenda of the environmental movement.  However environmentalists retreated from talking about population growth as told in the PBS program, To The Contrary with Bonnie Erbé. The show tells how the environmental movement dropped population from its agenda and how population growth is affecting the U.S. environment. Watching this is a great way to learn why this incredibly important environmental issue is no longer covered by mainstream U.S. media or discussed by most environmentalists as an issue. To request a free copy of the DVD just e-mail requests to: tothecontrary@hotmail.com and tell who you are and who else will see the DVD.

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Politics over Science
By: Mark Powell

Worcester, Vermont
Secretary, Vermonters for Sustainable Population

Much has been said of the right wing’s efforts to put politics over science when it comes to issues such as global warming and the teaching of evolution. We mock conservatives who happily ignore the evidence when it undermines their political agenda. At the same time, however, we give a free pass to liberals whose sentiments override evidence showing that America’s population growth is unsustainable.

This aversion to inconvenient truths achieves it purest form in respect to immigration, which accounts for two-thirds of U.S. population growth. That growth immensely compounds the difficulties we face in trying to reduce our nation’s carbon footprint, in developing an affordable, universal health care system, and in assuring a livable wage for workers. These are indeed worthy goals, but the solutions they call for do not operate independently of the harsh objectivity of mathematics, notwithstanding the efforts of many liberals to pretend otherwise. While many on the left will admit that global population growth is a problem, they treat domestic population growth as a taboo, out of fear of being labeled as racist xenophobes. Those who aggressively support our high immigration rates know this, and won’t hesitate to pull out the race card.

Our immigration policies are shaped not by abstract forces but by business and political interests. Economic right-wingers see increasing numbers of low-skilled workers creating a best-case scenario of cheap labor and increased demand for goods and services. On the left, the Democratic party embraces high immigration levels because growth in the Hispanic community promises to solidify their grip on political power. In 1990, these usually oppositional forces partnered on a bill that doubled legal immigration. Warning of an “impending labor shortage,” that year’s Economic Report to the President recommended higher immigration rates, and in response the first President Bush signed the bill.

Since then, we have seen an unprecedented surge in U.S. population growth. Indeed, in the year before this legislation, the Census Bureau predicted that our population would reach about 300 million people around the year 2040 -- and then level off. After the 1990 immigration bill, however, we reached a population of 300 million in October of 2006. Think about that: the population growth that the Census Bureau had expected in fifty years has occurred in only sixteen.

In today’s political climate, a significant coalition of Americans wants to slow down immigration while an opposing coalition of about the same strength wants high immigration rates to continue, albeit in a more orderly fashion. This stalemate would not exist, however, if not for the many liberals who defend massive immigration in spite of the difficulties it presents. Were liberals more open to rational consideration of objective data, they might notice that we’ve survived the “impending labor shortage” of the mid-90’s, and they might support repealing the 1990 immigration reform. This would put America back on track toward a stabilized population by restoring immigration levels to historical averages. A tighter labor market would enhance job opportunities and wages for the poor. It would slow our nation’s obscene consumption of fossil fuels and make it easier to protect important ecosystems. It would make prospects for health care reform more realistic by slowing growth in the uninsured population.

I support a broad spectrum of progressive goals, so I hope I don’t seem too harsh in arguing that slower population growth would make those goals more realistic. If I think that liberal support of high immigration is flawed, I appreciate that it is a good-hearted and generous flaw. But progressives should trust themselves enough to know that addressing immigration from a scientific perspective does not make them racists. And that scientific perspective demands they challenge the boundaries of their comfortable discourse and analyze the issue in numerical terms. At some point, the number of immigrants we allow into our country begins to tip the balance. At some point, the immigration rates get so high that the benefits are outweighed by the costs to our environment, to our social services, to our millions of disadvantaged, which includes immigrants already here. Only by respecting the science behind the issues of our day can we hope to attain our worthy ideals.

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Developing a Common Platform
By George Plumb
June 11, 2009

With over ninety environmental organizations in existence today, Vermont’s environmental movement is very, very fragmented. Each environmental organization focuses on just trying to deal with one to maybe at most four environmental problems. As a result most of the problems keep getting worse as is well documented in three widely different reports published in recent years. In “Understanding Vermont,” published in 2007 by the Vermont Community Foundation, 10 of 11 environmental indicators were moving in the wrong direction. In Disappearing Vermont?, published by Vermonters for a Sustainable Population in March 2008, 23 of 31 indicators were negative. In Vermont in Transition, published in December 2008 by the Council on the Future of Vermont, 12 of 21 indicators were deteriorating.

Generally speaking environmental organizations are not having much success dealing with the little e environment such as Lake Champlain never mind the large E Environment such a global warming and loss of biodiversity. And some problems are really not getting addressed at all such as continued land development, increase in vehicle miles traveled, light pollution, loss of scenic views, and crowdedness of wilderness recreation areas.

While some of the lobbying oriented environmental organizations do come together annually to agree on what legislation they are going to jointly work on in the forthcoming Vermont legislative session there is no common agreement on which broad environmental problems are the most urgent to solve or how they are truly going to be solved in the long term. A common platform is needed so that environmental organizations reach an agreement on how to deal with the big environmental problems and more importantly the root causes of those problems which is a culture that supports an ever increasing population size and consumption of resources. As it is now the environmental community is only treating the symptoms and not the causes of our many environmental crises.

One possible sequence for developing a common platform is as follows. A few environmental leaders get together and agree that a common platform is necessary. They then call for a one day summit and invite to the summit the director or a staff person and the chair or a board member of all of all Vermont environmental organizations. Selected government employees, environmental academic leaders, and public citizens could also be invited. This would likely result in about 150-200 participants which is certainly a manageable number as demonstrated by the Council on the Future of Vermont when they gathered 500 people in May of 2009, at UVM for their Imagining Vermont summit. The summit would begin with a talk on the need for a common platform and explain how it is to be developed. The attendees then select to participate in one of eight or more task groups such as possibly these defined below.

Managing the results of environmental degradation

1. Reducing Vermont’s contribution of greenhouse gas emissions to global warming

2. Maintaining biological diversity

3. Preventing land from being developed in Vermont

4. Maintaining air quality in Vermont

5. Maintaining water quality in Vermont

Dealing with the root causes of our environmental problems

6. Changing our continuous economic growth economy to a steady state economy

7. Stabilizing our population size

8. Reducing our per capita consumption levels

Each task group then selects a facilitator and begins to work on a one to two page position paper. The paper would contain a background section that would explain the nature of the problem, a vision section that says where we would like to eventually be regarding that issue, a public policy position section on how the problem would be solved, a special notes section that discusses the unique aspects of the issue, and a resources section that provides any additional information that is needed. The task groups would start on the paper that day and then be charged with completing the paper within a four month period. The position statements could be similar in format to the position statements located on the Vermonters for a Sustainable Population web site.

The eight papers would then be combined and sent out to all of the participants and suggestions for changes sent back. The summit would then be reconvened and each task group would explain its report. The participants would then vote to accept or not accept each position statement. Each environmental organization would then go back to its entire board for approval of the statements. Hopefully, a majority of boards would approve the final common platform. Each organization that did approve the common platform would be asked to post the platform on their web site. The teams would then meet periodically to develop and implement plans for bringing the position statement into action.

The advantage of having such a common platform is that the greatest environmental minds in Vermont would agree on what needs to be done to truly solve the causes of our environmental problems and it would be a unified position. As an example a major cause of our environmental problems is cultural acceptance of the idea that we have to grow the economy forever. This is just not possible ecologically. If the position was developed that we need to move to a steady state economy, and most of the environmental organizations adopted this position, then no one organization would be sticking its neck out alone and be subject to criticism. They would all be united in this position and it would be easier to defend and promote. The task group that developed the position could then agree to continue to work on promoting and implementing that position.

Developing a common platform would be one of the most powerful actions that the Vermont environmental community has ever done. It would be a great model for other states and even for the U.S. environmental community. If it could be done anyplace it could be done in Vermont.

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Was Malthus Just Off Some Years?



View the Full Article Here.
http://www.montpelierbridge.com/?page=19&dat=051508

Published By: Montpelier Bridge
Published Date: May 15, 2008

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SHADES OF GREEN
By George Plumb and Tim Murray1
April 17, 2008

 “Environmentalists” come in many shades of green, from light green to dark green.  Environmentalists are colored by both their personal actions and their external actions. 

Internal Actions

Dark green environmentalists live their personal lives in ways that create the most minimal impact on the environment.  They do this by:

• Replacing them selves only once.  Having children creates the greatest impact of all on the environment.  If a woman of 25 decides to change her lifestyle to live as frugally as possible, giving up her car, not flying, buying local, etc. she will reduce her consumption by 60%.  If she also decides to have a child, having that child will counter her reduction by the same amount over the course of her lifetime and that is assuming that the child lives as frugally as its mother.
• Living in smaller, energy efficient or alternative energy homes and using as little electricity as possible.
• Growing much of their food and buying the rest organic and local.  They eat a primarily a vegetarian diet.
• Not flying unless they have to for business that can’t be conducted otherwise or for family matters.
• Not taking cruises.
• Investing some or preferably all of their liquid assets as Socially Responsible Investments.
• Driving the most fuel efficient vehicle they can afford and walking, bicycling and taking public transportation as much as they can.
• Consuming as little as possible and reusing and recycling as much as possible.

External Actions

Dark Green environmentalists also live their external lives in ways that support the larger environmental movement.  They do this by:

• Understanding that the root cause of our environmental problems is population growth and supporting organizations that are working to address this issue.
• Giving time and financial resources, to the degree they are able, to an environmental/population organization.
• Supporting several other environmental/population organizations, to the degree they are able, by at least paying a membership fee. By doing so they are adding to their numbers and giving them moral support.  They understand that most traditional environmental organizations are treating the immediate symptoms of the problem and that population organizations are treating the long term root cause of the problems. Both types of organizations need their support.
• Speaking out on environmental/population issues by talking with family, friends and co-workers. If they have the confidence and skills they also speak out publicly in the media.

YOU ALSO KNOW WHEN YOU ARE A LIGHT GREEN WHEN:

• You think that population growth plays no role whatsoever in environmental degradation.  Even though America has doubled its population since 1950 and will go from 301 million to 438 million by 2050 if immigration and birth rates are unchanged.
  
  
• You think technological efficiencies and improvements will lessen our ecological footprint.  Trouble is you never heard of the Jevons Paradox or the concept that the additional number of ecological “feet” will wipe out those efficiency gains.
  
  
• You think however many more people there are, all we need to do is consume less.  Live “greener lifestyles” to make room for more people.  Problem here is that you have to be dead or unborn to have a zero footprint.
  
  
• You think that with “smart growth” we can shoe-horn an ever increasing population into this country without ecological impact. Just confine them behind tightly defined urban boundaries in very, very, dense housing developments and all greenbelts, farmland, and wetlands will be safe from human intrusion.  The difficulty here is that “smart growth” has failed in Portland, Oregon and other localities.  And the folks confined in those sheep pens and high rises still consume and still generate wastes and emit GHG.  No matter where they are settled, it is the number, not the distribution of people, that is ecologically decisive.  Smart growth is, however, an important temporary solution until we achieve a sustainable population.
  
  
• You think that by working to set aside nature reserves and parks, wildlife can be conserved alongside economic and population growth.  Wrong again.  There is no sanctuary from growth. Even Yosemite was violated when Congress decided to yield to mining interests.  But if reserves could be guaranteed safety from development and incursion, it would not slow the intensity of the development of lands outside the reserves.  In fact, population growth increases overall loss of biodiversity even as park dedication increases.
  
  
• You think that if population growth does indeed play a role in environmental degradation, it is a subsidiary role, and it plays that role in distant undeveloped countries.  Because you see, overpopulation is a GLOBAL PROBLEM, demanding GLOBAL solutions. Meaning that it is not anything we should do anything about here. Garrett Hardin had two ripostes to those tired clichés.  One was that to say overpopulation was a Global problem demanding a Global solution implies that we have a Global government to apply such a solution.  Since we don’t, we must act locally. Secondly he said that overpopulation was NOT a global problem, but the sum total of 194 national ones.  We solve ours and set an example for the rest of the world.
  
  
• You think there is no limit to how many people this country can sustain, or a certain number of people beyond which healthy biodiversity cannot subsist.  You accuse others of being nativist, racist, or xenophobic, but when challenged, you won’t answer a simple question: “How many people do you ultimately want to see live in this country?”
  
  
• You think the rights of immigrants are more important than the rights of the people and the wildlife who already call this country home.
  
  
• You think that other species survival conflicts with the “cultural” rights of people.  Humans are more important than fauna and flora.

George Plumb is President of Vermonters for a Sustainable Population and a long time environmental leader in Vermont.  Tim Murray is a neo-Malthusian supporter of the steady-state economy concept and an eco-nationalist. He is guided by the writings of Garrett Hardin and Albert Bartlett among others. Along with 2700 other humans he is happy to co-habit a Pacific rainforest island off Vancouver Island with wolves and cougars. Like the late Stephen J. Gould he believes you must love nature to fight for it and keep the human population in its place. Neither George nor Tim claim to be the darkest shade of green but they know others who are a pretty dark shade of green and are striving themselves to move in that direction.

WORCESTER, VERMONT--It’s a very inconvenient truth: The organized environmental movement has been almost totally ineffective at protecting the environment since the mid 1980s.

Co-founder of the National Resources Defense Council and Yale dean James Gustave Speth says when it comes to environmental action, “we have fallen far short.” © ncseonline.org

Yes, the big groups have been successful at protecting some resources in certain regions—staving off the drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and gaining more wilderness designation in the Green Mountain National Forest are two notable successes—but in terms of protecting the major ecosystems and the general environment, they have largely failed. This is most clearly demonstrated by their failure to energize the public to deal with global warming, which has reached a crisis point. It will now be too late to avoid many of the impacts.

But this is just the tip of the melting iceberg. There are many other environmental crises including loss of species diversity, loss of natural resources like wetlands and forests, and the collapse of ocean fisheries. The list goes on at great length.

As the dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, James Gustave Speth, says in Red Sky at Morning, “My generation is a generation, I fear, of great talkers, overly fond of conferences. On action, however, we have fallen far short. As a result, with the notable exception of international efforts to protect the stratospheric ozone layer, the threatening global trends highlighted a quarter century ago continue to this day.”

Many of the newer environmental organizations are doing very good work. Yet they tend to treat the symptoms of environmental degradation instead of the root cause — population growth. The best that can be said about the organized environmental movement since the mid 1980s is that, given the agenda of the right-wing, anti-environmentalism of the past couple of decades, things could have been worse.

Here in Vermont, the worst problem may be sprawl and suburbanization, once limited to our more urban communities, but now affecting nearly every town in Vermont. Life in Vermont feels much more crowded than it did 40 years ago or more.

Our beautiful views and access to recreational land are being lost as shorelines, ridgelines and meadows are developed. Despite millions spent on remediation, Lake Champlain is only marginally cleaner, if at all, because of increased stormwater runoff. Ski areas get more like cities, and now, even tiny East Burke faces the development of some 800 new living units.

Many factors have contributed to our environmental problems, including the myth that we must have continued growth no matter what, a media that has not paid much attention to the environment and our personal consumption patterns. Yet, environmental organizations hold a good deal of the responsibility. There are several reasons for this.

Today, environmentalists are afraid to talk about population control.

The environmental movement has gone from largely a citizen-based activist movement to an organizational movement run on paid staff. While this seems to happen with all citizen movements, it has been particularly harmful to the environmental movement. It has resulted in less passion, less citizen involvement, less creativity and less risk taking. The movement relies on paid lobbyists to do most of the work, and the members are largely limited to signing petitions after receiving an email action alert. With their paid staffs and large budgets, environmental organizations have become businesses, with their business interests sometimes taking precedence over their mission. Environmental groups also often find themselves being roped into legislative and administrative task forces and commissions to “solve” problems, making them part of the bureaucratic “solution” and less able to act independently.

Each environmental organization works with its own limited agenda and pursues only items that it thinks it has a chance of winning. Cooperation among environmental groups is fairly limited. As an example, it took the international (and some would say, radical) Greenpeace to send a staff person to Vermont during the months leading up to the 2006 elections before we finally got some real action dealing with global warming. Vermont environmental organizations knew some 20 years ago that this was likely to be a tremendous environmental issue yet they did nothing. Churches, with all their outward differences, are joining forces through the Vermont Interfaith Action and have hired a staff person to help them identify and work on important issues they can all agree on. Why couldn’t environmental organizations have done the same thing 10 years ago?

The organized environmental movement, with a few exceptions, lacks leaders who are willing to be even the slightest bit outspoken and radical. We need some folks who are a bit radical to call attention to issues, so that the rest of the movement does not seem so extreme. The last time we had a real action in Vermont was when the Hydro Quebec opponents unfurled a banner from the top of a building in Montpelier in the early 1980s to call the attention to the devastating impact the monstrous dams would have on the environment and the Cree and Inuit people.

Finally, and most importantly, environmental organizations have not mentioned population growth on their websites or in their literature as a major cause of our environmental problems. When the modern-day environmental movement began in the 1960s and 1970s concern for the environment and population growth were very closely interconnected and were widely and publicly acknowledged. Many of the nation’s largest environmental groups, had or were considering “population control” as major planks of their environmental platforms for the country.

The Biggest Problem

David Brower, the executive director of the Sierra Club at the time and a leading environmental leader, expressed the consensus of the environmental movement on the subject in 1966 when he said, “We feel you don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.” The first big Earth Day in 1970 had population growth as a central theme. A large coalition of environmental groups in 1970 endorsed a resolution stating that, “population growth is directly involved in the pollution and degradation of our environment—air, water and land—and intensifies physical, psychological, social, political and economic problems to the extent that the well-being of individuals, the stability of society and our very survival are threatened.”

The connection between population growth and the environment is perhaps best expressed through what is known as the foundation formula or the environmental impact equation,

I=PAT.

What this says is that any environmental impact is the result of three factors; the size of the population, the affluence or wealth of that population and the technology or type of consumption that the population spends its wealth on.

What has happened is that environmental organizations have disregarded the population part of the equation and focused almost entirely on the technology part of the equation, be it driving more fuel-efficient cars or encouraging “smart growth.”

While some of the national environmental organizations acknowledge that population growth is a concern they put almost no resources into addressing this concern. In Vermont, only two of the some 25 environmental organizations have publicly acknowledged that population growth is a contributor to our environmental problems — Vermonters for a Sustainable Population and the Vermont Earth Institute, both of which were founded originally to bring attention to population issues because other environmental organizations were not doing it.

Several environmental authors have written that population size and growth is of major concern including Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth, James Kuntstler in The Long Emergency, Sandra Postel in Saving the Planet, Lester Brown in Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and A Civilization in Trouble, James Speth in Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment, and Garret Hardin in Our Population Myopia. An environmental folk singer, Jeanie Fitchen, has even written a song about population growth titled, “Changes in the Wind/No More.” Why is it that so many well-respected environmentalists can make movies, and write and sing about population growth but our environmental organizations seem tongue-tied when it comes to discussing it?

Why have environmental organizations abandoned dealing with population growth? There are several reasons, including the fact that fertility rates dropped in the 1970s to 1.75, which is below replacement level. Perhaps it appeared to some that population growth would take care of itself. Abortion and contraception entered into politics, becoming hot-button issues. Some of the emphasis shifted to conservation, with people trying to protect what they had rather than dealing with a root cause of why natural resources were being lost.

It also became clear, beginning in the late 1980s, that immigration was the driving force of our population growth, with some 70 to 90 percent of our population growth since 1970 due to historically high immigration levels and the descendents of these immigrants. Environmental leaders did not want to be seen as racist. Finally, funding became an issue, with some donors and foundations threatening loss of funds if an environmental organization talked about population and/or immigration.

Environmental organizations heavily promote “sustainability,” as well they should. However, a population of 300 million, growing by approximately four million a year, is not sustainable. Experts say that a truly long-term sustainable population without cheap oil is probably more like 150 to 200 million. The larger the U.S. population grows, the more difficult it is going to be to achieve a sustainable population.

The founders of the modern environmental movement had it right. Population growth is a major cause of our environmental degradation. Action on population growth should be reestablished as a high priority by environmental organizations. Population is a sensitive issue, but it really is time that environmental leaders stopped worrying about offending, gathered their courage, and began alerting everyone to the need to rein back human numbers, humanely and democratically, for the sake of the planet.

CONTACT: Vermonters for a Sustainable Population; Vermont Earth Institute

MARK POWELL is the secretary/treasurer of Vermonters for a Sustainable Population and is writing a book about the politics of population growth.

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It’s conspicuous by its absence. In all the environmental-related discussion taking place, it’s a word we seldom dare to speak: Population. Two hundred years ago, the English economist Thomas Malthus asserted that human population will inevitably increase until it outgrows its resource base. More recently, population issues were once commonly discussed, peaking around the 1968 publication of Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. But today it’s as if some inadvertent conspiracy has eliminated population from discussion of natural resources, energy supply, global warming, and ecosystem preservation. Instead of useful data, a Google search of “population control” yields hundreds of hits debunking the need for limiting population, exposing the secret agendas of population organizations, and articles like “The Inherent Racism of Population Control.” George Plumb, a resident of Washington and president of Vermonters for a Sustainable Population (VSP), is hardly a candidate for the role of evil, racist conspirator. He’s small, fine-boned, with a quiet voice and a sober, almost shy demeanor. A father of three, he’s active in his church and community. George recalls the moment when it really hit him. He had grown up in a rural Massachusetts town before moving to Essex Junction in 1963. Two decades later, when he returned to his old home town, he found only sprawling subdivisions, malls, traffic. Gone were all the familiar, good places. It’s a too-familiar tale. He co-founded VSP when the birth of his first grandchild caused him to have more concern for living beings: “My priority expanded from caring for myself to caring for my family and finally to caring for the whole world. And I saw lot of suffering there.” Overpopulation was an obvious cause. A number of factors have caused the issue to fade from view. On the positive side, advances in commercial agriculture increased the Earth’s capacity to feed people, with new crop strains, tehcnologies, and chemical fertilizers vastly improving yields. Massive irrigation programs, such as those in China, doubled the amount of land under cultivation. More recently, economists and social scientists showed that more efficient use of resources and high tech could reduce per capita consumption. Population could grow much more than Malthus anticipated. Just as important were negative social reactions to attempts at regulating population. Tales of coercive abortions or sterilizations in China deeply offended our values. And religion abhorred family planning: In the Bible, God urged mankind to be fruitful and multiply, to “cover the Earth.” As religious traditionalists gained political power, the U.S. cut funding for population programs because of perceived links with abortion and concern that birth control led to promiscuity. For their part, secular liberals felt queasy about resonances with discredited ideas like eugenics and racist economic or immigration policies. The issue was largely abandoned even by those who should have most embraced it, environmentalists. Why? Because there were plenty of other fights to take on; no sense inviting opposition to tough but ultimately less-contentious efforts such as preserving species or eliminating air pollution by having them associated with a populationist agenda. Gotta pick your battles. Today the net U.S. birthrate – number of births in excess of deaths -- produces relatively slow growth. But our population continues to swell due to another major factor: immigration. Talk about hot potatoes! Immigration issues divide opinion paradoxically, with some on the right advocating for more because it means a growing economy and labor supply, some disliking it because of concerns for American cultural identity. On the left, some want to assure refuge for the world’s downtrodden and welcome cultural diversity, while others worry about the influx of disenfranchised cheap labor, pressure on social services systems, and, yes, the environmental burden. So, given the issue’s volatility, what can we do about population? VSP seeks to help Vermonters engage the issue. The first goal is public education – making sure people understand overpopulation’s environmental and social effects and the range of action options available. They also recommend support for family planning programs, nationally and internationally. And, importantly, for better immigration policies that reduce the flow into our country. George stresses that immigration control should not be equated with racism or bigotry. It’s a matter of common sense. Could we live abundantly and happily with twice as many people here? Maybe. How about ten times as many, or a hundred? Clearly not. If we accept that there must be a limit at some level, where should it be? So another item on the agenda must be research into what is truly sustainable. We need to determine what constitutes a viable population level – and what our criteria should be. Is the maximum number the land can possibly feed the only limiter, or should subjective aspects of quality of life – privacy, level of affluence, access to unspoiled natural lands – also be considered? George and VSP don’t claim to know the answers to these questions, but they do assert the importance of asking them, and of giving the issue the rational, unbiased consideration it warrants. Vermonters for a Sustainable Population provides scores of useful links to population-related organizations and publications on its website, www.vspop.org. Daniel Hecht is a novelist and executive director of Vermont Environmental Consortium. For more information on any Green Grapevine topic, contact vec@norwich.edu. Top

For more information on Disappearing Vermont, Environment Population, Family Planning, Growth, Human Population, Overcrowding, Overpopulation, Population Connection, Population Growth, Population Resources, Rural Vermont, Slow Growth, Smart Growth, Sprawl, Sustainability, Sustainable Population, Vermont, Vermont Environment, Vermont Environmental Indicators, Vermont Environmental Trends, Vermont Growth, Vermont Population and Vermont Quality of Life, please review our links sections for further research.  Thank you from Vermonter's for a Sustainable Population ( VSP )