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The following are articles on Population by Kelpie Wilson and some
cartoons by Nina Paley on the same subject. We urge our readers to
consider this very emotional issue with their minds as well as their hearts.
We also urge our readers to contact their local chapters of Planned
Parenthood or Zero Population Growth for more information on this
important subject. This insert was made possible by a grant
from the Fund for Wild Nature.
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ED.
It requires a very unusual mind to
make an analysis of the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead
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On Civil Dissent and Responsibility
K elpie W ilson
Abortion Clinics and Old Growth: Parallel Protests?
ven though I am a pro-choice
environm entalist, I have a few
things in com m on w ith Shelley
Shannon, w ho was recently convicted o f
shooting abortion doctor G eorge Tiller in
Kansas last August. O nly a few things—
but still m ore than I w ould expect to share
with som eone w hose v alues are 180
degrees apart from mine.
Shannon and I are the sam e age and
we have hom es about 35 m iles apart in
southern O regon. W e both have brow n
hair and w ear glasses. She has been sued
for O peration R escue protests, w hile I
have been sued for Earth First! protests.
T he abortion clinic suing Shannon filed
an am icus brief on behalf o f the logging
com pany suing m e, because they wanted
to apply the precedent set in my case.
M y case was decided last summer
w h e n th e O r e g o n S u p re m e C o u rt
d e te rm in e d th a t to allo w a logging
com pany to sue m e and five others for
hanging a banner on their equipment
w ould not violate the First A m endm ent
Both m y law yer and S hannon’s have
argued that allow ing punitive damage
awards in cases o f civil disobedience
would let a ju ry determ ine the degree of
punishm ent based on the content o f a
protester’s beliefs— an affringement of
First A m endm ent rights.
T he re su lt fo r m e and m y c o ­
defendants is that we m ust now pay
$30,000to H uffm an and W right Logging,
Inc. for stopping their old-grow th logging
operation in the Siskiyou National Forest
for one day back in 1987. The way I see
it, we are being punished for alerting the
public to a problem that is now being
seriously addressed. In 1991, federal
judge W illiam D w yer stopped all new
logging o f N orthw est ancient forest with
an injunction that was only recently lifted.
The present adm inistration is at least
a ttem p tin g to so lv e the p ro b lem o f
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UPPER LEFT
disappearing forests.
O ur civil disobedience was a tactic of
last resort to save ancient forests. W e
acted because we didn’t want to leave a
denuded, drought-ridden, salmon-barren
land to the next generation. But if hum an
p o p u la tio n and c o n su m p tio n k e e p
expanding exponentially as they are now,
all we will have done is to shift the
destruction to other forests that are less
well protected.
H e re is w here m y v ie w s are
completely opposed to Shannon’s: To
me, abortion means a gift to the future and
G v d disobedience is always a
questionable tactic. But ever
since the Boston Tea Party,
American society has valued the
deep probing of values and re­
commitment to freedom that can
lead to it.
a personal tragedy averted— the last thing
our overburdened e arth and dysfunc tional
society need is another unwanted child.
T o Shannon, abortion seems to mean
simply the deletion of a soul belonging to
God. She sees no difference between the
soul o f a 3-week-old embryo and that of
a m iddle-aged man. Shannon wanted to
force w om en into bearing unw anted
children so much that she tried to kill a
doctor. This crime landed her an 11 year-
prison term. The question is: Should an
abortion clinic have-the right to sue her to
keep her from blockading its entrance?
Clinic blockades do prevent women
from having abortions. W om en w ho
navel long distances to Find a clinic
temporarily closed by a blockade are
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denied their reproductive rights. The
atmosphere o f intim idation created by
O peration R escue has closed clinics
permanently: 83 percent o f counties in
the United States now have no abortion
services.
W ith few legal tools to stop the
harassment, pro-choice supporters turned
to RICO (the Racketeering Influence and
Corrupt Organizations Act). The Supreme
Court dec ided that R IC O could be broadly
interpreted to cover O peration R escue’s
criminal activity, even if m onetary gain
was not the motivation. B ut the American
Civil Liberties Union is concerned that
RICO many now be blanke tly used against
all political protesters, threatening First
Amendm ent rights.
Far better than broad defensive swipes
such as lawsuits and R IC O w ould be to
establish within the law that impeding a
w om an's legal right to an abortion is a
serious criminal offense. The Freedom of
Access to G in ic Entrances Act now in a
House/Senate conference committee does
just th a t The ACLU is satisfied that the
bill would not limit freedom of speech.
C iv il d iso b e d ie n c e is alw ays a
questionable tactic. B ut ever since the
Boston T ea Party, A m erican society has
valued the deep probing o f values and
recommi tment to freedom that can lead to
it. W hen we tested society’s values as
Earth First!, we found that people did
want to save the ancient forests for their
children.
W h en O p e ra tio n R escu e tested
society’s values, they found that Roe v.
W ade w as not so e asy to strangle.
Hopefully, they will soon find a new
federal law that prevents them from
interfering with a women’s right to choose.
K elp ie W ilson is a writer and an ancient
forest activist with the Siskiyou Regional
Education Project in Cave Junction, OR.
t is easy to see that large corporations are to blam e for our
disappearing forests in the Pacific N orthwest, but som e o f
the fault lies w ith consum ers w ho buy all the products they
turn out. O ur felled forests are re-erected as houses, businesses,
and the shopping strips w here we go to consum e all kinds o f stuff
that we don't really need. Possessing more stuff, w e find we need
bigger houses in which to store it all. And with our population
increasing, w c m ust build m ore houses every year.
All these factors taken together constitute demand. Popula­
tion biologist Paul Ehrlich has an equation that relates environ­
m ental im pact to dem and and technology: I (im pact) = P
(population) x A (affluence) x T (technology). The P and A terms
taken together m ake up dem and. T he United States has a long
way to go to reduce the affluence term, but we have work to do
on the population term as well. A lso, population num bers have
the potential to increase exponentially, w hereas affluence (given
the scarcity and eventual depletion o f resources) does not.
The U nited States is the fastest grow ing industrialized
nation. O ur population is projected to double from the current
260 m illion to 530 m illion by the y e a r2050. M any think that only
continued im m igration is keeping us from zero population
growth, but that is not true. About half o f our grow th is from the
birth rate w hich has increased in the last decade from 1.8 children
per woman to 2.1 children.
There are several speculations about why the birth rate has
gone up. Som e blam e it on the decrease in federal funding for
family planning and the anti-abortion climate o f the Reagan/
Bush years. Som e point to the increasing disparity of wealth in
this country and the fact that poverty often leads to high birth
rates. O thers say that im m igrants are bringing high birth Files
with them . All in all, we find ourselves in the midst of a "baby
boom let" as big as the original one, producing about four million
new A m ericans every year.
H ow can w e reduce logging levels and give forest ecosys­
tems the rest they need when the dem and keeps rising? As our
friends who w ork in the tim ber industry have put it so succinctly:
"W hat are you gonna wipe your ass with, a spotted owl?"
In 1990, during Redw ood Sum m er, I experienced a rare
m om ent o f com m on ground out on the Earth First! picket line in
front o f Louisiana/Pacific's Redw ood Valley mill. A mill
worker's wife told me that the reason Louisiana/Pacific was
cutting timber so fast was due to increased demand from population
growth. She agreed with me that excess consum ption was also
a part o f that demand. She knew that Louisiana/Pacific's
liquidation forestry would put her husband out o f a job soon, but
she w anted him to work as long as possible. They were trying to
put children through college as there was no future for them in the
I
tim ber business.
Boom and bust has always characterized the timber industry's
relation uyesources. W e are in real trouble if boom and bust also
applies to basic necessities like food. W orldw ide, population
grows by almost 100 million people a year, w hile we lose 24
million tons of topsoil through erosion and salinization, and per
capita food production decreases.
Som e 200 years ago, Thom as M althus pointed out that in
agriculture increasing inputs o f labor and fertilizer reach a point
o f dim inishing returns where future increases in production stop.
His "solution" was to allow the poor who had no bread to starve,
even though the rich possessed the resources to feed them. This
is no solution. Its been tried in different places for 200 years and
hasn't worked. B esidesit is simply immoral. T o save forests and
farm land, w e m ust reduce demand in a way that respects human
life and dignity as well as the limits o f the land.
The solution is straightforward and is being outlined in
preparatory discussions for the upcom ing U N Population C on­
ference in Cairo this September: redistribute wealth to end
poverty; fully fund birth control; and raise the status of women.
W hile the prescription is easy, rem aking our societies to end
patriarchy and class disparity is nothing less than a revolutionary
undertaking. If we care about forests, it must be done.
IWF/il
That government is best which governs
the least because its people discipline
themselves.
Thomas Jefferson
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