Here is a short bibliography o fw o rk s I
found helpful in understanding the com ­
plexities o f overpopulation.
OVERPOPULATION AND
by K elpie W ilson
Slogans have a surprising amount of power; take
"Earth Firstl" for example. And bumpersticker politics
is always bound to offend someone. Ever since the
"Maithus Was Right" bumpersticker appeared, there
have been people who have objected that overpopula­
tion is an exceedingly complex issue and can in no way
be reduced to a slogan like "Malthus Was Right* It is
not necessary to take that slogan as an absolute (jeez,
it's just a bumperstickerl). I believe it was devised to
stimulate thought and discussion in a society th at has
been pro-natal, patriarchal and unwilling to accept
natural limits for 6,000 years.
Malthus was actually the first known thinker in the
history of western civilization to challenge the
idea of unlimited growth in both the
economy and in hum an population.
He was motivated by a concern for
the problem of hum an m isery,.
though his proposed solution, to
starve the poor, was both mor­
ally reprehensible and totally
ineffective in reducing the birth
rate. (Malthus opposed birth
control like all religious moral­
ists of his time. He was certainly
wrong about thatl)
Conversely, William Godwin,
Karl Marx and other social revolu­
tionaries pointed to hum an greed
and capitalism as the root cause of
social injustice and misery. That school of
thought, if it concerns itself with overpopula­
tion at all, views it as a mere symptom of a larger
problem of capitalism. But a large part of Marxist
solution was increased industrialism and manage­
m ent of the Earth for the goodof all people. From a deep
ecologist's point of view, this is as morally reprehen­
sible as deliberately starving people and also ineffec­
tive in solving the problem of justice (more goods
translates into more greed, n o t better distribution).
Native American author, Ward Churchill, offers the
example of indigenous people who generally have
more egalitarian social relations that operate by con­
sensus. Indigenous people also know that they have to
hold their numbers below the level which causes
serious ecological disequilibrium. As Churchill says,
"population, n o t production, is the actual issue before
us."
But civilization was built on the destabilization of
traditional tribal cultures, turning women into baby
factories and m en into slaves. It has been the same
process from its beginnings in Mesopotamia and the
Nile, to the imperialism of the nineteenth century,
and finally to the global corporate rampage of today.
Rather than separate the problems of greed and over­
population and turn one into a symptom of the other,
we have to see both as different aspects of the same
sickness.
The solution is to bring about both economic j ustice
and population reduction at the same time. Some
examples of societies that are attempting this are:
China, Cuba, the Indian state of Kerala, and some
experimental communities in Costa Rica All have
programs that combine a guaranteed level of subsis­
tence with family planning and health care.
Most population activists today are fully aware that
dropping condoms from an airplane is not going to be
enough. But, in contrast, the much touted "demo­
graphic transition" which has brought birth rates
down in the "first world* through increased "standard
of living" (read: consumption) came at the expense of
the colonization and subjugation of the “third world."
The destabilization brought about by colonization
was the factor that tipped the balance, bringing about
the m odem explosive population growth in countries
like India.
I say that colonization tipped the balance because
population pressure itself has always existed and has
been highly significant in the development of agricul­
tural civilizations like India's. Paleontologists have
concluded that it was possible for nomadic, stone-age
people to obtain a high protein diet with less than four
hours of work per day. Agriculture, on the other hand,
requires constant work for a nutritionally inferior,
grain-based d ie t Why would any humans settle for
such a life unless population pressure had depleted the
wild game, or unless all territories had already been
occupied so that the only way to support more people
was to resort to agriculture?
It is no coincidence that large scale agriculture didn't
begin until the hum an species had spread all across the
globe, occupying every available niche. Once humans
stopped gathering and began agricultural production,
they stepped out of natural balance with the ecosys-
Caldlcott, Helen:
1992, If you Love This Planet, Norton, NY.
Churchill, Ward:
Zeta, pp 153-154, Juiy/Aug 1989; Zeta, p. 65,
July/Aug 1991.
Irene:
Extinction Movement has a "Meritorious Service Elia, 1988;
The Female Animal, Holt, NY.
Award" for "not adding another hum an to the existing Gilman, Robert:
billions." Write him for this attractive certificate to
Spring, 1992, Strands in the Web; "Interview with
display on your walL
Helena Norberg-Hodge", in Context, *31.
I don't mean to say that children themselves are not Gurley Flynn, Elizabeth:
1987, Words on Fire, ed. BaxandaU, Rutgers
valuable. Kids are usually more wild and more fun than
University Press, New Brunswick, NJ.
adults. Since I've settled down and become more of a
bioregional rather than nomadic activist, I've had Harris, Marvin:
1978, Cannibals and Kings, Vintage Books.
more exposure to kids and It is definitely enriching.
1989, Our Kind, Harper PerenniaL
I've also come into a comfortable relationship with
Hem, Warren M.:
many parents who can appreciate my strong position
"Family Planning, Amazon Style," D ec 1992,
on overpopulation, while I appreciate their work rais­
Natural History, VoL 10, No. 12.
ing new little environmentalists. I am against pro- Knight, Les U.:
natalism, not against kids.
These Exit Times, PO Box 86646, Portland, OR 97286.
Pro-natalism is that cultural attitude that automati­ LaChapelle, Delores:
1988, Sacred Land, SacredSex, Finn Hill Arts, Silverton, CO.
cally praises birth and parenthood, no matter what the
circumstances. This ingrained attitude shows up every­ Lerner, Gerda: 1986
77ie Creation o f Patriarchy, Oxford Unlv. Press, NY.
where, even in the EFI Journal. Greg Gordon in his
article "Malthus Was Wrong" (Beltane, 1993 issue) McCormick, Bill:
1991, Is Population Control Genocide?, serialized in
made a statement with pro-natalist overtones: "There
Wild Earth spring, summer & fall.
is nothing more wild, more natural and more sacred Moore, Barbara:
than giving birth." I cannot accept this absolutist
1991, The Great Cosmic Mother, Harper, San Francisco.
statement Maybe he didn't mean it as such. If not, Stott, D.H.:
then surely he would agree wi th me that choosing NOT
1969 "Cultural and Natural Checks on Population
Growth," pp.95-96 in Environment and Cultural
to give birth is behavior that is just as wild and sacred!
Behavior, ed. Andrew P. Vayda, Natural History Press, NY.
And that equally wild and sacred is the tribe in westemr
Australia which ate every tenth infant that was bom t a Wagley, Charles:
"Cultural Influences on Population: A Comparison
them. One more bumpersticker is appropriate: "Feel­
of Two Tuip Tribes," pp. 268-279, Environment and
ing Crowded? Eat Your Young."
Cultural Behavior, op cit.
Williamson, Lalla:
Kelpie W ilson is an Earth Firstl leg wrestling expert who
"Infanticide: An Anthropological Analysis," pp 61-
left her lucrative engineering position to become an
75, Infanticide and the Value o f Life, ed. Marvin Kohl,
Prometheus Books, NY.
underpaid Forest Activist.
B umpersticker P olitics
tern. This introduced a totally new kind of thinking.
Whereas gatherer-hunters had to adjust their numbers
to what the Earth would freely yield, agriculturalists
could produce more food by putting more people to
work Additional workers came from larger families
and from captured slaves. With agriculture, the twin
possibilities of greed and overpopulation were bom at
once.
The fact is that even if people had wanted to
come back into balance w ith nature by
reducing their numbers, this was never
an easy thing to do. According to
anthropologist Marvin Harris, stone-
age women like the lKung Bush­
m en were able to naturally sup­
press ovulation by prolonged
nursing in com bination with
their high protein, low fat diet
But whenever times were not
good and the diet tended to­
wards more starches and less pro­
tein (as under agriculture) women
would develop a higher percentage
of fat in their bodies, and ovulation
would resume.
Under these conditions, the only op­
tions were abortion and infanticide. (Harris states
that the existence of herbal contraceptives is mainly a
folk mythology.) Primitive abortion techniques were
very brutal and dangerous to women. Many women
died and still die today from drinking poisons or
inserting sticks into the uterus. Infanticide was the
safest option for women, but to be most effective in
controlling population, female infanticide was prefer­
ential. And so societies developed in which women
were less valuable than men.
To see overpopulation merely as a symptom of a
larger problem is also to ignore the problem of hum an
fertility control as a determinant of just social systems.
Let's look at India again. India has been cited as an
example of a society that had its numbers under
control before colonialism, but how was this accom­
plished? The answer is, mainly through the devalua­
tion of women. Female infanticide, bride burning, and
the starvation and mistreatment of female children all
reduced the number of breeding females and kept
population stable.
Is there anyone who would describe this system as
socially just? Colonialism curtailed these practices at
the same time that it introduced other destabilizing
factors that tipped the balance toward population
explosion in India. One thing that colonialism and
development did not change, though, was the status of
women. A woman's only route to status remained the
production of male children.
Greed and fertility control must be considered as a
whole. There will be some kind of population control
because there are limits to the Earth; Malthus was
absolutely right about th a t The real issue is what
kind—will it be patriarchal and devalue women, or will
it be just? Modem contraceptives and abortion, though
not without pain, avoid the more traumatic and unjust
necessities of infanticide and devaluation of women.
The social justice approach to population control must
include justice for women and the widespread avail­
ability of modem contraceptives and abortion. This
approach is the most effective and will finally lead us
back into balance with the Earth.
"Love Your Mother, Don't Become One" is another
bumpersticker that some find offensive, but it need not
be viewed as an attack on mothers, but rather as an
affirmation that one very good way of loving the Earth
is the conscious choice not to breed. For years I've
wanted to see a "non-mothers" or "non-breeders" day
established to honor those who would forgo the plea­
sures and ego-satisfactions of parenting. Face it, in most
cultures you are looked upon as very weird if you have
no children. If you are a woman, your very femininity
is called into question.
I've also thought of starting an "Artemis Society" to
honor childless women. Artemis was the "virgin" or
childless Goddess who was the guardian of the animals.
The Ladakh and Tibetan cultures honored childless
women. Many of them became celibate Buddhist nuns
which helped keep the population stable. I might add
that the women who did have families often took
several husbandsl Lucky for us, we have modem m eth­
ods that let us enjoy heterosexual relations without
reproduction. Les U. Knight of the Voluntary Human
A G V lP E T O A M E R IC A N S IN T H E 90 s
Everything depends on what the
people are capable of wanting.
Enrico Malatesta
© yfa t o Qfa
Teenage Pregnancy
by Kelpie Wilson
Let's start with the statistics: nationwide, one in ten
girls between 15 and 19 becomes pregnant every year.
23,000 girls of age 14 or younger also get pregnant. Of
the first group, only about 16% intended to get pregnant,
and only 25% will marry as a result. Many won't finish
high school and few will go on to college. In Josephine
County in southwestern Oregon, the rates are higher,
particularly in the isolated Illinois Valley. This year at
IVHS there are 65 pregnant or parenting girls out of a
student body of 440 — that's almost 30% of our high
school girls. This year also saw more pregnant students
than ever arriving at high school from middle school.
Alarmed by the rising teen pregnancy rates and costs
to the state for welfare and health care, Oregon Governor
Barbara Roberts announced in January a crusade against
teen pregnancy. Locally, RAPP (Reducing Adolescent
Pregnancy Program) has been active for over a year.
RAPP meets twice a month to bring together teachers,
parents, health care workers, social workers, church
leaders and citizens to try to find community-based solu­
tions to the problem. Occasionally even a teenager shows
up for these meetings.
Although the pregnancy rate has been rising over the
past few years, arid particularly among the younger girls,
some have pointed out that teen pregnancy was actually
higher in the 1950s. So what's the problem, really?
In the 50s, the Illinois Valley was a very different
place. 35 sawmills worked overtime turning the forests to
planks and sawdust. Why would a boy bother finishing
school when he could be making money and partying?
Why should a girl worry about getting pregnant when
there was a pretty good chance the guy would marry her
and their marnage would work out? Nobody really wor­
ried about teen pregnancy dunng those exuberant days
wnen the natural resources of the valley were being liq­
uidated at full clip. Certainly nobody worried about kids
getting an education. Uneducated workers were less
likely to challenge the authority of the mill owners. Be­
sides. education would only make the mind-numbing
mill jobs harder to bear.
In the Illinois Valley now there is only one mill
barely hanging on to one shift. The forests and minerals
are about gone and so are the salmon. There are no jobs
and not much of a future for kids growing up here. An
education can be the ticket out, but it's not easy. For
girls, a pregnancy decides the question, at least for a
while.
I see these girls, pushing strollers along the highway,
on their way to town to buy a pack of cigarettes. The ba­
bies seem happy enough, but the toddlers often appear
slightly bruised from neglect and have a dazed look in
their eyes that comes from being constantly shifted back
and forth between grandma and mom and babysitters till
the child doesn't know who it belongs to.
Until the forests grow back and rivers heal, bringing
the salmon back, there are too many human beings in this
valley. From an ecological point of view, there s nothing
to support us here. There is a little agriculture in the
rocky bottomlands, but it would be hard to feed everyone
in the valley. I don't know how many people could sur­
vive off of acorns and deer, but 1 don't see anyone volun­
teering to try it
The water supply is very limited, so large scale
tourist development isn’t possible, though more and more
gray-haired environmental refugees from southern Cali­
fornia are moving here A tight-fisted bunch with their
government checks, nonetheless, there are some jobs in
building their homes and caring for their health.
™ i
The government check makes life possible here, and
the government is sending the message louder and louder
to children having children, that it is tired of paying the
bill for their reproductive behavior.
Meanwhile, back in the cities where there are still
good paying jobs and fat suburbs, the typical yuppie
family bloats itself with daily trips to consumer outlets,
accumulating masses of cheap imported stuff to fill the
3000 square foot storage lockers they call "home.'' Tak­
ing truckloads of lumber to build, those homes helped
suck the resources out of places like the Illinois Valley.
And what about their poor yuppie kids? Too busy
getting and spending to relate to children, their parents
turn them over to the TV early on. 500 channels later,
they are highly educated mass consumers, programmed
to suck resources. Why isn't the state up in alarm about
the spawning of these little resource sharks? Why aren't
these parents and children getting the message of redun­
dancy from their government? The most ecological ap­
proach would be to levy a huge tax on middle class par­
ents for each new consumer they bring into our exhaust­
ed world.
Our country needs a population policy. Ecologically,
most of us are now redundant. Population is limited by
the least available resource necessary for life, and ulti­
mately, that resource is energy. We pretend like they
won't, but soon the fossil fuels will run out. According to
Dr. Paul Werbos of the US Department of Energy, re­
newable energy sources like solar, wind and hydropower
can support about 60 million people in this country with
a reasonable standard of modern comfort. Wc now have
260 million people. If tothing changes, by 2050 w i ll
have 530 million.
I brought my slideshow on overpopulation to the
RAPP group for their approval to show it in the high
school. I explained that I hoped it would help some kids
to connect their reproductive decisions to a larger whole.
Many kids are very concerned about the environment,
and if they knew they wanted to limit their families from
beginning, they might be more conscious about family
planning.
To my great surprise, the slideshow turned out to be
the most controversial program RAPP has looked into
yet. The Morman minister completely dropped out of
RAPP because it was even being considered. The other
ministers and their flocks turned out in force to express
their disapproval. They claimed that overpopulation
couldn't possibly be a problem because all the human
beings in the world can fit into an area the size of Texas.
They are against contraception, to say nothing of abor­
tion. Perhaps ending overpopulation interferes with their
vision of the coming apocalypse.
The school nurse didn't disagree with the facts in the
slideshow, but she felt it was too dismal and heavy to
show to the students. She wanted to protect them from a
harsh reality.
Because of the controversy, the teachers and social
workers decided that the slideshow couldn't be shown to
the general stddent population, but perhaps students who
got parental permission could see iL
The one student who was there disagreed with the
consensus and thought the slideshow would have a posi­
tive effect of some kind. She told everyone there: “I
think kids should sec this. What luds really need is good
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