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Environmental
endorsements of U.S. population stabilization
President Clinton's Population and Consumption Task Force
'As
a matter of public debate, immigration is a sensitive and explosive
issue, and both legal and illegal immigration must be addressed
with great sensitivity and care in order to advance the debate.
We acknowledge these impediments to easy and informal dialogue,
and we urge that participants take appropriate care so that a reasoned
discussion of immigration and the American future can begin.'
'We believe that reducing current immigration levels is a necessary
part of working toward sustainability in the United States.'
--
from the Introduction of Population and Consumption Task Force Report
President's Council on Sustainable Development (1996), established
by President Clinton in 1993 to find ways "to bring people
together to meet the needs of the present without jeopardizing the
future."
President Carter's Global 2000 Report
'The
United States should: Develop a U.S. national population policy
that includes attention to issues such as population stabilization
... just, consistent and workable immigration laws.'
from
"Global Future: Time to Act" in The Global 2000 Report
to the President, commissioned by President Jimmy Carter in his
1977 Environmental Message to Congress and released in January,
1981.
David Brower, 1966, then Executive Director of the Sierra Club,
"We
feel you don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a
population policy."
Blueprint
for Survival, 1972, supported by 34 distinguished biologists,
ecologists, doctors, and economists, including Sir Julian Huxley,
Peter Scott, and Sir Frank Fraser-Darling "First,
governments must acknowledge the problem and declare their commitment
to ending population growth; this commitment should also include
an end to immigration."
Former Senator Gaylor Nelson, father of Earth Day, "We
are preparing to celebrate the 32nd Earth Day just after the Census
Bureau has announced that far from winding down in the 1990s, U.S.
population growth boomed at its highest level in the nation's history!
Not even the peak of the Baby Boom in the 1950s added as many people!
This new population boom represents a profound failure in our nation's
pursuit of environmental quality. Since 1970, another 80 million
people have been added to the country. Every environmental goal
has been delayed because of this failure."
Wisconsin Secretary of Sate, Douglas LaFollette, "To
continue ignoring the large population component of our increasing
environmental problems will certainly doom our grandchildren to
a very bleak future."
President
Theodore Roosevelt, "There is no room in this country for
hyphenated Americanism. ...The one absolutely certain way of bringing
this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing
to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle
of squabbling nationalities." (Address to Knights of Columbus, Oct.
12, 1915)
Jacques
Cousteau, ''Population growth is the primary source of environmental
damage."
John
Flicker, President, National Audubon Society, "Human population
growth is the most pressing environmental problem facing the U.S.
and the world."
Garret
Hardin, professor emeritus of human ecology at University of California,
Santa Barbara (Living Within Limits, 1993) "...population policy
must be policy for a nation, not for the whole world, because there
is no world sovereignty to back up a global policy. We can, and
should, seek to persuade other nations to take steps to control
their population growth; but our primary focus should be on the
population growth within our own borders. This means that overpopulation
can be avoided only if borders are secure; otherwise poor and overpopulated
nations will export their excess to richer and less populated nations."
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