Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis

315 Pages·2011·1.55 MB·English

by  Ian Angus

Table of Contents

“Should be read by every environmental campaigner”
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword
Foreword by Joel Kovel
Acknowledgments
On Terminology
Introduction
1: Are People the Problem?
The Population Bomb
The Closing Circle
Head to head
2: Varieties of Populationism Today
“Let the people just starve”
PJP: “A progressive, feminist approach”
Optimum Population Trust: “Reduce the number of climate changers”
Lovelock: “Defend climate oases”
Jeffrey Sachs: “High fertility rates are deleterious to development”
SPA: “Reduce population or face chaos”
3: Dissecting Those “Overpopulation” Numbers
Correlation versus causation
Population where?
Problems with per capita
The IPAT illusion
Malthus with a computer
4: Is the World Full?
5: The Bomb That Didn’t Explode
6: Too Many Mouths to Feed?
Where’s the food?
Will food destroy the earth?
7: The Populationist War against the Poor
Population control as official policy
The patient is expendable
War against the poor
Incentives and repression
An imperialist chapter
8: Control without Coercion?
Contradictory strategies
Gradations of coercion
The “Cairo Consensus”
Too little, too late
9: Lifeboat Ethics
Guarding the American lifeboat
“The world can’t afford more Americans”
The greening of hate
Greening the anti-immigrant right in Canada
The immigration wedge
10: Allies, Not Enemies
Environmental justice
Protecting plunder
Our fight is global
11: Too Many Consumers?
Confusing two kinds of consumption
Ignoring inequality in the North
The real superconsumers
12: The Myth of Consumer Sovereignty
The manipulated market
Hiding the facts
The throwaway economy
The case of the car
The limits of choice
13: The Military-Corporate Polluter Complex
The case of Ira Rennert
A question of power
Business as usual
The world’s worst polluter
14: A System of G rowth and Waste
The growth imperative
A system based on waste
15: Populationism or Ecological Revolution?
Getting to the root
A movement to save the planet
Appendix 1: The Malthus Myth
Appendix 2: Donella Meadows Reconsiders IPAT
Appendix 3: - Eugene V. Debs on Immigration
Appendix 4: Climate Justice and Migration
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About Ian Angus
Also from Haymarket Books
About Haymarket Books
Copyright Page
“Should be read by every environmental campaigner”

“Sadly, the population myth has been used to distract attention from the roots of
ecological crisis in a destructive economic system and to shift the blame for
problems such as climate change onto the poor. This splendid book is an
essential read for all of us who are concerned with creating an ecologically
sustainable and just future. Buy it, read it, and spread the word!”
—Derek Wall, author of The Rise of the Green Left

“Ian Angus and Simon Butler’s superb book challenges the ‘commonsense’ idea
that there are too many people. Clearly and concisely they blame a system that
puts profit before people and planet, refuting the arguments of the latter day
Malthusians. It is a book that should be read by every environmental
campaigner, trade unionist and political activist.”
—Martin Empson, author of Marxism and Ecology: Capitalism, Socialism
and the Future of the Planet

“How did apparently progressive greens and defenders of the underprivileged
turn into people-haters, convinced of the evils of overbreeding among the
world’s poor? How did they come to believe the 200-year-old myths of a
rightwing imperialist friend of Victorian mill owners? It’s a sorry story, told here
with verve and anger.”
—Fred Pearce, author of Peoplequake

“Angus and Butler have written a comprehensive dissection of the arguments
surrounding overpopulation. It’s a vital and insightful socialist response to the
debate and highly recommended to anyone interested in fighting for a better
world and avoiding the pitfalls of false solutions.”
—Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism
“This is an essential subject, and we are in Angus and Butler’s debt for treating it
with such clarity and rigor.”
—from the Foreword by Joel Kovel, author of The Enemy of Nature
To the Ogoni people of Nigeria; to the Cree of Alberta, Canada; to the people of
the Amazon rainforests; to the farmers of La Vía Campesina; and to the millions
of others around the world who are fighting to stop the destruction of their
homelands and our common planet. Your struggles inspire us, and show the way
forward for humanity
Foreword by Betsy Hartmann

This brilliant book by Ian Angus and Simon Butler comes not a moment too
soon. The myth of overpopulation has returned with a vengeance along with the
scaremongering and scapegoating that are its hallmarks. A strategic coalition of
powerful population and environment organizations and pundits are spreading
false messages that poor women’s fertility is to blame for critical global
problems ranging from climate change to poverty to political instability.
Nativists are riding the latest population wave to target immigrants as the cause
of environmental degradation: it’s the greening of hate.
I have worked on the population issue for over three decades now. As an
activist in the international women’s health movement, I have fought with many
others around the world to advance and protect
Betsy Hartmann is the author of Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The
Global Politics of Population Control and the director of the Population
and Development Program at Hampshire College in Amherst,
Massachusetts. A longstanding activist in the international women’s health
movement, she writes and speaks on the intersections of reproductive
rights, population, immigration, environment, and security concerns. For
more information, visit her website at www.BetsyHartmann.com.
reproductive rights, including access to safe, affordable abortion. At the same
time I have fought against the human rights violations of population control
programs, from restrictions on contraceptive choice to coercive sterilization. As
a political researcher, scholar, and teacher, I have studied the myth of
overpopulation from many different directions, charting how it negatively affects
family planning and health programs, environmental movements, and the pursuit
of social justice and peace. It is a divisive ideology that plays on racial-ized fears
of people of color whether in the global North or global South. Despite the
periodic deployment of feminist language, it views women mainly as wombs.
In the years I have been working on population, the world demographic
picture has changed dramatically as birth rates have declined around the globe.
Today demographers tend to be much more concerned with the phenomenon of
negative birth rates and population aging than they are with rapid population
growth. The momentum built into our present numbers means that world
population will reach around nine billion by 2050, but after that it is expected to
stabilize. Now more than ever, it is clear that the myth of overpopulation is
really not about the numbers, but about obscuring the social, economic, and
political inequalities at the root of current global crises, including climate
change. It is about preserving the power of the rich.
Too Many People? shines a keen light on all these issues and more. With clear
prose and careful, cogent analysis, Angus and Butler provide the tools necessary
to dismantle the myth of overpopulation step by step. In so doing, they also show
the way to a more hopeful, justice-centered environmental and reproductive
politics. Like the excellent publications they edit, Climate and Capitalism and
Green Left Weekly, this book makes complex information, ideas, and arguments
accessible to a wide variety of readers—activists, students, educators,
journalists, policy makers, and indeed anyone who wants to better understand
the world.
The resurgent myth of overpopulation stands in the way of global solidarity
and progress. This book gives me hope that the myth can be dispelled quickly
and decisively so we can get on with the pressing challenges at hand. The
urgency of addressing climate change means there is no time to lose. Read this
book. It will liberate and embolden you to take action.