Eugenics inspired Hitler and it was much studied and admired around the world in many countries. It gained the approval of numerous intellectuals such as H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw (today it is Chris Hedges, David Attenborough and so is Bono), as well as leading politicians of the likes of Churchill. Eugenics fostered the justification for the colonial logic and white supremacy. The Nazi regime modelled its sterilisation programs on those of the American segregationists. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the research of German eugenicists, sponsoring major eugenic institutes. In recent years, eugenics forms part of the core belief of the over-populationists, a new “scientific” racism. Even supposedly liberal environmentalists have adopted the underlying premise with their “people pollute” arguments and their advocacy of zero population growth. When today one hears particular phrases such as “carrying capacity” or the “tragedy of the commons”, beware because it is pure Thomas Malthus. Ecologists offer a future tending toward the pastoral idyll and little is said on improving the conditions of the poor crammed into urban slums and shanty towns that were spreading across the globe. The poor are to be blamed for migrating from rural destitution and devastation.
One reads all manner of extreme predictions couched in academic language of ecologists. Forced sterilisation of the unworthy has become family planning for the undeserving. Are we surprised that Bill Gates’ philanthropy concentrates resources on contraception? They are careful not to blame the economic reasons for large families, instead it is unchecked copulation making new babies. The enemy is the people, not corporations or class exploitation. The poor are being blamed for being poor.
As Ian Angus wrote in 2012:
“[Over] Populationist ideas are gaining traction in the environmental movement. A growing number of sincere activists are once again buying into the idea that overpopulation is destroying the earth, and that what’s needed is a radical reduction in birth rates. Most populationists say they want voluntary birth control programs, but a growing number are calling for compulsory measures.”
The road to survival does not lie in prescriptions to eliminate surplus people, nor in birth control, but in the effort to make everybody on the face of the earth productive. Hunger and misery are not caused by the presence of too many people in the world, but rather by having few to produce and many to feed. Missing from the over-populationist’s arguments is any notion that people are capable of effecting positive social and environmental change. By placing the onus on the individual and personal life-styles the ecologists obscure the role of capitalist systems of production, distribution and consumption in causing global warming. Overpopulation per se has become the new scapegoat for the world’s ills. Overconsumption by the rich has far more to do with global warming than the population growth of the poor. The few countries in the world where population growth rates remain high, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, have among the lowest carbon emissions per capita on the planet.
“Would the grow-or-die economy called capitalism really cease to plunder the planet even if the world’s population were reduced to a tenth of its present numbers? Would lumber companies, mining concerns, oil cartels, and agribusiness render redwood and Douglas fir forests safer for grizzly bears if — given capitalism’s need to accumulate and produce for their own sake — California’s population were reduced to one million people? The answer to these questions is a categorical no… We have yet to answer what constitutes the “carrying capacity” of the planet… Viewed from a distance of two decades later, the predictions made by many neo-Malthusians seem almost insanely ridiculous… the most sinister feature about neo-Malthusianism is the extent to which it actively deflects us from dealing with the social origins of our ecological problems — indeed, the extent to which it places the blame for them on the victims of hunger rather than those who victimize them.” explained Murray Bookchin in 2010
FREELY ADAPTED FROM THIS ARTICLE
https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/04/population-bomb-or-bomb-the-population/#more-90757
One reads all manner of extreme predictions couched in academic language of ecologists. Forced sterilisation of the unworthy has become family planning for the undeserving. Are we surprised that Bill Gates’ philanthropy concentrates resources on contraception? They are careful not to blame the economic reasons for large families, instead it is unchecked copulation making new babies. The enemy is the people, not corporations or class exploitation. The poor are being blamed for being poor.
As Ian Angus wrote in 2012:
“[Over] Populationist ideas are gaining traction in the environmental movement. A growing number of sincere activists are once again buying into the idea that overpopulation is destroying the earth, and that what’s needed is a radical reduction in birth rates. Most populationists say they want voluntary birth control programs, but a growing number are calling for compulsory measures.”
The road to survival does not lie in prescriptions to eliminate surplus people, nor in birth control, but in the effort to make everybody on the face of the earth productive. Hunger and misery are not caused by the presence of too many people in the world, but rather by having few to produce and many to feed. Missing from the over-populationist’s arguments is any notion that people are capable of effecting positive social and environmental change. By placing the onus on the individual and personal life-styles the ecologists obscure the role of capitalist systems of production, distribution and consumption in causing global warming. Overpopulation per se has become the new scapegoat for the world’s ills. Overconsumption by the rich has far more to do with global warming than the population growth of the poor. The few countries in the world where population growth rates remain high, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, have among the lowest carbon emissions per capita on the planet.
“Would the grow-or-die economy called capitalism really cease to plunder the planet even if the world’s population were reduced to a tenth of its present numbers? Would lumber companies, mining concerns, oil cartels, and agribusiness render redwood and Douglas fir forests safer for grizzly bears if — given capitalism’s need to accumulate and produce for their own sake — California’s population were reduced to one million people? The answer to these questions is a categorical no… We have yet to answer what constitutes the “carrying capacity” of the planet… Viewed from a distance of two decades later, the predictions made by many neo-Malthusians seem almost insanely ridiculous… the most sinister feature about neo-Malthusianism is the extent to which it actively deflects us from dealing with the social origins of our ecological problems — indeed, the extent to which it places the blame for them on the victims of hunger rather than those who victimize them.” explained Murray Bookchin in 2010
FREELY ADAPTED FROM THIS ARTICLE
https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/04/population-bomb-or-bomb-the-population/#more-90757
No comments:
Post a Comment