Population and The PCSD (NPG Booknote)
- Lindsey Grant
- April 1, 1996
- Forum Papers
- Forum Paper
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An NPG Forum Paper
(NPG Booknote)
by Lindsey Grant
April 1996
The PCSD has completed its report on sustainability in America, to almost total press and public silence, and so quietly that it took multiple ‘phone calls to the White House to find anybody who knew what it was.
The PCSD came into being on June 14, 1993, by Presidential order. The Council’s path was not easy. The President’s message charged it with helping to “grow the economy and preserve the environment…”, objectives that are likely to conflict. The 29 Council members were balanced to include industrialists, labor, environmentalists, Cabinet members and critics, and a mix by sex, race, and ethnicity; and it undertook to proceed by consensus, which usually leads to harmless generalities. It had no real authority or role in decision-making, and such impermanent bodies have neither time nor authority to carry their ideas through. At first, population and consumption — key issues in sustainability — were not even in its scope. They were introduced, over opposition, at the insistence of Council member and Undersecretary of State Timothy Wirth.
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Lindsey Grant is a retired Foreign Service Officer; he was a China specialist and served as Director of the Office of Asian Communist Affairs, National Security Council staff member, and Department of State policy Planning staff member. As Deputy Secretary of State for Environmental and Population Affairs, he was Department of State coordinator for the Global 2000 Report to the President, Chairman of the interagency committee on Int’l Environmental Committee and US member of the UN ECE Committee of Experts on the Environment. His books include: Too Many People, Juggernaut, The Horseman and the Bureaucrat, Elephants in Volkswagen, How Many Americans?