Clinton on Population, Part 2: Waiting for Al

• Lindsey Grant
• February 18, 1995
• Forum Papers
• Forum Paper
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Clinton on Population, Part 2: Waiting for Al
An NPG Forum Paper
By Lindsey Grant
February 1995

Click here for a downloadable, printable PDF version

Tom Lehrer used to sing a song about Vice President Hubert Humphrey: “Whatever became of Hubert? … Are you sad? are you cross? are you gathering moss? … Oh, Hubert what happened to you?” (My memory of the lyrics may be inexact, but that was the idea.) Vice Presidents are not supposed to be heard, and Al Gore has disappeared into the traditional obscurity. He is doing some useful but unsung work – “reinventing government”; cleaning up the bureaucracy – which may well be swept away by the sledgehammer proposals for cutting government now being voiced.

There are a few people in government who have made the connection between population growth and environmental decline. Among them is the Vice President. More than any other national U.S. political leader, he has grasped the reality that growth cannot continue forever in a finite space. He has not yet applied that wisdom to his own country, but the United States has reached a level of population and consumption that brings “forever” into sight. He might yet play a role in bringing population into policy, and one of his ideas – for better foresight machinery – could be employed in a deliberate effort to build a consensus for a population policy.

This in itself is good reason for trying to enlist the Vice President.

Sources of Opposition

Earlier FORUM articles have mentioned some of the resistances that make population a particularly difficult and unpopular topic to take on. To list several of them:

• Immigration and fertility. These are the only two variables available to influence population change. To limit immigration is to break the faith for many people who are imbued with the “one world” dream. To address population growth through fertility stirs up hornets on both sides: doctrinaire feminists who fight any proposal to meddle with women’s decisions about child-bearing; and right-to-lifers who equate family planning with abortion.
• Multiple agendas. There has been an explosion of groups seeking social justice of one sort or another. Very few of them have made the connection with population growth. The political landscape is full of lobbies working at cross purposes or competing for resources. They do not see the ways in which population growth and intensified competition block their own agendas, and consequently they look upon the population movement as a competitor.
• Innumeracy (in Garrett Hardin’s memorable neologism). How often I have heard people resist the idea of a population policy because “it’s not just a matter of numbers”, when they don’t know the numbers. In fact, demography is supremely a matter of numbers, and those numbers affect the pursuit of most personal and social goals. Comparative national math proficiency tests repeatedly demonstrate that Americans by and large are less able to deal with numerical concepts than other nations’ students. The deficiency makes it difficult to reach people with numerical arguments.
• Relativism. Any proposal to address population growth encounters the response: “but you must take cultural differences into account.” True, but that applies to the way in which the population argument is presented, and to the approach that different cultures might take to limiting fertility. lt does not somehow vitiate the impact of population growth on a society. (Interestingly, this “cultural difference” argument disappears when advocates are pressing their own agenda. At the Cairo population conference last September, the feminist agenda was hardly muted in deference to Vatican and conservative Arab views.)

Other attitudes play a role. Many young people, in particular, ferociously criticize their own society and idealize others, defer to the immigrant and ignore their own less fortunate compatriots. I am hesitant to get into psycho-history, but there does seem to be an element there of hatred and rejection of their own society.

Whatever the source of opposition, the response is denial. Deny there is a population problem, and you do not face a challenge to your own mindset.

• Passivity. At the other end of the line, at various levels of government, population growth is taken as a given – an “independent variable” – that must be accommodated but cannot be changed. This attitude can be seen in Washington and among the professional planners in my county of Santa Fe, even while the voters have elected City and County councils on “no-growth” tickets.

Beyond these attitudes, there is a fundamental block to an effective population policy. It is the mindset that growth is the natural and necessary solution to immediate problems…Continue reading the full Forum paper by clicking here.