{"id":147128,"date":"2019-11-11T12:01:13","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T12:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=147128"},"modified":"2019-11-08T15:13:57","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T15:13:57","slug":"sierra-club-takes-a-commendable-turn-on-population-climate-change-and-inequality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/11\/sierra-club-takes-a-commendable-turn-on-population-climate-change-and-inequality\/","title":{"rendered":"Sierra Club Takes a Commendable Turn on Population, Climate Change, and Inequality"},"content":{"rendered":"

6 Nov 2019 – <\/em>The Sierra Club–long a retrograde proponent of saving the planet by driving a Tesla, eating wild caught salmon, and voting blue–took positive environmental leadership with their end of the year issue of the Sierra<\/em> magazine. Stating it is \u201ctime to fix the population fixation,\u201d they examine the interactions of population, climate change, and inequality. This commendable development from bourgeois lifestyle environmentalism to a more genuine red-green understanding, though, has a way to go.<\/p>\n

The Ideology of Over-Population<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ideology of over-population diverts criticisms of capitalist social relations of unequal distribution. It serves to justify a system, capitalism<\/em>, which creates needs for the many while satisfying them only for the very few. The Sierra Club, in a bold turn, now argues that the problem is not the fertility of women but \u201coverconsumption\u201d and the \u201coutsized contribution of the wealthiest few to the climate crisis and the extinction emergency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Birth rates go down when human needs<\/a> are met and women are afforded reproductive freedom, while the global carbon footprint of the superrich few is vastly greater<\/a> than that of the poor multitudes. As the status of women improves, birth rates have indeed been stabilizing; world population is predicted to nearly stop growing<\/a> by the end of the century.<\/p>\n

The opening Sierra<\/em> editorial<\/a> argues: \u201cThe tendency of environmentalists to blame individuals \u2013 in particular, women in developing countries \u2013 for the number of children they have is problematic\u2026Pointing the finger at women for this is essentially blaming the victim.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noting that \u201cthe killers behind the mass shootings in New Zealand and El Paso, Texas referenced overpopulation and environmental degradation as reasons to target immigrants,\u201d the Sierra Club unambiguously decries \u201csuch eco-fascist rhetoric\u201d as having \u201cno place in the environmental movement.\u201d A sympathetic article follows in the Sierra <\/em>magazine about the Border Angels, who defy the US Border Patrol by leaving caches of water in the Sonoran Desert for migrants.<\/p>\n

Climate justice is given its due importance in the latest issue of Sierra <\/em>with the recognition that: \u201cSome people are consuming wildly more and wildly different than others\u202610 percent of the world\u2019s population is responsible for about 50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and about 60 percent of those people are in the Global North. The bottom half of the world\u2019s population is responsible for about 15 percent of emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sierra Club understands, \u201ca mere 100 companies count for more than 70 percent of the carbon pollution.\u201d This is a big step forward from the simplistic notion that \u201cpeople create pollution, so population is the problem.\u201d But a sharper point on capitalist relations of production by the national environmental organization is wanting, and the vast contribution of the US military<\/a> to global warming is rendered invisible in the Sierra Club\u2019s analysis.<\/p>\n

In \u201ca conversation about capital<\/strong>, consumption, and population\u201d recognition<\/a> is given by the Sierra Club of the need to \u201ctranscend our culture of consumption.\u201d An audacious (for a mainstream environmental organization) comment is made about \u201cthe value of life beyond a capitalist system<\/strong>\u201d [Emphases added.] Flirting with a Marxist concept of alienation, the article is critical of seeing \u201courselves as a commodity or a consumer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The article recognizes \u201cgrowth is what\u2019s creating more inequality,\u201d but does not yet quite name the beast by saying it is capitalist<\/em> growth, although they come close with saying \u201cit\u2019s a system.\u201d Their call for \u201csystem change\u201d is informed by understanding the connection of \u201cgrowth and the disparity of income levels and the wealth gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reducing Wealth Inequality Is a Fundamental Climate Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Sierra Club deserves credit for coming around to a progressive stance<\/a> on population, immigration, and minorities. Back in the 1950s, the southern California chapter of the club had a policy<\/a> barring African Americans. In the late 1960s, the Sierra Club published Paul Ehrlich\u2019s<\/a> The Population Bomb, <\/em>which wrongly predicted that hundreds of millions of people (including in the US) would starve to death in the 1970s due to population growth. In the 1980s, Sierra Club national committees advocated for limiting immigration to the US. In 1998 and again in 2004, elements within the organization pushed hard to change the then policy of neutrality on immigration to one of actively closing the US borders to immigrants. The nativist anti-immigrant faction was defeated.<\/p>\n

Presently, the Sierra Club opposes the border wall, supports a path to citizenship for the undocumented, and works actively<\/a> with immigrant rights groups. From those dark days of Ehrlich when human population and especially the reproductive capacity of women were seen as the source of environmental problems, this latest issue of the Sierra<\/em> magazine has the tagline \u201cthe planet is in crisis \u2013 SHE has solutions.\u201d A young African woman wearing a hijab is on the cover.<\/p>\n

The Sierra Club is a member-based NGO with the latitude to make this leap forward on the population question. Most other major environmental NGOs won\u2019t likely follow, because they are more dependent on funding from rich individuals and foundations for whom the hint of income equality is a non-starter. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation<\/a>, with their Environment and Population Research Centre and their Climate Foundation, works tirelessly to suppress what the Sierra<\/em> article concludes: \u201creducing wealth inequality [is] a fundamental climate solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopefully the days are gone when the Sierra<\/em> magazine gets all weak kneed gushing over the \u201cgreen lifestyle\u201d of a former corporate executive who cashed in early on her stock options, left the \u201crat race\u201d of Los Angeles, and moved into a sprawling spread in the formerly unspoiled desert. And the reason why Sierra<\/em> viewed her as an environmental paragon? She installed solar panels on her roof. Hopefully, too, will be the passing of those cheery infomercials for the US military about how cool it is that their killing machines are fitted with solar panels.<\/p>\n

Identifying overconsumption and waste as problems is a breakthrough from the mainstream narrative on climate solutions, which usually focuses almost solely on alternative technologies and consumer preferences to maintain the capitalist growth economy of waste. If only \u201cwe\u201d weaned ourselves off of \u201cour addiction\u201d to oil and went solar, the narrow narrative goes, all would be satisfactory. The next step, yet to materialize for the Sierra Club, would be to recognize the necessity of ending that system of waste known as capitalism.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the Sierra<\/em> article concludes on an auspicious note<\/a>: \u201cWhat we need to think about is how do we bring those who are the biggest power brokers on the planet to heel.\u201d<\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Roger Harris<\/em> is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network<\/a> and the immediate past president of the Task Force on the Americas<\/a>, a 33-year-old human rights organization in solidarity with the social justice movements of Latin America and the Caribbean. He is active with the Campaign to End US-Canadian Sanctions against Venezuela<\/a> and is on the state central committee of the <\/em>Peace and Freedom Party<\/em><\/a>, the only ballot-qualified socialist party in California. He recently visited Syria for an international conference on the impacts of economic sanctions by the US and its allies on over 30 countries in the world.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 Nov 2019 – The Sierra Club–long a retrograde proponent of saving the planet by driving a Tesla, eating wild caught salmon, and voting blue–took positive environmental leadership with their end of the year issue of the Sierra magazine. Stating it is \u201ctime to fix the population fixation,\u201d they examine the interactions of population, climate change, and inequality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":146130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[686,401,267,993,610,1561],"class_list":["post-147128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-geopolitics","tag-global-warming","tag-inequality","tag-overpopulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}