When I was writing my environment column for Truthout, I often looked to George Monbiot at the Guardian as a writer who embraced integrated, big-picture thinking and was not afraid of solutions that might appear "radical" or "socialist." I have admired much of his work. But in a recent column on population growth, he displays quite a shallow view of the population problem and even sees fit to insult those who are concerned with it. That's a shame. I expected better from him. Here is my response from the comments section:
Dear George Monbiot,
The frustration you feel at the "old white men" who always bring up population growth is an interesting contrast to the frustration I (a middle-aged white woman) feel when people like you, who are often white men, refuse to focus on population growth as a key issue.
The fact is, population growth is not something "natural." White men such as yourself often have trouble acknowledging the current and historical impact of the pro-natalist policies of patriarchal empires. Women are not free. My contention is that if women were free to make their reproductive choices, we would reach a stable population much sooner. You seem to think this will automatically happen when population reaches 9 billion. However, 9 billion is a very damaging level of population for the planet to support at any level of consumption. I believe we can and must make every effort to stabilize population at a lower level than that. That means addressing it head on. Addressing it head on means we need to talk about it, which is difficult when otherwise progressive thinkers such as yourself try to slam the door every time the topic comes up.
Here is where I believe we need to start the conversation: We live in a patriarchal world. Patriarchal values are fixated on taking the natural power of reproduction away from women and putting it in the hands of men. We need to change two things very quickly. One is to apply the formula everyone agrees on: provide women with reproductive health care, education and economic opportunity. But we need to do more - we need to change the patriarchal attitude and that is much harder. Not being able to talk about it makes it harder still. One of the biggest weapons pro-natatists use against women is shame. Women who use birth control or abortion are told they should be ashamed of themselves because they are against "life." We need a countervailing, "pro-gaian" ethic that tells women that when they limit reproduction, they are helping the planet. But we can't say that because we can't talk about overpopulation. So shame continues to thrive in the silence.
You have a lot of contempt for Malthus which is interesting, because Darwin's theory of evolution is based on Malthus' Law of Population, so there must be some validity to some of Malthus' thinking. Engels also hated Malthus and thought the idea of population outstripping resources was ludicrous, but still said this:
"There is, of course, the abstract possibility that the number of people will become so great that limits will have to be set to their increase. But if at some stage communist society finds itself obliged to regulate the producion of human beings, just as it has already come to regulate the production of things, it will be precisely this society, and this society alone, which can carry this out without difficulty. It does not seem to me that it would be at all difficult in such a society to achieve by planning a result which has already been produced spontaneously, without planning in France and Lower Austria. At any rate, it is for the people in the communist society themselves to decide whether, when and how this is to be done, and what means they wish to employ to the purpose. I do not feel called upon to make proposals for giving them advice about it. These people, in any case, will surely not be any less intelligent than we are."
Isn't it time, George, to have a free and open discussion about how we could more effectively stabilize and then reduce human population to sustainable levels?
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