kelpiewilson

Malthus and Vice

It's taken me awhile to get this up, but here's my latest published piece:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/135518/have_we_hit_the_limits_of_human_population/

It's also at Energy Bulletin under my original title, Malthus and Vice.

Have We Hit the Limits of Human Population?

By Kelpie Wilson, AlterNet. Posted April 10, 2009.

Without growth, there would be no economy as we know it. But modern culture, by and large, doesn't see that it can exist only in the medium of ceaseless growth and expansion, because a fish doesn't see the water it swims in. Only today, in the recent, breathless moments of the greatest economic crash since the Great Depression, do we begin to perceive the waters around us.

Slowly, we are coming to realize that the last 200 years of economic growth have been based on a monumental Ponzi scheme that has pushed the final reckoning ever forward in time, until the future is now. Slowly, we are coming to realize that Thomas Malthus was right.

It was the warrior cry of the radical environmental movement in the 1980s: "Malthus Was Right!" But Malthus, a mumbling country parson with intellectual ambitions, had been transmogrified by capitalists and communists alike into a fearsome bogeyman possessed of "dangerous" ideas.

Environmentalists who invoked his name were invariably corrected by their progressive friends, who told them that excess consumption by the rich was the problem, not the reproductive profligacy of the poor.

Yet, as we drive deeper into the greenhouse world, with its crazy weather, water shortages and general degradation, more and more of us from across the political spectrum are wondering how on earth we will feed the 3 billion more people projected to arrive by 2050, or even the 6 billion or so we already have.

Another Great Response to Monbiot's Population Blind Spot

I found a really excellent response to an earlier Monbiot column dismissing population growth at a blog called Zone 5 - the edge between nature and culture. Here's a quote, but read the whole thing. It's really good:

Playing around with statistics to show that consumption is the real problem, not population, as Monbiot does, again fails to see that the two issues are inextricably linked. For example, it is often said, if we all become vegetarian, the world could support a bigger population. But what happens then if we achieve this and the population continues to grow?

Presumably, the response to those who try to raise the issue of population control will once again be:

“Ah, yes, but if we all just live on one bowl of rice a day and huddle round a single light bulb the world could support twice the current population! Let’s have 10 billion! Let’s have 20 billion!”

George Monbiot's Shallow View of Overpopulation

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.

Development vs. Growth

The conversation about energy and population continues at Dot Earth. Here is my latest post there:

Dear Steven,

Thank you for your challenging assignment (post #151) to think about growth vs. development. I agree with your association of growth with bigger and development with better. Ed Abbey put it this way: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

I also look at growth as the ideology of the predator class. If you are a wolf you will favor unrestrained growth of the sheep. If you are a master you will bank on the proliferation of your slaves. Capitalism justifies the growth ideology in Ponzi scheme terms: if the growth is great enough, a little of it will trickle down to everyone.

So, we understand now that infinite growth on a finite planet is madness. What then, is the alternative? What is development and can it substitute as an economic driver for physical growth?

We already see that a lot of what constitutes GNP is not growth in any beneficial sense. The example of the Exxon Valdez oil spill is a good one. Exxon spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a "clean-up" of Prince William Sound. A lot of idled fishermen were employed and a lot of filthy crude was pushed around, but nothing was produced and nothing was even really cleaned up, yet those dollars all counted toward the Gross National Product that year.

Given that "growth" doesn't always produce anything useful, what would constitute "development?" I used the term "de-development" as a prescription for the "over-developed" nations like the US. But perhaps "re-development" is more inline with our needs. For instance, heating, cooling and powering 100 million US residences accounts for 20 percent of our energy use. Our houses are less efficient than they were 40 years ago. Re-development would retrofit these houses with better insulation and energy efficient appliances. This would put a lot of people to work. The Obama administration is counting on it.

But we have to go a lot further down the re-development path than that. We need to re-localize and build community at the neighborhood scale because village level organization of food and energy production is the level at which the best efficiencies can be had. For example, a small combined heat and power system could provide a city block of houses with heating, hot water and backup electricity on a couple hundred pounds of wood chips a day. Central power plants would just waste the heat. And electricity generated right at home has no transmission cost.

Another opportunity to re-develop America into networked neighborhood virtual villages is the current foreclosure epidemic. About 15 percent of housing stands vacant now. Neighborhood associations should get ownership of some of those houses so they can be turned into community centers and communal kitchens. Neighborhoods that grow some of their own fresh vegetables and dedicate space to preparation and sharing of home-cooked whole foods will produce healthier people.

The eco-village is the green development path that I hope that both rich and poor worlds can converge upon. Perhaps that seems wildly unrealistic, but what if we stopped assuming that population was going to reach 9 billion by 2050? What if we assumed instead that population is going to peak at 7 billion in the next few years and drop back down to 6 billion or less by 2050? We should not treat growth as inevitable. People in the US are already starting to choose a different "small is beautiful" path. Here is one small but telling example: watching videos on cell phones is now just as "cool" as watching them on giant energy hog plasma screens.

By 2050 we need to provide 5 billion people each with a cell phone, access to a computer and the electricity to run it, good quality food, water, health care and shelter, along with some leisure to enjoy life. To me, that is the goal we are aiming for, not unlimited energy and growth.

Pro-Gaian - Not "Pro-Life"

February is Global Population Speak Out Month, and I made a pledge to do some writing about population this month. I had hoped to write a major piece on Malthus, Marx, the fallacy of economic growth and the primacy of women's rights in solving the overpopulation problem, but I did not get around to that. Instead I have been commenting on other people's articles. Here is a comment on this AlterNet story:

Why Are Even Smart, Liberal Men Freaked Out by Abortion?
By Anonymous, AlterNet. Posted February 20, 2009.

Even die-hard liberals who would wax on about a woman's right to choose were uncomfortable when presented with a woman who chose.

Here's my comment:
a pro-Gaian ethic could help us talk about abortion
Posted by: Kelpie on Feb 21, 2009 12:27 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]

I fully understand why anonymous wants to hide her identity. We live in a patriarchal world and because of that imbalance of power, women who thwart patriarchal values are vulnerable to retaliation. Patriarchal values are fixated on taking the natural power of reproduction away from women and putting it in the hands of men. Shame is the most powerful weapon patriarchal forces have, and inhibiting frank and honest discussion of abortion is an effective method of reinforcing the shame message. So I applaud anonymous for speaking out about her experience. It helps to dispel the shame message.

Why is shame so effective? It's effective because women know that with their reproductive power comes an awesome responsibility. Every woman wants to know that she has made good decisions about whether and how to reproduce and care for her family. As part of the larger society, women need to be responsive to the welfare of the group. So when she gets a heavy shaming message about ending a life, it's hard to sort that out. It's equally hard for men, even liberal men. The reason it is so hard is because there is not a widespread countervailing ethic to the so-called "pro-life" ethic.

However, in my research I have discovered an ancient ethic around abortion that I call the "pro-Gaian" ethic. This is a pro-life ethic but it is based on the welfare of the whole planet. Within this ethical system, a woman may decide to abort an embryo because she is not ready to take on the task of motherhood. Her decision is further validated by the needs of the ecosphere - the collectivity of life on planet earth. The ecosphere is increasingly threatened by human overpopulation. If humanity is going to survive, we must stop population growth. Let's do it in the most humane way possible. Let's avoid war, disease and starvation and instead concentrate on ensuring that all children are wanted children. This simple principle would avoid half or more of births every year which are adding 80 million more people to the planet annually. From this point of view, bringing an unwanted human life to term is an assault on the planet.

Anonymous says that the one thing she most needs is a way to talk about abortion, to get past the shaming stigma of it. I suggest that she consider the pro-Gaian ethic. I have put a compendium of stories, myths and images supporting the pro-Gaian ethic on a website - www.earthislandangels.com. Check it out!

My Dot Earth Comment - and a response

My comment on Andrew Revkin's NY Times blog, Dot Earth, was selected as an editor's choice comment. Thanks to Lou Gold for alerting me to the thread. Also thanks to Lou for his response to my Dot Earth comment in the comments section below.

I was commenting on this post: Could Energy Success Backfire in the End? Could cheap non-polluting, renewable energy lead to a huge new burst of population growth?

Here's my comment. It's another riff on the Stimulus Gender Gap topic:

Thus far in human history, an increase in available energy has always led to an increase in population growth. There are a few instances where civilized societies have maintained a steady state - these are all island nations. Some were found in Polynesia. Edo Japan is the best example.

So-that means that tackling population growth head on is an absolute necessity, whether we can increase the energy available to us or not, ultimately it makes no difference. Let us heed the words of Engels on this. Engels 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."

Engels' abstract possibility is very real to most of us today. Some still can't see it, but as food prices climb ever higher, the mismatch of population and resources on our planet will soon be undeniable. We are those people who must decide how to deal with overpopulation. Fortunately, the solution is not that hard. Just give women the choice and the means to prevent or end pregnancies that they do not want. Accompany that with education about ecology and economic alternatives to motherhood and the problem is solved. Unfortunately, regressive patriarchal forces are incapable of conceding reproductive control to women. Maybe that's the best argument there is for "communism" or some similar economic revolution. It may be the only thing that can topple the patriarchs from power and start the flow of funds to women's health and welfare.

Even our beloved Obama administration allowed funds for women's reproductive healthcare to be stripped from the stimulus package. Women's health is not a side issue. It is THE issue of our time.

— Kelpie Wilson, Cave Junction, Oregon

Plan B and Plan B

By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 10 October 2006

Just as women have finally won a concession from the Bush FDA that makes the emergency contraceptive known as Plan B available without a prescription, new reports abound that fundamentalist Christians are mounting an effort to end the use of all contraceptives.

Meeting in Chicago at the end of September, a group of so-called "pro-life" advocates held a conference titled "Contraception Is Not the Answer" to launch a campaign against all "unnatural contraceptives."

The conference featured speakers like Thomas Euteneuer, a Catholic priest who refuses communion to women who use birth control. Another speaker, Allan Carlson of the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society, called for an end to contraception because it interferes with a woman's duty to produce "a full quiver" of children for God.

These fringe Christian activists insist that every sex act must result in pregnancy or it is unholy. Following such a doctrine leads to the inevitable conclusion that an act of rape that results in a pregnancy is less offensive to God than the act of a married couple who block conception by using a condom or the Pill.

Interestingly, this retrograde movement comes at a moment when US population tops 300 million and ecologists warn that we are headed for disaster as Earth's life support systems crack under the weight of our numbers.

What Moral Values?

By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 5 November 2004

“Three issues dominated the campaign and shaped yesterday’s vote: terrorism, the war in Iraq and the national economy. Kerry overwhelmingly won among those who said Iraq and the economy were the most important issues to them, while Bush won by a landslide among those who cited terrorism. Beyond those issues, a fifth of yesterday’s voters said moral values influenced their choice, and Bush won them by 4 to 1.”
--Dan Balz and Mike Allen, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, November 3, 2004

It has been a truism of American politics that Americans vote their pocketbook. Clinton’s winning slogan in 1992 was “It’s the economy, stupid.” But the election of 2004 was an exception. Fear and loathing have trumped common sense.

Given the reality of the 9-11 attacks, given the utter complicity of the media in the Bush regime’s campaign of lies about Iraq and WMDs, it is not so surprising that fear has ruled the day. The politics of fear has a long pedigree in human affairs.

Hermann Goering, Hitler's right hand man, said: "It is the leaders of the country that determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked."

Karl Rove absorbed this lesson well.

So we have explained the economy vote and the fear vote, but what about the moral values vote? In America, the only moral values ever discussed are gay rights and abortion, otherwise know as “family values.” In the stark political lexicon of America, if you are for gay rights and abortion, you are against families.

The Goats in Gaia's Garden

The Goats in Gaia's Garden
By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 03 June 2004

www.truthout.org Last week one of the world's top scientists made a disturbing announcement. James Lovelock, author of the Gaia hypothesis, called on the world to fight global warming by initiating a rapid switch from coal and gas to nuclear power, which has no carbon emissions. The problems of nuclear power, he says, pale in comparison to the threat of global warming.

According to the Gaia theory, the earth is more than just a rock in space. The biosphere itself regulates conditions on the planet to keep them favorable for life. An example is the carbon cycle. Plants take up carbon dioxide released into the air by volcanoes and deposit it in the soil where it forms calcium carbonate. Rainwater washes calcium carbonate into the ocean where marine life forms it into shells. Shells sink down to the ocean floor forming sediments of limestone and chalk. This Gaian system has been disrupted by humans burning forests and fossil fuels; carbon is accumulating in the atmosphere and the temperature is going up.

Whether or not you agree with Lovelock's solution to global warming, you must feel the gravity of our situation in the stark choice he presents. Global warming could destroy civilization. The crops that feed the world are adapted to today's climate. Yields would plummet in a significantly warmer world, and every recent indicator shows that the world is already warming much faster than predicted. Furthermore, a rise in sea level of just seven meters would flood every major coastal city.

But still, how can Lovelock say that widespread nuclear technology is the solution to global warming? Part of the answer is that he takes the deep time view of the planet. Life has a certain amount of tolerance for radiation, but continued warming could cause an irreversible shift to a permanently hotter world. That hotter world might or might not support human civilization. As our sun ages, it grows hotter, and tinkering with the planetary cooling mechanism, as we are now doing, is exceedingly dangerous.

Another part of Lovelock's reason could be a species of professional jealousy. In his book Healing Gaia he relates his frustration at the worldwide alarm over ozone depletion and CFC's as compared to the deafening silence, denial and inaction on global warming. In his view, big science has focused its budgets and research might on specific problems like ozone depletion, nuclear radiation and toxic pollution while giving short shrift to the human impacts that are unbalancing the climate - deforestation and carbon emissions.

Lovelock is surely right about this misplacement of priorities, and the reason may be mostly that, as difficult as the first bunch of problems are, they seem to have techno-fix solutions, whereas global warming does not. Now Lovelock is proposing a techno-fix solution to global warming - nuclear power.

But why must our civilization be based on techno-fix solutions? Isn't it time to build a civilization that is sustainable? Sustainable means first of all, the end of growth and the stabilization of population. It also means the end of greed and over-consumption. Lifestyle changes to encourage conservation could save the energy output of many nuclear power plants.

Population growth is not inevitable. Spending as little as $20 billion dollars annually would bring full reproductive health care to every woman in the world. According to Population Action International, every year nearly 80 million unintended pregnancies occur worldwide and 350 million women lack access to effective family planning methods. World population is now increasing by about 85 million people a year. With full funding of women's health care and a little more to provide education and employment opportunities, we could halt population growth in a decade.

Instead of a big industrial build up to produce nuclear power plants, why not put that same bill of materials and energy into massive construction of solar panels and wind turbines? A combination of demand reduction and low tech renewables could be the underpinning of a new society that is just, sustainable and de-centralized. But Lovelock claims that renewable technologies are too "visionary" and cannot power our civilization.

He seems to have little faith in people's ability to change. He has asked the question: "Could we, by some act of common will, change our natures and become proper stewards, gentle gardeners taking care of all of the natural life of our planet?" And answered it: "I would sooner expect a goat to succeed as a gardener than expect humans to become responsible stewards of the Earth."

Nuclear power, on the other hand, fits perfectly with civilization as we know it: a centralized, male dominant society that operates a Ponzi-scheme economy based on exploitation and endless growth. Nuclear technology is completely owned and controlled by the giant corporations that sit at the top of the pyramid.

Nuclear power also has one other very big problem: nuclear proliferation in an age of terror.

When will we stop snubbing the low-tech solutions that can make real changes? When will we embrace conservation and simplicity? Perhaps when we are faced with the choice of a nuke in our backyard that will produce abundant, reliable power vs. a possibly less plentiful solar or wind installation, we will decide that it's worth it to turn off some lights to avoid the risk of a Chernobyl.

Lovelock brushes off such risks, saying: "Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway." That's not something I am willing to do.

Please, read Dr. Lovelock's statement below. You may come to your own conclusions about the actions we need to take. Or like me, you may want more information. The world, and most especially the United States, is just coming out of an intense period of denial of the facts of global warming. Though we do not need more studies to prove that global warming exists, we do need studies to look at the best solutions. Perhaps some mix of nuclear power is called for, but as we search for solutions, we should not accept anything less than a total rethinking of civilization as we know it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nuclear Power is the Only Green Solution
James Lovelock
Independent.UK

Monday 24 May 2004

We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger.

Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, was far-sighted to say that global warming is a more serious threat than terrorism. He may even have underestimated, because, since he spoke, new evidence of climate change suggests it could be even more serious, and the greatest danger that civilisation has faced so far.

Most of us are aware of some degree of warming; winters are warmer and spring comes earlier. But in the Arctic, warming is more than twice as great as here in Europe and in summertime, torrents of melt water now plunge from Greenland's kilometre-high glaciers. The complete dissolution of Greenland's icy mountains will take time, but by then the sea will have risen seven metres, enough to make uninhabitable all of the low lying coastal cities of the world, including London, Venice, Calcutta, New York and Tokyo. Even a two metre rise is enough to put most of southern Florida under water.

The floating ice of the Arctic Ocean is even more vulnerable to warming; in 30 years, its white reflecting ice, the area of the US, may become dark sea that absorbs the warmth of summer sunlight, and further hastens the end of the Greenland ice. The North Pole, goal of so many explorers, will then be no more than a point on the ocean surface.

Not only the Arctic is changing; climatologists warn a four-degree rise in temperature is enough to eliminate the vast Amazon forests in a catastrophe for their people, their biodiversity, and for the world, which would lose one of its great natural air conditioners.

The scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2001 that global temperature would rise between two and six degrees Celsius by 2100. Their grim forecast was made perceptible by last summer's excessive heat; and according to Swiss meteorologists, the Europe-wide hot spell that killed over 20,000 was wholly different from any previous heat wave. The odds against it being a mere deviation from the norm were 300,000 to one. It was a warning of worse to come.

What makes global warming so serious and so urgent is that the great Earth system, Gaia, is trapped in a vicious circle of positive feedback. Extra heat from any source, whether from greenhouse gases, the disappearance of Arctic ice or the Amazon forest, is amplified, and its effects are more than additive. It is almost as if we had lit a fire to keep warm, and failed to notice, as we piled on fuel, that the fire was out of control and the furniture had ignited. When that happens, little time is left to put out the fire before it consumes the house. Global warming, like a fire, is accelerating and almost no time is left to act.

So what should we do? We can just continue to enjoy a warmer 21st century while it lasts, and make cosmetic attempts, such as the Kyoto Treaty, to hide the political embarrassment of global warming, and this is what I fear will happen in much of the world. When, in the 18th century, only one billion people lived on Earth, their impact was small enough for it not to matter what energy source they used.

But with six billion, and growing, few options remain; we can not continue drawing energy from fossil fuels and there is no chance that the renewables, wind, tide and water power can provide enough energy and in time. If we had 50 years or more we might make these our main sources. But we do not have 50 years; the Earth is already so disabled by the insidious poison of greenhouse gases that even if we stop all fossil fuel burning immediately, the consequences of what we have already done will last for 1,000 years. Every year that we continue burning carbon makes it worse for our descendants and for civilisation.

Worse still, if we burn crops grown for fuel this could hasten our decline. Agriculture already uses too much of the land needed by the Earth to regulate its climate and chemistry. A car consumes 10 to 30 times as much carbon as its driver; imagine the extra farmland required to feed the appetite of cars.

By all means, let us use the small input from renewables sensibly, but only one immediately available source does not cause global warming and that is nuclear energy. True, burning natural gas instead of coal or oil releases only half as much carbon dioxide, but unburnt gas is 25 times as potent a greenhouse agent as is carbon dioxide. Even a small leakage would neutralise the advantage of gas.

The prospects are grim, and even if we act successfully in amelioration, there will still be hard times, as in war, that will stretch our grandchildren to the limit. We are tough and it would take more than the climate catastrophe to eliminate all breeding pairs of humans; what is at risk is civilisation. As individual animals we are not so special, and in some ways are like a planetary disease, but through civilisation we redeem ourselves and become a precious asset for the Earth; not least because through our eyes the Earth has seen herself in all her glory.

There is a chance we may be saved by an unexpected event such as a series of volcanic eruptions severe enough to block out sunlight and so cool the Earth. But only losers would bet their lives on such poor odds. Whatever doubts there are about future climates, there are no doubts that greenhouse gases and temperatures both are rising.

We have stayed in ignorance for many reasons; important among them is the denial of climate change in the US where governments have failed to give their climate scientists the support they needed. The Green lobbies, which should have given priority to global warming, seem more concerned about threats to people than with threats to the Earth, not noticing that we are part of the Earth and wholly dependent upon its well being. It may take a disaster worse than last summer's European deaths to wake us up.

Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen. If we fail to concentrate our minds on the real danger, which is global warming, we may die even sooner, as did more than 20,000 unfortunates from overheating in Europe last summer.

I find it sad and ironic that the UK, which leads the world in the quality of its Earth and climate scientists, rejects their warnings and advice, and prefers to listen to the Greens. But I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy.

Even if they were right about its dangers, and they are not, its worldwide use as our main source of energy would pose an insignificant threat compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves and sea levels rising to drown every coastal city of the world. We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear - the one safe, available, energy source - now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.

The writer is an independent scientist and the creator of the Gaia hypothesis of the Earth as a self-regulating organism.

Live From the March for Women's Lives

t r u t h o u t | Reporting and Blog
Live From the March for Women's Lives
From Washington D.C.
By TO Editor Kelpie Wilson

4:09 P.M. Eastern
Sunday 25 April 2004

Cameron Mannheim: "I hope John Ashcroft is listening because YOU are a direct threat to his vision of America. And Bush, you better beware. When women vote, Democrats win!" From the stage.

We are back at the mall.

Carol Mosely Brown just told us that we have made history today. This is the biggest march ever in DC. Wow.

I am going to sign off now. It has been an incredible weekend marching with more than a million women and men. I'm going to sit here for awhile and listen to the rest of the speakers and think about what I can do to help send Bush a pink slip in the fall.

2:13 P.M. Eastern
Sunday 25 April 2004

Well we are marching now. Made it off the mall and we're heading down Constitution. I found the other Black Block: Black Women's Health Imperative. They have a dynamite cheering section too. "Women's :Health, Not Corporate Wealth." "Not the Church, not the State. Women should decide their fate."

And what have we here? Bellydancers for Peace and Justice.fabulous! They are singing:

"1,2,3,4-patriarchy's at the door. 4,5,6,8- stop the patriarchal state."

Plus they are wearing T-shirts that say: "What Would Durga do?" I've found my spiritual home at this march.

A sign I love held by a young man: "Stop control of the fetus by the penis."

1:09 P.M. Eastern
Sunday 25 April 2004

"Women of color know that portraying the movement for choice as simply a desire to have an abortion is an evil, machivellian strategy. Women of color know that choice is so much more. We are dying of AIDS and poor health care.We must fight together for true choice which is the essence of freedom.
-- Jewel, from the stage

12:32 P.M. Eastern
Sunday 25 April 2004

Couldn't find Nancy so I'm wandering and taking pictures of the crowd. Here is a black and pink cheer squad. They seem to be part of the black bloc. Imagine orange hair, cheerleader boots, black bandanas, a pink tutu. And some precision call and respose cheerleading. A snappy drum back up.

I thought the march was stepping off but it looks like anarchy around here. A four headed pink pro-choice dragon just wriggled by me.

11:58 A.M. Eastern
Sunday 25 April 2004

I've just walked the whole length of the - packed with people the whole way. Hoping to find my friend Nancy with the Cleveland Unitarians. The Texas coalition just marched - don't mess with Texas. The march is about to step off.

11:12 A.M. Eastern
Sunday 25 April 2004

One of the most exciting things about the march is the emphasis on total choice - not just access to contraceptives and abortion.

Speaker after speaker is saying we must have reproductive justice. We must end poverty because women who have no economic opportunities have no choice.

It's incredible here, people as far as eye can see and so many young people, women and men. We are the future.

11:02 A.M. Eastern
Sunday 25 April 2004

I promised yesterday that I would explain why an environmentalist would be concerned about reproductive choice, so I stopped by the office of Population Connection this morning to collect some snacks for the march see what they had to say. Turns out it's not a complex connection between women, population and the environment.

I spoke with communications director Timothy Cline who told me that without exception, everywhere women have been allowed total access to health care, education and economic opportunity, women have chosen smaller families. Do I need to explain how growing human population hurts the Earth? Just one example should make the point. Think about water. Years of drought have reservoirs dropping throughout the west. There's not enough water for growing populations and spawning fish. Our excess reproduction hurts the reproductive opportunities of fish and other creatures. Give women the choice and they will not only do what's right for their own families but what's right for the earth.

I'm at the mall now and Hilary Clinton just took the stage to an absolutely earsplitting screaming cheer. She says over 50 million women who were eligible did not vote in the 2000 elections. Let's elect a prochoice president this fall.

9:04 A.M. Eastern
Sunday 25 April 2004

Good morning.

One thing I did not accomplish yesterday was to find a pro-choice T-shirt. By the time I got to Dupont Circle the Planned Parenthood shirts were all gone. So I was overjoyed to find that the pro-choice fairies had left one in a bag hanging on my door this morning! That's service. Now if only we could deliver women's reproductive health care services so easily.

I'm having breakfast in the hotel dining room and a very beautiful woman in traditonal African dress just walked by. Many international women are staying at this hotel. My press packet lists contacts from more than 60 countries. As bad as things are here, the challenges are so much greater in poor counties. I know we'll hear a lot about that today because US policies like the Global Gag Rule are killing women around the world.

I saw the antis yesterday with their bloody fetus truck. Last night on the news, they interviewed a woman sobbing hysterically about the "holocaust" of abortion. "They talk about the deaths in Iraq," she cried, "but the holocaust of children's deaths is so much greater."

What is she talking about? The three-week old embryo I once had to abort? I've seen pictures of such embryos and they don't look at all like a child. More like a tiny worm, less than a centimeter long. Ninety percent of US abortions take place at this stage, but the pro-life movement would have us believe that they are all like the twenty week bloody fetus picture on their truck. It's too bad we can't unite on a common goal of reducing abortions to the smallest number possible by providing women with the contraceptives and health care they need and not throwing obstacles in their path so when they do need to abort they can do it when it looks like a worm and not a child.

6:38 P.M. Eastern
Saturday 24 April 2004

I picked up an interesting book at Dupont Circle today. It is called Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century. It's by Alexander Sanger who is, you guessed it, Margaret Sanger's grandson. Alex Sanger was there at the table signing books so I got to do a mini-interview with him as follows:

KW: The blurb on the back of your book says that the pro-choice movement must re-think its message and change the rhetoric if we are to be successful. How do we need to change the rhetoric?

AS: We need to put abortion in the context of human reproduction. It's supposed to be a reproductive rights movement yet it does not put abortion in the moral context of what is needed for successful reproduction. Women are dying all over the world because they are having too many births.

KW: That was certainly true in your grandmother's day. I read her autobiography. She talked about how women were worn out and used up from having these huge families. But is that really true today, outside of the third world?

AS: Yes. Childbirth is very hard on women. One third of births in this country are by ceasarian section. Women need abortion to be available so they aren't forced to push themselves beyond their capacity for successful reproduction.

KW: So what specifically needs to change about the rhetoric?

AS: We need to appeal to men. It's not just about women's rights. Men want children too.

KW: And they want healthy, successful children, so they should support access to abortion?

AS: Yes.

KW: We were talking about the film called My Fetus that was broadcast in Britain recently. It has footage of an abortion being performed on a woman who is 4 weeks pregnant as well as images of aborted fetuses. It is an attempt to take another look at the images of aborted fetuses that have been used so successfully by the anti-choice crowd to stir emotion. But they don't like the film. They say it makes abortion look too easy. What do you think of this film?

AS: Well I haven't seen it yet, but I think it's a terrific idea to face up to what abortion is and not be ashamed of it.

KW: Is it killing?

AS: Not killing a human being, but it is ending a life.

KW: A sperm is alive. An egg is alive.

AS: Exactly.

KW: So what is it like to be Margaret Sanger's grandson?

AS: My grandmother valued children for their own intrinsic worth. It was wonderful being her grandson. She was a wonderful grandmother. And I'm proud of her. She started this whole movement.

KW: Thanks. I'm looking forward to reading your book.

Well there are all sorts of concerts and raves going on tonight, but after last night's red-eye flight from Oregon I'm ready for a little shut-eye. I'll be back in the morning to cover the big march.

4:20 P.M. Eastern
Saturday 24 April 2004

I'm sitting in Dupont Circle where a few hundred people are milling about amongst hot pink banners, stickers and T-shirts. It's a young crowd, the third wave of feminism very much present. There has been a parade of young, mostly female, singers and comedians over the past few hours. The big speeches are being saved for tomorrow, so the mood is light. Sarah Weddington is speaking now. She's the attorney who won Roe vs Wade thirty-some years ago. Things look bleak, she said, but you all are the reinforcements and the reinforcements will save the day.

This event is very much about telling our stories and there is a 20 foot-long bulletin board covered with fluttering pink sheets of paper where people have answered the question: I am marching because... I'll share some of them with you:
For freedom.
I've got my own Bush to worry about.
I march for all rape survivors.
For Emma.
Because I was a wanted child.
I would have died if I had not had a safe, legal abortion.
Because I have a daughter and a granddaughter and because I can remember.
My God is prochoice.
I have a HS diploma and 2 college degrees thanks to my freedom of choice.
I am named for my great aunt, who died before I was born, of an illegal abortion.
I'm marching because I can.

1:54 P.M. Eastern
Saturday 24 April 2004

I just got to meet one of my personal heroes - Frances Kissling of Catholics for Free Choice. I interviewed her standing in front of the Vatican embassy in protest of the politicization of her religion. "The Vatican is causing deaths with its anti-woman, anti-family policies," she said. "Catholics need to stand up and take back their religion."

She spoke against fundamentalism and I asked her if things had ever been any different in the church. She said yes, that for the first 1000 years priests were allowed to marry and they naturally had more sympathy and understanding of women and families.

What can ordinary Catholics do, I asked. Get political and raise our voices was her reply.

TC and I just had a lovely brunch. The cherry trees are blooming, birds are chirping and helicopters are whup-whupping overhead. TC just got a cell phone report that things are really hot over at the World Bank demo. I am going to stroll back over to DuPont circle and see what's in the Planned Parenthood tents.

11:04 A.M. Eastern
Saturday 24 April 2004

The shuttle dispatcher asked me if I was here for the march. "How did you know," I asked suspiciously. "Just there's so many women coming through here this morning. Gonna be a million women here this weekend. I'm going fishing." We both laughed. "In the Potomac?" I asked. "Naw, striped bass, Chesapeake Bay."

It's going to be a beautiful sunny weekend here in the Capitol, for fishing or marching.

I got to my hotel and immediately got a call from my old friend TC. There's a demonstration at the Vatican embassy right now, do I want to meet him there? Can't miss that, so a quick shower and I'm out the door.

9:31 A.M. Eastern
Saturday 24 April 2004

I've just arrived at National Airport and am sending this from the baggage claim. My travel agent refuses to call it Reagan National Airport. It was Ronald Reagan who first issued the Global Gag Rule that yanked vital funding from women's health clinics worldwide. Mary gave me a cheer when I told her I was going to the March for Women's Lives, and I'm arriving with a whole lot of cheers from friends in Oregon. I'm marching for them too.

The plane from Chicago was packed with marchers. I sat next to a high school teacher and her 11 year old daughter. "The best man for the job might be a woman," said the button the daughter wore.

The last time I flew to DC, I wore a spotted owl costume -- on the plane. I went with a contingent of spotted owls and salmon to lobby for ancient forest protection. The salmon spawned on the Capitol steps, dropping a load of bright pink ping pong balls. A collection of experiences like this has qualified me to be Truthout's environment editor. So why, you may ask, is the environment editor covering the March for Women's Lives? The long answer is that women's lives and environmental protection have everything to do with each other. More on that later. The short answer is: I am a human being who finds it essential to have control over my own body. I don't want to be beaten, raped, imprisoned, poisoned, experimented on or have my womb turned over to G. W. Bush and his army of fundamentalist terrorists.