John Feeney

Once I moved about like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all. -- Geronimo

This is a photo (slightly cropped) of the last band of aboriginal people in North America to fight and resist the takeover of their landbase by the United States government. Numbering about 39, including women and children, this band of Apaches including Naiche, son of Cochise (on horseback) and Geronimo (standing in front of Naiche), evaded capture by a quarter of the US army and  three thousand Mexican troops, finally turning themselves in, ending a key chapter in human history.

The ending of a tribal, non-agriculutral way of life among the aboriginal peoples of North America happened in about the same way it has happened worldwide. Central among proximate causes has been the growth of the population of those of us in civilization. The root cause has been civilization itself.

The people in the photo are standing on a spot in what is today southern Arizona. Twenty years after the photo was taken, my grandmother took a teaching job in a small town not far from that spot. She lived into the late 1980s. Indeed, it wasn't long ago that people still lived freely, as had their ancestors, apart from agriculture-based industrial civilization, right here where we in the United States live today. [1] [2]

Likewise, relative to the whole of human history, it has been only in the last instant that not everyone has lived in small bands, foraging and hunting for food, attuned to rather than trying to separate themselves from nature. [3]

Today as we puzzle over where we went wrong ecologically and socially, and scramble to find some way to fix things, we forget that for 3 million years we had many variations on a basic system which worked, made for fulfilling lives, and was sustainable.

I expect to focus much more on this topic in future writing.

For some insightful references see the section on core ecological issues and the relevant books in the book section. For an engaging source on the events surrounding the photo above, try David Roberts' Once They Moved Like the Wind.

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[1] During much of their history, and certainly at the time of the photo, the Apaches were not strictly hunter-gatherers. Owing to their roots, however, their surrender is an appropriate symbol for the loss of a way of life based not on agriculture, attuned to the natural world.

[2] While Geronimo's surrender maked the official end of the "Apache wars," reports suggest remnant bands of Apaches continued to live freely in the mountains of Mexico for years afterward.

[3] The period since the dawn of agriculture 10 thousand years ago to the present represents about one third of one percent of human history.

This article was published today at the Green Room. It examines the taboo currently suppressing open, public discussion of human overpopulation. It introduces the Global Population Speak Out, a project designed to weaken the taboo.

One point I'd like to have made more strongly is that the taboo is especially visible in the failure of major environmental organizations to speak up about overpopulation. They need to be pushed until they do. Otherwise, they have no chance of playing a major role in solving the global ecological crisis.

From the GPSO blog:

A seldom discussed, tragic consequence of human population growth is the loss of tribal cultures and peoples. It is the loss, as well, of ways of life which persisted for nearly all of human history until our population exploded in the last fraction of one percent of our time on Earth.

If anyone participating in GPSO wants to to speak out on one of the most underreported consequences of the growth of the human population, this would be a good choice.

An excellent source of information is the site of Survival International.

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I would add that Survival International seems to say little about the obvious, fundamental link between population growth and the loss of tribal peoples. I suspect it's a sign of how powerful the taboo against mention of overpopulation has been. I hope they'll feel freer in the future to talk about it. It's hard to imagine any hope for tribal cultures if the rest of the world's population grows much bigger.

Here's the word from George Plumb, President of Vermonters for a Sustainable Population:

In conjunction with the the GPSO the weekly community newspaper of the state capitol of Montpelier, Vermont has proposed doing an eight page supplement on population. I think this will be pretty ground breaking. How many newspapers in the country have devoted a supplement to population? The only problem is Vermonters for a Sustainable Population, of which I am the president, needs to come up with $3,000 to help pay for the xtra costs. Unfortunately we have no major donors cpable of this kind of financial support in our thrity member organization. If anyone knows of a potential source I would really appreciate your ideas.

That would be a first wouldn't it? So if you know any source to help with funding please let me know and I'll forward your message to George, or go here to contact George directly.

A recent issue of Science contains a short piece on GPSO. If you're registered there, you'll find it here. It's in the "Random Samples" section of the October 31 issue, Volume 322, Issue 5902. From the piece:

At a time when some developed nations are paying citizens to bolster flagging birth-rates (Science, 30 June 2006, p. 1894), a grass-roots group of scientists and environmentalists is calling for a new push to limit human numbers.

Overpopulation is threatening life as we know it on the planet, say members of a movement called Global Population Speak Out (http://gpso.wordpress.com/), which aims to persuade at least 50 “respected voices” to “speak out in some way” about the problem for a month next year.

GPSO is bringing scientific voices worldwide to bear on the population issue. It's great to have the opportunity to alert a large portion of the scientific community to what we're doing.

The GPSO letter (see the prior entry here) is now going out and we are receiving pledges. Note that you do not have to receive the GPSO letter to participate. Please go here, read the directions, and send in your pledge! Chances are you might fit in some way into one of the official categories of invitees. But that is not a necessity; we cannot cover every reasonable category. We will make every effort to document whatever action you take to speak out. So just pledge!

Be a part of this historic event. Send your pledge to GlobalPopulationSpeakOut [at] gmail [dot] com

(Go straight to the GPSO website)

I write to raise awareness of certain fundamental but underreported and generally misunderstood ecological issues, particularly the problem of the size and growth of the human population. Sometimes something other than writing may hold more potential in that regard.

Not long ago I came up with an idea for a small project aimed at bringing new or returning voices to the public discussion of population issues. That project is now a reality. It's called the Global Population Speak Out (GPSO) and is documented on its own website.

It's an effort to weaken the taboo against speaking out on population. It came from a simple idea: What would happen if a lot of new, qualified voices were to speak out on population all at once? Wouldn't that go a long way toward breaking down the taboo?

GPSO hinges on a letter (actually an email) we will send to a large number of scientists, environmental writers, executives of environmental NGOs, and other prominent people. Only a few are widely known for public statements on the population issue. We invite them to speak out on it during February in any way they choose.  A key is that they can be sure they will have plenty of good company in speaking out; for only if we get at least 50 pledges to speak out will we ask participants to honor their pledges.

Note that you too can participate!

Our hope is that by concentrating these messages about population into one month and seeing to it that most come from voices not already widely associated with the issue, we'll grow the number of people who speak publicly on the topic, raise the prominence of the issue, and make it a little easier for others to speak out in the future.

I'm pleased to report that some highly respected scientists, writers, environmental activists, and others have lent their names to the project as signers of the GPSO letter. Their willingness to sign on speaks to the urgency of the population issue and gives the project a real chance to succeed.

Let's see how this thing goes!

Relevant to an article on which I'm slowly working, an important new study looking at human population growth and the Quaternary Megafauna Extinction shows our population has grown at the direct expense of other species. Here's marine scientist Emmett Duffy's summary and discussion of the study:

Here's the study:

We must be cautious though in interpreting these data. They do not mean pre-agricultural people were causing extinctions at rates resembling those we're seeing today. In fact, the evidence is clear that for nearly all of human history prior to agriculture, hunting-gathering ways of living came much, much closer than today's society to true sustainability -- in part because population sizes were so much smaller. (Evidence suggests, in fact, that many hunting-gathering societies made efforts to hold their populations to within ecological limits. [1]) As mentioned in the article, species extinction rates were modest until not long before the advent of agriculture when the growth of the human population began to accelerate.

Click to read more ...

It seems we may now have another influential scientific voice speaking out on the urgency of the problem of population. Bravo to Shahbaz Khan!

From the article:

Global population growth is looming as a bigger threat to the world's food production and water supplies than climate change, a leading scientist says.

Speaking at a CSIRO public lecture in Canberra yesterday, UNESCO's chief of sustainable water resources development, Professor Shahbaz Khan, said overpopulation's impacts were potentially more economically, socially and environmentally destructive than those of climate change.

My latest article was published in the Guardian.

 
Titled Return of the population timebomb, it aims to dismantle the argument that we can solve our environmental problems by reducing consumption while ignoring population. Ecological footprint data provide one way of demonstrating the large and dangerous error in that notion.

That wasn't my title by the way. (I suggested Living lightly is not enough.) But I like it. It pushes the subject of population out there with a certain audacity. We need more of that. The idea that we must be exceptionally careful or tentative about how we discuss population strikes me as an unnecessary caving in to the propaganda of activists who seek to squelch the discussion. For some, it may compete with their preferred causes. Others simply misunderstand the issue. But when we approach population humanely and logically it is typically only those activists we offend.

Anyone who talks about population with a clear misanthropic (or excessively anthropocentric) intent should simply be dismissed. Leave them out of the public discussion. For everyone else, facing and discussing population forthrightly is perhaps the most important humanitarian step we can take at this time in human history.

Feel free to contact me to let me know your thoughts on the argument in the Guardian article. I believe it's almost airtight. Perhaps the only way to gain any leverage to refute it is to challenge the validity of the ecological footprint data. But, as I mention in the article, it appears that if the data are off base it's because they are too conservative. And that only strengthens my argument.