Spot on! It is not conservatives who espouse overpopulation, it is typically white male liberals who worry about "overpopulation" in countries with people of color. One of the loudest cheerleaders of reducing African nations' population has been Al Gore. https://t.co/6vM5tspph4
— Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) May 8, 2020
Gore: 'Making fertility management ubiquitously available…is crucial to future shape of human civilization. Africa is projected to have more people than China & India by mid-century. More than China & India combined by end of century.'
— Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) May 8, 2020
Prompted by the shocking falsehoods in Planet of the Humans, this thread asks why so many people in rich nations claim that the biggest environmental problem is #PopulationGrowth. The conclusion will enrage some people, but I think it’s unavoidable.
Let’s take this step by step— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) May 7, 2020
There’s no question that population growth exerts environmental pressure. It’s one of many issues about which we should be concerned. But the global impact is much smaller than a lot of people imagine.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) May 7, 2020
But I see population growth repeatedly blamed as THE MAIN CAUSE of climate breakdown and other global issues. This is flat wrong.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) May 7, 2020
There’s something else to note. The great majority of the world’s population growth is happening in countries where most people are black or brown. https://t.co/foJ7nVlKQj
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) May 7, 2020
So why do so many people in the rich world (the great majority of whom, in my experience, are male, white and quite affluent) insist, often furiously, that the “real” global issue, the “elephant in the room”, is population growth?
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) May 7, 2020
The first part of the answer is deflection. Blaming other people for your own impacts is a familiar means of avoiding responsibility and shedding feelings of guilt. But why point to the birth rates of the poorest people? Why not to consumption by billionaires?
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) May 7, 2020
It’s clear to me that generalised deflection is an insufficient answer. This is a particular variety of deflection. What we see is white people pointing the finger at black and brown people, saying “It’s not us. It’s Them”.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) May 7, 2020
In different ways, this has been happening for a long time. Throughout the colonial era and after, the rich nations portrayed themselves as the “civilised”, virtuous actors, while their colonial subjects were “inferior”, “barbaric” and “degenerate”.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) May 7, 2020
There was – and is – a long-standing moral panic about the reproduction rates of these “inferior”, “barbaric” and “degenerate” people. If something was not done, “They” would overwhelm “Us”. The human species would decline as “inferior” people took over.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) May 7, 2020
It was this terror of being “outbred”, “outnumbered”, “diluted” that inspired the eugenics movement. A similar set of claims persists to this day, and is popular among white supremacists. It’s called the Replacement Theory.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) May 7, 2020
I’m not saying this to cause offence. I’m saying it because it appears to be the most likely and parsimonious explanation of a bizarre phenomenon: affluent people with enormous impacts pointing the finger at poor people with tiny impacts.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) May 7, 2020
Nor am I claiming that most of those who over-emphasise population are intentional racists. I think it is possible to entertain subconscious racist beliefs without actively wishing to discriminate against people of colour.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) May 7, 2020
UK Environmentalist George Monbiot on Moore’s film:
Excerpt:
The film offers only one concrete solution to our predicament: the most toxic of all possible answers. “We really have got to start dealing with the issue of population … without seeing some sort of major die-off in population, there’s no turning back.”
Yes, population growth does contribute to the pressures on the natural world. But while the global population is rising by 1% a year, consumption, until the pandemic, was rising at a steady 3%. High consumption is concentrated in countries where population growth is low. Where population growth is highest, consumption tends to be extremely low. Almost all the growth in numbers is in poor countries largely inhabited by black and brown people. When wealthy people, such as Moore and Gibbs, point to this issue without the necessary caveats, they are saying, in effect, “it’s not Us consuming, it’s Them breeding.” It’s not hard to see why the far-right loves this film.
Population is where you go when you haven’t thought your argument through. Population is where you go when you don’t have the guts to face the structural, systemic causes of our predicament: inequality, oligarchic power, capitalism. Population is where you go when you want to kick down.
