The Environmental Movement’s Retreat From
Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization (1970-1998):

A First Draft of History

Roy Beck and Leon Kolankiewicz
June 2001

"Causes 1 & 2"

 

Cause #1: U.S. Fertility Dropped Below Replacement-Level Rate in 1972
 Cause #2: Abortion and Contraceptive Politics Created Organized Opposition
Notes

 

Cause #1: U.S. Fertility Dropped Below Replacement-Level Rate in 1972

In 1972, the U.S. Total Fertility Rate fell to below the 2.1 births per woman that marks the replacement-level fertility rate. By 1976, fertility had hit an all-time low of 1.7 and hovered just above that for years.

A common remembrance of aging population activists is their memory of the night in 1973 when TV broadcasters announced that the 1972 U.S. fertility rate had reached zero population growth. The American people apparently were profoundly confused by this announcement, with many believing the U.S. population problem had been solved. (In fact, because of what demographers call "population momentum," it takes a country up to 70 years after the replacement-level fertility rate is reached to actually stop growing. But by 1972, the fertility rate had indeed declined to a level low enough to eventually produce zero population growth, as long as immigration remained reasonably low.)

With zero population growth supposedly achieved (or at least approached), many people in the population movement may have felt their activism was no longer needed. Americans had reduced the size of the average family as far as was necessary. On average they were living up to the battle cry of "stop at two." Many activists shifted their former population energies into feminism, other aspects of conservation and environmentalism, or moved on to other pursuits altogether. "Full-Formula" environmentalism that dealt with both Individual Impact and Population Size factors shrank to a small core constituency as quickly as it had burst into a mass popular movement. The population committees of environmental groups lost popularity and significance or disbanded altogether.

The change to "half-Formula" (or "Individual Impact-only") environmentalism would have made sense if indeed the U.S. population no longer was growing, or if overall environmental quality goals had been achieved. Neither was the case in the 1970s, however.

The neglect of the population issue within organizations surely influenced new employees as they came on board during this period. Many of them probably never heard of the "full-Formula" environmental approach. They worked only on the Individual Impact side of the Formula. Many had little background in the natural sciences, resource conservation, or analytical/quantitative fields. To them, population advocacy may have looked like an external issue that could easily be left to external groups to handle.

Some population groups which had been reluctant to expand their worldwide focus to include the much-more-controversial domestic U.S. population issues may have felt they had been let off the hook by the U.S. fertility news. That left the work of keeping the flame of the movement alive to ZPG and to smaller environment-oriented population groups: Negative Population growth and the Environmental Fund (now called Population-Environment Balance). ZPG lost a large part of its "Johnny-Carson era" membership. Still, its leaders knew well that fertility could easily rise above replacement-level fertility again and that there was another source of population growth (immigration) in addition to fertility that also needed attention.

Perhaps another factor was at work as well. The overwhelmingly non-Hispanic, white leadership of the environmental movement may have felt it was defensible to address population growth as long as the great bulk of this growth came from non-Hispanic whites, which it did during the Baby Boom. ("We have met the enemy, and he is us!" from the Walt Kelly Pogo cartoon was a favorite quote of population activists in this era.) But the situation changed dramatically after 1972. From that year forward, the fertility of non-Hispanic whites was below the replacement rate while that of black Americans and Latinos remained well above the replacement rate.43 To talk of fertility reductions after 1972 was to draw disproportionate attention to non-whites.

Certain ethnic minorities and their spokespersons —with vivid collective memories of disgraceful treatment at the hands of the white majority and acutely aware of their comparative powerlessness in American society— were deeply suspicious of possible hidden agendas in the population stabilization movement. As the Reverend Jesse Jackson told the Rockefeller Commission in 1971: "...[any] group that has been subjected to as much harassment as our community has is suspect of any programs that would have the effect of either reducing or levelling off our population growth. Virtually all the security we have is in the number of children we produce."44 Dr. Eugene S. Callender, president of the New York Urban Coalition added: "Within this country, Blacks, Indians, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Orientals feel that such [population] control is solely to the advantage of the majority population. Minority groups at this point in history do not feel that they can afford to trust that the ‘nobler instincts’ of the white majority will prohibit the resurgence of subtle and overt forms of racism."45 And Manuel Aragon, speaking in Spanish, declared to the Commission: "...what we must do is to encourage large Mexican American families so that we will eventually be so numerous that the system will either respond or it will be overwhelmed."46

During the 26 years after 1972, the non-Hispanic white share of population growth declined significantly from the 1970 era.47 Thus, by the 1990s, a majority of the nation’s growth stemmed from sources other than non-Hispanic whites (especially Latin American and Asian immigrants and their offspring). Environmentalist leaders —proud and protective of their claim to moral high ground— may have been reluctant to jeopardize this by venturing into the political minefield of the nation’s volatile racial/ethnic relations through appearing to point fingers at "outsiders," "others" or "people of color" as responsible for America’s ongoing problem with population growth.

Yet by opting out of this risk, environmentalists effectively abandoned the American environment to the mercy of endless population growth —which will have multiple, adverse, and growing environmental impacts regardless of its source. William Hollingsworth’s book Ending the Explosion contains a hypothetical debate in the U.S. Senate on the global population growth issue that is also germane to U.S. domestic population growth:

Senator See now breaks her silence. "....I can easily see why you object to ‘the population explosion’: the populations that are still growing so fast are those of people of color. What some of your ilk call ‘zero population growth’ is but one more example of Western white racism and neocolonialism."

An upset Senator Sane responds. "Senator See, the sense and sanity I value are woven from all colors. The population explosion would be no less alarming to me were it wholly composed of folks with white skin and pink elbows. But I fear there is no way I can convince you of that, given my race’s shameful record of racism. Perhaps we whites of the North countries should say nothing about population growth in Africa, Asia, and Latin America."

"But," begins Senator Straight, "such a cowardly silence would place not seeming to be racist ahead of not being racist. One of the most condescending things, and thus one of the most racist things, that can be done to the nations of the South is this: ask of them something less than their critical share of responsibility for building a humane global future."48


Cause #2: Abortion and Contraceptive Politics
Created Organized Opposition

In June of 1960, the Food & Drug Administration approved oral contraceptives for sale. By the late 1960s, the Vatican and American Catholic leadership were engaged in a major counterattack to the growing use of contraceptives in the United States. They focused a considerable amount of their ire on groups advocating population control.

Their focus made a certain sense from their point of view. Most population and environmental groups which called for stabilization also made explicit calls, not for abstinence or celibacy, but rather for more availability of reliable, safe contraceptives and sex education. Many of them also called for the legalization of abortion.

Then in 1973, in Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion. That set off a much more intense campaign by the Catholic Church —and increasingly by conservative Protestants— against the whole of the population movement. Abortion had been something of a minor issue within the population stabilization movement but was included because of the thought that fertility might not be brought to replacement level without the availability of abortion. As it turned out, legalized abortion was not a necessary component to reach replacement-level fertility. America reached its stabilization fertility goal the year before the Supreme Court legalized abortion.

But to the Catholic hierarchy and the pro-life movement, the legalized abortion and population stabilization causes have been inextricably linked. In the 1990s, it was still difficult for a pro-stabilization person or group to get a hearing among many Catholic and pro-life groups without being automatically considered an abortion apologist.

A number of leaders of philanthropic foundations and politicians involved with population efforts in the 1970s have said that active measures by Catholic bishops and the Vatican were the greatest barrier to moving population measures and in setting a national population policy. Congressman James Scheuer was a member of the 1972 Commission on Population Growth and the American Future. In 1992, he wrote that "the Vatican and others blocked any reasonable discussion of population problems."49 This opposition applied both nationally and internationally. In a 1993 interview, Milton P. Siegel, Assistant Director General of the World Health Organization from 1946-70, indicated that, "one way or another, sometimes surreptitiously, the Catholic church used its influence to defeat, if you will, any movement toward family planning or birth control."50

As population activists reported on the Catholic activism and criticized it, the population movement began to be tarred as anti-Catholic. Environmental groups seeking membership, funds and support from a wide spectrum of Americans had good reason to stay out of population issues altogether, rather than risk offending their own current and potential members who also were members of the largest religious denomination in America. Environmental groups with Catholic board members were known to use them as reasons for not being more involved in population issues.

Roman Catholic opposition, both from the Vatican itself and from American Catholics, apparently played a key role in pressuring government policy-makers as well.

On May 5, 1972, gearing up for his re-election campaign, President Nixon publicly disavowed the recommendations of his own Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, which U.S. Catholic bishops had blasted for its permissive attitude toward contraception and abortion.51 Evidently still concerned about overpopulation, however, Nixon ordered a study in April, 1974, of the national security implications of population growth.52 When released in 1975, President Gerald Ford endorsed the findings of National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200). The report strongly stated that exploding populations in the third world would threaten the security of the United States. These threats would come from the destabilization of those countries’ economic, political and ecological systems. Besides recommending helping those nations curb their population growth, NSSM 200 called on the U.S. to provide world leadership in population control by seeking to attain stabilization of its own population by the year 2000.53

Although President Ford endorsed the NSSM 200, nothing ever became of it. Historians should carefully sort through the evidence that NSSM 200 was never implemented because of intense pressure applied by the Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Bishops (and that U.S. government officials of Roman Catholic background were particularly susceptible to such pressure). American policy [toward support of international family planning programs] was changed as a result of the Vatican’s not agreeing with our policy," President Reagan’s ambassador to the Vatican told TIME magazine.54 How much pressure was actually exerted is an important question to resolve.

With the U.S. fertility rate at such a low level anyway, it was easier for government officials to ignore the recommendations of NSSM 200, the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, the Global 2000 Report to the President, and numerous scientists and population activists that the United States move forthwith to stabilize its population.

Active efforts within Catholic circles arose to disprove that rising population size had anything to do with deterioration of natural or human environments or the ability of poor countries with rapidly-growing populations to develop economically.55 The worldwide —as opposed to the U.S.— population stabilization movement now had major organized opposition that was gladly encouraged and touted by economic and class interests which saw their wealth and power threatened by a slowing of population growth.

This counter-movement had its intellectual underpinnings as well. Certain influential writers, scholars and well-endowed think-tanks actually went as far as arguing not just that population growth was benign, but that it was good, even essential to continued economic and technological progress.56 The best-known advocate of the "growth is good" school was the late Julian L. Simon, who argued that the human mind was "the ultimate resource," and that the more of those minds there were, the more collective human ingenuity there would be to solve problems, create new resources and forge a better future.57 Simon’s most notorious (and criticized) claim was that "we have in our hands now – actually in our libraries – the technology to feed, clothe and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years."58

Historians however, will want to be careful in ascribing to the whole of the Catholic Church aggressive support for never-ending population growth. The voices from within the hierarchy have been decidedly mixed. The U.S. Catholic bishops in 1991 spoke glowingly of education, good nutrition and health care for women and children that, "promise to improve family welfare and contribute to stabilizing population....Even though it is possible to feed a growing population, the ecological costs of doing so ought to be taken into account."59 And just before the 1994 U.N. International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, the Italian Bishops’ Conference released a study by the Papal Academy of Science entitled "Too Many Births?" It argued that birth control is necessary, "to prevent the emergence of insoluble problems." It suggested that the birth rate must not, "notably exceed the level of two children per couple."60

Notes

43. In 1970, the "black and other" Total Fertility Rate (TFR) was 3.0 (National Center for Health Statistics. 1976. Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970). By 1997, black fertility had fallen to 2.2, slightly above the general population’s replacement rate of 2.1. Overall Hispanic fertility even in 1997 stood at 3.0, well above replacement level; that of Mexican-born women was 3.3 —actually higher than that of women in Mexico itself (National Center for Health Statistics. 1999. National Vital Statistics Report. Vol. 47, No. 18.
44. Supra, note 15. pp. 72-73. Testimony of Rev. Jesse Jackson in hearings before the Commission, Chicago, Illinois, June 21-22, 1971.
45. Supra, note 15. p. 72. Testimony of Dr. Eugene Callender in hearings before the Commission,. New York City, September 27-28, 1971.
46. Supra, note 15. Testimony of Manuel Aragon in hearings before the Commission, Los Angeles, May 3-4, 1971.
47. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the TFR of non-Hispanic white females was 1.8 in 1997 (compared to 2.1 for replacement level). Using Census Bureau data, it can be calculated that in 1970, non-Hispanic whites comprised 83% of the U.S. population and accounted for approximately 78% of the births. By 1994, non-Hispanic whites comprised 74% of the population and accounted for 60% of the births. With immigration included (approximately 90% of which originates from non-European sources), the non-Hispanic white share of current population growth drops well below 50%. According to medium projections of the Census Bureau and the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, non-Hispanic whites will account for 6% of the nation’s population growth between 1995 and 2050, blacks for 18%, Asians for 20%, and Hispanics for 54% (James P. Smith and Barry Edmonston, eds. 1997. The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Table 3.7). By 2050, Non-Hispanic whites are projected to have declined to 51% of the U.S. population from 87% in 1950 (Table 3.10, The New Americans).
48. William G. Hollingsworth. 1996. Ending the Explosion: Population Policies and Ethics for a Humane Future. Santa Ana, CA: Seven Locks Press. p. 31.
49. James Scheuer. 1992. "A Disappointing Outcome: United States and World Population Trends Since the Rockefeller Commission. The Social Contract. Vol. 2, No. 4. Congressman Scheuer (D-NY) was a member of the 1972 Commission on Population Growth and the American Future and at the time this article was written, was Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Natural Resources and Environment as well as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Education and Health.
50. "The Vatican and World Population Policy: An Interview with Milton P. Siegel." The Humanist. March/April 1993.
51. David Simcox. 1992. "Twenty Years Later: A Lost Opportunity." The Social Contract, Vol. 2, No. 4.
52. Stephen D. Mumford. 1996. The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy. Research Triangle Park: Center for Research on Population and Security.
53. Joyce Arthur. 1999. "Mortal Sins of the Vatican." Pro-Choice Press (Vancouver, Canada) Summer 1999.
54. Carl Bernstein. 1992. "Holy Alliance: How Reagan and the Pope conspired to assist Poland’s Solidarity movement and hasten the demise of Communism." Time, February 24. A section of the article was called "The U.S. and the Vatican on Birth Control."
55. Supra, note 48.
56. Ester Boserup. 1965. The Conditions of Agricultural Growth. London: Allen & Unwin, and 1981. Population and Technology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
57. Julian Simon. 1981. The Ultimate Resource. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, and 1986. Theory of Population and Economic Growth. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
58. Julian Simon. 1995. "The State of Humanity – Steadily Improving." Cato Policy Report, Vol. 17, No. 5, October. Washington, D.C.: The Cato Institute.
59. Roy Beck. 1992. "Religions and the Environment: Commitment High Until U.S. Population Issues Raised." The Social Contract. Vol. 3, No. 2.Winter 1992-93.
60. Anon. The Washington Times. 1994. June 11; Anon. The New York Times. June 16. Cited in Lindsey Grant. 1994. "The Cairo Conference: Feminists vs. the Pope." NPG Forum Series. July.
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[MFS note: Return to the menu or continue to "Causes 3 & 4".]
[MFS note: See "Sustainability Authors" for several of the authors cited.]
Used with permission of the authors.