Dear Editor,
Sunday’s Washington Post
editorial “Degrowth” [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/21/degrowth-climate/]
and Kate Cohen’s opinion on Dobbs v Jackson
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/21/roe-dobbs-abortion-rights-two-year-anniversary/] are
profoundly connected and relevant to the 4th of July. Degrowth
is dedicated to protecting the environment. And a women’s birthing rights are
vital to protecting nature. But protecting both will never be
sustainable given the seemingly irreversible dysfunctions of our government,
the UN, and our mind’s cognitive dissonance. Environmental
harm is not a function of economic growth or birth rates. It’s
a function of harmful consumer habits. We only protect what we
love. But loving degrowth won’t serve the environment or our
posterity by loving our wasteful ways and flawed concepts more.
Our reactionary policies to population and
fetus growth are the problem. For the
last five years many smart minds feared ‘Overpopulation’ with a logical but
flawed assumption that hunger is a result of too many people and not enough food. I once believed that, taught it to my students,
and argued it with anyone prioritizing profit over nature. In 1978 I learned the truth. Humanity had (and still has) the financial
and natural resources to end hunger but our governing systems only lack the “political
will”. This was the conclusion of three reports. The Brandt Commission, the National Academy
of Sciences report, and last in a 1980 Presidential Commission on World
Hunger. This bi-partisan Commission
warned, “The most potentially explosive force in the
world today is the frustrated desire of poor people to attain a decent standard
of living. The anger, despair, and often hatred that result represent real and
persistent threats to international order… Neither the cost to national
security of allowing malnutrition to spread nor the gain to be derived by a
genuine effort to resolve the problem can be predicted or measured in any
precise, mathematical way. Nor can monetary value be placed on avoiding the
chaos that will ensue unless the United States and the rest of the world begin
to develop a common institutional framework for meeting such other critical
global threats… Calculable or not, however, this combination of
problems now threatens the national security of all countries just as surely as
advancing armies or nuclear arsenals.” And
then it stated, “that promoting economic development in general, and overcoming
hunger in particular, are tasks far more critical to the U.S. national security
than most policymakers acknowledge or even believe. Since the advent of nuclear
weapons, most Americans have been conditioned to equate national security with
the strength of strategic military forces. The Commission considers this
prevailing belief to be a simplistic illusion. Armed might represents merely
the physical aspect of national security. Military force is ultimately useless
in the absence of the global security that only coordinated international
progress toward social justice can bring.”
They went on to specifically warn of increases in “diseases”,
“international terrorism”, “war”, “environmental problems” and “other human
rights problems”.
Back then the primary driver of excessive births was high
infant mortality rates (IMR). Since 1980 objective science has proven that the economic
wealth and health of poor parents and their children will reduce the need for
their parents’ ‘insurance’ births to ensure one male child to aid them in their
elder years. And motivated healthy and sufficiently
wealthy people have the motivation to protect their children’s future. If we with money have the wisdom to invest our
limited individual financial resources into existing green technologies and
fuel growth in research and development creating more that mimic the genius of
nature’s evolution, humanity could yield sufficient healthy food, clean power,
and unprecedented comforts to all humanity sustainably for more than 10 billion
people without a decline of populations by war, genocide, pandemics, or extreme
weather events. Unfortunately, these are
now causing hunger to grow.
Unfortunately, some of the smartest people continue to argue
that population reduction is the key to a sustainable future. But it’s not the number of people that is destroying
our species vital natural infrastructure.
It’s the wasteful consumption patterns of us in the wealthiest nations. We must value the lives of others and all
children’s future more than protecting our wasteful habits.
Degrowthers are right only if current wasteful consumption methods
are sustained. But if humanities unprecedented
wealth is devoted to achieving the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals our economy
would grow. That won’t happen with reactionary
thinking. A global Garden of Eden (and healthy
eating) on earth is possible, along with liberty and justice for all if we have
the political will.
The greatest barrier to this remains our delusional beliefs
that our current national and global governance systems. Both prioritize protecting national sovereignty
and corporations over human rights and the environment. These systems founded on the illusion of
independence cannot protect both our freedoms and security. This delusional mental construct exists
nowhere in the known universe because “Everything
is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And
that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of
nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....”. Jen Easterly, the Director of our
nation’s newest Federal Agency CISA (the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency)
said this
in a speech Oct. 29, 2021. Trying to
enforce independence these systems cannot protect our freedoms, security, and environmental sustainably. And all we will get is accelerating chaos, violence,
and other harmful unsustainable trends.
This 4th of July Americans will be celebrating the
anniversary of the most profound document in human history, the Declaration of
Independence. Its wisdom still offers
humanity what is essential to achieving all seven of the aspirations in our U.S.
Constitution’s preamble. The Declaration’s first sentence states “When in
the Course of Human events” we can “assume among the Powers of the Earth”...‘”the
Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” to empower us and achieve greatness. Yet we persist in refusing to take care of
nature and each other while with every religion in the world is founded on the “Golden
Rule”.
The Declaration’s second paragraph starts “WE hold these Truths
to be Self-evident”. Yet US policy makers
swear an oath to protect the Constitution - falsely believing it can achieve the universal
aspirations in its preamble. The Declaration’s
signers stressed that virtue is needed to sustain our freedoms. Yet those same signers engineered slavery (a
profound lack of virtue) into the Constitution putting states' rights above
human rights. Now our Supreme Court championed
states' rights again with their Dobbs v. Jackson ruling allowing
states to removing a Women’s inalienable right to control their own body in
some ‘independent’ states thus limiting their access to safe abortions or
family planning. This is a life sentence
five times more lethal than an abortion.
Meanwhile wars, genocides, infectious diseases, natural
disasters, and the lack of clean water/safe sanitation cause more aborted fetuses,
dead children, environmental destruction, and loss of basic human rights that
our governing systems allow. If we are truly
committed to a free, secure, prosperous, and sustainable future for ourselves
and our posterity we should insist every day that ‘everything is connected, interdependent,
and vulnerable....and a global effort is needed. And persist in insisting that businesses prioritize
funding the 17 SDGs - because governments are too indebted, and charities can’t
afford it. If businesses step up and
consumers prioritize purchases that grow heathy people and communities, then capitalism,
profit making, and personal comforts will become sustainable for all.
Humanity is far behind on meeting most of the 168 specific and
measurable goals within the 17 SDGs. Few
Americans have even heard of them. Given
the global evolution of weaponry, war, and political polarization the SDGs need
to be our highest priority. With the growth
of wise and sufficient investments ahead of our cognitive dissonance and
depression about the future.
Abraham Lincoln wrote that the Declaration is our “Apple of Gold”. And our Constitution its “Silver Frame”. It is up to “we the people” this November to champion the Apple of Gold and fix the flaws in its silver frame. The apple led to the foundation of our nation. The frame does no justice domestically or globally.
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