WASHINGTON (April 2001) -- At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1970, environmentalists heartily embraced stabilization of America's population as a core objective of their movement, without which they believed no amount of legislation or spending could stop and reverse the harm being done to the natural world.

But on the eve of Earth Day 2001, no national environmental group works for an end to U.S. population growth. This despite the fact that the 2000 census showed that the 1990s saw the largest population growth in American history, larger even than the peak of the postwar Baby Boom.

What happened?

A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies traces the evolution of the environmental establishment's attitude toward population issues. The report, called Forsaking Fundamentals: The Environmental Establishment Abandons U.S. Population Stabilization, by Leon Kolankiewicz and Roy Beck, analyzes a series of developments that led to the retreat from population advocacy.

The report finds that there is no simple explanation for why environmentalism at the turn of this century is so radically different from that which emerged around 1970. They examine a variety of developments that built on each other to result in U.S. population stabilization being dropped from the environmental agenda. One of the most important was the change in the source of population growth, from births by native-born American women to immigration and births by immigrant women. In the 1990s, immigrant-related growth was equivalent to 70 percent of U.S. population increase. This development caused environmental groups to lapse into silence on U.S. population policy for a variety of reasons, including the fear that advocating immigration cuts would alienate progressive allies; the transformation of population and environment into global, as opposed to national, issues; and concerns that funding might be jeopardized, since many foundation boards include left-leaning globalists and right-leaning representatives of multinational corporations, each with strong biases in favor of high immigration.

The other developments highlighted by the authors as having contributed to the environmental establishment's move away from population issues are:

• Dropping U.S. fertility
• Anti-abortion politics
• Women's issues separating population groups from environmental issues
• Rift between the conservationist and New-Left elements of the environmental movement

Praise for Forsaking Fundamentals:

"I am pleased to participate in the release of this monograph from the Center of Immigration Studies. Leon Kolankiewicz and Roy Beck provide fascinating and rather painful explanations for why our governmental institutions, the news media and especially our environmental groups have acquiesced and even encouraged this new population explosion.

"My hope is that -- as happened at the first Earth Day -- this year's Earth Day will see a renewed pledge to move toward full environmental protection that can be achieved only by U.S. population stabilization. This monograph shows what went wrong the previous 30 years and points the way to what must be done if we are to avoid the present trajectory that will double our population again this century.

Gaylord Nelson
State Senator, Governor, U.S. Senator (D-Wis.), 1948-81
Founder of Earth Day
Counselor, The Wilderness Society
 

Douglas La Follette
Wisconsin Secretary of State
organizer of first Earth Day in Wisconsin
former National Board Member of Friends of the Earth
former professor of chemistry and ecology