How Big is Your Environmental Footprint?
Mention of the Sierra Club brings to mind a nice little environmentalist organization fighting to save the planet from destruction and its inhabitants from extinction. I myself was one of these people, that is, until I took a look on their website at www.sierraclub.org. Little did I suspect how big a part population control played in their grand scheme for protecting the environment.
The Sierra Club first began to take interest in population control in the early 1960’s. In 1966, they stated that “population growth as a pattern and goal” should be abandoned and that a “balance between population and resources” must be achieved. What does this mean in plain English? It means that human beings are unnecessarily taxing the earth with their presence and that by populating the planet with more people, we are destroying the natural habitats of the earth’s other living creatures, as well as the environment in general.
In 1968, the Club published “The Population Bomb,” which stated in its frontispiece that “Overpopulation is now the dominant problem in all our personal, national and international planning.” The Club now tells us that human beings are walking too heavily on the planet, leaving the marks of our stride embedded deep into the environment.
Exactly how does the organization connect environmental issues with population issues, finding room in their crowded environmentalist agenda to push population control? Easy! They first conclude that all of the world’s environmental problems stem from too many people. Then, in the tradition of other anti-population organizations, they devise a way to “fix” the problem in such a way that they will achieve their goals with the help of a largely unsuspecting public.
It’s all in the Way its Phrased
How many people in developing nations (where population growth is often seen as a large problem) would like to hear representatives from a developed nation tell them that they need to stop having so many children? Not very many, and the population controllers know it. Stating their agendas so bluntly would get doors slammed in their faces. According to the Sierra Club, the idea must be couched in such a way that acceptance is virtually guaranteed. They state “Though population clearly affects other environmental issues…the approach can be tricky. If we want to clean the air, we talk about air pollution. If we want to save the wilderness, we talk about the wildlands we seek to protect. But, if we want to lower the population rate, we talk about women’s rights, girls’ education, abortion, family planning and birth control.” The Sierra Club, in other words, believes in “people pollution.” It just doesn’t talk about it, at least not in these terms.
Why Teach Women to Read and Write?
Consider what the club ever so politically correctly describes as “women’s empowerment.” According to their sugar-coated definition this means better standards of living, more economic power, increased autonomy, lower infant mortality rates, and more formal education for women. On the surface, this sounds noble and humanitarian. But keep on reading. What they really hope to accomplish by promoting these goals is an entirely different objective: population control.
Why does the Sierra Club want to educate women? Because an educated woman is employable. Why does the Sierra Club want to have women in the workforce? Because women with a job are women who are not at home. Why does the Sierra Club want women out of the home? Because women who are at home are having children. What is going on here? “Women’s empowerment” in practice is a way of getting women out of the business of having children, and into the workplace. This cleverly camouflaged language enables the Sierra Club to claim that they are advancing the rights of women while in fact promoting their own not-so-hidden agenda. Women are actually not being “empowered” so much as rendered barren. They marry later, if at all. They bear their first child at a later age. And they have fewer children altogether. All of this “reduces global population growth and preserves the planet’s resource base for future generations.” How convenient for the Sierra Club!
Anyone interested in finding out more about how large environmentalist organizations are coming to monopolize the population control movement as well as how they use misleading language to conceal their real agenda, should check out the Sierra Club website. Explore for yourself the depth of deception lurking beneath the “green concern.” As long as the Sierra Club seeks to impose population control worldwide, you can bet that they will be doing their best to make sure that everyone’s environmental footprints will become lighter, leaving a smaller impression on the planet, even if it means wiping them out altogether.
Tracy Trunk helps coordinate information projects for the Institute.
