Population, sustainability, and balance?

I'm interested in all the topics listed [in our recent survey], but halting human population growth, then reducing population, is of overriding importance. I would like to see Worldwatch Institute conduct research and make specific proposals on how governments, NGOs, and private citizens can work for negative population growth. Though time is short, we still have an opportunity to control our numbers using methods we choose. If we don't soon do so, Mother Nature will take control out of our hands.

On your letterhead I find the slogan "Vision for a Sustainable World." I am increasingly skeptical of the word "sustainable" and hope you will be judicious in your use of it. I'd like to see the term "sustainable development" banned from any serious proposals for addressing the world's problems. Development really means more growth and consumption. No sooner had the Brundtland Commission coined this expression than the world's corporate overlords began to spin it expertly to suit their own ends. The hoodwinked environmental community is given to believe the term means justice for the world's poor, and that easing their plight will, through the "demographic transition" (another dubious concept), bring about cessation of population growth and mitigation of the environmental devastation we humans have caused. Our corporate masters encourage us in these beliefs, all while implementing, under the guise of "sustainable development," their own agenda: more economic growth, more consumption, more consolidation of political and economic power into the hands of a wealthy few, and more population growth to fuel these projects.

A second concern is the magazine's creeping tendency to provide mainstream-media-style "balance." This spurious media "balance" is another of those niceties that nature really doesn't care about. In the face of the sixth great extinction, who needs "balance" in the discussion? Why waste precious magazine space--as you did in your population and peak oil issues--on skeptics, naysayers, and equivocators? If I feel a need for so-called balance, I can get it for free from the torrents of corporate advertising, and corporate-advertising-supported reporting, that is trumpeted at us from the mainstream media.

These criticisms aside, World Watch magazine remains my most trusted source for information and insight into national and world environmental issues. This is a very broad field of inquiry--almost all problems have an environmental dimension--and I'm always impressed by your research and the invaluable information you present to your readers. Though the condition of the world, and of most environmental groups, is at present rather disheartening, please be encouraged by the real significance of your work.

REBECCA REDFIELD

Wilmette, Illinois, U.S.A.

Editor Tom Prugh and Worldwatch Vice President Robert Engelman (formerly with Population Action International) respond: Your concern about the corruption of the word "sustainable" is, alas, justified by the many inappropriate uses to which it has been put. We would argue that continuing to use it responsibly, and calling to task those who do not, is the only defense against its total loss of meaning. As for "sustainable development," it need not imply unbridled growth and environmental destruction. As we point out in the just-released 2008 edition of State of the World: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy, the world's poorest people will not escape their wretched conditions unless their consumption increases. To make environmental "space" for that growth, those of us whose consumption has reached a level that no longer improves real wellbeing must be encouraged to curb it. This can be done in a way that radically reduces environmental impact while actually increasing true wellbeing.

Concerning "spurious media 'balance,'" the publishing of a range of views on a topic serves a useful purpose. With our peak oil issue (January/February 2006), for instance, the five essays sought to give readers a sense of where the center of gravity is on the issue while defining the opinion range. There is also something to the argument that heavily slanting coverage damages credibility. We termed the section a "forum"--an open arena for the expression of views from many quarters. The most extreme view (that taken by the oil industry representative) was clearly an outlier; its implausibility was starkly revealed by contrast with the other essays. Presenting a range of arguments in this way allows readers to "triangulate" their conclusions.

Finally, you're wise to challenge easy assumptions about the future of population growth, along with the future of environmental sustainability. Despite responsible demographic projections, there's really no way to guess when the world's population will peak. Demographic transition, however, is not so much a dubious concept as a well-documented one that is neither regular nor predictable. Every nation has undergone some demographic transition, meaning its population has a longer life expectancy and lower birthrates than it did at some point in the recent past. But demographic transition has stalled in several countries, it's not far enough along in most others, and in a few countries it's gone haywire with death rates actually rising, mostly due to deaths from HIV/AIDS. The linkage between population dynamics and environmental sustainability is complex, but Worldwatch has consistently maintained that population is critical to the human future. We intend to devote special attention to this linkage in the coming year.