Noah Smith – Why Paul Ehrlich – Population Bomb – Was Wrong

Noah Smith (see his Substack Noah Opinion & subscribe) an accomplished wordsmith, journalist, data analyst and thinker revisits Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, limits to growth and degrowth; still apparent in faux environmental narratives in mainstream media, but are coming from the fossil fuel nativist right.

Missed a few details including ZPG Zero Population Growth, Rockefeller Bros., Rockefeller Foundation, long standing donors like the Scaifes etc., whiff of anti-immigrant, antisemitic, anti-Catholic and Asiaphobe sentiments that were channelled via deceased white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton and his Social Contract Press; colleague of Ehrlich at ZPG.

Not to forget the roots of this movement including Malthus, Galton, Madison Grant, Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes and post World War II the Rockefeller Commission, UN Population Division, green revolution, Club of Rome and tracking symptoms of previous high fertility i.e. ‘population growth’ but ignoring decline in fertility globally, to this day. 

‘Data Analysis – Why Paul Ehrlich got everything wrong

And why we should still listen to warnings about environmental catastrophes

Biologist Paul Ehrlich is one of the most discredited popular intellectuals in America. He’s so discredited that his Wikipedia page starts the second paragraph with “Ehrlich became well known for the discredited 1968 book The Population Bomb”. In that book he predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the decade to come; when no such thing happened (in the 70s or ever so far), Ehrlich’s name became sort of a household joke among the news-reading set.

And yet despite all this, in the year 2022, 60 Minutes still had Ehrlich on to offer his thoughts on wildlife loss:

When the news program was roundly ridiculed for giving Ehrlich air time, the 90-year-old scholar defended himself on Twitter by citing his academic credentials, and the fact that The Population Bomb had been peer-reviewed:

As many acidly pointed out, the fact that Ehrlich has impeccable credentials and was peer-reviewed is a reason to take a more skeptical eye toward academic credentials and peer review in general. Maybe we’ve gotten better at these things since the 60s, and maybe not. But being spectacularly wrong with the approval of a community of experts is much worse than being spectacularly wrong as a lone kook, because it means that the whole field of people we’ve entrusted to serve as experts on a topic somehow allowed itself to embrace total nonsense.

Anyway, it’s useful to review why Ehrlich got things so wrong, and why the people who make similar claims today — i.e., the “degrowth” movement — are also wrong. But it’s also important to realize that just because Ehrlich was wrong about overpopulation and some other stuff doesn’t mean that he, or the degrowth people, are wrong about the threat of habitat destruction and wildlife loss.

Why Ehrlich was so wrong in 1968

Ehrlich’s basic prediction in The Population Bomb was that overpopulation would soon cause massive famines. Matt Yglesias has a good Twitter thread with some screenshots:

Ehrlich also predicted that 65 million Americans would starve to death in the 1980s, that England would cease to exist by the year 2000, etc. etc.

Obviously, nothing like this ever happened. But why? In fact, there are a number of reasons. But the most important principle here is just that extreme projections of recent trends tend not to come true. The scientific “models” that Ehrlich and the other enviro-catastrophists of the 60s and 70s relied on were very basic things — they were really just drawing exponential curves and then saying “See, line go up!” That sort of simple projection ignores all the various countermeasures that people will take against emerging problems, and all the ways they’ll adapt to new conditions. Countermeasures and adaptations act as a dampening force, slowing down the trend lines before catastrophe hits — sometimes, though not always, slowing it enough to avoid catastrophe entirely.

In the case of overpopulation and food supply, two big things happened to make Ehrlich wrong. The first is that a bunch of new agricultural technologies — collectively referred to as the Green Revolution — emerged that boosted crop production dramatically. For example, corn production has more than quadrupled since Ehrlich’s book came out:

The other thing that changed was the number of mouths that had to be fed. Population growth has not remained exponential; it has slowed all around the world, thanks to lower fertility rates. Ehrlich wrote right around the peak; since then, population growth has been more than cut in half.

These two factors, in combination, mean that human beings consume substantially more calories today, on average, than when Ehrlich made his sensational predictions

Nor is this just because a few rich-world people are hogging all the food. Global deaths from hunger and malnutrition have fallen steeply, to about 212,000 in 2019

So whether or not Ehrlich got his math right, the fact is that his assumptions were wrong. But why were they wrong? A bit of it was due to what I might call “quasi-natural” processes — economic growth led to urbanization, which drives down fertility rates. Increasing education, which also tends to accompany growth, reduced birth rates as well. But most of Ehrlich’s mistakes come from his failure to anticipate that human beings would act intentionally to avert most of the trends he was warning about.

Scientists of the 1960s, like Norman Borlaug, knew that feeding the world would be a problem as global population rose; they didn’t need Paul Ehrlich to tell them that. That’s why they dedicated their lives to working on improving crop varieties and fertilizers and irrigation. The inventors of birth control knew that for many families, having one more accidental child just meant one more mouth to feed, and they invented new forms of contraception specifically so that people could choose the family size they wanted. Human ingenuity — what Julian Simon, who famously beat Ehrlich in a bet about commodity prices, called “the ultimate resource” — was one of the stabilizing mechanisms that acted to damp out the runaway trends Ehrlich was predicting. (In fact, human ingenuity was also the reason Simon won the bet about commodities; people worked hard to develop new sources of supply and new ways of using resources more efficiently.)

Another stabilizing mechanism was government action. Concern about overpopulation was what prompted many countries to make new birth control technologies more available to their people, even when it violated their conservative values — for example, worry about food supply prompted Iran’s religious leaders to implement one of the world’s most effective (and totally voluntary) family planning programs in the 1990s.

What about coercive programs? Brutal, repressive policies like India’s mass sterilization program or China’s one-child policy were motivated in part by the overpopulation panic that originated in the West (though in China’s case the key book was The Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth). Of course, China and India hardly needed some American intellectuals to tell them that they were poor countries who struggled to feed their gigantic populations. But these were definitely the kind of brutal totalitarian measures that Ehrlich was recommending.

And yet it’s not at all clear how much of an effect these repressive policies actually had. China’s fertility rate had already declined precipitously by the time they enacted the one-child policy, and further declines didn’t happen until a decade later.

Meanwhile, India’s mass sterilization campaign in 1975 produced no discernible change in the slow, steady downward fertility trend in that country.

In other words, the stabilization mechanisms that made Ehrlich so laughably wrong were generally not the massive coercive top-down government actions that he hoped for. Instead, stabilization of global food supply was achieved via technological innovations by concerned scientists, which were then adopted by concerned governments.

There is a lesson here for the modern day.

Ehrlich’s modern-day heirs

In general, my advice to people who want to understand the late 2010s and 2020s is to read about the late 1960s and 1970s. The parallels aren’t perfect, of course, but the broad-based social and political unrest that emerged in the late 60s has an obvious parallel with the unrest of the late 2010s. My general thesis is that unrest is a “macro variable” that trickles down and basically infects everything in a society, including what scientists think about and write about.

For many, I think, unrest creates a sense of catastrophic runaway change, which results in a desire to “stop the bus” and slow change down. If you’re a biologist, then perhaps that fear of change manifests in catastrophic predictions about population and natural resources. Ehrlich has caught an especially large amount of flak, but he was hardly unique for his day; Mark Perry has a good roundup of apocalyptic predictions that environmentalists made around the same time, some of which are even more extreme than Ehrlich’s!

Nowadays, as in the 70s, many intellectuals on the left have become afraid of economic growth and resource limitations. This is why Ehrlich is back on TV — wildlife loss is one of the things people are scared of. But the biggest thing people worry about is climate change. And though some environmentalists have embraced the idea of green growth as the solution to climate change (which it is), there’s also a degrowth movement that’s especially popular in the UK and North Europe, and has gained a foothold in some intellectual circles in the U.S.

So far, degrowth’s popularity in the U.S. has been limited due to vigorous pushback from liberals and many leftists, who realize that its proposed solution of massive coordinated global anti-growth planning is A) unworkable, B) would stall the transition to renewable energy, and C) would require developing countries to make untenable sacrifices. But the idea still gets regular exposure in the American press, and sensible folks are forced to be constantly vigilant against the steady drumbeat of degrowtherism from across the Atlantic.

It worth mentioning, though, that degrowthers aren’t just calling for unworkable solutions; they’re also incredibly sloppy in their predictions. For example, degrowthers regularly base their assessments of unsustainable resource use on aggregate measures of material usage. 

The British intellectual Jason Hickel also uses aggregate measures of resource use by gross tonnage to support his own jeremiads against growth.

This is a terrible metric, for several reasons. First, it includes materials that are recycled or sustainable (e.g. commercial forests, or farming itself). If resources shift to a more sustainable form — for example, the massive switch from fishing to fish farming — that won’t be recorded in these numbers.

Second, it ignores one of the most important sources of sustainability: resource substitution. When humans figure out how to substitute a commonly available resource for a scarce one, sustainability increases even if the gross tonnage used also increases. For example, if we use widely available magnesium instead of scarce lithium for our batteries, that increases sustainability even if tonnage doesn’t change. Humans are always looking for ways to substitute plentiful resources for scarce ones, and we often find them.

But no matter what metric they use, degrowthers always make the same fundamental mistake, and it’s the same one Paul Ehrlich made: trend extrapolation. The tweet above is just classic “line go up” thinking. And degrowthers treat the past correlation of economic growth and resource use as if it’s a law of the Universe, when there’s no reason to believe that correlation will continue. For example, many countries have managed to decouple their carbon emissions from their GDP growth:

When confronted with this blunt fact, the degrowthers, who have long claimed that this sort of absolute decoupling is impossible, will respond that all that matters is global emissions (which is true), and that although global GDP has grown much faster than emissions since 1990, the fact that global emissions are still up slightly since that time means these have not yet decoupled in an absolute sense.

This is, of course, nonsense. Absolute decoupling in countries like Mexico, Singapore, Germany and the U.S. shows that absolute decoupling is possible in every country; most countries consume just about as much carbon as they produce, which is why outsourcing of emissions basically doesn’t happen. There’s no reason that China, India, and the rest of the world can’t decouple as well, and with them, the world. Of course, it will take several years — perhaps a decade — to demonstrate global absolute decoupling, by which time our age of unrest will likely be behind us and degrowth will have faded just as surely as the population panic of the 70s.

In the meantime, however, degrowth might push some countries’ policies in a decidedly foolish direction; I’m particularly worried about the UK. Just as India and China pursued self-destructive policies in response to the population panic, the UK may be tempted to make its grinding post-2008 stagnation even worse in the name of degrowth.

But enviro-catastrophists are not always wrong

Witnessing the follies of environmental catastrophists, from the 1970s to today, it’s tempting to conclude that people who make dire environmental predictions are simply kooks whom we should just never listen to. Indeed, many people do draw exactly that conclusion, especially on the political right. This is a bad response, for a number of reasons.

First, environmental catastrophes are a very real possibility. Climate change is the main example; if we don’t do something to limit emissions (and, probably, pull some carbon out of the air), we really do face a whole lot of extremely negative consequences. Sober scientists who believe strongly in the power of human ingenuity, technical solutions, and economic growth nevertheless recognize both the necessity and the magnitude of the task.

It would be very, very bad to ignore the people warning about climate change. If we do avert catastrophe, technology will be how we do it. But just as with Norman Borlaug, scientists have to be sufficiently worried about the problem in order to be motivated to devote their lives to this project. It’s easy to mock climate alarmism, but without some sort of alarm, people wouldn’t have spent the last 40 years figuring out how to make solar power and batteries cheap. Ingenuity is one of the great stabilizing forces of human society, but it doesn’t just happen automatically.

(So how do we tell the difference between the sober, realistic warnings and the overblown panics? There’s probably not a good general mechanism for doing this; we just have to use our intelligence to evaluate the claims various people are making. But one good rule of thumb is probably to be suspicious of people who package their warnings with pre-prepared solutions. In general, expertise in identifying a problem isn’t the same as expertise in solving it, so people who insist that mass sterilization is the only solution to overpopulation, or that degrowth is the only solution to climate change, often have a political axe to grind, or are just overconfident people to begin with.)

But there’s one other situation where prophets of enviro-doom might come in handy even when their warnings are overblown. Humans, who set all the policies and invent all the technologies, simply don’t care enough about nonhuman life. We may stop climate change and overpopulation and resource scarcity and air and water pollution out of self-interest, but it’s unlikely that pure self-interest will be enough to stop habitat destruction.

And we are destroying the animals — or at least, many of them. Wild mammals, for instance, have declined by 85% (in terms of biomass) since humans arrived on the scene. 

Statistics on biodiversity and habitat loss generally all point in the same direction.

I’ll write a lot more about why this is happening, and how bad it really is, and what we can do to prevent it, but for now I’d just like to note that it’s highly unlikely that human beings care as much as we should about the welfare of non-human living beings. Some people do care, a lot; but the fact that self-interest is rarely a major factor in our calculations about other animals means that we’ll always tend to care less about actions of ours that harm those voiceless, powerless creatures.

This lack of caring can often be utterly chilling. In an otherwise strong post criticizing Ehrlich’s recent 60 Minutes appearance, Cato senior fellow Marian L. Tupy ended with this disturbing assertion:

But let’s get real. The reason the planet matters is that we are here to perceive it and to enjoy it with our senses. (Animals don’t care about biodiversity per se. What they do care about is finding an organism to kill and eat or mate with.) Moreover, the planet is not a fragile damsel in distress…Rather, it is a ruthless killing zone in need of taming.

This depiction of animals as savage beings who care only about killing and sex is strongly at odds with the experience of anyone who has actually been around animals and seen them demonstrate love, playfulness, and kindness. It also happens to omit animals’ desire to live, to avoid starvation and pain — wildlife exists not just for humans’ benefit, but for its own. And the idea that the savage necessities of life in the wild provide moral justification for human destruction of wild habitats needs some stern reexamining.

Seeing the prevalence of attitudes like this, I wonder if alarmism like Ehrlich’s isn’t a useful counterweight to human callousness. In economics jargon, perhaps overestimating the probability of a sixth mass extinction is a way to better match the private utility functions of the humans who make global economic policy with the social welfare function that includes all living, feeling beings. At the very least, alarmism might help to keep habitat destruction in the public consciousness.

So I’m not ready to throw the degrowth people and the doomers under the proverbial bus quite yet. I just want them to focus their efforts on wildlife, biodiversity, and habitat destruction, and leave climate change to more sober-minded folk.’

For more blogs and articles on Demography, Environment, Eugenics, Limits to Growth, Political Strategy, Statistical Analysis, Tanton Network and White Nationalism click through:

Malthus on Population Growth, Economy, Environment, White Nationalism and Eugenics

Posted on February 16, 2021

Malthus on Population Growth, Economy, Environment, White Nationalism and Eugenics

In recent years we have observed the reemergence of the British nineteenth century preacher Malthus and his ideas on population, via groups like Population Matters in the United Kingdom, with a focus upon negatives round the supposed direct relationship between increasing population (growth), economic growth or impairment, and environmental degradation.

However, Malthusian population principles have less relevance in the 21st century, especially when presented via scientifically untested ideas or philosophy versus the now available grounded science research and data analysis. Further, there is very limited and sub-optimal data to support Malthusian claims which have returned to become a weapon or political tactic. This leveraging of Malthus includes white nationalism, fossil fuels and environmental degradation, apportioning blame for related issue on undefined population growth, as opposed to the lack of good policy development, on actual causes i.e. fossil fuel pollution, global warming through emissions; used to deflect from inertia of governments and create antipathy towards existing and future ‘immigrants’ including babies, from the non European world.

Ghosts of Galton and Eugenics Return – Society, Population and Environment in the 21st Century

Posted on November 25, 2021

We have already looked at some other key players of the past related to eugenics, population via Malthus and liberal economics of Adam Smith, now we look at Galton, if not in detail, a broad sketch of his life and later impact on society, especially in the Anglosphere.

This has been exemplified by how eugenics theory never went away, even after the Nazis post WWII, but reemerged via the US using an environmental and climate prism, with a focus upon Malthusian population obsessions; supported by ZPG, UNPD data, Anglosphere media and think tanks to avoid regulation and business constraints, while encouraging xenophobia.

Madison Grant – Eugenics, Heredity, Class, Immigration, Great Replacement, Conservation and Nazis

Posted on May 3, 2022

In recent years we have observed the rise of white nationalism, alt &/or far right, nativism, eugenics, neo-Nazis etc. in the Anglosphere and Europe, often underpinned by divisive dog whistle politics through legacy media. For one to understand modern Anglo &/or European nativism, the past of eugenics and conservation in the US especially, the history of Madison Grant starting over a century ago, needs to be scrutinised. Following is a brief but incomplete overview from relevant literature, including Grant’s own writings.

John Tanton – Australia – The Social Contract Press

Posted on September 30, 2020

John Tanton – Australia – The Social Contract Press. Many people in the Anglo world and now Europe may ask where does the current transnational white nativist or white nationalist ideology, promoting eugenics and immigration restrictions, come from?

Trump’s White House Immigration Policies and White Nationalist John Tanton

Posted on April 10, 2020

The aggressive anti-immigration sentiment and policies that are promoted by governments in the US, UK and Australia are not new and have been in the making for generations, John Tanton described as the ‘most influential unknown man in America’ appears central in modern day manifestations.

Monbiot – Radical Right Libertarians – Fossil Fuel Think Tanks – Koch & Tanton Networks

Posted on January 14, 2024

Good overview via Argentina by George Monbiot in The Guardian ‘What links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump? The shadowy network behind their policies’ and concerning dynamics around national politics, media, think tanks and governance.

The ‘junk tanks’ he talks of, observed in Anglosphere and globally are Atlas – Koch Network and another that shares donors in the US, Tanton Network. The former does low tax, low regulation and small government while the latter is faux environmental via demographics, population and migration ‘research’.

Mainstreaming of the Far Right

Posted on January 2, 2024

The far right did not emerge from a vacuum, but ignorance of the history of eugenics, authority, slavery, colonialism, Nazi Germany and post WWII, white nativists, especially in the US, and nowadays ageing democracies and right wing media which adopt the same.

Both Malthus and Galton are central to narratives around population control, identity and eugenics, with strong undercurrent of socio-Darwinism. By post WWI eugenics became a major area of research, not just in Germany via Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, but the US too with slavery, Madison Grant and AES American Eugenics Society.

Global Population Decline and Rebalance

Posted on January 17, 2024

The Anglosphere, especially right wing media and influencers, obsess about supposed immigrant-led population growth in the developed world, while claiming high fertility and exponential growth; not true it’s a reflection of better human health and increasing longevity.

However, these dynamics are still misrepresented or ignored in media, politics and public narratives based on the eugenics based ideology of Bob Malthus, Francis Galton, Madison Grant and John Tanton; the latter via ZPG Zero Population Growth supported by Rockefeller Bros. Fund.

Population Growth or Decline?

Posted on October 20, 2019

Since the 1970s, and earlier with Malthus and eugenics movement, we have been presented with the threat of catastrophic population growth due to fertility rates in the less developed world, then due to ‘immigration‘ from the less developed world when in fact we are facing population decline from mid century; contrary to UN Population Division data which inflates future headline growth?

This ‘misunderstanding’ has been highlighted by science journalist Fred Pearce in ‘The Coming Population Crash: and Our Planet’s Surprising Future’; Hans Rosling in ‘Don’t panic the truth about population’; Prof. Wolfgang Lutz of Vienna’s IIASA and Sanjeev Sanyal demographer at Deutsche Bank.

Mainstreaming of the Far Right

The far right did not emerge from a vacuum, but ignorance of the history of eugenics, authority, slavery, colonialism, Nazi Germany and post WWII, white nativists, especially in the US, and nowadays ageing democracies and right wing media which adopt the same.

Both Malthus and Galton are central to narratives around population control, identity and eugenics, with strong undercurrent of socio-Darwinism. By post WWI eugenics became a major area of research, not just in Germany via Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, but the US too with slavery, Madison Grant and AES American Eugenics Society.

Due to the holocaust and Nazis treatment of Jews, Gypsies and minorities, including the ‘left’ i.e. being exterminated, eugenics had to be rebranded post WWII as a quasi ‘environmental’ movement, with strong support of same fossil fuel Rockefellers (Standard Oil & Exxon) and auto oligarchs (Fiat & VW) via Club of Rome and ZPG Zero Population Growth. 

This movement morphed into what is now known as ‘Tanton Network’, provides the faux academic support for the ‘great replacement’ and ‘environmental constructs like ‘degrowth’ and ‘limits to growth’, advises GOP, Tories and all in Australia.

Fast forward to ‘90s and noughties when Tanton’s people started liaising with GOP Reps and Congressional committees related to promoting the issues of asylum seekers, immigration and borders, to then be used as a foil vs. calls for carbon emissions pricing, trading and robust environmental protections.

Their lobbying was sold on the basis of immigrant equals Democrat voter, but the Cafe con Leche Republicans warned of the nativist trap i.e. attacking potential future constituents and supporters; many as evidenced by Koch’s Heritage for Trump i.e. ‘Project 2025’, next opportunity GOP plans permanent power via SCOTUS, voter suppression, obedient employees etc.?

By the naughteens it was becoming clear, using Jane Mayers’ expression in ‘Dark Money’ explaining the political machinations and media, as the ‘architecture of influence’ with the far right central.  

The latter includes Putin’s Russia, US GOP for Trump, UK Tories for Brexit, Murdoch led right wing media channelling Tanton agitprop, which shares fossil fuel donors with the supposedly ‘libertarian’ ‘Koch Network’ and many high profile influencers. They are targeting ageing and regional electorates, via legacy and social media, with nativist talking points, before younger, more diverse, educated and centrist voters emerge to ‘replace’ ageing citizens.

The Conversation:

Look to the mainstream to explain the rise of the far right

‘Javier Milei in Argentina. Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. These are the two latest “populist shocks” – the tip of the “populist wave” that comes crashing against the weakened defences of liberal democracies.

At the same time, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage benefits from the same “funwashing” on I’m a Celebrity Get me out of Here! as Pauline Hanson, leader of the most successful extreme right party in Australia in recent years, did when she was invited on Dancing with the Stars just a moment after her political career plummeted.

The contradiction in addressing the rise of far-right politics in public discourse could not be starker. And yet, it goes far deeper.

It should be obvious to anyone concerned about these politics and the threat they pose to democracy and certain communities, that humanising their leaders through fun reality TV shows or coverage of their hobbies rather than politics only serves to normalise them.

What is less obvious and yet just as damaging is the hyped coverage of the threat. Milei and Wilders are not “shocks”. The resurgence of reactionary politics is entirely predictable and has been traced for a long time. Yet every victory or rise is analysed as new and unexpected rather than part of a longer, wider process in which we are all implicated.

The same goes for “populism”. All serious research on the matter points to the populist nature of these parties being secondary at best, compared to their far-right qualities. Yet, whether in the media or academia, populism is generally used carelessly as a key defining feature.

Using “populist” instead of more accurate but also stigmatising terms such as “far-right” or “racist” acts as a key legitimiser of far-right politics. It lends these parties and politicians a veneer of democratic support through the etymological link to the people and erases their deeply elitist nature – what my co-author Aaron Winter and I have termed “reactionary democracy”.

What this points to is that the processes of mainstreaming and normalisation of far-right politics have much to do with the mainstream itself, if not more than with the far right. Indeed, there can be no mainstreaming without the mainstream accepting such ideas in its fold.

In this case, the mainstreaming process has involved platforming, hyping and legitimising far-right ideas while seemingly opposing them and denying responsibility in the process.

While it would be naive to believe that the mainstream media tell us what to think, it is equally naive to ignore that it plays a key role regarding what we think about. As I argued in a recent article on the issue of “immigration as a major concern”, this concern only exists when respondents think of their country as a whole. It disappears when they think about their own day-to-day lives.

This points to the mediated nature of our understanding of wider society which is essential if we are to think of the world beyond our immediate surrounding. Yet while essential, it relies on the need for trusted sources of information who decide what is worth priming and how to frame it.

It is this very responsibility that much of our media has currently given up on or pretend they do not hold, as if their editorial choices were random occurrences.

This could not have been clearer than when the Guardian launched a lengthy series on “the new populism” in 2018, headlining its opening editorial with: “Why is populism suddenly all the rage? In 1998, about 300 Guardian articles mentioned populism. In 2016, 2,000 did. What happened?”. At no point did any of the articles in the series reflect upon the simple fact that the decisions of Guardian editors may have played a role in the increased use of the term.

A top-down process

Meanwhile, blame is diverted onto conveniently “silent majorities” of “left-behind” or a fantasised “white working class”.

We too often view the far right as an outsider – something separate from ourselves and distinct from our norms and mainstream. This ignores deeply entrenched structural inequalities and forms of oppression core to our societies. This is something I noted in a recent article, that the absence of race and whiteness in academic discussion of such politics is striking.

My analysis of the titles and abstracts of over 2,500 academic articles in the field over the past five years showed that academics choose to frame their research away from such issues. Instead, we witness either a euphemisation or exceptionalisation of far-right politics, through a focus on topics such as elections and immigration rather than the wider structures at play.

This therefore leaves us with the need to reckon with the crucial role the mainstream plays in mainstreaming. Elite actors with privileged access to shaping public discourse through the media, politics and academia are not sitting within the ramparts of a mainstream fortress of good and justice besieged by growing waves of populism.

They are participating in an arena where power is deeply unevenly distributed, where the structural inequalities the far right wants to strengthen are also often core to our systems and where the rights of minoritised communities are precarious and unfulfilled. They have therefore a particular responsibility towards democracy and cannot blame the situation we all find ourselves in on others – whether it be the far right, fantasised silent majorities or minoritised communities.

Sitting on the fence is not an option for anyone who plays a role in shaping public discourse. This means self-reflection and self-criticism must be central to our ethos.

We cannot pretend to stand against the far right while referring to its politics as “legitimate concerns”. We must stand unequivocally by and be in service of every one of the communities at the sharp end of oppression.’

For related blogs and articles on Ageing Democracy, Demography, Eugenics, Political Strategy, Populist Politics and White Nationalism click through

Malthus on Population Growth, Economy, Environment, White Nationalism and Eugenics. In recent years we have observed the reemergence of the British nineteenth century preacher Malthus and his ideas on population, via groups like Population Matters in the United Kingdom, with a focus upon negatives round the supposed direct relationship between increasing population (growth), economic growth or impairment, and environmental degradation.

Ghosts of Galton and Eugenics Return – Society, Population and Environment in the 21st Century. 

We have already looked at some other key players of the past related to eugenics, population via Malthus and liberal economics of Adam Smith, now we look at Galton, if not in detail, a broad sketch of his life and later impact on society, especially in the Anglosphere.

This has been exemplified by how eugenics theory never went away, even after the Nazis post WWII, but reemerged via the US using an environmental and climate prism, with a focus upon Malthusian population obsessions; supported by ZPG, UNPD data, Anglosphere media and think tanks to avoid regulation and business constraints, while encouraging xenophobia.

Smoking Gun Memo – Warning to US GOP Republicans on Eugenics Masquerading as Conservative Immigration and Environmental Policies. 

Almost a decade ago in 2013 the ‘Cafe con leche Republicans’ circulated a memo below to warn the GOP of the danger of being misled by ‘Tanton Network’, but it disappeared? Below outlines some of the lobbying for immigration restrictions, while in the background Tanton Network has a history of faux environmentalism, population control, fossil fuels oligarch support e.g. ZPG Zero Population Growth, white nationalism and right wing astroturfing.

While Tanton passed away several years ago his movement became central in the Trump administration, states too, promoted by Fox News, alt right, Steve Bannon, continues to stalk the GOP and inform policy. Also indirectly impacts the Anglosphere right wing parties and UK’s Brexit via antipathy encouraged towards the EU European Union and all things ‘immigrant’, reinforced over decades by compliant media, especially tabloid.

Coincidentally, in the UK the Tanton influenced Migration Watch shares a Tufton St. London address with fossil fueled ‘Koch Network’ libertarian think tanks?

Immigration Restriction – Population Control – Tanton Network. 

Excerpts from an article by Brooke Binkowski in Unicorn Riot outlining the history of the population control movement of Tanton Network which informs immigration in the Anglosphere and parts of Europe.

Collective Narcissism, Ageing Electorates, Pensioner Populism, White Nativism and Autocracy. 

‘As Plato noted more than 2000 years ago, one of the greatest dangers for democracy is that ordinary people are all too easily swayed by the emotional and deceptive rhetoric of ambitious politicians’

We have observed the Anglosphere including the U.K., Australia and U.S., becoming more nativist, conservative, libertarian, extreme and conspiracy minded.  This is not organic, but political strategists, ideologues and media have been gaming ageing electorates through platforming them and their concerns, then using PR techniques and messaging to reinforce and spread further via related negative proxy issues, for power. 

Environment – Fossil Fuels – Climate Science Denial – Populationism – Anti-Immigration – Far Right – Tanton Network. 

One would not bother using high level analysis to rebut low level faux science nativist agitprop inspired by former ZPG Zero Population Growth types, namely deceased white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton whose colleague was Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich, with support from the Rockefeller Bros., ‘limits to growth’ PR constructs promoted by Club of Rome and drawing on Malthus, Galton and Madison Grant.

However, it does show some of the influence that proponents aspire to, whether in media, NGOs, think tanks or politics, constantly reinforce old nativist and white Australia policy tropes masquerading as environmental science, greenwashing both fossil fuels or carbon emissions and eugenics; targets old white Australia sentiments and younger mistaking the movement and proponents as experts.

Global Population Decline and Impacts

The developed world zeitgeist, especially Anglosphere, is that population growth has been one of the key issues of environmental sustainability and nativist conservative politics, left and right.  However, as the article from First Links below explains, we are in fact approaching peak population, due to below replacement fertility and to be followed by ageing and decline, or balance?

Many are realising that ‘population growth’ is not such an issue, it has stalled with long term fertility decline (below replacement), while recent analysis suggests peak mid century (Lancet etc.) while researchers Bricker & Ibbitson (‘Empty Planet’) predict precipitous decline after the peak.

The headline number is not the issue but as the late Hans Rosling said, it’s the make-up and how the population is managed at different life stages e.g. oldies now outnumber youth which has electoral repercussions when voting for short term horizons aka Brexit.

Population obsessions, have also been used to support an unsubstantiated environmental link of ‘sciency sounding’ PR that deflects from carbon regulation, fossil fuels, often blames ‘immigration’ to at least preserve the status quo; from the time of Malthus and Galton through ZPG, and the UNPD (whose formulae are used by ABS & UK too).

The issue is not just skills gaps nor is demanding all retirees continue to work (involuntarily), but how to fund budgets when we are dependent upon taxes from working age and temporary churnover via PAYE system, but these cohorts are in decline viz a viz increasing numbers of retirees?

OECD demographic data, i.e. medium to long term trends of working age/retirees + kids, is more informative and gives comparisons with other nations, vs. our obsessions with short term headline NOM net overseas migration data snapshots that make for media headlines (but normally dominated by students and backpackers).

Quite obvious, like elsewhere, temporary churn over is important, as ‘net financial contributors’ to support budgets, when more retirees/pensioners are tugging on the same with ageing declining tax payers.

Click through to see OECD Australian working age demographics with other comparable nations. 

All have passed the ‘demographic sweet spot’, hence, how can budgets be supported further? Increase taxes for low income types and/or retirees (mooted in the US by some in the GOP), or cut services and health care, or privatise more services for user pays (political suicide)?

From First Links Newsletter Australia:

‘Embracing the bright side of population decline

Emma Davidson   30 March 2022

A growing body of research is showing that global population growth is slowing down and will likely drop into negative territory within the next few decades.

One study predicted that the global population would peak at 9.7 billion people in 2064 – up from around 7.9 billion currently – before falling to 8.8 billion by the end of this century. If this is true, it’ll be the first sustained period of world population decline since the Black Death.

But what’s worrying some experts today is that many countries are already seeing natural population growth come to a standstill. Here in Australia, the lack of immigration contributed to population growth of practically zero in the year to March 2021 . Similar stories are playing out in the UK, the US, and many other developed countries.

Shrinking populations and financial markets

What economic impact will these demographics shifts have? After all, we can’t ignore the human aspect of our economies. Financial markets are complex, interconnected ecosystems, and our attitudes and behaviour are key to how they perform.

Well, when it comes to population decline, many analysts are bearish.

They say lower birth rates create ageing nations, with fewer people available to look after the elderly. These stretched workforces limit innovation and productivity. Growing economies need growing populations, it is claimed.

However, I believe this is an overly pessimistic view. I’m far more bullish about the impact of declining populations. There are many possible benefits to having fewer people in the world. And I suspect even the negatives aren’t quite as bad as people suggest, given humans have an incredible knack for adapting to change.

Wage growth

It’s widely thought that a smaller working-age population could lift wages. Fewer workers give the labour market greater bargaining power, leading to better working conditions.

There would also likely be more opportunities for women and ethnic minorities, increasing workforce diversity. Research shows that diverse organisations tend to financially outperform their less inclusive competitors. They are also six times more likely to be innovative and agile.

Economic growth might slow, but it is my hope that the above changes would lead to healthier, happier, and more engaged workers – and a more even wealth distribution.

The late Swedish statistician Hans Rosling argued convincingly for bringing the world’s final 1 billion people out of extreme poverty to limit population growth and provide better opportunities for millions of families who are struggling.

I’m confident that humans can adjust to a ‘new normal’ where economic growth is still a goal, but not the only goal. Instead, perhaps we can focus more on creating a world where living standards and wealth distribution are our barometers of success.

Then, freed from poverty, some people will inevitably go on to become the scientists, entrepreneurs and leaders of tomorrow that we’ll need when populations decline.

Innovation and productivity

The conventional logic is that bigger is better when it comes to population and innovation. More people means more researchers and innovators (as well as more consumers to sell to). And yet, only three of Bloomberg’s top 10 most innovative economies have populations exceeding 10 million people (South Korea, Germany and Sweden).

So, it’s clearly not just a numbers game.

Investing in education and encouraging more people to work in research and development also facilitates the flow of new ideas. Furthermore, automation can accelerate innovation and productivity by performing all of the tedious, time-consuming tasks that would usually fall to humans, freeing them up for more value-oriented work.

Initial predictions for automation were bleak. The ‘rise of the robots’ would mean job losses, economists said, as employers replaced workers en-masse with machines that never get sick or tired.

More recent research is challenging that theory. One study found that each robot per 1,000 employees boosts employment at a firm by 2.2%. Essentially, automation makes companies more competitive and profitable, helping them to grow the business and swell their ranks.

Sustainability matters

It’s common to hear industry commentators make statements like “ignoring the environmental benefits for a moment” or “sustainability aside” when talking about population decline. But we can’t simply forget about the environment. It’s too important. Ever-growing populations continue to put a strain on the world and its resources.

Declining populations can help

Researchers recently calculated that having one child fewer saves approximately 59 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. “Having one less child saves each parent more than 20 times (of CO2 emissions) as living without a car, or about 70 times as much as eliminating meat from the diet” Sustainable Population Australia says.

To be clear, I’m not advocating that people should stop having children. I have written previously about the potential repercussions of a ‘baby bust’ if rising infertility rates are ignored. In addition, and as things stand right now, the global human population begins to decline at the end of this century and is likely to continue along the decline trajectory.

What I am wanting to highlight is the environmental benefits that are associated with population decline.

Finding the right balance

Of course, there are some roles that robots simply can’t fill. Ageing populations will place more pressure on our healthcare and elderly care systems, for example. And it’s hard to imagine artificial intelligence ever having as good a bedside manner as a real doctor or nurse.

Australia’s healthcare and superannuation systems are excellent, which should relieve some of this burden. But we must also find ways to make certain roles, such as elderly care, more rewarding.

Automation is therefore just one piece of the puzzle. We must also recognise there are complex services that only humans can provide.

There are undoubtedly challenges we face with declining populations, and I don’t pretend to have the answers.

But do our narratives have to be so gloomy? There is far more room for optimism based on the human capacity to adapt.’

Emma Davidson is Head of Corporate Affairs at London-based Staude Capital, manager of the Global Value Fund (ASX:GVF). This article is the opinion of the writer and does not consider the circumstances of any individual.

For more articles and blogs on immigration, population growth, demography and economics click through:

Limits to Growth – Jorgen Randers – Club of Rome

Hans Rosling – GapMinder – Factfulness – Human Development – Adult Education

China PRC – Fertility Decline – Peak Population?

Population Growth or Decline?

Population, Environment and White Nationalists in Australia – US Links

Climate Confusion, Astroturfing, Pseudo-Science, Population Movement and Radical Right Libertarians

With COP26, the environment and net zero being in the news, the following Guardian article ‘Meet the ‘inactivists’, tangling up the climate crisis in culture wars‘ is relevant overview on those confusing the science round climate and measures to ameliorate e.g. Net Zero Watch formerly GWPG the Global Warming Policy Foundation linked to Lord Lawson (situated at 55 Tufton Street, London).

However, this modus operandi or strategy including misinformation, astroturfing, lobbying, accessing media, deflecting from fossil fuels and/or carbon mitigation measures also fits with the old ideology of the many corporate leaders, oligarchs and conservative politicians; radical right libertarian socio economic ideology and eugenics but, both are unpalatable to most voters.

Population Movement, Eugenics, Fossil Fuels & the Environment

The ‘science of eugenics’ went quiet after WWII for obvious reasons but reemerged in the US under the guise of ‘population control’, Population Council (Rockefeller) and the UN Population Division (UNPD).  Meanwhile ZPG Zero Population Growth was founded in the ‘70s with support of Rockefeller Bros. (Standard Oil/Exxon), Ford and Carnegie Foundations with directors being Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich and deceased white nationalist and anti-semite John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton.

This was later replicated in the UK with now Population Matters (Ehrlich is a patron) and in Australia, SPA Sustainable Population Australia, in liaison with both Ehrlich and Tanton.  In Australia their role is transparent, i.e. producing ‘demographic research’ that is used for dog whistling post white Australia immigration through the supposed environmental prism of ‘population growth’ portraying immigrants as an environmental ‘hygiene issue’; ‘greenwashing’ racism.

Further, Tanton can also be linked to UK’s Migration Watch, an anti-immigrant lobby group claiming e.g. there is demographic and/or immigration crisis, for media consumption, then negative headlines for tabloids.

It’s the ‘libertarain trap’ as focus upon immigrants and/or population growth then allows both dog whistling and deflecting from fossil fuels etc. and stymying any attempt at robust regulation of carbon and the environment.

Radical Right Libertarian Socio Economic Ideology

There is a network of Koch linked think tanks across the globe in the Atlas Network promoting low taxes, small government, reduced regulation, fewer public services and nobbling education.  In the USA this includes Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Heartland and American Enterprise Institute, the UK it’s Taxpayers’ Alliance, IEA Institute of Economic Affairs etc. and in Australia it’s the IPA Institute of Public Affairs, CIS Centre for Independent Studies and Taxpayers’ Alliance.

They also can be linked back to the white nationalists etc. round the population movement, including the ‘great replacement’ as Tanton had been active in having IRLI involved with the Koch linked and corporate donor supported Congressional lobbying ‘bill mill’ ALEC.  IRLI is part of another Tanton offshoot, FAIR Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, like CIS Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA which informed the Trump White House, Miller, Sessions and Bannon; while nowadays still being deferred to by US media for expert commentary on immigration.

Common interest in antipathy towards empowered immigrants and citizens, discouraging science or ‘experts, versus more gut instinct and religious belief, underpinned by eugenics?

These seemingly disparate elements in different nations seem to orbit in the same system, though publicly dissociated from each other; global warming, climate, environmental regulation and eugenics is the common strand or theme that is shared.

A stark example exists in London, i.e. 55 Tufton Street, coincidentally houses the following groups within the Koch orbit i.e. IEA, Taxpayers’ Alliance and Lord Lawson’s Net Zero Watch, but the surprise is having the Tanton linked Migration Watch sharing the same building; libertarians, climate and/or science denial, immigration restrictions or eugenics aka 18th or 19th century?

The following Guardian article of Jack Shenker unwittingly stumbles across some of these links which are taken at face value but represent a ‘long game’ (identified by Nancy Maclean regarding radical right libertarians) of anti climate science and pro big business or ‘Big Oil’ to influence policy, regulation, MPs and voters, but it’s neither democratic nor transparent.

Also according to DeSmog, there are also links across to Covid science denial, ‘freedom & liberty’ from sensible constraints and with support from Koch linked networks.  Again, similar has been witnessed round the world but especially US, UK and Australia where nativist and/or conservative libertarians appear compelled to reinforce and maintain concepts of freedom & liberty, scepticism of science, avoidance of regulation and strangling government through ever lower taxes, with assistance of the radical right aka Capitol Hill and street demonstrations against Covid restrictions.

Meet the ‘inactivists’, tangling up the climate crisis in culture wars

As climate science has gone mainstream, outright denialism has been pushed to the fringes. Now a new tactic of dismissing green policies as elitist is on the rise, and has zoned in on a bitter row over a disused airport in Kent.

by Jack Shenker

In May 2020, as the world was convulsed by the coronavirus pandemic and global infections topped 4 million, a strange video began appearing in the feeds of some Facebook users. “Climate alarm is reaching untold levels of exaggeration and hysteria,” said an unseen narrator, over a montage of environmental protests and clips of a tearful Greta Thunberg. “There is no doubt about it, climate change has become a cult,” it continued, to the kind of pounding beat you might hear on the soundtrack of a Hollywood blockbuster. “Carbon dioxide emissions have become the wages of sin.”

The video’s reach was relatively small: according to Facebook data, it was viewed somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 times. But over the following weeks more videos came, each one experimenting with slightly different scripts and visuals. All focused on the supposed irrationality and hypocrisy of climate campaigners, and the hardship they wanted to inflict upon society’s most impoverished communities…..

At one stage, users hovering over the logo of that advertiser – a UK organisation called The Global Warming Policy Forum, or GWPF – were informed by Facebook that it was a “Science Site”. The GWPF is not a science website: it is the campaigning arm of a well-funded foundation accused by opponents of being one of Britain’s biggest sources of climate science denial.

The videos being tested by the GWPF in the spring and summer of 2020 were part of a strategic pivot away from explicit climate crisis denialism, and towards something subtler – a move being pursued by similar campaigners across the world. Welcome to a new age of what the atmospheric scientist and environmental author Michael E Mann has labelled climate “inactivism”: an epic struggle to convince you not so much to doubt the reality of climate crisis, but rather to dampen your enthusiasm for any attempts at dealing with it…..

Mackinlay, who has described Britain’s net-zero aspirations as a “social calamity” and insisted that “sooner or later, the public will rebel against this madness”, was not alone in framing decarbonisation through the lens of cultural division and class privilege…. 

Steve Baker, another Conservative parliamentarian and a close ally of Mackinlay, has dismissed the Committee on Climate Change, which advises the government, as “unelected and unaccountable”. Earlier this year, Baker declared that “In net zero, as with Brexit, the political class has in a very, almost smug and self-satisfied way, built a consensus which is not going to survive contact with the public.” Instead, he predicted, “there’s going to be an enormous political explosion.”….

Popular anger at the economic insecurities that are synonymous with 21st-century capitalism – which in the UK have included soaring housing costs, the casualisation of employment and sustained falls in wages – has provided an opening for any political forces presenting themselves as radical outsiders, fighting on behalf of the voiceless masses (Ed. they promote the former to justify the latter). On the right, these grievances have been fused with a cultural resentment towards highfalutin virtue-signalling and liberal elites…

In the run-up to Cop26, more than 30 leading organisations came together to develop a new set of tools capable both of monitoring the online spread of inactivist messaging, and anticipating the next Texas blackout campaign before it takes off. The ongoing project is being led by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, or ISD, a thinktank better known for its work tackling hate and extremism. So far it has yielded valuable insights into the shape of climate debates across Europe, such as the “national sovereignty” arguments being used to defend coal mining in Poland, and the entwining of anti-EU sentiments with inactivist climate messaging in Hungary. It has also led to a major report exploring the global spread of “climate lockdown” alarmism, in which hard-right activists and Covid denialists have found common cause in driving fear of pandemic-type lockdowns that they claim will soon be imposed by tyrannical governments at the behest of environmentalists.

It was back in May this year that DeSmog – a journalism platform that aims to expose and eliminate the “PR pollution” around climate breakdown, and one of the project’s partners – first noticed a newly trending Twitter hashtag: #CostOfNetZero. It was being pushed by Steve Baker, the Tory MP for Wycombe and the former chair of the Brexit-supporting European Research Group, as well as a newly appointed GWPF trustee…..

In the months that followed, however, disquiet over the net zero transition began ramping up in sections of the UK press – initially in outlets such as Spiked Online and GB News, but eventually creeping into the pages of major newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph and the Sun, too. In August, the Spectator magazine printed an image of banknotes tumbling into a void on its cover, with the headline “The cost of net zero”; by September, right-leaning media commentators were homing in on the government’s aim of gradually phasing out gas boilers as part of the decarbonisation plan, and replacing them with air- or ground-source heat pumps instead. The far greater economic costs of inaction on climate crisis were rarely mentioned in these reports, but again and again, efforts to reduce our collective carbon emissions were framed as an elitist power-grab….

By the autumn – as a growing cost-of-living crisis began to dominate the news agenda – the GWPF had rebranded itself as Net Zero Watch, a new parliamentary grouping called the Net Zero Scrutiny Group led by Craig Mackinlay had been formed,….

The idea that decarbonisation is inherently elitist is a myth, peddled largely by political figures who have shown little concern for deprived communities in any other context, and who ignore the fact that without a net zero transition it is the very poorest – globally and domestically – who will suffer most severely. But like all effective myths, it is founded on a kernel of truth: namely that under successive governments, political decision-making has felt remote and unaccountable, the rich have got richer, and life for a great many of the rest of us has grown harder.’

For more blogs and articles click through below:

Dumbing Down and Gaming of Anglosphere Media, Science, Society and Democracy

Anglosphere Triangle – Immigration – Environment – Population Growth – Radical Right Libertarians 

Koch Industries: How to Influence Politics, Avoid Fossil Fuel Emission Control and Environmental Protections 

Trump’s White House Immigration Policies and White Nationalist John Tanton

White Nationalist Extremism – Mainstreamed by Politicians and Media

Tactics Against Bipartisan Climate Change Policy in Australia – Limits to Growth?

Conspiracy of Denial – COVID-19 and Climate Science

Dumbing Down and Gaming of Anglosphere Media, Science, Society and Democracy

Relevant and interesting article from Menadue’s ‘Pearls and Swines’ in Australia from Lucy Hamilton on how Anglosphere conservative and nativist libertarians have joined forces to impede science, education, female and minority rights and progress, on behalf of powerful interests, endeavouring to preserve their power, status and influence; even if a minority. 

Key topics within the excerpts have been underlined to emphasise some key points which have become apparent, in not just the Anglosphere of US, UK and Australia, but similarly in ‘illiberal states’ like Hungary, Poland and Russia; what are we becoming?

Firstly it is about halting progress through attacking science, education, empowerment etc. with confected attacks on academia and curricula, then the same is supported by media and think tanks, then further, weaponised through digital or social media to access younger generations in e.g. far or alt right.  

Many of the Republicans promoting these strategies are known more directly as ‘segregationists’ hiding behind ‘state rights’ to delay or stop minority voters from expressing their democratic will through the ballot box, using a variety of voter suppression tactics that stymies the Democrats.

Although conservative think tanks are cited in the article one would describe them now, as Jane Mayer has in her work ‘Dark Money’, as ‘radical right libertarian’ channeling Luther, Calvin and Adam Smith, but keeping the most unpalatable aspects i.e. Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan’s more radical socio economic views, away from public scrutiny, according to Nancy Maclean in ‘Democracy in Chains’, for electoral reasons.  

Many of the same libertarian think tanks are now networked in what is known as the Koch global Atlas Network which also includes several in Australia and the U.K.  With the Tea Party in direct reaction to Obama’s election had the Koch Brothers in a supporting role seeding the Tea Party as an authentic but astroturfing grass roots movement which was confected to oppose Democrat policies and create street protest for supposed credibility (and media content).

Also related was Brexit and in many ways (frustratingly) transparent in its objective of avoiding EU treaty constraints on environment, finance, labour standards and mobility, but using nativist issues of xenophobia towards Europe, refugees, immigrants, foreign workers and population growth; the latter issues got Brexit across the line with much help from legacy media and the present opportunities for gaming of ageing electorates.  

Further, it was not just a ‘back of the cigarette pack’ plan by Farage et al. but was predicated upon decades of anti-European and anti-immigrant sentiment in British media; simply needed to be triggered. The latter, like many Tory MPs, were informed by think tanks or NGOs e.g. Population Matters and Migration Watch (like Sustainable Population Australia) that can be linked back across the Atlantic to white nationalist John Tanton; also an admirer of the white Australia policy.  

Tanton, with Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich at ZPG Zero Population Growth (supported by Rockefeller Bros./Exxon, Ford and Carnegie Foundations) from late ‘70s (when scientists were aware of global warming) had environmental health as not a fossil fuel or carbon emissions issue, but high immigration and high population growth (under the pseudoscientific guise of ‘limits to growth’), hence, need only restrict immigration to lower population and improve the environment…… the ‘Cafe con leche Republicans’ were aware and warned their colleagues nearly ten years ago of Tanton and what they described as eugenics, but to no avail….

‘Australia has proved fertile ground for US anti-intellectual propaganda

By Lucy Hamilton  Oct 7, 2021

Cynical conservative strategies in US politics have well and truly made their way into Australian discourse — just look at the demands of the rioters in Melbourne for Ivermectin.

Seeing Trump flags flying at the riots on Melbourne’s streets last week was a reminder that “culture war” battles are no longer national — they are as global as the COVID-19 pandemic.

These violent scenes are also partly a result of a conscious tool in the right’s efforts to corrode democracy.

When strategists encourage a voter identity based on resentment and fear, not to mention a disdain for experts, they cannot always foresee the paranoias that will emerge in the circles targeted, or the violence that might result.

……. Our democracies may not survive the radical conservative bloc’s utter rejection of consensus reality.

Some of the climate projections suggest that civilisation itself may not survive the challenges in its path.

Since the Civil Rights era in America, a small number of Republican strategists in the anglosphere have considered how the white and wealthy might continue to dominate elections despite their numerical and policy goal marginality. With goals of lowest tax, smallest government, and least regulation, the richest would need to hide their plans behind marketing campaigns…..

…..Conservative think tanks, which mainly worked in the interests wealthy whites, fostered the spread of these strategies internationally through conservative circles and political networks. The internet has enabled the resultant culture war to permeate the world, augmenting the identity fractures that already pervade diverse cultures…..

The most dangerous aspects of this conservative identity are its opposition to the scientific method and expertise…..

In the US, Republican figures who embraced the cynical Tea Party backlash to Barack Obama’s electoral victory did not imagine a party where a huckster like Donald Trump dictated their every word. Any Republican who annoys him faces the wrath of his base, upon which the party now depends.

It was their cynical strategies that led to the armed attack on the Capitol in January.

In the UK, when Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson activated nostalgic jingoism and racism to campaign for Brexit, they did not care about the surge of race-based attacks around the country……

Sectors that consider themselves more important than any one nation’s government shape our fate. Fossil fuels and the tech industry benefit from this strategy to harness a mass conservative identity to protect the freedoms of the powerful……

……The social media companies showed how rapidly they could act when they chose to shut down ISIS’s ability to recruit on their platforms. On current matters, however, they have chosen barely to intervene.

…… This conservative strategy was a Cold War phenomenon: it is hardly surprising that libertarian strategists should have felt threatened by totalitarian regimes. This bled over into frustration with interventionist governments that devised Depression era systems to keep the public from revolting. The New Deal in the US and the Welfare State in the UK struck these libertarians as only steps away from life behind the Iron Curtain.

The atheism of the totalitarian bloc was deeply disturbing to Americans too. Christian-identity Republicans were the first to produce strategists that imagined this loyal voter bloc forged from the poor.

In the late 1970s, a conference call between a collection of Republican figures including Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich, the man behind the Heritage Foundation, took place. They debated topics around which a Christian Right identity could be galvanised. Prayer in schools was one of the topics abandoned. Abortion, drawing on Phyllis Schlafly’s powerful anti women’s lib movement, was the issue selected in the end. The Evangelical sects would be galvanised into the heart of the new Moral Majority.

The success of this long game is astounding. Now even the Democrats are afraid to campaign on access to abortions, despite majority support. Republican politicians tweet Bible verses. Texas has offered bounties for informing on women seeking abortions and those who help them; other states are following.

The degree to which these ploys are now international is illustrated by Australian Deputy Minister for Women Amanda Stoker and Nationals backbencher George Christensen adopting the anti-choice fight in Australia. Stoker headlined a pro-life rally in May and Christiansen introduced a “born alive” bill to Parliament last month.

Evangelical Christianity has become entangled with the conspiracy theories of QAnon. The Evangelical churches of America tend towards rejecting the secular world. Rejecting consensus reality primes people for the QAnon’s ad hoc compilations of conspiracies.

We saw the bizarre mix of QAnon’s MAGA version of conservative identity on the streets of Melbourne: militant bigots and misogynistic incels, anti-science anti-vaxxers and Evangelicals. It is an extraordinary international movement.

It might seem a spontaneous phenomenon. It is the result, however, of strategies devised by a network of conservative forces aiming to achieve minority rule.’

For similar articles and blogs about radical right libetarian and white Christian nationalist ideology click through below

Anglosphere Triangle – Immigration – Environment – Population Growth – Radical Right Libertarians

Radical Right Libertarian Economics or Social Populism? 

Libertarian Economic Policy Promotion and Think Tanks

Anglo Radical Right Libertarianism and Economics

Nationalist Conservative Political Parties in the Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Ideology and Populism for Votes

Koch Industries: How to Influence Politics, Avoid Fossil Fuel Emission Control and Environmental Protections

Trump’s White House Immigration Policies and White Nationalist John Tanton

White Nationalist Extremism – Mainstreamed by Politicians and Media

Tactics Against Bipartisan Climate Change Policy in Australia – Limits to Growth?

Conspiracy of Denial – COVID-19 and Climate Science