Obama's Science Czar, John Holdren has espoused controversial views on population control in the past.

By now you’ve heard the outrageous ideas put forth by Obama’s science Czar John Holdren in Ecoscience . This is the book where Holdren, joined with Paul and Anne Ehrlich, suggested that sterilants placed into our water and essential food supply would be a good way to limit population growth. The trio also tossed around the idea of mandatory adoptions for children born to mothers out of wedlock or to teen mothers, that is if the teens hadn’t already been forced to abort-as the book also suggests.

You may be thinking that this is a far-fetched notion, that these were just wild ideas in the world of academia, and that people don’t really believe this stuff.  Think again.

Youthquake is a report put out by the radical group Optimum Population Trust.  It is an urgent call to action to save the planet, not only from pollution, but from people.  It’s OPT’s contention that overpopulation is killing our planet, and to save it, we should push for population reduction.

Without action, longages of humans – the prime cause of all shortages of resources – may cause parts of the planet to become uninhabitable, with governments pushed towards coercive population control measures as a regrettable but lesser evil than conflict and suffering.

OPT released a briefing in 2007 which says the following:

Population limitation should therefore be seen as the most cost-effective carbon offsetting strategy available to individuals and nations – a strategy that applies with even more force to developed nations such as the UK because of their higher consumption levels. A non-existent person has no environmental footprint: the emissions “saving” is instant and total. Given an 80-year lifespan and annual per capita emissions (2006) of 9.3 tonnes of CO2 (Defra, 2007, provisional), each Briton “foregone” – each addition to the population that does not take place – saves 744 tonnes of CO2, equivalent in emissions to 620 return flights from London to New York (1.2 tonnes of CO2 each).

Well there you have it!  “A non-existent person has no environmental footprint.”  A non-existent person also has no dissenting political views, no burden on society, no addition to health care costs, and no demand on social services.  Whether people want to admit it or not, Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger, believed strongly in eugenics.  This is the theory that we can and should weed out the undesirables–you know, those who might be emitting too much CO2–or in her day, who were too poor, or too dumb, or too weak, or too black.  Sanger’s idea was that we could use “family planning” to keep those “unfits” from reproducing.

At a March 1925 international birth control gathering in New York City, a speaker warned of the menace posed by the “black” and “yellow” peril. The man was not a Nazi or Klansman; he was Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a member of Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League (ABCL), which along with other groups eventually became known as Planned Parenthood.

Sanger’s other colleagues included avowed and sophisticated racists. One, Lothrop Stoddard, was a Harvard graduate and the author of The Rising Tide of Color against White Supremacy. Stoddard was something of a Nazi enthusiast who described the eugenic practices of the Third Reich as “scientific” and “humanitarian.” And Dr. Harry Laughlin, another Sanger associate and board member for her group, spoke of purifying America’s human “breeding stock” and purging America’s “bad strains.” These “strains” included the “shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of antisocial whites of the South.”

Not to be outdone by her followers, Margaret Sanger spoke of sterilizing those she designated as “unfit,” a plan she said would be the “salvation of American civilization.: And she also spike of those who were “irresponsible and reckless,” among whom she included those ” whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers.” She further contended that “there is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.” That many Americans of African origin constituted a segment of Sanger considered “unfit” cannot be easily refuted.

The History of Coerced Sterilization in the United States

Still shaking your head thinking that forced sterilization can’t happen here?  Unfortunately it already did.  From 1930s to the 1970s, mass sterilization was taking place in Puerto Rico.  Women were encouraged to get hysterectomies.  Children in schools were taught that the key to economic success was having a small family.  The average age for those who were sterilized was 26, with a full 1/3 of the island’s female population being sterilized by 1965!  Many of those women were not told that the procedure was irreversible, and some were not even told that it was a surgery at all.  Planned Parenthood had a hand here as well, after all, this primarily targeted poor and impoverished women–or as Margaret Sanger would say, “unfit.”

Which brings us back to recent studies on population control and dire warnings from environmentalists.  Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost is literally a cost/benefit analysis of population control and pollution.  Simply put, the study found that “family planning” is the “cheapest way to combat climate change.” Oregon State University statisticians have recently released a study that claims that having fewer children is the best way to reduce your carbon footprint.

While the OSU researchers make it clear they are not advocating government controls or intervention on population issues, we cannot ignore the fact that there are groups who are advocating coercive measures and that someone who has written about such things in the past, has the president’s ear.  In a political environment where every day is the potential for a new crisis, as the next big thing, we have to wonder how many ways this new research can be used by an uber-progressive administration.  Holdren has written about compulsory abortions and coerced sterilization, all in the name of the environmental movement.  Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, recently resigned amid revelations of his radically controversial views.  Obama has said that he wants to put science before ideology–but whose science and whose ideology?

Articles of interest:

Oh my: One quarter of Americans could be non-religious in 20 years