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The Sierra Club and the Immigration ControversyBy Sierra Club Director Paul Watson, February 14, 2004
When I first joined the Sierra Club in 1969, the following policy had just been adopted: The Sierra Club urges the people of the United States to abandon population growth as a pattern and goal; to commit themselves to limit the total population of the United States in order to achieve balance between population and resources; and to achieve a stable population no later than the year 1990. Adopted May 3-4, 1969 Population stabilization was not achieved in 1990 nor has it been achieved fourteen years later. Do we only begin to address this problem when the census reaches five hundred million or a billion? At the present rate of growth of 1.1% per year we will reach the billion mark by 2100. And what about the rest of the world? Currently our 6.5 billion will double by 2050 to 13 billion just as it doubled from 3 billion to 6.5 billion in the last fifty years. And that 13 billion will become 26 billion by 2100. These numbers must concern us. Mathematics is an absolute science. Place a grain of rice on square number one of a chess board and two grains of rice on square number two and double each time until you reach square number sixty-four. You will never will reach square number sixty-four because all of the rice in the world and all of the rice harvested for the last century will not be enough to fill that final square. That is the reality of exponential growth. Exponential multiplication however will lead to divisions and finally subtraction as the numbers crash like a house of cards when population exceeds carrying capacity. Dr. Judy Kunofsky in her 1989 Sierra Club report on population wrote "With current fertility levels, and immigration of 507,000 per year, the U.S. population would reach its peak of 302 million in the year 2038, and then experience a very slow decrease." Dr. Kunofsky was being optimistic. The population of the USA will reach 302 million by 2008, three decades ahead of her projection and her figure of 507,000 immigrants per year has already quadrupled to two million immigrants each year. Judy also wrote in her official Sierra Club report; "that Sierra Club statements on immigration will always make the connection between immigration, population increase in the U.S., and the environmental consequences thereof." Somehow within a few years the word "always" was abrogated in favor of neutrality as the Sierra Club leadership pulled it's collective head into the shell of political correctness for fear of offending groups whose agendas were not conservation. In 1989, the official Sierra Club policy on Immigration was: Immigration to the U.S. should be no greater than that which will permit achievement of population stabilization in the U.S. In 1990, the Club stated: "...U.S. population growth is also of concern. Immigration is a matter of environmental importance because of its connection with U.S. population growth..." Then in 1996, a radical move overturned nearly thirty years of Sierra Club policy on population with the proclamation that "the Sierra Club, its entities, and those speaking in its name will take no position on immigration levels or on policies governing immigration into the United States. The Club remains committed to environmental rights and protections for all within our borders, without discrimination based on immigration status. Adopted Feb. 24-25, 1996 In 1998, those who opposed this remarkable about face attempted to take the issue to the membership by proposing a ballot initiative. The problem was that the wording of the ballot by those who sponsored it was rejected. The ballot statement was rewritten by the neutrality advocates to the point where it was vague and confusing. Despite this tampering with the wording 40% of the membership rejected the neutrality position. Sierra Club director David Brower responded to this by saying in 1998, "the leadership are fooling themselves. Overpopulation is a very serious problem, and over-immigration is a big part of it. We must address both. We can't ignore either." Since 1998, those directors and activists who feel this is an important issue have worked to initiate another ballot question to the membership but this time demanding the right to control the wording. Now with candidates running who will be supporting this course of action, the neo-establishment of the Sierra Club has been taking some unorthodox measures to discourage the election of these candidates. Thus the politics of population has ignited a public controversy within the Sierra Club and has brought this debate into the open. And so today, those of us in the Sierra Club who were opposed to the radical flip-flop of the Club on population and immigration are being cast as a threat to the traditions of the Club when in fact the traditional policies of the Sierra Club have been for population reduction including reduction in the number of immigrants. No matter what the outcome of the Sierra Club Board elections, the controversy will not go away - not as long as the population of the United States continues to grow exponentially each year promising one billion people in America by the end of this century.
Captain Paul Watson
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