At our current level we are the world's largest consumer and polluter. They would have us believe that trying to deflect this country from a path leading to a scenario resembling present-day China has become an unpatriotic act. This intimidation has succeeded. Journalists are so loath to cover population stories that a dishearteningly small number attended the population session at the Society for Environmental Journalists' annual convention last fall. It is a truism that the strength of a democracy depends upon well-informed voters.
Demography drives human destiny.
B. Meredith Burke is senior fellow at Negative Population Growth, a Washington, D.C.-based organization. In the 1990s, large donors have begun to intervene more directly to set the course of environmental activism. This raised concern among activists who feared the effort would inadvertently support the rising wave of anti-immigration sentiment that was just beginning to sweep the country. An examination of the Annual Reports of the major environmental organizations revealed an extent of overt corporate influence upon the leading national environmental groups that surprised all but the most jaded activists. Almost all of the leading groups were receiving substantial contributions from the most polluting corporations.