Letters to the Editor.

The Sierra Club's Right, Not Rightwing

Betsy Hartmann's analysis of the Sierra Club's population program is full of faulty logic and untruths ("Two Steps Backward for the Sierra Club," January issue).

Stabilizing, and eventually reducing, the world's population is ecologically necessary and eminently possible using the policies we support: women's empowerment, universal access to family planning assistance, and increased educational and economic opportunities for women and girls.

Many countries have already achieved below-replacement-level fertility. They showed that we can achieve this without coercive birth control, increased death rates, or ending immigration. Countries with below-replacement-level fertility include some of the most progressive countries with regard to the status of women, and the policies they have used are the very strategies supported by the Sierra Club. Hartmann's claim that population reduction can be achieved only by coercion or increased death rates is wrong.

There is abundant evidence that today's human population is consuming more than its share of the Earth's resources. So, without eventual population reduction, humanity will either reduce consumption globally, or we will continue to wipe out other species and destroy the environment. If Hartmann fears draconian measures, those options are much more worthy of her wrath.

To restore a healthy balance between people and the natural environment, the Sierra Club is working to stabilize, and eventually reduce, the global population through positive means that have proven effective.

Carol Schlitt Senior Washington Representative Population Program, Sierra Club Washington, D.C. Betsy Hartmann argues that the Sierra Club has taken a step backward and has aligned itself with the racist elements of the right wing by calling for population reduction.

But scientists have concluded that the Earth cannot support even our current level of population for very long, let alone the nine billion people that are expected in 2050. The maximum population, allowing for a decent quality of life and without degrading the environment, they say, is no more than two billion. A population of nine billion will lead only to massive starvation, disease, and social unrest, which are violations of everyone's human rights. This is what the Sierra Club is hoping to avoid by calling for population reduction.

Hartmann says that reducing U.S. population will require a halt to immigration, and thus the...