I believe that one of the most pressing environmental issues of our time is population growth. This issue that is constantly escalating and rarely being addressed exacerbates every other environmental problem that the world faces. Kraft finally brings up this issue in the last section of his last chapter, though devotes a surprisingly thorough view of policy within those few pages, including multiple pieces of legislation and their changes throughout time. Population is a touchy subject, as it is nearly always spoken of in conjunction with abortion and the strong religious ideas opposing it.
Kraft rightfully uses the population issue as an example “that environmental agreements often rest on a fragile political consensus that can weaken at any time” as support for international family planning programs has waxed and waned with each presidential election. Each time I read about the huge changes involved with the US’s new presidents, backsliding with Reagan, eventually gaining ground with Clinton, and again falling with G.W. Bush, I wonder if there should be a policy created that does not allow new administrations to weaken environmental policy. In the case of population, there is little regulation in the first place, though such topics as deforestation and pollution emissions are constantly being made more or less stringent. I have to wonder if there is a way to force administrations to comply with previous standards without being able to deteriorate the laws. I am afraid that by allowing this, other, conflicting “interest groups” would want such promises as well such as the coal industry being able to mine so much per year or the oil industry being able to drill so much oil per year. It seems an impossible task, yet one that would benefit the earth so very much. Is there a democratic way of allowing such changes? Or do we have to rely on ourselves, the citizens, to create a sea change in the environmental movement (which perhaps has already started…) that will elect only environmentally conscious officials?
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5/5 Two very interesting thoughts: population and divorcing environmental management from the whims of the changing executive branch. In terms of population, I find it so hard to have that conversation without relating this subject to affluence. I think the issue of popular interest and acceptance of the centrality of environmental concerns to human life will ultimately bring the strongest and most lasting type of political change.
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