Mar 30 2010
What’s Humane About Population Control?
Carter Dillard is not a household name, but perhaps it should be to anyone who runs a farm. Dillard is an attorney "of counsel" with the Humane Society of the United States, and a law professor at Loyola. He’s the guy HSUS sends if, say, you run an upstate New York duck farm that HSUS would be happy to see out of business.
Dillard was formerly the General Counsel of Compassion Over Killing (COK), a radical vegan activist group founded by HSUS senior staffer Paul Shapiro and former HSUS vice president Miyun Park. Josh Balk also came to the Mother Ship via COK, Dillard is also involved with Four Feet Forward, an Oregon-based group that helps “nonhuman species,” promotes vegetarianism, and provides free media and legal services to smaller animal advocacy groups.
Dillard also has an, um, interesting avocation. He's a research fellow at the Optimum Population Trust, a United Kingdom-based think tank that promotes the view that Planet Earth can support, at most, 5.1 billion people. That means that in order to be sustainable, today’s world population would have to shrink. A lot.
Here's Dillard in action on the FOX Business channel, arguing about overpopulation with Stuart Varney:
Carter Dillard has also published academic papers in law journals arguing that having children is not a basic human right. In a 2007 essay titled “Rethinking the Procreative Right,” he challenges whether people have a right to have kids as they see fit.
That's not a joke:
The right to procreate, correctly defined, is a right at least to replace oneself, and at most to procreate up to a point that optimizes the public good.
And what does “the public good” entail? Dillard says that involves the public’s right to “access wilderness and natural biological diversity (including other species).”
Hmmm.
More on that thorny "other species" angle in a moment. But here’s a question worth exploring: Why does HSUS, an animal-oriented group, so often seem preoccupied with concern for human population? Let’s review:
- In the book Bloodties, a pre-HSUS Wayne Pacelle tells author Ted Kerasote that “I certainly don't plan to have children. I take it as a very serious personal responsibility not to put another consumer on this planet.” And Heidi Prescott (now an HSUS vice president) tells Kerasote that she had herself sterilized at an early age, saying: “If I gave up animal rights and zero population work, I'd go into prison reform.”
- The unknown author of the “HSUS X-Files” report writes that HSUS gave $2,500 in 1994 to a group called “Zero Population Growth,” an offshoot of notorious population doomsday merchant Paul Ehrlich that today brands itself under the name “Population Connection.” You might remember Ehrlich—he wrote The Population Bomb forty years ago, predicting that the world's population would crash because food production couldn’t possibly keep up with population growth. (Obviously, his theory was an “epic fail.”)
- In HSUS's 1991 Report of the President (see page 50), then-HSUS Vice President for Environment Jan Hartke noted that HSUS’s environmental section had addressed “the human population explosion.” In fact, Hartke brags:
The Environment section took a leadership role in initiating and advocating a Population Priority Statement whose purpose is to underscore, for the first time, the consensus judgement [sic] of environmental organizations that “the increase in population and in resource consumption are basic causes of human suffering and environmental degradation and must become major priorities for national and international action.”
Why is this a talking point (much less a major priority) of a supposed animal protection group?
It only make sense (to us, anyway) if you bring Carter Dillard back into the equation. Remember: He believes that the right to have kids should be balanced against “other rights”—including those of “non-human species.”
So if people are just another animal species, and if our “rights” must be considered on the same level as those of deer, pigs, and lab rats, then it’s not too big a stretch to require that we thin our own numbers for the purpose of making room for animals. And if you're laser-focused on the supposed "rights" of chickens, it makes a twisted sort of sense to demote all of us "people" to the status of blind automatons whose nasty habit of consuming animals for fuel violates the rights of countless livestock.
Wayne Pacelle himself put the cherry on the sundae in a 1998 interview with Vegan.com founder Erik Marcus. (Pacelle was HSUS Senior Vice President at the time):
Human population growth is ultimately one of the most significant [things] that we as a movement have to grapple with. It's a simple equation that more consumers translates into more animals raised for food.
Don't get us wrong: We're not saying that it's a good idea to subject the planet to a limitless number of people. But we find it remarkable how an idea like "zero population growth" can be co-opted by activists who find their own narrow reasons to hoist its banner high.
On the other hand, insects outnumber us poor humans by several orders of magnitude. And there are 24 billion chickens on the planet. So maybe we're the oppressed minority after all. We say let's thin the herd of broiler hens. Preferably with the aid of some BBQ sauce.
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This must be why they are trying to decimate our food. It isn’t about animals at all, it is about starving the rest of us to death. Or maybe they have bought stock in Soylent Green, Inc. LOL
Keep remembering ONE GENERATION AND OUT….its why the whacko’s (ooops how tacky of me) are teaching the kids to not want meat…
All kidding aside, with those links and connections that are involved are you laughing? or crying? or does it put a cold dagger of fear into your heart? This is (as I see it) a very big problem in our lives (and world?!) today…....
David:
As a Christian Catholic the picture above offends me greatly. How does it relate to the effort to expose HSUS while insulting Catholic Christians?
Also this statement was out there for me as well.
“Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that it’s a good idea to subject the planet to a limitless number of people.”
What you are basically saying is that in some way you support restricting any human life if you see fit.
I’ll continue to read this weblog, but I have my doubts. I hope these low points were a slip of bad taste and poor judgment.
As for the many links, in pre-internet days, they would have been “footnotes” in research with the source cited at the end in a “bibliography page”—always a good thing if you are looking for credibility.
Does this HSUS “people population control” subject tie in with the Bilderberg topic that is frequently mentioned on TV? Are they related or supportive of one another? I’m scratching my head about this - not being sarcastic. Anyone know?
I can appreciate the fine line David walked on this and its time for people to put aside personal feelings/beliefs on some of this stuff to head off what is ahead of us. POLITICS is what its about in the end, I’m sick of our folks saying “we can’t get involved in politics” WAKE UP, THEY ARE USING POLITICS AGAINST US. You must fight fire WITH FIRE….or fall by the wayside and take all of the rest of us down with you.
PETA is using Octomom now to talk NEUTER/SPAY…..
I have been contacting billboard companies regarding a billboard in the Austin, Texas area to display an ad that lets the public know the REAL AGENDA of HSUS. Interestingly, I happened to contact the very large company that is used by HSUS & THLN & was informed they couldn’t help me because the ad was “negative” and because it would be a conflict of interest. Once again, the HSUS megabucks make it difficult, if not impossible to get the word out about HSUS to the general public so they’ll stop “innocently” sending donations.
I’m not Christian at all and I do believe in population growth/control (not enforced by the government but it is an issue) is a big issue we need to deal with; however, I’m going to have to go with both of you on the picture - that those who dress up are intending to be provocative (if not down right offensive) AND that I found the photo to be offensive.
I know David and crew will choose better in the future though because HSUS is the issue here, not the ancillary issues (even if they are difficult to avoid at times).
This is exactly what author Wesley J. Smith is writing about in his book, “A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy”—the human cost of the animal rights movement….
.I see lots of other things in daily life that offend me, but I don’t let my personal sensibilities rule what I do and don’t so. HSUS and PeTA—now THEY are offensive!
This ad is offensive in so many ways. Sorry but Catholic nuns should not be protrayed in this light by any organization let alone one that is now claiming a religious leaning itself.
“I say let’s thin the herd of broiler hens. Preferably with the aid of some BBQ sauce.”
Even if someone mistook you for a serious, ethical person, this kind of statement would make it clear that you’re not.
I guess it depends on whose ox is gored. I think that the Catholic who objects to the photo of the “pregnant” nun should loosen up. Every nun should be knocked up at least once. Otherwise how do they know they don’t like it!
Peta has made a deal with octomom where they give her a nice big check to keep her home and she does a new ad thing for them about spaying and neutering pets so that they don’t become “octo-parents” too. Awful.
I can’t figure out why Dita was their choice for ads either, considering she openly says she loves wearing fur, preferrably vintage ones but she doesn’t have a problem with wearing brand new furs..oh yeah - if they’re against fur production, why do they throw paint on people wearing fur, since it only means more animals will have to give up their skins to replace what’s been ruined.
Where can i find a recorded phone call of some one calling hsus or lca or any other animal rights orginization to complain about animal abuse? i need this so that i can present to my class how simple it is to call if they witness animal abuse or know of unsanitary conditions involving animals.
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I’m surprised how people are horrified at the thought of population control. Really? It’s already projected that the world population will reach over 9 billion people in the next 50 years.
Put aside the notion that OTHER living things on this planet have a right to grow and thrive here, but governments have to put serious thought in food and water management.
Also societies around the world have to change their notion that people (particularly women) are worthless if they don’t have babies, especially male. Also, that the idea that the true measurement of how happy your marriage is should be based entirely on how many children you have.
So many people have kids and then abuse, abandon and neglect them. This isn’t helping society, our communities, the nation or the planet. Let’s promote birth control, education, the woman’s right to choose, and stop picking on people who don’t want kids in the first place! Parenthood isn’t the be all and end all of the universe.
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First of all I love this quote: “On the other hand, insects outnumber us poor humans by several orders of magnitude. And there are 24 billion chickens on the planet. So maybe we’re the oppressed minority after all. I say let’s thin the herd of broiler hens. Preferably with the aid of some BBQ sauce.” YAY MEAT!!
Secondly, while I think population control for the sake of saving the planet is a bit much. (There are plenty of other things we could do..) I do think that it should be more difficult for people to have children. Governmental support in many societies is encouraging families that people cannot afford to take of. Poverty is increasing profoundly. Every being should be allowed the right to procreate, but each of them have the individual responsibility of making sure they thrive.
Thank you a lot for your information about this!
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I reference Pacelle’s quote on the subject often, when I encounter the “People always drag up quotes that Wayne made 15 years ago. People change”
My reply is always “I hear ya. So, has he had a kid yet?”
To know a person, look to their behavior and actions….not what comes out the left side of his mouth.
(the bot-blocker code to post this comment is ironically “home tasters”. Gladly! Pass the BBQ sauce! ha ha ha)