Nearly 40 years ago, John Holdren (now “science” advisor to Obama) wrote a book with the infamous Ehrlichs. In the “recommendations” at the end of 1973 book Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions, they said: “A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States”.
It’s a weird use of the word. But, there is no mistaking “de-develop”: to undo development, to go backwards, to get rid of advances….
And it was hardly a juvenile slip of the tongue. 37 years later, all this time passes, and when asked about that passage, he acknowledges it’s still on his agenda:
“What we meant by that was stopping the kinds of activities that are destroying the environment and replacing them with activities that would produce both prosperity and environmental quality. Thanks a lot.”
CNSNews.com then asked: “And how do you plan on implementing that?”
“Through the free market economy,” Holdren said.
Just imagine what twisted, sicko “free market” would freely choose to do some de-developing?
Holdren’s version of freedom is just another grand control scheme: “Let me tell you how to live”. “Free market” has become the false advertising banner of the totalitarians. A market is not free if you have to coerce people or jail them into joining the market.
“De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote.
“Resources must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries,” Holdren and his co-authors wrote. “This effort must be largely political, especially with regard to our overexploitation of world resources, but the campaign should be strongly supplemented by legal and boycott action against polluters and others whose activities damage the environment. The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”
There are plenty of world-peace-type-problems to discuss. But, the mindset that thinks 1973 USA was “overdeveloped”, and that development itself is the problem is two dozen beers short of a slab. If people are unfed, sick, or homeless, then problem is not the development, but that the development is only half done.
Populations can’t keep growing exponentially, sure. But, the only countries that have got control of their population surge are the ones that developed.
Read the whole report on CNS.
H/t Climate Depot (see also John Holdrens Ice Age Warning in 1971)
The man just wants to stop everyone else flying around in planes, having fun:
In their 1971 chapter, Holdren and Ehrlich speculate about various environmental catastrophes, and on pages 76 and 77 Holdren the climate scientist speaks about the probable likelihood of a “new ice age” caused by human activity (air pollution, dust from farming, jet exhaust, desertification, etc.).
He also wrote that trees ought to be able to sue in court…
Giving “natural objects” — like trees — standing to sue in a court of law would have a “most salubrious” effect on the environment, Holdren wrote the 1970s.
“One change in (legal) notions that would have a most salubrious effect on the quality of the environment has been proposed by law professor Christopher D. Stone in his celebrated monograph, ‘Should Trees Have Standing?’” Holdren said in a 1977 book that he co-wrote with Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich.
If you met him at the pub, he’d be the guy you might egg on just for sake of a good dinner party anecdote to use after the fact, but he’s not just the nutter at the bar, he’s one degree of separation from the the Leader of The Free World.