Veterans of the environmental movement, among them Earth Day founder and former U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-WI), acknowledged the nexus between increases in population and environmental hazards. They came to acknowledge the need to limit immigration to the United States in order to control population growth that would inevitably place ever greater pressure on natural resources and our environment. And there would be little possibility of living without the stresses that necessarily accompany overcrowding.
In this issue of The Social Contract, leading with Brenda Walker’s article on “Liberal Policy Switches,” we review the dramatic shift of mainstream environmental organizations, especially the Sierra Club, from recognizing the need for population limitations (which means supporting immigration restriction, given that almost all U.S. population growth is driven by post-1965 immigrants and their children and grandchildren) to “neutrality” or active opposition to sensible calls to end mass immigration and establish an environmentally responsible U.S. population policy.
Frosty Wooldridge reflects on his own awakening. As he remarks, “Five years previous to Earth Day, little did anyone think about the fact that our U.S. Congress… pushed through the most dangerous bill in U.S. history, without debate: the 1965 Immigration Reform Act…. [a sponsor] Senator Howard Metzenbaum said, ‘We’ve opened the floodgates.’”
Readers may be especially interested in the essay by Fred Elbel, Dick Schneider, William G. Elder, and Stuart H. Hurlbert, “How Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization (SUSPS) Advised Congress in 2001,” on the need to restrict immigration if the principal goals of the environmental movement were to be realized in the future. Their essay is a concise summary of what took place within the Sierra Club and related organizations from the 1960s to the present. The testimony of SUSPS remains relevant today.
We are pleased to include in this issue Carl Horowitz’s expose of the Central American Caravan and its Chicago-based promoters, which event, as he says, “is challenging U.S. sovereignty like no other...in recent memory.” James Kirkpatrick reflects on the meaning of the “Yellow Vest” Protests in France, which have inspired open resistance to the forces of globalism around the world.
Peter Gemma interviews Dave Gibson about his new book, No Safe Places: Death at the Hands of Illegal Aliens, just published by The Social Contract Press. The book profiles fifty Americans who were killed by people who should never have been in the U.S. in the first place. ■
Wayne Lutton, Ph.D.
On the cover, clockwise from the top: Edward O. Wilson, David Brower, Garrett Hardin, Gov. Richard Lamm, George F. Kennan, Sen. Eugene McCarthy, Sen. Gaylord Nelson, and Rep. Barbara Jordan.