Conservative media outlets are waging an online defamation campaign against Presidential Science Advisor Jon Holdren, using out-of-context quotes and misinformation to portray him as hell-bent on pursuing population control through the use of forced abortions and mass sterilization.
Fox News reported that Holdren was bent on adopting a “planetary regime” of population control, while blogger Michelle Malkin called him a “wackjob” who entertains policies that would mandate “forced abortions, mass sterilizations, and poisoning the water supply to control the population.” On February 27, FrontPage Magazine published an article decrying Holdren’s “globalist, redistributionist, Malthusian views.”
The attacks are widely off the mark. The evidence generally cited by critics is a 1977 textbook entitled “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, and Environment.” The authors — Holdren is one of three — in a chapter detailing various coercive and non-coercive policies for “population control” ultimately come out strongly against such policies. They argue that the harm caused by their adoption “would, in our opinion, militate against the use of any such agent” of involuntary population control.
This Huffington Post piece won’t come as a shock to anyone who follows the climate debate and sees how the deniers routinely smear the scientific reputation of serious climate scientists like Holdren and NASA’s James Hansen. Indeed, the deniers and delayers and their media flacks were pimping lies and disinformation about Holdren when he was just a nominee (see “More proof Holdren is a great choice: Pielke, Tierney, Lomborg, and CEI diss him“).
I have known Holdren for over a decade and have discussed energy/climate issues with him many times. He probably has more combined expertise on both climate science and clean energy technology than any other person who could plausibly have been named science adviser. You can see a video of an excellent talk he gave here (along with talks by Chu and me). For a more recent BBC interview, see “The Climate Quote of the Week“.
He is about as far from a partisan flamethrower or radical environmentalist as one could possibly find among the scientific community. It is, however, certainly the case that anybody who spends as much time as Holdren has researching climate and talking to leading experts is going to become hellbent on avoiding Hell and High Water, the myriad catastrophic impacts our unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases will impose on our children and grandchildren and the next 50 generations. Hence the NYT quote from a Revkin piece:
“I am one of those who believes that any reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date look at the evidence makes clear that civilization has already generated dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system,” Dr. Holdren said. “What keeps me going is my belief that there is still a chance of avoiding catastrophe.”
Duh.
More debunking of the attacks on Holdren can be found in the Huffington Post piece:
Holdren’s work was also a product of its time. As the American Prospect noted in its July 21 issue, “population control” was a not particularly controversial concept at the time, and one that many scientists did support in various forms.
Shocked at the mischaracterization of their work, Holdren’s coauthors, Anne and Paul Ehrlich, released this statement earlier in the summer: “We were not then, never have been, and are not now ‘advocates’ of the Draconian measures for population limitation described — but not recommended — in the book’s 60-plus small-type pages cataloging the full spectrum of population policies[.]” They had merely described measures “that, at the time, had either been tried in some country or analyzed by some commentator.”
Holdren is on leave from Harvard University, where he is a professor of environmental policy. Prior to that he taught at UC Berkeley for over 20 years. His work focused on causes and repercussions of global environmental change, analysis of energy technologies and policies and initiatives to reduce the dangers from nuclear weapons and materials.
At his confirmation hearings, Holdren answered extensive questions from members of Congress covering a broad range of topics, including one question about the appropriate role of government in population control.
“I think the proper role of government is to develop and deploy the policies with respect to economy, environment, security, that will ensure the well being of the citizens we have,” he said.
He was unanimously confirmed.
All of this, however, has been lost on Holdren’s conservative critics, many of whom continue to selectively quote his work. In recent weeks “Intelligent Design” groups have joined the cause, publishing their own screeds against Holdren. These sites have gained such traffic in recent weeks that at the time of writing this article, a Google search for “John Holdren” yielded one such attack as the second hit.
The White House has generally scoffed at alarmist and far-fetched criticisms. But from “death panels” to “mass sterilizations,” the administration is facing an increasing barrage of charges that the president wants to stop your family from being born or facilitate them dying. In Holden’s case, the White House felt the misrepresentations had gained enough steam to warrant a defense.
“The quotations used to suggest that Dr. Holdren supports coercive approaches to limiting population growth were taken from a 1977 college textbook on environmental science and policy, of which he was the third author,” said Rick Weiss, Director of Strategic Communications at the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
“The quoted material was from a section of the book that described different possible approaches to limiting population growth and then concluded that the authors’ own preference was to employ the non-coercive approaches before the environmental and social impacts of overpopulation led desperate societies to employ coercive ones. Dr. Holdren has never been an advocate of compulsory abortions or other repressive means of population limitation.”
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Incidentally, Holdren and Paul Ehrlich invented the famous IPAT formula for humanity’s total environmental impact:
Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology
The environmental movement has focused primarily on cleaner technology and secondarily on population. I think that it will also have to look at the affects of affluence soon, as consumerism spreads from the currently developed nations to China, India, and other developing nations.
As all the vested interests have is smear campaigns and disinformation campaigns, this is zero surprise. What continues to surprise me however is the lack of a decent response yet again. Fer chrissake, its not as if this is a surprise.
Best,
D
Reactionary denialism will grow as climate destabilizes.
I need some help.
I am not a scientist, and have only been interested in this issue for a few years. I’m fine to point people in the right direction for broad concepts. But I don’t even know any calculus yet.
I have a commenter who knows a heck of a lot about Steve McIntyre and the Hockey Stick controversy. He’s got a complicated chain of logic and citations which supposedly show that every 1000-year temperature graph ever used by the IPCC is flawed, when the flaws are taken out (specifically bristlecone pine data) the conclusion falls apart, and this has been suppressed by the IPCC which proves they have an agenda.
I’ve been holding up okay until now. But now I really need someone who knows their climate science well – either to help me out or to (preferrably) take over. I’m not the right person to be taking part in this debate. I’m not a scientist.
The thread starts here – http://climatesight.org/ 2009/ 08/ 13/ by-your-own-logic/ comment-page-1/ #comment-547 – and really gets into the specifics around here – http://climatesight.org/ 2009/ 08/ 13/ by-your-own-logic/ comment-page-1/ #comment-634.
Any takers?
The far right wingnuts have no shame.
Kate,
Simply direct the deniers to this NASA data site:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
… if they want to claim that NASA is also part of some global conspiracy by scientists against the freedom-loving people of the world and that 30 years of satellite data has been “faked” or somehow “misinterpreted” by some of the best minds on the planet, then there is nothing you can say which will changed their minds and you can stop wasting your time with them.
The character assassination campaigns will continue because with a certain segment of the population they work and that segment does not care about truth, only dogma. This is true for those who fight againstClimate Change action, Health Care action, or any other proposal which those who are trying to fix what needs fixing will put forth. They do not care about the future, they do not even care about the fate of their own children or grand children over the coming decades.
Since the deniers and their corporate media thugs have no honest facts or logic to use in their opposition, they will continued so spew lies and fan the fears of the willfully ignorant. We will continue to hear claims that all this is simply an excuse to create population control “death squads” and health care “death panels”. When they do this it is vital that they always be called out in public and debunked. But that won’t stop them and once their current lies have been exposed it’s best to move on to and not waste time trying to convince them or their followers of the facts. They really aren’t interested.
The American Prospect piece you mentioned was very disappointing and a virtual hit job, as I commented at the time. To my knowledge, it has never been modified.
Dr. Holdren,as you note, has exemplary credentials to be Science Advisor.
The mainstream media just repeat nonsense without evaluating it.
Jack Cadogan
knows a heck of a lot about Steve McIntyre and the Hockey Stick “controversy”. He’s got a complicated chain of “logic” and citations which supposedly show that every 1000-year temperature graph ever used by the IPCC is flawed, when the flaws are taken out (specifically bristlecone pine data) the conclusion falls apart, and this has been “suppressed” by the IPCC which proves they have an agenda. [quotation marks added]
zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Best,
D
As a doctoral student of John Holdren’s, I know him to be a man of brilliance, integrity, thoughtfulness, and humility. To see him disrespected and insulted is very disheartening, even if it is business as usual for the right-wing character-assassination squads.
I am confident he will not let this deter him from important matters, and neither should any of us.
“The far right wingnuts have no shame.”
No shame, no sense, no ideas, no program for society, no philosophy, no morals, no care for nature, no compassion, no security, no sense of community, and no clue.
No ANYTHING, except the dogmatic and negative trashing of anyone and anything that stands in the way of their me first philosophy of life, a philosophy that is destructive of any sort of real progress.
Somebody toss me a brew…
Kate (4) — It some regions it is now obviously warmer than at any time in the last several thousand years. Here is an article about one of those places:
http://news.softpedia.com/ news/ Fast-Melting-Glaciers-Expose-7-000-Years-Old-Fossil-Forest-69719.shtml
Another place to check is the Alps, with Uetzi the Iceman playing a prominent role.
Since the rise of these far right groups and their disruption of the town hall meetings on health care I have started monitoring far right wing radio again. Ughh! I monitored a program today called the Alex Jones Show which I picked up on my portable shortwave radio. It’s got a very strong signal in North America and is easily received on the cheapest of shortwave recievers. This is why far right wind groups and militia supporters used it back in the 1990s and use it still today. Its a poor man’s radio network. Alex Jones, the host of the Alex Jones Show, mentioned John Holdren unflatteringly in this outrageous claim that this was part of a plan by, Bilderburgers, The New World Order, Barrack Obama, you fill in the blank here, to reduce the population by 80%. It’s sad that there are enough people out there that actually believe this tripe. These may very well be some of the 18% people who believe the sun orbits the earth. Our education system and our political maturity has a long way to go before this gets assigned to the circular file.
Kate,
Raphael: “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”.
“Conservative media outlets are waging an online defamation campaign against Presidential Science Advisor Jon Holdren, using out-of-context quotes and misinformation”
“As all the vested interests have is smear campaigns and disinformation campaigns, this is zero surprise.”
To which I add that if you are an oil or coal company, you have at least three problems right now:
1) retaining your aging and very highly qualified professional staff in the face of overwhelming evidence that your product is defective (I am assuming the staff have ethics–very likely)
2) hiring the next generation of 1) in the face of…
3) creating a gigohumongous fog of fuzziness wherein you can pretend your product is not defective when the courts finally get involved
Funding the PR war on science and scientists? Priceless.
4 Kate; 1. Send him to http://www.realclimate.org
2. Get your own degree in physics, if you can.
Kate,
I have an easier solution. Go to Peter Sinclair’s website on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610 where he hosts a weekly video series called, “Climate Crock of the Week.” I have found it most useful and the explanations are easy to understand. They’re also very entertaining.
The best solution of all…..I contacted Tamino. The guy’s arguments were squished and he ran away. My comment policy has been changed so now people have to cite the scientific statements they make with something peer-reviewed – hopefully that’ll get rid of most of the hopeless debates!
I hope that the current Obama administration does something about people like Ed Magedson of the RipOff Report found at http://www.ripoffreport.com, who has apparently ruined millions of people’s lives and businesses for no reason, some apparently even committing suicide, with complete and total immunity and impunity, due to a little loophole in defamation law called the CDA 230.