In email and around the Web I’ve seen a few objections to GPSO on varying grounds. Most reflect critics’ frustration that GPSO does not emphasize their own ideas about population: GPSO doesn’t focus enough on US population, GPSO doesn’t say enough about past abuses in the name of “population control,” GPSO doesn’t talk enough about women’s issues and reproductive health, GPSO doesn’t fit population into a systems thinking perspective, etc.
I would ask critics to read carefully the welcome page and the GPSO letter to understand clearly what GPSO is and is not. The short answer to all the concerns above is, “Yes it does.”
Here’s why: GPSO aims only to enable open, honest public discussion of overpopulation. As stated on the site, the idea is to “help weaken the taboo and bring population to a more prominent position in the global discussion,” by asking pledgers “to speak out publicly in some way on the problem of the size and growth of the human population.” That’s all. Nothing more.
As long as pledgers identify the size and growth of the human population as a serious problem they’ve met their pledge and are free to approach the topic from any angle they wish.
They can talk about US population, women’s issues, or the need to avoid repeating past abuses if we’re to address the problem effectively. They can place population within a systems perspective. Again, the aim is solely to weaken the taboo, making it easier to include population in public discussion. Ideas concerning solutions and an increase in attention to population will undoubtedly be welcome side benefits.
The only real emphasis on this site is that on the population-environment link. It is the nub of the entire population issue, the root of all other population concerns. But pledgers are free, for example, to talk about overpopulation as a social and economic issue.
At any rate, GPSO is not the website. It is all the efforts pledgers will make to speak out in February.
Oh, there’s one more criticism – that GPSO is a part of a conspiracy on the part of the world’s elites to depopulate the planet for reasons having something to do with the “New Wold Order.” Arrgh, why didn’t I get the memo?? But seriously, if this is true then the science of ecology is bogus and part of some conspiracy of the world’s elites. If so, then I’m an unwitting pawn and GPSO is guilty as charged. I hate when that happens!
