Erosion

After working in the sustainable population advocacy field, one can't but help at times wonder, "Will the emotional polarity that this issue brings up in people ever be able to be overcome?"

There is a nasty tendency for this issue to register in people's worldview as either the most important, fundamental issue blocking the way to sustainable living scenarios for all scales of human civilization -- or -- as the most insignificant waste-of-time issue imaginable. That's quite a chasm, yet I don't think I am mistaken to say very few people occupy middle ground between these two great extremes.

It's with great struggle and heretofore unknown results that NECSP has been trying to populate (excuse the pun) that middle ground -- to correctly frame population issues as core considerations that any responsible sustainability advocate must make in struggling for an improved future for planet and people.

Not the only considerations one must make (wouldn't that be nice), but certainly one of them.

Is this really so controversial?

No, not really. But the problem is that in the great din and cacophony of each side shouting at each other, moderate voices are imperceptible -- and the balance of our position renders it useless to the partisans, because it undercuts both of their set-in-concrete ideological positions. Who wants to take the time to leave the high perch of your certainty and come down to the middle ground and start motioning for people to lower their voices? To start problem solving like adults?

No matter how narrow of a ledge you must stand on to occupy it, it's much easier to claim the moral high ground (itself conveniently self-defined) than it is to make peace.

The dynamic replicates itself over and over -- global warming vs. global hoax; growth economy vs. steady state; and, yes, Red Sox vs. Yankees. People tend to make decisions based on emotion, and very few issues cut so close to the human experience as the issues of reproduction, progeny and community.

And, in a relative sense, those of us down here on the middle ground looking up at the warring parties are just as convinced of our position as the extremists. We beleive that like a bell curve, there will always be outliers at either end arguing that, "Population is not a problem at all" vs. "Population is the only problem".

Our task then -- at least philosophically -- is to operate on the conviction that though the outlying, highly opinionated folks at the ends of the bell curve may have loud voices, that some critical mass of of our 6.9 billion co-inhabitants of the actually Earth fall within the "reasonable" zone; and, it's our job to find them, empower them, amplify their voices, organize their efforts when neccessary and eventually watch those cliffs of extremism collapse into the sea.