He further stated: “that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution. [N]either the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mentions a right to reproduce.”

But the Constitution does mention in the Bill of Rights: 9th Admendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

In other words, if it ain’t mentioned, the government doesn’t have the right – the peoople do.

If Holdren doesn’t understand that, he obviously should not be an advisor on any level.

This is the quote from the first paragraph. Note that there is no discussion of whether American institutions need to be changed, but only on how they should be changed.

To portray Ecoscience as merely a description of other people’s opinions is rather dishonest. The book is not a collection of essays, a compilation of facts, or even a presentation of disagreeing views.

Instead, the authors show a clear opinion that in a crisis that the American government does have grounds for enacting population control measures.

The authors start with a statement that population control measures would be allowed by the Constitution. Then they go on to state that such measures would not conflict with the first amendment.

The authors then go on to describe their opinion that there are only two valid constitutional limits on policy control measures: due process and equal protection. There is no alternative opinion presented that says “hey…family size regulations (eg forced abortion) wouldn’t actually be legal for these reasons”.

Usually text books don’t take this approach. They represent multiple opinions on controversial issues.

Maybe Chris feels differently, but publishing a textbook that concludes that forced abortions would be legal is a pretty big deal. Unless of course, one happens to think that it would be legal to bring China’s one-child policy to the US.

If they are correct, then he has been duped, at the least.

If they are correct, it sounds like Ehrlich, and possibly Holden, are lying.

And I also forgot one that Chris Mooney conveniently (for him and John Holdren) overlooked:

“Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market.”

“The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits…”

“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

“A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.”

“The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.”

“If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.”

“In today’s world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?”

The last quote ends in a “question” that is in rhetorical format. The Ehrlichs and John Holdren were effectively stating that the law should be able to prevent a person from having more than two children.

But, he isn’t admitting anything of the sort. He’s just now on to the “I” in “I PAT”, that is the climate hallucination, and not talking so much on the “P”. The rest of the Obama administration is taking care of the “A”. The “T” never did make much sense, but then again, neither did the “P” and the “A”.

I = P × A × T

Human Impact (I) on the environment equals the product of population (P), affluence (A: consumption per capita) and technology (T: environmental impact per unit of consumption).

Mooney is excusing the outrageous. Forced sterilization and one-child per family measures that China enacted in this era were widely admired by the Erhlich’s and their ilk (ie, Holdren). Back in the 1970s, the literati, including academically ambitious High-Schoolers, seriously advocated their views.

It is one thing to be wrong and fail to admit it – another to defend the indefensible. These ZPG-types possessed the same “good intentions” that drives James Hansen to talk of prosecuting AGW “deniers” in show trials, or Al Gore’s dangerous hyperbole today – the kind of climate Mccarthyism Bjorn Lomborg recently denounced as “simply treason against reason.” http://www.scienceprogress.org/2009/07/hold-of-holdren-again/

Being a famous angst-filled scientist means never having to say “I’m sorry-I was wrong.”

Saying it was 30 years ago means nothing unless their views have changed. That Holdren recently said that he rejects forcible abortion and sterilization is much more meaningful… but it’s worth recognizing that such views are still embraced by some on the left.

Presumably this is an example of the narrative being more important than strict accuracy for Mooney.

It appeared very clear to me that Holdren was being very specific about “planetary regimes”, legal support for his ideas, the Constition, and how international bodies could be used to implement these policies.

We have a right to be concerned after the long horrific history of eugenics that haunts humanity to this day and when this is not the first time the US government has discussed the repopulation agenda. See Kissinger’s NSSM 200.

You might recall that India later did institute such a program, with horrific results.

You can walk over to your University Library, as I did, Chris, and look that up. You could also look at Human Ecology (Ehrlich, Ehrlich and Holdren,1973). This was not a textbook, but a passionately-written book of advocacy.

After a quick review of the Indian vasectomy program, compulsory sterilization of mothers with more than three children, and ‘compulsory implantation of steroid capsules at puberty with removal for childbearing with official permission only’, they wrote ‘Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable idea, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying’. I’m sorry, but that’s not a rejection of the idea — particularly when you consider that two years previously, Ehrlich, in a volume edited by himself and Holdren, had predicted a US population of 22 million in the year 2000 thanks to mass ecological catastrophe. It is clear Holdren and Ehrlich thought the ‘horrifying alternatives’ were not hypothetical, but in fact destined to occur.

So now, in 2009, science is predicting a different ecological catastrophe, and Holdren is in the position of advising the White House on responses to it. Given his previous advocacy of drastic coercive measures to forestall an earlier (incorrectly) predicted catastrophe, isn’t it reasonable to ask if he will give similar advice today?

A far better choice? But not the only choice?

So “Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A ‘Planetary Regime’ with the power of life and death over American citizens.” is an option?

However, to describe these measures is different from advocating them. And in fact, the Ehrlichs and Holdren concluded by arguing that noncoercive measures were what they suppported: “A far better choice, in our view, is to expand the use of milder methods of influencing family size preferences” —such as birth control and access to abortions. In fairness, their text does read as dated today, ripe for quote mining. They were writing in very different times thirty years ago; but even if they were defending these positions then (and they weren’t), that hardly means that they do today.

Tim,
If Mr. Mooney’s quote in this paragraph is true (my emphasis added), how did Mr. Holdren and his co-authors advocate for the measures you seem to think he did?

Are you kidding me?

You will dismiss the ludicrous assumptions in Holdren’s book because it’s “3 decades old”?

How about the fact that HE WAS WRONG in his “intellectual” assumption on population?

And Holdren was just as wrong to “back-door” advocate the dark means other countries could use to control population just by going through the ways to implement control.

Holdren may reject “those methods” now, because he was WRONG, but just as with eugenics and man-made-global warming, these bleating “scientists” were all for it then.

Fail.