Consultation: | Young Greens AGM 2020 |
---|---|
Agenda item: | B Motions of Policy and Organisation (Closed 18th July) |
Proposer: | Joshua Alston (Leeds) |
Status: | Published |
Submitted: | 07/19/2020, 00:07 |
B2: Motion on Population Control
Summary
To add a Young Greens stance on population control advocacy within the environmental movement to the record of policy statements.
Motion Text
Motion on Population Control
This motion notes:
The richest 10% of the global population produce more than 50% of global climate
emissions.[1]
Longstanding racist anxieties surrounding global population rise particularly
among people of colour are particularly popular among the global far-right.[2]
Fear of a declining white population and white replacement have been a constant
justification for white supremacy since earliest colonisation, and has been
embraced by far-right terrorists.[3]
Elements of the environmental movement have adopted ‘populationist’ explanations
for climate change. This theory views climate change as primarily caused by
demographic expansion among people of colour in the Global South and argues for
population control as a solution for this.[4]
This motion believes:
Climate change cannot be adequately explained by global population rise, owing
to the ongoing global inequality in carbon emission between the wealthy and the
poor.
Blaming climate change on global population creates a false explanation for
climate change which is unmoored for the global economic forces that produce
climate change, and therefore constitutes a form of climate change denial.
Population control creates a racist narrative in which people of colour having
too many children are blamed for climate change.
Population control reflects violent far-right ideas which views population rise
among people of colour and the global south as a threat to white security. These
ideas have no place in the environmental movement.
This motion resolves:
To insert into the Young Greens record of policy statements the following:
‘The Young Greens believe that climate change results from our current fossil
fuel based economic system. The need to change this urgent. Global population
rise cannot adequately explain climate change. Population control advocacy
creates a racist narrative where responsibility for climate change is placed on
people of colour who are seen as having too many children.
Advocacy for population control has no place in the Green Party or the wider
environmental movement.’
[1] Timothy Gore, Extreme Climate Inequality: Why the Paris climate deal must
put the poorest, lowest emitting and most vulnerable people first (Oxfam, 2015)
[2] Eric Kaufman, Whiteshift: Population, Immigration and the Future of White
Minorities (New York: Abrams Press, 2019) – note Kaufman is a white supremacist.
Do not pay money for this book.
[3] Rose Scwartzburg, Guardian, ‘The White Replacement Theory Motivates Alt-
Right Killers the World Over’
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/05/great-replacement-theory-
alt-right-killers-el-paso> [Accessed 18/7/2020]
[4] For example Michael Moore dir. Planet of the Humans (Los Angeles, 2020)
Supporters
- Matthew Hull (Camden Green Party)
- Rosie Rawle (Oxfordshire)
- Tom Hazell (Oxfordshire Green Party)
Likes
- Robert Nixon
- Dylan Lewis-Creser
- Wesley Walton
- George Morris
- Macsen Brown
- Ria Patel
- Matthew Hull
Comments