White House Science Czar Says

[lostinblue 1,989]

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/75388

White House Science Czar Says He Would Use ‘Free Market’ to ‘De-Develop the United States’

In a video interview this week, White House Office of Science and Technology Director John P. Holdren told CNSNews.com that he would use the “free market economy” to implement the “massive campaign” he advocated along with Paul Ehrlich to “de-develop the United States.”

Thursday, September 16, 2010

By Nicholas Ballasy

(CNSNews.com) - In a video interview this week, White House Office of Science and Technology Director John P. Holdren told CNSNews.com that he would use the “free market economy” to implement the “massive campaign” he advocated along with Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich to “de-develop the United States.”

In his role as President Barack Obama’s top science and technology adviser, Holdren deals with issues ranging from global warming to health care.

“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,” Holdren wrote along with Paul and Anne H. Ehrlich in the “recommendations” concluding their 1973 book Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions.

“De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote.

“Resources must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries," Holdren and his co-authors wrote. "This effort must be largely political, especially with regard to our overexploitation of world resources, but the campaign should be strongly supplemented by legal and boycott action against polluters and others whose activities damage the environment. The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”

CNSNews.com asked Holdren about this passage on Tuesday after he participated in an Environmental Protection Agency forum celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Clean Air Act.

CNSNews.com asked: “You wrote ‘a massive campaign must be launched to restore a high quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States’ in your book Human Ecology. Could you explain what you meant by de-develop the United States?”

Holdren responded: “What we meant by that was stopping the kinds of activities that are destroying the environment and replacing them with activities that would produce both prosperity and environmental quality. Thanks a lot.”

CNSNews.com then asked: “And how do you plan on implementing that?”

“Through the free market economy,” Holdren said.

CNSNews.com also asked Holdren to comment on the declaration he made in 1995 along with co-authors Paul Ehrlich and Gretchen Daily of Stanford University that mankind needed to “face up” to “a world of zero net physical growth” that would require reductions in consumption.

“We know for certain, for example, that: No form of material growth (including population growth) other than asymptotic growth is sustainable,” Holdren, Ehrlich and Daily wrote in an essay for the World Bank titled, “The Meaning of Sustainability.”

“Many of the practices inadequately supporting today’s population of 5.5 billion people are unsustainable; and [a]t the sustainability limit, there will be a tradeoff between population and energy-matter throughput per person, hence, ultimately, between economic activity per person and well-being per person,” Holdren, Ehrlich and Daily wrote. “This is enough to say quite a lot about what needs to be faced up to eventually (a world of zero net physical growth), what should be done now (change unsustainable practices, reduce excessive material consumption, slow down population growth), and what the penalty will be for postponing attention to population limitation (lower well-being per person).”

Holdren would not comment Tuesday about this statement, saying he had to get to another engagement.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Is someone surprised? Obama's actions cannot be by mistake. It is a dedicated plan to dismatle the US economy and way of life.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Is someone surprised? Obama's actions cannot be by mistake. It is a dedicated plan to dismatle the US economy and way of life.

nope

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Right-wing blogs twist Holdren's clarification of 37-year-old book passage

CNSNews.com recently conducted an ambush interview of Obama science adviser John Holdren and used his unremarkable response to write a sensational, fearmongering headline and summary.

CNS' article is headlined "White House Science Czar Says He Would Use 'Free Market' to 'De-Develop the United States,' " and here's their summary:

In a video interview this week, White House Office of Science and Technology Director John P. Holdren told CNSNews.com that he would use the "free market economy" to implement the "massive campaign" he advocated along with Paul Ehrlich to "de-develop the United States."

Several other right-wing blogs quickly picked up the article or accompanying video, all using similar headlines.

Here's what they all downplayed: the "de-develop" line comes from a book that Holdren co-wrote in 1973, and in the ambush interview, Holdren explained that he was advocating "stopping the kinds of activities that are destroying the environment and replacing them with activities that would produce both prosperity and environmental quality." When asked how, he said, "Through the free market economy."

CNS quoted from the book, including this sentence:

"A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States," Holdren wrote along with Paul and Anne H. Ehrlich in the "recommendations" concluding their 1973 book

Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions

.

The article eventually got around to describing what Holdren said Tuesday, rather than what he wrote in 1973:

CNSNews.com asked: "You wrote 'a massive campaign must be launched to restore a high quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States' in your book Human Ecology. Could you explain what you meant by de-develop the United States?"

Holdren responded: "What we meant by that was stopping the kinds of activities that are destroying the environment and replacing them with activities that would produce both prosperity and environmental quality. Thanks a lot."

CNSNews.com then asked: "And how do you plan on implementing that?"

"Through the free market economy," Holdren said.

The end of the video that CNS posted with its article shows the same CNS reporter talking to Holdren in June:

REPORTER: I just want to ask you real quick about a lot of your past work. I've read it, and I --

HOLDREN: Look, this is a stale topic. If you read it and you have a problem, you're misreading it. I didn't come here to be interviewed, I came here to honor my friends. Thanks a lot.

On a side note, the "science czar" tag that the right-wing media are fond of using for Holdren is particularly ridiculous -- Holdren was confirmed by the Senate in March 2009.

link

CNSNews....

[JohnSmith2007 353]

link

CNSNews....

Yeah, he never said it.....

Media Matters ....

[Dan J 277]

CNS taking news out of context for 6000 years...

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Yeah, he never said it.....

You're being just like the CNS interviewer who wasn't interested in understanding the context. Nothing more than partisan hackery at its finest.

[JohnSmith2007 353]

You're being just like the CNS interviewer who wasn't interested in understanding the context. Nothing more than partisan hackery at its finest.

Hiding behind a false "context" claim is political hackery as well.

[JohnSmith2007 353]

Steven probibly thought the argument "it all depends on what the definition of "is" is." as valid as well.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Hiding behind a false "context" claim is political hackery as well.

Let's see - he has been one of the few cabinet posts nominated by Obama that were actually confirmed and that was back in March of 2009. So it took some RWN's over a year to comb through everything this guy wrote in his past hoping to find something they could claim as controversial. And you RWN's gobble it up like turkeys at the trough.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Holdren served as one of President Bill Clinton's science advisors from 1994 to 2001.^[1] Eight years later, President Barack Obama nominated Holdren for his current position as science advisor and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in December 2008, and he was confirmed on March 19, 2009, by a unanimous vote in the Senate.^[4][5][6][7] He testified to the nomination committee that he does not believe that government should have a role in determining optimal population size^[8] and that he has never endorsed forced sterilization.^[9][10][11]

Talk about chasing a dead dog down an empty water well.CNSNews should win an award for their journalism.

[lostinblue 1,989]

Let's see - he has been one of the few cabinet posts nominated by Obama that were actually confirmed and that was back in March of 2009. So it took some RWN's over a year to comb through everything this guy wrote in his past hoping to find something they could claim as controversial. And you RWN's gobble it up like turkeys at the trough.

You liberals are expert at this.

[JohnSmith2007 353]

Let's see - he has been one of the few cabinet posts nominated by Obama that were actually confirmed and that was back in March of 2009. So it took some RWN's over a year to comb through everything this guy wrote in his past hoping to find something they could claim as controversial. And you RWN's gobble it up like turkeys at the trough.

You're so blinded by your political bias that you are willing to believe any excuse offered by someone on your side. It is a good thing that there are other with their eyes open and minds engaged. Just because it wasn't noticed at first does not make it moot.

Someone like you calling me a RWN is a complement. Thank you.

[simpson_121919 0]

You liberals are expert at this.

Spot on.