Pres. Obama’s Science Czar is a clear and present danger to life and liberty
I recently wrote an article describing my distaste for the Obama administration’s penchant for appointing “czars” to handle all manner of policy and administrative functions. One Czar who has been the subject of much controversy is the “Science Czar”, Dr. John Holdren, officially titled the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Dr. Holdren has recently been the subject of an unflattering, but very well written, article in Reason Magazine, while pronouncements he has made during his career have provided fodder for a host of negative blogs postings.
Much of the controversy stems from his 1977 book, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment. In the book Dr. Holdren postulated thusly:
“Population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution.”
The book also contains what the Reason Magazine article referred to as:
“…some unpleasant talk about mass sterilizations and abortions.”
Holdren also is, or at least was, a believer in the theory that the earth has a maximum “carrying capacity”. That is, the earth can only support a certain number of humans. As humanity approaches and exceeds that number, famine, war and mass extinction will be the result of our overpopulation. Put another way, Dr. Holdren seems to think humanity is a disease. Like many in the “green” movement there seems to be a need to rescue the earth, its plants, resources and animals, from their most dangerous threat of all, you and me! I once wrote an article claiming the climate change movement was a threat to liberty. It appears I was more correct then I could have imagined.
Going back to Thomas Malthus, every age seems to have its prophet of doom, predicting a finite capacity of the earth to support human life. In this age we are lucky enough to have two such profits. One is former Vice President Al Gore, the other is President Obama’s Science Czar.
Holdren was one of the participants in the now famous wager among some of his fellow travelers, including scientist Paul Ehrlich, the discredited author of Population Bomb, and economist Julian Simon. Simon believed human ingenuity would overcome the stress on the earth’s resources and challenged Holdren et all to put up or shut up. Holdren chose five natural resources he expected would experience extreme and dire shortages because of human consumption. As is now widely known, he lost the bet on all counts.
“…the composite price index for the commodities he picked, including copper and chromium, fell by more than 40 percent.”
That the doomsayers have always been wrong seems only to stiffen their resolve and cause them to bleat ever more ferociously; vainly attempting to find meaning in their lives by inconveniencing ours in their quest to “save” the planet. The fact is, humans in a free market and society have always managed to find ever more creative and inventive ways to supply cheap food and energy to expanding populations. Perhaps this is why the greens are so keen on regulating away our ability to produce food and energy? In order to convince us to let them run our lives for the sake of the planet, they need to create the very food and energy shortages they kept predicting. Our current energy “crises” and the last two years of food inflation both have direct causal links to specific government policies; from preventing resource exploitation, to not allowing refineries or nuclear plants to be built to ethanol subsidies. (Ethanol subsidies take energy and food out of the market thereby causing higher prices and shortages for both, so the greens get a “two-for” with that one.)
As for Dr. Holdren, he is still pushing his impending apocalypse “science”. Dr. Holdren claims that global warming could cause the deaths of 1 billion people by 2020, and that sea levels could rise by 13 feet by the end of this century. These projections are far beyond what even Al Gore has managed to scare people with. When asked by the Senate about past hyperbole in overstating impending crises, he responded it was a legitimate attempt to “motivate” people to change their behavior by illustrating some of the worst potentialities. Apparently Dr. Holdren believes it is the duty of science to use fear as a tool to get people to do whatever government wants them to do. What was that the left use to say about President Bush using the terror threat as an excuse to expand government power? Not that there would be many people left to rule if Dr. Holdren has his way.
Dr. Holdren was once a vocal advocate of the government having total control over population growth through control of reproduction:
“…It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption…”
He was also an advocate of involuntary sterilization:
“The sterilizing capsule …could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.”
While no longer advocating government mandated population control, (for now) Dr. Holdren does advocate government policies to encourage folks to have fewer children.
Holdren has also gone beyond the usual left-right debate of whether or not a fetus is a human life by claiming a baby is not a human life. To him a baby, once born, remains a “fetus”, and therefore still able to be aborted post birth, until it becomes socialized:
“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being.”
How many “early years” does it take to actually become human? Does this mean babies can be “terminated” until whatever age the government decrees them to be fully “socialized”? Does this mean the mentally handicapped, or Alzheimer’s and dementia patients can be “terminated” as they no longer retain their “humanity”? I do not believe I am engaging in hyperbole when I say this is the kind of thinking which lead to eugenics, and Nazi racial theories.
I have just one final question. Is making Dr. Holdren his official Science Czar, what President Obama meant when he said his White House would end the “politicization of science”?
[...] That is the title of an excellent piece here. [...]