Houston Simply Repeats Leadership’s Failure To Address Overpopulation Here and Overseas

By Donald A. Collins | 2 September 2017
Church and State

The events in Houston will pass and the leaders of America will throw more money at people who tragically lost so much, but the recognition of root causes for our escalating environmental tragedies will continue to get little attention except from the seemingly few enlightened observers such as Edd Doerr.

His latest pithy 9/2/17 email to me states in brief the case as well as it can be said.

He wrote: “With climate change, rising sea levels, melting ice, changing weather patterns, deforestation, desertification, environmental degradation, resource overuse, soil erosion, etc., world population of 9.8bn by 2050 (Economist, Sept 2nd) is simply unsustainable. With Trump pulling the US from the Paris accord and climate change denial rampant, our planet is in serious trouble. Where is the action on population control recommended by US president Gerald Ford in 1975’s National Security Study Memorandum 200 report?”

This website has long featured the detailed scholarship of our Chairman, Dr. Stephen D. Mumford, who has written widely on the population growth implications from ignoring the finding of Ford’s NSSM 200. US population has grown since 1975 from about 220 million to over 320 million and world population has gone from about 4 billion to 7.5 billion with expectation that we could be 9 plus billion by 2050.

The rapidity of our 20th Century growth and the potential for disaster is shown in this table.

Table source: Vaughns World Population Growth History.
Table was last updated on 2017-06-27. https://t.co/uvoywrhrt5 pic.twitter.com/U8oVcE2gVy

— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) September 3, 2017

Back to that cogent quote from Mr. Doerr. One might ask who is Mr. Doerr? Simply listing his credentials will perhaps convince you of his qualifications to make the above comment.

President: Americans for Religious Liberty (current); Executive Director: Americans for Religious Liberty (1982-present); Senior Editor: Voice of Reason newsletter. Writer, editor, publisher, lecturer.

Organizations: President: American Humanist Association, 1995-2003. Board Member: National Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice; Member: Phi Delta Kappa; Horace Mann League.

Professional Background: Editor of Church & State magazine (1970-1982); previously teacher of history, government, Spanish, English, science and math in public and private schools in United States and Colombia.

Books by Edd Doerr

Here I Stand (2006)
Somebody Has to Say It (a collection of letters and essays) (2004)
My Life as a Humanist, a Memoir (2004)
Rejoyce, Rejoyce! (a collection of poems) (2004)
Great Quotations on Religious Freedom (with Albert J. Menendez) (1991, 2002)
The Case Against Charitable Choice (2001) (with Albert J. Menendez)
Six Stories and Seventy Poems (2001)
Cómo Mantener la Cordura en un Mundo Loco (Spanish translation by Herenia and Edd Doerr of Sherwin Wine’s Staying Sane in a Crazy World) (2000)
Vox Populi: Letters to the Editor (1999)
Timely and Timeless: The Wisdom of E. Burdette Backus (Editor) (1998)
The Case Against School Vouchers (with Albert J. Menendez and John M. Swomley) (1995)
Religious Liberty and the State Constitutions (with Albert J. Menendez) (1993)
Catholic Schools: The Facts (1993, 2000)
Dancing on the Wall (poetry) (1993)
Religion and Public Education: Common Sense and the Law (with Albert J. Menendez) (1991)
Church Schools and Public Money: The Politics of Parochiaid (with Albert J. Menendez) (1991)
Images (poetry) (1991)
Abortion Rights and Fetal ‘Personhood’ (with James W. Prescott) (1989, 1990)
Religious Liberty in Crisis (1988)
A Hitch in Time and Other Tales (fiction) (1988)
Dear Editor (1988)
Parochiaid and the Law (1975)
Eden II (fiction) (1974)
The Conspiracy That Failed (1968)

Sections in ten books on school finance, religious liberty and other topics, articles and book reviews in Liberty, Education Digest, The Humanist, Tennessee Teacher, Minnesota Teacher, Valparaiso University Law Review, Free Inquiry, Baltimore Sun, USA Today, Unitarian Universalist World, Religious Humanism, Journal of Church and State, etc.

Chapters in Books (partial list)

“The Importance of Church-State Separation and Its Prospects,” in Toward a New Political Humanism, edited by Barry Seidman and Neil Murphy, Prometheus Books, 2004.

“Celebrating Humanism,” in A Life of Courage: Sherwin Wine and Humanistic Judaism, compiled by Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Harry T. Cook, and Marilyn Rowens, The International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, 2003.

“Religion and Public Education,” in Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Educational Issues, edited by James Wm. Noll, McGraw-Hill, 2003.

“Religion and Government,” in The Humanist Way, edited by N. Innaiah and G.R.R. Babu, Hema Publications, Chirala, India, 1994.

“Freedom of Religion, Freedom from Religion,” in Civil Liberties: Opposing Viewpoints, edited by David L. Bender and Bruno Leone, Greenhaven Press, 1994.

“Church-State Separation: Endangered Species,” in The Book Your Church Doesn’t Want You to Read, edited by Tim C. Leedom, Kendall-Hunt, 1993.

“Public Schools Should Not Allow Formal Prayer” (with al Menendez), in Education in America, edited by David L. Bender and Bruno Leone, Greenhaven Press, 1992.

“Church-State Separation and Freedom of Conscience,” in Building a World Community, edited by Paul Kurtz, Prometheus Books, 1989.

“The People Speak: Parochiaid and the Voters,” in Church and State in American History, edited by John F. Wilson and Donald L. Drakeman, Bearon Press, 1987.

“Reprogramming Funds for United States Mission to the Vatican,” statement to hearing of the Committee on Appropriation of the House of Representatives, February 9, 1984, on behalf of Americans for Religious Liberty, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the American Ethical Union, the American Humanist Association, and the Council for Secular Humanism.

Testimony on appointment of Robert Destro to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in Hearings before the Committee of the Judiciary: United States Senate, Serial No. J-97-52, 1982.

“Transcendental Meditation Goes to School,” in The Best of Church & State, edited by Albert J. Menendez, Americans United, 1975.

“Public Funds and Nonpublic Schools,” in School Finance in Transition, National Educational Finances Project and Institute for Educational Finance, Gainesville, 1973.

“Implications of Supreme Court Decisions for Public Aid to Parochial Schools,” in Constitutional Reform of School Finance, edited by Kern Alexander and K. Forbis Jordan, National Educational Finance Project, 1972.

Activities: Numerous television and radio talk show appearances; addresses at conferences, churches, synagogues, universities and student groups.

Involved in numerous U.S. Supreme Court cases on religious liberty issues; organized Supreme Court brief on abortion rights representing Nobel laureates and other scientists; coordinated successful state referendum campaign against tax aid for sectarian private schools; testified at congressional and state legislative hearings.

Involved in blocking U.S. intervention in the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70).

You can contact him here:

Edd Doerr, President
Americans for Religious Liberty
Box 6656
Silver Spring, MD 20916
301-460-1111
arlinc@verizon.net

As the evidence mounts of impending global disaster amidst the continuing failure to vigorously seek to lower population by the humane and widespread offering of family planning services, we find our own government enmeshed in seeking ways to avoid treating the issue. Half the births in the US are unintended! There are over 40 million abortions worldwide annually, only half performed safely. And still no major leadership is evident with perhaps the worst performer on this key issue OUR OWN GOVERNMENT.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC., has spent over 40 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013.

Edd Doerr was president of the American Humanist Association from 1995 to 2003, serving previously as vice-president and board chair under Isaac Asimov from 1985 to 1991. He has been executive director and then president of Americans for Religious Liberty since 1982. A former teacher of history and Spanish, he is the author, co-author, editor, or translator of twenty books, mostly on religious liberty and reproductive rights. He served on the governing body of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice from 1973 until 2004 and on the boards of NARAL, the ACLU of Maryland, and the National Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty. More than 3,000 of his articles, columns, reviews, and letters have been published in The Humanist and many other publications. For over ten years he has been writing a column in the journal Free Inquiry from the Council for Secular Humanism.

Back in 1991, the NGO Don Collins founded in 1976, International Services Assistance Fund (ISAF), co-produced a TV quality 22-minute film called “Whose Choice?” which Ted Turner arranged to broadcast on September 21, 1992 in prime time on his then independent Turner Broadcast System (TBS). Other outlets such as PBS and several of its affiliates Collins and his colleagues contacted then refused to run it because of its forthright treatment of the abortion issue, arguing for all women’s right to choose not to have a baby. ISAF has made a new edition of that DVD. The purpose for reissuing this 3rd version of “Whose Choice?” was simply to show the historical urgency that attended those times, still blocked and attacked over 40 years after the Roe v Wade decision in 1973. This video is available for public viewing for the first time.

Sir David Attenborough: an interview with the Wellcome Trust

Professor Paul Ehrlich: Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?

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