The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism

9. Ronald Reagan, the New Right, and Population Growth

201 9 The controversies about population growth in the 1970s show the complicated concerns, interests, and divisions that surrounded the environmental movement in the wake of Earth Day. These debates had fascinating political fallout in a decade that, although often overlooked, continues to shape the contemporary political landscape. Overall, the population and limits-togrowth issue hurt Democrats and helped Republicans. Nothing shows this better than the varied fates of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in the late 1970s. Carter came to the Oval Office determined to find a way to help the United States live within its limits. “Dealing with limits,” he recalled shortly after leaving office, had been “the subliminal theme” of his presidency, and concern about population growth was part of this. By this time, most environmentalists had gravitated toward the Democratic Party. Within the party, though, both the Old Left and the New Left found aspects of the Malthusian views of environmentalists like Paul Ehrlich troubling. Ultimately, Carter’s emphasis on limits would cost him dearly: it would divide the Democratic Party and help lose the 1980 election.1 As the Democratic coalition was ripping at the seams, a new political movement was sweeping over the American landscape. “Most establishment experts,” historian Bruce Schulman writes about the surprising 1980 election, “had simply not heard the thunder on the right.” This thunder was the “New Right”—the conservative wave that remade the Republican Party during the 1970s and early 1980s. More conservative on economic, social, and international issues than other Republicans, the New Right not only helped put Ronald Reagan in the White House in 1980 but also became one of the defining features of American politics for decades to come.2 Ronald Reagan, the New Right, and Population Growth “For the first time, they [politicians] may even have to come out against motherhood.” —Walter Cronkite, reporting on Earth Day, 1970 Population politics helped shape the new Republican Party in surprising ways. President Reagan molded his political personality in the late 1960s and 1970s in opposition to the population limitation movement, especially environmental Malthusianism. Whereas Malthusians generally saw new government action—programs designed to spread birth control and abortion rights and even THE MALTHUSIAN MOMENT 202 FIGURE 12 Many conservatives continue to remain deeply skeptical of environmental problems because of the perceived “population dud.” Illustration by Taylor Jones for Hoover Digest, Fall 2001. to reinvent family structure—as necessary to prevent oncoming disaster, Reagan believed that market-based solutions, combined with policies to promote economic growth, would yield a rosy future. Reagan was the optimistic flipside to the doom and gloom of the environmental Malthusians, a sunny “anti-Ehrlich” who reveled in flouting environmental limits.3 Jimmy Carter, Malthusians, and Malaise Before the ascendance of Reagan and the New Right, though, there was Jimmy Carter. Carter came to office at a time when concern about population growth and limits was still strong. In the mid-1970s, driven by the oil and food crises, and buoyed by the success of the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth, environmentalists saw great urgency and little need to compromise. “Environmentalists Surge Onward, Strengthened by Oil Cutoff,” read a 1974 headline. “What is called for is no less than a restructuring of society,” argued Frank Tysen, a professor of environmental management. Some, though, raised an eyebrow at such prescriptions. “Environmentalists are approaching an issue,” wrote Larry Prior of the Denver Post, “that until a few months ago was considered political suicide to even discuss: Will the public be willing to change its life-style? Can people be appealed to above the belly?” He warned environmentalists to proceed cautiously: “Nobody knows yet whether environmental concerns can survive during a period of economic hardship, since the movement so far has been a product of affluence, a luxury of the postindustrial society rather than a necessity.” Carter would be the test, focusing on “limits to growth” programs at home, and population limitation and environmental protection overseas.4 As governor of Georgia in the early 1970s, Carter was known for racial liberalism and environmental concern. He became a hero of environmentalists across the country for blocking a dam already under construction by the U.S. Corps of Engineers on a small but scenic Georgia river. In his 1976 presidential campaign, he tapped into a growing network of environmental activists. While Republican opponent Gerald Ford said he would always chose jobs and growth over environmental...