The Washington Post - 19.08.2019

MONDAY, AUGUST 19 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

Paso shooter cites birthrates

among the “invaders” trying to

enter the United States and as-

serts, “If we can get rid of enough

people, then our way of life can

become more sustainable.”

This line of thought is dismay-

ing to Paul Ehrlich, 87, a professor

emeritus at Stanford University

whose 1968 bestseller, “The Pop-

ulation Bomb,” proved hugely

influential.

“They often cite me, even

though I’ve spent my life trying to

fight racism,” Ehrlich said.

John Holdren, a Harvard pro-

fessor who co-authored articles

with Ehrlich and later served

eight years as President Barack

Obama’s science adviser, said the

environmental movement grap-

pled decades ago with the per-

ceived racist undertones of the

emphasis on population growth.

“A lot of people felt they were

getting burned by talking about

population growth and its ad-

verse impact,” Holdren said. As a

result, he said, the movement’s

leaders began focusing on the

education and empowerment of

women, which has led to falling

birthrates around the world as

women take control of their re-

productive lives.

A refrain among environmen-

talists is that if anti-immigrant

groups are genuinely concerned

about degradation of the natural

world, they’re targeting the

wrong people. Climate change

hasn’t been driven by poor people

struggling to get by. The activities

of wealthy nations have been the

main historical source of green-

house gas emissions, the deple-

tion of natural resources and the

destruction of habitats.

Ali, the environmental justice

expert, said he often hears people

say population growth is the big

problem today, and he shoots

that down.

“My response to them is, ‘Who

are the people we need to limit?

Who are the people making deci-

sions about that?’... Until we

have true equity and equality and

a balance of power, then we know

vulnerable communities are go-

ing to end up on the negative side

of the ledger, whatever the tough

choices are,” Ali said.

[email protected]

Brady Dennis contributed to this

report.

said Hartmann, the author of

“The America Syndrome: Apoca-

lypse, War and Our Call to Great-

ness.”

Conservationists have a long

history of wrestling with ques-

tions about immigration and

population growth. Some of

those on the environmental left

have seen the explosion in the

human population — which is

nearing 8 billion and has more

than doubled in the past hal-

f-century — as a primary driver of

the environmental crisis. That

argument has then been adopted

by racists.

The alleged Christchurch

shooter began his online screed

by writing, “It’s the birthrates. It’s

the birthrates. It’s the birthrates,”

and then warned of the “inva-

sion” by immigrants who will

“replace the White people who

have failed to reproduce.”

The document thought to have

been posted by the alleged El

Right rally in Charlottesville in

2017, for example, white national-

ist leader Richard Spencer pub-

lished a manifesto that had a

plank on protecting nature.

Ecofascism has deep roots.

There is a strong element of it in

the Nazi emphasis on “blood and

soil,” and the fatherland, and the

need for a living space purified of

alien and undesirable elements.

Meanwhile, leaders of main-

stream environmental groups are

quick to acknowledge that their

movement has an imperfect his-

tory when it comes to race, immi-

gration and inclusiveness. Some

early conservationists embraced

the eugenics movement that saw

“social Darwinism” as a way of

improving the human race by

limiting the birthrates of people

considered inferior.

“There’s this idea coming out

of the eugenics movement that

nature, purity, conservation

were linked to purity of the race,”

in the environmental move-

ment,” said Michael Brune, exec-

utive director of the Sierra Club.

Echoing that was Andrew

Rosenberg, director of the Center

for Science and Democracy at the

Union of Concerned Scientists:

“We need to speak out so that our

members know that under no

circumstances are we buying into

this kind of philosophy.”

The alleged gunmen in El Paso

and Christchurch did not emerge

from the green movement. The

documents attributed to them

are primarily focused on race,

cultural identity, immigration

and the fear of a “great replace-

ment” of whites by people of

other races. The “eco” part of the

equation is arguably an add-on.

But these people did not come

up with their hateful ideologies

in a vacuum. They have tapped

into ideas about nature that are

in broad circulation among white

nationalists. Before the Unite the

University of California at Los

Angeles who has written exten-

sively on the use and misuse of

dystopian environmental scenar-

ios.

It’s important, he said, to pro-

vide people with potential solu-

tions and reasons to be hopeful:

“There’s definitely a danger of

people taking dire measures

when they feel there’s no way out

of it.”

Hartmann, who has tracked

ecofascism for more than two

decades, echoes that warning,

saying environmentalists “need

to steer away from this apocalyp-

tic discourse because it too easily

plays into the hands of apocalyp-

tic white nationalism.”

The leaders of several major

environmental organizations say

that white supremacy is antithet-

ical to their movement.

“What we saw in the El Paso

manifesto is a myopic, hateful,

deadly ideology that has no place

to be extreme examples of ecofas-
cism — what Hampshire College
professor emerita Betsy Hart-
mann calls “the greening of hate.”
Many white supremacists have
latched onto environmental
themes, drawing connections be-
tween the protection of nature
and racial exclusion. These ideas
have shown themselves to be
particularly dangerous when ad-
opted by unstable individuals
prone to violence and convinced
that they must take drastic ac-
tions to stave off catastrophe.
The alleged El Paso shooter’s
document is full of existential
despair: “My whole life I have
been preparing for a future that
currently doesn’t exist.”
In recent years, the main-
stream environmental move-
ment has moved strongly in the
direction of social justice — the
opposite of what hate groups
seek. Now, the leaders of those
organizations fear white nation-
alists are using green messages to
lure young people to embrace
racist and nativist agendas.
“Hate is always looking for an
opportunity to grab hold of some-
thing,” said Mustafa Santiago Ali,
a vice president of the National
Wildlife Federation and an ex-
pert on environmental justice.
“That’s why they use this ecologi-
cal language that’s been around
for a while, and they try to
reframe it.”
Michelle Chan, vice president
of programs for Friends of the
Earth, said, “The key thing to
understand here is that ecofas-
cism is more an expression of
white supremacy than it is an
expression of environmental-
ism.”
This is all happening in a
rhetorically and ideologically
overheated era in which public
discourse is becoming toxic, not
only in the dark corners of the
Internet but among those occu-
pying the highest elective offices.
Environmental activists want to
create a sense of urgency about
climate change, the loss of biodi-
versity and other dangers to the
natural world, but they don’t
want their messages to drive
people into violent ideologies.
There is a danger of “apocalyp-
ticism,” said Jon Christensen, an
adjunct assistant professor at the

SHOOTINGS FROM A

Environmentalists fear green messaging from hate groups

MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ/THE WASHINGTON POST

Mariachis practice at the grave of Elsa Mendoza Marquez, an educator from Mexico who was slain in the mass shooting in El Paso. Along

with racial assertions made in a statement attributed to the suspect are environmental concerns such as water pollution and plastic waste.

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