You may want to sit down for this one. You’re about to learn about a “czar,” or advisor to the president, who warned of global cooling in the ’70s, then global warming in the ’80s, exclaimed that a population of 280 million Americans was far too many, and predicted we’d run out of oil and natural gas in his lifetime. His name is John Holdren, and he is the science advisor to President Obama.
Unanimously confirmed by the Senate in March, he is the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy-a 50-person directorate that advises the president on scientific affairs, focusing on energy independence and global warming.
“[Despite] the litany of apocalyptic warnings that turned out to be incorrect, no one was willing to stick his neck out [and vote no],” said William Yeatman, energy policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Senator John Kerry (D-MA) had this to say, as reported by FOXNews.com: “The Commerce Committee and the Senate … unanimously concluded what I have long known-that John Holdren is a leading voice in the scientific community and we are fortunate to have him lead the fight to restore the foundation of science to government and policymaking that has been lacking for almost a decade.” Holdren was the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. (Teresa Heinz Kerry is Kerry’s wife.)
You should know about a radical 1,000-page course book Holdren co-authored in 1977, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, in which he and his co-authors write, “to provide a high quality of life for all, there must be fewer people.” They note that “the neo-Malthusian view proposes … population limitation and redistribution of wealth,” and they conclude, “On these points, we find ourselves firmly in the neo-Malthusian camp.”
Here’s a taste of the material the neo-Malthusians base their philosophy on. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus writes, “all the children who are born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the death of grown persons.”
In Ecoscience, Holdren and his co-authors write, “It has been concluded that compulsory population control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger society.” They say, “if some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproduction responsibility.”
A world army or “Planetary Regime” would be given responsibility to manage optimum population from one region of the world to another. The authors go on to say they would “authorize” enforcement by the United Nations if the U.S. refused to take proper measures.
In an essay he contributed to the 1973 book The No-Growth Society, Holdren writes, “I believe that those who are unconcerned by the prospect of 280 million Americans have seriously underestimated the importance of population … I will argue here that 210 million now is too many and 280 million in 2040 is likely to be much too many.” OK, so we’ve surpassed that quota. As I write, the current population in the U.S. is 307,454,780 people. Oops, sorry-make that 307,454,784. Hang on-wrong again-it’s now 307,454,787. Imagine the policies this philosophy could create.
As for global warming, in an open letter, titled “The Sky is not Falling,” a team of scientists urged Congress to ignore a letter from the Woods Hole Research Center (where Holdren used to be the director) that demanded quick action by Congress to “avoid global disaster.” This rebuttal to the Woods Hole letter laid out the facts about global warming, explaining that the earth has been cooling for the last 10 years.
John Holdren has a history of radical ideas that have proven to be wrong. He talked about global cooling in the ’70s. Then he flip-flopped over to global warming. He helped create the slide show that led to the book An Inconvenient Truth by Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore. In his 1971 Sierra Club book, Energy: A Crisis in Power, Holdren predicted that natural gas and oil supplies would be tapped within the lifetime of the present population.
The WSJ reports that according to the Potential Gas Committee (administered by the Colorado School of Mines), the U.S. sits on top of massive reservoirs of natural gas-an estimated 2,000 trillion cubic feet-that contain more energy than all the oil in Saudi Arabia.
Cap and trade passed by a narrow vote in the House and will be up for a vote before the Senate. Let’s hope they take a little more time than they did confirming John Holdren.
Edward J. Smith (E.J.) is Managing Director of Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. an investment advisory firm managing portfolios for investors with over $1,000,000 in investable assets.
