Gaylord Nelson was the founder of Earth Day (which began in the year 1970), an icon in the environmental movement... Yet, much to the discomfort of adoring environmentalists, he also strongly supported measures to reduce population growth, for the purpose of protecting our environment.

Anyway, he died this week at the age of 89, and fought for immigration reform till his last days... For his courageous fight for immigration reduction (with few supporters in the environmental movement), it's fitting that we honor his life's work here at ALIPAC, especially after Independence Day.

Here's an interview with Gaylord Nelson from 2001 :
http://workscited.net/articledisp.php?articleid=58
Q. What is the number one environmental problem facing the earth today?

A. If you had to choose just one, it would have to be population. . . . The bigger the population gets, the more serious the problems become. . . . We have to address the population issue... The United Nations, with the U.S. supporting it, took the position in Cairo in 1994 that every country was responsible for stabilizing its own population... It can be done. But in this country, it's phony to say "I'm for the environment but not for limiting immigration." It's just a fact that we can't take all the people who want to come here... And you don't have to be a racist to realize that... However, the subject has been driven out of public discussion because everybody is afraid of being called racist if they say they want any limits on immigration.

Here's part of a CIS article from the year 2001 :
http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/forsaking/turning.html
Even as environmental groups increasingly distanced themselves from the population issue, Nelson’s concern with U.S. overpopulation through the years never wavered, and his speeches around the country on environmental sustainability spotlighted the U.S. population problem... A newspaper article describing an Earth Day 1998 speech began: "Senator Gaylord Nelson spoke to a standing-room only audience at Beloit College’s Richardson Auditorium [in his home state of Wisconsin], advocating the U.S. limit immigration before U.S. resources are depleted... "Later that year, in a Washington, D.C., press conference, Nelson bristled at the idea that what really motivates attempts to limit immigration is racism... He said that such accusations only served to silence a debate that was long overdue: "We ought to discuss it in a rational way. We have to decide if we’re going to be comfortable with half a billion people or more.".. In a March, 2000 speech to a civic group in Madison, Wis., Nelson warned that if immigration and fertility rates continued, the U.S. could become as overpopulated as China and India. "With twice the population, will there be any wilderness left? Any quiet place? Any habitat for song birds? Waterfalls? Other wild creatures? Not much," he said... When he saw an earlier version of the present monograph, Nelson wrote one of the co-authors that its thesis that U.S. population growth was no longer being addressed primarily because of immigration and fears of being labeled racist was "right on target."

Yet not even the Father of Earth Day’s irreproachable reputation, peerless stature, and acute concern swayed the environmental establishment and its avant-garde VIP friends. In April 2000 in Washington, D.C.’s historic Mayflower Hotel, Nelson was honored with a standing ovation by the organizers of the 30th anniversary Earth Day celebration on the National Mall, an event that drew celebrities and performers like Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Edward James Olmos, Melanie Griffith, Clint Black, Carole King, Chevy Chase, James Taylor and David Crosby... One of the co-authors attended the celebration on the Mall, with the Capitol dome looming behind, and listened to numerous speeches and exhortations, none of which mentioned overpopulation. Gaylord Nelson is revered by mainstream environmentalists because of his seminal contributions to the movement and in spite of his position on population and immigration, not because of it.
...
Historians need to explain how an environmental issue as fundamental as U.S. population growth could have moved from center-stage within the American environmental movement to virtual obscurity in just 20 years. For the American environment itself, the ever-growing demographic pressures ignored by the environmental establishment showed no signs of abating on their own as the nation prepared to enter the 21st century.

Yet a ray of hope remains... "If the people lead, the leaders will follow" says an aphorism... The growing grassroots concern of numerous rank-and-file environmentalists and ordinary Americans with the multiple problems unavoidably aggravated by overpopulation and overimmigration may yet overturn their leaders’ stubborn denial of demographic and ecological realities.