Cockburn on Sierra Club

Attacks from the far left or right are not new experiences for me, although seldom have I been treated to one as venomous, inaccurate or distorted as that of Alexander Cockburn (Column Left, Oct. 2). Virtually the only correct statement in the column was that I wrote “The Population Bomb” in 1968. Bald associations of pre-World War II eugenicists and Nazis with the Sierra Club’s current discussion will unquestionably fan the flames of hysteria already surrounding the issue of immigration and force rational discussion further off the agenda.

Cockburn’s assertions that the Sierra Club had “not even a semblance of rational discussion of any relation between environmental degradation and population” and, “The consumption patterns of the rich were never under the same censure as . . . the poor” (an accusation applied by implication to me as well) are equally misplaced. Most of what the Sierra Club is about addresses those very issues, and they are embodied in the population statement issued by the board of directors.

As for me, perhaps Cockburn should read more of my writings, starting with “The Golden Door,” which I wrote with Anne Ehrlich and historian Loy Bilderback in 1979, and “The Stork and the Plow: The Equity Answer to the Human Dilemma” (1995), which I wrote with Anne and my Stanford colleague Gretchen C. Daily, to see how far off-base he really is.

PAUL R. EHRLICH

Bing Professor of Population

Studies, Stanford University