Much has been written about those for whom Independence Day in the US was not cause for celebration. While our country was freed from British rule in 1776 slaves were not yet free and women had to fight for the right to vote which wouldn’t come for another 144 years. Abolitionist Frederick Douglas famously said,” I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us, I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.” Then of course there is the as yet unreconciled matter of stealing lands from those who had called North America home for thousands of years.
But I would like to offer another perspective about independence. Certainly, it is a double-edged sword when it is offered to men and not women, whites and not blacks, straight and not gays and so on down the line. Independence is a wonderful concept when offered to all. We all want our independence from tyrants, idealy we want independence without rendering other people homeless. We want freedom from the immobility of prejudice that binds us to a limited life. The first time you drive a car or travel on your own is a wonderful feeling that you are now an adult. The benefits of independence are many. You can be free to make your own decisions, your own policies. It is great not to have to pay taxes to a foreign power, or fight in their wars.
Taking a look at independence from the perspective of growth, however, brings it all into a more discerning light. Independence cannot live up to its promises when sustainability remains an elusive goal.
Independence is not a panacea by itself. The freedom from the oppression of rule is only a first step. Independence does not free a country from oppression of overpopulation and the poverty it brings, as well as the resources it destroys. Because unlimited demand for limited resources is a recipe for disaster, a celebration of independence needs to be accompanied by a simultaneous concerted effort to incorporate goals of sustainability. Let me illustrate.
When India finally gained Independence from Great Britain in 1947 its population was 340 million. Today it struggles to meet the needs of its citizens because at over 1.4 billion, it is on course to overtake China as the most populous country in the world. India has only 2.4 percent of the world’s total land area, while needing to support 14 % of the world’s population. Rates of growth are decreasing but actual numbers are still rising. The addition of 1,060,000,000 since independence was declared contributes to the fact that over 63% of Indians live in extreme poverty. Bad leadership, corrosive politics and other factors certainly contribute to India’s woes, but even with great leaders and unlimited rupees, how would the tremendous challenges of taking care of over a billion people in a land 3 times smaller than the US be resolved?
When Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa and Black people were finally free from apartheid in1994, its population was 43.27 million. Today it has grown by over 18 million people. At 61. 5 million the suffering continues. South African Poet Mongane Wally Serote once wrote “We neglect the creativity that has made the people able to survive extreme exploitation and oppression. People have survived extreme racism. It means our people have been creative about their lives.”
No doubt they have been creative but removing the shackles of racism did not prevent the imprisonment of overpopulation for it overwhelms creativity. It is the rock in the game of rock, paper scissors. South Africa is a dry country and climate change is making it drier. Adding over 18 million people since Apartheid ended has not been good for the quality of lives of South Africans. Take the town of Cape Town South Africa. It’s population, like that of all of South Africa has soared and climate change has diminished its ability to get water from its source, mountain snow melt. Why is it is rapidly facing a water crisis? Today 4.6 million people need water in this city. In 1994 half as many people needed water. If you were the mayor of Cape Town which number would you prefer to have in your city? 2.3 million or 4.6 million? How can you have the equality promised by the dismantling of the evil apartheid, in a land overwhelmed with a demand that cannot be met no matter how well run because the limits to growth have been ignored? You don’t of course, you only have chaos and more injustice as those who are better off buy the remaining scarce sources of water. Yes, it’s true that the wealthier citizens use more water per capita, but redistributing that water more fairly is not going to solve the problem.
The US is also burdened by overpopulation but you wouldn’t know it by watching or reading any news source. The US operates under a deep but false narrative that it has no limits. These deeply ingrained beliefs direct policies of expansion and growth beyond the capacity of US aquifers and rivers, beyond the ability to sustain openlands and the wildlife they need to support. With over half a million homeless people, rising cost of living, rising pollution, rising traffic congestion, more people to manage is never the secret wish of any mayor, governor or president.
The first census data conducted when Thomas Jefferson was Secretary of State revealed a country with just under 4 million people in 1791. Today the US is not even stabilized at a whopping 331 million. It is allowing itself to continue to grow unsustainably mostly with weak policies and even weaker enforcement of mass immigration, both legal and illegal.
Every time independence is the goal, every time justice is sought this struggle must be married equally to an ideal of sustainability. Gandhi and Mandela would be horrified to see the continued poverty in their respective countries. They fought so hard for independence and equality believing that it would indeed lead to better living conditions for their people. Yet that continued growth in a finite space has undermined their idealistic goals. Both of their countries are looking at a precarious future of extreme poverty and suffering.
According to the United Nations Family planning agency, “Where rapid population growth far outpaces economic development, countries will have a difficult time investing in the human capital needed to secure the well-being of its people and to stimulate further economic growth. This issue is especially acute for the least developed countries, many of which are facing a doubling, or even a tripling of their populations by 2050.”
The growth of numbers within each of these countries has come within the context of being free to self-govern without the reigns of injustice to bind them to cruelty, and yet they have all grown beyond their means of self-support, thereby taking the wind out of the sails of independence.
Admittedly, it is hard enough to fight for independence from greedy overlords, yet without a focus on sustainability the goals of a better freer world cannot be actualized. We don’t need just to fight for independence from harsh rule we need to fight for independence from crippling numbers. Countries grow beyond limits from either high fertility or high rates of immigration or both. That growth is the enemy of Independence.
Independence Days are often celebrated with parades, special foods and a lot of flag waving. But to truly celebrate a better world each country needs to create a Sustainability Day to commemorate laws and actions which keep them from growing beyond their limits. Now that would really be something to celebrate.