False bad news about population growth, natural resources, and the environment

Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature

Be not a cancer on the earth -

Leave room for nature -

Leave room for nature

(Christian, 1981)

"Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature" and "Be not a cancer on the earth - Leave room for nature - Leave room for nature" are the first and last of ten inscriptions on The Georgia Guidestones (R) (Bridges, 1981). The construction cost of the over one hundred thousand kilogram (100 metric ton) granite structure (Bridges, 1981) has never been released, but its value has been estimated at about half a million -2009- dollars (Smith, 2009).

The sponsor(s) of the construction of The Georgia Guidestones (R), also known as the American Stonehedge, have not been disclosed. The person who contracted with the Elberton Granite Finishing Company to build the structure used the pseudonym Robert C. Christian (Bridges, 1981).

"The sponsors behind the The Georgia Guidestones (R) explained their reasons for the monument" (Bridges, 1981):

There are alternatives to Armageddon. But they will not happen without coordinated efforts by millions of dedicated people in all nations of the Earth.…

The monument has been named The Georgia Guidestones (R). It consists of four large upright blocks of granite, each measuring two meters wide and five meters high. They mark the extreme positon of the rising and setting of the sun in its cycle of 18.6 years. They surround a central stone which is oriented north and south. This stone contains ports aligned with the celestial pole and with the paths of the sun and moon as they cross the horizon. The central stone also marks the passing of the sun at noontime throughout the year. (Christian, 1981)

Robert C. Christian elaborated upon the precepts on the monument in a book. Smith (2010) comments:

Christian left behind a 1986 book, "Common Sense Renewed," that is still for sale at the Elberton Granite Museum. Many of the concerns he lists in it wouldn't be out of place at a modern Republican gathering: growing entitlement spending, stifling regulation, the breakdown of the traditional family.

But he also warned that the world's problems were symptoms of overpopulation, turning civilization as we knew into an "atomic tinderbox," and requiring some limited form of world government to save mankind from annihilation, he concluded.

Smith (2009) claims that the book calls for severe restrictions upon reproduction, since it states that "Reproduction is no longer explicitly a personal matter." He also claims that selective breeding would be imposed, since the book states, "Humanity has successfully applied practical genetic principles in developing domesticated plants and animals. It is now within our power to begin the domestication of our own species in a parallel fashion."

Smith (2009) concludes: "While circumstantial, the evidence is so persuasive that we believe that Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III played the role of Robert C. Christian in the Georgia Guidestones creation story." He also notes that Turner made a $1 billion donation to the United Nations. However, this was actually a pledge related to his founding of the United Nations Foundation in 1998. One of the Foundations first grants was almost $12.2 million to the United Nations Population Fund (DiscoverTheNetworks.org, Undated B).

From DiscoverTheNetworks.org (Undated A):

To “protect” the environment and limit population growth, Turner advocates a “one child per family” policy.

Turner also has promoted nuclear disarmament through Ted Turner Documentaries, whose eight-hour television series about weapons of mass destruction, Avoiding Armageddon, aired on PBS stations in April 2003 and was hosted by Walter Cronkite.

Also in 2006, Turner signed a statement that accompanied the documentary film The Great Warming, which maintained that not only did global warming pose a threat to the future of life on earth, but also that it was largely a result of human industrial activity.

In April 2008, Turner made the unsubstantiated claim that within a few decades, most of humanity would be extinct as a result of global warming.

Outspoken about his leftwing political views, Turner candidly calls himself “a socialist at heart.”

A recent interview:

Charlie Rose. (2008). A conversation with Ted Turner.

While the precepts inscribed on The Georgia Guidestones (R) have generated much discussion among conspiracy theorists about secret plans to decimate the World's population, a simpler explanation is that they were simply a reaction to the threats that dominated public thinking of the period. The 1980s began as a period of heightened tension in the Cold War between the USA and the USSR. There was discussion within the Reagan Administration of "winning" a nuclear war against the the USSR. The leadership of both the European allies of the USA and of the USSR regarded such views as dangerous, if not insane. The enormous increases in military spending by the USA, including the development of a "missile shield" to intercept Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles were seen as a move toward a first-strike capability.

The Encyclopedia of the New American Nation (Undated) notes:

Reagan … deliberately strove to upset the balance of terror by focusing on defense rather than deterrence. The shift had important ramifications for the Cold War. Reagan reauthorized the development of the B-1 bomber and the next generation of highly accurate and MIRV [Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle]-equipped Peacekeeper missiles....

Reagan's supporters included a religious right faction which viewed a nuclear war as necessary to bring Biblical prophesy to fulfillment, thereby ushering in the "End Times" and the return of Jesus Christ. The combination of changes in the nuclear force posture and the dominant ideology, of public statements by Reagan about the "Evil Empire", and of threatening military maneuvers in Europe created a real fear that a full scale nuclear exchange was imminent, both in the USA and USSR. In fact, at one point the Soviet Leadership was convinced that an attack was imminent. Assurances from their operatives in London that everything was normal at the Ministry of Defense were necessary to calm them. So, The Georgia Guidestones (R) could well have been intended as a message to the survivors of a full-scale nuclear exchange.

Another major concern of the period was overpopulation. It was popularized by the mass media and books, such as the Population Bomb, a best-selling book written by Paul R. Ehrlich in 1968. Julian Simon rejected this view in The Ultimate Resource (Princeton University Press, 1981), arguing that the most valuable resource of all was people. In an article in Science, he stated (Regis, 1997):

"False bad news about population growth, natural resources, and the environment is published widely in the face of contrary evidence. For example, the world supply of arable land has actually been increasing, the scarcity of natural resources including food and energy has been decreasing, and basic measures of U.S. environmental quality show positive trends. The aggregate data show no long-run negative effect of population growth upon standard of living. Models that embody forces omitted in the past, especially the influence of population size upon productivity increase, suggest a long-run positive effect of additional people."

In the pages of Social Science Quarterly, … Simon challenged Ehrlich to put his money where his mouth was.... Ehrlich and his colleagues picked five metals that they thought would undergo big price rises: chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten.…

Between 1980 and 1990, the world's population grew by more than 800 million, the largest increase in one decade in all of history. But by September 1990, without a single exception, the price of each of Ehrlich's selected metals had fallen, and in some cases had dropped through the floor.…

Which is how it came to pass that in October 1990, Paul Ehrlich mailed Julian Simon a check for $576.07.

It seems clear that Turner's knowledge of the Earth's population limits was not drawn from the scientific literature, since even with the technology of the 1970s the Planet could support a population of 60 billion people (Revelle, 1976).

References:

Bridges, B. (Ed.), The Georgia Guidestone Guidebook (pp. 17-21). Elberton, GA: Elberton Granite Finishing Co., Inc. (URL , Downloaded October 8, 2011)

Christian, R. C. (1981). The purpose.… In Bridges, B. (Ed.), The Georgia Guidestone Guidebook (pp. 17-21). Elberton, GA: Elberton Granite Finishing Co., Inc. (URL )

DiscoverTheNetworks.org. (Undated A). Ted Turner. (URL , Downloaded May 26, 2010)

DiscoverTheNetworks.org. (Undated B). United Nations Foundation. (URL , May 26, 2010)

Encyclopedia of the New American Nation. (Undated). Deterrence - Mutual assured destruction (mad). (URL )

Regis, E. (1997, February). "The Doomslayer". Wired (Issue 5.02). Archived from the original on 2008-05-18. (URL , Downloaded May 27, 2010)

Revelle, R. The Resources Available for Agriculture. Sci. Amer. 235(3) Sept 76, p 165-178.

Charlie Rose. (2008, April 1). A conversation with Ted Turner. (URL , Downloaded May 26, 2010)

Smith, V. (2009, Dec. 28). Decoding the Georgia Guidestones. Van's Hardware Journal. (URL , Downloaded May 22, 2010)

Smith, M. (2010). Waiting for the end of the world: Georgia's 30-year stone mystery. CNN International. (URL , Downloaded May 23, 2010)