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Paul Kingsnorth, author of several books including Real England: The Battle Against the Bland (Portobello, 2008), talks about the change in environmentalism from a movement concerned about ecology to one primarily about political activism. "Now it seemed that environmentalism was not about wildness or ecocentrism or the other-than-human world and our relationship to it. Instead it was about (human) social justice and (human) equality and (human) progress and ensuring that all these things could be realised without degrading the (human) resource-base which we used to call nature back when we were being naïve and problematic. Suddenly, never-ending economic growth was a good thing after all: the poor needed it to get rich, which was their right. To square the circle, for those who still realised there was a circle, we were told that "(human) social justice and environmental justice go hand in hand" - a suggestion of such bizarre inaccuracy that it could surely only be wishful thinking," he says. Read his whole post at Energy Bulletin.
The world's population is on track to reach 7 billion people in two years, just twelve years after reaching 6 billion. In the meantime, global climate change, as a result of human activities, is having unprecedented effects on the planet's sea level rise, weather patterns, species habitat and freshwater resources. The United States uniquely demonstrates how these two issues – population and climate change – are inextricably linked. Check out the interactive map by clicking here.
By Eric Ruark, Research Analyst
The political elite have jetted to Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) taking place December 7-18, 2009. While being ferried around in limousines, munching on caviar sculptures, and generally emitting a huge carbon footprint, they are in the midst of discussing how the rest of us must be forced to drastically reduce our own standards of living in order to reduce global warming.
If one buys the premise of anthropogenic climate change, then one also has to accept that that there are two ways to reduce this cause and effect. The first is to reduce consumption and emissions per capita. The second is to reduce the size of the world’s population, especially in developed countries where per capita emissions are disproportionately high. So one has to ask: if President Obama is serious about ending global warming why does he support growing the U.S. population by tens of millions of people through immigration over the next decade, admitting those whose carbon footprint will be greater in the U.S. than it would have been in their home countries?
The Copenhagen conference is not about U.S. immigration policy, but it is precisely because of our immigration policy that the United States can not provide any real leadership on environmental issues. While the rest of the world looks to us to set an example, we can only provide bad precedent. Given the opportunity to stabilize our population and to work toward a sustainable future, our approach has been to grow our population by 80 million over the last thirty years and to put the United States on course to reach a billion people by century’s end.
The U.S. population is rising faster than any other developed nation and our per capita energy consumption is the highest in the world. This is environmentally and economically unsustainable, but the few who reap the financial benefits of U.S. immigration policy have funded politicians who push for amnesty and continued mass immigration at the expense of the American people.
Many Americans are skeptical about the claims being made at Copenhagen, and the release of e-mails hacked from computers at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit have only added to this growing skepticism. It’s not that Americans are not concerned about the environment; it’s that they mistrust blatant political posturing and resent the dearth of responsible and capable governance.
The first step toward a responsible environmental policy would be to recognize the environmental impact of U.S. population growth, and to understand that our fixation on economic growth no matter the cost to the environment is a grave error. Despite what politicians in D.C. may say, we can not continue to grow at an unprecedented rate and preserve the environment for future generations. This is simply not possible. We have to make a choice.
We do not have to accept the doom and gloom forecasts of Al Gore, and certainly should reject his push to circumvent our democratic process so that he can “save the planet.” We can, however, affect real and lasting change by ending our rapid population growth due to mass immigration. Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) has reminded President Obama that any agreement signed in Copenhagen would not be binding on the U.S. unless approved by Congress. As American citizens we can use the same democratic process to send members to Congress who will put the interests of American citizens first and foremost, and who will finally stop giving given lip-service to environmentalism and instead enact polices that actually protect the U.S. environment.
"Across the U.S. as a whole, approximately 50 percent of the warming that has occurred since 1950 is due to land use changes (usually in the form of clearing forest for crops or cities) rather than to the emission of greenhouse gases," said Georgia Tech City and Regional Planning Professor Brian Stone. "Most large U.S. cities, including Atlanta, are warming at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole -- a rate that is mostly attributable to land use change. As a result, emissions reduction programs -- like the cap and trade program under consideration by the U.S. Congress -- may not sufficiently slow climate change in large cities where most people live and where land use change is the dominant driver of warming." Professor Stone is publishing a paper in the December edition of Environmental Science and Technology that suggests policymakers need to address the influence of global deforestation and urbanization on climate change, in addition to greenhouse gas emissions. Read the full article on the Science Daily Web site here.
Water scarcity grows in urgency in many regions as population growth, climate change, pollution, lack of investment, and management failures restrict the amount of water available relative to demand. The Stockholm International Water Institute calculated in 2008 that 1.4 billion people live in "closed basins"-regions where existing water cannot meet the agricultural, industrial, municipal, and environmental needs of all….Signs of scarcity are plentiful. Several major rivers, including the Indus, Rio Grande, Colorado, Murray-Darling, and Yellow, no longer reach the sea year-round as a growing share of their waters are claimed for various uses. Read the full story from Worldwatch Institute.
On August 5, Lou Dobbs ran a story on how overpopulation is a major contributor to greenhouse gas production and the finding by researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) that having one less child in America produces a much bigger savings in CO2 emissions than things like changing light bulbs and driving more efficient automobiles. See the Dobbs interview with Prof. Paul Murtaugh and Ben Zuckerman of UCLA and CAPS here.
Growth, whether through immigration or natural increase, is a plus for some groups. For business, it means a boost in the demand for products. It also means a surge in low- and high-skilled workers, which can keep a lid on wage pressures. Religious and ethnic groups want more immigrants of their own faith and ethnicity to raise their political and social clout. The military regards young immigrants as potential recruits. But the public pays a cost for a bigger population. Joseph Chamie, former director of the population division of the United Nations, speaks of more congestion on highways, more farmland turned into housing developments, more environmental damage, including the output of pollutants associated with climate change. Get the whole story in this article from The Christian Science Monitor.
According to a report authored by FAIR’s Director of Special Projects Jack Martin entitled Immigration, Energy, and the Environment, Americans actually achieved more than a nine percent reduction in per capita energy consumption between 1973 and 2007. During that same time period, however, the U.S. population increased nearly 70 percent, with more than 31 percent of that increase directly attributable to legal immigration alone. In addition, the report notes that “the share of population growth attributable to immigration is still higher when illegal immigration and the children born to the immigrants after their arrival are included.” This population increase led to a 33 percent increase in American energy consumption from 1973 to 2007 — an increase that can be attributed primarily to U.S. population growth over that period.
With Congress and the Obama Administration considering an energy bill, wouldn’t it make sense for them to take into account the single largest contributing factor to greenhouse gas emissions over the past 35 years? Unfortunately, this hasn’t been the case. The House of Representatives recently passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, legislation more commonly referred to as “Cap-and-Trade.” The bill seeks to, among other things, “cap and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” a move that supporters of the legislation suggest would help fight global climate change. However, the bill fails to address the principle cause of the problem it is seeking to solve: immigration generated population growth.
According to Immigration, Energy, and the Environment, “Any effort by the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must take population growth into account.” The report goes on to point out that the central component of an energy policy that deals with population growth “must include an effective and enforceable immigration policy that curbs immigration levels to the point that it is no longer driving U.S. population growth.”
The report is available in its entirety here.
