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U.S. Overpopulation....Why Doesn't Anyone Talk About Immigration?
Eric Ruark, Sr. Researcher, FAIR
The size of the world’s population receives a lot of attention from scientists and academics. The overwhelming consensus among them is that there are simply too many people already on the planet, and that earth’s burgeoning population growth is a recipe for disaster. Most also believe that governments around the world are not taking this issue very seriously, ignoring what may become an intractable political crisis. But what to do about it?
That is the question that divides those who deal with population issues. There are some who advocate direct government intervention in family planning, such as preventing couples from having more than one child. Most, however, take a more moderate and humane approach, endorsing greater education on family planning, or eliminating tax incentives for couples who have multiple children.
There is a lot of room for discussion when it comes to the question of population policy. Unfortunately, one thing that often gets left out of the discussion, but what is crucial to any public policy decision, is immigration. Even those who work in population related fields many times choose to ignore how international migration fits into the picture.
A good example of skirting the issue was the forum “Population Growth and Rising Consumption: What’s Sustainable?” sponsored by the Population Institute, the Population Media Center and the Wallace Global Fund and held on October 6, 2009. The forum featured “five prominent experts on population, economics and sustainability” yet there was virtually no mention of immigration. Only one speaker raised the issue, a Canadian economist and Professor of Environmental Studies at York University, who said “talking about immigration as a tool for population policy, it’s a very touchy and difficult area, but I don’t think we can shy away from it.”
The problem is we are shying away from it, just as the speakers at the population forum did. Immigration is driving population growth in the U.S., and we are on course to reach a population of one billion by the end of this century. Isn’t that something that should be discussed by our political leaders, and shouldn’t so-called environmentalists be concerned about the ecological disaster that a billion people in the U.S. would cause? Right now, politicians in D.C. want to pass legislation that markedly increases the number of people who come into the U.S. each year. We might reach a billion people sooner than we think.
What lies behind the exorbitant U.S. immigration numbers is the mistaken belief that we need to grow in order to survive. True, big business needs cheaper labor and more consumers in order to maximize their profits. But is this in the best interest of America’s long-term needs. In order to generate increased revenue developers will hire illegal workers and seek to build on every bit of open land. They have politicians in their pocket, and have likewise bought off many environmental organizations. Green, Inc, published in 2008, exposes how large corporations pay off large environmental organizations in order to win “green” endorsements. Even Wal-Mart has gotten in on the ruse.
Surely, not all academics are paid off with corporate money. So, why then do they remain mostly silent about immigration? Perhaps is a larger political perspective that obstructs their view on this issue. Or, maybe they find the topic too controversial or complex to approach. Theoretical models are easier to deal with then the human implications of immigration policy. Yet, “experts” should consider the human implications of failing to reduce the flow of immigrants to the U.S.
Only by reducing immigration can the U.S. achieve population stability, and it is the only way to begin to achieve environmental sustainability. That conversation has been ignored for over forty years, and any discussion of population growth or environmental policy that disregards immigration is inherently flawed and can lead to no genuine solution. How can Americans advise others around the world to adopt sustainable population policies when our own situation is out of control? The lesson we are teaching is that exponential growth is the key to economic prosperity, the way to the American Dream. This is a catastrophic message to send to the rest of the world, and one that will result in catastrophe for us, as well.
Bonnie Erbe, contributing editor at US News & World Report and host of PBS's weekly news analysis program To the Contrary, looks at the impact of immigration on our nation’s environment. Watch the video below or check out our video section in the right sidebar of our home page for this eye-opening segment.
Our population has experienced an aggressive growth over the past 25 years which has had a direct effect on traffic gridlock, urban sprawl, and wide swings in a variety of economic statistics, the latest being the recent subprime mortgage crisis.
How will your quality of life be affected when the population goes from 306 million at present to 438 million (Pew estimate) by 2050? Will your children have a better or worse environment than you? Will they have a better or worse quality of life?
Tell us what you think in this week's poll: Will the increase of the U.S. population from 306 million at present to 438 million in 2050 improve or worsen the quality of life of average Americans?
As the new US Administration and Congress begin to tackle immigration reform, they will again be faced with the weighty question of how large should America’s population be in the future. Should America’s population continue to grow indefinitely, perhaps doubling to 600 million by the end of the century? Clearly, any answer to this vital demographic question has serious and far-reaching economic, political, social and environmental consequences for America as well as for the international community of nations. Read the full study at Yale Global Online.
In his study “Rapid Population Growth in California: A Threat to Land and Food Production,” Cornell University professor Dr. David Pimentel writes that as the population continues to climb, food security and the ability to produce enough food so that Californians can lead healthy and productive lives will be significantly stressed. The future status of agricultural production is especially critical, because resources of cropland, clean water, adequate fossil energy, and abundant biodiversity are rapidly depleted throughout California, and indeed worldwide. Click here to download Dr. Pimentel’s eye opening study.
A U.N. conference report released on Monday warned that unless birth rates are lowered sharply through voluntary family-planning programs and easy access to contraceptives, the tally of humans on Earth could swell to an unsustainable 11 billion by 2050. The researchers said that with one and a half million more humans climbing aboard the planet every week, a recipe is looming for ecological overload, famine and broken states. While the report was not readily available, you can read the whole story in this article at Breitbart.com.
"The drought that gripped the Southeast from 2005 to 2007 was not unprecedented and resulted from random weather events, not global warming, Columbia University researchers have concluded. They say its severe water shortages resulted from population growth more than rainfall patterns," the New York Times reported October 1, 2009.
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.
During the first class of a graduate level environmental education course, students were to rank, from a list of 50 environmental issues, the most critical issue that negatively impacts the environment. Lack of education, air pollution, water pollution, etc. were included along with increasing population growth. I remember ranking increasing population growth number 1. This was indeed the most critical issue. Politicians refuse to provide a vision to address how immigration...let alone illegal immigration...should be regulated. The environmental education course was given at the University of Maryland in 1988.
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.
In response to charges of “hatred” by the open-border radical group Imagine2050, Progressives for Immigration Reform Executive Director Leah Durant says that if the group considers all organizations that examine immigration policy for its impact on U.S. growth and environmental sustainability as “anti immigrant,” they also labeling the late Barbara Jordan, and all Americans concerned with the swelling of our population as such. The fact is that, according to the U.S. Census, the United States has the highest annual growth rate of any developed nation, and that it is time for policies that address the impact of uncontrolled growth on our environment. Click here to read Ms. Durant’s response in its entirety.
Philip Cafaro, assistant professor of philosophy at Colorado State and author of a recent paper entitled “The Environmental Argument for Reducing Immigration to the U.S.” recently presented his controversial thesis (that a reduction in immigration to the United States is essential to maintaining a healthy planet), at a recent National Press Club (NPC) panel presentation on Tuesday, August 25. The discussion, hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies and moderated by its Director of Research, Steven Camorata, provided insight into the diversity of opinion represented within the environmentalist movement and demonstrated the possibility for a future conservative/environmentalist partnership focused on immigration enforcement. Read the recent story from Examiner.com here.
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.
"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.
Bonnie Erbe writes at Politics Daily that while President Obama is talking about reducing C02 emissions, he won't address the main driver of increases in greenhouse gas emissions - population growth. Erbe says that a coalition of groups invested in mass immigration has curtailed public discussion on the merits of unlimited population growth in the U.S. Read the entire article here.
Wildlife biologist Leon Kolankiewicz writes in his commentary that the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and other environmental groups have condemned the fence under construction along the U.S.-Mexican border claiming it will disturb the habitat and movements of sensitive wildlife like pygmy owls and jaguars. However, what is woefully inconsistent — even hypocritical — is the environmental lobby’s refusal to get riled up about the ecological damage caused by the rampant, unsustainable U.S. population growth that illegal immigration exacerbates. The wildlife habitat eliminated to accommodate an additional 3 million people annually is on a scale far more widespread than the border fence. You can read Mr. Kolankiewicz’s commentary in its entirety 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.
While history teaches us that international conflicts over water shortages have been few and far in between, this interesting article from Christian Science Monitor tells us that a more likely scenario is potential intra-national (within country) water conflicts. The Southeastern states of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have longstanding disagreements over water — they are in federal court over water rights — and Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue has emphasized the state’s rights to use water that falls within its borders, despite claims by neighboring Florida and Alabama. While nowhere near what happened in China recently, we should start seriously looking for viable solutions to our shortage issues. Read the whole article here.
The United States will have a much harder time meeting goals for 2050 greenhouse gas emission cuts than Russia and a number of other wealthy countries that have decreasing populations, according to the results of a Reuters survey. Click here to read the whole story.
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.
