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Some feel it is to the environment, domestic and global, what a neglected levee system was to New Orleans. It may be, if powerful business and globalization interests get their way, only the beginning. It happens in a vacuum of public awareness and discussion, even as some environmentalists, politicians and the media look the other way or overtly collude. In October, likely on or about October 17, we will become 300 million, this in the wake of our, in the 1990s, quietly becoming the third most populated nation behind only China and India. But look quickly, because unless we act soon and certainly if both parties in Congress continue their irresponsible ways, despite the overwhelming public opinion by Americans wanting reform, it is likely only the beginning of a population tsunami. We will confront being a China-like ONE BILLION, perhaps in as little as 40 years, a slap in the face to Americans’ near-replacement birth rate and couched in the outrage——for a representative democracy——that it occurs absent a national debate about whether that is the population future we want for our children and grandchildren. Our growth will hinder, if not overwhelm, the efforts of the world’s leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions——the United States (although China closes in)——to reduce its carbon contribution to global climate change. It happens as nearly 7,000 species in our country face extinction, mostly due to habitat loss. Back in 1972, as we passed 200 million and in response to great public concern at the time about United States population, a presidential commission——including John D. Rockefeller 3rd, influential senators Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) and Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), and heads of business, education, the environment and industry, after a two-year study, recommended that we move toward population stabilization: ""At some point in the future, the finite earth will not satisfactorily accommodate more human beings——nor will the United States……. We have concluded that……no substantial benefits will result from further growth of the Nation’’s population, rather that the gradual stabilization of our population through voluntary means would contribute significantly to the Nation’’s ability to solve its problems. Presidential Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, March 1972.
The commission believed, prophetically, that as the population grew, health care, education, infrastructure and the environment would suffer, with every problem——social or economic——becoming more daunting. But the commission erred. It believed that births, then averaging 3 per woman, would be the driver. But instead, births in subsequent years averaged in ranges of 2.1 children per woman, or essentially replacement level. The main driver became immigration, TIME magazine estimates now at 3 million or more a year. (U.S. Census Bureau statistics and projections have proved consistently so low as to raise questions about agency credibility.) Today, one in five of all immigrants live in the United States as we accept more immigrants than all the world’’s other nations combined! And the 1972 commission erred in assuming that Congress would heed their warning, which reflected the nation’’s attitude on the topic then and for the previous 50 years, to: "……pass legislation which will impose civil and criminal sanctions on employers of illegal border crossers and aliens……."" In short, they saw not an illegal alien problem, but an employer problem. They believed the nation would continue the cautious immigration policy spawned, in some measure by the nation’’s founders who urged great caution on immigration, and to a greater measure by the American people who demanded an end to the Great Wave of Immigration from 1880 to 1918. That cheap labor subsidy into a still under-populated frontier nation spawned sweat shops, inspired Upton Sinclair’’s THE JUNGLE and, though only one-third the level of today’’s immigration, overwhelmed cities and public institutions. But the era when the commission did their work, the 1970s, was an era (unlike our own) of concern about our own poor and an era——as Americans boycotted table grapes in sympathy——in which labor activist Cesar Chavez volunteered his United Farm Workers to patrol the border in the style of today’’s Minutemen. Labor would never advance, he knew, as long as laborers could be easily replaced with an endless supply of cheap and compliant illegal alien workers. Today, the media are unaware, uncaring or just not reporting that if the recent McCain-Kennedy-Bush Senate immigration "reform" stands, it will astronomically increase an historically unprecedented high immigration rate, allowing upwards of 100 million immigrants to enter over the next 20 years. The bill can be defined as, "Don’’t like illegal immigration? Fine, we’’ll just make them ALL legal!" (Even legal immigration, at 500,000 in 1972, has doubled to a million a year, despite the commission’’s recommendations the lower rate be retained.) The media tout our one-percent per-year growth rate (but rising rapidly) as "slow" or "low"——an opinion not shared by the 1970s commission. They were shocked that it represents doubling times of 60 years and pointed out that that would represent an ever-expanding environmental footprint as population grew. In contrast, Europe "grows" by 0.1 percent a year or doubling times of 600 years. In effect, Europe has stopped growing. To further set the stage for the "Day of 300 Million," it is important to look at1994. During the "Population Summit of the World’’s Scientific Academies," the national academies of sciences of 58 nations issued a rare joint statement. They cautioned that we cannot depend on science alone to deal with problems caused by overpopulation; society must assume responsibility for population stabilization, they admonished. Many assume that warning applies only to developing nations. But considering that each citizen of an industrialized nation has many times the environmental impact, by estimates of Britain’’s Royal Academy of Sciences, equal to 10 people or more of one in a developing nation, the warning should apply to the United States and rapidly industrializing China and India as much or more as, say, Bangladesh. And then, during the Cairo world population conference in 1995, we were a signatory nation agreeing to draft a domestic population policy——also recommended by the 1972 commission but never drafted——to guide policies influencing growth, including immigration, visas, citizenship provisions for babies born within our borders and family re-unification policies. (For example: If an illegal alien woman——or a woman here legally as a guest worker——gives birth, her child automatically becomes a citizen, paving the way under "chain migration" for the child’’s extended family, seemingly excluding only the family dog, to gain citizenship.) I try to assure myself that reportage on the "Day of 300 Million" will not be co-opted, as was the 1999’’s global "Day of Six Billion," with the media preoccupation with the demographic non-event, the ""birth dearth."" The media ignored a still-booming global population as it focused on what business interests see as a demographic catastrophe of low birth rates in industrialized nations. That sparks the question of whether the media, like the rest of corporate America, can ever accept the concept of the absolute imperative on a finite planet of a need to end growth and perhaps reduce population, since some experts believe our numbers are already higher than the planet can sustain. While economists argue that growth is an imperative of nature, they ignore that in nature nothing, except cancer, grows indefinitely. Sadly, even alternative media are guilty. While PBS, for example, will talk about global population, it reports on domestic environmental problems absent references to growth. A recent report on drought-stricken New Mexico, for example, talked of water ""solutions"" absent any acknowledgement that solutions will be only temporary as population triples in the near future. Al Bartlett, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, jokingly refers to this as Disney’’s First Law: ""Wishing will make it so,"" or a naïïve belief that carrying-capacity solutions can be found absent addressing population. I have stood amazed as otherwise well informed Americans——often as they confront growth damage in own towns or cities——spout the nonsensical, ""We HAVE to have growth."" Europe and the prosperity of some European nations dispel that myth. Japan, Italy, Spain and Ireland all lose population and, despite ""the sky is falling"" hand wringing of our own boom-boosters, are overall pleased by the future that will bring. Of course decreases cause problems, such as how to care for the elderly, but so do increases, such as how to care for the young. Booming California, for example, must build a school every 57 hours! On a planet grappling with climate change——by depictions of the National Academy of Sciences inextricably linked to population——and the largest species extinction since the die off of the dinosaurs, in large measure due to habitat loss to human population expansion, increases are, directly or indirectly, the problem. While environmental groups in the 1970s spoke out on the imperative of population stabilizing, ever eager to avoid controversy and to not offend contributors on politically charged topics from abortion to immigration, most backed away from the topic so fast they left skid marks only vaguely discernable from yellow streaks up their backs. If I sound bitter, it is because one of these groups, the Sierra Club, on whose Population Issues Committee I sat in the 1980s, took the debate to an appalling low as it labeled some members, including one black member and a former Colorado governor with an impeccable record on race relations, racist for speaking out on immigration. They did this, many of us feel not coincidental to a $100 million donation from a donor opposed to immigration reduction and knowing that the club itself, in the 1980s, discussed the ""immigration problem"" as something that must be addressed. They also ignore that such prestigious environmentalists as the founder of Earth Day, Sen. Gaylord Nelson; former Kennedy Interior Secretary Steward Udall and former Sierra Club director David Brower called for population stabilization, including Brower siding with those attempting to force the club to speak out on immigration in the 1990s. As economist Kenneth Boulding so succinctly put it, ""Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."" I’’ll leave it to the reader to decide where those fall within that realm who claim population is not within the purview of environmental organizations. Many environmentalists’’ immigration solution seems to be ""pack ‘‘em in ever more tightly and regulate in a futile attempt to mitigate,"" never mind Isaac Asimov’’s ""Democracy cannot withstand overpopulation."" Nor do they seem to understanding that it accomplishes little to reduce consumption if population increases nullify the results. Think of the environmental benefits of a stable population——to sprawl, to forests, to wildlife, to agriculture, to energy conservation——if no new houses or expanding city boundaries are needed to accommodate growth. Think of automotive engineering gains actually stretching fuel supplies, rather than just accommodating ever more cars! Think of water conservation in drought-stricken states going to refill reservoirs and provide water for wildlife, not just subsidize land speculators’’ demands for evermore growth! Some, particularly the corporate media, define overpopulation within the narrow definition of whether there will be adequate food. But many of us believe humans need open spaces, solitude, the joy of seeing wildlife or just knowing wildlife are there. We also believe in a planet not in environmental freefall. And, food is a far more critical issue than depicted. The much-hailed ""green revolution,"" which tripled grain harvest between 1950 and 2000, was dependent on irrigation and fossil fuels. This is today replaced by the ""food bubble,"" as agricultural expectations deflate as aquifers decline and energy costs, for pumping, fertilizers and crop transport, skyrocket. This will worsen as the United States, in the 1950s and 1960s a major food exporter, within two decades becomes a food importer as we pave over farmlands——122,000 acre are lost a year in California alone——and increase our own numbers. Nor have the impacts of Disney’’s First Law ""solutions,"" such as biofuels, like ethanol, been considered as they are touted as an alternative to our having to limit our numbers or send our Hummers to the great parking garage in the sky. This year with the industry in relative infancy, ethanol will require 14 million tons of grain even though China’’s and India’’s distilleries are not yet on line. Just think of the implications to poor nations forced to compete against one billion Americans wanting grains to ""feed"" hungry cars! I have little doubt who will lose, and it won’’t be SUVs. (Parker, a journalist, publisher and longtime environmental activist, is a native of the Four Corners area. During her lifetime, she has seen cities such as Las Vegas, Phoenix and Denver grow from tens of thousands of people to millions. She lives in the Albuquerque suburb of Rio Rancho.) |
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