U.S. population stabilization advocates see high immigration numbers as key to increased pollution, sprawl, and water and energy shortages. Most mainstream green groups place the blame on Americans' extravagant consumption habits, gas-guzzling cars and huge homes.
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Dear EarthTalk: Why are some environmental groups jumping on the immigration issue? What does immigration have to do with the environment?
-- Ginna Jones, Darien, CT
What to do about booming legal and illegal immigration rates is one of the most controversial topics on Americans’ political agenda these days. More than a million immigrants achieve permanent resident status in the U.S. every year. Another 700,000 become full-fledged American citizens. The non-profit Pew Research Center reports that 82 percent of U.S. population growth is attributable to immigration.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that U.S. population will grow from 303 million people today to 400 million as early as 2040. While many industrialized nations, including Japan and most of Western Europe, are experiencing population growth slowdowns due to below replacement birth levels and little immigration, the U.S. is growing so fast that it trails only India and China in total numbers.
Advocates for U.S. population stabilization, including some environmental organizations and leaders, fear that this ongoing influx of new arrivals is forcing the nation to exceed its “carrying capacity,” stressing an already overburdened physical infrastructure. David Durham of Population-Environment Balance says that Americans who care about the environment should insist on reducing immigration, to recognize “ecological realities such as limited potable water, topsoil and infrastructure.” He also cites studies showing that a permissive U.S. immigration policy drives up fertility rates in the sending countries “which is the last thing these sending countries need.”
To others the problem is larger than immigration itself. “People don’t just materialize at our border, or at any border,” says John Seager of Population Connection. “When you talk about immigration, you’re talking about the second half of a process that begins when people decide to leave their homes.” And they are usually leaving their homes because of hunger, lack of work, oppression, or any number of other often-desperate reasons. Seager and many others argue that by helping poor nations better address the economic and family planning needs of their citizens, Americans can not only help improve the lot of millions of people living in dire poverty, but also slow down the tide of immigration.
Groups focusing on the immigration-environment nexus are keen to get their voices heard, but many mainstream green groups shun the highly divisive topic, preferring instead to encourage Americans, who are infamous around the world for their huge homes, gas-guzzling cars and extravagant consumption habits, to curb their unsustainable lifestyles, which they see as more fundamental to U.S. environmental problems than population pressures. With just five percent of the world’s people, Americans use a quarter of the world’s fossil fuels, own more private cars than drivers with licenses, and live in homes that are on average 38 percent larger today than they were in 1975. By scaling back, Americans can take a big bite out of pollution, sprawl and other environmental problems, while also setting a good example for those who land in the U.S. every year, lowering the nation’s collective carbon footprint significantly in the process.
CONTACTS: Pew Research Center, www.pewresearch.org; Population-Environment Balance, www.balance.org; Population Connection, www.populationconnection.org.
EarthTalk is produced by E/The Environmental Magazine. GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.
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8 Comments
Add CommentThe optimum population size for the United States is probably about 150 million. In order to stabilize, and eventually reduce, population growth the U.S. would need to reduce maximum fertility to two (or fewer) biological children per woman, and to limit immigration to 100,000 (or fewer) people per year.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCarbon footprints & moving from lower polluting to higher polluting countries & Immigrants pollute less than the Native Born & Urban Sprawl & the concepts today have become so high tech that people tend to forget about the most basic of all environmental issues, the ability of the environment to support the people who live there. This is also called carrying capacity. The Salton Sea, the Antelope Valley, Mono Lake, and other places in California are dead or dying because the needs for water in California have outstripped the supply.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLiving with the fall-out of our current unrestrained, illegal immigrant driven population growth is not easy. Here in Minnesota we have a water resource depletion driven Sword of Damocles hanging over our head. The Oglalla Aquifer that runs from the Dakotas to Texas is so depleted of water that there are serious plans to divert Great Lakes water westward, ripping up our State in the process and messing with the ecology of the Great Lakes. The only thing stopping it so far is figuring out how to get the project past our treaty with Canada. And the State Government is trying to enter into an Interstate Compact that includes Canadian Provinces to further hinder the possibilities but many consider that unconstitutional. How long will that last with many places in the Aquifer seriously close to failure.
All over our nation people see our wide open spaces and think that our population can grow forever. But so much of the U.S. ranges from semi arid to out and out desert that we cannot support large populations like in China. As stated earlier, the limiting factor has less to do with population density that it does with carrying capacity. If an aquifer is about to fail it does not matter if the population density is one person per square mile or 15,000 people per square mile. You risk ecological collapse by increasing the population period. In addition to the problems with the Oglalla Aquifer, EVERY city in the American Southwest is on the verge of running out of water resources. Around Phoenix they have pulled so much water out of the ground the land is actually sinking. San Diego is only surviving because they found a way to clean up the polluted ground water there as they ran out of water from the Colorado River, which now all but disappears at the Mexican border.
Many people do not realize how bad our water situation is becoming in the U.S. because half our population lives within five hundred miles of Chicago where water is more plentiful. People see the falling reservoirs along the Colorado River out west and think that it has nothing to do with them. They hear that the Salton Sea in California is now dead thanks to overuse of water by cities and they say that is not us. But uncontrolled Immigration means we get to the bottom of our wells and find them dry all that much faster.
And then there is food production. It takes one square mile of farmland to feed 1,000 people. New York, the U.S. City with the highest population density has is rated at 27,282 people per square mile (ppsm) so each square mile of city requires 273 square miles of farmland. As people look at the U.S. they say that we have so much open land we do not need to worry. But in fact less than half the U.S. is tillable and even less than that is actually tilled because of our Forests and Prairies that are locked up as preserves and parks. And as such, we are really blessed as only 11% of world lands can be used to grow crops. In fact we will run out of farmland to feed people long before we run out of places to put people. At New York Population Densities we could barely support 0.2% (50%x1/273) of our land used as city space.
Currently in the U.S. most of our cities are much less densely populated than New York. Chicago has a population density of about 12,470 ppsm, Los Angeles 8,205 ppsm, Minneapolis 6,791 ppsm, St. Louis 5,696 ppsm, San Diego 3,872 ppsm, Houston 3,701 ppsm, Des Moines has 2,621 ppsm, and Indianapolis 2,152 ppsm. But this presents a different problem. These cities are sprawling over our very best farmland. The Pew Center estimated that there are 12,000,000 Illegal Immigrants in the U.S. (as of 2007). At Chicago population densities his represents additional urban sprawl from Illegal Immigration covering over a farm land area of about 1,000 square miles and represents one million people loosing their food supply to Illegal Immigration. At Des Moines population density 12,000,000 Illegal Immigrants cost us an area of farmland the size of Connecticut that used to feed almost five million people thanks to Illegal Immigrant driven U.S. urban sprawl. If this is "spaceship Earth" as they used to say in the early days of the modern day environmental movement then the huge net tonnage of food that the U.S. exports each year is the pantry of that spaceship. And we are destroying that pantry on the alter of unlimited immigration.
The problem is with the material mode of subsistence! When materialism is balanced by objective reality, it would also balance choices and behaviour including consumption. Slow down on 'self' in favour of 'principle' development. Values should be taught in education and trust me attitude will change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou seem to know a lot of info that I'd like to know. Can you recommend some books and/or organizations for research purposes?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo Peter T. Wilson - Whenever people start talking about teaching "Values" I have to wonder whose values are to be taught. Values are not facts; they are opinions of what is right and wrong. So what happens if someone has a different set of values? Do they get classified as "wrong" and in need of "re-education"? Some values are shared such as murder is bad, but even in this case there have been many societies over the years that practice ritualistic murder as Human Sacrifice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlus there are many aspects to environmental impact that are unequal and can never be equalized. People in Minnesota burn a lot more fuels for heat than do people in Florida. People consume water, food, and other natural resources differently based on many factors. And then there is the consumption of meat. Is it better to have meat in a person's diet and risk long term survival due to lack of certain hard to find in vegetable amino acids or proteins or is it better to eat only vegetables and let farm animals go extinct so we need less farmland per person? And are the grasslands that currently used to raise farm animals even usable for farming? With all these variables two people armed with an array of facts can come to opposite conclusions and both can be correct ... or both can be wrong.
One thing is certain, it was recently proven in a study that children exposed to green space via camps or forested areas or lakes and streams or whatever become better adjusted to society than do those who do not. Stacking people like cordwood in high-rise buildings with only city environment for company is asking for trouble. Back in the 60's they used to use rats to study human behavior because the two species seem to share many macro behavior traits in common. They found that if too many rats were crowded together in a "rat city" the incidence of psychotic behavior went up precipitously. It seems that regardless of "values", overcrowding without easily accessible open space is an issue. I would submit that the high crime rates that characterize many of our densely packed cities may already be our canary in the coalmine warning that we are going too far.
To Peter T. Wilson - Whenever people start talking about teaching "Values" I have to wonder whose values are to be taught. Values are not facts; they are opinions of what is right and wrong. So what happens if someone has a different set of values? Do they get classified as "wrong" and in need of "re-education"? Some values are shared such as murder is bad, but even in this case there have been many societies over the years that practice ritualistic murder as Human Sacrifice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlus there are many aspects to environmental impact that are unequal and can never be equalized. People in Minnesota burn a lot more fuels for heat than do people in Florida. People consume water, food, and other natural resources differently based on many factors. And then there is the consumption of meat. Is it better to have meat in a person's diet or risk long term survival due to lack of certain hard to find in vegetables amino acids or proteins? After all, growing farm animals is the least efficient use of land. And are the grasslands that currently used to raise farm animals even usable for farming? With all these variables two people armed with an array of facts can come to opposite conclusions and both can be correct ... or both can be wrong.
One thing is certain, it was recently proven in a study that children exposed to green space via camps or forested areas or lakes and streams or whatever become better adjusted to society in than do those who do not. Stacking people like cordwood in high-rise buildings with only city environment for company is asking for trouble. Back in the 60's they used to use rats to study human behavior because the two species seem to share many macro behavior traits in common. They found that if too many rats were crowded together in a "rat city" the incidence of psychotic behavior went up precipitously. It seems that regardless of "values", overcrowding without easily accessible open space is an issue. I would submit that the high crime rates that characterize many of our densely packed cities may already be our canary in the coalmine warning that we are going too far.
We need to define what it means to be an American. Right now we're just a loose conglomeration of profiteers. Japanese people have a really good idea of what it means to be Japanese -- let's start there and improve it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswell, duhhhh.
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