The neo-Malthusians are at it again, warning that the United States’ population is growing too fast! And the problem with that, according to the liberal conventional wisdom, is that since Americans use so many natural resources per capita, that it will be an environmental disaster.
Yeah, you know what’s going to be a disaster? When Western European countries and countries like Russia and Japan have a complete economic and societal breakdown because they’re not having enough babies to prop up their socialist welfare programs and pay to care for all the elderly of the next couple of generations. Or, in order to counteract those effects, Western European countries will import a whole new population with a whole new culture and language and essentially create a new country with the same name.
As for the claims about the US, the actual birth rate is not that much higher than most developed nations, barely above replacement at 2.1. What is causing most of the population increase is immigration. Hey, I thought liberals liked immigration. Oh, and what part of the US population is having most of this children in the 2.1 rate? Bingo, immigrants and the poor.
Meanwhile, I have begun to hear refutations of the claim that Americans use an inordinate amount of the world’s resources, saying that Americans are developing new ways of using resources, new conservation methods, new resources altogether so that the net effect is to decrease the overall burden on the planet. But the claims made in the article seem to be mixing up population growth with other issues. For example:
Despite a relatively small migration from urban areas, the Northeast continued to feel the pressures of development. The report said that elevated ozone levels make Maine’s Acadia National Park the fifth-most polluted park in the country, and air pollution has damaged 30 percent of Vermont’s upland forests.
Yet, elevated air pollution is not a function of population, per se, but of the machines creating the pollution. I think many would agree that the pollution impact per capita has decreased in the past 150 years, not increased. The Merrimac River in northeastern Massachusetts doesn’t run red, purple, green, and yellow from industrial runoff anymore. The US Forest Service reports that there are more trees in the US today than there were when the Pilgrims landed.
Who is behind this report? Would you believe…
Technorati Tags:abortion, birth rate, overpopulation, population control
How come no population control groups advocate vows of virginity and the religious life?
Not that I don’t know the answer: the “dogs in perpetual heat” theory of human sexuality.
It’d be interesting to see if people turn the problems of demographic implosion into an argument against the religious life.