Thread: 06 AUGUST 2006 : AMERICA: TAKING IT TO THE LIMIT?

America: taking it to the limit?

U.S. population growth and its effects on our environment must be addressed, experts say

By Mike Lee

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 6, 2006

Look at the top-priority campaigns of the nation's big environmental groups and you'll find endangered animals, pollution and global warming.

What's largely missing are high-profile, domestic initiatives that tackle what many conservationists agree is a chief source of these and other challenges: U.S. population growth.

The environmental establishment has mostly abandoned talking about the nation's growing populace, particularly as it relates to immigration. The topic is dogged by internal squabbles, divisive politics and a desire to avoid ethnic discrimination.

One result is that ecological factors are rarely mentioned in the current effort to establish a new immigration policy. The debate mostly centers on economics and national security.



CRAIG MAYHEW AND ROBERT SIMMON / NASA GSFC
The United States – population nearly 300 million – and its neighbors light up the night in this view from space.

"People have been avoiding it like the plague,â€

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Leaders of big-name green groups said they focus their energies on a larger issue: global population growth.

“Some people ... want the Sierra Club to have a position that is more U.S.-centric,â€

The southwest is been in drought conditions for years, so we definitely need more people sucking up water or wasting it. You can do without food and survive for a week or two, but without water you won't last more than a few days. And what has happened to water supplies? Chemicals being dumped in from farms so rivers turn green. Last I heard the Gulf of Mexico has an hypoxic zone the size of New Jersey at the Mississippi delta where no sea creatures can live. Miami does not have enough sewage processing facilities so they pump untreated effluent into deep-injection wells which eventually ends up in the oceans and gulf.
Human population is one of the worst pressures on this earth and its resources, from food to medical care.

In 2004, for example, the organization was deeply split by three candidates who ran for board positions on platforms to limit immigration. Some of the group's members saw it as a racist campaign, and none of the candidates won.

The Sierra Club has always been totally hopeless, IMO. In each chapter there is enough political infighting to make a sane person upchuck.