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€