Yesterday, Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies was featured in the Washington Post opinion pages with a piece entitled “How Many Americans?” His article is a reminder that from the environmental point of view immigration presents a more clear and present danger then does so-called global warming.
I’ve said it before! In 1974 I was at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and everyone was freaked about global COOLING—a new ice age was coming and its arrival was featured on the front cover of Time magazine. Notice the crazy lefties (the Al Gore gang) aren’t even saying ‘global warming’ anymore, it’s ‘climate change’ because they know that actually the planet has started to cool in the last few years.
We should be getting freaked over the numbers that Camarota is telling us about. Think about where you live now and the impact 135 million more people will make in this country. Are you having political battles over growth? Too many houses? Too much pollution? Losing farmland? Traffic? If you live in the west, how is your water supply? Is your local park overrun by unemployed immigrants? And, what about the demand for energy?
And what these numbers also tell us is that this is coming really fast! Here is what Camarota had to say:
When the Census Bureau released its new population projections last month, most of the media focused on the country’s changing racial composition. But this was almost certainly not the most important finding. The projections show that the U.S. population will grow by 135 million in just 42 years — a 44 percent increase. Such growth would have profound implications for our environment and quality of life. Most of the increase would be a direct result of one federal policy — immigration. If we reduced the level of immigration, the projections would be much lower. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Do we want to be a much more densely settled country?
Native-born Americans have only about two children on average, which makes for a roughly stable population over time. But with an estimated 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants settling in the country each year, and about 900,000 births to these immigrants each year, immigration directly and indirectly accounts for at least three-fourths of U.S. population growth.
We, Americans without immigrants in the equation, are just replacing ourselves. Many many immigrants, especially those from Muslim countries, are having large families with 4, 5, 6 kids and on up. Islam dictates they have large families so that they might spread out across the world. No where have I ever read that proponents of Shariah law are concerned for protecting the environment, or for science at all, for that matter.
If I were Presidential candidate McCain, and knowing the major environmental groups do nothing on immigration, I would make immigration my number one environmental priority for the Republican party. Conservatives especially are loathe to get on any alarmist bandwagon, but I am a conservative ready to climb on this wagon. Imagine even the loss of liberty that is inevitable with a growing population.
If I were McCain I would begin admitting I was wrong on the issue of amnesty, not just the closing the borders part. I would make reforming immigration (LEGAL and illegal) my number one environmental priority, forget the global warming bandwagon. If you can’t let go of the premise of global warming notice it too (if it were true) is directly related to too many people in America. It is so clear it is maddening. And, to make the point again here is another paragraph from Camarota:
An increase of 135 million people by 2050 is equivalent to the entire populations of Mexico and Canada moving here. Assuming the same ratio of population to infrastructure that exists today, the United States would need to build and pay for 36,000 schools. We would need to develop enough land to accommodate 52 million new housing units, along with places for the people who lived in them to shop and work. We would also have to construct enough roads to handle 106 million more vehicles.
By continuing our present rate of immigration, in America and other western countries, there is no incentive for countries, say in Africa, or Mexico for that matter, to begin to get themselves under control. We are their safety valve—the overflow is coming here, or Canada or to Europe or New Zealand or Australia.
Read the rest of Camarota’s piece where he addresses the aging population issue and the poverty issue.
And now is probably a good time to re-visit the Numbers USA link at the top of our blog and WATCH the video.