Alarm sounds on US population boom

[jpak]

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/08/31/alarm_sounds_on_us_population_boom/

WASHINGTON -- The United States, now at nearly 300 million people, is the only industrialized country that has experienced strong population growth in the last decade, creating concerns that the boom and Americans' huge appetites for food, water, and land will sharply erode the nation's natural resources in coming years, according to a report released yesterday.

The Northeast remains by far the most densely populated region of the nation, but it also had the slowest population growth in the country during the 1990s, including a 2 percent population reduction in urban areas, said the Center for Environment and Population, a Connecticut-based nonprofit research organization that produced the report.

In contrast, the South and the West were booming, creating new pressure on fragile environments and water sources.

For the first time, the report compared national and regional population trends with environmental indicators, highlighting stresses that growing populations are placing on nature, according to the report and outside analysts.

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[Poppyseedman]

1. Simply solution.

Close the border

[jpak]

2. Why would you want to embargo Canada????

n/t

[Poppyseedman]

4. Yes, people from Canada are flowing illegally

into our country in unprecedented numbers. Close the damn Canadian border.

[jpak]

7. That's just plain stupid

Close the border and halt all trade and tourism with Canada???

There would be a lot of Americans out of work and living in the cold and dark if that happened.

Got a link to those "unprecedented numbers" of illegal Canadians entering the US????

And why would any self-respecting Canadian give up their universal health care, social safety net, gun control policies and international goodwill to come to the hellhole of Bushamerica????

That's crazy talk...

[Poppyseedman]

8. I thought the sarcasm in my post was obvious.

Guess not

Your last comment is interesting.

I just spent a week fishing in Canada. Almost every Canadian I meet would get a huge laugh out of your comment. Lot's of bitching about their government. I was very surprised to hear it.

[jpak]

9. I lived in Canada for several years

All Canadians bitch about their government - it's their national sport.

Are they going to give up their universal health care???

nope

Their social safety nets???

nope

Their gun control policies???

nope

Ally themselves with US neocons and squander the goodwill that the international community bestows upon them???

nope

Give up their beloved Maple Leaf for the despised Stars and Stripes??

nope

Also, if we close the border, you won't be doing any fishing in Canada for a long long time.

[Poppyseedman]

10. Closing the border doesn't mean not being able to cross it legally.

I thought you understood that.

Guess not.

[jpak]

11. No - you said "close the damned border"

All Americans and Canadians can legally cross the border today.

No need to "damned close it".

And there is no unprecedented influx of illegals from Canada.

That's Minuteman nonsense.

[Poppyseedman]

12. My post was sarcasm. I told you twice already

You do know the meaning of the word?

[jpak]

14. All my replies were "sarcasm" too

Still don't get it???

[Poppyseedman]

15. Touche'

[jpak]

16. Hee hee

:hi:

[greenman3610]

3. Is it possible to advocate this without being thought racist?

I am anything but a "Minuteman" type, but
I believe we must get control of the border.

[Poppyseedman]

5. A one word answer.

No.

Of course, we are racist who only want people to immigrant legally.

[kestrel91316]

13. Correct, but it's not the Canadian border that's the problem.............

[thegreatwildebeest]

22. We need to get control...

...of ridiculous, unscientific sex education, and the paucity of family planning funding and abortion access in this country. Half of the 5-6 million births that occur each year are unwanted. Most, if not all of those could have been avoided with reliable access to contraceptive services, emergency contraception, and barring that, REAL access to abortion as a choice.

People who talk about immigration as the problem don't acknowledge the fact that many European countries are also seeing equally unprecendented amounts of immigrants, but yet are seeing a negligible, or decreasing, birth rate. The solution is education and access, not draconian immigration laws.

[NMDemDist2]

26. half of the births are unwanted? that seems a bit extreme

where did you get that piece of data?

[thegreatwildebeest]

30. You can find it here...

You can find it at the Guutmacher Institute, in this paper.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3002498.html

Considering this rather sober statistic, and combine this with similar data from the UNFPA that contraceptive demand far outstrips supplies that are available, one realizes that the problem is not people wanting to have children, but not either knowing how to or being able to stop pregnancy due to economic and other access factors. Depending on your economic circumstances, 15-30 dollars for birth control, or the amount of money for a box of condoms (multiplied by the number of times you have sex), or even more expensive methods (IUD's, Implanon once its available) is quite a bit of money, even if you know the risks of not using them are significantly higher.

[NMDemDist2]

31. abortion rates are that high?

:wow:

they are claiming 48% of women will have an abortion in a lifetime

i dunno......

[thegreatwildebeest]

32. It's not "claiming"...

It's the truth. 1.5 million abortions are performed a year. Presuming that there is roughly 150 million women in America it takes a mere 20 or so years (presuming one abortion per woman) to hit that number. More people than you realize choose to exercise their choice, and the fact that its not "Scoially acceptable" or considered a topic to acknowledge, is a sign that we have lightyears to go before we can claim that this country ctruely supports a woman's right to choose.

[NMDemDist2]

33. wow. with so many states making it so difficult to get a safe and legal

abortion those numbers astound me.

just shows how many women would be injured or die if abortions went back to back alleys

[david_vincent]

6. As the article states,

the population problem is exacerbated by the greed many Americans have for resources. NPR the other day ran a piece on the boom town of Frisco, Texas. I was astonished to hear that the average house size in Frisco is projected to be well over 4000 square feet. It is the greed of people who demand to live in McMansions and drive big SUVs that is the most directly addressable factor here. And something tells me that McMansions aren't full of illegal immigrants working at recycling stations.

[melnjones]

18. THANK YOU. nt

[JohnWxy]

21. YOu can thank the GOP and their regressive tax "reforms" for the

conspicuous consumption by people who are paying about half the tax rate they used to pay on dividends and capital gains. You know how much average working people get in dividends and capital gains. As the rich get richer their expenditures become more and more impractical and wasteful.

BTW, All those guys driving pick-up trucks who voted for the GOP and who are now wondering if they are gonna get laid off (indefinitely) can reflect on the likelihood they are gonna become millionaires thanks to the GOP tax reform (because of ALL THAT MONEY they will be putting into their 401-Ks).

Kinda hard to make contributions to your 401-K if you're not employed.

[Deja Q]

28. Have you looked inside the windows of those mcmansions?!

I live in a blooming area. Nothing BUT McMansions popping up yet the number of immigrants seems very high indeed.

And an immigrant family of 6, working together, CAN afford one of those houses. A couple or a single person simply couldn't. Not with the lack of availability of jobs that a single person or childless couple live on.

Don't forget, the influx of immigrants is about reducing wages. Period. It has nothing to do with bettering America. Especially when America's politicians are doing nothing about the healthcare and college price crises.

[ConcernedCanuk]

17. I closed the border for myself when I saw the first bombs drop on Baghdad

.
.
.

And everything I've seen, heard and read since about what is going with and in the US convinces me more day by day it was the right decision.

But I'll miss sunny southern California. As well as all the other states I used to visit . .

NOW, I won't even fly with all that terra/close to a strip search just to get on an airplane.

Buh-bye USA

(sigh)

[hunter]

19. I don't think the U.S.A. will last.

The English speaking portions will be annexed by Canada, and the Spanish speaking portions will be annexed by Mexico, and that's the way people will want it to be.

Even if we keep the old names, and call ourselves some kind of North American Union, this will be the political reality. The empire will be gone, and there won't be any U.S. borders to "protect."

[Delphinus]

20. Nobody yet has been the bad guy,

so let it be me.

We've got to stop reproducing. We've got to look at how bringing children into the world impacts the full spectrum of life. China looked at the long-range view with their one child policy.

I think it also means we have to look at the impact the aging and dying have too.

I'm probably being too simplistic, but this is the first thing that popped into my head.

This from the article:
In suburbs nationwide, Markham said, "You are losing pieces of land rapidly, and the species you're seeing in your backyards are there because they don't have normal predators anymore, or they have lost their land."

We are out of balance - I used to think nature had a way of bringing herself back into balance, but now I'm not so sure.

[hunter]

23. Whenever Americans talk like this....

They tend to mean "all those brown people."

And when you talk about the Chinese, memories of America's racist "Yellow Horde" fear-mongering ought to weigh heavy on your mind.

Garret Hardin used to piss me off so bad with this sort of couch potato "realism." It's racist and rotten to it's burnt little core.

You want to reduce population growth? You've got to get out and work with the women in places where the fertility rate is high. You have to think globally and accept that everyone is your brother and sister, because when this train crashes we are all going to suffer. There will be no borders people with nothing won't cross.

...ah, hell, sorry if I sounded rough. All I have to do is think of that @#$%^&* Hardin, and there I go. When I'm in a gentle mood, maybe I figure he was yanking my chain. But usually not...

:grr:

[Delphinus]

24. I agree, Hunter.

We are all connected. That's one of the biggest lessons for humanity - to see that what affects one, affects all. We've been trying to learn for a very long time that blood runs red no matter what outer body we're wearing.

I've not heard of the person you speak of ... I regret if I made you lose your gentle mood. :(

[hunter]

25. Whew. That passed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Hardin

http://www.garretthardinsociety.org (ugh)

[Deja Q]

27. Gee, Asia has 3 billion alone - where's the outrage over THEIR actions,

which makes the US very sparsely populated by comparison! Or is it politically incorrect to point out that the two biggest populated countries in Asia (and therefore the world) have a LOT to answer for?

And are more people breeding, or more people coming in?

(No time to read the whole article; that paragraph alone is plenty for me right now...)

[hunter]

29. "...answer for..." to who???

This is one of those problems that just is. You can only find a solution to the problem on that basis. One proven solution is to increase the political and economic affluence of women. Women who feel they have some control over their own destiny tend not to have so many children.

Furthermore, the environmental impact of the average mostly vegetarian Indian or Chinese worker is far less than the impact of the average "meat-every-day" American worker who might own a big car and commute 200 miles a week.

To look fairly at these problems you cannot group people by ethnicity, nationality, or anything else. We are all on this boat together. You do not want to start practicing any lifeboat morality because when you do, most certainly, someone bigger and meaner and less ethical than you is going to come along, smash your head, and eat you for dinner.

The U.S. mentality is that "We're number one!" But maybe we are not. Maybe we are just the schoolyard bully about to meet his match.

[bhikkhu]

34. Ridiculously msleading article.

Much of the country has growth rates comparable or only slightly higher than Europe, but "The South and the West were booming". Irresponsible reproduction is hinted at. Read the article, however, and you will find that immigration is not factored out of the increases. Factor out immigration, and there is essentially nothing left to talk about.

If they intend to focus upon immigration as the cause of or a danger to our natural resources, they should say so. If they want to focus upon the inordinate American appetite for such things, they should say so. I imagine the original report was not so poorly organized, and the writer of the article might have benefitted from a better reading of it.