Only one country in the world has an advanced economy and a steadily increasing population: The United States of America. A growing population would be a problem in any case, but that its happening in the US with its high level of per capita consumption and greenhouse gas emissions is especially troubling. An issue that’s avoided by nearly everyone in the environmental community and, until recently, by demographers is that most of the US population growth is due to immigration.
You can’t look at the mainstream media these days without seeing something about illegal immigration. That’s a serious and complex issue, yet two-thirds (800,000) of the 1.25 million US immigrants who enter the country each year do so legally under policies established in the 1960’s. Only a small portion of legal immigrants are here due to their high-tech or medical skills; most arrive under provisions of the law that allow entry to relatives of previous immigrants.
In a recent report based on using U.S. Census Bureau data, 100 Million More: Projecting the Impact of Immigration on the U.S. Population, 2007 to 2060, Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, writes,
If immigration continues at current levels, the nation’s population will increase from 301 million today to 468 million in 2060 — a 167 million (or 56 percent) increase.
This graph from NumbersUSA.com uses 1970 as a baseline and reflects a result similar to Camarota’s analysis. The green curve projects population level due to the those present in the US in 1970 and their descendants. The rest of the projected growth is due to immigrants arriving in 1970 and after and their descendants.
Camarota again:
Supporters of low immigration point to the congestion, sprawl, traffic, pollution, loss of open spaces, and greenhouse gas emissions that could be impacted by population growth. Supporters of high immigration argue that population growth may create more opportunities for businesses, workers, and consumers. Whatever one thinks of population growth, the projected 167 million growth in the nation’s population in the next 53 years is very large. It is larger than the entire U.S. population in 1950, and it is more than the combined total populations of California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, and New Jersey.
What would the United States look like with 167 million more people?
Camarota’s report is summarized here and here, and C-SPAN recently aired a panel discussion about the it with
- Roy Beck, Executive Director, NumbersUSA.com
- Steven A. Camarota (author of the report), Director, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), Research and Programs
- Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)
- Ben J. Wattenberg, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
The first three represented the case for severely limiting immigration so it leads to a stable (non-growing) population level with the fourth, Wattenberg, representing the view usually associated with Julian Simon who thought population growth was always benefitial.
The reduce-immigration side (CIS and NumbersUSA) made the case that low levels of immigration were necessary to stop population growth in order to mitigate congestion and environmental degradation. Wattenberg (AEI) countered that growth is always good, the US has always benefitted from immigration, etc. See here for a Cato Institue view consistent with his position. (Note, that essay is hosted on the CIS website giving them some credibility for being willing to present opposing views. I’ve not seen Cato or AEI do the same.)
But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the CIS, said the study highlighted the need to inject concerns about population growth into a public debate that has focused too narrowly on immigration’s implications for the nation’s economy and security. (source, emphasis mine)
In our confusion around immigration issues, we often talk of economic growth as measured by GDP as if it were an end in itself. An economy that depends on a growing population for its health is one that sees people as a raw material input rather than the end users which the economy exists to serve. Insisting on population growth as a necessary condition for economic well-being is both unsustainable and immoral (immoral because it is unsustainable) for the economy exists to serve people — not the other way around.
Roy Beck in Sorting Through Humanitarian Clashes In Immigration (PDF) says,
Before deciding what our ethical position dictates in terms of “how many?” we should consider that the U.S. Census Bureau projects that under the current rate of immigration the 1970 population of 203 million will more than double to 420 million by the year 2050. That assumes that most illegal immigration will soon stop. Current immigration policies, if not changed, will lead to a half-BILLION people being crowded into American communities long before the end of this century, the Census Bureau states.
For comparison purposes: the average annual legal immigration for the first two U.S. centuries (1776-1976) was 236,000. After Congress declared the end of an open-border philosophy in 1924, the annual average was 178,000 from 1925 until major changes in the law in 1965. The post-World War II average from 1945 to 1970 was 255,000. [Current net immigration is about 1.25 million per year.]
Racism and the desire of people to escape poverty and repression must be part of the immigration discussion, but even if all immigrants were blue-eyed and prosperous we’d still have the issue of a large population increase in the United States and the concomitant problems of “congestion, urban sprawl, traffic, pollution, loss of open spaces and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions.” The population growth aspect of immigration must become part of the public discussion.
As John Feeney has noted, environmental writers and women’s rights advocates tend to avoid the population problem even though it’s intimately intertwined with their issues. Similarly, with immigration being the primary driver of US population growth, it does no good to avoid the topic, in spite of its emotionally charged complexity.
notes
Data used to build the above charts comes from NumbersUSA.
Other posts on regional population issues:
- Iran
- a two part series comparing Bangladesh, Nigeria, Philippines, southern California: part one and part two.
Update: See also this September 2008 article in the Washington Post by Steven A. Camarota.
This is such a contentious topic, but you’ve done a great job of cutting through the nonsense and knee-jerk reactions to the gist. This sums up a lot of it:
“[E]ven if all immigrants were blue-eyed and prosperous we’d still have the issue of a large population increase in the United States and the concomitant problems of ‘congestion, urban sprawl, traffic, pollution, loss of open spaces and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions.’”
It’s a messy subject, for sure, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t be on the table for discussion.
I’d love to see that panel discussion. Wattenberg, from what I’ve seen, usually pushes the standard cornucopian view, which is just silly.
[...] bad enough so few discuss certain thorny but relevant environmental subtopics, but we’re not even seeing stories on the [...]
Immigration is something certain not talked about enough with population. In Australia we have a similar issue. While I believe the US has about 10 percent increase from immigration Australia is at the 25 percent mark. But because the present population in Australia is 20 million it is not seen as a problem.
Worrying is the fact that if we continue to push the entire population towards developed nation levels of consumption (which we are) we will not have a chance to survive. As it is with current developed nations’ consumption it is unsustainable.
Tackling the population alone will not change this. Consumption per capita must be reduced. And this is something developed nations are reluctant to do.
I think both declining population and lower per capita consumption are going to be part of our future. The question is how soon and how dramatically. Can we prepare for it by developing more appropriate technology and economic systems, and, perhaps more importantly, can we demonstrate how to live well and peacefully with less?
[...] There is only one country in the world that is both “industrialized” with an “advanced economy” and increasing in population size. Guess which one, find out the why and the whereall here. [...]
Trinifar
Would it be true to say that that modern economic systems demand growth and that the loss of consumption will require a fundamental re-evaluation of our economic structures?
If this true the way to the future is paved in thorns because the sad truth is that when people have power they won’t give it up and the powerful people in this world are the ones who benefit most from the current system. Such is the stuff of “revolution” which really means “chaos”.
Kenneth Boulding, “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
Well said, Dead Soul. In searching for some sort of way through without massive upheaval, it seems to me that one logical source of hope is that even those in power might be led to anticipate the demise of that power in the absence of major changes. On the other hand, it may well be that the necessary changes will have to mean much less stratification in terms of power in society. But even then, those in power had best anticipate that even their most fundamental needs may go unmet if they don’t acknowledge the plight we face and concede the need for change. Thoughts?
Dead Soul: … the sad truth is that when people have power they won’t give it up and the powerful people in this world are the ones who benefit most from the current system.
John Feeney: … those in power had best anticipate that even their most fundamental needs may go unmet if they don’t acknowledge the plight we face and concede the need for change.
My hope is that the science — the plain facts unobscured by a desire for this or that outcome — carries the day. Yes, this is a dangerously optimistic point of view, but it’s the only one with a positive outcome. If we can get the world talking about what a United States with 400+ million people consuming at or above the current rate would be like, we might just have a chance at convincing even traditionalist economists of the need for change.
I hear the bit about people in power seeking to retain their power, but even those people, if they are to succeed, must face facts. And the dispute over what the facts are, in terms of the planet as a whole and how they affect individual regions, is beginning to evaporate.
It may be the case that large multi-national corporations come to their senses in time to save the planet. In the USA, some large corporations are advocating carbon emission limits in order to produce a stable and consistent playing field in their marketplace. We can hope that more sound science will encourage them to do more — if only to improve their bottom line.
[...] to correct what may have appeared in the original to be too quick a dismissal of the relevance of immigration to the discussion of population in the US. The rest remains the same as the version which first [...]
John and Trinifar,
I can see no real way forward in all this. These issues have puzzled me most of my adult life. By nature we are egocentric but neuroanatomical evidence in the context of evolutionary encephalisation tends to suggest that there remains hope for a renewal of human behavior.
People often assert that humans came to dominate the world because of our intelligence. I disagree, I think the more important attributes are co-operation and allocentric capacity. “Allocentric” simply means “other centred”. This quality varies across individuals but my concern is that we don’t put much effort into enhancing this innate ability so as to give us a greater understanding of other people.
The common and naive model of evolution emphasises competition. A good example of cultural and philosophical prejudices distorting science. After all, if Lynn Marguilis is correct, and his position is now widely accepted, the emergence of complex cells arose through a parasite taking up a symbiotic relationship in cells that radically transformed their function and paved the way for all multi-cellluar life. I’m referring to mitochondria here, which have their own DNA of a completely different structure to nuclear DNA (circular, single stranded). There is a bulk of other evidence to support this but the point is this: without co-operation life is impossible, the truth is that life mostly exists in a state of co-operation, not competition.
Our economic model emphasises competition with little regard for co-operation, though it must be said that modern economic systems do very much encourage co-operation, our culture seems to encourage competition to levels that all too often impede co-operation. Competition helps drive a society forward and co-operation keeps it together, finding the right balance is the trick.
We can have hope when we see people like Gates giving away their billions, and Buffet. Or what about Paul Newman? Last I heard his salad dressing or whatever has given 125 million to charity! There are a lot of people like this in the world and if we want to encourage a more co-operative and allocentric spirit in the general culture we need to make more efforts to turn these people into “heroes of culture”.
At a deeper level I think one of our fundamental problems is that we still cling to essentially religious notions about human nature and behavior. I hate the concept “human nature”, I just think it is a very bad way to think about being human. Until such time as society can abandon these atavistic notions of being human progess will be very difficult.
So a word of warning for all us: “Everyone wants to change the world but no-one wants to change himself.” Dostoevsky
Sorry Trinifar, but people do not have to “face facts”. That is the problem!
You’ve been tagged:
http://skeptalchemist.blogspot.com/2007/10/mutating-and-dumbledore-what.html
Dead Soul: Sorry Trinifar, but people do not have to “face facts”. That is the problem!
I don’t think “people” have to face facts — and I am quite sad about that. Rather, it’s large corporations, big business, that will have to face the reality of reacting to what’s going to happen to their bottom lines. The good thing for the rest of us is that Big Business need us to be buyers. Otherwise we’d be irrelevant.
[...] developing countries who see large families as an economic necessity. However, the United States is an outstanding counterexample of a developed country struggling with increasing population [...]
Trinifar: it’s large corporations, big business, that will have to face the reality of reacting to what’s going to happen to their bottom lines.
I’ve got to disagree with you there, Trinifar. The super-wealthy that run and make the decisions at mega-corps don’t need to sell one more product. If the sales of their businesses plummet, it doesn’t affect them because they are already rich. They usually just fire more minions to cut costs, and thereby escalate the viscous cycle of corporate ineptitude that causes so many corporations to fail. When these corporations fail, it is rarely the executives that suffer. They just take their wealth and their parasitic attitudes to a different host.
Their minions, their children, and their customers are already irrelevant to the heads of large corporations.
[...] is why the increasing population of the United States and China along with their increasing affluence and use of techonologies like coal-fired power [...]
[...] immigration and US population growth [...]