The article is the first article that I've seen about an academic willing to discuss the "politically incorrect" population figure of one billion, so my hat goes off to Arthur C. Nelson for having the guts to actually bring up the one billion population figure. You can see in the article how his colleague immediately starts trying to discredit the population projection of one billion because almost all academics don't want to discuss the direction that our population growth curve is taking us by the year 2100. They're afraid to discuss the topic of mass immigration into the United States because saying anything against it would be politically incorrect on nearly all American college and university campuses.
Unfortunately, the article didn't go into the possibility of actually lowering the U.S. immigration levels so that the U.S. population can be prevented from ever getting anywhere near one billion. A population of one billion people in the U.S. is not inevitable because we have the power to democratically lower the immigration levels of the U.S. by putting pressure on the Congress and the Executive Branch to lower the yearly number of permanent immigrants allowed into our country.
The population projections of the U.S. Census Bureau clearly show that we are trending towards the one billion figure, especially when you add in the several million (or more) people who did their best to not be included in the most recent census and thus are not included in the current official population figures. You can see the U.S.Census Bureau's projections here[pdf] and the current official U.S. population here. Incidentally, as I forewarned in my April 2nd post of this year, the Census Bureau has now apparently removed the above projections from its website and so I'm posting the projections on my network.
With the decimation of the environmentalist/conservationist faction of the Republican Party it's up to the Democratic Party with it's strong and vibrant environmentalist/conservation wing to fight for sustainable population levels in the U.S. and to develop policies and programs that will bring about those levels. Despite the anti-immigrant faction of the Republican Party, the more dominant wealthy, plutocratic faction of the Republican Party will continue to force the party to support mass immigration levels (over 1 million new permanent immigrants per year) in order to have an overabundance of workers in the country to always keep wage and salaries lower than they would be with a smaller number of workers. Conversely, Democrats understand the importance of avoiding the existence of an over-sized labor force that has no power to bid up its wages and salaries.
Most Americans from all the different economic levels and ethnic groups, when told that the U.S. population is heading towards over 1 billion people which is a number of people similar to the current population levels of China and India, will instinctively say "Oh, that's too many people!" Yet our national immigration policy supporting mass immigration does not correspond to this view. There is a definite disconnect between the opinion of the majority of the American people and the immigration policies of the United States government. Any environmentalist, ecologist or biologist worth his or her salt will tell you that a billion people in the U.S. is too many people if we want to keep a standard of living in 2100 that resembles the current American lifestyle.
You may be one of the individuals that thinks "Who cares how many people come to the U.S., there's plenty of space for more people!" I'll give you just two of the many reasons why you should be concerned about population growth in our country: 1. You've probably noticed how difficult it is for the U.S. to become energy independent with our current official population of over 314 million. Imagine how difficult it will be to become energy independent with another three to four times as many people in the country. 2. We already have severe water shortages in the Southwestern part of the U.S. - just imagine the water problems in the Southwest when it has a population of three to four times as many people as are currently living there.
It's critical that we adopt long-term policies supporting moderate immigration levels of a few hundred thousand people per year rather than our current mass immigration levels of over 1 million per year. If, after getting the "Pathway to Citizenship" people through the system, we can quickly establish immigration levels of a few hundred thousand permanent new immigrants per year, we should be able to keep the U.S. population well under 1/2 billion people by the year 2100.
The population projections of the U.S. Census Bureau clearly show that we are trending towards the one billion figure, especially when you add in the several million (or more) people who did their best to not be included in the most recent census and thus are not included in the current official population figures. You can see the U.S.Census Bureau's projections here[pdf] and the current official U.S. population here. Incidentally, as I forewarned in my April 2nd post of this year, the Census Bureau has now apparently removed the above projections from its website and so I'm posting the projections on my network.
With the decimation of the environmentalist/conservationist faction of the Republican Party it's up to the Democratic Party with it's strong and vibrant environmentalist/conservation wing to fight for sustainable population levels in the U.S. and to develop policies and programs that will bring about those levels. Despite the anti-immigrant faction of the Republican Party, the more dominant wealthy, plutocratic faction of the Republican Party will continue to force the party to support mass immigration levels (over 1 million new permanent immigrants per year) in order to have an overabundance of workers in the country to always keep wage and salaries lower than they would be with a smaller number of workers. Conversely, Democrats understand the importance of avoiding the existence of an over-sized labor force that has no power to bid up its wages and salaries.
Most Americans from all the different economic levels and ethnic groups, when told that the U.S. population is heading towards over 1 billion people which is a number of people similar to the current population levels of China and India, will instinctively say "Oh, that's too many people!" Yet our national immigration policy supporting mass immigration does not correspond to this view. There is a definite disconnect between the opinion of the majority of the American people and the immigration policies of the United States government. Any environmentalist, ecologist or biologist worth his or her salt will tell you that a billion people in the U.S. is too many people if we want to keep a standard of living in 2100 that resembles the current American lifestyle.
You may be one of the individuals that thinks "Who cares how many people come to the U.S., there's plenty of space for more people!" I'll give you just two of the many reasons why you should be concerned about population growth in our country: 1. You've probably noticed how difficult it is for the U.S. to become energy independent with our current official population of over 314 million. Imagine how difficult it will be to become energy independent with another three to four times as many people in the country. 2. We already have severe water shortages in the Southwestern part of the U.S. - just imagine the water problems in the Southwest when it has a population of three to four times as many people as are currently living there.
It's critical that we adopt long-term policies supporting moderate immigration levels of a few hundred thousand people per year rather than our current mass immigration levels of over 1 million per year. If, after getting the "Pathway to Citizenship" people through the system, we can quickly establish immigration levels of a few hundred thousand permanent new immigrants per year, we should be able to keep the U.S. population well under 1/2 billion people by the year 2100.
