Letters to the Editor
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it's not sustainable
It's not sustainable for the US to keep absorbing millions of immigrants every year--whether legal or illegal. Our society is ultra-high in cosumption (it would take 6 earths and its resources with today's technology to give everybody on the planet the lifestyle we have here.) It's not about race or color, it's about the pressure put on our natural resources that scares me. While I do my best to limit my carbon footprint, I'm in the extreme minority. Ever since I was in high school in the 1970's, I was alarmed at the ever growing population of the planet, and that was when we had 4 billion people. We add 10,000 humans an hour (after births and deaths), and this poor planet can't continue to absorb that type of exponential growth rate. So, to me, the US can't be the country that continues to absorb the population explosions of other countries-- they'll have to comes to terms with it without sending their overflow here. I would say the same thing if it were millions of Swedes or Norwegians that come here-- I could care less what color or race you are. Paving over ever more farmland and forests is not my idea of progress to accomodate ever more humans. There are enough of us, for God's sake! Let's leave some green, OK??
When the Population Bomb was written decades ago, it warned of dire consequences that have yet to be seen; after all, when it was written, the oceans weren't being strip mined, and the concept of global warming had yet to understood. We weren't pumping millions of tons of herbicides and pesticides to extract ever more food from our decreasing acres of farmland. We WILL hit a wall, the question is WHEN. Did you know that the late 70's was when there was more food produced per capita than today? While the earth is producing more food, there is actually less of it to go around because production is not keeping pace with the human growth rate. So, more people are going to bed hungry today than twenty years ago. Some progress.
This all ties in to illegal and legal immigration. At what number to we slow down? We've got 300 million now in the US, how about 400 million? 500 million? 1 Billion?? 2 billion?When? These are things we need to think about. So please, leave the race card out of this one.