Letters to the Editor
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The Population Bomb Is Exploding And We Pretend It Isn't
At the end of Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" interspersed among the credits are a series of several suggested ways to lessen the impact of humanity on our environment (ride a bike, recycle, etc.). These are all commendable but what is omitted is the most glaringly obvious one, responsible reproduction. As the U.S. population crossed the 300,000,000 mark last year, only passing mention was made in the press. Yet almost all of the serious environmental and social problems we have and are about to face are directly related to the fact that there are so many of us. The average American consumes 4 to 5 times the energy and materials used by the average human on Earth, so in terms of environmental impact, there are 1.2 billion to 1.5 billion Americans, greater than the population of China.
Within my half century plus of life I have seen countless acres of farmland paved over and covered with suburban sprawl. Fewer and fewer children have the opportunity to have direct access to nature on a daily basis. The alienation of youth is exacerbated by their disconnection with nature and the crowding they must endure.
Many of those who come to this country are excellent people, but we really don't need any more, thank you. As petroleum supplies dwindle over the coming decades, our country, along with the rest of the world, is going to be hard pressed to feed the ones already here. We need to seriously start building self-sufficient communities with sustainable economies. The long crisis of the 21st Century has only just begun as the era of cheap energy draws to a close and we should develop strategies for reducing population gradually and humanely. Restricting immigration is one of the most effective methods of accomplishing this.