Note:This a letter to the editor of the Stockton CA Record.

Energy problem's roots found in overpopulation

The electrical-power crisis in California has been blamed on environmentalists for hampering the construction of power plants. One can thus mischaracterize this complex current crisis, but from a biologist's long-term perspective, we are not short on energy. We are long on people.

California is always the leader, so smug folks around the nation better watch out: The energy/population crisis may be your future too.

California's population of 23 million in 1980 has grown to 34 million today, an increase of 47 percent. California's annual population-growth rate of 1.7 percent is comparable to that of Bangladesh, India or Indonesia. Although population has increased, the state's electricity per-capita consumption declined 4 percent from about 7,300 kilowatt-hours in 1979 to 7,000 kilowatt-hours in 1999.

Obviously California's increased power demand is population-driven. With projected future population growth to more than 50 million by 2025, the problem is awesome in dimensions. We can become the first Third World country within a country!

If the United States had adopted a policy to stabilize its population in the 1970s as per the Rockefeller Commission Population Report's recommendations, would we be having these energy problems now or would our energy problems be coming later?

In the past decade alone, the United States added 33 million people, a number greater than the nation's entire population in 1860. We have fostered population growth by raising legal immigration limits to excessive levels of 1 million per year. Much of this legal immigration has come to California as well as a large illegal contingent. Please, no accusations of racism here. I am talking about human beings, whatever their hue, lingo or economic circumstances.

The U.S. population was 203 million in 1970. Without the radical increase in the numbers of immigrants, it would be nearly stabilized by now and would have peaked in 2030 at 247 million (43 million higher than in 1970). Instead of stability, there are now 281 million of us with nearly 4 million births annually. Assuming current fertility rates and current immigration rates, the population will soar to nearly 400 million by 2050. Ninety percent of 21st century population growth will be due to immigrants and their descendants.

If we want civilization to end sooner rather than later, we should allow the entire world to come to California -- where fossil fuels, water, farmland and other resource assets are being overused at an unprecedented rate to support a nonsustainable affluence.

It is exasperating to see the lack of concern and action on this issue. For example, instead of lamenting this growth, the local chamber of commerce keeps touting how great it is to live in a growing community when what they are really celebrating is a cancerous destruction of the planet.

Environmentalists are part of the problem. The Sierra Club and other groups have refused to acknowledge immigration as an environmental problem for the U.S. and have done little to promote population control.

If we believe the comic-strip character Pogo that "we have met the enemy and it is us," then why do we continue a laissez faire attitude toward adding more enemies to this planet of fools than can be accommodated for the long term?

Apparently, because we are fools.

Lee W. Miller

Stockton

http://www.recordnet.com/daily/news/opinions/opinions.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 28, 2001

Answers

Thanks for posting this article. It seems that the evidence couldn't be any more obvious than knowing the sun will rise tomorrow and yet, there is still a large contingent that refuses to accept it. This I will always fail to understand.

-- Guy Daley (guydaley1@netzero.net), April 29, 2001.

My Brother and I married legal immigrants who arrived in this country over 25 years ago. Our family walks the walk when it comes to accepting immigrants. However, the immigrants in our family were the first to sound the alarm that this country was becoming overpopulated thru the mass immigration of the last 10 years. My sister-in-law grew up in Hong Kong , known for its overpopulation problem. She knows what it is like to grow up with rampant disease and the infrastructure problems that overcrowding brings. She wants better for her children and grandchildren!

The Sierra Club refuses to admit the connection between U.S. immigration policy, intended or accidental, and America?s population explosion. That explosion puts heavy demands on our natural resources and on infrastructure like housing, roads, education and health care. Since the early 1970s, immigrants and their offspring have become the cause of an overwhelming majority of the population growth in the USA. That growth has consequences.

-- K (infosurf@yahoo.com), April 29, 2001.