PERSPECTIVES
Immigration, Population, and the Environment: Connecting the Dots
By Don and Norm Weeden, Weeden Foundation
In October 2006, with much fanfare, the United States passed the 300 million population
milestone. Media coverage was oddly celebratory. The New York Times editorialized that “Our
teeming immensity keeps us from going stale.” Of the coverage, writer Paul Theroux observed,
“It was as though the colossal agglomeration of people amounted to another great score for our
love affair with bigness.” Sadly, environmental groups were virtually silent on this day, which
marked a doubling of the country’s population in only 55 years. At this rate, we will glide our
way to 400 million in just a few more decades.
In fact, the environmental establishment (leading green groups and their institutional
funders) had largely abandoned concerns about US population growth more than two decades
ago, as the “baby boom” morphed into the “immigration boom.” Some NGOs, such as the Sierra
Club, shifted their focus to address global population issues exclusively, while some continued to
dabble domestically by backing sex education and informing the public about human
population’s impact on wildlife. On the whole, the environmental establishment appears to view
continued US population growth as a somewhat irrelevant “given.” Sprawl? Fight it with smart
growth. Rising energy consumption? Promote energy conservation/efficiency and the
development of alternative energy.
Population a Key Factor
Analyses of recent Census Bureau and other government data, however, demonstrate that both
sprawl and growing energy consumption are directly attributable to our rapidly growing
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population. Sprawl studies by the NumbersUSA Education and Research Foundation determined
that population growth is responsible for just over half of the loss of national rural lands to new
development, approximately two million acres annually. Land-use decisions leading to lower
density account for the other half. In essence, the higher the population growth, the greater the
sprawl. The studies concluded that, “In the absence of population growth, smart growth policies
would be much more successful and would encounter less opposition.”
Similar studies by environmental researcher, Leon Kolankiewcz on energy consumption,
examining the period between 1970 and 2000, found that the lion’s share (87 percent) of US
growth in energy consumption and related residuals including carbon-dioxide emissions is linked
to the rising absolute number of energy consumers -- that is, US population growth -- and only
weakly correlated (13 percent) with increasing per-capita energy use. In fact, during the 1980s,
largely in response to the two “energy crises” of the previous decade, per-capita energy
consumption in the United States actually declined. If it were not for a 10 percent increase in
population during this decade, aggregate energy consumption would have declined as well.
Instead, it grew by 8 percent.
According to the same researcher, US aggregate emissions from fossil-fuel combustion
grew by almost 13 percent during the 1990s. US population grew by a nearly identical amount,
thus accounting for 100 percent of the increase. And despite stronger efforts to reduce fossil-fuel
use, under the “business as usual” scenario, total US greenhouse gas emissions are projected to
increase by approximately 40 percent between 2000 and 2020 again driven largely by
population growth. This increase is a disaster for the world’s climate because the United States
currently contributes to 25 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions.
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The United States has been described as the world’s most overpopulated country because
we are the only one with massive population, massive growth, and massive per-capita
consumption. No doubt, it is critical that our society lower drastically the average American’s
ecological footprint of 24 acres per person (a level far exceeding our nation’s resources). But if
the United States adds yet another 100 million residents, any gains in reducing per-capita
consumption—or promoting smart growth, or better managing water resources—are likely to be
negated. A stable US population does not by itself improve environmental protection, but it does
make it much easier to attain environmental goals.
The Immigration Connection
America’s ballooning population, unique in the developed world, is currently driven by
historically high immigration numbers, which, combined with recent immigrants' higher fertility
rates, is responsible for 70 to 80 percent of the approximately 3 million people added to the
population annually. (U.S. Census Bureau.) While native-born fertility has been at or below
replacement level since the early 1970s, immigration numbers have more than quadrupled (even
without considering illegal immigration). If they had remained at the pre-1970 historical
average, US population would be peaking in the next 15 years at approximately 250 million.
Whereas, under the guest-worker bill passed by the Senate last year, the number of legal,
permanent immigrants would double to more than two million per year, putting the United States
on track to reach a population of 500 million by around 2050, and of one billion by 2100.
The framers of the Immigration Act of 1965–which jump started today’s mass
immigration–never intended to increase legal immigration levels, let alone to quadruple them.
Since then, in a climate of political inertia, the US Chamber of Commerce and other corporate
lobbies have been the primary drivers for bolstering immigration numbers, with a stated goal of
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increasing overall growth and consumption, and a less open one of holding down wages. Thus,
higher consumption is not simply an inadvertent aftereffect of today’s immigration policy; it is
largely its intention.
A Sustainable Demographic Future
Prescriptions for reaching a population-environment balance need not be anti-immigrant: The
U.S can still accept immigrants, just not at the current rate. A sustainable immigration policy
would match immigration with emigration, at a level of about 250,000 people a year. This figure
represents both the country’s historical average (1776–1976) and the average level of
immigration from World War II to Earth Day One (1945–1970). As a result of significantly
lower future numbers, most labor economists believe, individual immigrants in this country
would be better off in terms of higher wages/benefits/availability of jobs and education, and face
less resistance from the communities they enter.
What the country really needs is a population policy, guided not by special interests or
nostalgia, but by critical thinking and analysis. This policy should also include efforts to reduce
significantly the rate of unintended pregnancies in the United States (which are the highest in the
developed world). It is time for the environmental establishment to take off their blinders
regarding US population growth, and take the lead in forging a more sustainable demographic
future for our country. Our human health and welfare, and the fate of wild nature, depend on our
tackling root causes, not merely symptoms, of environmental problems.
EGA encourages rebuttals to this essay, in the form of a “Perspectives” article or a letter to the
editor. Please send submissions care of editor@ega.org.
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