By Rob Harding
Think globally, act locally, set an example This week’s International Day for Biological Diversity invites us to “be part of the Plan.” The Plan refers to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, also known as the Biodiversity Plan. For those of us in the U.S., our collective efforts to stop America’s loss of nature are contributing … Continued
By Jeremy Beck
Citing NumbersUSA’s poll of likely Colorado voters, Pomerance noted that 9 out of 10 people “desire a future where far fewer people move to the state” and 6 out of 10 want to stop growing completely.
By Jeremy Beck
North Carolina’s growth is “turning more of the farmland that [people] love into commercial distribution centers, housing developments, and public roads,” Woodruff reports. People like Vaughan Willoughby and the Farm Bureau are worried about the future of agriculture. Only Texas and Florida have lost more farmland and habitat than North Carolina.
By Jeremy Beck
Media coverage of NumbersUSA’s report on sprawl in the fastest growth state: Nevada.
By Rob Harding
Immigration-driven population growth is constraining the movements of wildlife, especially for large mammals like wolves which require room to roam. Projected future growth under current federal immigration policy is likely to cause more human-wildlife conflicts.
Despite the Clean Water Act, many of America’s rivers are suffering, with no relief in sight, as our population continues to soar to unprecedented levels. The Census Bureau projects America’s population will grow by another 75 million in the next 40 years, with roughly 90% of that caused by immigration. It’s significant that this projection was made before the immigration surge at the southern border, where illegal immigration has become more than twice as high as legal.
By Rob Harding
In a state where 95% of the land is privately owned, the trade-off between unchecked population growth and open space preservation in Texas is clear.
By Jeremy Beck
Immigration contributes to inequality. America has a special obligation to our citizens. And America’s economy is not working for the majority of citizens today. Those are three of Sir Angus Deaton’s – recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics – boat-rocking conclusions in his recently published article, “Rethinking My Economics,” on the International Monetary Fund’s website.
Americans have grown increasingly efficient with our use of resources (i.e., our per capita ecological footprint). But we haven’t grown more sustainable — that is, the U.S. ecological deficit (gap between footprint and biocapacity) has increased — because the amount of natural resources (i.e., our biocapacity) per person has also declined. Why? In part because we have converted them into urbanized areas to accommodate immigration-driven population growth.
