We're at Dallas Earth Day -- Biggest Event in Country (but U.S. population also biggest)
This is the 41st Earth Day, and Congress continues to defy the goals of the First Earth Day 1970 by forcing massive U.S. population growth.
NumbersUSA has a booth at the giant Earth Day festival in the blocked off streets of the Arts District of downtown Dallas. Last night, in a reception for the sponsors of this event, the leader Trammell Crow Jr. said (in typical Texas fashion) that he was quite sure that this is the largest Earth Day celebration in America in terms of exhibits, etc.
(I ran into trouble with laptop connectivity and only got a few observations recorded below. See my further comments about the Dallas Earth Day response to our immigration-reduction message at this blog: http://www.numbersusa.com/content/node/12130. I will be adding to it throughout Saturday.)
WE PRESENT OURSELVES TO PUBLIC WITH A BIG QUOTE FROM THE LATE SEN. GAYLORD NELSON, THE FATHER OF EARTH DAY
. . . no way to forge a sustainable society without stabilizing U.S. population.
Roy Beck and Anne Manetas at Dallas Earth Day 2011
By identifying our whole booth and message with the Father of Earth Day 1970, we are causing most skeptics who stop by to give us a second look. Many are a little amazed that the whole enterprise was begun by a man who thought a central necessity of the Earth Day movement was the stabilization of U.S. population.
Furthermore, Sen. Nelson became more and more insistent during the last years of his life that true American environmentalists had to support immigration reductions, because sustainability was not possible without cuts in the numbers.
At last night's reception, NumbersUSA Deputy Director Anne Manetas and myself had quite a visit with former Congressman Pete McCloskey of California (ran for President against Nixon in 1972). He was the Republican co-chair of that first national Earth Day, in partnership with the Democrat Nelson.
Anne and I enjoyed swapping Sen. Nelson stories with Congressman McCloskey. Anne had worked with Sen. Nelson frequently throughout the 1990s as he became more and more public in his condemnation of immigration policies that were negating many of the big Earth Day environmental gains. And I both shared speaking platforms with Sen. Nelson during his last years but was a bit of a phone pal with him, as he regularly checked with me for new population statistics.
MY FIRST OBSERVATIONS ABOUT PEOPLE VISITING OUR NUMBERSUSA EARTH DAY BOOTH'
11:00 a.m. -- A young man just came by with a name tag as affiliated with a Texas green activist group. He looked at our foldover population card with that big red "growth from immigration" on it. He pointed to the red and said, "So I'm the problem?"
He went on to say that he immigrated from South America a decade ago. I told him that he and other immigrants are not part of the problem but that federal policy is the problem if it continues to bring quadrupled levels of immigration into the country.
He was respectful but clearly disturbed to see our booth.
10:30 a.m. -- Having fun having a number of people come by and say "I send your faxes." And a number giving thumbs up that glad to see the U.S. population issue showing up at this enviro event.
10:15 a.m. -- A woman came by and asked if we were working for zero population growth.
I said, "Yes, we work on the immigration part that is keeping us from a stable population in the U.S."
She responded that she couldn't go along with limiting immigration but she was for zero population growth. I said that if she looked at our wall chart she could see what she wants isn't possible.
The woman then said she was for zero population growth of the world but not the U.S.
10:00 Central Time -- Lots of schools have released roving bands of students and clogging our streets. Only a few stop to ask. But the ones that do hear Anne and me say, "This is what will happen to the U.S. population in your lifetimes."
Census Data used for the chart shows that the 203 million U.S. population of the First Earth Day 1970 and soared to over 300 million today and will hit 625 million by the end of this century -- if Congress doesn't change immigration numbers.
Every environmental effort advertised in this Earth Day festival will be substantially if not wholly undercut if that population growth occurs.
ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA