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Are you an altruist? Let’s assume you are driving down an empty highway (yes, a few still exist in America) and you have just finished drinking a can of soda. You are far from home and this is not a route you expect to travel again. Nobody can see what you do. Do you toss the empty can out of the window? No? Why not?
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Altruists Align Against America’s Addiction To Population Growth
By Edward C. Hartman, Author of The Population Fix
Are You An Altruist?
“Well,” you say--at least I hope you say-- “if everybody did that, what a mess America would be. Maybe I won’t have to look at this particular road again, but I don’t want to create a mess for those who will have to look at it later.”
Good for you! You may be an altruist. The reason that is important is because what I have to say is for altruists--people with an unselfish concern for the welfare of others; people who can borrow the American Indian philosophy of the seventh-generation: “The present generation, which is making decisions for the tribe, needs to think of their impacts seven generations down the line.”
So, I may as well tell you up front . . . my words may do you little good. If you absorb every thought offered and if you do everything recommended, you personally may gain little, except possibly the good feeling that can come from doing something good for future generations.
You see, it has taken many years for America to develop its addiction to population growth and it will take many years for America to deal with the producers, pushers, and enablers, and to help America’s population growth addicts through withdrawal and recovery. By the time that happens, you may not be around to see many of the benefits of the recovery. If that proves true, you may have to obtain your satisfaction in knowing you have unselfishly--altruistically--done your best for the welfare of future generations.
America’s Seriously Sad Situation
If immigration and births continue at their present rates, the United States is on course to a population that will come close to the one billion people mark at the end of the century. That's three times our current population, in only a few generations.
America’s population has grown 104 of the last 105 years. Projections of current trends tell us that children born in America today will likely live to see most American cities looking like Hong Kong, Kolkata (Calcutta), Mumbai (Bombay), Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Tokyo, and Los Angeles and New York City. And that’s the good news. The bad news is: That projection is based upon the Census Bureau’s “most likely” scenario of future births, deaths, and net migration.
Because the U.S. Census Bureau has used, in my opinion, some optimistic assumptions about reductions in America’s fertility rates, most likely the actual scenario will be worse than their “most likely” scenario. In short, even in the most unlikely event of the “most likely” scenario, these newly born children will live long enough to live in an America about which people from other developed countries will say, “America is a a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there!”
Breaking The Population Growth Addiction
What can you do to help break America’s addiction to population growth?
First, are you--or could you become--a populationist?
• Are you one who relates population growth to international, national, and local problems which cross your personal radar screen?
• When you read about a water shortage do you ask yourself, “Could it possibly be a ‘people overage?’ ”
• When you hear about a bond issue to build another highway bridge or to bore another highway tunnel or to add highway lanes do you think to yourself, “Fewer people would mean fewer drivers and that would mean less need to raise taxes to pay for highway bond issues?”
• When a neighbor says, “Our schools are simply getting too crowded--we need to build more schools” do you reply, “If our population wasn’t growing so rapidly would we need so many more schools?”
If you don’t react to those and similar situations in similar ways today, do you think you could learn to do so tomorrow? Do you think you could learn to immediately react to every major societal and environmental problem with the question: “Will population growth help or hinder the mitigation of this problem?” In other words, do you think you could learn to think like a populationist?
Second, are you willing to learn what other populationists are thinking, writing, and doing? There are many groups of populationists scattered across America--some concerned about fertility, some concerned about migration, some concerned about both. My book describes several populationist organizations and tells how you may obtain more information about each.
Finally, as you learn more about America’s addiction to population growth and understand better how that addiction has led to bankrupt hospitals, crowded classrooms, declining water supplies, endangered wildlife, failing highways and bridges, growing land fills, overpriced and poorly constructed housing, polluted air, uncertain energy supplies, resurgent diseases, shrinking farmland, spreading urban sprawl, vanishing forests and wilderness, will you be willing to share what you have learned with friends and acquaintances...and with your legislators?
When you do that, you will be doing something worthwhile for seven generations of Americans!
Edward C. Hartman, author of The Population Fix and a native Californian, has observed the effects of rampant population growth on the nation's most populous state. A new role as a grandfather in 1996 led him to question the underlying causes of the state's failing fortunes and declining quality of life for its citizens and for future generations.
Edward C. Hartman spent 28 years in the telecommunications industry and runs his own financial services business. He lives with his wife in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has two children and four grandchildren. |
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©2006 Edward C. Hartman. All Rights Reserved
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