‘How Much Nature Should America Keep?’

Gary Wockner chimes in:

A report titled, “How Much Nature Should America Keep?” in 2019 by the Center for American Progress indicates that:

The United States loses a football field of natural land every 30 seconds,

The continental United States lost 24 million acres of natural land to development between 2001 and 2017,

At this rate, “a South Dakota-sized expanse of forests, wetlands, and wild places in the continental United States will disappear by 2050”.

And the report directly points to the culprit by noting that, ‘since 1996, the U.S. population has skyrocketed from 270 million people to 330 million, and that figure could eclipse 440 million by 2065 if current trends continue’. …

….Always a “third rail” issue, immigration policy in the U.S. nevertheless needs to be brought out in the open and discussed by environmentalists including major environmental groups.

As does The New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin:

Which brings us full circle back to Joseph Chamie. Money quote from Revkin’s 2009 article:

Without more of a focus on the implications of immigration policy for population, there could be 600 million Americans by 2100, he writes. Depending on whom you talk to, that is a boon or a disaster. Mr. Chamie notes that the relatively enormous thirst for energy, food and other resources from Americans, when compared with that of the average world citizen, gives outsize importance to issues like global warming and to American trends.

JEREMY BECK is the Director of the Sustainability Initiative for NumbersUSA