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Tag: Sprawl

Population Growth Cuts Down American Forests

By Henry Barbaro

Our nation’s immigration-driven population growth is fueling urban and suburban expansion, which has become the principal factor contributing to deforestation in the United States. As development spreads outward irreplaceable forest functions are lost, leaving communities more vulnerable to flooding, pollution, extreme heat, declining biodiversity and declining quality of life. Unless excessive immigration rates are reduced, urban sprawl and deforestation will continue.

Personal Freedom, Polling…and Pollinators!

By Jeremy Beck

Basic Freedoms Four out of five Americans say the area where they live either has enough people living there, or is already too crowded. In a recent CBS News poll (May 2023), Americans were asked about population density where they live, and whether or not their areas needed more people. Almost a third of Americans … Continued

Congress is the wellspring of unsustainable demand

By Jeremy Beck

Population growth has its downsides… …at least in Idaho, where The New York Times reports “the population and living costs have surged in recent years.” The surge of people moving in from California and elsewhere has “put new demands on health care, education, and transportation.” NumbersUSA is currently working on a study of urban sprawl … Continued

Growth like this dashes any hope of Biden’s “30 by 30” plan becoming a reality

By Jeremy Beck

Federal Conservation and Population Policies At Odds “WILDLIFE IS DISAPPEARING around the world,” The New York Times reports. “Humans are taking over too much of the planet, erasing what was there before…” Habitat corridors across the American landscape are being extinguished. Good faith efforts to save them can only hope to mitigate the loss if … Continued

Immigration and the “expanding bullseye”

By Jeremy Beck

What Hurricane Ian tells us about immigration policy and resiliency Hurricane Ian will likely go down as the most expensive storm in Florida history: $66 billion in property damage and a record number of homes and properties destroyed. The damage is still being calculated. By one measure, Ian is tied for the fifth strongest storm … Continued

Heat Wave Crashes Into The Greatest Wave

By Jeremy Beck

Some of the fastest-growing cities in the US are among those being roasted by record temperatures that are baking more than 100 million Americans under some sort of extreme heat warning. The sprawl of concrete for new housing has helped heighten temperatures in many of these growing cities. The spread of hard surfaces has also … Continued

U.S. projected to lose 18 million acres of farmland by 2060

By Jeremy Beck

America’s growing population is leading to the unilateral loss of farmland to make way for housing, office parks, shopping plazas, and more. The looming paradox is that as development consumes farmland to accommodate more people, the demand for food also grows. America’s capacity to provide basic resources (water, food, fiber) to its citizens is on … Continued

More density and less open space

By Jeremy Beck

Americans are living more densely, on average, than we were 20 years ago, but we’ve paved over the equivalent of more than five Yellowstone National Parks – or roughly eleven-and-a-half million acres during that same period of time. Some of that loss was due to regional differences in land consumption per person; a majority of … Continued

Was COP26 a cop-out? I think so, and here are a few reasons why

By Christy Shaw

As a person who cares about the environment and who also believes in a balanced approach to economic policy, I understand that immigration reduction is essential to sustainable and equitable policy approaches on both these issues. It also means I am in a rather foul mood after listening to the same old grand speeches at … Continued