I have, at various times in my life, been a ghost -- the hand inside the sock puppet, the idea and knowledge and voice behind the person with good hair who reads the lines in a speech and gets promoted up the chain of command for giving it.There are no complaints here, so long as the check clears.
That said, sometimes, long after a speech has been given and no one can quite remember who gave it, I like to dust off a piece and trot it out for the ideas that are in it.
The speech, below, was given to Western land managers in Wisconsin some 5 or 6 years back by someone I will not mention, and it details the complex relationship between U.S. population growth, regulation, and the environment.
I post it here simply to illuminate the rather complex relationships that exists between population growth, economic growth, regulation, and agricultural policy.
The Limits of Accommodation
It's great to be here in Wisconsin, the home state of Aldo Leopold.
It is a true honor to be a stand-in for Senator Gaylord Nelson, the Father of Earth Day.
Senator Nelson was originally asked to speak about the environmental consequences of U.S. population growth for the American west.
I am going to speak on the same topic - a topic too often given short shrift in the environmental movement, but one that remains a core environmental issue.
My comments about population and the environment follow a pretty simple structure -- I am going to talk about where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.
I am not going to give you answers - I am going to give you scenarios and choices and ask you to think about those choices.
Good people can -- and will -- choose different futures for America and for the west.
That is perfectly fine. I am not interested in the choice so much as the process. I want the process to be thought through. I want the issues to be hashed out and mulled over.
And above all, I want the answers to come from the American people - not politicians in Washington or stock traders on Wall Street.
As Wood Guthrie said so well, "this land is your land."
First, let me talk about where we have been.
Well, we've been on Earth.
I make this point not to be flip, but to say that the story of U.S. population growth closely parallels that of world population growth --- at least through the first half of the 20th Century.
Between 1930 and today, world population tripled from 2 billion to 6 billion people.
This is a phenomenal rate of population growth, and it has shaped every thing on this planet, from coastlines to mountaintops, from the jungles of the Amazon to the pack ice of the Arctic.
During the same period of time, the population of the U.S. also grew by leaps and bounds, soaring from 122 million people in 1930 to over 285 million today -- not quite a tripling, but far more than a mere doubling.
Between 1935 and 1965, the U.S. and the world shared a similar population and environment story.
As human populations burgeoned, massive amounts of toxins - from raw sewage to pesticides - were washed into fresh water streams and rivers.
Overgrazing of marginal lands resulted in rapid erosion and desertification on all continents.
Over-fishing, pollution, and coastal development resulted in the systematic depletion of fish stocks and the destruction of reef systems.
New roads were ripped into once pristine areas - from jungles to mountaintops.
As more and more humans spread into new areas of the world, once-natural eco-systems were transformed into human-focused profit centers.
This is the population-environment history of the world, and for a long time it was the history of the United States as well.
Beginning about 1965, however, something interesting began to happen -- the environmental history of the U.S. began to diverge from that of much of the rest of the world.
While population growth continued apace, both in the U.S. and the world, the environmental consequences of population growth seemed to slow here in the U.S.
In the last 30 years our water has actually gotten cleaner
Our air has gotten better.
Much of our most depleted wildlife stock actually recovered.
We have more forest in the U.S. today than we did in 1930.
How is this possible?
The short answer is law, government and urbanization -- the stuff too many pure population pundits never talk about.
In 1911, Congress passed the Weeks Act which resulted in the federal government buying back millions of acres of denuded mountain tops that had been ripped and robbed by timber and coal mining interests. This land is the backbone of the National Forest system we have in the Eastern U.S. today.
At the same time, large-scale farm mechanization and the railroads made marginal farmlands in the eastern U.S. less profitable. Millions of cleared acres were allowed to return to forest.
Even as forests began to regrow back East, a new environmental awareness began to take hold in the U.S.
Led by people like Senator Gaylord Nelson, the nascent environmental ethic that had begun with Teddy Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold, began to take off. By Earth Day 1970, environmentalism had become a mainstream political force - a widely shared common value uniting us across race, religion, political party, class, and geography.
This was a marvelous thing, and marvelous things came out of it. Thanks to the growth of the American environmental movement, new laws were implemented, including the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.
The result was that our air and our water actually got cleaner.
The same divergence that was occurring in terms of forests and clean water and clean air also began to happen with wildlife.
Commercial hunting of wildlife was banned at the turn of the century and, with the passage of the Lacey Act, wildlife hammered to the edge of existence began to slowly recover.
This recovery process was greatly accelerated with the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, and with the rise of a professionally-trained corps of science-based land, water and wildlife managers.
The result of new law and good government was extraordinary: things began to turn around.
And what is more remarkable - or perhaps most remarkable - is that things began to turn around even though the population of the U.S. grew by leaps and bounds.
Consider this: Between 1970 and 2000 we added 100 million people to the population of the United States.
This is a LOT of people. One hundred million people is a population greater than ALL of the current populations of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Wisconsin COMBINED.
It is an extraordinary testament to America's environmental ethic and good government that between 1970 and 2000 we added 100 million people to the population of the U.S. and the water got cleaner ... and the air got cleaner.
Today we have more forests in the U.S. than we did in 1900 or 1930 or even 1970.
Today we have more protected land in the U.S. than we did in 1900, or 1930, or even in 1980.
Whale watching is a growth industry.
Today it is hard to imagine that populations of Canadian geese, whitetail deer, and beaver were once in critical danger. Today the issue for these creatures is control, not protection.
Wild turkey have rebounded too. Today there are more wild turkey in the U.S. than there were when Columbus landed.
The American Bison - almost extinct 100 years ago - is now so abundant the federal government will spend $10 million this year to manage down their numbers.
Elk populations have rebounded nicely too. A small elk herd was recently reintroduced into Kentucky -- where they were last seen in 1850.
Elk are not the only thing showing up in old haunts. Red wolves are back in North Carolina. And in Minnesota there are now over 2,500 gray wolves -- twice the target number the Fish and Wildlife Service hoped to achieve for that state when wolves were first protected back in the 1970s.
The alligator story today is not that they are endangered, but that they are eating the poodles of the retirees in South Florida.
The Bald Eagle may soon be off the endangered species list. The Peregrine Falcon already is.
Blue bird houses have helped restore the eastern blue bird. Wood duck nest boxes have brought back the wood duck.
All of this is great news. And it is great news that occurred despite the fact that we added 100 million people to the population of the U.S. in the last 30 years.* * * * *
Please don't misunderstand me. I am NOT saying everything is fine with the environment.
We still have very serious environmental problems in the U.S. These include:
Having said that, the BIG environmental story of the last 30 years is that we have made a HUGE amount of progress right here at home thanks to the rise of environmental regulation and consciousness-raising over the last 30 or 40 years.
I am very proud to say Audubon was part of that effort - an effort you folks were instrumental in making happen as well.
I am amazed it was possible despite the addition of 100 million more people in the United States.
Population growth did not HELP the situation, but the fact that progress was made DESPITE rapid population growth is a remarkable story.* * * * *
So that is where we have been.
Now let me tell you where we are.
Right now, in terms of population size, the U.S. is the third largest country in the world -- behind only China and India.
The U.S. has the fastest population growth rate of any industrialized country in the world. No country in Europe has a population growth rate as fast as the U.S., and neither does Japan or Canada or East Asia.
Right now, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, about half of all U.S. population growth is due to immigration from overseas, and about half is due to native-born Baby Boomers moving to complete their own families.
Taken as a whole, the population growth rate of the U.S. is 1.1 percent. This may not sound like much - but it means our current population is on a trajectory to double in about 60 years.
To put it another way, our population growth rate right now is faster than that of China or Argentina, and it is about 10 times faster than the population growth rate of Western Europe.
Right now, we are adding about 3 million people a year to the population of the U.S. To put it another way, in terms of population growth, we are adding the population of Iowa every year.
Of course, U.S. population growth is not uniformly distributed.
Out West - where water is scarce and our last pristine wild lands can be found -- we find population growth rates that are truly sobering.
Nevada's population growth rate is now more than 4.3 percent a year - a population growth far faster than that found anywhere in the less-developed world . . . Faster than that of any country in Africa . . . Faster than that of any country in Asia . . . . Faster than that of any country in Latin America.
And Nevada is desert country.
So too is Arizona, which has an annual population growth rate of 2.8 percent -- the same as Pakistan's . . . the same as Tanzania's . . . the same as Honduras.
Colorado's population growth rate is 2.3 percent per year - a rate of population growth equal to that of Ghana and El Salvador . . . and faster than that of the Philippines.
Texas has an annual population growth of 1.89 percent per year - about equal to that of Mexico, and faster than that of Lebanon or Indonesia.
Of course, the U.S. is not a Third World country - we can pipe water in from vast distances, we can invest in low-flow shower heads and toilets, we can put in drip irrigation systems.
And - if push comes to shove - we can ban golf courses, swimming pools, and grassy front lawns.
In many communities and in many states these measures are already beginning to be put into place as communities find that local population growth has overshot the ability of the region to supply people, business and agriculture with all of their competing water needs.
Water is only part of the problem, of course.
As we were recently reminded with the energy crisis in California and the controversy over drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge -- and in every twist and turn of Middle East politics -- the U.S. is an oil-importing nation.
The good news is that conservation has done great things in the U.S. in the last 30 years. Our refrigerators, air conditioners and home heating systems are far more efficient that they were just 30 years ago. Our cars get twice as many miles per gallon as they used to.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that U.S. population growth has entirely negated these oil-conservation measures.
Remember those 100 million people that we added to the population of the U.S. between 1970 and 2000?
Those 100 million people are equal to ALL of the population of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho ... ALL the states west of the Mississippi River COMBINED.
Now think about this: ALL of the cars driven in those states - and all of the homes heated and cooled in those states - represent the oil draw down of just 30 years of U.S. population growth.
Everything the current population of the U.S. west of the Mississippi River consumes, pollutes and builds -- now and into the future and forever - is equal to just the last 30 years of U.S. population growth.
The resource consumption and environmental damage caused by the population growth of the last 30 years is not a one-lifetime phenomenon. It will last for the lifetime of the kids and the grandkids of these 100 million new people. The human impact will NEVER stop. And the impact is huge - it is all of the land, water and resource use of the entire population of the U.S. now living west of the Mississippi River.* * * * *
So that is where we are.
Now, let me talk about where we are going.
The first point I want to make is that we are going to have more population growth.
The question ahead - at least for the next 50 years or so - is not whether we are going to have population growth, but how much of it there is going to be.
The U.S. Census Bureau puts out three scenarios for the year 2050. The high and the low are outer-boundary possibilities, and the middle scenario is the "least likely to be wildly off the mark."
The Census Bureau's LOW scenario is that over the next 50 years the U.S. will add 35 million people -- or a population equal to that of all of California today. To do that, will require an 80 percent cut in net immigration to the U.S. and a pretty steep drop in the U.S. birth rates.
The Census Bureau's MIDDLE scenario for 2050 is that we will add 125 million people to the population of the U.S. in the next 50 years - a population greater than the entire population of the U.S. west of Mississippi River today. For this to occur, we would have to hold immigration at current rates, and keep birth rates from rising any further.
The Census Bureau's HIGH scenario for 2050 is that the population of the U.S. will nearly double. For this to occur, immigration would have to be allowed to double and then triple (what it has done in the last 50 years) and U.S. fertility rates would have to rise to the levels they were in 1967.
Obviously, adding 270 million new Americans to our population would have global resource implications, not just national, as we are the third largest nation in the world in terms of population and far-and-away the heaviest users of natural resources.
The Census Bureau's middle-series projection is probably closest to what we can expect.
It's basically a status-quo projection, and it would result in the addition of 125 million more people to the population of the U.S. over the next 50 years.
Let me remind you how many people 125 million people is. That's a population equal to ALL of the current population of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Wisconsin COMBINED ... plus the populations of Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi thrown in for good measure.* * * * *
OK, those are the numbers.
Now, here's a question: Can the U.S. handle the addition of this many people?
Of course it can!
The U.S. can handle 40 million more people.
It can handle 125 million more people.
It can handle 270 million more people.
The question is not whether the United States can handle this population growth -- but at what price.
What are the limits of accommodation?
You see, if we chose a population of 125 million or 200 million more people, other choices flow naturally from that choice.
As John Muir once observed, "if you pull on any one thing in nature, you will find it is connected to everything else." That is certainly true for population.
With the addition of 125 million more people, we may have to turn increasingly large sections of wild forest into tree farms devoid of most wildlife in order to meet our rapidly growing paper, pulp and wood needs.
With the addition of 125 million more people we may have to discourage sprawl by removing or limiting home-ownership tax incentives for those living outside of major urban beltways.
With the addition of 125 million more people - many of them in the arid West - we may have to ban swimming pools and golf courses and lawns . . . and mandate low-flow everything.
With the addition of 270 million more people, we may not be able to export food to the developing world.
I am not trying to be apocalyptic. I am trying to be honest.
If you chose one thing - continued rates of relatively rapid population growth - you may also be choosing something else as well.* * * * *
Now, let me be a Devils' Advocate.
I started this talk by noting that we managed to accommodate the LAST 125 million people that we added to the U.S. population. While we lost our wetlands, mismanaged much of our western forests, and hammered our coastal fishing stocks, we also had some huge victories at the level of forest regrowth, clean water, clean air, wildlife reintroduction and wilderness protection.
Why can't we do that again?
Why can't we add ANOTHER 125 million people to the population of the U.S. and STILL have everything work out fine?
Perhaps we can.
In truth, no one knows.
In 20 years we may be flying around in solar-catalyst-enabled hydrogen-fueled cars.
In 20 years we may be growing twice as much food in half as much space.
In 20 years we may find a boundless clean-energy source that enables us to desalinate the ocean and pump it to Arizona for a fraction of a penny a gallon, enabling us to put golf courses and swimming pools in the desert without any perceivable harm to aquifers, streams or rivers.
I doubt that this will happen, but it COULD happen. Who knows?
Even if all that happens, however, I think we have questions to face because some things are NOT going to happen again.
We are not going to be able to make progress by enacting obvious legislative remedies like we did in the 1970s. Al of the "easy picking" stuff has been picked. We've already taken most of the slack out of the rope.
Nor are we going to be able to create more political muscle to pull that rope. We are not going to create a new environmental movement in the U.S. We already have a pretty big environmental movement in the U.S. right now -- so big, that Atlantic magazine notes that "everyone is an environmentalist now."
Let me tell you something else that is not going to happen: We're not going to get more wild western land.
Has anyone been to Yosemite or Zion National Park, or the Grand Canyon recently? God isn't making any more places like those. In Yosemite and Zion and the Grand Canyon we already have to park our cars and ride buses to see the natural wonders.
In National Parks and National Forests across the country we ALREADY have to reserve camping spots parks on line -- as if we were going to a rock concert.
What will it be like with 125 million more people?
How about birds? The birds in the Rocky Mountain west are in pretty good shape because there are still so many large blocks of unbroken forest. If we add 125 million more people to the U.S., however, we can expect to see increasing forest fragmentation due to roads, fires, and private developments. The relationship between forest fragmentation and bird loss is clear. If you fragment the forests you WILL have dramatic declines in many of the songbird species so many of us know and love. Is that OK? And what if some bird species - like the sage grouse - go extinct all together. Is that OK?
And how about fire? This is a hot topic right now - no pun intended. We're spending hundreds of millions of dollars right now to put out fires we might once have let burn. But we can't let them burn now, because there are million dollar homes up there on those timbered ridgelines. We have to suppress the fire to save the real estate. And the more real estate development there is, the more fire suppression we will have to do, and the bigger the fuels accumulation in the woods. Is that an expensive and unnatural cycle that we can live with? (Note: we can log, but the Federal Government LOSES a huge amount of money on logging every year. The more logging, the more money lost).
Anyone here hunt or fish?
Across vast sections of the American West the Mule Deer population is in rapid decline due to increased roading of once wild lands. At the same time our best trout and salmon streams are not only getting fished harder by more anglers, they are suffering from increased siltation due to more roads.Anyone here believe that adding 125 million more people to the population of the U.S. will help either situation?
In fact, does anyone here believe that adding 100 or 200 million more people to the population of the U.S. will help improve ANY environmental issue we face today?
It's a Socratic question - a rhetorical question.* * * * *
Now, you may have noticed I have not told you WHAT to think.
I have NOT told you that America will keel over with 100 million more people -- or even 200 million more people.
In fact, I think the PEOPLE will do fine.
I'm not so sure about the wildlife, however.
I'm not so sure about our last great wild places.
I have given you the Census Bureau's possible population scenarios - I have not made them up, I have only spelled them out.
I have NOT told you which one to pick ... only to think about the choices that each scenario may force us into -- as land managers, as environmentalists, as citizens, and as mother and fathers interested in passing on the essence of the American West to our children and grandchildren to come.
I have asked you, in short, to choose your future.
I do not live in the Western part of the U.S., and I am not going to tell you what choices to make. Different people have different values and may have different answers.
I would like to close with the words of Wyoming Governor Jim Geringer, one of the founders of the "EnLibris" platform that seeks to have the western states decide their own future for themselves.
Governor Geringer's writes in his guidebook on conserving Wyoming's open
lands:"Today, the primary human impact on Western land has shifted from resource development to urban development and subdivisions that can reduce and fragment agricultural land and open spaces.
"Fragmented lands may cause progressive irreversible deterioration to the wildlife, natural resources, economic diversity and culture that define the West.
"Without the scenic views, agricultural land and wildlife habitat that open spaces provide, quality of life in Wyoming will decline.
"Rapid growth has created housing booms in the Rocky Mountain states,diminishing our neighbors' most fertile agricultural land, wildlife habitat and open lands. Strip malls destroy grain fields; housing subdivisions replace meadows. It's like paving the pastures of paradise ..."* * * *
"It's like paving the pastures of paradise. "
I leave it to each and every one of you to decide if that is a good thing, or not.43
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