The Perfect Storm Descending Upon America part 3: Environmental Impact
After reading parts 1 and 2, you probably scratched your head with consternation. You might even shake your head with exasperation. Some readers feel that this series spells out the future in such dire terms that they cannot fathom a future with another 100,000,000 (million) immigrants invading our country.
If we, the citizens of the United States, fail to change course by our actions, what you see in the graphs and the numbers---will occur within the next 30 years. If we don’t rescind the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, yes, we are doomed to add a total of 138,000,000 (million) more people on our way to 625,000,000 (million) within 80 years. Let’s figure out how to change that when part 4 publishes.
Jacques Cousteau inspired me to start scuba diving back in 1963. He remains one of my environmental heroes.
“We must alert and organize the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises – exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Over- consumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.”
- Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Oceanographer
Cousteau spells it out clearly. But he’s not alone. Another 100 top world experts say the same thing in their own books published in the past 30 years. Yet, world leaders ignore this issue like the Bubonic plague. Why? That’s mystery of the century. Somehow, the world’s elites think none of the consequences will reach them. They would be exceedingly incorrect.
As our immigration-driven population juggernaut smashes into our country by 2050—a scant 33 years from now—we cannot change it at that point. We face devolving into a third world country. Worse, we face the “energy slave” oil exhausting within this century. Oil drives everything. It’s also destroying everything with carbon footprint heating up and acidifying our oceans.
What’s the big deal environmentally? Fact: humans burn 94,000,000 (million) barrels of oil 24/7. We exhaust billions of tons of particulate and carbon that soaks into the ground and absorbs into the oceans. It kills the soil and contaminates the seven seas. Experts tell us that humans expect to burn nearly 200,000,000 (million) barrels of oil daily by 2030—scant 13 years from now. How? China adds 27,000,000 (million) new cars, net gain annually. Experts tell us that China will burn 98,000,000 barrels of oil daily by 2030. (Source: The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler)
But look at this catch:
“As we go from this happy hydrocarbon bubble we have reached now to a renewable energy resource economy, which we do this century, will the “civil” part of civilization survive? As we both know there is no way that alternative energy sources can supply the amount of per capita energy we enjoy now, much less for the 10 billion expected by 2050. And energy is what keeps this game going. We are involved in a Faustian bargain—selling our economic souls for the luxurious life of the moment, but sooner or later the price has to be paid.”
- Walter Youngquist
Can you imagine what’s going to happen when we don’t have gasoline to fill the tractors to plant crops? Harvest crops? Transport food to your table? How about the results with 8.3 million hungry people in New York City that will double to 16.6 million by 2050? Eleven million people in Los Angeles that doubles to 22 million? Another 5 million people in Chicago that jumped to 10 million within 33 years?
Remember: legal immigration drives this nightmare.
Do you honestly think we will be able to solve all our environmental problems with another 138 million more people? How about fresh water? Seven states already face water shortages. How about quality of life in our cities as 35 of them double their populations? What about species extinctions in the USA from habitat loss?
“Upwards of two hundred species…mostly of the large, slow-breeding variety…are becoming extinct every day because more and more of the earth's carrying capacity is systematically being converted into human carrying capacity. These species are being burnt out, starved out, and squeezed out of existence.. thanks to technologies that most people, I'm afraid, think of as technologies of peace. I hope it will not be too long before the technologies that support our population explosion begin to be perceived as no less hazardous to the future of life on this planet than the endless production of radioactive wastes.”
- Daniel Quinn
As Florida jumps from 18 million to its 36 million people by 2050, how do we solve extinction rates of alligators, puma lions, snakes, butterflies, eagles, egrets, pelicans and marsh hawks?
You got any ideas?
“At this point, it’s almost certainly too late to manage a transition to sustainability on a global or national scale, even if the political will to attempt it existed, which it clearly does not. Our civilization is in the early stages of the same curve of decline and fall as so many others have followed before it. What likely lies in wait for us is a long, uneven decline into a new Dark Age from which, centuries from now, the civilizations of the future will gradually emerge. We are strong and adaptable animals and can certainly make a new life on the hotter Earth, but there will only be a fraction of inhabitable land left. Soon we face the appalling question of whom can we let aboard the lifeboats? And whom must we reject? There will be great clamor from climate refugees seeking a safe haven in those few parts where the climate is tolerable and food available. We will need a new set of rules for limiting the population in climate oases.”
- James Lovelock, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A final Warning
While the media portrays the “symptoms”, the cause and connection escapes them. Ironically, that cause escapes every national leader from the president, congressional members, and state governors—right down to average citizens.
Population equates to a mathematical problem. It is possessed of that same beautiful, and sometimes deadly, precision that we find in E=MC2 and a2 + b2 = c2. Presently, it is still subject to our control, but the passage of time without understanding and action will move it beyond our reach and authority. Let’s begin a national conversation on immigration and a sustainable future for our children.