Joe Guzzardi
July 7, 2003

Last week, I urged you to read two important reports regarding California and its immigration related population woes.

The reports are titled “No Time for Complacency---Teen Births in California” published by the Public Health Institute and “California’s Population Growth 1990-2002: Virtually All from Immigration” released by Californians for Population Stabilization.

This week I refer you to another important study by environmentalist Leon Kolankiewicz, “Population Growth—the Neglected Dimension of America’s Persistent Energy/Environmental Problems.” 

To most observers it is obvious that every new arrival in California becomes a “consumer” of our natural resources. Yet few residents—especially those in the media-- are willing to discuss the impact of mass immigration on open space, water and energy.

Even in the midst of an energy crisis, the impact of ever-increasing population (or the “demand side”) on energy is all but totally missing from the debate.

But because creating a sustainable energy policy in the 21st Century is one of California’s greatest challenges, we simply cannot ignore— just for reasons of political correctness—the demand side of the equation.

The Kolankiewicz study examines what portion of America’s growing energy consumption can be linked to population growth—that part of the equation that represents an increase in the number of energy consumers. And the study also analyzes what portion of demand for energy can be linked to rising per capita energy consumption as reflected in our passion for a plethora of consumer products that use, in total, an obscene amount of energy. 

Kolankiewicz uses a standard mathematical apportioning procedure (explained in the study) to assign percentages of our rising consumption of total energy, petroleum, and electricity and to identify our output of carbon (that is, carbon dioxide), the major greenhouse gas. These figures are then related to population growth, and by implication, to growth in per capita consumption.

The report confirms the obvious: that population growth translates to higher energy use—and the environmental impacts associated with those high levels of usage are damaging indeed. And, more importantly, Kolankiewicz finds that the demand side is a greater factor in energy use than rising influence or changing technology.

In other words, stabilizing population is more important to energy conservation that discontinuing the production of S.U.V.s

Kolankiewicz notes that:

“If the United States were entirely dependent on renewable energy sources, it would still not be able to support an ever-growing population indefinitely.”

Kolankiewicz reminds us that the U.S. Census Bureau currently projects a 400 million population by 2050 and a billion plus population by 2100.

In view of those “ominous projections”, emphasizes Kolankiewicz, Americans must “come to some consensus on an optimal population size for their country and take its now aimless demographic politics into their own hands instead of regarding population as some uncontrollable juggernaut.”

In conclusion, Kolankiewicz writes that U.S. fertility rates have been below “replacement” levels (2.1 children per woman) for more than a generation. (See the above referenced Californians for Population Stabilization report). Hence, birth rates are not the driving force behind population growth.

However, Kolankiewicz notes “immigration levels, on the other hand, have quadrupled over the last four decades and is responsible for 60-70% of domestic population growth.” (In California, the figure is 100% according to the CAPS report).

America will have to summon up the political will to address the issue of immigration’s impact on population. But the stakes are high and the discussion cannot be put off forever.

To delay the debate only increases the likelihood that nature will impose the ultimate outcome in some particularly harsh manner.

Of particular interest is “Forsaking Fundamentals: The Environmental Establishment  Abandons U.S. Population Stabilization.”

The Kolankiewicz/Beck report can be read at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/forsaking/toc.html