It’s time to take the temperature of the US. Not the political temperature, that one is more easily assessed, and just as diseased. No, it’s time to take the population temperature of every city and state relative to the limited resources each state can provide its citizens.
There are some aspects of our world’s health which are easy to measure but hard to control. We are swimming in climate change data and yet it is proving to be one of the hardest things to reduce. Twenty-six years of global negotiations at the COP conferences have had disappointing results. Population on the other hand presents a different story. What it takes to support a given number of people with a limited resources, is more challenging to measure, more difficult to see, but much easier to address in theory at least. What is needed is the right kind of thermometer and a bigger microphone when it is time to announce the results.
For those who still believe in science, it is clear that climate change is making our western arid states even drier. But because we do not take the population temperature of these states, because we equate open space and relatively uncrowded cities as room for more people, these water-stressed states are attracting more and more development as we speak.
A list has been compiled by those who like to make lists, of the top ten least populated states in the US. My first reaction was to shout, “Oh no now people will want to move there.” My second and more profound reaction was, “These states may have relatively low numbers, but they are already overpopulated relative to their resources. They cannot support additional people because they don’t have enough water for one thing.”
Wyoming with a population of approximately 581,075 is at the top of this list. At first blush, with only lack of density as a measure, it would seem the ideal destination for newcomers and a beacon for attracting real estate developers and agents. But Wyoming has a naturally arid climate and as our country’s 5th driest state it is experiencing extended periods of drought. Because each person in our fair land uses an average of about 82 gallons of water per day, water availability is deeply relevant. When 70% of your water is dependent on a deep snowpack, you need to start putting up no-vacancy signs. If we truly care about wildlife we must acknowledge that Wyoming’s bison, mountain lions, wolves, bald eagles, grizzly bears, black bears, elk, moose, deer, pronghorn antelope and wild horses, cannot thrive in a landscape carved up into subdivisions.
Vermont is second on the low population list. But at a population last measured at 623,251, one must look at its numbers relative to its square miles. Vermont is the 6th smallest state in the US with only 9, 614 square miles as opposed to Wyoming’s 97,813.2 square miles. Yet Vermont has witnessed a population increase of 2.8% in the last decade by those seeking a lifestyle with less traffic, and more open spaces. Ironically, this additional growth increases traffic and decreases open spaces as housing drives the destruction of forests and more cars are added to the roads.
Local governments are spending their time signing permits for growth which some foolishly attribute to progress and others just as an inevitable Trojan horse full of the soldiers of destruction. Overpopulation is a relationship of the number of people to naturally-limited resources. Taking the temperature of a given area is critical to insuring its future. The illusion of ‘room’ will disappear when these limits are confronted. Of course, each of our 50 states has a different amount of resources. Some are more in danger of losing habitat, others more in danger of running out of water, others are being strangled by traffic. But no matter the resource, all have a need for the only prescription that would result in a true remedy: halting growth.
When threatened with a resource meltdown, our default button is almost always to attack our consumption habits. While there are certainly private jets, limousine and mansions that need curtailing, just living in a modern country among hundreds of millions creates an unsustainable demand to meet our basic needs. We go through contortions that would make Cirque de Soleil performers envious in ill-fated attempts to increase resources rather than to lower the demand. This often means stealing water from those who live downstream or robbing long-time residents of their vistas and quiet lifestyles. It means destroying habitat to add more lanes of freeways which never works to decrease traffic jams in states with ever increasing populations, just ask any of the 12,459,000 people now trying to get around in the Los Angeles metro area.
It is time to grow better not bigger. It’s time to incentivize the refurbishing of old buildings rather than build so many new ones. Cities need to discuss ways to keep populations stable so they may truly conserve their water resources. They need to make their streets walking and bike friendly, divert development resources into arts and education programs, encourage volunteering with grocery-vouchers, designate clean up days followed by free musical concerts and so much more. These ideas will allow our cities to grow better. We must create the uncertainty in growth as inevitable, for it is not, not if the voices of the ecologically aware are elevated above the volume of the growth mongers.
Closing our doors to growth at the state level must be supported at the national level. Inner migration between states is problematic as aging populations retire to warmer states, but mass immigration from other countries is also fueling the kind of development that our country can no longer support. While some countries need to pay attention to their fertility, in order to address their particular overpopulation issues, the US must address its growth where it is occurring in modern America. Most of our growth is now coming from immigration. “The Census Bureau projects that the U.S. population will grow by 111 million between 2010 and 2060 with future immigration accounting for the overwhelming majority of future population increase. Leon Kolankiewicz, Center for Immigration Studies (2015)
What can the federal government do to discourage population growth? It can start by telling a new story about our country. When it comes to overpopulation, we are sick and in the ICU. We are on life support and adding more growth in any of the states on this low population list is equivalent to pulling the plug on a better future. Telling the truth, the one that the developers don’t want us to hear will be difficult, to say the least. But we must tell Americans to find the right resource thermometer for their cities and states and see if they have any real room for expansion before they allow one more permit to start the bulldozers humming. Educate them that the huge fall out of overpopulation undermines our prosperity and sets in motion a horrible fate for our wildlife. The scarcity of resources (we cannot increase by technology) sets the stage for the unraveling of the American dream.
It remains a detrimental mythology that the US can perpetually be the repository of all who need and want to come here. It undermines both our ecological reality and the real reasons that industry encourages new and desperate workers to come to our shores. The perpetual exploitation and subsequent dismissal of Black Americans who are shoved to the back of hiring lines every time there is a flood of new immigrants willing to take the meager offerings of heartless corporations is well documented in the book, “Back of the Hiring Line, a 200 Year History of Immigration, Surges, Employer Bias and Depression of Black Wealth” (Roy Beck 2021). Throughout our history we have had rules to limit the number of people allowed to come and live permanently in the US. It is un-American to do this in harsh ways, but we must be much stricter in the number of people we encourage to come into the country, and then be accountable for responsibly enforcing those policies.
Americans do not like to hear that we have limits. Most will insist that we can make more room. They will permit the further slicing and dicing of our remaining water supplies and landscapes even if it means a reduction in all we hold dear. But that is like telling the doctor that you will not fill your heart prescription and take your chances that your clogged arteries will not lead to a stroke or heart attack.
Imagine if a diabetic refused to take insulin and expected to live a normal life, that is where we are in the US today. At 332,000,000 and growing, we are suffering from the disease of overpopulation. Growing by over 80 million a year adding to our already unsustainable billions, the world is also inflicted by this illness. The good news is that this disease has a cure. Our “vaccination” is in both reducing birthrates and curbing immigration where appropriate.
These may seem like harsh remedies to those who have never considered the downsides of our domination of the earth’s limited biosphere. But I assure you, the cure is NOT worse than the disease. We must, however, be willing to find the right pharmacy with the proper ‘halt growth’ medication and then judiciously and with great moral authority, follow doctor’s orders.