No More Room at the Inn

David Letterman started his nightly Top Ten List from the bottom up. I will do the same. I will begin the list of the 10 least populated US states, which are really already full and overpopulated with number 10. I will proceed to make my case with a series of measurable limits that are often overlooked. In doing so I will reveal the limits to growth that need to become much more obvious to our citizenry. While it is true that in total numbers, these states don’t have the amount of people that the other 40 state have, it is also true that they do not have any resources to spare. Many critical tipping points will be revealed once we take a deeper look at water resources, wildlife, traffic, job availability, Indigenous rights and climate change.

There are obvious reasons for the low populations in these states. Among them are a state’s size, climate, terrain, and soil conditions. But population pressures are causing them to be exceeded which leads to more pollution, traffic, water scarcity and all the misery which comes with living in a more densely populated area: crime, mental illness, homelessness and general chaos brought about when services cannot keep up with demand.

The dangers of accepting growth as inevitable needs to be revealed. This is my attempt to demonstrate the need to see the U.S. as full and overflowing. If the least populated states are full then it goes without saying that the remaining states rest are further down that road.

There are limits which are less obvious as most people are unaware of the biocapacity of their locale. Perhaps that is why we keep welcoming growth into our limited spaces. We not only allow the developers to come into our cities to ruin our skylines, top into our diminishing water supplies, crowd our streets with more traffic, we roll out the red carpet for them. We delay their tax payments just to get them to come in and destroy our cities in a delusional attempt to improve life for all. Notice that I did not say ‘who’ is coming in, but ‘how many’ we keep inviting to continue to populate our cities and states.

But I digress. Let’s begin with number ten on the list our northern most state. Maine is the most forested of the lower 48, with winding roads and few freeways. Growth would mean cutting forests and in a world with climate chaos beating down our door cutting down mature trees which absorb carbon to make more room for humans is beyond ignorant, it is insane. Trees surrounding Lake Sebago in Portland Maine filter the water of this freshwater lake which is Maine’s second largest, and cutting down these trees to make room for more people will disturb the lake’s health. This will harm the citizens who depend on the lake for their drinking water. Maine is not a place to go if you are seeking employment either. The JD Irving company is the state’s largest employer with 15,000 workers but be prepared to work in the forest harvesting industry because that is what they do. It is a state which does not have many big employers and over 29,000 are currently listed as unemployed. Its winding roads will inevitably need widening to accommodate more growth further decimating the forests and the moose, black bears, pine martens and the myriad of birds who live there. By all means visit Maine’s amazing parks and shorelines but do not come in a U-Haul.

Montana comes in at number 9 on the list. It is big state so why not cram a bunch more people there? Well Montana actually comes from the word ‘mountain’ as 2/5 of this 41st state to enter the union is covered by ranges of the Rocky Mountains. That’s in the western part of the rectangular state. The eastern part of the state is rangeland, poor for growing crops but great for grazing animals and why Montana is considered to be the quintessential west. Big skies are part of the beauty of this sprawling state which is now under a drought alert. Last year its governor issued a warning saying that 42 % of the state was abnormally dry and another 18% was in a severe drought. 42 percent of the state is classified as abnormally dry, with another 18 percent of the state in severe to extreme drought conditions. May and June are historically the two wettest months of the year in Montana. If the snowpack is less than normal all of the rivers are affected and Montana is projected to be in ever declining snowpack and ever-increasing drought conditions due to climate change. In other words adding more people needing water for bathing, drinking, washing clothes is a fool’s game.

Rhode Island with a population of just over a million is number 8 on the list. It is also famously our smallest state weighing in at just over 1200 square miles. In spite of its small size, however, it grew in population by 4.35% in the last decade. According to the University of Rhode Island, urban growth rates show no signs of slowing down, impacting loss of natural vegetation, open space and the fueling the loss of forests and wildlife habitat and even agricultural lands. With just over 1,000 people per square mile Rhode Island is second only to New Jersey in population density. Being a coastal state Rhode Island is also subject to the damage caused by hurricanes which are forecasted to become more violent as climate warming adds more water vapor into the atmosphere. To add fuel to the fire Rhode Island is actually sinking while the oceans are rising, a fact shoreline developers will surely avoid putting on their brochures.

Coming in at number seven is Delaware. Delaware has already experienced a sea level rise of more than one foot in the last century and has the undesirable ‘honor’ of being the lowest lying state in the country at a time when sea rising is predicted to become a major issue in coastal areas. Hurricane Sandy hit just north of Delaware in October of 2011 knocking out power to thousands and causing much misery. These storms will undoubtedly get stronger. More development will only increase the number of victims of future storm events. Although the Cooper’s hawk and Barred Owl were removed from Delaware’s Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) List in 2015, there remain 184 bird species on that list. They include 19 species of endangered shorebirds including the red knot and piping plover. The number one reason stated for their precarious status is habitat loss and the number one driver of habitat loss is population growth. Don’t move here either.

South Dakota ranks 6th on the list of least populated states. I lived in eastern SD in the 70’s. I remember seeing pronghorns on the way to work which still roam in the eastern part of the state where I taught school. South Dakota encompasses 77,123 square miles which means that it averages only 10 people per square mile. But before we encourage people to move there it would be prudent to look at tribal claims on the land. There are 9 reservations in South Dakota, including the nation’s poorest, the Crow Creek Reservation inhabited by the Crow Creek Sioux tribe. The lack of density in South Dakota lends itself well to a traditional native lifestyle and speaks to the need to increase Indian land back to its promised dimensions and invest in their communities before we open to more development. In 2020 South Dakota had rain but it wasn’t enough to alleviate its long-term drought. When it stops raining aquifers do not get replenished and because 74% of South Dakota’s citizens use ground water as their source of drinking water, well you get the picture. If I could advise their Chamber of Commerce, I would tell them to keep welcoming tourists to its corn palace in Mitchell and the Paha Sapa, (what we call the Black Hills) but to wave goodbye when their tourist dollar are spent. 

North Dakota ranks No. 5 just in front of South Dakota. Like its neighbor to the south, its landscape is comprised of former and current Indian country. There are five federally recognized Tribes within the state comprised of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, the Spirit Lake Nation the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate Nation. All together there are 31,329 Indians in North Dakota of which almost 60% live on reservations. Their voices need to be considered before expansion to more non-Indians is considered, being that they are still fighting what was promised them in broken treaties. North Dakota has become a relatively recent beacon for jobs due to the increase of fracking of its oil shale, and is now the second largest crude oil producer in the US. But this comes with heavy price to the environment there. It has caused an increase in gas waste, and exposure to radioactive materials, heavy metals, polluted waters all posing risks for human health as well. The proposed route of the Dakota access pipeline has caused lengthy protests by the folks of Standing Rock Sioux reservation who worry about the contamination that pipelines always bring.The 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie was violated before the ink was dry. It promised the Indigenous nations that they could retain portions of land in states, while ceding their land east of the Missouri River. It is worth going to visit the Teddy Roosevelt National Park in the western most part of this windswept state, but after you see the bison and the vistas do not stay. North Dakota would be wise use their oil revenue to buy some ‘No Vacancy’ signs. 

If the cold, dark and mosquitoes don’t keep you away from Alaska, perhaps its 130 volcanoes and the seismic activity might. Alaska is an Aleut name and its indigenous people knew how to live off the land and not exploit its oil reserves which led to the horrific disaster that happened with the grounding of the Exxon Valdez. While I am as big a fan of whales as you could find, I also understand that when a small population of whale hunters use whale blubber for fuel, it is much less detrimental to the land than extracting oil has proven to be. Much of Alaska is tied up in glaciers and tundra, with populations just slightly growing in its main city of Anchorage. The state’s population is one of the few that tends to lose population perhaps because with just 5 hours of daylight in the winter, many suffer from seasonal effective disorder. Employment is not great either unless you work on the pipeline. The last frontier state is also a state which is geared up to extract its resources for export, oil, gas and seafood among them. This rugged landscape was also in the hands of its Indigenous people until fairly recently and they still struggle with the scraps left to them. The awful legacy of cheating the Inupiat, Yup'ik, Aleut, Athabaskan, Tlingit, and Haidai and others tribes out of their land and fishing rights is evident as they still have presence in its cities. Like so many other states on this list, population growth will only harm their continued struggles to gain a better footing in a society which has discarded them and nearly destroyed their traditional lifestyles. Luckily Alaska will probably not attract too much growth on its own due to the difficulty of living there, it is best saved for tourists. 

The District of Columbia is a political entity but not really a state and has no representation in Congress. Nonetheless its population density is such that its traffic problems are well known in spite of six lines of mass transit boasting 91 stations. Its traffic congestion ranked third worst in the country before the pandemic. With an area of just over 68 square miles, its density averages 10,450 people per square mile. Since DC protects a relatively large amount of area designated at park land (7,000 acres) the only way to grow is up, further adding to traffic and all other issues which can be attributed to density. D.C.'s residential population grew more than 14 percent from 2010 to 2020, according to Census Bureau statistics. In 2021 it was proposed that Hardy Park in DC’s Ward 3, become a school in order to alleviate overcrowding in the public schools. There are folks protesting but when population growth is ignored these land use conflicts will only increase proving once again that last thing the parks and quality of life in DC needs is more people. 

Vermont ranks number two on the least populated 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. Yet Vermont, known for its forests and lakes 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 increased growth demands and expansion of housing which in turns drives the destruction of forests. More cars put pressure on road expansion which then brings out more bulldozers and the pristine nature of Vermont becomes a thing that the history books will only know.

Wyoming with a population of approximately 581,075 has the least people in it. It is ten times larger than Vermont. At first blush, with only lack of population 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 to a state’s expansion plans. 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 our iconic wildlife, we must also 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.

I hope it has become obvious in each of these ten examples that when water resources, indigenous rights, forest land, wildlife, jobs, quality of life, traffic, terrain, climate and climate change forecasts are all considered, we must face the harsh reality that the US is full and overflowing. It is time for a new narrative if we want a viable, thriving country. As Lional Shriver, author and Population Matters Patron once said, “We need to recognize that slowing population growth is one of the most cost-effective and reliable ways of easing pressure on our environment and securing a sustainable future for us all.”

A state’s growth happens in three ways: migration from other states, local fertility rates and immigration from countries. Growth, no matter how it occurs is still growth and must be well regulated. We have yet to wake up to this new narrative of limits. We can no longer afford to have our laws to remain stuck in the past when our still growing population of 332,000,000 was so much less. Let us be brave, embrace our updated story and tell those with greed in their eyeballs who refuse to regulate growth that there is no more room at the inn. 

Halting Growth: A Prescription for a Better Future

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.

We Must Be the Good Parent When it Comes to our Immigration Policies

From my experience as a child of good parents and as a professional educator, I learned to recognize the qualities of a good parent. A good parent sets up reasonable rules, makes sure they are clearly understood and enforces them without abuse. A good parent does not spoil their child by letting them have their way, only to yell at them when they misbehave. A good parent does not create chaos by allowing those in their charge to have a free reign. A good parent looks into the future and tries to prepare those in their care with a skill set dialed into the future they are likely to face.

 That is the way we need to think about immigration policy for the US going forward. We are not a nation that needs any more hate or unfair rules thrown at the newest members of our society. But in our overpopulated world we need to set an example of how to scale down our numbers which are eating away at our country’s vitality.

We must set and enforce limits and do so in the way that a good parent does, with tough love. We need to think of our country as a house and admit that our house has limits. The US operates according to a narrative about being a democratic nation of immigrants, but that is a story predicated on often unrecognized ecological and structural limits. Measure the emptying reservoirs, the constant traffic jams, the disappearing wild animals, or the overtaxed healthcare system and the damaging effects of adding too much demand to limited resources becomes obvious. By most measures, the US has reached many of its limits in both natural and structural resources.  Adding more demand stresses those resources creating a world where squalor will dominate.

 We need to recognize that setting up responsible immigration laws and enforcing them is both critical and compassionate for our future.  America needs to be a good parent, beginning with an assessment of our resources, and pointing both a critical and legal finger at those businesses set out to prey on new immigrants with low wages, and efforts to stop unions. Mass immigration has been encouraged throughout our history so that businesses make profits while taking advantage of their desperation. As a result, African Americans became disenfranchised once again, for many industries have a sordid track record of preferring immigrants over those for whom we still owe access to a decent American livelihood. This shameful history is well documented in Roy Beck’s 2020 book, Back of the Hiring Line, A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth.

Saying that we love our immigrants but ignoring tools like E-verify to check on work authorization before hiring, is like saying you love your child by telling them to wear a helmet but not checking if they bother to wear one. Allowing for more open chain migration to ever distant family members, is like telling a child that they can invite however many kids they want to their birthday party so that they don’t hurt their feelings, without checking if there is enough cake to go around.

 This will all fall on deaf ears, of course, because few realize how seriously overpopulated the US is relative to its resources and quality of life. Our media and politicians don’t tell the story that we just don’t have much to share with more newcomers. We have added 181 million people within our borders since I was born in the 50’s. Our outrageous population of 332,000,000 people is putting a pressure on everything from our dying rivers to our collapsing freeway infrastructure. Continuing to ignore our numbers is like watching smoke billow out from under our windows without calling the fire department.

 We pay attention to almost every threat to American life except overpopulation. We can’t turn on the news without hearing about the latest variant or violent storms caused by climate change. We must require of all news services and all of our conservation organizations to use the word overpopulation instead of euphemisms like habitat loss and overcrowding so that Americans will see that being a good parent means realizing we are overshooting our country’s ability to provide water, food and a decent life to those already here.

Deliberately taking on more people when you are already overpopulated is being a bad parent. It’s like allowing the bathtub to overflow and wondering why you are spending your time constantly mopping up the floor. Turning off the faucet is a responsible act in a country which keeps growing in spite of lowered birth rates and a pandemic. Our growth now and increasingly into the future, will be due to unregulated and unenforced immigration policies, unless we wake up and become the good parent.

 We all know of someone who desperately wants to come to the US for a variety of understandable reasons. That makes it very difficult to be the good parent we need to be and say no. It makes it difficult to be in favor of reigning in the number of visas doled out by the government, just like it’s difficult to look into a child’s begging eyes and explain to them that they must limit their candy intake. Saying yes to unlimited candy now means cavities and diabetes will soon be lurking on the horizon.

 We can probably all remember a time when our parent’s said “no” when we thought we knew better. We thought we had a handle on our maturity and ability to handle things when clearly we did not. Now America needs to be a good parent and fairly limit immigration in creative un-demeaning ways that allow for well vetted, enforceable temporary stays in a house that has run out of room.

Should We Save the Lynx or the Lemurs? Why We Need to Target Growth, Beginning Right Here at Home.

Dedicated to the memory of E.O. Wilson and Thomas Lovejoy

May their legacy for advocating for biodiversity become amplified by all who admire their work.

The Lynx (Lynx canadensis) of North America is a secretive nocturnal member of the cat family which depends mostly on the abundance of snowshoe hares. Though the warmer winters brought on by climate change is making it harder for both to exist, Lynx can range up to 300 miles and they also need mixed contiguous forests to sustain them.  Lemurs are primates that evolved roughly 60 million years ago and now reside exclusively in Madagascar and a few small islands off the eastern coast of Africa. They range in colors, size and behaviors and are becoming critically endangered. The forest habitats of these two unrelated species are being cut down for related reasons: human encroachment fueled by overpopulation and its continued growth.

Growth is the monster breathing down the necks of wildlife worldwide. Indonesia has the shameful status of having the most species on the global endangered species list. It cannot be accused of being a rich country, but it can be accused of being an overpopulated one. Its current population of over 276 million is up from 69 million in the 1950’s. This remains an unblamed reason the future of the Javan Rhino and the Sumatran Tiger are in peril.

The 1300 or so species now on the US Endangered Species list are endangered by growth of our wealthy ‘first world’ overpopulated country while others in the developing world are being destroyed by overpopulation, population growth and poverty. The threatened wildlife species don’t care whether you destroy their homes for a new condo development or to make way for a rice paddy to grow food, the result is the same. The Lynx and the Lemurs don’t get to live there anymore. They just get to join the infamous list that announces to the world of their pending demise.

I love gregarious Lemurs and the ever-secretive Lynx. I have not seen either of them but my chances of seeing Lynx and saving it from extinction are much greater because we share similar borders. Their future is more within my reach. Both creatures suffer from the successes of humanity around them. Both have less and less nature to survive in, both experience the loss of habitat - one from a poor but growing nation, one from a rich but growing nation. The US is in the top ten of the highest median per capita income countries and Madagascar is in the top ten of the lowest median per capita income countries. The Lynx and the Lemurs have no access to their bank accounts, they just ‘know’ that the expansion of the rich and the poor may be for different reasons, but both destroy the natural areas where they need to live.

Madagascar has been in the news lately due to the horrific suffering of its people. There are many factors, but the one that is mysteriously escaped the media’s attention is the fact that this island nation has increased by approximately 23 million people in my lifetime, from 1954 to 2021. This volcanic island has only been inhabited by humans for the last 1300 years, but they have been busy. First cutting down its ‘exotic’ trees to sell, then intensive rice farming took over. As their population increased, they more aggressively cut down the habitat of some of the most unique creatures on earth. One sobering statistic says that there are now more long-tailed lemurs in zoos around the world than in their native Madagascar.

Here in the US, 181 million people have been added to our country in my lifetime, we continue to grow by over 1 million a year. It is no coincidence that the number of endangered species in the US has grown along with our population. The billions of dollars designated to help them by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973 has been successful in saving some species from the brink of extinction. It put protections and penalties in place to protect wildlife and has worked to stop pollution. But those dollars have not been targeting US overpopulation. Perhaps if it had there would not be 1300 on this list. The Florida Panther is protected by the ESA but they are also threatened by Florida’s tremendous population increase and the cars that come with them. There are about 120 panthers left in the wild and 24 of these big cats were killed by cars in 2021. The ESA is helpless to save them from this fate, in light of the over 19 million people that have come to live and drive there since the 1950’s.

Our political reach to curb Madagascar’s population growth, which is fueled by an average of 4.1 births per woman and a lack of cultural acceptance and access to birth control, is very limited. Growth is a two-headed monster. It comes from inside and outside sources. Growth in Madagascar comes mostly from inside sources and in the US, it comes increasingly from outside sources. Just as it doesn’t matter to the Lynx or the Lemurs why their forests are being cut down, it also doesn’t matter whether the growth is coming from inside or outside the country. What matters is that those targeting growth as the enemy of wildlife are targeting the appropriate source of growth. Stopping immigration to Madagascar or stopping high fertility in the US are equally futile, because immigration to Madagascar and high fertility in the US are not the main problems each of these countries faces.

Targeting the appropriate source of growth is the only way we can truly protect our remaining biodiversity. Removing the immigration story from its ‘quicksand’ tales is not impossible. We can love our immigrants and still work to stop mass immigration. When our policies are set by our leaders with other than noble motivations, it’s time to give them another look. Roy Beck’s 2021 book, “Back of the Hiring Line:  a 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias and Depression of Black Wealth”, is a welcome permission slip to seeing immigration with new eyes, unburdened by guilt. It is a well-documented non-fiction narrative that needs a deep dive by all who claim racism when they hear the ‘I’ (immigration) word brought up.

We are on track to lose the Lynx and other priceless species unless we work to stop the forecasts of increased growth mostly due to immigration. Eighty-eight % of future growth in the U.S. is projected to be from entrants to our country according to the PEW Research Center, adding millions more to our country in the coming years. It is our moral duty to focus on changing the policies that permit excessive legal U.S. immigration increases so that we may truly have more power to help the endangered animals that are struggling within our borders. Ironically while it is both the easiest and cheapest way to help wild animals it is politically the most challenging strategy to implement. The unwillingness of conservation organizations and our government to refocus conservation efforts towards the targeting of growth in the U.S. something for which future wildlife lovers will never forgive us, and they should not.

When Autumn Breezes Blow

Autumn brings change, to this part of the world, so lovely in its inherent warning of what is to come. As I scan the horizon, my eyes  rest on the newly naked branches of trees that hug the shoreline. I am in search of the birds which may be revealed. My bright red kayak takes me on what is likely to be the last paddle of the season, and I recognize my own resistance to the inevitable changes on the horizon.

I deeply identify with the last crispy leaves to fall from the cottonwoods that line my beloved lake. The golden vestiges of sunlight bring focus to the sparse profile of trees intelligently preparing for winter. Those still hanging on in resistance have my heart in mind.

 I wonder, as the cold droplets of a changing lake take refuge on my vessel, if they are they the brave ones hanging on to the last moments of autumn’s glory. Perhaps, but maybe they are cowards denying the changes the angle of sunlight will soon bring to our both our soil and our bones.

 The lake is clearer now, one can see to the bottom as water lilies wave goodbye with the help of the bay’s ripples, knowing they must go before the ice forms above them. Some round leaves are still green and I identify with them as well. Do they miss the dazzle of their white flowers like I do? Or are they  more mature, sensing they will be back when the spring equinox signals their ability to return.

The V formations of geese and ducks head south now in rhythmic waves of planning. I wish them well and their safe return, pondering who has it easier, the birds who must go or those who must stay. I do know I appreciate the risk in both journeys.

So now my own journey begins, as I wrap my kayak in its winter cloak a part of me goes to sleep, the part that is awakened only by spring flowers and summer breezes, but in that slumber a renewal is brewing as well as the lessons I have yet to learn.

Afraid to Laugh, Are we Losing our sense of humor when we need it the most?

“If we didn’t laugh we would all go insane”

Jimmy Buffet

The art of comedy is an American phenomenon. We have more comedians, more comedy venues than anywhere else in the world. Over the years, the American comedy scene has become a diverse medium with voices representing everyone from the LBGTQ to the immigrant community. From Protestants and Catholic to Jews and Muslims, From Africans to African Americans I can easily come up with a successful comedian or three representing each. But just when we can brag about these multi layered voices, we are also losing our ability to laugh at ourselves. We are asking that comics commit to the kind of scrutiny that used to be reserved for politicians, and in doing so the light is starting to fade on our collective laughter.

With so many voices welcome in comedy we have choices. We can tune in or tune out, buy tickets or not, but we now live in a world where a group of word and morality police has gotten way too much traction and this time it is coming from the left side of the political aisle. It used to be, as George Carlin poignantly pointed out, that the FCC was given the power to decide what would or would not be bleeped. Now the audience, as Dave Chappelle correctly points out, is the self-proclaimed Federal Communication Commission telling everyone what and who should or should not be permitted on stage.

 If comedians are performing their difficult craft well, they will be speaking from their own experience and relating it to audiences through the viaduct of our mutual funny bones. The best of them find the universal in their lived experiences. So though I am not black or gay, I find Wanda Sykes very funny and it is because she goes in search of the universal connection between us all. It is personal the same way it is not. On the other hand, I am Jewish and though I can relate well to most Jewish comedians, I may or may not find them funny. and that is the beauty of freedom. I am free not to like someone because they do not have their comedic arrows pointed toward the nuances of my funny bone.

 Comedy is a mystery. Even though I am a Jewish woman with an interest in politics and an overpopulation activist I find Jim Gaffigan, a white male non-political comedian with Irish/Catholic heritage and five children hilarious. Why? Well that is the mystery. Tickling someone’s funny bone is more of an art than a science. If a type of comedy is no longer funny due to a more enlightened society than let the empty seats reflect that.

 I spend most of my Sirius XM time over on the comedy stations, channels #’s 93-99. It is easy to change the channel if someone comes on that I do not like, but mostly I change the channel because I have heard the routine before, though often I listen again and again. I know many of Vin Das, Mike Birbiglia, Nate Bargatze and Sara Silverman’s routines by heart, but no one in their right mind would want me to perform them. These talents are masters at their craft which has taken years to perfect. I have been fortunate to have seen the following comedians in person: the late great George Carlin, Lewis Black, Bill Maher, (2x), Al Franken, Kathleen Madigan, D.L.Hugley, Dana Carvey, Paula Poundstone and countless others and laughed all the way home and into the next morning. I have many of their books and other comedic performances on my wish list. I am afraid however, that they are a part of a dying rather than a thriving art form. I read that Jerry Seinfeld refuses to perform on colleges campuses because of the cancel culture that has taken root there. While no one would ever accuse me of being a car person, I think I am all caught up on his terrific Netflix show, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”

Milton Berle once said that laughter is a mini-vacation. In today’s world of 24/7 depressing news cycles, we need many not fewer mini vacations. Let’s do what comedians Bill Burr, Bill Maher and so many others recommend, let’s lighten up and search for the reasons to laugh, not for the reasons not to. We as a society will be so much better off.

Conservation's Condom Conundrum: How Ignoring Overpopulation has Undermined the Success of Saving of Endangered Species

" It's been a long time coming, it’s going to be a long time gone"

Crosby Still and Nash

During my 35 -year career as a naturalist I tried to teach empathy for the earth, its systems, flora and fauna. I often felt that the messages my students were getting from everywhere else countered that. From their religious affiliations they were getting the message that just about everything is more important than nature. My main dispute with organized religions is that they are promoting a human-centric narrative. People matter to the exclusion of all other species even though we depend on them for everything in our food supply and the sense of wildness in our hearts. Through the media which has permeated all aspects of our lives, we also get a very anthropocentric viewpoint. The news is full of what happened to people. If there is a flood, we are told how many homes and lives were lost. If there is a fire, tornado or any other disaster the focus is the same. No one bothers to calculate the loss of wildlife and native plants, unless a bird is dripping in oil or found in some other gripping way that will bring in viewers. But species, who have been here longer than any of us, continue to disappear mostly in silence while the news cycle tells the same narrative, that people matter over everything else. Few are telling children that other species matter. No one is screaming about the loss of bees and butterflies except those in my corner of the world.

Now we hear in the mainstream media, which must mean that it is finally true, that a myriad of new species are being listed as extinct, including the ivory bill woodpecker. It is no surprise to me. I blame it on the fact that our conservation organizations and their members have not been able to find their spine on overpopulation’s role in the demise of the wildlife we pretend to love. Meanwhile we trample over wildlife with such abandon that some are now calling for housing the homeless in national park lands.

One cannot mourn the loss of these never to be seen again species without taking into account our incredible population growth over the last 100 years. I tease my dad that when he was born the world had a chance to reserve some of its resources for wildlife. But that was 6 billion people ago. 6 billion is hard to visualize but try this example on for size: 6 billion minutes is the equivalent of 11,415 years. That number represents very significant pressure leading to the demise of wildlife that cloth bags and plant-based diets cannot erase. Any wild animal with a large territory or a requirement for quiet so that they can stalk prey is out of luck. The footprint of our collective human enterprise ( H.E.) includes our ballooning numbers and our mostly unavoidable consumption. Our H.E. ( or one could call it S.H.E. for Shitty Human Enterprise to fit within today’s norms), stomps all over the chance for wildlife surviving in any sustainable population density. To provide for our food requirements alone, huge tracts of land are cleared. Land that was habitat for wildlife is disappears under the disks of combines as they convert acres of prairie into feed and feed lots.

It is true that wild animals go extinct as a part of the natural cycle of natural selection. It is often argued by those invested in the world of development, that 99% of all species ever to live on earth are now extinct and they accomplished this without the aid of modern humans. True enough, but that does not let us off the hook for the wildlife annihilation now taking place on the planet. We are experiencing the sixth mass extinction, a rapid increase in extinctions brought about by habitat loss and climate instability, the result of too many people consuming and polluting at rates the biosphere cannot handle. From the pollution of our fossil fuel usage to gobbling up their habitats, our numbers matter.

Phrases like “Loss of habitat”, or “Human Activity” are the euphemisms used to describe why animals become endangered. “Degraded habitats” “Invasive species introduction” and “Development” are others which are all inextricably tied to the engine of this train that needs to be named so it can be blamed. Overpopulation is behind it all. Too many people consuming limited natural resources which if stretched due to technical advances only leads to more people. If I were a betting person, I would put my money on challenging anyone to find a sign at a zoo or wildlife refuge that uses the word ‘overpopulation’ as the reason why these amazing animals are now only serving as spectacles and not enjoying their lives in the wild.

Just look at any graph of population growth and species loss and they mimic each other. These hockey stick curves go up and up together in destructive unison illustrating a simple but profound truth, the growth of us equals the demise of wildlife. Avoiding this correlation in the conservation community has led us to what I am calling the “condom conundrum". The fact that better use and easier access to birth control would help wildlife is clear and it is also clear that it has been avoided by the thousands of well-intended conservation groups promising a success that can never be theirs. We need to be seeing population numbers on the front covers of conservation magazines for the way in which our bloated presence is driving so many species to appear on the list of now extinct animals. I would start belonging to them again, if I were to read in between their glossy photos that we are adding 80 million to the H.E. each year globally and many countries are still growing due to immigration. Sir Peter Scott of the World Wildlife Fund wisely said in his later years, how he thought in retrospect that they would have saved more wildlife if they would have focused on birth control.

I know plenty of people who sincerely care about wildlife. Thanks to their efforts, the Bald eagle, the Peregrine falcon, Trumpeter swan, the Brown pelican and others have made impressive recoveries, but not without a lot of effort and expenditure. Overall, however, the rates of extinctions and the amount of native plants, vertebrates and invertebrates are disappearing faster than we can count. That’s why the time we are living in now is being referred to as the sixth mass extinction.

In my view we have gone about saving species in entirely the wrong way. It’s been very expensive to captive breed and reintroduce wildlife. Adding a specie to the endangered list comes about only when there are so few left researchers can hardly find enough genetic diversity in the remaining rare individuals without risking genetic trouble down the road. As we’ve experienced recently, conservation legislation is only as good as the current political party holding office. Buying up land to keep in conservation easements is another noble but very expensive strategy. We often wait too long to try and save species, and do it in the most costly of fashions. We employ environmental lawyers to sue developers and spend extraordinary efforts to battle those with more money and moxie to save landscapes. Beneath all of these noble efforts is the difficult story about how we have been focused on the wrong problem.

I loved to teach about the way the food pyramid, also called the food chain or web, works. With a myriad of games, hikes and lectures I demonstrated the relationship between plants as producers and the various tiers of animal consumers. The most important lesson was that the top of the pyramid needs to have the least number of consumers for it to function as dictated by evolution. In an oversimplified pyramid where grasshoppers eat plants and skunks eat grasshoppers to be followed by owls eating skunks, the owls must always be the least numerous. We are a part of this law of nature but have flipped the pyramid with our success as a specie. The collapse of wildlife which is also affecting our ability to live in this unbalanced world is knocking on our door demonstrating the horrific results of breaking nature’s laws.

We have not tried to save wildlife by doing what would have really worked, ratcheting down our numbers and recognizing which laws, policies and economic systems are surreptitiously working to help us grow when we need to be shrinking the entire human enterprise away from the edge of extinction of all life. We have been sold a bill of goods by over 11,000 NGO’s dedicating to global conservation efforts with combined assets of over 3.5 billion dollars. Oh, they are sincere enough, but they would have been much more successful had they partnered with population groups to focus on the multiple ways human numbers have needed to be curtailed with non-coercive but effective methods.

There are two parts to the “condom conundrum”. The first part is revealing that overpopulation and the access to birth control is connected to the survival of wildlife. The second part is that birth control advocacy alone will not solve local overpopulation issues by itself. Some countries, including and especially the US, have impressively lowered their fertility rates but their populations are still growing due to increases in immigration.

Professor Garret Hardin, wrote prophetically about how to go about solving how humans are overtaking the planet by using the analogy of potholes. Potholes are a global problem, but they must be solved locally. The same is true when it comes to saving our local species on the brink of extinction. We should try to save globally threatened species whenever we can, but we have the most power to save them in our own back yards. It’s sad that many US school children can identify endangered wildlife from other continents while being stumped by those in their own backyards. Young school children can easily identify gorillas and elephants but have a harder time with recognizing that bobcats, lynx and kangaroo rats live here.

Concerned about the species on the US endangered species list? Well there are over 1600 and sending money to the United Nations Family Planning Association (UNFPA) will not help them at all. UNFPA will send your hard earned dollars to where the Asian elephant lives, or the Mountain Gorilla, but not to where the desert Tortoise lives, within our borders. Spending money to halt population growth here in the US holds the most hope. Want to help save the Florida panther, the lesser prairie chicken, the monarch butterfly and so many other species suffering from overpopulation’s bulldozers? Make sure all wildlife lovers and the NGO’s they support get on board with overpopulation’s role in their demise. It is an issue which is screaming for attention right here in the USA where it can do the most good. Native habitats will not be adequately protected with cloth bags and address labels from US focused NGO’s who do not also work on US overpopulation for it is our growing numbers which signal the bulldozers of ‘progress’ to invade wildlife habitats to make way for condos and theme parks.

The beautiful red-headed woodpecker is threatened because of increased numbers in the US, now numbering 330 million, and what that has meant to the loss of pine savannas. The endangered Karner Blue Butterfly depends on wild blue lupine flowers which used to be found in the pine barrens, oak savannas and dunes of lakeshores before overpopulation turned them into cabins, freeways and strip malls. The Amargosa vole is endemic to the Mohave desert where it depends on rare desert wetland plants and raptors depend on it for food. But overpopulation has drained ground water and introduced invasive species have become its unnatural predators. All you will read about it an any Google search however is at best that ‘human activity’ is causing their demise. For those like me who may be geographically challenged, the Mohave desert is located in California south of Death Valley National Park. The endangerment of the Amargosa vole there is tied directly to the fact that California has added 20 million to its borders since the first Earth Day scolded us for not caring enough about the environment back in 1970.

The condom conundrum keeps us from addressing all causes of population growth because focusing only on birth control is not comprehensive enough to help wildlife. According to the Pew Research Center immigrants and their descendants are projected to account for 88% of US population growth through 2065. Until groups like the National Wildlife Federation, Defenders of Wildlife, The Wilderness Society and so many others I no longer feel I can support, address this reality, they will essentially be operating wildlife Ponzi schemes.

In the US we grow in our numbers when capitalism and its industries favor loose immigration laws which result in lower wages and high profits for CEO’S and their shareholders. Greed inspires immigration increases and we grow in numbers when rich and powerful industrialists use their wallets to sway politicians. If all goes as planned, they will then vote to keep immigration restrictions to a minimum. This way they can keep wages suppressed and unions from forming so their own portfolios can grow. See the new book “Back of the Hiring line A 200-year history of immigration surges, employer bias, and depression of Black wealth” for a comprehensive look at this history. (Roy Beck 2021). As Beck points out, restricting immigration, when it has happened over the years, improves the chances for employment and economic advancement for the deserving descendants of slavery. We are also growing our immigration numbers due to relaxed and ignored immigration policies already on the books. Those who work to strengthen them should be supported, in the name of improving all issues important to Americans. Just making employers follow the law and hire US citizens would help to curb US population growth and help save jobs for Americans especially those who have been shoved to the back of the hiring line. The Florida panther, the lesser prairie chicken, the monarch butterfly and so many other species suffering from overpopulation’s bulldozers will be thankful too.

When we focus solely on China, India, Nigeria and other nations with huge populations and their faster growth rates we are doing a disservice to the wildlife suffering here at home from our own overpopulation issues. Everything from worsening traffic to record breaking crowds at National parks is due to the overpopulation. We are experiencing the loss of these freedoms to move about as we wish and wildlife disappears for the same reason, we cannot continue to pretend that it doesn’t. For reference, we have gained an unsustainable 125 million people in the US since Earth Day 1970.

Without a focus on the wildlife consequences of US population growth by conservation groups, don’t expect to see the 41 species of endangered US Salamanders or the Northern Spotted Owl to be returning from the brink of extinction anytime soon.

The Flaw in the Statue of Liberty and its impact on our endangered species

I wrote a version of this essay in 2019, when the US had 4.5 million less people, in spite of the pandemic which killed 700,000 Americans, so I thought it was time to revisit the topic.

The talented and hard-working men who replaced our patio door had heavy Russian accents. I soon discovered that they were from the same part of Russia, Belarus where my grandparents were born. I have intentionally traveled to countries populated with people with different languages because I enjoy learning and absorbing different cultures. I have devoted my professional life as a naturalist to make our nature center accessible to everyone. The doctor title before my name was earned in a degree that was steeped in social justice.

I have not wavered from my steadfast belief in the justice for all concept in our constitution, but I am continually stunned by how so many of our policies completely ignore nature’s laws and the way we as a species depend on them. It is time to have a more nuanced discussion about immigration that includes the environment. In this time, on this planet, in our country we have a reality shaped by how many people are already here.

The Statue of Liberty, was originally known as “Liberty Enlightening the World” and was given by France in 1886 to celebrate the Franco-American alliance during the Revolutionary war. It was given when our population was just over 50 million people as a gift to celebrate liberty. When the poem by poet Emma Lazarus was added later in 1903, it was a game changer for it turned statue which graces Liberty island in New York’s harbor, into a symbol of a different notion: as a never-ending welcome mat for the world’s downtrodden. It is a narrative that has permeated our culture for 118 years. I am arguing that it has contributed to the gaining of 280 million people since these words were added to the base of the statue.

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The flaw in that sentiment is that it assumes that our country will always and forever more be better off with more and more people. It ignores the land stolen from so many Native American Indian tribes, still working to get it back. It assumes we will have enough farmland, fresh water, open space, wildlife, wildlands and everything that makes for a quality of life, now and forever more.

When the currently silenced voice of environmental measurement is allowed a seat at the decision-making table, it will speak a shocking story. It turns out, according to data from Global Footprint Network that if we are to look at immigration and the US population through the eyes of sustainability then we passed up our sustainable numbers at least 150 million people ago.

I am in my sixties now. Our population in the US has more than doubled in my lifetime. Those additional 167 million consumers have transformed this country. They are responsible for our crowded cities and traffic congestion, more pollution and less open land. More people make a wide variety of negative impacts on the environment on which we all depend, and it doesn’t matter from this perspective the nationality, religion or race of those additional people. It is significant however, that we are growing in the US it mostly due to our ecologically outdated immigration policies, not due to our fertility rate. The Census Bureau projects that the US population will increase by another 79 million people by 2060, passing 400 million in 2058. Almost all of that increase will be due to immigration. Therefore, we can hand out all the condoms on street corners that we want. We can even use the Endangered Species Condoms so cleverly produced years ago by the Center for Biological Diversity, but we will not affect US population growth much if we focus on our total fertility rate, which is now officially 1.7 per woman. With the current and increasingly more permissive immigration policies, we would be best to focus on Washington DC and the policies currently in the hopper. Here comes one of the metaphors I am becoming known for, we are trying to clean up the disease of US overpopulation with soap and water when antibiotics are required. Antibiotics (aka sensible immigration policies) are more expensive and have side effects, but they do at the end of the day save the patient.

We are all consumers. We can and should try to consume less but we all need water, energy, food, jobs, open land and none are in a limitless supply. The consumption in the US is so high that those who keep the statistics on this like the Global Footprint Network, tell us that it would take five planets to supply the globe with enough resources if everyone were to consume like we do in the US. Adding more high-level fossil fuel consumers to the US due to increased immigration from lower footprint nations is not what our warming planet needs.

Yes, overpopulation is indeed a global problem, but it will be much easier to stabilize and reduce our own population with our own political systems than to try work only on the global stage. Population Media Center and UNFPA (United Nations Family Planning Association) have wonderful missions and have had some admirable successes on the global population stage, and it is critical that both get much more funding. However, since they both formed in 1998, we have added 1.8 billion people to the planet. They have an extraordinary and overwhelming task before them no matter how well they are funded. It would be so helpful if each of the 195 countries recognized by the UN assisted them by recognizing that their own futures are in peril if they do not take on the task of addressing the overpopulation issues within their own borders.

Let’s put in it terms of saving endangered species. Those who wish to save them might listen to the argument that we need a more local approach to overpopulation. They may agree that although still very challenging, it is at least theoretically easier to save Florida panther from extinction that it is to save the African Elephant. Both are suffering from overpopulation and the way it ravages ever-shrinking habitat on both continents. Clearly, no matter how many address labels and cloth bags we collect from our donations to international conservation groups, we have more political power to save the Florida panther.

In 1973, I vacationed in Florida, the same year that the Florida panther, a subspecies of mountain lion for which their hockey team is named, went on the endangered species list. The population of Florida then was just 7 million. The panther formerly ranged from Canada to the Andes but was hunted to near extinction to protect livestock and make room for humans. Thanks to intensive conservation efforts there are estimates of 120-150 Florida panthers now trying to exist alongside 22 million humans within its borders. Many are hit by cars and struggle to find suitable habitat. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, most of those 15 million Floridians added in 48 years are due to inward migration followed closely by foreign immigration. Florida with its shrinking habitats and some of the worst traffic congestion in the country has truly taken Lazarus’s poem to heart. It did name the Florida panther as the state’s official animal back in 1982, but it needs to do much more.

I wish I had the space to do justice to the 1,300 endangered species on the US list like the lesser prairie chicken or the lovely pollinator, the Karner blue butterfly, but that’s the point of this article, we are all running out of space due to overpopulation and our continued growth.

I acknowledge that this is a very difficult discussion to have. I have personally benefited by having ancestors who came here. I don’t pretend to have all of the answers. But I know for sure that human numbers and how we grow is a part of the equation that needs to be on the table. Overpopulation has been ignored, dismissed and trampled upon for far too long, often under the pretense of political correctness. We absolutely cannot allow our overpopulated country to be an excuse for treating immigrants inhumanely. Atrocities are indefensible. But it is equally hard to imagine that we can make good decisions about our country’s future regarding immigration policies while ignoring the tragic state of our country’s limited life-giving resources. Is it really fair to welcome people into a place that is already over-pumping its aquifers and draining its rivers to support unsustainable development? I know for sure it isn’t fair to the hundreds of species hanging on by a thread.

We must acknowledge that we all suffer when we exceed our country’s environmentally determined limits, and we have already exceeded them by many measures. We must try our best to walk that fine line between loving our fellow human and our planet’s support systems. It would have been great if a Emma Lazarus would have added these words to the end of her poem “until it is no longer sustainable to do so.”

The Statue of Liberty would then truly have an opportunity honor the US, its future and its goals of liberty and justice for all.

The Same Rules Apply: Gaggles of Geese, Herds of Deer and Swarms of People

Cultural diversity and biodiversity are intimately related. But those who fight for one rarely dialogue with those that fight to preserve the other. Perhaps it all started in high school. The bell rang and you went to a completely different class, with unique textbooks and teachers. Biology class was different from music, language and social studies. It had different assignments, perspectives and teachers. No wonder we have developed into a world where we can focus our lives on one arena without incorporating the other. In today’s human-centric world we are supposed to focus exclusively on cultural diversity and righting the wrongs of the past, not a bad goal at all, but one that cannot be achieved without a tandem look into the perilous condition of our country and worlds’ biodiversity. As the world tumbles off a human created cliff of neglected biodiversity it will take all of us with it, and the already marginalized will suffer first.

This all means that while it may be okay to teach about population limits for animals like geese and deer, it cannot continue to be out of bounds to discuss population limits for people. It is feared it will create a world of even more unequally applied policies. Fair enough, that fear is actually grounded in both history and present-day continuations of deeply ingrained racism. But it is also fair to proclaim that unless we find some way around this politically dicey quagmire we will be strangled by our good intentions. Ironically, stopping these discussions because some may be afraid of unintended consequences is exactly what will cause nature to have very intended ones.

Let’s examine the status of the white tail deer, for example. While we were busy overpopulating  the US in the last century ( we’ve added 222 million since 1921) we were also busy creating  the deer’s preferred fragmented habitat. We are helping to encourage the deer population because they prefer what is referred to as ‘edge’ habitat. Deer first evolved on the planet between 10-20 million years ago. Due to our increased presence, in the last 100 years, this large mammal increased its population from 1 to 30 million in the continental US.  One deer needs about 7 pounds of food a day, on average. You do the math. Instead of needing to provide 2 ½ billion +  pounds of the over 600 plants that deer eat a century ago, we now must provide over 75 ½  billion pounds of plants per year. No wonder my most of my tomato plants this year found their way into this ungulate’s digestive tract.  

 Canada Geese have increased their populations 4-fold in the last century, due to deliberate re-introduction into the US and due to their preference for mowed lawns and golf courses. They are thriving in a world where the endangered species list is gaining more victims. My state of Minnesota now has the second largest population of geese in the lower 48. When I directed a nature center not too far from the Minneapolis International Airport, it was discovered that ‘our’ geese, were now finding their way into plane engines. Not so fun fact, the Minneapolis International Airport is a stone’s throw away from where we once counted 77 goose nests in our 70 acre marsh. A goose reduction program was instituted immediately. Ironically in the ‘70’s geese were brought into my nature center, their wings clipped in an effort to increase their numbers. I will never forget the day, during my tenure there, when one of my favorite walkers came to my office with muddy knees. A goose had knocked her down, she had come too close to a nearby nest. Every effort was made to reduce the population of this human made problem. Egg shaking was tried, but the female’s do not eat while waiting 31 days for their young to hatch and they will starve if they remain unhatched. Netting was also tried. Nothing worked until we were fortunate enough to have coyotes move into the nature center with geese on their menu. I say all of this because we are no different. Humans are subject to the same laws of ecology. The geese were innocent even as they gathered and made the boardwalks greasy with their excrement. They became hated by many, nonetheless, even though we had artificially increased their numbers and then scratched our collective heads when they responded to our efforts with too much success.  

Every animal on earth needs three basic things: food, water and shelter. Add energy for humans. Those do not come in unlimited supplies and something always suffers under the weight of too much demand for those limited resources. When populations get out of control it usually means that natural boundaries of curbing growth have been eliminated and food has been increased. Take away the wolf, the deer’s natural predator, and cut down the forests for increased population growth- fueled development and you have a perfect storm for population explosion. Encourage geese by clipping their primary wing feathers and imprinting them on new habitats, in a landscape with few predators and multiple lawns and you get the same.

So why have humans become so numerous in spite of multiple wars and disease? The same rules apply. A human created petri dish where overpopulation thrives is brought about by a confluence of many factors including: religious edicts for large families in order to keep power in the hands of the already mighty, lack of access to birth control, lack of women’s empowerment in patriarchal cultures, and large investments in curing disease and preventing accidents. In individual countries like the US, numbers are increased by unrestricted immigration policies favoring cheap labor and social justice narratives.  Math has a role to play here too. When two people have even just two children, in four generations there will be 8 progeny.

We must form a bio-centric world view. It has always been required, for to keep growing in a limited landscape is a death sentence for humans        and much of our wild populations too. A human centric world full of hospitals and the worshipping of growth by our economic systems is not human centric in the long run. To promote humans to the exclusion of wildlife to is create misery, suffering and early death for humans.

We see it over and over again. Destroy the forests to build housing and human infrastructure and watch the soil erode away. Starvation follows planting crops in the sand that is left. To place more and more people in denser and denser cities is to ask the water supply to do more than it can. Lake Mead is crying for us to pay attention to the suicidal continuation of growing population in an already water scarce region. Our economic system was set up to keep expanding using natural capital converted to wealth chasing a story with collapse as its only possible ending. These are just a few of endless examples of the need to stay in our ecological lane, just like geese and deer and so many other examples from the wild world.

Geese and deer do not overconsume however, they just consume. They do not own jet skis or private aircraft. Overconsumption is a simply a result of too many of them in a given area. Their higher than normal numbers are almost always due to our failings as the species in charge. We get rid of natural predators and wonder why rabbits are so numerous. My nature center had room for 3 deer, the forest became a wasteland when their numbers grew to 45 in 5 years. No one wanted to do the responsible thing and cull them, but they also wanted the forests to be full of birds and other wildlife. The bad actions of the past only leave us with worse choices today, but they are far better than what nature has in store.

Humans, however, can and do overconsume especially in the developed world. It becomes particularly egregious when our tax laws and poor union regulations help to create billionaires. Private jets, yachts and multiple homes have huge carbon footprints in a world choking on its own fumes.

Remove those billionaires, however and we still have an attack on biodiversity due to our huge out of control numbers. Adding millions of people in the US and billions worldwide in the last 100 years all needing fresh water, a source of food, energy, health care and materials for housing and infrastructure is a demand causing the earth to throw up its hands as if to say, What are you thinking? The conversation seems to always go south and become a discussion about the horrors of attempting any reasonable solution. That is a reflection of focusing solely on cultural diversity.

It is reasonable to require cities to prove they have enough water to support any new development before it is permitted. It is reasonable to first calculate the country’s ability to absorb immigrants without harming existing biodiversity and the quality of life of those already here. It is reasonable to look at the world through a more holistic lens with our specie as only one part of a complex, fragile system.

Nature has a its own chaotic solution to our overpopulated world knocking at our door right now. Out of control wildfires, stronger more devastating hurricanes and lengthening droughts are messages from a planet we have overwhelmed with our numbers and appetites. Business as usual will not work it was never on track to serve us. Biodiversity must be respected and cultivated for cultural diversity to ever get a stronghold in society. Nature is a harsh teacher, but here is its main lesson : There can be no equality on a dead planet.

Don't Give Incentives to Boost US Population ( printed in the Sarasota Herald Tribune 8/4/21)

Politicians in both parties want to solve the “problem” of declining fertility.

Recently the Biden administration began sending checks to parents with minor children. Republican senators like Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio have proposed their own plans to offer financial rewards for having kids. These leaders hope that by subsidizing childrearing, they can incentivize people to have more babies - and thus prevent a “population bust.”

These tactics display a mild contempt for the millions of Americans who are intentionally choosing to have smaller families. And they display an ignorance of - or apathy toward the disastrous environmental consequences caused by excessive population growth.

This sensitive subject that become somewhat taboo even within the environmentalist movement- which was originally founded to mitigate the ecological destruction resulting from rapid growth. Uncomfortable though it might be, we can’t afford to ignore these consequences. It will be impossible to conserve our wildlands, waterways, and wildlife if the U.S. population continues to boom.

The number of people in the United States grew by 22.7 million over the past decade. That means the country added 2.3 million people- roughly the population of Houston- every single year. America is projected to add another 75 million people over the next 40 years, mostly through immigration.

The notion that we’re facing a population bust is delusional. And as we allow and encourage growth, we are ravaging our limited resources. In metropolitan areas our capacity to feed, house and employ everyone is under severe strain. More than a half million Americans are homeless; some 34 million live in poverty.

As we struggle to support people, we are also straining nature. Ecologists use the term “overshoot” to describe the phenomenon of human demand exceeding the capacity for an ecosystem to renew itself- for example, when we consume freshwater more quickly that an aquifer can replenish, or overfish a species to extinction.

According to the Global Footprint Network, which measures this ratio between resource use and renewal capacity, the United States is deep into overshoot mode, sucking up nature’s bounty at up to 150% of the ecosystem’s capacity to renew. Meanwhile, studies show that as the human population grows in a given area, that area loses natural spaces and agricultural land for grazing and growing crops.

The effects have been especially acute in fast-growing states. Florida, for instance lost 10% of its natural lands, 23% of croplands and 39% of rangelands between 1982 and 2010 according to a report on urban sprawl by environmental planner Leon Kolankiewicz.

Many of us have witnessed human-driven environmental degradation with our own eyes, from the suburban sprawl that takes over former wildlands to the extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change.

Encouraging rapid growth- either through immigration or paying people to have more kids than they otherwise would- is a short-sighted response to a nonexistent problem.