New NPG Forum Paper Examines Uphill Battle to Counter Population Growth in the U.S.
- NPG
- December 7, 2023
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Slowing Down Population Growth in the U.S. is Not Impossible
Alexandria, VA, (December 7, 2023): A new Forum paper from Negative Population Growth has revealed that ‘smart growth’ won’t be enough to solve the population crisis in the United States. The paper, titled Spoiler Alert: ‘Smart Growth’ Won’t Save the Day, by Mark Cromer, examines the challenges posed by the country’s rapidly increasing population and the need for meaningful dialogue to produce policy initiatives that can reverse the trend. Cromer begins his work by noting: “With more than 8 billion people now crowding a planet that continues to convulse with the conflict and corruption that drives mass migrations, the United States confronts its own steadily escalating population growth and the challenges it presents in both the short-term and over the long haul.”
This Forum paper highlights the visible symptoms of population growth, such as the abject chaos of mass migration, the fierce competition for employment and housing, and the escalating homeless crisis. It also examines the role of U.S. society in the population crisis, sharing that “throughout the past half-century, much of U.S. society has lived something of a double life; on the one hand, advocating for ever more environmental protections and often leading preservation efforts (here and abroad), but on the other hand, indulging a seemingly insatiable appetite for more and bigger things. From TVs-turned-Home Theaters to cars-turned-tanks and homes turned McMansions, a powerful and perpetual desire for ‘more’ and the instinctive sense that the party is about to end, one way or the other, has been evident for the better part of the past half-century.”
Additionally, Cromer does not shy away from accurately identifying immigration as the main driver of U.S. population growth, explaining: “In 1965, the foreign-born population of the U.S. was just five percent. Pew’s 2015 report noted that more than half of the 131 million people added to the U.S. population between 1965 and 2015 were the result of immigration and births to immigrants.” He also spotlights the ineffectiveness of politicians unwilling to go the distance, writing: “To have a meaningful dialogue that produces policy initiatives designed to reverse population growth simply appears beyond the reach of our present political leadership in the United States.”
Taking on the media, Cromer dissects comments on population growth made by various figures and points out inaccuracies along the way. Zeroing in on a piece written for Nat Geo, he writes: “…where one of his (journalist Robert Kunzig) demographic takeaways was that if we wanted to give the entire population of the planet a little more breathing room than the City of Angels, everyone would still fit rather comfortably into Texas.” Cromer then adds: “Such musings are a sly deception based on a journalistic sleight of hand that conflates empirical geographic space and the human physical footprint with ‘best case’ hypothetical projections surrounding resource availability and consumption rates among a bevy of other basic quality of life metrics.”
This paper is a call to action for U.S. citizens to take a stand and demand meaningful dialogue and policy initiatives that can reverse the population crisis. It is a reminder that smart growth alone won’t solve the problem. In his conclusion, Cromer tells readers: “More than energy, arable land and viable living space, reliable access to fresh water for nearly a half billion people here is going to be chief among the resources that should guide population sustainability decisions in the years ahead.”
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