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Does immigration policy impact greenhouse gas emissions, habitat preservation, sprawl, or pollution? Join the author of a recent environmental impact statement on US immigration policy to find out.
About The Population Factor:
A series of key conversations examining the connection between our planet’s growing population & related issues. Expect to be educated on a range of topics including climate change, wildlife preservation, immigration policy & consumption patterns.
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EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
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Does immigration policy impact greenhouse gas emissions, habitat preservation, sprawl, or pollution? Join the author of a recent environmental impact statement on US immigration policy to find out.
About The Population Factor:
A series of key conversations examining the connection between our planet’s growing population & related issues. Expect to be educated on a range of topics including climate change, wildlife preservation, immigration policy & consumption patterns.
EarthX
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
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Follow Us:
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How to watch:
United States:
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TVTranscript
00:30Hello and welcome to The Population Factor. I'm your host, Phil Cuffaro. In recent decades,
00:39American environmentalists have argued, sometimes furiously, about whether U.S. immigration
00:44rates are too high. One key question dividing them has been what role immigration-driven
00:50population growth plays in creating our environmental problems. Several years ago, a colleague and
00:57I set out to answer that question by preparing an environmental impact statement on U.S.
01:03immigration policy. This 480-page opus was published in 2016 by the group Progressives
01:09for Immigration Reform. And today, that colleague, Leon Kalankiewicz, joins me to discuss its
01:16findings. Leon is a practicing environmental scientist, wildlife biologist, and natural
01:22resources planner. He's worked as a consultant on NEPA projects since 1990, managing numerous
01:29environmental impact statements on projects including roads, parks, mines, dams, and reservoirs,
01:36and many more. Leon, welcome to The Population Factor.
01:40Thanks for having me, Phil.
01:42Great having you here. Great to see you again.
01:47Let me begin by saying a few words about NEPA, and then maybe you can explain how environmental
01:53impact statements fit within it. The U.S. National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, was enacted by
02:01Congress in 1969, and it's really the nation's most important environmental law. It requires all
02:09federal agencies to give serious consideration to the environmental impact of projects they
02:15approve, fund, or carry out. Under NEPA, all federal agencies are required to consider and review
02:22the environmental implications of agency actions whenever they, quote,
02:27significantly affect the quality of the human environment. NEPA represents a commitment to
02:33environmental protection. It establishes a national policy to use all practicable means to, quote,
02:41create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony for
02:47present and future generations of Americans. Among NEPA's primary goals is to achieve, quote,
02:54a balance between population and resource use, which will permit high standards of living
02:59and a wide sharing of life's amenities. So, okay, Leon, what role do EISs, or environmental impact
03:08statements, play in applying this law? They are considered the action-forcing mechanism, Phil.
03:18Basically, they require federal agencies to look before they leap, that is, to anticipate
03:26and divulge to the public and stakeholders and decision makers what the potential impacts
03:34of those actions or projects or programs that they are conceiving or would like to carry out
03:42before they actually do them. So, instead of leaping, you take that look, that hard look
03:50at where you're going and see whether or not you want to get there, or go there, or whether or not
03:55the environmental impacts entailed with getting there are worth it. So, it does not, NEPA does
04:03not require any particular outcome, but 50 years ago, the federal government began saying that,
04:12look, we want to more carefully look at and anticipate the environmental effects of
04:20where we're going, and NEPA itself was very much an outgrowth of growing concern for the environment
04:27in the 1950s and in the 1960s, as the nation underwent unparalleled population and economic
04:37growth after World War II. In the 1950s, we famously had the baby boom, and the 1960s, that began to
04:46taper off a little bit, but was still very substantial, and in both decades, there was, again,
04:52unprecedented economic growth, all of which meant that there, as well as technological change,
05:00all of which meant that there are new impacts on the environment under the sun that people had
05:07never really contemplated before. So, really, these EISs are, they're planning documents, and they're
05:17saying, when you're planning something that could have an important environmental impact, you need
05:22to consider that, justify it to yourselves and to the general public, and part of the process, then, is
05:30asking the general public what they think about these alternatives, the environmental impacts,
05:36but also, this is an opportunity to talk about other impacts, as well. Exactly. In fact, the human
05:42environment is construed very, very broadly. We talk about impacts on biodiversity, impacts related
05:48to climate change, impacts related to noise levels and air pollution, water pollution, but also impacts
05:55on so-called socioeconomics and environmental justice. What are the impacts on people? What are
06:00the impacts on their employment prospects? And that's what is meant by the human environment.
06:07It's both the biophysical environment and the very human environment, the sociological environment,
06:13the cultural environment. In fact, cultural resources are one of the major areas
06:19cited in environmental impact statements. So, almost since its inception, some environmentalists
06:26have argued that the EIS requirement should be applied to U.S. immigration policy, and the
06:32argument's been pretty straightforward. Immigration can impact population numbers, population numbers
06:38can impact the environment. To date, however, the relevant government agencies have declined to
06:45undertake such a review of immigration policy, or of population policy more generally, and that's
06:51where we came in with support from Progressives for Immigration Reform and the Whedon Foundation.
06:57We performed such an analysis to answer our main question, how do U.S. immigration policy choices
07:05impact the environment? So, let's talk a little bit now about the EIS that we did five years ago.
07:12One of the first steps is an alternatives analysis. You have to lay out a number of alternative
07:20policy choices that could be made, and the idea is, you know, if you're going to plan,
07:27you need to have relevant alternatives in front of you. So, you start, of course, with the so-called
07:36no-action alternative, and that would just be keeping the policy status quo, and we figured
07:42out that at that time, and continuing to today, the U.S. net immigration, so total immigration
07:52into the country minus emigration from the country, legal and illegal, if you add all that
07:57together, that was about one and a quarter million people annually. So, the no-action alternative was
08:06continuing to bring in a net of one and a quarter million people annually. What were the
08:12other alternatives that we looked at? Okay, so the no-action alternative, or the status quo, as you say,
08:19keeping things the way they are right now and projecting the impacts of those into the future,
08:24was 1.25 million, and then we had a so-called expansion alternative, which added a million
08:31people annually to that. So, the expansion alternative then was 2.25 million net per year,
08:41and then we had a so-called reduction alternative, which was reducing current levels by a million
08:49a year down to 250,000 a year, or 0.25 million a year, which are more towards traditional levels
08:58of immigration rates in the country that prevailed throughout most of the 20th century.
09:04So, that reduction alternative would have taken us back to immigration levels from the
09:0840s, 50s, and the first part of the 60s, let's say. The expansion alternative, conversely,
09:15would have increased immigration levels, and we figured that was roughly in line with some
09:20of the proposals that had recently been made in Congress to increase immigration.
09:27I noticed just the other day in the New York Times, there was a proposal by Jorge Ramos to
09:34increase immigration to two million annually. So, this kind of range of alternatives
09:42is sort of a reasonable range in terms of what people have been proposing for policy choices,
09:47and by focusing in on those three alternatives, then if you wanted to split the difference
09:52between two of them, let's say, you could have a sense of what that would be.
09:57Right, and that term reasonable that you used, Phil, is very much a term of art in NEPA. You try
10:04and pick alternatives that do represent this range, reasonable range, or range of reasonable
10:11alternatives, and the three that we have bracketed where we are right now, and we had an alternative,
10:18the reduction alternative that looked at more traditional rates of immigration, and then we
10:23had the expansion one looking at levels that are very much in line with some of the proposals we
10:29were seeing some years back when we did this and currently. So, the next step after we chose those
10:37alternatives was to do population projections. So, the next question becomes then, how will
10:46overall population be impacted by immigration levels at these three different levels? And we
10:54projected out from the 2010 U.S. Census numbers all the way out to the 2100 U.S. Census numbers.
11:05Give listeners a sense of what we found there. Well, the further you project out, of course, the
11:12wider the disparity or the gulf between the alternatives becomes, and we felt that it was
11:18important to do that because from one year to the next, you really don't notice these changes.
11:24Adding another a million people a year is less than one percent of the existing population.
11:30That's within sort of what we would call in the environmental sciences the noise ratio, right?
11:36You really can't discern or tease out different impacts from a third of a percent
11:44additional number of people, but if you go far enough out and all of us hope and expect the
11:50country to be here in the year 2100, a lot of us will have descendants who are still alive then.
11:57I hope my own children are, for example. 80 years from now or 79 from 2021 is not all that far off.
12:05So if you project out to 2100, the 1.25 million, what we call the new action alternative,
12:15would go from 309 million in the year 2010 out to, I think it was 524 million.
12:24So adding, what was it? Well, over 200 million more people, right? I think it was a 70 percent
12:32increase in population size. 70 percent increase, that's right. So simply sticking
12:39with our current immigration policies would lead to a 70 percent increase in the U.S. population
12:47by 2100. Then we looked at our other two alternatives. Under the expansion alternative,
12:54bringing in another million people annually, that would result in a population of 670 million people.
13:02By 2100, that's an increase of 360 million from above the 2010 population, an increase of 117
13:12percent. So it gives you a little bit of doubling. In other words, it would be more than a doubling
13:17and it gives you a sense of how relatively small annual changes can accumulate over time. Right.
13:25Conversely, under the reduction alternative, that would lead, we calculated, to a population of
13:31380 million in 2100, which would have been an increase of 70 million or 23 percent
13:39over the 2010 population. And for listeners, you should know that right now we're right around
13:45330 million in the United States today. So again, even with that relatively
13:54small annual decrease in immigration, you can see that we wouldn't have a smaller population in 2100.
14:04We'd still have more people than we have today, but we wouldn't have nearly as large an increase.
14:11So if you put all that together, what you're saying is these relatively small annual
14:18changes in the numbers make the difference between stabilizing our population
14:24about 20-25 percent above what it is today to more than doubling our population by 2100.
14:32Phil, one of the key realities or findings of our study or any demographic projection like that
14:39is that in the year 2100, in spite of those enormous increases in our numbers under both
14:45the no action alternative, 1.25 million annually, and the expansion alternative 2.25 million annually,
14:52we would still be growing very, very fast in the year 2100. We would not be approaching
14:59stabilization under either of those two alternatives or demographic scenarios.
15:05So that's kind of key. You know, we're going to be, as part of this, we're showing these
15:11population projections on your screen. And of course, as Leon says, we hope the world won't end
15:18in 2100. We hope it'll continue on. So as you're looking at those three population projections,
15:24put a little arrow on the end of it and just imagine that all else being equal, those trajectories will
15:31continue. So sticking with the status quo or expanding immigration doesn't just mean we're
15:36going to have more people in 80 years. It also means that we'll continue to have more people
15:42in the future. In other words, at some point, if you want to stabilize a population,
15:49you're probably going to have to cut back on immigration. Now, as we discuss in the EIS,
15:56there are other ways to cut back on total population. You can try to decrease the fertility
16:04rate. And changes in fertility rate will also make a difference to future US populations.
16:11You can increase or decrease the mortality rate. And of course, we don't want to get to
16:17a stable or lower population by increasing the death rate. That's not the way we want to do it.
16:27So, okay, we've got our three population trajectories, our projections. Then the next
16:33step in the EIS is to ask how important are more or fewer people in terms of environmental impact?
16:40And EIS is only as good as its ability to quantify these kinds of questions. Now, for our analysis,
16:47we had six areas that we looked at, urban sprawl and farmland loss, water use and withdrawals from
16:54rivers, greenhouse gas emissions and result in climate change, habitat loss and impacts on
17:00biodiversity, energy demands and national security implications, and then the international ecological
17:08impacts of US immigration policies. So, we only have a certain amount of time here, but let's
17:14consider several of these areas. If you look at urban sprawl and farmland loss, what did we find
17:23for that? Well, we found that if you add those numbers of people, certainly under the higher of
17:31the two alternatives, the no action and the expansion alternative, there would be tens of
17:36millions of acres of both natural habitat and farmland or agricultural land that would be
17:45sprawled over. When you add 20 to 30 million people a decade, decade in and decade out, they
17:53all need places to live. They need places to work. They need transportation areas. All of that takes
18:01up land, and on the average in recent decades, it's been roughly a third of an acre per person.
18:07Now, in the last two decades, that has come down somewhat, and one thing that it's important to
18:14realize, Phil, is that the amount of land that each person is using is far more than just the
18:21residence that they're on. Some folks think that just by building up, right, stacking people
18:27one on top of one another, going up instead of going out, as it's sometimes put, that they are
18:32saving all of this additional land that their presence imposes on the biosphere, and to some
18:39extent, that is true, but again, there are all sorts of other urban land uses that support each
18:45additional consumer, and as I say, on the average, it's roughly a third of an acre per person,
18:51so if you're adding 200 million more people, that is an enormous 70 to 80 million acre addition
19:01of the amount of urbanized or developed land that it's going to take to support that additional
19:07population, and all of that land has to come from either natural habitat or farmland or both.
19:14So, you know, when you think about this, when our listeners think about this,
19:20you've got to imagine people need places to live, you know, you need a home or a house or an
19:25apartment, but we also use roads, we also have to eat food, and so each one of us is trailing a little
19:33bit of agricultural land that is being used to feed us. We like to recreate, we take up
19:41space doing that, so these are all the various things that, now, as Leon says, you can decrease
19:49those impacts with greater efficiency in various ways, but there are limits to that, and all else
19:56being equal, more people means more impact, so one of the things we calculated, and this is kind of
20:03interesting, is acres of cropland per person under these different scenarios. So, in 2010,
20:11in the United States, there was 1.2 acre of cropland for every person in the country.
20:20By 2100, just under the status quo immigration scenario, we're instead looking at only 0.3 acres
20:28of farmland. Now, why might this be? Well, it's because each person you're adding sort of
20:35comes at this and decreases it in two ways. More people means more sprawl, and that
20:43paves over agriculture land. On the other hand, each person you add means one more person who
20:50needs agriculture land to be fed, so if you add those two impacts together,
20:58you've got about a quarter of the cropland per person in 2100 as you would have had
21:05just keeping the population stable from 2010. Exactly, and that's, so it turns out, and maybe
21:13this isn't a surprise to a lot of folks, that the best land to build on is the best land to grow on,
21:19right? That is, grow crops on, to grow food on. Flat land with access to water attracts both
21:27builders and farmers, and so you have that competition for the same high-quality land,
21:34and so folks, each additional food consumer in this case, again, is putting an additional load
21:41on our agricultural land base, both by needing food and by needing a place to live, right?
21:48So another way of doing that, one thing we tried to do in this document was not accept that
21:57per capita impacts were always going to be the same, both, I think, with regard to our farmland
22:02and natural habitats and wildlife impacts. We assumed that we could reduce the per capita
22:09impact of each person by up to maybe 30 percent, just to throw some numbers out, or that as a
22:15result of increasing income and consumption, higher per capita impact, each person might have
22:22up to 1.5 times the impact. So we allowed for a range of impacts there, but the reality is that
22:30adding new consumers means that you're devouring greater portions of the earth and biodiversity
22:38and an aggregate ecological footprint to support that higher population.
22:43So that's an important point to make. We really did try to leave open the possibility that
22:49Americans will make some strides in being more efficient and decreasing their per capita
22:56resource use. But what we found, and this is something that people have seen in recent
23:02decades as well, if you have a relatively fast-growing population, you have to run very
23:10fast just to stay in place. So over the past 40 years, to give an example,
23:15California has improved its water efficiency use quite a bit. Californians use, on average, about
23:24half the amount of water per capita that they did 40 years ago. But P.S., there's twice as
23:30many people in California than there were 40 years ago. So there's no more water available
23:36for other species, for instance, or to leave in rivers after all that work on increased efficiency.
23:43And that's an important point because it is, as a conservationist, I very much believe in trying
23:49to reduce my own per capita ecological footprint or environmental impact. And there are many ways
23:55each of us can do that and urge government to set standards that require everyone in the private
24:01sector and industry to do that. But by forever increasing the numbers of consumers and carbon
24:08emitters and water users, you offset those gains that you get from increased efficiency
24:15and conservation, offset or overcome them, nullify them. I've worked on environmental
24:21impact statements on both electricity, that is electrical power production, and dams and
24:28reservoirs to provide water for municipal growth. And in both cases, increased energy efficiency
24:37and increased water use efficiency was more than offset by the projected increase in population,
24:45which meant that environmentally damaging projects had to go forward if you're going to meet that
24:53net rise in aggregate demand or aggregate consumption of resources.
25:00As someone who's done a lot of these EISs, then you're very familiar with the fact that early
25:05in the process, you have to go to the U.S. Census Bureau and take a look at what the population
25:11projections are for the region that is designated to be served by these projects. That's right.
25:16And, you know, a lot of times the decisions come down to, do we really need this or not?
25:23The answer to that could be very different whether, you know, you've got the same population
25:28in 50 years or twice as many people. That's right. You know, it's interesting and kind of ironic.
25:35Population is cited as a major accelerant of damage to the environment in the NEPA statute
25:42itself. I think it's in Section 1 or Section 101, where it refers to the profound impacts of
25:48population growth on the environment. And in a lot of the NEPA documents that are prepared around the
25:54country that have been written and published and evaluated for half a century now, population is
26:02always in there as one of the main drivers and perhaps the main driver in the so-called purpose
26:08and need for a given proposed action or project. But that doesn't mean that stopping population
26:15growth is considered to be one of the options, right? Because it's always given as an underlying
26:23factor, something that can't be changed. And that's what we were trying to get around by
26:30doing an EIS specifically on immigration policy, which is a main driver, the main driver of current
26:39and projected U.S. population growth. Let's take a look at another one of our six areas of
26:45environmental impact, habitat loss and impacts on biodiversity. Again, what were the findings
26:54there of the CIS? Well, the findings there, I don't remember the specific numbers that we came
27:01up with at this point, but the findings there that were that as a result of this increasing
27:07demand for both land to provide for additional people and the increasing energy needs, water
27:13needs, the impact on biodiversity would be profound. I think we found it to be significantly adverse,
27:22highly significantly adverse, projected out to the year 2100. Again, from one year to the next, Phil,
27:29you don't see all that much change from an additional million people or even an additional
27:35three million people in a population of 330 million. But the cumulative impacts over time
27:42are nothing short of extraordinary. Adding 200 million additional people in this fixed land
27:49area, adding 300 million additional people at a time when wildlife biologists such as myself
27:56know that the main driver of the biodiversity crisis, the extinction crisis, is loss of habitat,
28:04fragmentation of habitat. We have other things such as poaching, pollution or contamination,
28:11invasive species, all of which are also more indirectly related to the number of humans
28:17weighing on the landscape. But it's habitat loss, which is the main driver of our biodiversity and
28:24extinction crises in this country and in the world. And so adding 70 million at the lowest
28:32of the three alternatives up to more than 300 million in the expansion alternative would have
28:38a profoundly adverse cumulative effect on wildlife habitat, wildlife populations and
28:45biodiversity more generally. So as you say, conservation biologists are in agreement that
28:52habitat loss, habitat degradation is the key driver of biodiversity loss. Adding more people
29:00simply makes it more likely that that number will increase. The more people you add, the quicker
29:07that habitat loss and degradation will happen. And as you say, if you're concerned
29:14about pollution, which is another secondary cause of biodiversity loss, if you're concerned with
29:19over-hunting, over-gathering, over-exploitation, all of these things tend to be accelerated by adding
29:27more people. And conversely, we should add in places where those populations are decreasing,
29:35that tends to open up opportunities for rewilding and ecological restoration.
29:40So if you go around to parts of the northeastern United States where you have a stable or
29:45decreasing population, if you go to the major rewilding efforts in Europe, you often see that
29:51it's former agricultural land that's no longer needed because their populations are stable or
29:57declining. So we want to remind people of that as well. It's just not the case that population
30:03always has to go up, or even that the only alternative is to stabilize it. We might have
30:09fewer people. You know, we actually have in this country, say, since the year 1900,
30:15our population, the U.S. population, I believe, grew by fourfold, four times in the 20th century,
30:22and from 75 million to 200 million plus. And yet during that same time period, as a result of
30:31technological change and social change, perhaps a quarter to a third of the counties in the country
30:37actually underwent population loss. And those were the places that you found habitat being restored
30:43on, say, former farmlands in the southern Appalachians or in the New England states.
30:48And a lot of wildlife habitat, national wildlife refuges, et cetera, were developed on those areas
30:57that had stable or declining populations. So it does open up the potential for being able to
31:04restore the habitats and the wildlife that depend on them. So just as if we're talking about water
31:11use or energy use or anything else, we can imagine a range of alternatives where per capita use
31:18either goes up or down. When we looked at habitat loss and biodiversity preservation, we also
31:25looked at that very same thing, and we imagined per capita use of biodiversity or degradation
31:36of biodiversity anywhere from 0.7 to 1.3 what it is today. And then we plug that figure,
31:47those figures in, to the population changes. And so what we found, just to quote a few more
31:53figures from the study, under the no action alternative where we're growing by about 200
31:59million people from today, the net aggregate effect on habitats and biodiversity would
32:06range from approximately 1.2 to 2.2 times greater than it is today. So if we continue with that
32:12population growth, even if we improve our efficiency and decrease our personal footprints on
32:22wildlife, we're still looking at putting more demands and having less wildlife.
32:28Conversely, if you went with the reduction population, immigration reduction alternative,
32:36the net aggregate effect on habitats and biodiversity would range from 0.8 what it is
32:43today to 1.6 times what it is today. So under that alternative, you actually open up a space
32:50where we could be taking less and leaving more for other species. Exactly. Again, it's just...
32:57Oh, go ahead. Yeah, no, I think that we would agree that that's all part of a strong sustainability,
33:04right? Thinking of the biosphere and planet Earth as being here not just to meet human needs,
33:10but to provide for ecological and biodiversity for the other species that are fellow citizens
33:19on this planet as it were. Yeah, that's an important point and it's something for our
33:25listeners to really consider. As you think about these questions, we really have two ways to think
33:33about them. We can ask ourselves, well, how many people can we sustain in the United States or on
33:39planet Earth or in Colorado or in Pennsylvania where you are? And we can determine that and
33:48act on that basis and act as if really everything is available for us and we won't really worry too
33:55much about other species. Or we can ask, how many people can we have on this planet
34:01in the United States, et cetera, and still continue to have robust populations of wildlife?
34:10And the answers to those two questions might be very different.
34:15Considerably different. And again, it's impossible to quantify that, but from the strong sustainability
34:22perspective, the key question is not how many people the United States or the Earth can contain,
34:27but how many we can sustain. And from the broader biodiversity perspective, the more space or the
34:37fewer of us there are and the lower our aggregate consumption, the more space and resources there
34:44are for the other critters that share this space in this universe with us. Some of the viewers may
34:52have seen these amazing and depressing statistics in recent years to the effect that over 95%
34:59of the standing biomass of vertebrates or mammals on the planet, or certainly the terrestrial
35:06portions of the planet, are human beings, homo sapiens, and the handful of domesticated
35:13animals that we have. And only 5% of the total living weight are all of the other mammals,
35:205,000, 7,000 mammals that make up the Earth. That's how little we have left right now for the
35:27rest of creation. To say nothing of adding hundreds of millions of more of us in this country and
35:34billions more on the planet. If you go back to Nipah, Nipah talks about the desire to have a
35:43state of harmony between human beings and nature, the rest of the natural world, other species.
35:52You really can't seriously talk about a state of harmony if you're just crowding everything
35:59else out. It doesn't work that way. That's right. And I think those values and concerns
36:09were implicit in the intent of the legislators who enacted Nipah in 1969.
36:17Let's talk a little bit about water demands and withdrawals from natural systems, withdrawals from
36:24from rivers, lakes, aquifers. That's an issue that's of particular interest to those of us
36:30living in the western U.S. What did we find in the analysis regarding water and water use?
36:38Once again, we assumed there that, in fact, I believe we extrapolated from recent reductions
36:46in per capita use of water and went an additional 25 percent below where we are right now in terms
36:54of per capita demands on water up to, no, I don't think we even, I think we assumed that overall
37:00there would be that decrease in per capita water consumption. That's right. Yeah. As I mentioned
37:07earlier, the population growth under certainly the no action alternative and the expansion
37:13alternative more than offset those gains or drops in per capita consumption and increased our
37:21aggregate demand on water. Now, as a result of climate change and the projections that there is
37:27going to be a lot less water available in this century in the American Southwest in particular
37:33from climate change, it's unclear whether or not those demands can even be met
37:39without more exotic means of supplying water like, what do you call it, desalination from the ocean
37:49using reverse osmosis or some other technology not yet developed. But one thing to consider
37:55there is that that that's not a silver bullet or a panacea. Those have impacts.
38:01It takes absolutely to produce that water. And where are you going to get the energy from?
38:07Yeah, I mean, we're looking to try to decrease our carbon emissions. And one good way to do that is
38:13to decrease our energy use. But if you start to say Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle start to
38:19have to get their water from desalinization. Right. That's putting a pretty big energy
38:25bite on things. You know, the reality is that we're using water and especially again in the
38:31Southwest at unsustainable rates right now. You have a number of aquifers that are in
38:37permanent decline where although water itself is a renewable resource. Right. We have the
38:42hydrologic cycle that is a representation of that renewability of water. But a lot of the stocks of
38:49water in the West, like the Ogallala Aquifer, for example, that extends up into Colorado and I think
38:56through 13 Western states that is being mined. That water isn't even being used because excuse
39:03me, that isn't being replenished at a rate that is anywhere near its use is being used at a highly
39:10unsustainable rate right now. The Colorado River, as a lot of people famously know,
39:16has been used up, tapped out to the point where it never reaches the Sea of Cortez down in Mexico
39:23anymore as a result of this drying climate and this perhaps mega drought that we're in right now.
39:29Lake Powell upstream of the Grand Canyon, Lake Mead downstream of the Grand Canyon have infamous
39:36bathtub rings around them because the water level has dropped so substantially. So water is a very,
39:44very serious issue in the Southwest at a same time that population is growing there by leaps
39:51and bounds. So we're concerned about that because, you know, we're concerned about the well-being of
39:57our human communities. Even if you take an optimistic view and say, well, you know, we can get
40:05even more efficient than 25 percent, etc. A worry that a lot of us have is that we'll find a way to
40:13take care of human needs, but that'll come at the expense of non-human beings. And again, just to
40:20throw out a few figures from the environmental impact study, under the no-action immigration
40:27alternative, under the status quo, even with good conservation measures, we're still looking
40:35at a 25 percent increase in the demand on water resources between 2010 and 2100. And if you go with
40:46the immigration expansion alternative, you're looking instead at an increase in nationwide
40:53water demand of 62 percent by 2100. Again, within a context of climate change, overuse of aquifers,
41:03things which might wind up decreasing the water that we have available.
41:07So again, whether you're more of a human-centered, anthropocentric kind of person, or whether you're
41:15more of a wildlife lover like Leon and I, these are issues that make a difference.
41:25And again, by conserving water, we want to not only sustain it for human use, but
41:35be able to return water to the natural aquatic habitats from which we have withdrawn it, right?
41:42A lot of the, you know, the biodiversity damage in, especially the southwest, once again, is from
41:49taking water away from those aquatic systems. A lot of the threatened species are aquatic species.
41:56That's actually true in the southeast as well, where dams and pollution and channelization
42:03have heavily impacted mussels. American southeastern, North America, I should say,
42:10is the world's hotspot for mussel biodiversity. It is one of the forms of taxa that, you know,
42:18they're important aquatic macro-invertebrates. And so we want to be able to return water
42:25and restore ecosystems that have already been affected by human use, and by increasing human
42:31demands, it makes it harder, if not impossible, to do that. So, very important point. I mean,
42:40we've seen some pretty inspiring projects in various parts of the country, up in New England,
42:46up in the Pacific Northwest, where we've taken out small to medium-sized dams on the Elwha River
42:53in Washington, for instance. And we've really seen that you can restore some of these things.
43:00You can restore salmon runs. You can make better mussel habitat in the southeastern United States.
43:08But there's a conflict. You can't keep accelerating and accommodating human demands and still hope
43:15to do that good ecological restoration work. Exactly. And again, this comes from
43:21living on a finite planet, right, and having to make tough choices. That is the reality of our
43:29ecological condition and ecological imperative, is that we have to make tough choices, and that you
43:35can't have unlimited growth on a finite planet. It's a condition that just won't
43:45be carried on for all that long. So, Leon, we've talked about the impacts of more people or fewer
43:52people in a number of key environmental areas. How would you summarize the overall findings
43:58of this EIS? Well, the overall findings, Phil, are that projected to the year 2100,
44:06there are tremendously different cumulative impacts from the choices that we make today
44:12on immigration policy, specifically with regard to the number of people that settle in the country.
44:19The expansion alternative, adding 2.25 million additional people every year to the U.S. population
44:26and carried out 79 years to the year 2100 would lead to hundreds of millions of additional
44:34American residents, right, each of which is a consumer of resources and an emitter of wastes.
44:41Everything from waste into water to carbon dioxide. The reduction alternative to bring
44:50levels of immigration back to more traditional ones, not to shut the door, not to stop or to
44:56cease immigration, but to return it to more traditional levels, would allow us the chance
45:02to pursue environmental sustainability in a way that is much more realistic than either
45:10the no action alternative, keeping those rates where they are today, or certainly the expansion
45:15alternative. And this has been recognized in a number of efforts over the years.
45:24Some of the listeners or viewers may be familiar with President Clinton's Council on Sustainable
45:32Development, developed after the Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. There was a population
45:39and consumption task force in that, as part of that Council on Sustainable Development.
45:48And in 1996, a quarter of a century ago, they issued their findings that although they recognized
45:55immigration was a very sensitive issue and had to be treated sensitively, reducing immigration
46:02levels was a very important drive, was a very important part of pursuing population stabilization
46:10in the United States, an indispensable part of it, in fact, and the pursuit or the drive towards
46:16sustainability. So this has been recognized by environmental scientists and policy people
46:22a lot over the years. That is, we can't have population growth in this country
46:29from now until kingdom come and not expect there to be consequences.
46:35So as you say, I think the scientists tend to realize this. When you actually start to crunch
46:41the numbers and ask hard questions about environmental impacts, the answers seem to
46:47come back pretty clearly, that fewer people can help create a sustainable society,
46:55or even more strongly put, are necessary for creating a sustainable society. Now,
47:02you know, I might have you back for another show at some point, and we could talk about the reasons
47:06for why these questions and issues have been pushed under the rug. But instead, now I'm going
47:13to ask for my last question. Do you see a change in the last few years? Do you see people more
47:20willing to talk about the connection between population and the environment?
47:27Yes and no, Phil. I see both encouraging and discouraging signs. I think both nationally
47:38and internationally, there is an underground and growing awareness that numbers have to be taken
47:45into account. At the same time, there's pushback on that, and all sorts of, I would say,
47:51scurrilous accusations against those of us who insist on making an issue of population size,
47:59and what we can do to cease population growth. So that is true. I mean, you can be called some
48:06pretty choice names if you bring up these issues. On the other hand, we're starting to see things
48:11like the World Scientists' Warning on Climate Change 2017, signed by over 12,000 scientists
48:20around the world. And it said very clearly, population growth is one of the main drivers
48:26of climate change, and stabilizing populations at a sustainable level is going to be part of
48:33the solution. It needs to be part of the solution. So I look at that, and I, oh, go ahead.
48:40I'm one of the signers of that, and I'm very proud of it. And yes, they made population
48:47growth and the need to stabilize numbers one of the key elements in their framing of this issue.
48:55So I was very happy to see that. So it's possible that the tide is turning on these things.
49:02And of course, you know, there are arguments pro and con about many, many different aspects of
49:08immigration. We don't want to oversimplify the issue. What we did, I think, successfully in this
49:14document is we showed using good data, using good projection methods, et cetera, that immigration
49:24makes a difference to population numbers in the United States. And those population numbers in
49:30turn make a difference in our ability to create a sustainable society.
49:34Yes. And that's a very important finding, I believe. And again, it's one that needs to be
49:45communicated to the public. This is an issue that isn't going away. And sticking our heads in the
49:53sand doesn't mean that the impacts will disappear.
49:58Leon Kalankiewicz, thank you so much for being with us today on The Population Factor.
50:03It was a real pleasure. Thank you.
50:06See you again soon.
50:07Okay.