America will hit 300 million people this fall....Is this REALLY good?

[TreeMonkey]

http://www.startribune.com/484/story/183206.html

A decade ago, population control was the CORNERSTONE of the environmental movement. What in gods name happened to the environmental movement that we gave this up? After Clinton got in, YES, we all relaxed on our haunches, but to not hear a PEEP about going from 280,000,000 (280 million) to now 300,000,000 (300 million) in ten - 15 years, mainly from Illegal Immigration, (yes, its illegal, as they sap public resources, and provide cheap, unregulated labor to big businesses, IE: wage slavery)

Will we ever wake up to the fact that more people in a consumer society will consume more, degrade our open space, demand more recourses, etc etc etc...

Its time to drop the PC non-sense, as every environmental issue is MADE WORSE by population. Ive seen "left" wing sites that actually promote OVER POPULATION (as long as its from a poor country)

When in gods name will the madness end? We can save the entire world, we've tried! Illegal immigration is becomming THE ISSUE, but the Republicans will run with it, yet ONLY Kerry mentioned it in the shrub debate.

Just a rant...=) But this is really sickening...

If the experts are right, some time this month, perhaps somewhere in the suburban South or West, a couple, most likely white Anglo-Saxon Protestant or Hispanic, will conceive a baby who, when born in October, will become the 300 millionth American.
As of Thursday, the Census Bureau officially pegged the resident population of the United States at closing in on 297,900,000. The bureau estimates that with a baby being born every 8 seconds, someone dying every 12 seconds and the nation gaining an immigrant every 31 seconds on average, the population is growing by one person every 14 seconds.

At that rate, the total is expected to top 300 million late this year. But with those projections adjusted monthly and the number of births typically peaking during the summer, the benchmark is likely to be reached just about nine months from now.

"You end up with a number in October," said Katrina Wengert, a demographer and a keeper of the Census Bureau's official Population Clock, getting about as specific as possible this far in advance in a field subject to chronic fudging and revising.

The clock is, itself, a contrivance, of course.

But it's no more so than other pretexts for a wintertime sexual encounter. Rest assured that hospital publicists, canny obstetricians, entrepreneurial chambers of commerce, baby food manufacturers, public officials and countless others pursuing some political, social or personal agenda, abetted by the media, are already guesstimating the growth rate to anoint any number of unsuspecting newborns as the mythical American who pushed the nation's population past 300 million.

Mr. 200 Million

In 1967, when the population reached 200 million, Life magazine dispatched 23 photographers to locate the baby and devoted a five-page spread to its search. Instead of deciding on a statistically valid symbol of the average American newborn, the magazine chose the one born at precisely the appointed time.

Life immortalized Robert Ken Woo Jr. of Atlanta, whose parents, a computer programmer and a chemical engineer, had immigrated seven years earlier from China. Woo graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and is a litigator. Now 38, he still lives in Atlanta with his wife, who is also a lawyer, and their three daughters. This time, like last, the selection is subject to all manner of qualifications, not the least of which is the conceit that the census can measure individuals so precisely as to determine the exact time that the population tops 300 million or, playing the odds, can define the average American newborn.

Still, demographers do know that the United States, which ranks third in population behind China and India, is still gaining people while many other industrialized nations are not. (Japan, officials there announced last month, has begun shrinking.) Driven by immigration and higher fertility rates, particularly among newcomers from abroad, America's population is growing by just under 1 percent annually, or the equivalent of doubling the entire population of Chicago (2.8 million).

A different paradigm...

[GrumpyGreg]

1. This info sure shows the ZPG movement didn't work.

[DanCa]

2. Bad Joke - what would happen if they jump up and down all at once?

And to answer your question it is not good.

[Triana]

3. NO it is absolutely NOT good - but NO ONE wants to seriously

address the problem, save ZPG - who is now known as the Population Connection.

I am NOT for uncontrolled breeding, nor am I for uncontrolled immigration. BOTH (PC or NOT) need to be stopped--else we as a race in this nation at least, are sitting here sawing off the very branch on which we are perched.


PERIOD.

NOTHING else we do, -- from controlling the amount of CO2 we dump into the air, to trying to control urban sprawl or get a handle on healthcare problems or crime will solve the problem PERMENANTLY until and UNLESS we address POPULATION CONTROL.


Population control is the ROOT of every problem we're facing today. And the current fundie-driven government and the immigration-driven, uncontrolled-breeding (ie: PRO-LIFE/pro-birth¿) driven govt/religious factions WILL NOT ADDRESS THIS PROBLEM. They won't even DISCUSS IT. They only want to MAKE IT WORSE by outlawing birth control and abortion.

W R O N G!!! Wrong. Wrong. The RIGHT is WRONG.

[undergroundpanther]

4. The problem with population control

is EGO
Favored sons and"heritage"games
Families carry on names ,traditions etc.Religion poisons the debate further. This is because of our fucked up biology too many humans want to live forever,and bodies die they seek to live through their kids and because every kid is told to grow up please parents and BE SOMEBODY BIG,people will not stop breeding ,because they do it for SELFISH MOTIVES,People have babies irregardless of being bad candidates for parenthood.Success kills as quickly as failure does in a evolution situation.Survival of the fittest ain't necessarily about success.We are a very successful species yet we are destroying the world with our lack of self responsibility and small circles of awareness..
And remember every attempt at population control done in a top down manner turns into EUGENICS.Where the rich and white or other population groups ina dominant position kill off the competition,it's bullshit posing as science for EGO.

Population control if imposed on people has never been about diverse people curbing their breeding to keep sharing the planet with people not like your own kind.

[Triana]

5. Yea. I get what you're saying - all the reasons...

... certain politicians and religious nuts (the same ones who refuse to address the issue) would address it in some very bad ways if they do at all. It's sad that our choice is between not having it addressed and having it addressed badly.

Still, the bottom line is, until it's dealt with, all the other issues we have as a nation and as a race will be uncontrollable - if not now (and some of them are now), then at some point.

Of course, things will take care of themselves eventually, when famine, disease, global warming, or some world war or nuclear bomb or something kills millions or billions - then the problem will then be relieved - in a really hideous way - because humans are too stupid to do it themselves, voluntarily. They can voluntarily destroy themselves - we're doing it now. But for some reason, we can't manage to voluntarily save ourselves before a really humongous disaster strikes and does it for us.

Pretty sad. Pretty primitave.

[phantom power]

6. We might be the only non-reality-based indutrial country.

Our failure to control our own population is just one more manifestation of that underlying problem, along with our disastrous foreign policy, environmental failures, debt-based economy, embarrassing lack of health-care, anemic public education....

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[blindpig]

9. Your link is appalling.

Got xenophobia?:puke:

[blindpig]

10. Apparently someone else thought so.

:toast:

[Odin2005]

11. There are too many people on this planet.

That's why I ain't having kids.