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U.S. population hits the 300 million mark

Vicky Meretsky considers: Milestone or Millstone?

The U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that the nation’s population would reach the historic milestone of 300 million on October 17 at about 7:46 a.m. (EDT). This comes almost 39 years after the 200 million mark was reached on November 20, 1967.

The estimate is based on the expectation that the United States will register one birth every seven seconds and one death every 13 seconds between now and October 17, while net international migration is expected to add one person every 31 seconds. The result is an increase in the total population of one person every 11 seconds.

Expert perspective: “Last Tuesday, at 7:30 in the morning, the US population passed 300 million people, according to estimates of the U.S. Census Bureau. Today, eleven and a half hours short of one week later, we are already estimated to be 50,000+ souls beyond that. As the fastest-growing “developed’ country in the world, we have the sense to be asking if this is a milestone we have just experienced or a millstone dragging at our necks.

“The environmental movement has always had difficulty addressing the population issue. In the 1960s, Paul Ehrlich's alarming predictions of impending doom gave environmentalism a major boost. But when the awaited disasters did not materialize, critics roasted environmentalists as short-sighted alarmists. To make matters more difficult, population issues are tightly bound to immigration policies and even to abortion policies, two areas with enough emotional weight to drag any environmental protection effort to a halt. And so the environmental community takes on industry, government, and lifestyles, but not population.

“The trends are clear enough—urban sprawl and an increasing national enthusiasm for second homes are eating up our remaining unpaved landscapes at an ever-increasing clip, devouring agricultural land in the Midwest, desert in the Southwest, the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coastlines, and even the North Woods of Maine. Although we often think of cities as a major source of environmental damage, they are a far more efficient use of land than suburban areas or the proliferating ranchettes of the West.

“The combination of urban sprawl and second homes is an insidious one, as the two together complement each other in their appetites. Urban sprawl eats up the open spaces near our cities—sometimes agricultural land, sometimes greenspace that supports local biodiversity as well as recreational areas. The second home boom gobbles chunks out of our more intact, wilder landscapes, reducing the size of remaining undisturbed areas until they can no longer support many species of wildlife. Our national parks and national forests are increasingly ringed with development of both kinds, changing our public lands from parts of a larger fabric of natural lands into islands besieged by a rising tide of humanity that is loving and using them to death.

“To support the lifestyle that accompanies our land use, we have increased the pace of oil, gas, and coal exploration and development. According to a spring 2006 commentary from the National Academies of Science, the Bureau of Land Management, the major public land management agency, anticipates it will process 12,000 permits for oil and gas drilling during the coming fiscal year. While we are trying to maintain our access to cheap energy, we are only beginning to try to reduce our need for it; the imbalance means we continue to produce planet-warming waste gases at a great pace.

“And yet, we see regular signs of battles being won. Land trusts are protecting greenspaces of many kinds—agricultural land as well as more natural landscapes. Voters are supporting purchase and protection of land by states and cities. Excessively lax protection of public natural resources is halted by legal actions of citizen oversight groups. But at least for now, the land war is not going our way. For every acre protected, many more are being developed.

“We also see regular progress at the state and local level in reducing greenhouse gases. Here, too, the larger picture is less rosy. Federal actions increasingly trail behind both domestic efforts at more local levels and efforts in other developed countries. But industries increasingly see economic opportunity in the goods and services that drive and accompany efforts to slow the pace of global warming. How will that balance develop?

“The U.S. is not wildly concerned about environmental issues in part because it knows itself to be large and resourceful. We know that immigration has been an important part of the history of the country. We know that past predictions of doom have left us seemingly unharmed (although, individually, we are not well-instructed in seeing harm).

“We also know that, as a nation, we are not blind. We pioneered environmental protection laws. We cleaned our air and our water in good order, saving lives and ecosystems. We are, perhaps, waking up again, particularly to the global threats of vast change in our atmosphere and in our oceans.

“Our 300 million Americans are a small part of the world’s population, but a large part of the world's consumption and waste production. Our actions will have a major impact on our own environmental future and the world's. What will we do? If current coverage of election issues is any guide, our sense of responsibility will continue to lag behind our impact for a while. But predicting our environmental future is difficult, and there is some reason for hope. We are already losing species, places, sights, and sounds that we will regret. But we have much left to lose that we can save. If we use our 300 million as a milestone—a chance to take stock and consider our course—we may yet avoid the millstone.”


The SPEA Toolkit: SPEA associate professor Vicky J. Meretsky is a conservation biologist with research interests at both the single species and landscape scales. Previously she has conducted research on California condors, Egyptian vultures, and endangered species of Grand Canyon, Arizona, including humpback chub and Kanab ambersnail. She coordinated the vertebrate portion of the Arizona GAP biodiversity analysis. Professor Meretsky's research interests include ecology of rare species, demographic and spatial population models, temporal patterns in biodiversity as a function of physical and biotic environmental variables, and integrating ecosystem research and endangered species management with adaptive management.


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