-----Original Message----- From: Mark Jones <Jones_M at netcomuk.co.uk> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Is anyone connecting this thread with population? If the US census
>people are right there will be 400m (median) 500m (high forecast)
>US citizens by 2050. The US is becoming Third Worldized because
>it has a third world rate of surplus population creation.
"Surplus population" - what does that mean?
This kind of rhetoric, along with green "carrying capacity" - is the stuff of eugenics and immigrant bashing.
The issue is not population but how we use resources, since the same population can spread itself out in suburban tract housing using excessive energy, or it can be organized in high-density, high conservation ways. Especially given how badly the US has organized itself over the last decades, there are rather interesting ecological views on how to use growing populations to "infill" low density areas that would actually increase conservation by making mass transit more viable in such areas. I dare say that New Yorkers contribute less to global warming on a per capita basis than almost any city in the US and probably contributes less in absolute terms than a city like Los Angeles with a fraction of the population.
The san Francisco Bay Area is experiencing tremendous sprawl out into previously green and open lands stretching into the San Jouquin Valley. And the responsibility is largely the "green" and liberal cities of Berkeley and Oakland. Out of NIMBYism and preservationism, new high-density development is sharply limited, especially in Berkeley, so new populations have no choice but to sprawl. There are some better models where "greenbelts" help focus growth into high density development - I believe Seattle is doing pretty well with such a policy.
--Nathan