Oct. 28, 2006
 
EDITORIAL: We Have a Right – and Duty – to Control Population
 
The Providence Journal
 
The American population has rolled past 300 million and is now headed quickly to 400 million. How many people do we want in this country?
 
Americans have a right to ask that question, and the federal government has a responsibility to deal with the answer. We think that the answer should be something below 300 million -- and certainly not above.
 
Every day we in the Northeast see the consequences of a population explosion. Farms are disappearing, roads disintegrate under the weight of snarled traffic, parks are jammed even off-season. Our quality of life is in decline -- and the population changes around here are relatively tame next to the wild transformations out West.
 
Yet the federal government ignores those concerns, which have been boiling for more than four decades. In 1969, Richard Nixon warned that the growing population would soon impair the American way of life. The population then was 200 million.
 
Since 1969, of course, real-estate development, accompanied by congested roads, has spread much further across the land as the population has swelled.
 
The lack of immigration-law enforcement explains much of this. Immigration is responsible for 40 percent of the population growth, more if we factor in the higher birthrates among immigrant families. (The American birth rate is now at the replacement level.)
 
No one will starve in an America with a super-sized population. There's plenty of food and still some open space that can be built on, mostly well away from the coastlines. That's not the problem. The continent can support a lot more people.
 
The worry is rather how will those people live? Most immigrants and native-born Americans on the move head for a few regions. The coasts are already bulging with population; more than half the population lives within 50 miles of the coasts. The semi-arid Southwest and Mountain states, meanwhile, are being covered with strip malls and housing developments. There's not much movement into the wide-open prairies in the center of the country.
 
The good life, American style, requires more than economic growth. It needs a countryside, an ability to drive in reasonable traffic and a low population density that allows for backyards. In the packed cities of Asia, economic growth lets the people buy flat screens, computer gadgetry and European fashions, but it doesn't provide the ease of living that Americans have come to take for granted. The good life is more than the accumulation of ever higher piles of consumer stuff.
 
Unless we get a handle on population, our very culture will be in jeopardy. We've already obtained a good level of family-planning services. What we really have to concentrate on is immigration. We must decide what number of immigrants will meet our true labor needs and use our laws to enforce that limit.
 
Many of us will be gone by the late 2040s, when, if current trends continue, the population will surpass 400 million. However, a moral society tries to preserve the nest for generations to come. Americans have both a right and a duty to control their population.
 
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