“We must alert and organize the world’s people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises – exploding population growth and extreme consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overpopulation underlies every environmental problem we face today.” Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Oceanographer
In 2018, America gallops toward a demographic cliff with the passion and fervor of a Kentucky Derby race horse. Americans watch their country expand on average, 3.1 million annually. U.S. Census Bureau projections show the United States accelerating from 300,000,000 (million) in 2006 to a mind-numbing 439,000,000 (million) by 2050. (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, www.PewResearchCenter.org , Fogel/Martin “U.S. Population Projections.”)
The research of an increasing number of global resource experts, including the extensive data of Global Footprint Network, (https://www.footprintnetwork.org/), verifies that current human numbers, both globally and in the U.S., remain alarmingly above the sustainable level that our renewable resources can tolerate. On this finite planet, Non-Renewable Natural Resources remain limited to 1 to 3 billion people—dramatically less than our current 7.6 billion! The levels of consumption and pollution from those 1 to 3 billion people must become significantly lower than the current unsustainable levels of average Americans.
While Americans squirm daily in gridlocked traffic in every major city in our country, they fail to 
connect the dots as to the long-term ramifications of adding 139 million more people to the equation in the next 32 years—in our already overcrowded country.
What does 139 million more people mean in context? Answer: adding that many people equates to doubling the human population of our 35 most populated cities. In some cases, it means doubling the population of entire states. For example, New York City-Newark houses 18 million people today. That metropolitan area could double to 36 million. Los Angeles at 11 million expects to exceed 22 million—and on down the line for 33 other cities. States like Florida remain on track to grow from 21 million to 36 million in three decades. None of these projections need occur! We must change course!
But like those people fuming in traffic as they breathe their own fumes, few of them connect the dots. If your car’s dashboard warning lights flash to red, you stop your car to check whether or not you will burn up the engine with low oil, leaking radiator fluid or a leaking transmission case.
Today, planet Earth’s dashboard lights flash red with countless warnings. As humans burn 94 million barrels of oil worldwide 24/7, we exhaust billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere that ultimately dumps into the oceans, warming them. That warming and acidification of ocean waters causes the death of entire ecological systems like reefs and spawning grounds. According to the Norman Myers 40-year study at Oxford University, an average of 100 species suffer extinction 24/7 around the globe.
That same warming trend causes “catastrophic climate destabilization” which magnifies hurricanes like Harvey, Sandy and Katrina. How much oil do we burn that dumps that much carbon into our oceans? To give you an idea, a barrel of oil holds 42 gallons. It’s 20 inches in diameter across the bottom of the barrel. If you take 94 million barrels of oil and stand them side by side, they create a belt of oil in excess of 25,000 miles around the equator. We fill them up at midnight and burn them down to empty 24/7. The biosphere cannot continue such relentless abuse. I learned these realities when I worked with top climate scientists in Antarctica in 1997-1998.
Nobel Laureate Dr. Henry W. Kendall said, “If we don’t halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity – and will leave a ravaged world.”
What did he mean by that abrupt statement?
As a world bicycle traveler across six continents, I witnessed firsthand Dr. Kendall’s statement. One look at China and India gives you an idea of the consequences of overpopulation at its end-most destination. For example, Bangladesh houses 161 million people in a landmass the size of Iowa. Can you imagine half the U.S. population living in Iowa? Can you fathom the ecological damage as to shortages of drinkable water, sewage pollution, carbon emission exhausts, and difficulty of growing food to nourish 161 million impoverished bodies, not to mention human crowding and loss of any quality of life? Tragically, Bangladesh accelerates toward 202 million people by 2050.
By importing all these people from around the world, we ensure our demise. Those immigrants face the consequences of their profligate birth rates, but flee to our country to solve their problems. Instead, they make their problems our problems. Why do the same thing to our future generations? Why? Why? Why?
Part 2: An endless line of immigrants exploding US population beyond carrying capacity, overshoot and loss of quality of life.
© 2018 Frosty Wooldridge – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Frosty: frostyw@juno.com
