Further on the Meeting with Senator Bennet of Colorado
January 6, 2010
by Phil Cafaro
My last blog post discussed a meeting Senator Michael Bennet had with environmental leaders in northern Colorado yesterday, and the mutual incomprehension that occurred when I asked him why he pursued expansionist immigration policies that undermined his self-proclaimed environmental commitments. Incomprehension, on my side: that anyone could fail to see the connections between immigration, population growth and environmental degradation. Incomprehension on Senator Bennet’s side, that people were raising the issue of immigration at a meeting that was supposed to be devoted to environmental issues.
Of course, most of the meeting did not deal with immigration, but with regional, national and world environmental issues. There were a number of strong opponents of proposed uranium mine, thanking the Senator for writing a letter to the EPA on their behalf. There were others worried about mercury pollution from our main coal-fired electricity plant. Others reminded the Senator about efforts to block a new reservoir that has been proposed, which would drain most of the remaining water out of the Cache la Poudre, the river that runs through my hometown of Fort Collins, Colorado. And still others worried about global warming, and asked anxiously about how we could push for stronger greenhouse gas reductions in the Senate.
Senator Bennet mostly had the right answers to these questions, from the environmentalist perspective. He is for renewable energy, and against nukes. He is for keeping water in the Poudre River (we think, maybe . . .) and for the strongest possible climate change bill that can get through the Senate. The crowd of activists seemed to like him a lot, and vice versa.
Yet I couldn’t help thinking that we were all kidding ourselves a bit. It is fine to put up wind farms and better scrubbers on our electricity plants. But with more people, we will need more energy, and some of that is bound to come from fossil fuels.
It is fine to oppose uranium mines, especially on the outskirts of your town. But with endlessly greater energy needs and the growing threat of climate change, you can bet that there will be an increased role for nuclear in our future energy mix. The handwriting is on the wall.
It is fine to talk about how important our rivers are to our “quality of life.” But more people will demand more water, and you can bet that politicians will scramble to get it for them. We may fight off this reservoir project, but another one will come up. Sooner or later, people will come into conflict with the last wild denizens of our rivers. We know who will win.
It is fine—noble even—to argue that we need to do more as a nation to fight global climate change. But the reality, as we’ve seen in the recent health care bills, is that the entrenched interests will be served. We will be lucky to achieve modest per capita reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. If we allow that improvement to be swallowed up by a growing population, we will likely fall even further behind in achieving what is needed to avoid ecological catastrophe.
My friend Glen Colton, a long-time Fort Collins environmentalist, put the discussion in perspective in a follow-up message to participants:
Quite a meeting with Senator Bennett today. I find it quite interesting that many environmentalists are willing to demand a lot from everyone in the US in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, stop dams, quit building roads, and otherwise change their habits/compromise their lifestyles and consumption in order to meet environmental goals. They want a 35% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the next few years and an 80% reduction by 2050. They want people to dramatically reduce water consumption, they want people to stop driving, they want to stop uranium mines and nuclear power, stop coal fired plants and drilling for natural gas, they want people to live in dense developments, etc.
Of course, these are all things we probably need to do long term, anyway. On the other hand, they seem to be rather unwilling to compromise or give anything up in return for asking others to sacrifice.
The question I have for the environmental crowd that either supports the immigration status quo or is unwilling to address the issue is the following: Are you willing to compromise any of your core beliefs in order to attain your environmental goals? Specifically, are you willing to support reducing mass immigration to a level that will allow the population of the US to stabilize?
The obliviousness of many of the environmental folks at the meeting today to the population aspect of our environmental situation is quite disturbing. I believe that a failure of mainstream environmental organization to address overpopulation in the US is a major contributor to our environmental problems and the fact that people aren’t aware of our population growth driven by immigration.
I believe it is unreasonable for “open borders” environmentalists to demand significant sacrifices by the American public in order to attain environmental goals and sustainability, when they won’t confront the immigration / population issue and the issue of unsustainable economic growth. We need to get environmentalists off the dime on the immigration / population issue!
