Sierra Club says, “Think Globally, Don’t Act Locally”
Philip Cafaro
February 14, 2012
The lead article in the most recent issue of the Sierra Club’s “Compass” newsletter is titled “Population and Family Planning at the UN Climate Negotiations.”
In it, Kim Lovell from the Club’s “population campaign” laments the fact that negotiators at the UN Climate Negotiations are ignoring the impacts of population growth in driving global climate change. Lovell approvingly quotes South African Jacques Van Zuydam that, “we can’t respond to climate change without taking into account population dynamics,” and “population, development, and climate should be a single discussion.”
In this case, though, it seems like a case of the pot calling the kettle black. After all, the Sierra Club has backed way off any discussion of American population growth, because growth in the U.S. is driven primarily by excessive immigration.
In recent years, most growth in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions has come from immigration-driven population growth. But you’d never know it from listening to the leaders of the Sierra Club.
To learn more about the role population growth plays in America’s ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions, don’t ask the Sierra Club! Instead, check out this recent study by the Center for Immigration Studies.
