1. A growing debate

2. Population growth: Environmental disaster?

3. Contrarians speak

Can clean energy get us out of this mess? Wind generators could supply half of Europe's residential electricity in just 16 years, producing virtually no greenhouse gas. Photos: Wind turbine: Sandia National Laboratory Coal plant: USGS

The ecological footprint of the United States is roughly four times the world average.Graph courtesy William Rees.

Not so fast!
Does population growth, whether fueled by immigration, natural increase, or both, actually cause environmental degradation? We asked some social scientists who study how these factors interact, and they responded somewhere between "yes, but" and "no, it's the consumption, stupid."

SUV or hybrid? Individual choices help determine how much of the world's resources go into your consumption account.

The study of population, immigration and environment spans academic disciplines, and it brings out stark differences in approach by environmental and social scientists. While William Rees worries where we'll find extra planets to supply our resource needs, Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology at Princeton University, tells us that population and immigration are "not a real environment issue, as far as I'm concerned."

Massey, who studies immigration, especially from Mexico, says the issue is too complex to be reduced to a single issue, and that the wrong people are being blamed for environmental problems. "The average Mexican immigrant isn't driving around in an SUV. ... The attitude that we [natives] should be only ones able to drive SUVs, I think, is false logic. Maybe it's not a good idea for anybody to drive an SUV, but it's better to limit fossil fuels directly, rather than indirectly, through restricting immigration."

Alberto Palloni, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says that while "population operates on the environment, it's mediated by institutions, and it's the form and shape of those institutions that colors the effects. In some cases, population growth may be harmful, but in other cases, not."

Economic policies, he says, can be adjusted to reduce environment impacts, regardless of population. "If you tax environmental pollution, the price of the polluting activity would increase, and you would start making less pollution. All you need is a mechanism that controls what you could call the spillover effect."

In other words, a growing population could use small cars, big cars, or even bikes, for that matter. Palloni, in other words, focuses on the T (technology) and A (affluence ) factors in I = P * A * T .

Economics could even help reduce population, he says, with "a mechanism that controls the spillover of childbearing. If you have six children and think the rest of us are going to pay for their education, sure you will have six children. But if we make it difficult for people to educate their children [by, for example, having parents pay directly for schooling], surely they will cut their fertility." Similarly, policies that provide for old-age insurance make it less likely that parents will have children to provide "social security."

The Dollar: Is it almighty?
To Robert Costanza, a professor of ecological economics at the University of Vermont, an obsession with money can actually promote over-consumption, through a "false connection" between higher income, more consumption, and a better quality of life. Rather, he argues, psychological research now shows that "beyond a fairly low level of consumption and income, there's practically no correlation between income, consumption and subjective well-being." Instead, well-being is more connected to relative consumption (are we keeping up with the Joneses) and to time spent with family and friends. "You need a balance between the conventional notion of capital, and human, social and natural capital, to have a high quality of life."

Costanza, who looks at the Affluence term in Ehrlich's equation, adds, "I don't think there's any inherent relationship between population and consumption and impact on the environment. People can be just as happy while consuming less. We have to address the number of people, and the consumption level, and ultimately the fact that consumption and happiness don't correlate."

Is this necessary? A new "McMansion" joins a farming community.

Grim history
Surrounding the immigration issue is a nest of nastiness that we'd like to shield you from, but any discussion of immigration must at least mention the ugly history of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States. "Linking the environment to immigration is just the most recent list of complaints that people have ascribed to immigrants; it's very deep in American history," says John Sharpless, a professor of history at University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied that history. "I'm of Irish heritage. [In the 19th century, people in the United States] said that lawlessness came with the Irishmen, they drank too much, fought in the streets, and wouldn't fit in. Now it's the Hispanics and Asians" who are being subjected to such calumny -- or racism.

Against that history, Sharpless says, "My personal bias is that I'm a little suspicious of this rhetoric, that immigrants are responsible for the degradation of the environment. Is it forest issues? Pollution in rivers? What exactly is the connection between new arrivals and specific outcomes?"

As Sharpless notes, some Western European countries with high population density have low levels of pollution and stable environments. "The Benelux countries, Switzerland and France have done a fairly good job. You can have high density, and have environmental laws that protect the environment. It's not clear that density is the issue."

However, as William Rees observes, Dutch agriculture, often cited as one of the most productive and cleanest in the world, actually proves the ecological adage that everything is related. "Economists like to say that Holland has an agricultural surplus, but that's only in dollars," he says. Because the animals eat so much imported feed, "Most of Dutch agriculture takes place outside of Holland. It's quite easy to show that the ecological footprint of Holland is several times larger than the whole national territory."

The overall number of U.S. immigrants each year dwarfs the number entering Australia and Canada. But it's a different story when you consider population: With 7,449 immigrants per million residents each year, Canada's per capita rate is highest. Sources: The Migration Information Source, U.S. Census Bureau, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Statistics Canada.

Voice from down under
To this point, we've been obsessed with population, immigration and environment in the United States. But Canada and Australia have also welcomed large numbers in the past few decades, and they have seen echoes of a similar debate.

Can a voice from Australia, another country that populated its almost wide-open spaces with European immigrants, make sense of the arguments? We emailed some questions to Graeme Hugo, who studies immigration at Adelaide University, and he told us that while immigration, population and consumption all play a role, it can be misleading to focus on one factor.

"Immigration per se does not inevitably cause environmental harm," he wrote. "Having said this, however, I strongly believe that environmental considerations must be incorporated into discussions about the scale of immigration. However, they cannot and must not be the only factor taken into consideration. Immigration policy must be a compromise of economic, social, cultural, political and environmental elements. If we allow purely economic considerations to dominate I believe there is every chance that there can be negative environmental consequences. Equally, to only consider environmental factors will undoubtedly have highly undesirable societal effects. Producing an immigration policy which is in the best interests of the nation can only be done by balancing out environmental, economic, social, cultural and political considerations."

Immigrate over to our immigration bibliography. Visa optional.

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