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US Population to Top 300 Million
An anonymous reader writes "The number of Americans will surpass 300 million this month, a milestone that raises environmental impact questions for the only major industrial nation whose population is increasing substantially. The US census bureau says the 300 million mark will be reached 39 years after US population topped 200 million and 91 years after it exceeded 100 million. That makes US the third most populous country behind china and india. It is noteworthy that sheer number of human beings do not necessarily have the heaviest impact on the environment. Instead environmental impact is a calculation that involves population, affluence and technology. The US consumes nearly 25% of the world's energy though it has only 5% of the world's population and has the highest per capita oil consumption worldwide. Each American produces about 2.3 kg of trash a day, a rate about 5 times that in developing countries."
Americans aren't pumping out puppies, it's that we welcome people looking for a better life. So lay off the environmental left wing crap, those people would be somewhere creating pollution.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
Maybe if we adopted stringent population controls like china did, we'd be better off.
Except, according to TFA, a full 40% of the US population growth is due to immigration (legal and illegal).
- Tony
So the hispanics, whose population growth rate was over triple that of the general population last I checked, are all living in desirable areas?
A large part of the growth of the US population is from the large amount of immigration the US has, both legal and not legal. Also, the OP stated that they compared the per capita usage to developing countries, not industrialized countries. It sounds like someone's cherry picking stats to make it sound bigger than it is.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
I found this US Census page, but I can't find the "live" moving clock. It seems, to me at least, that a 1% yearly growth in population isn't really anything to be alarmed about. In fact, if you look at population density, our population density is less than average: 31 people per km compared to the world average of 48 km. That's less than 10% of the density in Japan or India. Some European countries are way up there as well. Germany and the UK both have more than 200 people per km. Even without Alaska, we're still only at about 37 people per km.
If we had Germany's population density, the US would have 2.2 billion people (and still only about 400 interested in the World Cup).
The question isn't about density, as it is about resources and the ecological footprint that Americans have. We're terribly, awfully wasteful. If we all became more conscious about resource use, in twenty years, even with 360 million people, we could use less resources then than we use today. At that point, the economic benefits of population (and immigration) outweigh the other costs.
I'd be a lot more worried if we've maxed out our resource use efficiency and there was simply no way to improve. No, we've got a lot of improvements we can do. If we follow through with them, US population growth won't be a problem in the next century.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
It would be one thing if the US had accumulated its wealth in fair and equal competition with the rest of the world. But I doubt anyone would claim that to be true...
But do you also know where the American agricultural products are exported to? Do you know how many Africans cant sell their agricultural products, because of the low priced (with subsidies!) American products?
How much of that low-cost is due to subsidising? How does the US stack up against developing countries pre-subsidy? I'd like a figure please.
More to the point, do you have any idea what impact subsidising your food exports has on the global economy? Specifically, have you got a clue just how badly fucked the third-world, agriculture-based economies are thanks to your heroic efforts to get rid of this food that your farmers are overproducing so they can reap the benefits of such a heavily manipulated market?
You may not be sucking up other nations' resources in this regard, but you are destroying their ability to be economically profitable and competitive. The thing is, economically speaking it doesn't make much difference to the US - just a few less wasted fields here or there, a marginally improved national deficit figure - but to the countries who rely on food export to maintain any kind of currency in the global market, it is everything. Still, as long as nothing inconveniences the honest 'Merkin, yes?
Meta will eat itself
America has a disposable culture. Even things that are made to last for more than one use have a limited lifespan. Things are not engineered to last, and are cheap enough to replace rather than repair. Durable goods used to be things that were expected to be last for at least 10 years. This included cars and refrigerators. Over time the definition of durable goods has changed so that they are only good for 3 years, and only includes cars.
Even our cars are pretty much designed to fall apart after 3 years of regular use. How can American's not be leaders in producing trash in this kind of environment. Only good note is my mother in the law is a packrat and has not thrown hardly anything away for the last 30+ years. But I guess she is just a minor rounding error on the average.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Thing is, Funny is both a) subjective and b) unrelated to "tasteful" (well, inversely related if anything). I don't mind being modded down - that's what the system's for - but your statement that "it isn't funny" means that you didn't find it funny. Clearly at least 3 other people did at the time, which is what humour is about - timing. The following Troll/Flamebait mods only appeared after you sulked and wept your heart out.
I can appreciate it wasn't funny to you - yes, it was tasteless - but I knew people who were badly affected by the London bombings and who that very night were making jokes about it. Partly it was a coping mechanism, but partly it was just that some people like edgy humour and prefer to distance themselves from tragedy with levity. In some ways it's a way of confronting tragedy head-on. Iodine for the wound, as it were. I've no doubt you would have found those jokes as funny as they and I did. You might have felt slightly uneasy about it, but it was that ability to laugh, to shrug it off, at least to be pragmatic, that stopped everyone from going bug-fuck paranoid and bitter at the time, and which allowed London to get on with its life instead of doing exactly what the terrorists wanted - freaking out.
Sorry if I offended you. However, your knee-jerk reply suggests that you aren't well equipped to deal with the stings and blows that everyone experiences in life. Still, it is interesting how quickly the mod-tide turned...
Meta will eat itself
An insignificant amount. Now airconditioning in every american home consumes _a lot_ of power.
The big problem in "starving Africa" is not food, but war, corrupt government and diverted distribution. Africa is materially capable of self-sufficiency, but corruption and fighting always prevent the aid and resources from reaching those who most need it. I have hear first-hand stories of how import shipments of good grain, after a mysterious week's delay somehow end up arriving in port half their expected size and full of vermin and rot - and, curiously, of the same variety that the importing country was supposed to be shipping out.
And one of the main reasons for constant war and corruption? Manipulation of the global market through subsidy, sanctions and ridiculous demands by the western-led IMF & World Bank. Like it or not, we as a culture are pretty much directly responsible for all of the shit that's going on in Africa.
I've seen whole essays on this, and it's too depressing for me to go into any more detail.
Meta will eat itself
I don't know where you were, but I think you're vastly overstating the durability of previous-generation automobiles and appliances.
Cars today are far more reliable than cars were 40 or 50 years ago. You can take pretty much any car today, and expect to get 100,000 miles out of it, properly maintained. This is not just Japanese cars, most domestic cars will last this long too. A whole lot of cars didn't used to have odometers that even went beyond 100k; it was just assumed that it would be scrapped by that point. Plus, they're more efficient, safer, and cost less in real-dollar terms. Not to mention a lower defect rate and less production waste. In short, you get a lot more for your dollar when you purchase a 2006 automobile than its 1956 equivalent.
Maintainance statistics on refrigerators I don't have as readily, but I'm willing to bet that you're viewing the past with some rose-colored glasses there, too. Most major appliances today will easily last ten years, in fact I'll bet that more of them are thrown away because they're no longer stylish, than because they actually break.
There are certain legitimate criticisms of the way a lot of mechancial devices are currently designed (sealed units, difficult to repair), however the upshot of this is that they're both more reliable, require less maintainance (when's the last time you had to have the coolant in your fridge topped off?), and far less expensive than they were in the past.
The reason you don't see very many older cars on American roads is not because they all die, but because we as a whole, don't like to drive them. Rather than driving them until they're actually at the end of their mechanical life, they either get sold to other countries (Mexico imports tons of used cars from the U.S.), or are cut up for parts or scrap rather than being reparied after some non-fatal damage. I suspect that in any major U.S. junkyard, you could very quickly put together enough parts to have a working automobile; it's simply not worth the labor for a skilled mechanic to do so. In other countries, or in the U.S. in the past under different economic conditions, this wouldn't be allowed to happen.
There are lots of things I'm nostalgic about the past for, but I have no illusions about the strides we've made in product engineering over the interim. That we've taken those engineering gains and used them to create a disposable culture is a social, not technological, problem.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Days of major terrorist attacks in New York: 1, ever.
Number of major earthquakes on the West Coast: about 5 or 6 in the past century, spread out from California to Alaska.
Percentage of years in which Buffalo, New York has freeze-your-ass-off winters: 100.
What an artfully cherry-picked bunch of statistics!
That makes US the third most populous country behind china and india.
True, as far as it goes, but those countries are 3-4 times larger.
Instead environmental impact is a calculation that involves population, affluence and technology.
Population density is worth at least a mention, no?
Each american produces about 2.3 kg of trash a day, the current rate is about 5 times that in developing countries.
Since the US produces more waste per person than any country in the world, why set up the comparison against developing countries? The US produces more than twice the trash per person of the more efficient industrialized nations. Isn't that trouble enough?
US environmental impact is an important problem that shouldn't be undermined by spinning the statistics. The reality of the problem is more than bad enough.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Well, no, you produce a LOWER percentage of the world's goods.y _-_overview), and, as you said, you consume 25-30% of all resources.
USA produces approx. 21% of the Gross World Product (for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy#Econom
So your efficiency is below average.
I have long pondered where under the sun man should live and this answer was revealed to me: God meant for man to live where he can grow grapes.
It's that simple, really. If the grapes like the climate, so will we. And, if not, at least we will have wine.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
In fact there may be so little there, that there isn't an underground water supply to sustain a human civilization. There are reasons people tend to live next to rivers, and oceans. They need something to pee into.
Oh You POS
Really? Then why was the balance of payments deficit for goods for 2005 a record $782 billion? The last time the United States had a positive balance of payments was in 1973, and the deficit has been on an almost steady increase for the past two decades. Read the figures published by the Census Bureau (warning PDF link), or if you prefer, a a graph from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. With these figures, the only reason why the United States hasn't yet suffered an Argentina-style economic collapse is that other countries keep buying up US debt...
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Yes, and my ancestors started coming over here in the 1870s. They worked hard and were discriminated against.
And here in California, there is fruit rotting in the fields because border tightening has cut the supply of farm workers.
So you out of work IT folks, get out there and pick lettuce, corn, tomatoes and pears!
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
The EU is now what 'these united States of America' (note the lower-case u in united and 'these' instead of the) was before the civil war. States used to be as distinct and seperate here as the EU countries are now; and the federal government had much less influence, concerning itself primarily with matters like the treasury and common defense.
~Rebecca