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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."
Actually, the population of America is more like 858,000,000. The population of the USA, however...
Meta will eat itself
"Each american produces about 2.3 kg of trash a day"
Smart move. Use a unit that almost no one in america is familair with. Next you can talk about the gas "mileage" of american cars in meters. Yeah, say bob gets 16,093 meters off a gallon of gas. 16 fucking 093 meters, thats some eco-friendly car bob has isnt it?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Is this 300 million with or without undocumented, er, illegal, er, visiting, um, whoever they are.
In a less trollish tone, maybe we have 300 million residents because, since the 1970s, 50 million people from all around the world decided the US was a cool place to live, and practically climbed over one another to get here.
Anyway, once China gets serious about ridding the world of fossil fuel, we in the US will seem like a nation of effete greenies.
>>>"25% usage of the world's energy supplies (including oil) what does the US do with it? Create an even greater percentage of the world's goods"
Last time I checked, just about everything in America is made in China.
And I also think a large proportion the US energy is used to power those mobility chairs the morbidly obese people use.
(Before you mark it troll, are you doing so just because you are an American and you cant take criticism mixed with a bit of sarcasm?)
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Nary a word about the real fact that the long-term birthrate in the U.S., helped by immigration, is just barely at the replacement level, meaning our baby boom will be able to retire without Social Security going bust--if we get medical costs under control. Not a word about all the good the U.S. does in the world while most Europeans pick their noses and whine.
And there's no indication that this cluesless ideologue is aware of a major crisis that is undeniable--the well-below replacement birthrates of Europeans that's driving the immigration into Europe of millions of people who don't integrate into European or democratic culture and who live off the generosity of socialist, welfare state economies, rioting to beat the boredom, as they did in Paris a few days ago. Europeans aren't having babies and their largest economies--France and Germany--are stalled at double-digit unemployment rates and morbid growth rates in productivity. How are they going to pay for the declining years of their aging and spoiled populations? How are they going to keep from coming under Sharia Law when their countries become more that 50% Muslim? No one knows and, more telling, virtually no one in European politics seems to be looking for an answer. Better to bash the U.S. and whine about microscopic quantities of lead or some other 'toxic' chemical in those U.S.-designed iPods.
It's called tranference when someone whose mind isn't particularly strong transfers his attention from a real danger to a fake danger that feels more comfortable. Hysteria about those fake dangers and demonization of their alleged cause are the most obvious clues. From the 1870s to 1940s, the demon of frightened European minds was the Jew. Today it's the U.S. with Israel, filled not accidentally with Jews, thrown in for nostaglia's sake. It is oh-so comforting for these weak minds to feel that all the world's ills could be solved if two of the world's most stable democracies and most productive economies could be reduced to Western European levels of impotence and incompetence. But that isn't going to happen. And baring some miracle, Europe's real problems, left unfaced, with evenutally destroy it. If Europe's cultural treasures survive, it will be because the U.S. persuades this Taliban-to-come to sell them to us rather than destroy them.
If Cmdr Taco really thinks the United States is so awful, he should pack his toothbrush, a change of underwear, and his laptop and move to some country that better suits his ill-tempered ideology. But he'd be well advised to look at their violent crime rates before he moves to some European cities. And in any case, please spare us these mindless rants.
As I have said before, SlashDot would be a lot more interesting and useful if it wasn't so obvious that the gatekeepers do their best slant and spin what gets posted to fit their political correct agendas.
--Mike Perry, Seattle
Which was the part of your brain that made this statement seem like anything other than horrifically ignorant and offensive racism? Cause you might want to have that bit checked out.
This is why I think immigration from Mexico should be specifically forbidden. The whole reason Mexico is such a dump is because of their corrupt government. If all these unemployed, dissatisfied people were forced to stay there, maybe they'd finally rise up and do something about their corrupt government instead of just running away from the problem. Then with a decent government, they'd get an expanding economy with lower unemployment, all the Mexicans who prefer Mexican culture would move back there, and everyone would be happy on both sides of the border.