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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."
The population of the US may be increasing, but only in certain desirable areas. The "Rust Belt" - cities like Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh - continues to shrink. Pittsburgh alone has lost over HALF of its population from nearly 700,000 in the 1960s to barely over 300,000 today (and not just due to people leaving for the suburbs). If you're willing to tolerate the winters there's plenty of room up here!
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.
Asia has too many, Europe has a decreasing population, America is just right. Whats your secret?
Shit! Quick, go to a school and start a killing spree! It's the only way to keep this thing under control.
Meta will eat itself
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
"The US consumes nearly 25% of the worlds energy though it has only 5 % of the worlds population..." We can do better than that. Thanks to ATI / nVidia and their 1.21 gigawatt next gen GPUs, I'm confident we can shatter this number by next year.
So, while we do, in fact, have a large global consumer footprint, we still, as a nation of plenty, have to capacity to contribute back resources.
Just like the last story, cue the anarcho-capitalists who will ask "Would you rather have it any other way?"
Yeah, they probably will. But would you rather have it any other way?
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
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
"The number of Americans will surpass 300 million this month, a milestone [...] for the only major industrial nation whose population is increasing substantially"
Wrong! Canada (member of the G8, so technically a major industrial nation, even though a little over a tenth the size of the US) is increasing in size faster. More new immigrants settle in Greater Toronto Area every year than any other N. American city, including LA and Miami. Since I first came to Canada 10 years ago, I've seem the population grow from 28 million to 32. The last government was trying to increase the inflow of immigrants. Yes, it's easier to have a higher growth rates on lower numbers, but the impact on things like services (medical, roads, education, etc) and the enviroment are still proportionally higher.
go to war with China (those bastages are taking all the oil we need), we need to increase population to catch up to them...It is all part of the administration's master plan for when Jeb becomes president.
Uh, if nobody uses the energy then the power companies will simply generate less. Thus less usage of natural resources (fossil fuels, etc) and pollution.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
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...
The 5-25% phrase bugs me. It's designed to make the US look wasteful while that's definitely not the case.
i stics/horizontal-file_2006.xls]world population and GDP .xls[/url], the US GDP is 8.2 billion and the world's 38.9 billion. So the US accounts for 21% of global economical output using 25% of energy resources. That's below average and something to think about, but it definitely puts a different perspective on matters.
According to Angus Maddison's [url=http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/Historical_Stat
You make the presumptions that A) what the US is producing is also what it is consuming, and B) globalization is a benefit to all. Neither are knowns.
You think Ethiopians have a need for the energy we have?
Yes.
KFG
People in America are plenty familiar with a kilo. They are smallish bricks that are relatively easy to stash in vehicle cutouts and can be used to negotiate for cash with shady characters at the local strip club.
At least that's what the movies tell me.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
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
Everyone knows that Rhode Island really isn't a state, it just a joke perpetuated by New Englanders on the rest of the country for their own amusement.
New England is really one state, it just gets twelve Senatorial votes and has a particularly byzantine internal tax code.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
When I look at my mother's house, I can think of several things that have lasted over 10 years (my house for instance). My mom's washer and dryer lasted for at least 14 years before being replaced; her refrigerator may be older than I am (it does not even have an ice maker). The two cars that I have driven (hand-me downs from my grandparents) are a 1993 Toyota Camry (which is on its last legs, sadly) and a 1998 Nissan Altima (which is still in good shape). My mom still uses my first TV (a TV/VCR combo that I got when I was seven); however, the vertical sync is off a bit.
Anyway, gadgets did last longer 30-50 years ago, but they were also more expensive. Western Electric phones were designed like tanks because AT&T rented phones (at $5 per month), and it was cheaper to design a long-lasting phone than to constantly replace broken ones. Also, from what I have heard, automobiles are designed so that they do not break down as often as they broke down twenty years ago.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
The US consumes nearly 25% of the worlds energy though it has only 5 % of the worlds population and has the highest per capita oil consumption worldwide.
I really doubt that's true. Not that 25% of the world's energy use takes place in America, but that a good energy accounting system would assign all that use to Americans.
Say what?
What I mean is, America uses more energy per capita in a simple account, but think about what we're using that energy for. At least some of it is going toward production of goods & services for export. Should the energy used to manufacture and ship a computer be assigned to us, or to whoever buys it in another country? I think the latter.
Even taking that into account, I would guess that we still use more per capita. But not 5x as much.
That's a lot of ... poop. By the way, 100 square meters is, drumroll, 10 meters on a side, which is about 35 feet. Assuming you use miracles for infrastructure, that's still not very much room, especially if you want silly things like parks.
Taking you somewhat less literally, we get most of our fresh water from nature at the moment. Oxygen too. Those things are quite a bit more important than physical space. If you choose to take E.O. Wilson seriously, read "The Future Of Life". He puts the carrying capacity of the earth at somewhere less than 20 Billion people. Comfortable at less than that.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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."
According to Nation Master, who gets there information from the CIA fact book, the USA is 17th in oil consumption per capita.
Interesting to note: Luxembourg is number 7 and most of the largest consumers per capita are Island Nations.
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)
the US gov't is far from welcoming the tired, poor and huddled masses anymore.
And we never did.
The whole "give us your tired, your sick" crap was just that, crap. The U.S. has never been particularly interested in taking refugees; exceptions to this are just that -- exceptions -- and not the rule.
I don't know what drives this constant temptation to embellish the past, but it wasn't this wonderful place of sunshine and light. Most of the people who were allowed to immigrate into the United States throughout its history weren't allowed in out of some sort of self-righteous pity, but because they were needed in order to meet the demand for labor. Lots of sick people got sent right back on the boats they came over on, and even if you were young and healthy, you still had to have someone willing to vouch for you here in the States before you were allowed in.
We need to stop deluding ourselves about our past immigration policies. While they may have ended up being more liberal than the rest of the Western world's at the time, that was only because Europe had more people than it knew what to do with, and the U.S. was starved for labor and people to tame the new lands it was in the midst of acquiring. As a nation we needed more people, and as a result we became more welcoming; the latter was a response to the former, not the other way around.
The needs of the United States have always been the driving force in our immigration policy historically; if it worked out well for the immigrants then all the better for them. It's mostly after the fact that people have congratulated themselves for being so high-minded.
Now it's disappointing to me as an American that our immigration process wasn't easier for your wife, who I am assuming is probably educated and employable -- in short, exactly the type of people we need to be encouraging to come here. However, I don't think that as a nation we should be guilt-tripping ourselves into rolling out a red carpet to everyone who needs a place to live, particularly to those without skills, for whom there is little demand today and less so in the future; we have never engaged in this historically, and there's no reason to start now.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.
And with it's roughly 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
WRONG
World GDP = 60,000 Bn
US GDP = 12,000 Bn
Share of US in World GDP : 20%
Amazingly enough, the US are less energy efficient than the RoW.
If you're looking for an exceptionally efficient economy, try the EU.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Would somebody PLEASE change that wiki article to make the US look better?!?!
:%s:work:/.:g
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.
We're Americans, we measure our trash output in pounds, not kilograms. The metric system is for those snooty Europeans.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
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