Eminent demographer Joel Cohen’s important book entitled “How Many People Can the Earth Support?” sheds light on the problem of world population growth and by extrapolation on our own corner of planet earth. Cohen writes, “… I will not try to persuade you that the world will end in the next ten years unless everybody changes to a diet of soybeans and contraceptive pills, or that a universal diet of soybeans and contraceptive pills would eliminate hunger, disease, violence, ignorance and poverty…. But I will try to persuade you that the world cannot easily and comfortably accommodate an unlimited number of people at any desirable level of material, mental and civic well-being.” Similarly, I will not try to convince you that the United States cannot support any more people but I will try to convince you that unfettered population growth is self-defeating and in the long run will compromise our standard of living and quality of life.

We all know that natural resources are finite.  It follows that if one divides finite natural resources by an ever- increasing population, the inevitable result is less for everyone.  Petroleum is one such natural resource.  Hubbert’s Law predicts that once you extract half the oil from a given field, production begins to decline.  In spite of improvements in extraction techniques and efficiencies, that law proved to be astonishingly accurate in the case of U.S. oil fields. Except for a temporary small increase when the Alaskan North Slope oil began to flow, U.S. petroleum production has been in decline since 1971.  Over the first 32 years since reaching that peak, U.S. production has declined by more than 41%.  World production per capita has also peaked.  In a complex, petroleum-dependent society like ours, this is one of the defining problems of this century.  It can be addressed through the vigorous development of new energy sources, energy conservation and population stabilization.

According to the Census Bureau, our population is projected to grow from 275 million in 2000 to 404 million by 2050 and 571 million by 2100.  The fertility rate of American women is about 2.03, just enough to replace our population.  Therefore, all of the projected population growth to 2050 and beyond is attributable entirely to visas, legal immigrants, illegal aliens and their progeny.  Women of Mexican origin have nearly twice as many children as non-Hispanic white women. Roughly half of the growth between now and mid-century will be due to the Hispanics already here and those flooding through our porous borders.  They like to make babies but do not seem to comprehend that this will ultimately re-create the very conditions they left their homelands to escape – poverty, joblessness, crime, and disease.  It will ultimately condemn their children and their childrens’ children to a life not unlike the life their ancestors lived in Mexico and perhaps a government as corrupt as the Mexican government.

The message is clear:   curb population growth or face a future of diminishing returns, a lower standard of living, and a compromised quality of life.