When Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich published population bomb In 1968, he predicted that widespread famine and death would be inevitable in the 1970s. That decade—and many years since—proved Ehrlich wrong.But that didn’t stop him from warning of another impending disaster on Sunday 60 minutes appearance, claim “The next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.”
The phrase has long been popular with left-wing environmentalists, although evidence From the opposite side. Anti-immigration groups and politicians have also continually echoed Ehrlich’s worldview. Western countries should reduce the number of immigrants they accept, they say, or face increased pollution from environmental degradation and the inevitable arrival of immigrants from poorer countries.
Two prominent environmental lawsuits lean toward this logic. August, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruling That Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform (MCIR) v. Department of Homeland Security can continue. The lawsuit, filed by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), alleges that the Biden administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 by failing to conduct an environmental analysis before ending several of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich made the same argument in an April 2021 report Suit against the Biden administration. “Population growth has a major impact on the environment,” says a Press release In the lawsuit, however, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “and other federal officials did not provide an environmental impact statement or environmental assessment when DHS abruptly halted ongoing construction of the border wall” and proceeded to end Trump’s “Remain” campaign. “Policy that allows more immigrants to enter the country in Mexico” policy.
These ideas have also found support in Congress. March 2021, Reps. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) claim In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorcas, “Reducing illegal border crossings protects our border environment.” They cite research by CIS researchers to build their case.
Ehrlich’s worldview is central to CIS and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), two organizations at the forefront of anti-immigration environmentalism.Both push for sharp reductions in legal and illegal immigration, often quote to worry about About overexploitation and pollution.they are set up John Tanton, an ophthalmologist with restrictionist views on immigration include A concern for the environment — and a passion for eugenics and racial quotas. “While fertility rates are down, he sees new threats emerging,” he said. New York Times contour tanton. “Immigration rates are soaring.”
“Tanton formed his belief in population control through the writings of anti-birth zealots such as Garrett Harding and Paul Ehrlich in the 1960s,” said Jason Reilly, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute wrote for wall street journal. 1970s, Tanton replace As chair of Zero Population Growth, a pro-population control group founded by Ehrlich.
Ehrlich is a “long-time FAIR consultant,” according to Southern Poverty Law Center, and service on the board of FAIR (although he give up Year 2003). “Quick implementation [zero population growth]”, he and his co-authors wrote for Population and Environment In 1995, “supplementary restrictions on immigration will be required”. Immigrants, they claim, become “super consumers that exacerbate local and global environmental degradation”; They “have long been champions of diversity,” but they wondered “whether the American political system can hold its own without shutting down.”
But this is the wrong way to think about immigration and the environment.according to Research Places with more foreign-born populations tend to have better air quality because immigrants tend to “use less energy, drive less and generate less waste,” said Michigan sociologist Guizhen Ma. Immigrants are also more likely than native-born Americans to work in “jobs that directly benefit the environment or make their businesses more environmentally friendly,” according to 2021 data from George Mason University Research. Migrants mainly settle in urban areas, contradictory Claiming they contribute to the overdevelopment of pristine land.
according to arrive reasonRon Bailey, “Current trends in agricultural productivity, population, urbanization and dematerialization may negate [Ehrlich’s] Omens of extinction and predictions of civilizational collapse. This is because “over the course of this century, increasingly wealthy and skilled humans will withdraw from nature.” “Just as an increase in the birth rate will lead to more ideas and help solve pressing environmental problems, so will immigration.
It should come as no surprise that a misanthropic worldview can develop in a xenophobic direction. However, the realities of immigration and the environment should provide another reason to be skeptical of Ehrlich’s predictions and what might be done to prevent them from becoming a reality.
