The United States has now topped a population of 300 million people. The news has been full of talk about America's resources, immigration, and changing demographics. The reliably sensational news sources have been reporting these issues out of the proper context.
A couple days ago, CNN's Anderson Cooper interviewed CNN's Lou Dobbs, the author of War on the Middle Class. Mr. Dobbs postulated the future of the United States, feeding a greater number of people, and the use of our precious resources. When compared to China, though, many of his arguments seem much less pressing.
Lou Dobbs mentioned the question many citizens of United States have brought up before. Indeed, since I was in junior high school, I remember this same question from the mouth of teachers: what population can the United States sustain?
Before we start our Mars settlement program, we should look at the comparitive size of the United States and China. They are almost exactly the same. China somehow feeds four times the population, though. Not only that, but America has more arable land (18% vs. China's 15%, according to the CIA World FactBook). You want to talk about issues? Talk about India.
Can we feed 300 million people and more? Yes. It would actually be cheaper to feed them instead of continuing the government subsidies paying farmers to leave their land idle.
I know it is not that simple. But in a way, it really is. We start using our global economic vocabluary to enable us to worry about a problem that is far from reality. Maybe Americans could use a little tighter budget on food.
Another topic Lou Dobbs brought up was our most precious resource: not oil, but water. He gave some statistics on water shortages and the difficulty of providing water for the current population, but I have always thought the statistics on water were a little skewed.
I remember reading a National Geographic article on water, the Earth's diminishing resource. I seem to remember my science class teaching me that water cannot disappear, but stays in a cycle. Not only that, but I remember thinking, if this is all true, our globe is going to grind to a halt within ten years. Well, we are past ten years since that article, and things seem fine.
This is a personal theory, because it is hard to find anybody willing to step up and really explain what they mean: I think they are talking about drinkable water. Now, to put this all in context, the water that flushes my toilet in the United States is cleaner than the water coming from the tap in China. Does that mean the world is about to end? No.
That just means that you have to clean it yourself! Forbid. (Or pay the water delivery folks to do so.) The United States and many other countries have excellent water purification systems, but just because there is a precious small amount of water in the world that has gone through such systems does not mean that we are going to run out of water. If water were that precious, the United States would stop using expensively treated water to flush waste to the sewers. Hong Kong uses sea water to flush toilets, though, that is cheating, because that requires them to have two completely independent water systems and Hong Kong is conveniently surrounded by sea.
Yes, water is precious and many places in the United States may not be able to sustain the predicted growth. Texas, my home state, was just such a place when the settlers arrived. Hundreds of resevoirs made Texas the (mostly) livable place it is today.
These are issues to talk through, but I think news sources should be more wary of dumping the "facts" on the public without proper explanation. We turn people against immigrants because of our unfounded fears of the lack of food and water. Immigration is a difficult issue, but I do not think we can logically use lack of food and water as a legitimate excuse against our fellow man. There may be other issues...but not this one, not yet.
p.s.
I hesitantly use the word "American" and "America" when speaking of the United States of such. What of all the other people and countries in the Americas: Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Cuba, and others? Unfortunately, it is in common usage. With a smile, I suggest the more appropriate "United Stations" instead of American. If the United States of America was not just a description and actually had a name, we would not have this problem. I just want to apologize to my fellow Americans of the greater Americas for the improper usage of these terms.
