As we celebrate the 100th birthday of the National Park Service, and applaud it for helping families create memories in beautiful parks all over the United States, it’s hard not to worry and wonder how many birthdays the National Park Service has left.
With immigration levels causing the US population to skyrocket, open land and space is becoming sparse. As populations grow, they inevitably expand into surrounding ecosystems and areas. This becomes a problem when the population growth exceeds the resources available.
Growing population means higher consumption of everything, including land, water, carbon fuel, and species’ habitats. As the United States continues to accept millions of new immigrants annually, farmland, forests, and other open spaces are being developed at more than double the rate they were in the 1990s. Eventually, there won’t be any more space to spread out, and our national parks could be compromised.
Without any immigration, the U.S. population would grow from today’s 318 million to 362 million by 2050 – an increase of 44 million people. If the immigration trends of today continue, by 2050 the population will grow to be 438 million – an increase of 120 million.
Millions of acres of farmland are developed each year due to housing needs for our growing population. This comes at the expense of natural resources, species habitat’s, and the quality of life American see today.
The National Park Service lists air quality as a significant threat to the environmental health of their parks as well. As people continue to flood into the United States, pollution levels rise and the quality of the parks suffer.
National Geographic sites adjacent development as one of the top major threats to our national park system. Even if our parks remain untouched, what happens on a park’s borders can dramatically impact the environment and ecosystem inside the park itself. Mining, clear-cut lumbering, and other developments are typically prohibited inside parks, but still pose a threat to water quality, clean air, and other aspects of the park environment.
Thomas Kiernan, president of the National Parks Conservation Association, says encroaching real estate development and road construction are threatening the park system. As the population continues to rise, the need for housing and infrastructure will too.
It’s impossible to not look at immigration as a major issue for our environment. Those who ignore the impacts mass immigration into the United States are either deluding themselves, or shying away from a controversial topic they don’t understand.
Happy 100th birthday National Park Service! Here’s hoping we can put a stop to the mass unchecked illegal immigration, and continue to celebrate your contribution to the country for hundreds of years to come.
8 Comments
Ken Burns did a great TV series on national parks, but I had to stop listening to his audiobook – he kept spewing the blame-America-first line. Whites mistreated Native Americans, but many Native Americans kidnapped and tortured white men, women and children. Whites “won” in the end, but I do everything I can to treat all people fairly, and so do many other white Americans. In researching a government program, I found many accommodations to Native Americans passed by Congress. Americans alive today should not be expected to make up all wrongdoing of previous Americans. My grandparents didn’t even arrive in the U.S. until the early 1900’s.
The Good News on World Overpopulation?
Zika mosquito?
Just look at where the city of San Francisco gets its water, a city that makes a big deal about how much it cares about the environment but is for open borders and is a sanctuary city for illegal aliens. San Francisco gets its water from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, created in the early 20th century when Yosemite National Park’s Hetch Hetchy Valley was dammed to provide water for San Francisco. John Muir loved Hetch Hetchy Valley, it was comparable in its natural beauty to Yosemite Valley before San Francisco destroyed one of the natural wonders of the world for its water supply.
The Sierra Club wants to restore Hetch Hetchy to its natural state, but they support our current levels of mass immigration which is rapidly increasing our population, so how can they possibly think this is feasible if current trends continue?
And all the phony so-called environmentalists in San Francisco continue their support of open borders while they drink and bathe in the water made available to them by the destruction of one of the natural wonders of the world. But then reducing immigration would reduce the number of voters for the Democrats, and make them like those racist Trump voters.
Destroying John Muir’s beloved Hetch Hetchy Valley is a small price to pay to be able to continue to socialize among the enlightened ones who shop at Whole Foods, attend Yoga classes, etc. If they publicly came out for lower immigration and population growth they might as well wear a “Make America Great Again” hat and start going to NASCAR races.
I saw a story by a reporter for radio station KGO in San Francisco who said she was “intentionally homeless” in 2015 because she and her boyfriend could not even afford the rent on a one bedroom apartment. She said she hopes the city can one day provide “affordable options” for the average person. I’m sure she has never one time considered that the flood of immigrants into that city and others is a big part of the problem, just like New York. There’s only so much land in that city, and so much housing. You can either build up, which few want, or you can pay more and more. Or you could cut out the people coming from overseas, but that’s forbidden to be discussed.
Have you noticed when Hillary is way ahead in the polls all the news sources emphasize it, but when Trump does well it’s the sounds of silence. He just took a slight lead over her in a LA Times nationwide poll and there’s almost nothing about it.
SecBorders, great point about becoming socially ostracized. It’s probably a VERY big thing. Humane and logical people MUST see that we have too many immigrants pouring in and having babies. Yet, social STIGMA keeps them silent. For example, a few years ago, some people were gathering signatures for the Save Our LIcense initiative in CA (to not allow drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants). In a newspaper article, the person getting signatures in Marin County only did it among friends, saying that it was pointless to sit outside Whole Foods and get into arguments. The person getting signatures in Sonoma County refused to be identified in the article. Unfortunately, social stigma is powerful and can lead to job loss and other really bad things. A very fair and humane person who could show how opposing mass immigration isn’t racist is often not
given a chance.
It used to be that racism was more defined as supporting overt racial discrimination such as the Jim Crow laws. Now, it has been twisted into if you want limits on the number of foreign citizens who can move here, which our country has had for most of its history, many will consider you a racist even though you are 100 percent opposed to any laws that discriminate against anyone by race in this country.
Our country’s population is around 320 million and is headed towards 400 million and beyond, although we will probably go bankrupt long before we reach 400 million so there won’t be the same appeal for people to move here. Americans of all races will suffer from the deterioration in the quality of life, environmental destruction, national bankruptcy, joblessness, and declining standard of living that is our bleak future if current trends continue.
All anyone has to do is look at what life is like for most people living in China and India, which each have over a billion people. Why do we want to replicate this kind of hell here?
We are not even discussing an issue that is of the most vital importance to this country. An increasing population only hurts us. Yet the mainstream media is virtually silent on the question. We have Hillary, in the middle of a campaign for the president of this country, and she has yet to hold a formal press conference THIS YEAR. She goes on friendly talk shows for softball questions but refuses to take real questions.
Does anyone think this issue is even going to be raised at the debates? Of course not, because the networks don’t want to be called “nativist” or “racist”. Might affect advertising money. We don’t have a free press, we have a corporate press.
In 1993, the first year of the Clinton administration, we had 257 million people. Now we have 323 million, an increase of 66 million people in 23 years. Why does no reporter ask when is enough enough? Where are all the environmental organizations? Oh, that’s right, the Sierra Club was paid off by a wealthy donor to not take a position on immigration.
In the early 1970s, the Rockefeller Commission on Population Growth, when immigration was a quarter of now, recommended that we stabilize our population at the then level of 205 million. Our descendants are going to ask how did we let this happen.
I agree that we need to stabilize the population. The truth is both parties over the last forty years have continued to let immigration run wild. But the Republican party wants to get rid of planned parenthood which enables people especially the poor keep their birthrate down.