米国の人口が今月中に３億人を突破しそうであると。昨年の人口増のうち６割近くは移民によるもの。この人口増は先進国の中では例外的。ここでは主に人口増による環境への負荷増大が言及されている。
ところで、日本は既に「米国の５１番目の州」*1というようなことはよくいわれる。しかし、実際に日本が米国の「５１番目の州」になりたいなんて言い出したら、真っ先に反対するのは当の米国人だろうな。何しろ、日本人は最大のエスニック・グループになるわけだし、４億人のうちの１億だから、連邦下院議員の４分の１は〈日本州〉から選出されることになるし、大統領選挙の選挙人の数もかなりのもの、大選挙区であるカリフォルニア以上のものになる。現実的な可能性は殆どないわけだが、もしも米国の州になったら、エスニック・グループとしての日本人の国際社会における発言力は今の数倍にはなるわけだ。勿論、テロに狙われる可能性も、それと同様に、或いはそれ以上に増大するわけだが。
Some See Gloom as U.S. Population Reaches 300 MillionAbid Aslam, OneWorld US
Thu Oct 5, 5:11 PM ETWASHINGTON, D.C., Oct 5 (OneWorld) - The human population of the United States will reach 300 million some time this month amid anxiety over immigration and the environment.
The milestone should be attained around mid-month, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The United States will remain the world's third most populous country after China and India.
The excess of U.S. births over deaths accounted for about 1.7 million new Americans between 2004 and 2005, according to official figures. Another 1 million were added by immigration. Most growth occurred in the South and West.
The government agency plans to issue an announcement for the occasion but commemorations of the scale ordered by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967, when the number of U.S. residents reached 200 million, are not anticipated.
In large measure, that is because immigration has become a politically prickly issue and officials consider it possible that the 300 millionth U.S. resident will be Hispanic and could be an undocumented migrant.
Of course, that person could turn out to be a homespun newborn. Baby food manufacturer Gerber Products Co. appears to have bet on this in launching a promotion heralding the arrival of ''Baby 300.''
The individual's identity likely will never be known, however. Demography is not an exact science and no one tracks each new arrival.
Immigration has stoked marches and counter-demonstrations across the nation by groups on opposing sides of the issue. It has seen the advent of government regulations aimed at quashing church help for needy migrants and the rise of vigilante outfits such as the much-heralded Minutemen.
Since 1967, the foreign-born portion of the U.S. population has grown from around 5 percent to 12 percent, according to census figures. Hispanic women in particular have an average of three children while their counterparts of other ethnicities have only two. As a consequence, almost half of all children younger than five are non-white, according to the Washington, D.C.-based research and advocacy group Population Reference Bureau.
While the benefits and costs of immigration and America's changing ethnic composition have become grist for numerous election campaigns ahead of the November 7 polls, experts also are voicing concern over the environmental impact for the world's only major industrial country with a rapidly growing population.
Wherever we come from, environmentalists say, we end up consuming, discarding, and polluting disproportionately and with ruinous consequences at home and across the globe.
''It's the elephant in the room that everyone recognizes, yet doesn't take seriously,'' said Vicky Markham, director of the New Canaan, Connecticut-based Center for Environment and Population (CEP) and author of a new report on the U.S. population and its environmental impact.
''We've become a super-size metro-nation with a fast growing population, and super-size appetites for housing, land, and resource consumption. This is often overlooked as attention to population factors and their environmental consequences is usually focused outside the nation,'' Markham said.
''Americans need to recognize our population's environmental impacts,'' she added. ''We can't ignore the evidence any longer.''
The United States consumes nearly 25 percent of the world's energy, although it has only 5 percent of the world's population, Markham noted in her report. Americans consume more oil per person than the citizens of any other country and they have come to inflict more harm on the planet than people anywhere else.
With domestic reserves largely depleted, the United States buys increasing amounts of foreign oil, pushing up prices on the world market, said Lester Brown, president of the nonprofit Earth Policy Institute (EPI).
Then there is the garbage. Each American produces about five pounds of trash every day, up from about three pounds in 1960 and five times the rate in developing countries, said the CEP study.
Each American uses three times as much water as the world average, it added.
Industrial, agricultural, and domestic water use is draining the homeland, said Brown.
''The U.S. annual population growth of nearly 3 million contributes to the water shortages that are plaguing the western half of the country and many areas in the East as well,'' he said.
''Water tables are now falling throughout most of the Great Plains and in the U.S. Southwest. Lakes are disappearing and rivers are running dry. It has been years since the Colorado River, the largest river in the U.S. Southwest, reached the Gulf of Mexico,'' Brown added.
As water supplies tighten, the competition between farmers and cities intensifies. The farmers usually lose.
''Scarcely a day goes by in the western United States without another farmer or an entire irrigation district selling their water rights to cities like Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, or San Diego,'' said Brown.
More than half of all Americans now live in cities and suburbs, up from 38 percent in 1970, census figures show.
More land is gobbled up by sprawl than by any other phenomenon as land is plowed under at twice the rate of population growth.
''The United States, with its 226 million motor vehicles, has paved some 4 million miles of roads, enough to circle the Earth at the equator 157 times,'' said Brown.
''For every five cars added to the U.S. fleet, an area the size of a football field is covered with asphalt. More often than not, this land being paved is cropland simply because the flat, well-drained soils that are good for farming are also ideal for building roads and parking lots,'' he said.
''Asphalt is the land's last crop,'' Brown added, quoting fellow environmentalist Rupert Cutler.
Americans are commuting ever farther, spending more time in their cars and spewing more pollution in the process, EPI said. In 2003 alone, traffic congestion caused $63 billion in fuel waste and travel delays.
Brown long has pioneered advocacy of technological and policy initiatives aimed at increasing efficiency and reducing consumption and waste. This month's milestone gave him pause to contemplate whether such measures would suffice.
''Given the negative effects of continuing population growth on our daily lives, it may be time to establish a national population policy,'' Brown said.
''Almost all other industrial countries now have stable or declining populations,'' he added. ''Perhaps it's time for us to stabilize the U.S. population as well, so that we never have to ask whether 400 million Americans is a cause for celebration.''
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