As we cross the threshold of 300 million people and edge ever so little closer to China and India (actually we probably aren’t getting any closer) some are pondering whether that is too many. I guess I don’t really see it as a problem, considering wonderful cities like Cleveland (you can insert your own jokes here) are losing population (just wait til global warming really kicks in, then you’ll come crying back). However arbitrary the number 300 million is, some are scared by the number, including Froma Harrop who writes a syndicated column that for some reason was in this mornings Columbus Dispatch.
Froma doesn’t like it in the least and tends to agree with a group that thinks the ideal number is 150 million, of course with 300 million we can all agree we are polluting too much, but is this really the fault of the numbers or merely are fault for being unable to walk, build better more ecologically sound means of transport?
If you ask the migrant folks living in the plains before Europeans arrived they would likely have agreed with Ms. Harrop that 300 million is too much (they lived in very low population density and thus allowed the land to sustain itself), however they might have also said Columbus and his motley crew were also a few too many. So maybe if they had a column in the time they would have asked Froma’s relatives to stay wherever they came from.
Negative Population Growth (www.npg.org) thinks the optimal number for sustaining a decent quality of life in the United States is 150 million. That is half of what we now have, but in case you think it’s a crazy low figure, consider that the U.S. population was 150 million as recently as the 1950s, which many regard as a golden age of American contentment. (“That’s just too many Americans” By Froma Harrop)
While distancing herself from the statement on the ‘golden age of American contentment’ by saying that ‘many regard’ it as such, I thought that this was about the dumbest line I’ve ever read, as countless historians point out that our views of the 1950s are so skewed by media representations of it as a happy time, considering the social turmoil that was boiling beneath the expanding suburban lifestyles we saw, not to mention that in the 1950s there were ‘whites only’ signs hanging in parts of the country, so much for a golden age… So why harp on Harrop, mainly because I think that she is writing about the wrong problem, the problem is real, I agree, but its not traffic because we have too many people (well it kinda is) but it wouldn’t be a problem if we were saner in our development and didn’t subsidize to death automobiles only to be kicked in the butt by painting ourselves into a dependency corner and needing to be best buddies with represive regimes in the mid-east.
So I say lets congratulate that 300 millionth person, be it an immigrant crossing the Mexican border or a baby whose family has roots going back to the pilgrims.
The idea that 300 million is too much is 100% idiotic. Send a New Yorker or a Clevelander out to Montana, Idaho, eastern Oregon, the Dakotas, or Wyoming and then have them write a column about how we are overcrowded.