US environmentalist takes equivocal stance on immigration in Lou Dobbs interview

Lou Dobbs interview on US population explosion

The following transcript is instructive for its revelation of the globalist mentality of mainstream environmentalism. In this case represented by Robert Engelman of Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org). Engelman, the good environmentalist that he is, takes the safe, easy way out. He opposes population growth alright. On a global front. The Worldwatch Institute says it's a bad thing and Engelman has written a book saying all the politically correct things. You know, "Women don't want more children, they want more for their children", so let's empower women. Fine.

It's when you start talking about population growth at home that environmentalists get nervous. And as soon as you mention "immigration", they get more than nervous, they get a panic attack. They start thinking about losing their donor base, especially that donor whose initials are D.G. and who gives $100 million every year on condition you don't take a stand on immigration. If you press them too hard and win the argument, well then you are a racist and the discussion is over.

What do folks like Engelman do? As you will see in the transcript, he blames the population increase on more people having babies. Environmentalists are very comfortable about discussing a "woman's right to choose" but apparently not a whole people's right choose how many shall become citizens. What Engelman doesn't want to face up to is that the fertility boom America is experiencing is driven by immigrants. And even if it wasn't, isn't there something perverse about an environmental movement that a)ignores population growth as an agency of environmental degradation and b) ignores immigration as an agency of population growth when in Canada and the US it accounts for 70% of such growth, irrespective of the children of immigrants?

The environmental movement can be likened to a police force that sets up a road block to arrest drunk drivers but allows the drug impaired to drive on through. It is prepared to arrest unwanted pregnancies but mass and illegal immigration can just drive on through.

The transcript was circulated by Bill Ryerson. I highlighted the juicy parts and inserted some annoying comments. Tim Murray

This is the transcript from Lou Dobbs' CNN program segment on U.S. population growth broadcast on August 21, 2008. For the entire program, see transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0808/21/ldt.01.html. Be sure to send Lou Dobbs your comments on the program and encourage him to do more programs on population issues at loudobbs [AT] cnn com .

Dobbs: The population of this country is expected to grow, get ready, by 135 million people in just the next 40 years. That growth is driven principally by immigration, both legal and illegal, and not by birth. There are serious concerns whether this country's national resources can keep up with and support such an outright explosion in our population.

Joining me now are three experts on population growth. From Washington, D.C., Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute (www.aei.org). Norm, great to have you with us. Norm is co-author of "The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get it Back on Track."

Robert Engelman is vice president for programs at the Worldwatch Institute. Good to have you with us. Robert is the author of "More: Population, Nature and What Women Want."

And that is one of my favorite titles. And here in New York is Jane Delung, president emeritus of the Population Resource Center (www.prcdc.org). Great to have you with us.

Let's begin. We're talking about an outright explosion. Almost 50 percent increase in our population over the course of the next four or five decades. That's crazy.

Jane Delung, President Emeritus, Population Resource Center: It is an explosion. For every two people that are in the United States today, there will be a third person. And this explosion is occurring both because of immigration and descendants to immigration. All respective experts say that it's between 60 and 75 percent of that growth will be driven by immigration. No one talks about this.

This is the hidden elephant in the room in the United States. We will have immigration reform discussions and debates next year. And it is beyond me why the American public is not willing to talk about what size do we want to be and how fast are we going to get there? We're growing from 300 million people to almost 450 million people in 40 years. Three million additional people a year.

Dobbs: That's incredible. To put that in some context, that growth rate is in excess of 10, 15 percent greater number than the entire number of people living in this country in 1940. That's nuts.

Delung: It's double the population in the 1960s. We hit 200 million in 1967. We're going to hit 450 million in 2040. It's an extraordinary growth rate.

Dobbs: Robert, let me ask you this. The environmental impact -- at a time when this country is being criticized for consuming so much of the world's resources. At a time when we are finding ourselves running into limits in terms of this country's resources whether it be for building, for the production and manufacture of products and goods, whatever it may be, what is the environmental impact?

Robert Engelman, Worldwatch Institute: Well, first of all, it's probably worth pointing out that these projections sometimes change. This is actually an increase in what the census was projecting just a few years ago. Probably more because of increases in births than actual increases in immigration. (Nonsense! What Engelman fails to note is that much of the current baby boom is attributable to illegal Hispanics exploiting the 14th amendment that allows citizenship to anyone born in the country. "Anchor babies". Hispanics in the US are having more children than they did in their home country. Population growth is driven by immigration. Other factors are peripheral.-Tim)

But let's assume the number is more or less accurate, it's going to be fairly close to that. It's interesting that this discussion is occurring at a time when everyone from President Bush on down has recognized that one of the reasons Americans are paying more for gasoline, more for food, is increases in demand. Demand matters and we're starting to lose confidence that I think we used to have that we can always produce more, we can always find more of everything we might need, so it doesn't matter how many people are consuming.

It clearly does matter and what we're seeing in America is a high consuming country that will need to consume about 50 percent more of the energy of housing. Whether it's John McCain's numbers or our own individual houses. We're going to be consuming more living space and more transportation. All of these things that we're worried about right now will need to find a lot more of.

Dobbs: So where is - where are the environmentalists on this? The impact is tremendous on the environment, on water supplies, on air. It's extraordinary and we're not hearing any discussion at all of what is a critically important issue from the environmental sector. (They have been bought out my friend. Google David Gelbaum. $100 million will make the "P" in the "IPAT" equation go away. Then all of America's environmental problems become ones of our sinful over-consumption.-Tim)

Engelman: I think the whole topic of population has become very sensitive. It's scary, it's very difficult for the environmental movement as a movement to take on. And it's one of the difficulties with a lot of things we face.

Dobbs: Sensitive and scary. Why should any American in any quarter ever be scared?

Engelman: People like to have safe conversations at least when they're not on television.

Dobbs: On this broadcast, we would like to have honest conversations. We want to tell everybody in this country who watches the broadcast, it's OK talk straight. We don't have to be politically correct. We don't have to be bound up with some silly orthodoxy on the left or right, some partisan nonsense. And it is all nonsense, coming from the right or left in this country. Feel free.

Engelman: Fine, I do. But for those who are trying to raise funding, for those who are trying to gain members, when you're looking at a phenomena that's basically about births and immigration, it has a lot to do with sex. It has a lot to do with contraception, touches on abortion.

Dobbs: You mean life itself?

Engelman: Yes, it can sometimes be sensitive and that's one of the difficulties of population. It's not like technology in just saying if we put up enough windmills, we'll be OK.

Dobbs: Let me put this in an expression of one of my daughters. Is the environmental sector about ready to man up on this issue?

Engelman: I don't know if I would put it that way. But I think we're going be forced more and more to examine where we're going demographically, because it is so important. At some point, we're going to have to decide whether we're going to cap our greenhouse gas emissions. Then it will get very interesting as our population keeps growing.

Dobbs: To me, it's already interesting, Robert, to be honest, and troubling. Let me turn to you, Norm. The idea as Jane just pointed out that we're not having a conversation. We don't hear from John McCain or Barack Obama, despite all of their nonsense on the campaign trail, we're not hearing from either of them about what the country will look like, how should our country function. What should we be thinking about in terms of the resources we will demand for the population one or two generations out? We're talking about finances on some levels at the margin. But we're not talking in any real terms about population growth, environmental impact, scarce resources, all of the tough issues.

Norm Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute: You know, it's almost inevitable in a political campaign that you look at short-term driving things. Right now, it's $4 a gallon gasoline. You mentioned the word that I think is an absolutely critical one, Lou, which is water. There will be an international water shortage. Safe potable drinking water, for other purposes that will make the oil crisis look pale by comparison.

And we really need to have a discussion of this. It's not going to happen in a political campaign, I'm afraid. We're going have to have a discussion about transportation. As more and more people move to exports, how are we going to afford to or find the vehicles or ways to get them around? And it's certainly great to have this conversation now.

You know, I might add one other thing, though. Keep in mind that as we look at our projections, in Europe the projections are exactly the opposite. They're going dramatically falling birth rates. They're actually going to have fewer people. They're going to have a whole lot more older people with very few young people to pay for the services that they've grown used to having. There's going to be crises in a lot of different ways and a lot of places, Lou.

Dobbs: We're going to don't talk about just exactly that when we continue with our panel here. Stay with us, we'll be right back. We're going talk about how in the world is the planet going to support over 9 billion people in the next four decades. Stay with us.

(Commercial break)

Dobbs: Jane, let me turn to you first quickly. The projections here for population growth. Do you believe that we're going to be growing faster than the rest of the world? Is it possible that it would even be growing even faster than these projections?

Delung: I do not think we're going to be growing faster than the rest of the world. But as Bob said, there's a real possibility that we will actually grow faster than these projections. I believe we will. The last population projections were in the mid-1990s. These projections have us with 45 million more people than they did in the mid-1990s.

Dobbs: So we continue to underestimate.

Delung: The growth has accelerated. We are underestimating the population that we're going have.

Dobbs: That's even more troubling. Robert, the environmental impact here, the political correctness issue, the sensitivity if you will as you described it here, there's a point of which, when we look at the issues of clean water, the energy demand that is resulting, natural resource demand. Why in the world would the environmental groups not now coalesce around this issue and start dealing with political issues that are going to have to be made in this society?

Engelman: Well I think one of the things that we need to communicate better is there are reasonable choices to make. One of the big factors in this that doesn't get talked about is the high level of unintended pregnancy in this country. If we had universal health care, and I might say if we had health care that was accessible to people who are not documented here as well as people who are undocumented here so that everyone, whether you're legally here or not, could at least get access to good family planning service, we could eliminate a large proportion of the pregnancies and thus the births that are occurring in this country. That's something we don't tend to talk about, environmentalists.

Dobbs: So it's politically incorrect to discuss illegal immigration, but it's politically correct to talk about substituting the national birthrate for immigration.

Engelman: I'm not sure which is politically correct.

Dobbs: We'll have that debate later. I want to turn to Norm very quickly. Norm, the choices that are here. We're talking about political choices. How do we get the political choices involved with exploding population growth on the national agenda?

Ornstein: You know, we're going to have to among other things hope that we can have more than three structured presidential debates. Have a different way to focus on all of the policy implications that flow from larger population. Some are positive. We're going have young people who at least can pay into a social security system and perhaps provide some of the resources to pay for health care for the elderly population and a whole lot of others that aren't.
(Unbelievable. The old Population Pyramid Scam. And who will pay for their health care when they reach old age, another billion immigrants? Young people cost more to care for than the elderly.-Tim)

Dobbs: You make them sound like social security slaves that we can bring in for the great entitlement plantation.

Ornstein: For our age, that's something we've got to think about, Lou.

Dobbs: Well, I didn't dismiss it out of head. Norm, thank you very much. Robert, thank you. Jane, thank you. So much, all three of you for being here to help us examine this. Come back soon, please.

Tonight's poll results: 98 percent of you say the Rhode Island bishop would be better served by calling upon the Mexican government to exercise morality in providing for its own citizens rather than encouraging them to break the law and enter the United States.

We thank you for being with us tonight. Please join us tomorrow. For all of us here, thank you for watching. Good night from New York. "THE ELECTION CENTER" with John King begins now -- John?