I don't think you are getting it Jeff. Without immigration we would have
had a steady and probably declining population around 2015. Our current
citizens do not reproduce enough to replace thier own population. Most
industrialized nations do not. The only reason that the net housing count
is going up is because of immigration. You make it sound like a crime to
have natural borned kids in our country. we need more of this with our
values and cultures and less of the immigration with there homeland values
and culture. I kind of like this coutry that was built of God and hard work
and plan to pass it on to my FOUR great American girls.

Gary
"Jeff Strickland" wrote in message
...

"Fred Elbel" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 29 Jan 2003 09:32:55 -0800, "Jeff Strickland"
wrote:
...until [immigration reduction] happens, we are facing huge problems.

Hi, Jeff:

Yes, I have to agree.


If we manage to shut down all illegal immigration tomorrow, we will
still
have a very large bubble of population to work through.

Let me point that illegal immigration is certainly a component of the
problem. But *legal* immigration alone is a million per year and
needs to be reduced in order to achieve U.S. population stabilization.



Well, we have a couple that marries and buys a home. They crank out 3 or 4
kids. The kids grow up and get married and buy homes, Mom & Dad still need
their home, now each of the kids needs one, so we need another 1.5 ~ 2
homes
(they marry other people's kids, so we can halve the demand). These
couples
have another 3 kids, and so need another 1.5 homes. Now, we are getting to
the level where Grandma and Grandpa begin to not need a home anymore, and
that old home can be recycled to the next generation of demand. In this
case
we still need another half of a home for future generations. So, we still
need new homes for many decades to come, and the problem I see is that we
are not making adequate progress in meeting the demand curve of
infrastructure and satisfying the need to protect and preserve at the same
time. Indeed, we are protecting and preserving at the expense of meeting
infrastructure demands.

As an illustration, in my community we have several thousand new homes
along
a rural highway. The highway was designed for well under 3000 trips per
day,
but it now carries over 3000 trips per hour. We need a fresh look at
infrastructure demands while protecting and preserving at the same time.
The
difficulty is meeting these two goals simultaniously, however if we are
going to build several thousand homes, we may as well build the roads
because the environment is trashed anyway. There are conflicting goals in
the various levels of government, the result is that we get new homes
without consideration of road requirements, but we can't get new roads
because of the environmental rules. Well, if we can't get the roads, why
can
we have the new homes?



I see the issue as not being as simple as reducing numbers, we also
need
to
develop long range strategies that integrate our demands for growth
with
our
needs to preserve habitat. We need policies that protect and preserve
by
changing the way we do things so that those things are more
environmentally
sound. We have to get away from the idea that any plan is inherently
bad
and
can never be made good enought to satisfy contradictory goals of
growth
and
preservation.

I understand your point and I don't disagree.

What I tried to point out before is that often individuals or
organizations will focus only on the symptoms (growth management) as
opposed to the root problem (population growth).



I thank you for your rational discussion. We need a more balanced approach
to both sides of the issues, we need to reduce future growth projections
while dealing with today's real grwoth problems. Growth reduction will not
appear for decades to come, perhaps only one decade, but in the mean time,
we have growth issues facing us today that are not being met with rational
thought processes.




We have to adopt a strategy that accepts the idea that growth
is going to happen, so let's do it responsibly and minimze the
impacts.

To an extent. But it is a slippery slope between acknowledging that
growth will happen as opposed to believing that growth is inevitable.
The latter becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.



In my community, it has already happened. We must deal with it now after
it
has already happened, but we should have (or could have) planned ahead ten
years ago and avoided some of the very problems that we are facing. If we
had taken a regional approach to development instead of the apparent
piece-meal approach that we seem to be taking, then we could have forseen
where the homes were going to go and built the roads ahead of time, then
backfilled the homes. The result would have been that today, we would have
smooth flowwing traffic and identified places that would be preserved. The
county is finally looking at this issue in the very manner that I am
suggesting.



There must be ways that we can manage the growth of our cities until
we
figure out a way to curtail the population explosion that we are
facing.

I suggest we focus on growth management *while* we curtail the
population explosion.

Other than that, we are in agreement.



I can accept that. This is how we adopt the two pronged approach, we
manage
the growth and direct it to places that are virtual wastelands from the
perspective of trying to preserve and protect postage stamp sized parcels
in
the middle of massive development, and preserve the places where postage
stamp sized developement among massive tracts worth preserving. We try to
figure out ways to curtail the population explosion at the same time, but
there is still the huge bubble working its way through the developement
cycles that we need to accomodate.



Your position also seems to not reduce the population growth, to
relocate
the growth to other areas. I don't appreciate how this helps the
planet,
yet
I can see how it might help the USA.

I don't quite get your point. Stabilizing U.S. population is
necessary if we are to preserve what's left of our environment and
natural resources. In order to stabilize U.S. population, immigration
numbers must be reduced to traditional, sustainable levels.

Isn't there a slight double standard with the USA says people can't come
here because it spoils our countryside, but those people can remain at
home
and spoil other countrysides?



In addition, there about 150 or so other countries that need to
stabilize their populations, too. Great strides are being made by
many countries to reduce their fertility. But more help is needed and
it is incumbent upon developed countries to help developing countries
with family planning assistance, education, etc.

Unfortunately our president just cut off all funding to the UN Family
Planning Assistance program.


That seems to be a giant step backwards, further pressuring us to manage
the
expected growth we will be having here over the next few decades.
Basically,
if we can't reduce the population, then we need innovative methods of
getting all of those people a place to live and a road to drive on to get
to
work.