The environmental establishment has mostly abandoned talking about the nation's growing populace, particularly as it relates to immigration. The topic is dogged by internal squabbles, divisive politics and a desire to avoid ethnic discrimination.One result is that ecological factors are rarely mentioned in the current effort to establish a new immigration policy. The debate mostly centers on economics and national security.
"People have been avoiding it like the plague," said U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Carlsbad, a hawk on illegal-immigration issues.
"[Environmentalists]will sidestep major challenges to what their stated goal is because it may end up stepping on political friends' toes," he said. "They have credibility problems when they are willing to look the other way." [...]
"Some people ... want the Sierra Club to have a position that is more U.S.-centric," said Stephen Mills, the club's international program director in Washington, D.C. "We feel that the entire planet is worth protecting, not the U.S. over anywhere else."
How many average Sierra Club members would continue to send their annual dues if they knew the management didn't believe the American environment was worth saving? And despite the obvious global interconnectedness of natural systems, we citizens have far more to say about what is done in our own country than across the planet.
The Sierra Club in particular is corrupt to the core, having accepted a "donation" of $100 million on the condition that immoderate immigration not be mentioned as detrimental to environmental preservation.
The article included a preview of a report to be published in September, with some disturbing news about America's environmental health.
About 40 percent of the nation's rivers and 46 percent of its lakes are too polluted for fishing and swimming. Wetlands, the biological filters for water pollution, are shrinking by 100,000 acres a year, mainly because of development.Roughly 6,700 species in the country are at risk of extinction, most often because of habitat loss.
Half of the continental United States no longer supports native vegetation, largely because people have altered the terrain significantly.
See the theme running through? Too many people crowding up the place, paving over every living thing in sight. And Bush's Washington is planning on importing at least 100 million more in the next 20 to 35 years.
But don't expect the compromised faux-greens to criticize American overpopulation — as long as it's "diverse."
