The Importance of Curbing and Ending Population Growth to Achieve Sustainability

• Author: Anne H. Ehrlich and James Salzman
• Pages: 171-185

Chapter 12

The Importance of Curbing and Ending

Population Growth to Achieve Sustainability

Anne H. Ehrlich and James Salzman

Population growth is a fundamental obstacle to sustainable develop-

ment. Indeed, the forms of environmental degradation seen around

the world—climate change; losses of natural capital, biodiversity,and

ecosystem services; collapsing fisheries; air and water pollution; and

other harms—cannot be addressed effectively without addressing hu-

man population growth as well.

Over the last decade, the U.S. population grew more than in any

other 10-year period in the nation’s history, resulting in significant en-

vironmental impacts both at home and abroad. Yetthe government as-

serts that it has no population policy. In its submission to the 2002

World Summit on Sustainable Development, in Johannesburg, the

U.S. report stated:

The U.S. does not have an official population policy,in part because

population density is low in the United States and large regions of

the country are sparsely populated. ...Inaddition, there is little pub-

lic consensus about either the need for population-based policies or

their nature.1

The facts belie this claim. Population growth in the United States is

due to a number of policies that have demographic effects, ranging

from immigration regulations and restrictions on abortions to the tax

code and foreign aid policies. Since 2002, there have been no major

changes to this de facto U.S. population policy. More than ever, the

U.S. government needs to engage in a serious consideration of the na-

tion’s population-carrying capacity and the related issues of resource

consumption and development. Unless we confront these physical

facts and corresponding ethical implications, we cannot establish a

meaningful or effective policy for managing population growth in the

United States.

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