If you watch this interview by Bill Moyers, you’ll be struck by the apparent sincerity of his guest, Anthony Leiserowitz. The man comes across as very intelligent and open-minded as well. But toward the end of the interview, Leiserowitz makes it abundantly clear that he is in favor of the continued massive immigration from Latin America, and that he sees no problem with a future America that is largely Hispanic.
Is a Hispanic America likely to be more, or less, conscientious about the environment? A quick google image search of “climate change activist” yields mostly white faces. A 2009 New York Times article states:
National environmental organizations have traditionally drawn their membership from the white and affluent, and have faced criticism for focusing more on protecting resources than protecting people.
But with a black president committed to environmental issues in the White House and a need to achieve broader public support for initiatives like federal legislation to address global warming, many environmentalists say they feel pressure to diversify the movement further, both in membership and at higher levels of leadership.
“Our groups are not as diverse as we’d like, but every one of the major groups has diversity as a top priority,” said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “There’s great commitment to making the environmental movement representative of what the country is.”
While there certainly are Mexican environmentalists, concern for the environment appears to be much stronger among whites than among Mexicans. This is apparent to those who have spent time in both the U.S. and Mexico. A Hispanic America is bound to be an America that takes a less active role in protecting the environment. Cultural values do not change overnight.
Furthermore, for all the talk of global-warming and how we must mitigate it, the gorilla in the room is the increase in population. I have written about this elsewhere but the above interview is a perfect illustration of how people who supposedly care about the environment, will simultaneously promote policies that will clearly lead to environmental catastrophe. If not for immigration, the population of the U.S. would remain more or less static. Much has already been written about this. The Alliance for a Sustainable U.S.A. puts it nicely:
In an article of April 6, 2011 entitled “Nonwhite youth population growing in California and nation, report finds“, the Los Angeles Times reported that “nonwhites accounted for all the growth in the youth population from 2000 to 2010”, based on a study authored by William Frey of the Brookings Institution. The same Los Angeles Times article also wrote: “Another finding from the study was that 10 states and 35 metropolitan areas, including California and the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana area, have minority white children populations.”
MSNBC.com reported in its news article of March 24, 2011 titled “New milestone: 1 in 6 in US is Hispanic“:
“Racial and ethnic minorities are expected to make up an unprecedented 90 percent of the total U.S. growth since 2000, due to immigration and higher birth rates for Latinos”. This information was the Census Bureau’s “first set of national-level findings from the 2010 count on race and migration, detailing a decade in which rapid minority growth, aging whites and increased suburbanization were the predominant story lines.”
The article goes on to say:
The California Department of Water Resources has forecast serious water shortages 10 years from now, due to population growth, most of which comes from immigration. Although consumption must be reduced at all levels, continued population growth directly threatens biodiversity and causes species extinction, loss of farmland and open space, and general degradation of environmental quality, including global warming.
It makes about as much sense to oppose global warming and also support continued immigration as it does to oppose AIDS and also promote unprotected sex. Not only does immigration increase the population of the U.S (and other Western countries), it also provides the third-world with an excuse to ignore its own ticking population bomb; it can offload some of its excess population onto the West. The typical leftist rebuttal to this point is to state that “we all live in the same world.” While this is true, it’s more of a slogan than any sort of meaningful comment. If local communities do not have to suffer the consequences of their own poor choices, they will have no incentive to correct them. It’s also grossly unfair to communities that do all the right things to have to suffer from the overflow of communities that do not.
But it’s not simply a matter of a larger population bringing about more environmental damage. By most accounts, Americans have among the largest per-capita carbon footprints in the world. According to Energy Trends Insider:
The U.S. also has much higher per capita emissions than developing countries and EU countries. In 2008, the U.S. had the 12th highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions, but due to decreases in recent years are probably further down the list of countries now. (See chart in the original article).
Common sense would dictate that environmentalists, such as Leiserowitz, would favor policies that would lead to less Americans, not more of them. And yet he is in favor of ever-increasing population growth in the U.S. One gathers, from the interview, that he has only one child. It’s safe to assume that this child will be raised to care about Mother Earth. If I may be so bold as to be a spokesman for Mother Earth, I would tell him to have at least 5 or 6 more children. Leiserowitz may think he is doing his part to decrease the human burden on Mother Earth by having only one child. In reality, such efforts are futile and pitiful; his “contribution” is more than offset by the millions of migrants pouring across the border and by their tax-subsidized children. Leiserowitz speaks fondly of the fragile ecosystems in the Rockies. How will they fare when the U.S. population reaches half a billion and more?
Leiserowitz is concerned about the many Americans who don’t take “climate-change” seriously. I think he should address this issue by first seeing to it that people like us take him seriously. It’s hard to do so when he blatantly contradicts himself.
