Question:
Immigration vote?
Answer:
I am a member who is outraged and deeply disturbed about Sierra Clubs vote
on whether to favor decreasing immigration to save our natural resources.
Favoring decreasing immigration has a long history in this country
and is generally favored by conservatives and reactionaries to find scape goats
during poor economic times. Favoring decreasing immigration is also
inextricably linked to biogtry against non-white, non-European people.
If members are so concerned about
saving our enviornment from immigration, they should start being politically
active to improve the conditions of countries from which these people
emmigrate.
Should Sierra Club vote in favor of this reactionary proposal, I will
immediately resign.
The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Inquirer had a front page story on the
Sierra Club mess. Why am I starting to think this fight is about more
than immigration?
Actually, it is ...
it is about how many people he US should have in it,
whether we should be increasing or decreasing the numbers,
or staying the same.
And do we consider immigration as part of this or not?
For years I've heard statements like, "except for immigration,
the US has zero population growth". These statements
were always made to justify why the US didn't have to worry
about doing anything about its population growth.
Unfortunately by ignoring the "Immigration" in the simple equation:
Population Growth = Births + Immigration - Deaths - Emigration
you are just fooling yourself.
It's kind of like I heard once, where group decide once that
it would be easier to make PI equal to exactly "3.0"
It sounded simple, but it wasn't true, and it just didn't work.
So basically, they are asking us to decide if we still want
to keep fooling ourselves by using the fake numbers,
or start using the real ones.
If it wasn't so politicied, wouldn't bother to ask us to vote
on it. Do they bother to ask us what equation we should be using
for gravitation, etc?
Someone said they'd resign from the Sierra Club if A passed.
I'm not sure if I'd bother to stay in if B passes.
I joined the Sierra Club in hopes of doing some good
for the environment. As a native California, I see
the biggest problem the environment has, is our unbridled
population growth.
If the Sierra Club decides that is going to continue to ignore
the population growth problem, why bother to stay?
Sure, they'll continue to address the global population problem,
which is nobel, but doesn't seem effective. And is to little to late,
where California, or the United States is concerned.
I'll even start to wonder why I should even bother to conserve,
if you are going to ignore population growth.
I'm willing to conserve resources if I know it
is contributing to a sustainable future.
But an ever growing population gaurantees that all that you do
to conserve is erased. In the end, you are just letting
more and more live at a lower and lower quality of life.
Is there a point to that? (I guess under certain religions it means
more people going to heaven and hell.)
Then when you burn up all your resources,
and a lot more people are left with nothing,
a lot quicker, than if you'd held the population
to somekind of rational figure.
I agree, believing oyu can solve the US's natural resource problems by
curbing immigration is ridiculous, a band-aid for a heart attack. There are
countless other things we could focus on which would actually have a
noticeable effect (resource use, planning and zoning, FREE birth control,
etc..)
But, on the other hand, the north american environment would be a
lot better off if all the immigrants left...but of course everyone knows
that means we'd all have to leave because WE ARE ALL IMMIGRANTS.
But i think you left out a few terms.
For those of you in Colorado, we have the following:
Pop Growth =
Births +
PeopleWhoMoveFromCalifornia +
PeopleWhoMoveFromTheEastCoast +
OtherPeopleWhoMoveInFromAroundTheUS +
Immigration -
Deaths -
Emigration
Perhaps we should submit a referendum to the sc focusing on this
equation. Or perhaps we should each work out the equation for our own
zip codes and pursue it at more of a grassroots level.
The issue is not the oft-quoted but very irrelevant equation. It is
that it has NOTHING do with the earth. If you do the same math for
the entire earth, you get
Population Growth = Births - Deaths
So the question is:
If the Sierra club can devise a strategy for improving the US
environment that manages to have no impact at all on the global
environment, is it a good idea? I don't think so, but it is something
we should all think about.
Right. All we have to do is solve the problems of about
190 other nations (which are already increasing in population
by about a quarter million a day), and then people will stop pouring into the
U.S.--and the environment will be saved!
