In 1999, the hard work of CAIRCO's Mike McGarry and Aspen City Council member Terry Paulson paid off. The city of Aspen passed Aspen Resolution #114 supporting population stabilization in the United States. Pitkin county followed suit.
Then during 2000 and 2001 Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform leaders and activists (Mike McGarry, Terry Paulson, Fred Elbel, and Frosty Wooldridge) met with city and county governments across the state to gain support for resolutions at the local government level which would support sustainability and U.S. population stabilization. While testimony in favor of the resolution was repeatedly presented in city council meetings, none of the cities mustered the courage and foresight to pass a similar measure.
A resolution of the City of Aspen, Colorado, supporting population stabilization in the United States
December 14, 1999
Whereas: The population of the United States reached about 274 million in 1999 and is growing by approximately three million each year, over 57,000 weekly, the highest population growth rate of the developed countries of the world. Most European countries are at zero or negative population growth.
Whereas: The population of the U.S .is six percent of the world's population, consuming up to 25 percent of the world's natural resources.
Whereas: The ability of the United States to support a population within its carrying capacity is now strained because of population growth. Fifty percent of our original wetlands have been drained to accommodate growth. Ninety-five percent of all U.S. old growth forests have been destroyed. It is estimated that we have consumed approximately three-fourths of all our recoverable petroleum, and we now import more than half of the oil we consume in the United States. America's underground aquifers are being drawn down 23 percent more than their natural rates of recharge.
Whereas: For each person added to the U.S. population, about one acre of open land is lost, causing a total yearly loss of about three million acres. America annually exports $40 Billion in food. If present population trends continue, the U.S. will cease to be a food exporter by about 2030.
Whereas: The report of the Task Force on Population and Consumption of the President's Council on Sustainable Development (1996) said: "The two most important steps toward sustainability are:
1. to stabilize the population promptly, and
2. to move toward greater material and energy efficiency in all production and use of goods and service." The President's Council said, "...reducing immigration levels is a necessary part of population stabilization and the drive toward sustainability."
Whereas: Population growth generated by mass immigration to the United States causes increasing pressures on our environment and forces local governments and communities to spend taxpayers dollars for additional schools, health care facilities, water disposal plants, transportation systems, fire protection, water supplies, power generation plants and many other social and environmental costs.
Whereas: 70 percent of U.S. population growth in the 1990's resulted from mass immigration, comprised of approximately 1.2 million legal immigrants and 300,000 to 400,000 illegal immigrants plus their U.S.- born offspring, annually. If mass immigration continues, the population of the United States is projected to exceed half-a-billion by 2050.
Whereas: Population growth is unsustainable. With a return to replacement levels of immigration, U.S. population can expect to stabilize in another 40 to 50 years. A temporary, all-inclusive five-year immigration reduction to 100,000 annually, followed by a return to 200,000 annually, will eventually allow the U.S. to stabilize its population, at best at about 325 million, and
Whereas: A majority of Americans of all ethnic and racial backgrounds favors substantial reduction in legal immigration and a complete halt to illegal immigration, and
Whereas: The people of the United States and the City of Aspen, Colorado, envision a country with a stable population, material and energy efficiency, a sustainable future, a healthy environment, clean air and water, ample open space, wilderness, abundant wildlife and social and civic cohesion in which the dignity of human life is enhanced and protected.
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That the City of Aspen hereby petitions the Congress of the United States and the President to immediately implement with deliberate speed and by means consistent with the Constitution of the United States, the consensus of the American People and the President's Council-legislation appropriate to stabilize the population of the United States and insure sustainability:
(1) that will encourage and promote all opportunities toward establishing and maintaining material and energy efficiency, social and environmental responsibility;
(2) by a return to traditional replacement levels of legal immigration, approximately 175,000, all-inclusive per year, annually; by
(3) requiring equitable wages and benefits for workers and community environmental protections to be part of all free trade agreements; and
(4) by mandated enforcement of our immigration laws against illegal immigration, thereby promoting the future well being of all the citizens of this Nation and the City of Aspen.
Below is the opening City Council statement by Aspen Councilman Terry Paulson, who sponsored the resolution in December of 1999:
Fellow Council Members:
This resolution we will be considering for adoption tonight could be the most important consideration we will ever make as representatives of our constituents and their children.
Immigration-driven population increases are transforming America-already the fastest growing country of all the developed countries of the world and the third most populous country in the world-into a country of over a half-a-billion within the near future, within the lifetime of our school children.
In October, I attended and participated in a conference at the Aspen Institute, called The Myth of Sustainable Growth. At that conference, I had the privilege of hearing a remarkable talk, Population, Immigration and Global Ethics, by Jonette Christian, from Maine. Jonette is a family therapist by profession, giving her a very special perspective on this matter before us.
Here is some of what she said: "As this future descends upon our children, public silence about these numbers is deafening. And we are responding like deer with headlights in our eyes-paralyzed or else indifferent-and we would rather talk about almost anything else: urban sprawl, pollution... traffic, declining fish stocks, falling water tables... [smart growth], overcrowded schools, [highways and transportation]-anything to avoid blunt speech about [immigration-driven] population numbers. Speaking to you as a family therapist, this is the behavior of dysfunctional groups. They avoid conversation about the pink elephant in the living room at all costs, and they exhaust themselves in a flurry of helpful activity around peripheral matters. We have agitated, confused and deluded ourselves with the illusion that we are being overwhelmed by many, many problems-when in fact we have primarily only one. But it is the one that terrifies us the most, and we handle that terror by chattering endlessly about everything else. Denying... [ignoring] and minimizing population growth in the 1990s is a hate crime against future generations, and it must end"
And isn't that really the dilemma we are confronted with tonight? We can act as a dysfunctional family by making "safe", reality-denying choices. We can chose to support an ill-defined, general resolution in support of population stabilization, making sure not to mention the I-word, immigration, the prime driving force behind our reckless growth into a country of over a half-a-billion souls. We can ignore prudent, necessary reduction numbers and deny glaring facts that would otherwise encourage establishing a sound and traditionally consistent flow of population stabilizing immigration. And by doing so, we will effectively be choosing to foreclose the future of America's and Colorado's children.
Or we can make the necessary, responsible and, yes, uncomfortable choice. We can pass this resolution intact, a resolution written with carefully considered language and with distinguished, learned support-the only real hope for an eventual stable American population. And by doing that, we will serve as the needed example for other representative bodies to act affirmatively for their constituents, providing them with the opportunity to join the small yet growing number of uncompromising voices now openly acknowledging the emperor is indeed without cloths.
Finally, I am reminded of the frog-in-the-water analogy. You can put a frog in water and turn up the heat little by little until the frog is dead. On the other hand, drop a frog in boiling water and it immediately jumps out. We are all in the pot of water, and the heat is being insidiously turned up, up and up at the immigration knob.
Please, join me, by calling for this deadly, increasing heat to be turned down now to health-giving, bath water temperatures, by passing this resolution as written, and thereby insuring a sustainable future for America and her children.
A resolution of the Board of County Commissioners of Pitkin County, Colorado, supporting population stabilization in the United States
Resolution # 2000-56 RECITALS
1. The population of the United States reached 275 million in 1999 and is growing by approximately three million each year, over 57,000 weekly, the highest population growth rate of the developed countries of the world. Most developed countries are at zero or negative population growth (Dr. Albert Bartlett, University of Colorado, Boulder).
2. The population of the U.S. is about five percent of the world's population, consuming up to 25 percent of portions of world's natural resources (Population Reference Bureau).
3. A population cannot be stable if, by its size or behavior, it destroys the very life-support systems on which it depends The ability of the United States to support a population within its carrying capacity is now strained because of population growth (Dr. Virginia Abernethy, Population-Environment Balance). Fifty percent of our original wetlands have been drained to accommodate growth (Environmental Protection Agency). Ninety-five percent of all U.S. old growth forests have been destroyed (Save American Forests). It is estimated that we have consumed approximately three-fourths of all our recoverable petroleum, and we now import more than half of the oil we consume in the United States (Bartlett). America's underground aquifers are being drawn down 23 percent more than their natural rates of recharge (Carrying Capacity Network).
4. For each person added to the U.S. population, about one acre of open land is lost through urbanization and degradation, causing a total yearly loss of about three million acres. America annually exports $40 billion in food. If present population trends continue, the U.S. will cease to be a food exporter by about 2030 (Dr. David Pimentel, Cornell University).
5. Immigration is the leading cause of population growth in the Unites States. Population is the leading cause of environmental degradation. (The Environmentalist's Guide to a Sensible Immigration Policy).
6. The report of the Task Force on Population and Consumption of the President's Council on Sustainable Development (1996) said: "The two most important steps toward sustainability are: 1. to stabilize the population promptly, and 2. to move toward greater material and energy efficiency in all production and use of goods and service." The President's Council said, "...reducing immigration levels is a necessary part of population stabilization and the drive toward sustainability" (Executive Summary); and
7. Poverty, exacerbated by population growth generated by population explosion, places demands on infrastructure: schools, health care facilities, waste disposal plants, transportation systems, fire protection, water supplies, power generation plants and other social services that exceed the ability of local jurisdictions and communities to provide these services, forcing those jurisdictions to increase taxes to keep up with demand.
8. Legal and illegal immigration combined is too high for assimilation. In 1998 alone, there were 420,000 illegal permanent entries into the U.S. (U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service) The latest U.S. Census Bureau shows that immigration will add 90 million to the U.S. population and account for 70 percent of population growth within the next 50 years. If mass immigration continues, the population of the U.S. will exceed 400 million by 2050. If current proposals to increase immigration are adopted, the U.S. population could exceed a half-billion by 2050 (U.S. Census Bureau).
9. Contemporary pressures to emigrate from foreign countries are created in large by exponential population growth, displacement and urbanization of farmers, environmental exploitation and degradation, and by inadequate wages, benefits and protections for workers (Dr. Robert Cohen, Boulder, Colorado, Population/Global Resources.
10. Continuous population growth is unsustainable (Bartlett). Considering population momentum, a permanent return to more traditional Twentieth Century (1925 to 1965) immigration levels on all immigration in excess of 175,000 annually, will eventually allow the U.S. to stabilize its population sometime after another 50 years, at best at a level exceeding more than at 350 million Americans (Roy Beck, NumbersUSA.com).
11. A majority of Americans of all ethnic and racial backgrounds favor substantial reduction in legal immigration and a complete halt to illegal immigration (1998 Wall Street Journal; 1996 Roper Poll; Hispanic USA Group survey); and
12. The people of the United States and the Board of County Commissioners, County of Pitkin, State of Colorado, envision a country with a stable population, material and energy efficiency, a sustainable future, a healthy environment, clean air and water, ample open space, wilderness, abundant wildlife and social and civic cohesion in which the dignity of human life is enhanced and protected.
13. The Board of County Commissioners recognizes the value of diversity and the contributions on immigrants since the arrival of the first settlers many centuries ago. We also recognize and deplore the exploitation if immigrants through violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, such as minimum wage and overtime. We specifically reject the notion that immigrants (legal and not) are disproportionately criminal or bad people. Nonetheless, we believe immigration, both legal and illegal, should be restrained. The United States has a responsibility to promote family planning opportunities world-wide, to require our trade partners to treat their laborers humanely, and to respect our shared environment.
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Board of County Commissioners of Pitkin County, Colorado, hereby petitions the Congress of the United States and the President to immediately implement, with deliberate speed and by means consistent with the Constitution of the United States, the consensus of the American People and the President's Council, legislation appropriate to stabilize the population of the United States and insure sustainability that:
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT:
Pitkin County accepts its responsibility to work to improve working and living conditions, both locally and throughout the world, through appropriate regulations that support multi-cultural education programs, that conserve natural resources world-wide, that move toward greater energy efficiency in production and use of goods and services, and that exhibit social responsibility.
Approved on the 22nd day of March 2000