A book Review

Re: The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050 by Joel Kotkin

Part 2: Inane projections, degradation of critical thinking

Joel Kotkin wrote a book celebrating America’s projected 100 million population growth by 2050.  From our current 310 million to 400 million!  Other reports (“US Population Projections” by Fogel/Martin) show 100 million added within 25 years and 138 million in 40 years. 

Kotkin promotes inane projections and degradation of critical thinking. 

Critic “Mark” on a review on www.amazon.com, said, “I wanted to like this book. I really did. But between the author's arrogant dismissal of Jane Jacobs, and his holding up of Phoenix as a great American city, I'm really disappointed. He completely fails to connect that the physicality of a city defines what that city becomes, and thinks that Las Vegas will be the new New York just because a bunch of people move there. His view of urbania is slightly above contempt. He ignores the political polarization now splitting America, or how it influences people's habitat choices, or how the automobile completely redefined how people live. In short, a simplistic, deeply lacking book.”

THE FUTURE ECONOMIC LANDSCAPE

“America’s continuing demographic vitality will drive its economic resilience in the coming decades,” said Kotkin. “…but over time the rise in births, producing a generation larger than the boomers, will add to the workforce…immigrants will no doubt play a leading role in the next economic transition.”

Since we already suffer 15 million unemployed American workers, how does Kotkin create jobs for another 100 million people?  Out of his imagination?

He talks about those immigrants, but let’s pitch him a reality fastball:  today, each year, over 2.0 to 2.4 million legal and illegal immigrants arrive annually into America from countries where illiteracy remains the model as a cultural norm.  Of the next 100 million, demographers show that 70 million will be third world immigrants. They arrive so fast and in such great numbers that our educational systems cannot educate them.  Thus, we create a permanent subclass of illiterates. 

Today, according to the National Reading Foundation, we already suffer 42 million functionally illiterate adults and 50 million adults that cannot read past the 4th grade level.  Already heavily immigrated, Detroit, Michigan suffers a 76 percent dropout/flunkout rate from high schools according to NBC’s Brian Williams.  How does Kotkin think that will improve with 70 million third world immigrants?  By magic? 

WE ARE ALREADY OVERPOPULATED IN THE USA

This will prove the most important quote of the 21st century: “Every cause is a lost cause without limiting human overpopulation.”  Paul Ehrlich

While Ehrlich suffered great scorn from his Population Bomb in 1968 because of the temporary ‘Green Revolution’—it’s over and will never again save us from sheer human overpopulation. Since 1968, “A series of things have come up since then that have made the problem incredibly grimmer…. The ozone hole… acid rain…. Three hundred million people have starved to death since THE POPULATION BOMB was written. The famines weren’t as large as agriculturists thought they would be… due to the spread of… Green Revolution technology into the poor countries…. What makes us nervous right now is that we’re faced with again having to do something desperate to increase our food production greatly.... In 1965 we knew exactly how to do it, the question was could we deploy it fast enough—Today we have nothing left to deploy—that’s very scary.... As a species we’re not able to live on our income; we’re living on our capital, our deep rich agricultural soils are being destroyed, water is being over-pumped, and our biodiversity, our life support system—we’re already far beyond what we can support.”

Yet, Kotkin staggers forward with laptop in hand; plunders onward like a drunken sailor on a ship headed for the nearest reef.  He’s too drunk to understand his own destiny or his inability to think straight.

But he thinks we desire to sail on the same ship with him.  Wrong!  I witnessed what Kotkin proposes in my world travels and I wouldn’t sail on anything he proposes if my life depended on it.

KOTKIN PRAISES LOS ANGELES AS A FABULOUS EXAMPLE OF A FUTURE CITY

“Yet Los Angeles, which possessed a mere hundred thousand inhabitants at the turn of the 20th century, has emerged as the essential model for the 21st century city,” Kotkin bragged.

He forgot to mention LA’s 20,000 member “18th Street Gang” that murders, rapes and distributes drugs along with growing MS-13 gangs proliferating in the city.  He forgot to mention that LA’s schools, once in the top five of the nation, now hunker down to the bottom five of the nation. Over half the kids do not graduate from high school and illiteracy runs rampant.  Over 80 percent of the child births stem from immigrant illiterate mothers that leap onto the welfare wagon.  Annual costs to U.S. taxpayers in total: $346 billion annually across 15 federal agencies according to Edwin Rubenstein Report. (Source: www.thesocialcontract.com )

Kotkin thinks New York leads as the ‘aspirational archetype’ city on the eastern seaboard. If you love gridlocked traffic, honking taxis, stacked-up-high living, concrete jungles, 100 different languages, a bottle of Excedrin a day to keep the headache acceptable, insane crowding and dirty air—be my guest.

As John Muir said, “Tell me what you will of the benefactions of city civilization, of the sweet security of streets—all as part of the natural upgrowth of man towards the high destiny we hear so much of.  I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found. If the death exhalations that brood the broad towns in which we so fondly compact ourselves were made visible, we should flee as from a plague. All are more or less sick; there is not a perfectly sane man in San Francisco.”  (That applies to any mega American city!)

Yet, Kotkin cannot wait for New York City to add another five million to its concrete jungle quagmire!

Wonder if he’s ever read Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond’s book: Collapse: How Societies Succeed or Fail?  Richard Heinberg’s: Peak Everything—Facing a Century of Declines ; Dr. Albert Bartlett’s: “Sustainability, Energy, Population” and Dr. William Catton’s Overshoot?

Obviously not!

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If any of us, no matter what our race, creed or color might be, refuse to engage our U.S. Congress as we have not for 30 years as to the population/immigration equation-our children will find themselves living in a terribly degraded America where the American Dream will be described by the history books as a 'fleeting fantasy' from the era of 1950 to 2010.

These are several of the top organizations where you can take collective action to change the course of American history as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Take collective action at www.numbersusa.com where you can fax pre written letters into your reps, 1 million members, bi partisan, very effective. 

 www.fairus.org ; www.capsweb.org ; www.thesocialcontract.com ; www.populationmedia.org ; www.worldpopulationbalance.org ; www.populationconnection.org ; www.quinacrine.com ; www.familyplanning.org/ , www.skil.org ; www.growthbusters.com ; www.populationpress.org ; www.thinkpopulation.org ; www.carryingcapacity.org ; www.balance.org ; www.controlgrowth.org ; in Canada www.immigrationwatchcanada.org ; in Australia www.population.org.au andPublicPopForum@yahoogroups.com; in Great Britain www.optimumpopulation.org ; and dozens of other sites accessed at www.frostywooldridge.com.

Must see DVD: "Blind Spot" http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/blind_spot/ , This movie illustrates America's future without oil, water and other resources to keep this civilization functioning. It's a brilliant educational movie! www.blindspotdoc.com

Must see: Rapid Population Decline, seven minute video by Dr. Jack Alpert-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTWduFB_RX0

Must see and funny: www.growthbusters.org ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXSTrW_dARc
Dave Gardner's Polar Bear in Bedroom: http://growthbusters.org/2010/03/save-the-polar-bear-in-your-bedroom ; Dave Gardner, President, Citizen-Powered Media ; Producing the Documentary, GROWTH BUSTERS; presents Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity, Join the cause at www.growthbusters.org ;760 Wycliffe Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80906 USA; +1 719-576-5565

Check out this link with Wooldridge on bicycle and Lester Brown and panel discussion:

http://www.upnorthmedia.org/watchupnorthtv.asp?SDBFid=1631

Tomorrow's Americaproject on www.youtube.com/contemporarylearning.

Producer: GEORGE A. COLBURNwww.tomorrowsamerica.com

DC: 202-258-4887; Email: gac@starbrightmc.com

Link to www.tomorrowsamerica.com for more discussions on America's predicament.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.starbrightmediacorp.com ; www.tomorrowsamerica.com

Dear fellow Americans, Canadians, Australians, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and planetary citizens:

Re: The USA about to add 100 million people within 25 years—world to add 3 billion people in 40 years, and what actions citizens must take in order to change course toward viable and sustainable societies--interview with Frosty Wooldridge

If you have time, you may enjoy a one hour interview in California as I address overpopulation/immigration, not only in that state, but nationwide and worldwide.  I attempted to cover all aspects of what our civilization faces if we continue on our overpopulation path toward adding 100 million people within 25 years here in the USA.  While we may become emotional around the immigration issue--in the end--it’s about too many people, too little water, too little resources, vanishing carrying capacity, species extinction, acidified oceans and dwindling energy reserves that will render this civilization and all ‘oil-dependent’ civilizations unsustainable. Away from the ‘emotional’ responses, we find ourselves in a great deal of trouble on multiple levels. I attempt to bring that reality to the forefront.  Additionally, below, you may read from other top world minds and writers as to the long term consequences of continued human overpopulation.

Interview with Frosty Wooldridge--Posted on the archive of the Stark Truth:  http://reasonradionetwork.com/?p=8893

Thank you for appearing for an excellent & informative show!
Regards, Mike Conner
Voice of Reason Broadcast Network
http://reasonradionetwork.com

For further information, please contact me at www.frostywooldridge.com , frostyw@juno.com. Also, view  “Blind Spot” with Aldopho Doring and Amanda Zackem at www.blindspotdoc.com  at http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/blind_spot/ ; watch the 14 minute video by Roy Beck “ Immigration by the Numbers” at www.numbersusa.com ; also join www.TheSocialContract.com for the finest in updates and information as to what our civilization faces; also www.fairus.org for top notch information on immigration and population; additionally  www.cis.org with Mark Krikorian and Dr. Steve Camarota for up to date info on population and immigration; please visit www.albartlett.org for exceptional program on population and energy by Dr. Bartlett; www.populationmedia.org with William Ryerson and Joe Bish; www.worldpopulationbalance.org with David Paxson, www.populationpress.org with Marilyn Hempel; www.skil.org with Dr. Jack Alpert, PRODUCER: GEORGE A. COLBURN ,www.starbrightmediacorp.com; www.innovationcourse.org ;  Dave Gardner, President, Citizen-Powered Media ; www.growthbusters.org ;  in Canada www.immigrationwatchcanada.org ; in Australia www.population.org.au andPublicPopForum@yahoogroups.com; in Great Britain www.optimumpopulation.org ;  and many other top organizations at my website.

Kindest regards, Frosty Wooldridge, Golden, CO

 SERIOUS REALITIES WE FACE AS A CIVILIZATION  

                               By Frosty Wooldridge 

 “Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases of population, locally, nationally, or globally.”  Dr. Albert Bartlett www.albartlett.org

 “A simple look at the upward path of global greenhouse emissions indicates we will continue to squeeze the trigger on the gun we have put to our own head.”  Eugene Linden, The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather and the Destruction of Civilization

 “The ship is already starting to spin out of control.  We may soon lose all chance of grabbing the wheel. Humanity faces a genuinely new situation.  It is not an environmental crisis in the accepted sense. It is a crisis for the entire life-support system for our civilization and our species.”  Fred Pearce, The Last Generation: How Nature Will take Her Revenge for Climate Change

 “At this point, it’s almost certainly too late to manage a transition to sustainability on a global or national scale, even if the political will to attempt it existed, which it clearly does not. Our civilization is in the early stages of the same curve of decline and fall as so many others have followed before it.  What likely lies in wait for us is a long, uneven decline into a new Dark Age from which, centuries from now, the civilizations of the future will gradually emerge.”  John Michael Greer, The Long Descent

 “We are strong and adaptable animals and can certainly make a new life on the hotter Earth, but there will only be a fraction of inhabitable land left. Soon we face the appalling question of who m can we let aboard the lifeboats?  And who must we reject?  There will be great clamor from climate refugees seeking a safe haven in those few parts where the climate is tolerable and food available. We will need a new set of rules for limiting the population in climate oases.”  James Lovelock, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A final Warning

 “Imagine we live on a planet. Not our cozy, taken for granted planet, but a planet, a real one, with melting poles and dying forests and a heaving, corrosive sea, raked by winds, strafed by storms, scorched by heat. And inhospitable place.  It needs a new name, Eaarth.”  Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making a life on a Tough new Planet

 "The cheap oil age created an artificial bubble of plentitude for a period not much longer than a human lifetime....so I hazard to assert that as oil ceases to be cheap and the world reserves move toward depletion, we will be left with an enormous population...that the ecology of the earth will not support. The journey back toward non-oil population homeostasis will not be pretty.  We will discover the hard way that population hyper growth was simply a side-effect of the oil age.  It was a condition, not a problem with a solution. That is what happened and we are stuck with it."  James Howard Kunstler 

 “We must alert and organize the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Over-consumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.”   Jacques-Yves Cousteau

 “As we go from this happy hydrocarbon bubble we have reached now to a renewable energy resource economy, which we do this century, will the “civil” part of civilization survive?  As we both know there is no way that alternative energy sources can supply the amount of per capita energy we enjoy now, much less for the 9 billion expected by 2050. And energy is what keeps this game going. We are involved in a Faustian bargain—selling our economic souls for the luxurious life of the moment, but sooner or later the price has to be paid.”  Walter Youngquist 

 “The U.S. will set a record in the rate of rise—and fall of an empire.  Between wide open borders and fall of the dollar and growing population against a declining resource base, the US will be defeated from within. Mobs will rule the streets in the nation that is now the third largest in the world and unable to support its population except by taking resources from other countries.”  Arnold Toynbee

 “If present growth trends in population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth will be reached sometime in the next 100 years.”  The Club of Rome 1972

 “The power of population is so superior to the power of earth to produce subsistence to humanity that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.” Thomas Malthus 1798

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Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents - from the Arctic to the South Pole - as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents "The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it" to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com He is the author of: America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans. Copies available: 1 888 280 7715