By Frosty Wooldridge

Shannon O’Neil, last week, wrote a Perspective column in the Denver Post advocating “We’ll need more immigrants” which illustrates his appalling negligence of the facts facing Colorado, California, Arizona, Texas and America.

His first egregious misinformation stems form his contention that Mexico possesses a 2.2 fertility rate. Wrong!  It continues at 4.3 children per female.

That equals a 1.7 percent annual increase from its current population.  It grew from 50 to 104 million in the last century and will grow to 216 million by 2046 on its way to a half billion people.

Source: According to Kimball, the population of Mexico will be approximately

500 million in the year 2100. Mexico; population growth predictions

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html

What does that mean for Colorado? We’re expected to grow from 4.3 million to 9.7 million by 2050.    California expects an added 40 million people.  Arizona expects five million more people!   Ninety percent driven by immigration!  Source: Fogel/Martin March 2006, “US Population Projections.”

What does that mean to our citizens?  You can expect twice the toxic air pollution.  You will suffer a 90 mile long traffic jam on weekends from Denver to Vail for skiing and camping.  Adding six million people to Colorado creates irreversible dilemmas and unsolvable problems.  How about compaction of housing, roads and people?  What about quality of life as we become a beehive?

Arizona, already so dry a man can't spit, will find itself bone dry with few options.  The air over Phoenix, already thick with toxins, will grow worse with an added five million people.  Why go there?  

What about social, emotional and spiritual consequences?  How about water shortages growing beyond our ability to solve them?  Why go there?  Any great reasoning behind adding six million people to Colorado?  Five million to Arizona?

How about Colorado losing another 3.1 million acres of farmland by 2022 to development as reported in the Denver Post?  How will we grow crops without viable farmland and without water for irrigation?

At the same time O’Neil advocates more immigrants, the USA expects to add 100 million people by 2040, which is 33 years from now.   California expects 40 million added people by 2050.  That multiples all of our current water, air, crowding, food, energy and other problems by 100 million.  What exactly is the point?  What is the benefit? 

At what point does this kind of thinking deal with reality?  At what point won’t we need to add another 100 million people upon the 100 million we just added?  When will we understand that we can’t use 20^th century thinking to solve 21^st century problems? 

One of the greatest minds of the 20^th century said, “The problems in the world today are so enormous they cannot be solved with the level of thinking that created them.” Einstein

When will we not need any more immigrants?  When will we come to a balanced, sustainable number of people in Colorado, California, Arizona, Texas and America? 

Why should this country want to add more consequences?  Why do to ourselves what China, India and Bangladesh did to themselves?  Why drive our civilization over a cliff?

We can’t save the world, however, we can destroy our civilization.