US Population to Hit 300 Million by Next Week

[Frodo]

America's Population Set to Top 300 Million;
Immigration Fuels Much of Growth

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 12, 2006; Page A01

Clicking upward at a rate of one person every 11 seconds, the U.S. population will officially surpass 300 million in the next week or so.

The milestone is a reminder that the United States remains a remarkable demographic specimen, 230 years old (since the Declaration of Independence) and still in a growth spurt.

Behind only China and India, it is the planet's third most populous nation. For a rich, highly developed country, it is anomalously fertile, with a population that is increasing briskly, in sharp contrast to anemic growth or decline in Western Europe and Japan. Some demographers say this continued growth is essential to support an aging population in retirement and a sign of the continued allure of the United States even at a time when its image around the world has been sullied by the war in Iraq.

[adam]

I don't think the blame for America's "over-population" can really be layed on  the immigration situation. Illegal immigrants represent .04% of the American population (going off of the statistic of 12,000,000 illegals). So can the "over-population" problem really be largely contributed to the illegals? Perhaps we should look into the baby boomer culture we live in before pointing fingers.

All of this aside, do we really have an "over-population" problem? We are roughly 5 times the size of India, yet they have a population of over a billion. We are geographically a larger nation than China as well and their population is over 1.3 billion people. Looking at the statistics, I wouldn't say we have much room to complain.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Plus or minus a few months.

[Nym90]

I don't think the blame for America's "over-population" can really be layed on  the immigration situation. Illegal immigrants represent .04% of the American population (going off of the statistic of 12,000,000 illegals). So can the "over-population" problem really be largely contributed to the illegals? Perhaps we should look into the baby boomer culture we live in before pointing fingers.

All of this aside, do we really have an "over-population" problem? We are roughly 5 times the size of India, yet they have a population of over a billion. We are geographically a larger nation than China as well and their population is over 1.3 billion people. Looking at the statistics, I wouldn't say we have much room to complain.

Just to clarify, that would mean illegals are 4 percent of the population, not 0.04 percent.

[adam]

I don't think the blame for America's "over-population" can really be layed on  the immigration situation. Illegal immigrants represent .04% of the American population (going off of the statistic of 12,000,000 illegals). So can the "over-population" problem really be largely contributed to the illegals? Perhaps we should look into the baby boomer culture we live in before pointing fingers.

All of this aside, do we really have an "over-population" problem? We are roughly 5 times the size of India, yet they have a population of over a billion. We are geographically a larger nation than China as well and their population is over 1.3 billion people. Looking at the statistics, I wouldn't say we have much room to complain.

Just to clarify, that would mean illegals are 4 percent of the population, not 0.04 percent.

(embarrased smiley here) Oops, I did the calculaton by hand at 1 in the morning...probably not the smartest thing.

EDIT: Actually, I just did the calculations right, I just forgot to multiply by 100.

[Platypus]

I remember the day the paper had a massive special on the 20 millionth Australian

Of course it was just a stastically-suggested guess, but it was pretty cool.

[memphis]

This is great news. Regarding illegal immigrants, I think it's great that so many people want to come to America. I think it shows that we are doing a lot of things right, despite our imperfections. America has plenty of room for more people. If you don't believe me, drive across Nebraska.

[angus]

US:  299,965,037
World:  6,550,003,095

As of 5:23 pm central time Oct 12, 2006, according to the US census bureau official estimate.  By the time it takes me to type this sentence both will have changed.

Edit at 6:16 pm:

U.S. 299,965,304
World 6,550,010,616

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

LOL. We've been at 310-330 million for some time. The illegals are grossly undercounteed.

[memphis]

This is great news. Regarding illegal immigrants, I think it's great that so many people want to come to America. I think it shows that we are doing a lot of things right, despite our imperfections. America has plenty of room for more people. If you don't believe me, drive across Nebraska.

It's not about how much land we have. It's about how many resources we have. We use 4 times as much oil as we produce, and everybody wants to live a cushy lifestyle. It's not sustainable. We need to *reduce* our population. Grain stocks have been falling the last 5 years. At some point we're not going to have enough food for everybody!

America has too much food. You know how much staples like rice and corn cost? Practically nothing because there's so much. America's about as likely to run out of food as it is to run out of air for people to breathe. Water is a problem in the SW but market forces can take care of this problem (the price will keep people away) if you let them. Ditto for oil, though I'd be in favor of anything the gov't can do to reduce our oil use given the evil sh*thole countries we support by buying oil.

[bullmoose88]

This is great news. Regarding illegal immigrants, I think it's great that so many people want to come to America. I think it shows that we are doing a lot of things right, despite our imperfections. America has plenty of room for more people. If you don't believe me, drive across Nebraska.

It's not about how much land we have. It's about how many resources we have. We use 4 times as much oil as we produce, and everybody wants to live a cushy lifestyle. It's not sustainable. We need to *reduce* our population. Grain stocks have been falling the last 5 years. At some point we're not going to have enough food for everybody!

SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE! ITS PEOPLE!

[Colin]

This is great news. Regarding illegal immigrants, I think it's great that so many people want to come to America. I think it shows that we are doing a lot of things right, despite our imperfections. America has plenty of room for more people. If you don't believe me, drive across Nebraska.

It's not about how much land we have. It's about how many resources we have. We use 4 times as much oil as we produce, and everybody wants to live a cushy lifestyle. It's not sustainable. We need to *reduce* our population. Grain stocks have been falling the last 5 years. At some point we're not going to have enough food for everybody!

SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE! ITS PEOPLE!

LOL! Kudos to bullmoose.

Seriously though all 300 million people in America could live a cushy lifestyle, there are resources available for it, however you should be more worried about China and India and the rising prosperity in the developing world as a more conspicuous place where resources are being depleated at an astounding rate.

[ottermax]

I don't think we are overpopulated, but it appear that way due to a few factors:

Most Americans live in much larger houses than in the rest of the world.

Most Americans live in urban areas, so it gives most of us the illusion that we are packed and overpopulated because in many suburbs all that we can see are houses and concrete.

China is truly overpopulated. Although it takes up almost as much land area as the United States, nearly all of the 1.3 billion people in China live packed in fertile areas in its Eastern half.

So, before we start freaking out over overpopulation, we should just drive a little out of the cities and suburbs, and we can all realize how empty a country we are.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

Just move to nuclear power, strong usage of public transport, electric cars and using nanotech made carbon composites instead of plastic(we're already starting to use them) and the problems of "Depletion" won't be even so much of an issue for us. Unfortunately due to entrenched political consensuses/special interests/rich baby boomers who dont' want to lsoe their McMansions we won't be changing over until the rise in prices starts hurting the wallets of the boomer elites.

[memphis]

http://www.peakoil.com/
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
http://www.theoildrum.com/

We are at the peak of oil production. The world will never again produce as much oil as it does now, give or take a few years to a decade. Switching to alternatives is necessary but takes longer than you assume and we really haven't even started. The Department of Energy funded a report which concluded we need 20 years to mitigate the effects of peak oil without severe economic consequences.

Assuming you are right people will cut back when the price of oil goes up. I'd certainly burn a lot less gas if it were $5/gallon.  Also, I believe the oil companies made one of their biggest finds ever recently in the Gulf of Mexico. Either way, we have to stop funding places like Venezuela and Iran. I don't think America's modest population growth is really at the crux of the oil issue.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

http://www.peakoil.com/
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
http://www.theoildrum.com/

We are at the peak of oil production. The world will never again produce as much oil as it does now, give or take a few years to a decade. Switching to alternatives is necessary but takes longer than you assume and we really haven't even started. The Department of Energy funded a report which concluded we need 20 years to mitigate the effects of peak oil without severe economic consequences.

Did I say we wouldn't have severe economic problems because of Peak oil? No. Peak oil is bad but it won't be a long term issue.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

I meant a little worse than the great depression levels at best. The Great depression was just a financial  crisis but this is removing one of the cornerstones of the global economy.

[Platypus]

The human footprint this year meant we consunmed this years's sustainable resources last weekend, according to the BBC. IE, we've used what we can use without damage or loss of sustainability for this year alreafy. Everything from here on is in the red.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

There's always releasing bioweapons on the third world and closing off america's borders. Less people means less usage of resoruces.

[angus]

The human footprint this year meant we consunmed this years's sustainable resources last weekend, according to the BBC. IE, we've used what we can use without damage or loss of sustainability for this year alreafy. Everything from here on is in the red.

That's actually what occurred to me as well.  The planet could probably sustain much more than the six point five billion currently inhabiting it, but not if all consume the way citizens of OECD countries do.  As for us gringos, we have about six million square miles and roughly three hundred million people, so that's about eighty persons per square mile.  As I recall, there are about 640 acres in a square mile.  So each of us would have eight acres to sustain us (assuming, generously, that each US acre is capable of helping to sustain us).  I remember taking Sierra Club magazine's global footprint quiz a few years ago, and to my surprise I require about 24 acres per year.  I noted that that's about the US average.  Surprising, since I turn off lights, recycle, usually bicycle to work.  In my case it was all the flights I take that brought my number up to the average.  Anyway, so the US average footprint is about three times what our own land would feasibly allow.  Assuming we don't mind maintaining large armies to ensure our global hegemony, and assuming we don't mind sustaining large trade deficits, we could indefinitely consume three times as much as we should.  Still, something doesn't seem quite right about that.  I'm no economist, but something will eventually give.  Borrowed wealth and great armies of occupation don't last forever.  And all empires eventually crumble, usually under their own weight.

[Tender Branson]

Congratulations for the 300 Million mark ...

I hope we get 9 million before 2050

I calculated that if the whole 6.6 Bio. people on earth would live in 1 city with a density of about 10.500 per square mile or 4.000 people per square kilometer (like Philadelphia or Vienna), this city would have an area of about 620.000 square miles or 1.600.000 square kilometers. A city with the area of Iran

[Colin]

That Peak Oil bullsh**t has been fettered about since the 50's. It has always predicted upcoming doom only to be proven wrong by either less usage of oil and petroleum, new technologies in extraction and detection, or new finds. Peak oil is, in my mind, about as likely to occur as a Malthusian style mass famine.

Just as Malthus predicted that food supplies would be outstipped by population growth because one, population, is a geometric function and the other, food production, is linear. However this has been shown to not occur. Through the use of better means of production and new technologies food production has grown geometrically so that it remains above the levels of population growth. While famine has been widespread in Africa in recent years that has more to do with weather conditions than with any Malthusian concerns.

I consider Peak Oil to be the modern Malthusian syndrome. Peak Oil has just replaced one natural resource, food and agriculture, with another, oil. It says the same things that Malthus said about population growth and has applied it to oil, include the doom and gloom end of the world scenarios, but, like Malthus, supporters of peak oil have forgotten to take into account the better technology and new finds that are coming online. Within a few years, with better technology, extracting oil from deep sea deposits such as those around the Falkland Islands and the Gulf of Mexico becomes more feasible and we'll have made progress on extracting premium grade crude oil from tar sands and more viscous oil reserves. Also it doesn't take into account any sort of alternative sources of fuel or synthetic ways of making things like plastic and lubricant.

So basically I consider that Peak Oil is a crackpot theory on par with those same Malthusians who stated that we would all be starving right now and going through a new dark age.

[Colin]

Peak Oil also relies on the fallacy that technology wont advance, that we will be stuck in an oil-dependent society forever, which is not the case. Coal is a finite resource as well and I'm sure if we were all driving steam-powered automobiles, riding in steam-powered trains, and working in steam-powered factories there would be concerns over shortages of coal but technology came up with a more efficient and more economical way of producing that energy, via oil. Now it is very possible that at some date in the future technology will advance to the point where oil is not the least cost option and some other sort of fuel, be it hydrogen, solar, liquified natural gas, ethanol, or something I can't even fathom, that oil will be put off to the wayside just as coal was and that this new energy source would become pre-eminent.

I believe that this is much like Malthus because, as I said before, both are doomsday scenarios that don't take into account the effects of technological advance. Of course if we used oil for the next 100 or 200 years we would eventually run out just as if we still planted everything by hand and had to go out into the fields with scythes to cut down the grain we would not have enough food produced to fill the needs to six billion people. However we do not reap and sow with our hands anymore but with machinery that is able to work huge plots of land thus making food production keep pace with population growth much in the same way that either new technological discoveries, new oil finds, and more efficient cars and vehicles, as well as the use of synthetics in the creation of petroleum goods such as plastic, will nullify the effects of a finite resource.

You have to remember to that while you might dismiss my comparison between the two land is a finite resource, and arable land is even more constrained than land itself so food production is restricted by nature in much the same way as oil is.

And also I'm not saying that geologists are proponents of Malthusianism I am just comparing the two theories. Yeah oil is a finite resource but then so are most things. Even the sun, for God's sake, has a finite amount of energy and life-span. However what is important is that society adapts to whatever changes there are in the natural resources available and technology allievates the problems of finite natural resources by using those resources in a more efficient manner and taking the strain off of more rare or harder to find resources and on to more plentiful sources.

[The Constitarian]

Although 300 million, there are 76 million baby boomers and only 53 million in the generation younger than them so in the next thirty years or so the population should decrease.

[Frodo]

In case anyone cares, today at 7:46 am (EDT), the United States just gained its 300 millionth citizen:

U.S. Population Reaches 300 Million

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 17, 2006
Filed at 7:43 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Maybe there will be a bigger party when the population hits 400 million. Save the date: 2043. America's official population passed the 300 million mark Tuesday, fueled by a growing number of immigrants and their children.

The moment, recorded at 7:46 a.m. EDT, passed with little fanfare, perhaps dampened by a divisive debate over illegal immigration and the fact that many experts think the population had already hit the 300 million mark months ago.

[...]