www.agoregon.org

Here's a speech given by Andy Kerr:

Oregon's Population Growth: Its Causes and Cures

by

Andy Kerr

President, Alternatives to Growth Oregon

In 1998, Governor John Kitzhaber said:

"If I had the power, I'd turn off the spigot and keep Oregon as it is today."

Amen.

A recent debate on expanding the Portland Metro Urban Growth Boundary was a debate on how, not whether, to grow - in both population and land area.

The choice was reduced to two options: sprawl like Los Angeles or densify like Los Angeles. (Yes, LA is more densely populated than Portland.) The course chosen by Metro was to do both. The option of not growing - or even slowing growth - was not considered.

Ironically, surveys reveal that overpopulation is the greatest fear of Oregonians. Approximately 62% believe the state's growth is undesirable. When Metro asked citizens a few years ago whether they wanted to grow-out or grow-up, most volunteered that they preferred neither. This advice was rejected out-of-hand.

Growth is a race one loses the faster one runs.

A quarter century ago, Governor Tom McCall was worried about growth. He led the state to adopt a critically acclaimed land use planning program. McCall apparently hoped that planning could adequately mitigate the impacts of growth.

He said in 1973:

"Sagebrush subdivisions, coastal condomania, and the ravenous rampage of suburbia in the Willamette Valley all threaten to mock Oregon's status as the environmental model for the nation."

Tom - wherever you are - we have those sagebrush subdivisions, coastal condomania and the ravenous rampage of suburbia. But I do have to say, they are well planned. Rather than sprawl dotting the landscape like poxes, the sprawl is spreading like gangrene across the land.

Planning alone - in the face of population increase - cannot keep Oregon Oregon.

Oregonians should not be misled into believing that planning is all we must - or can - do to maintain livability.

Oregon is on its way to becoming a better-planned California; the Willamette Valley another Puget Sound, and Portland a Los Angeles with light rail (maybe).

Metro says:

We can all see the effects of rapid growth on our highways, housing, shopping and open spaces. But growth doesn't have to just happen. (Metro) provides planning services .... so that we can maintain our livability while planning for the next 50 years of growth.

"(M)aintain our livability" and "50 years of growth"? Pick one and call me back.

"But growth doesn't have to just happen," says Metro. Alternatives to Growth Oregon says: "But growth just doesn't have to happen."

The assumption is of another 500,000 people - about the present population of Portland - moving to the Metro area in the next 20 years. Where do we put the next 500,000? And the next half-million after that?

In the Willamette Valley, the projection is another 1 million people by 2040. That's the equivalent of two Portlands, or eight Salems or Eugenes, or twenty Corvallises.

A 3% growth rate doubles our population in a generation.

A 1% growth rate doubles our population in a lifetime.

Like an adult human, Oregon has matured; any further growth is either fat or cancer.

"'Smart growth' is an oxymoron," said my favorite billionaire Ted Turner. "'Less-stupid Growth' would be a better name," he said.

Ted does have six children. In response to a reporter's question he said he had all his children by the age of 30, he didn't know any better, and "once they were here, I couldn't shoot them."

We could book our favorite fishing hole or mountain top through TicketMaster, but is that the Oregon we want to live in?

The planning establishment is telling us that Oregon is doing a better job than anyone else. The fact that Portland today or tomorrow is, or will be, more livable than Newark, Los Angeles, Dallas, Mexico City or Calcutta is of little comfort. I am only interested in an Oregon that is at least as

good to live in in 2040 as it is today.

The only smart growth is no growth.

Remember the words of Isaiah 5:8:

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field till there be no place that they may be placed alone in the midst of the Earth.

 

THE COSTS OF POPULATION GROWTH IN OREGON

What are the costs of population growth in Oregon?

Excessive population and consumption is a global problem and a local problem. In the past century, the world population tripled while the use of energy and raw materials grew more than ten times. Materials use in the US has grown 18-fold over the same period, with the average American using at least 222 pounds of material every day. Sustaining the whole world at this level of resource use "would require the land area of three Earths" says WorldWatch Institute.

Population is increasing in the Pacific Northwest at twice the national rate and 50% more than global rates.

Even though Portland's population has increased 50% since 1970 - the passage of the Clean Air Act - the city's view of Mount Hood is the best in a generation. Two decades ago city haze was so bad the mountain could be seen only 35% of the time on clear days. Now it is visible more than twice as often. The reason is technological improvements of factories, wood stoves and automobiles. But technology has its limits. Planners estimate that air quality will peak between 2001-2010 as population increase overwhelms the technological gains.

(Speaking of Mount Hood, the current Forest Service effort to limit the use of the Mount Hood Wilderness to protect legally required solitude, is but another manifestation of excessive population.)

In the Portland metropolitan area, where one-half of the state's population lives, most residents drink unfiltered water from the relatively pristine Bull Run Watershed. Relatively little chlorine is needed to treat the water.

Population growth is propelling plans to drink from a watershed where 70% of the state's residents live and excrete. 93% of all Willamette River fish have dioxin in their tissues. The intake for this new filtration plant would be downstream from a stretch of the river where up to 74% of the

squawfish have skeletal deformities - including 3-eyed fish. The only reason to drink from the Willamette is that the region has "outgrown" the Bull Run Watershed.

Planners have estimated that to maintain the existing "quality of traffic" and to accommodate the next 20 years of population increase in the Portland area, $13.5 billion would have to be spend on roads and other transportation. They estimate that perhaps $3.5 billion could be found, but only if the voters approve a 25¢ per gallon increase in the gas tax. Even under these projections, what is intolerable traffic today will be commonplace tomorrow. If you wanted to fully maintain existing quality of traffic, we'd have to raise the gas tax 96¢ per gallon and build lots of freeways. 24-hour traffic reports, even on weekends.

As population grows, urban growth boundaries are expanded to always have a 20-year supply of developable land. Any person can see that at some point - in our lifetimes- where all the urban growth boundaries in the Willamette Valley touch either each other or public forestlands. Urban

growth boundaries are more accurately called urban growth bungies.

Despite the promises of developers and their chorus - chambers of commerce, most government officials, much of the media, etc. - the significant and rapid population increase of the last two decades has not lowered taxes. In fact, it has raised them as the cost of providing services to new industry and residents far exceeds any taxes they might pay.

As the Governor's Task Force on Growth noted, growth exacerbates government revenue problems, it does not relieve them.

The City of Portland used to pick up the leaves three times each fall, but now only once. City worker salaries haven't tripled nor has leaf production dropped by two-thirds. The money has been diverted to subsidize growth. Popular government services - such as libraries - are increasingly funded through voter-approved serial levies and bond measures. Politicians know the voters will approve such measures, but wouldn't approve of their tax moneys going to subsidize new industry and new residents.

It would be cheaper for local government to buy up all the undeveloped land within their borders to prevent - rather than subsidize - its development.

Eben Fodor, a planner from Eugene has authored a new book: Better, Not Bigger. In it, he has identified these factors which are detrimentally affected by growth:

• air pollution,

• water pollution,

• noise pollution,

• lost mobility,

• lost fish and wildlife habitat,

• higher cost of housing,

• higher cost of living,

• more crime, less safety; and,

• loss of community.

I would add to these the loss of democracy and freedom. As there are more of us, each vote is worth less. As there are more of us, we are closer together, and therefore need more rules and regulations to maintain a civil society.

 

THE CAUSES OF POPULATION GROWTH IN OREGON

What are the causes of population growth in Oregon?

Alan Durning and Christopher Crowther, in their book Misplaced Blame: The Real Roots of Population Growth, identified five root causes.

The first three are causes of so-called "natural increase": births exceeding deaths. One-third of Oregon's population growth is due to natural increase.

The first factor is child poverty. Youth poverty is the single largest cause of high birthrates in North America. Outside of its poorest groups, Oregon does not have a high birthrate. The middle and upper class are at replacement levels. The poor do not seek pregnancy but are less aggressive in preventing it. They accept it when it happens because they don't see other options as available to them. Options such as college, career, etc. Parenting is one of the few, and one of the more rewarding, options potentially available to them.

The second root cause of population growth in the Northwest is sexual abuse. Victims of child sexual abuse often feel that having a child will help them heal from the violation they have suffered. A child having a child can also be a ticket out of an abusive home.

The third root cause of population growth is inadequate family services. Ten percent of the babies born in the Northwest are unwanted at conception. They are accidents at a time when the mother wanted no more children.

Two thirds of Oregon's population increase is due to migration.

The fourth factor identified in Misplaced Blame is subsidies to domestic migration.

Eben Fodor, in his report, "The Cost of Growth in Oregon," found that each new house costs the taxpayers at least $33,000 in infrastructure costs that are not paid by either the developer or the new house owner. What does he mean by "infrastructure?":

• schools,

• sewers,

• storm drainage,

• transportation system,

• water,

• parks and recreation,

• fire,

• library,

• police,

• open space,

• general government services,

• electric power generation and distribution,

• natural gas distribution; and

• solid waste.

For every three new houses you see, you don't see a firefighter, police officer, school teacher, or librarian.

In the name of jobs, taxpayers also subsidize corporations.

These jobs attract new residents - most new Oregonians move here without having a job - which demand new houses, which receive tax subsidies.

The highest amount and rate of unemployment in Alaska was at the same time it had the highest amount of employment: that boom of all booms - construction of the oil pipeline.

Fodor identified five ways that citizens and taxpayers are affected by these subsidies to growth:

1. Increased taxes,

2. increased financial debt (usually as municipal bonds),

3. infrastructure debt (falling behind on needed facilities to accommodate growth),

4. facility maintenance debt (diverting maintenance funds to accommodate new growth), and,

5. reduction in public services (shorter library hours).

Yes, we Oregonians are paying to foul our own nest.

The fifth and final factor is misguided immigration laws.

Twelve percent of Pacific Northwest immigration is from other nations. 70% of US immigrants come to California. Los Angeles is an immigrant-magnet city; Portland, Bend, Corvallis, Eugene, Salem, Ashland and Medford are all native-magnet cities.

Canada and the US ,with 1/20th of the world's population, are home to one-fifth of the world's living international immigrants.

Up to 70% of the US population increase in the next 50 years is projected to come from immigrants and their offspring.

US immigrants can be divided into three major categories:

• family reunifications,

• employment visas, and

• political refugees.

Family reunifications is the reason for nearly three-fifths of US immigration. Under recent changes in US law, not only are spouses and minor children eligible for reunification, but so are the adult siblings of immigrant spouses.

The second category, about one-sixth of immigration, is employment visas. This includes highly skilled workers such as doctors and engineers and the lowly skilled such as farm workers. NAFTA and GATT are exporting US manufacturing to the cheap labor. You can't move farmland, so the cheap labor comes here.

The final one-sixth of US immigration is political refugees.

The United States ought to always be open to political refugees. But we should equally ensure that US government policies and the actions of our corporations are not causing people in other nations to become refugees.

Can we afford such a liberal policy of extended family reunifications? This pool of potential immigrants grows exponentially.

Can the source countries afford it? Immigration to the US results in brain drain from the developing world. Three-quarters of foreign medical students who come to the US to study, stay for good, doing a great disservice to their home countries. These immigrants are the potential leaders that ought to be leading either reform movements or revolutions in their native countries.

Allowing workers into this nation corrodes the prospects of both our poor and middle-class, further diminishing the value of their labor.

Illegal immigration is one-fourth of all immigration and must be stopped. But we should spend equivalent resources on Europeans who fly in and overstay their tourist visas as we are for Latinos who walk or swim in without visas.

Immigration is a very divisive and sensitive issue that nonetheless must be discussed. To those who support generous immigration, I ask you this: Why are you on the same side as Microsoft and the other huge computer corporations, and of Archer Daniels Midland and the rest of the agri-business lobby? How can you support a policy that helps ensure that our existing poor will never be adequately valued for their labor?

To those who oppose immigration because of racist and/or xenophobic reasons, I say to you: Go to hell. The issue is immigration, NOT immigrants.

I come to my support of immigration reform from an ecological carrying-capacity perspective. Be it a house, a block, a city, a watershed, a state, a bioregion, a nation, a continent or a planet; all have a carrying capacity.

 

Is the Problem Population or Consumption?

Some argue that the absolute level of population is out of control and must be limited. Other argue that the real issue is consumption, especially in the United States. They note that in a lifetime a person from an overdeveloped nation consumes 40-50 times the resources than a person from

an underdeveloped nation.

The American consumes way too much and the Bangladeshi not enough. The issue is partly - but not entirely - a matter of equity. If resource consumption and resultant pollution continue to rise, it won't make enough difference that population is stabilized. Similarly, if recycling doubles,

nothing is gained if population also doubles.

The problem is not population or consumption. It is both.

 

STABILIZING AND THEN REDUCING POPULATION GROWTH IN OREGON

 

A member of the Governor's Task Force on Growth, a developer from Ashland, said he didn't see any problem with another two million people in Oregon or "however many God wants to send us."

Lord knows we have enough people in Oregon now.

Since even the most rapacious Oregon developers say they don't want Oregon to become another California, the question arises: Then when do we stop growing?

The question is not "how many people can we tolerate to stuff in our state," but rather "what is Oregon's optimal population?"

Will growth stop only when the quality of life in Oregon is perceived to be no better than elsewhere?

To answer what's best - what is an optimal population for Oregon? - we need to have a statewide conversation where we decide on the kind of Oregon we want.

How clean do we want our water and air?

How crowded do we want our classrooms and roads?

Do we want enough salmon to eat? Do we want salmon just hanging on? Do we want salmon at all?

Do we all want to ride the bus and live in apartment buildings?

After we answer these and similar questions, it is a simple matter for the planners to develop models which tell us how many Oregonians we can have and still have what we decide is a necessary and desirable quality of life.

After plugging our assumptions and desires in the model, what will we find?

That Oregon's present population of 3.2 million people is optimal? If so, we need to stop growing so it doesn't become suboptimal.

Or that we've overshot Oregon's optimal population? If so, we need to figure out how to return to a sustainable level as soon as possible.

Personally, I think we have overshot. Demographers and other scientists have estimated that if we want everyone on Earth to have a Western European/North American/Japanese standard of living - and assuming easily obtainable efficiency improvements in energy and materials use, leaving

room for nature and living off solar income - this Earth can support about 2 billion people in the long run. We have six, going on ten billion.

Astronomers are looking for other planets like Earth, but they haven't found one yet, let alone three more. And if they do, maybe they are already full. Maybe those inhabitants are looking for our planet for the very same reason.

Interpolating for Oregon, this means, about one million people, not three million. We had one million in my parents' lifetime. If everyone who wants children limits themselves no more than two, Oregon could be at one million in another lifetime. No one has to leave early to achieve a sustainable population.

Am I right? Who knows? Let's discuss it. We're not evening asking - let alone answering - this vital question.

Let us recognize and embrace limits now that are optimal; not wait to have limits imposed because we have no other choice.

China is increasing food production by turning graveyards and parks into farms. The reason the Chinese practice Chinese-style birth control is that they didn't act earlier.

 

NO LINEAR RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONSUMPTION & HAPPINESS

"Grow or die" is the battle cry of both developers and of cancer cells.

At some point growth will stop. Why not stop it now, before it's too late?

Most estimates project the global population leveling off at 10 billion. When population levels off, what happens to the growth economy then? And what happened to our environment and elbow room?

What kind of an economy do we have that depends upon an ever-growing population and rate of consumption?

Since 1970 the average house being built has increased to 2100 square feet from 1600 square feet. At the same time, occupancy of the average house has dropped 16% to 2.6 members. Between 1970 and 1990, housing increased at twice the rate of population increases. Divorce is a factor, as is second, third and fourth homes.

Materially, Americans are four times richer than their grandparents. Are we four times happier? The practice of thrift by grandparents has died out. The adage of "use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without" has been replaced with "Buy it up, toss it out, buy some more, don't do without."

Do you want more stuff or do you want more time? The average American is working 160 hours more each year - four 40-hour weeks - than we did 25 years ago.

A result of global mass media is that we are no longer trying to keep up with the Jones' next door, but with the Gates'.

Sen. Avel Gordly recently asked "At what point do we question the whole notion of creating wealth for the sake of having dollars and give that more value than creating community?"

The Gross Domestic Product is going up. How good is that? The GDP is merely a summing of financial transactions. Hurricanes, AIDS, and war all increase the GDP. (They also create jobs.) The GDP has more than doubled since 1950.

Robert F. Kennedy, speaking in 1968 said:

We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the gross national product. For the gross national product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highways of the carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for our people who break them. The gross national product includes the destruction of the redwoods, and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads.... It includes Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the broadcasting of television programs which glorify violence to sell goods to our children.

And if the gross national product includes all of this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of public officials.... The gross national product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile; and it can tell us everything about America-except whether we are proud to be Americans.

The Genuine Progress Indicator-the "GPI" - which assigns costs to such things as crime, family breakdown, underemployment, and the loss of species and farmland - reveals that GPI increased from 1950 to 1970 and has had a steady decline since then.

 

A Growth Free Future

What would a growth-free future look like?

If population growth ended in Oregon, a whole set of problems would just not happen:

• Drinking water out of the Willamette River,

• Declining air quality,

• Sprawl, and,

• Traffic gridlock.

If population growth ended in Oregon, another whole set of problems would be solvable:

• Rebuilding our cities to favor people more than automobiles,

• Repairing our economic infrastructure,

• Restoring our natural infrastructure, and,

• Making our economy energy and materials efficient.

If population growth ended in Oregon a final set of problems would be reduced. If we got off the growth machine:

• we'd have the resources to directly address poverty and child abuse,

• we could all work less,

• we'd all have more time for ourselves (Prozac and cocaine consumption would decline),

• we'd all have more time for our families (the problem of latch key kids goes away), and,

• we'd all have more time for our communities (volunteering to help).

 

A 10-STEP ACTION PROGRAM

Here are 10 things that we could to do to improve both the quality of our own lives, those of our family and of that of the community.

1. Identify that unsustainable portion of our economy dependent on growth and convert it to sustainable pursuits. We can transform developers of farmland and open space into redevelopers of downtowns and ghettos.

2. Change tax policies to favor small families. Society should pick up most of the costs for the first child by generous assistance and/or tax credits. The costs of the second child should be equally shared between the state and parents. Parents should pay the full societal cost for additional children. The difference between a population explosion and a stable population is a third child.

3. Directly address poverty in this state. Since Social Security and Medicare for the elderly were implemented, senior poverty has declined two-thirds. People at the beginning of their lives deserve help as much as at the end of their lives.

4. Make Oregon government growth-neutral. Let's quit subsidizing developers and new homeowners. One-third of the savings should go to lower taxes, one third to restoring lost government services and one third to new socially desirable investments. Spend the saved money on making Oregon better, not bigger.

5. Reform the tax system. Let's quit taxing "goods" like savings and income and start taxing "bads" such as excessive consumption and pollution.

6. Internalize those externalities. Let's be economic and force those who cause costs to bear those costs, rather than society or the environment. By doing so, a lot of problems would self-correct.

7. Determine Oregon's optimal population. Let's urge the Governor to appoint a blue-ribbon panel to address the question of Oregon's optimal population.

8. Reduce the work week. Let's share the good jobs and the bounties of increased productivity. The minimum wage should also be raised to a living wage.

9. Limit immigration to the United States to be equal to that of emigration. About 100,000 people leave the US each year. That's enough to take care of political refugees, especially if we also change US government foreign and corporate policies that create these refugees. It's also enough for immediate family reunifications.

10. Make every pregnancy a wanted pregnancy. Access to birth control of all kinds is vital to control our population.

 

ALTERNATIVES TO GROWTH OREGON

A few Oregonians are making quite a killing on growth, more are making a living on growth, while most Oregonians are paying for growth that is killing the Oregon we love.

Alternatives to Growth Oregon supports economic progress based on appropriate technological improvement, increased realization of human potentials, and energy and materials efficiency. It opposes economic growth that depends on increased population and/or consumption. Making our economy more productive and efficient is desirable - as is the creation of meaningful work for all. Making it more consumptive is not.

The motto of Alternatives to Growth Oregon is Better, Not Bigger. If anyone would like to learn more about us, we're on the web at AGOregon.org or give us a call. We're listed in Portland information.

 

CONCLUSION

Do I have all the answers? Of course not. I have some ideas and so do you. To come up with the right answers, we first have to ask the right questions. So far, we've been afraid to ask ourselves questions like: "What is Oregon's optimal population?" "Is growth inevitable?

Twenty-five years and 57 million fewer Americans and one million fewer Oregonians ago, a Nixon commission on population noted:

There would be no benefits to a growing population, that the health of our economy does not depend upon it, that the life of the average citizen is not enhanced by it, that democratic representation is diluted by it and that most of our serious problems would be easier to solve if we stopped growing.

Governor Kitzhaber, in your second term and with your mandate, if you exercise statesmanship, you might just find that you do have the power to turn off the spigot.

Any good cause is a lost cause if we don't stabilize population at sustainable levels.

While we must plan for growth, let us also have - as our first choice - a plan not to grow.

The only thing more radical than not growing is growing.

Thank you.

 

-- jumpoffjoe (jumpoff@echoweeb.net), February 13, 2001

Answers

You're preaching to the already converted when it comes to me. Unfortunately I think as a whole people have no more long term sense about overpopulating their environment than a culture of bacteria in a petri dish and with the same eventual consequences. Luckily I wont have to be around to experience it.

-- HermitJohn (hermit@hilltop_homestead.zzn.com), February 14, 2001.

I guess you're right, Hermit John; you won't be around to experience it. (I assume you are remote enough to escape most of the impacts, although many of them, such as polluted air and water and fuelshortages may affect even you)

I assume that you are also concerned about this, though, since you do have your children and grandchildren to think about (or, if not, at least your friends' kids and grandkids)

JOJ

-- jumpoffjoe (jumpoff@echoweeb.net), February 14, 2001.

Reread my statement and it didnt say exactly what I meant. I meant that I will be dead by time population density gets super extreme as in my petri dish example. There are already very visible signs of human overpopulation as JOJ articles show. I've done my part in not having children and in having any pet I adopt neutered/spayed. Beyond that there is little I can do for surplus humans in the future anymore than there is anything I can do for all those surplus animals in shelters. I dont have the charisma necessary to politically lead anybody to make difficult decisions. Dont like telling others what to do anyway. They should have the sense to make their own good choices or face or let their decendents face the harsh penalties that the natural world imposes on surplus populations of any species.

-- Hermit John (hermit@hilltop_homestead.zzn.com), February 14, 2001.

I'm sorry, I just can't resist...... us native folk could have told y'all 500 years ago that immigration will only ruin things. hee hee hee hee

-- Sparrowhawk (sparrowkiak@yahoo.com), February 15, 2001.

sparrowhawk, I've heard before that it's all your (native americans) fault; your ancestors had an overly liberal immigration policy. :)

JOJ

-- jumpoffjoe (jumpoff@echoweeb.net), February 15, 2001.

Hi JOJ, Well you know I'm in agreement with you on this issue. You might be interested in the Northwest Environmental Watch if you don't already know about it. I'm a member even though I live in KS. Alan Durning is the head of the organization and I highly recommend his books. I also recommend the Deep Ecology books edited by George Sessions. If your local library doesn't have them they can do an interlibrary search for them. Deep Ecology also has a website. I've learned so much from them this winter. Keep up the good fight!

-- debra in ks (solid-dkn@msn.com), February 15, 2001.