Viewpoint/Meredith Burke: Future depends on rolling back population

The Bakersfield Californian

1/28/01

In the past decade, school districts in the Bakersfield area have built or brought back some 25 elementary schools and a half-dozen middle schools. When Delano's new high school opens in 2003, it will already be past capacity. Kern High School District has built four new schools in the past 10 years, accommodating an additional 8,000 students. Yet it anticipates needing at least two more schools in the next 10 years, if not the next five.

News stories about projected enrollment increases or land acquisitions for school expansion accept population growth as a given. This is in line with the survey findings of University of Southwest Louisiana communications professor Michael Maher. In the mid-1990s, he analyzed a national sample of 50 stories each dealing with endangered species, urban sprawl and water shortages. Only one story in 10 even mentioned population growth as a contributory factor. Among these, "smart growth," not population stabilization, was offered as a possible solution.

Growth in Bakersfield's student-age population comes from several sources: offspring of telecommuters or skilled workers employed in Los Angeles in search of cheaper housing or a smaller community than the mega-city: offspring of migrant farm workers or of oil industry staff; offspring of prison employees or inmates (a factor in Delano High School District); a small baby boom echo as baby boomers bore postponed births in the late 1980s/early 1990s; and a halving of the Kern High School District's drop-out rate (from 40 to 22 percent).

Yet births to U.S. nationals have long since receded to the low levels of the 1970s. What underlies persistent enrollment increases? Journalists told Maher they didn't explore population growth factors because "it's beyond my scope (as a local reporter)." Or, "I have no room to go into underlying or contributory causes." And lastly, "We fear that discussing population will raise issues of reproduction and from there, abortion politics, which we prefer to avoid."

Alas, these reporters are 30 years behind times: immigration, not abortion, has become the "elephant in the living room" that it is impolite to remark upon. Since 1970, half of all national population growth and 60 percent of state growth have been derived from immigration - not just entrants, but their descendants. In the 1990s, births to immigrant women constituted 20 percent of national and 45 percent of California's annual 550,000 to 600,000 births. (By the 1990s U.S.-born daughters of recent entrants began their own childbearing).

The land and agriculture of the Central Valley - one of California's last great agricultural regions, producer of half the fruits and vegetables for American tables - will not survive a projected state increase of 20 million more people by 2025. Our land and natural beauty are already severely compromised by population's growth from 10 million in 1950 to 35 million today. Can they survive the next assault? If so, can they survive those after that?

The San Joaquin portion of the Central Valley (from Bakersfield to south of Sacramento) had 2 million people in 1980; 3.2 million today. Another 3 million live in Sacramento and areas further north.

Thirty years ago, M.I.T. professor Jay Forrester, in his books "System Dynamics" and "Urban Dynamics," warned against piecemeal solutions to complex systemic problems. By confusing symptoms with cause, this approach guarantees futile or, worse, counterproductive solutions.

The President's Commission on Population Growth and the American Future bluntly warned in 1972 that continued population growth threatened everything Americans held most dear. It urged Congress to adopt a national policy with all due speed, noting that both reproductive health and immigration policies would have to respect such.

But planners and politicians rejected demographic accountability, incurring that growth that spawned local dilemmas. They instead proposed short-sighted local solutions to systemic and national problems, and accepted the (physically impossible) inevitability of perpetual population growth. Safeguarding resources and the environment for our children's children is not on the legislative table.

None of the presidential candidates commented on the Census Bureau's projections that today's 275 million Americans will rise to 570 million Americans by the year 2100 with constant immigration levels - a full 1 billion with expanded ones.

Citizens must accept the unpleasant truth that saving our communities once and for all requires first stopping, then reversing population growth until California is back to its 1950 level of 10 million, the country to its 1950 level of 150 million: our maximum sustainable numbers. "Smart growth" can only partially mitigate the near-certain growth in the next quarter-century given the (immigrant-fueled) jump in childbearing-age adults.

A long-term commitment to sustainability requires both a national population policy and a strong commitment to defusing the Third World population explosion while fostering improved living standards and levels of female literacy in these countries. This is a popular policy: a recent national survey conducted for the Rand Corp. found that 72 percent of self-identified "conservatives" (80 percent overall) approved of U.S. support of international family planning programs.

Focusing upon only the micro picture will guarantee that each local school and water and planning district will work ceaselessly and futilely to meet expanding demands.

Demographer B. Meredith Burke is a senior fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization.

-- K (infourf@yahoo.com), February 15, 2001