- James Bowen, Ph.D. is a nuclear physicist and environmentalist from Lawrence, Kansas.
- Endless growth also threatens Americans’ quality of life.
- The ever-increasing population has made the consequences of water shortages far worse.
- The good news is that Americans want a more sustainable population.
Spring Hill, 30 miles south of Nashville, experienced the 10th-fastest population growth of any city in the country last year — and it was the only Tennessee city on the Top 10 list.
Plenty of other Tennessee municipalities are growing nearly as fast.
According to projections by the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the Volunteer State could grow by close to a million people over the next 20 years and reach a total population of 7.87 million by 2040.
This growth certainly brings some economic benefits, but it also comes at a severe cost to the environment and existing residents’ quality of life.
A growing population needs more water from rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers — as well as more land to grow food, more residential and commercial buildings, more roads, more landfills, more wastewater treatment plants, and so on.
There is ample evidence that the current U.S. population, 333 million and counting, is already unsustainable. And unless our leaders slow this ongoing growth, the problems will only get worse, and our quality of life will drastically decline.
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