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Alexandria, VA, (10/16/06): Donald Mann, president of Negative Population Growth, Inc. today called on the nation's leaders to first recognize that our country is already vastly overpopulated in terms of the long range carrying capacity of its resources and environment, and then adopt policies that would halt and eventually reverse our population growth.

Using the occasion of the country reaching 300 million people – and, if present trends are allowed to continue, the prospect of reaching 400 million in only 30 more years – Mann criticized all those who celebrate population growth rather than recognizing it for what it is – a serious threat to our resources and environment, and thus to our standard of living and the quality of our lives.

"The American people, especially our leaders, must bring themselves to face the reality that our population cannot be allowed to continue to grow without disastrous consequences," Mann said.

Mann continued, "More people will require more of everything: land, water, energy, roads, schools, hospitals, etc. The more we grow, the more difficult it will be to reduce our dependence on imported oil."

"Furthermore, the financial costs of keeping up with current population growth and building the massive infrastructure of roads, bridges, power plants, dams, airports, housing, office buildings and other vital projects needed to accommodate more than 30 million more people per decade in the coming years will be tremendous. The environmental destruction that would result would be massive and irreversible," he noted.

The solution, according to Mann, is for today's elected leaders and national policymakers to work toward a National Population Policy aimed at stabilizing our population at an optimum level – a level far lower than today's that we could sustain far into the future. Such a policy would entail encouraging couples to have not more than two children, and call for a drastic reduction in immigration, the primary source of our population growth.

According to Mann, "Failure to act now to adopt sensible population and immigration policies designed to halt and reverse our population growth as soon as possible will condemn future generations of Americans to a declining quality of life in an overcrowded country. We owe it to them to address this issue now."

Negative Population Growth is a national membership organization, founded in 1972, that seeks to educate the American public and our political leaders about the catastrophic effects of overpopulation on our environment and quality of life.