With new books on population and immigration reaching bookstores all the time, where can you turn for good advice on which ones to purchase? NPG, of course. Below are a few books which we highly recommend browsing.
The Collapsing Bubble:
Growth and Fossil Energy
by Lindsey Grant
Seven Locks Press, 2005. $9.95 paperback.
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"A courageous look at the world's dwindling energy resources. Contending that the energy debate has been cast in the wrong terms, the author suggests that the problem would not be solved by asking: "What energy sources will be available to replace fossil fuels?" but by questioning: "What populations can be supported at a decent standard by the energy sources that will be available after the transition from fossil fuels?" Taking a brave stand, Grant suggests that with a bit of luck—we may be able to create a more harmonious balance with the rest of the biosphere, but at much lower population levels and less consumptive habits."
The Collapsing Bubble: Growth and Fossil Energy is a collection of three NPG Forum papers, The New American Century, The End of Fossil Fuels: Part I - How Long the Twilight, and The End of Fossil Fuels: Part II - Twilight or Dawn?.
About the Author
"Lindsey Grant is a retired Foreign Service Officer; he was a China specialist and served as Director of the Office of Asian Communist Affairs, National Security Council staff member, and Department of State policy Planning staff member. As Deputy Secretary of State for Environmental and Population Affairs, he was Department of State coordinator for the Global 2000 Report to the President, Chairman of the interagency committee on Int'l Environmental Committee and US member of the UN ECE Committee of Experts on the Environment. His books include: Too Many People, Juggernaut, The Horseman and the Bureaucrat, Elephants in Volkswagen, How Many Americans?"
The above text is from Amazon.com.
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Food, Energy, and Society
by David and Marcia Pimentel, Editors
University Press of Colorado, 1996, Revised Edition. Hardback.
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Food, Energy, and Society provides a detailed evaluation of the link between two of the greatest problems we face today - uncontrolled population growth and the destruction of our various life-supporting systems - food, land, water, and energy. Editors David and Marcia Pimentel suggest global population be drastically reduced from the current 6 billion to about 2 billion. Without such a change, the Pimentels ask the inevitable question - how can everyone be fed, given the limited and declining resources of our environment?
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Beyond Growth:
The Economics of Sustainable Development
by Herman E. Daly
Beacon Press, 1996. $20.00 paperback.
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In Beyond Growth, Professor Herman Daly offers to his readers a new way to examine the concept of economic growth. Daly argues that the term sustainable development is "dangerously vague" and widely misunderstood. Daly states that a truly sustainable economy must be directly linked to the size of the population and further growth in either area should not push beyond the environmental resources available.
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Too Many People:
The Case for Reversing Growth
by Lindsey Grant
Seven Locks Press, 2001. $12.95 hardback. $7.95 paperback
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This book explores a fundamental but seldom asked question: has the recent growth of human numbers and economic activity imperiled our well-being, social justice and even the natural support systems on which we and other creatures depend? Challenging a nearly universal enthusiasm for endless growth, Grant makes the unassailable point that perpetual material growth on Earth is a mathematical absurdity. Growth, moreover, is already an unrecognized root of environmental and social problems, not simply a potential danger.
Grant summarizes the evidence concerning food, water, land, climate change, the energy transition, chemicals and pollution and their threat to living systems. He observes that most people object to crowding -- but without identifying the source. He recognizes – indeed emphasizes -- the limits of our knowledge, but he suggests, in broad terms, what world population might be sustainable at a decent standard of living. The numbers are something like those the world passed two or three generations ago.
"We are already at war with the biosphere that supports us. More than any other proposed solution, a solution on the demand side -- population -- offers an effective way to end or ameliorate the problems I have described... and, remarkably enough, it will save money rather than demanding more investments." (p.71)
Politicians, planners and environmentalists usually treat population growth as an independent variable to which they must adjust, rather than as a factor that must be changed if a real solution to their problem is to be found. Grant turns the problem around and asks: what population size is compatible with achievement of our goals? And he suggests how we can get there. He applauds Europe's population turnaround though he warns of the limits.
The book is readable and will appeal to inquiring minds of all ages, but it is aimed particularly at college undergraduates. Grant is a former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment and Population Affairs and author of Elephants in the Volkswagen and Juggernaut: Growth on a Finite Planet.
"All great truths begin as heresy. Lindsey Grant is a heretical prophet. He proves it again by his new book. When the histories of these times are written, they will show him to be one of the few people understanding the future."
- Richard D. Lamm,
Governor of Colorado, 1975-87
"... unbiased but somber... I look forward to using Too Many People... as a supplementary text in my course on Environmental Policy."
- David Pimentel,
Professor of Ecology and Agricultural Sciences,
Cornell University
Click here to access the complete text of Too Many People.
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A Bicentennial Malthusian Essay:
Conservation, Population and the Indifference to Limits
by John F. Rohe
Rhodes & Easton, 1997. $18.95 hardcover.
Learn more: the Malthusian Bicentennial
NPG Executive Director Sharon McCloe Stein's Review
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"In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus wrote the controversial Essay on the Principle of Population in which he stated: "... the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." Two hundred years later, a far more congested world must make room for 250,000 more people every day (total births minus total deaths). Malthus suggested there might be an inverse relationship between the quantity and quality of human life. Approximately one billion people now go to bed hungry every night. Several hundred thousand die of malnutrition every year. Violence and hostility are in the rise in increasingly overpopulated regions. Malthus recognized limits. Was he just a "squeezing, grasping, covetous old sinner" inspiring Dickens' fictional Scrooge? Or does the Malthusian message of 1798 have relevance to the present world?"
"Just as Malthus did two centuries ago, John astutely points out that ignoring population will result in more than an indifference to limits. It's sure to prove ruinous."
-Keith Schneider
Executive Director,
Michigan Land Use Institute
"Get ready for some straight talk you might find difficult to hear. Like Malthus before him, you may not always agree with what John Rohe has to say. But his essay is oddly hopeful if enough of us question, as he does, the path we're on and begin to blaze a new one."
-Julie Stoneman,
Land Programs Director,
Michigan Environmental Council
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"Unfortunately, with an endless supply of competing crises to capture both rich and poor nationsâ attention and resources, governments are likely to lose focus . The world community will not do nearly enough to prevent massive overpopulation unless two things occur. First, nations become sufficiently convinced of the severity and the urgency of the population crisis. Second, governments gain a realistic view of what is needed to resolve the crisis in time."
"A very important book. Unlike most, it rightly sees overpopulation as a threat to
the human spirit as well as to our physical well-being."
-Virginia Abernethy, Ph.D.
Editor, Population and Environment Journal
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The Case Against Immigration:
The Moral, Economic, Social, and Environmental Reasons for Reducing U.S. Immigration Back to Traditional Levels
by Roy Beck
W.W. Norton and Company, 1996. $24.00 Hardcover .
NPG Fellow David Simcox's Review
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"We will always be a nation of immigrants. But runaway immigration rates-- far beyond traditional levels-- are now savaging American society on many fronts. This rigorously reported, deeply humane book documents the crisis and points the way out of a government-engineered mess that benefits the rich at the expense of almost everyone else including immigrants."
"Roy Beck demonstrates that immigration policy has been set in an incoherent
manner without any stated goals, and with no regard for the harm it does to
both high-skill and low-skill American workers.ä
-Professor Norman Matloff,
University of California, Davis
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Juggernaut
Growth on a Finite Planet
by Lindsey Grant
Seven Locks Press, 1996.
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Lindsey Grant examines the human condition as population and consumption levels approach the edges of the Earth's ability to support them. The book is a unique synopsis of the interactions among population, food production, the energy transition, air pollution and climate change, technology, trade policies, productivity and unemployment. It describes the different ways that the current population explosion plays out in the poorest countries, the "emerging" countries, and the old industrial nations-- and shows how they will shape each otherâs future. It relates that growth to U.S. policies on foreign affairs, agriculture, trade, immigration, unemployment, population and health care, and proposes some specific changes in thinking and policies.
"Fascinating...no one has described so compelling the social, political and economic implications of population growth."
-Gaylord Nelson
Former U.S. Senator, Earth Day Founder
"The best and most clearly written discussion yet about what the author correctly suggests may be the most important task on Earth.
-Congressman Anthony C. Beilenson
Co-chair of the Congressional Coalition on Population and Development
"This book dares to go beyond the conventional wisdom. It comes to grips with the need for solutions that are both adequate and humane. In doing that, and in doing that so well, this book meets a dire need in the population policy arena."
-Donald Mann
President and Founder,
Negative Population Growth, Inc.
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Elephants in the Volkswagen:
Facing the Tough Questions About Our Overcrowded Country
by Lindsey Grant
W.H. Freeman & Co., 1992. $22.95 hardcover
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In the last century, the United States has grown from 75 million people to 250 million. Have we gone too far? How can an optimum population be identified and achieved, and how can we confront the problems now facing our overcrowded country?
Negative Population Growth put these questions to specialists on the environment, food and energysupplies, urban issues, national defense, labor and other areas directly affected by U.S. demographics. The result is Elephants in the Volkswagen -- a unique, multifaceted examination of one of the most pervasive and controversial issues facing our nation's policymakers.
"Courageously attacking the hard questions about population, these essays cast new light on some of the central problems of human survival. The readers may be surprised to learn that we really can do something about population."
-Dr.Garrett Hardin
co-author of Managing the Commons and author of Population, Evolution and Birth Control
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How Many Americans?:
Population, Immigration and the Environment
by Leon F. Bouvier and Lindsey Grant
Sierra Club Books, 1994. $18.00 hardcover, $12.00 softcover
Read NPG President Donald Mann's Review
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In this tough-minded, lucid book, Leon Bouvier and Lindsey Grant examine the inevitable and escalating environmental degradation that will result if population growth pushes the limits of our already strained environmental carrying capacity. If we are already grappling with dirty air, poisoned water, destruction of forests, the loss of topsoil, vanishing species, and the deterioration of cities, with the gap between rich and poor growing ever wider, what will the next century be like aswe grow from 260 to 400 million?
The prospects the authors describe are not pretty ones. Because of our energy-demanding consumption-driven economy, the United States is the leading source of two of the gravest threats to life on this planet - acid precipitation and climatic warming. Given the disproportionate damage we as Americans create, the authors call for appropriate attention to the difficult issues raised by population questions.
Analyzing current andprojected rates of fertility, mortality and migration, Bouvier and Grant forecast various population scenarios and conclude that low fertility rates alone will not solve our population problem. They recommend lower immigration levels to achieve environmental sustainability in the twenty-first century. Arguing with compassion and concern for the less fortunate in other countries, the authors point out ways the United States could support population-reducing policies abroad and promote the empowerment of women in decisions affecting family size. At the same time, they urge Americans to act responsibly toward our own future, here, at home.
In the increasingly heated debate over immigration, the reasoned, unflinching, progressive voice of How Many Americans? is sure to play a pivotal role.
"This book asks questions long overdue. Do we want 400 million Americans? Fifty million Californians? If 'all great truths begin as heresy,' this is a heretical -- but desperately important -- book."
-Richard D. Lamm,
Former Governor of Colorado
"The future is unbearably grim unless corrective measures are now taken, largely in the form of sharply reducing current legal immigration levels (now about a million a year), while taking strong steps for bringing illegal immigration to a halt... How Many Americans? has several distinctive attributes, aside from its important message: it is well written, well organized, commendably succint, and above all, concludes with positive, specific solutions."
-Marshall Green
Former Assistant Secretary of State and Chair,
National Security Council Task Force on Population
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