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Lindsey Grant Books
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Notable Papers and Articles
(from sources other than NPG, but of significant importance to NPG’s mission and goals)
The End of Growth
by Richard Heinberg
New Society Publishers, 2011
Summary by Bill Ryerson of the Population Media Center
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Immigration Reform and America's Unchosen Future
by Otis L. Graham, Jr.
AuthorHouse, 2008
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NPG published a chapter from Graham's Book as an NPG Forum Paper
A Review by NPG's David Simcox
by Peter Seidel
Prometheus Books, 2009
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A Review by NPG's David Simcox
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?
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.
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
Ending the Explosion: Population Policies and Ethics for a Humane Future
by William Hollingsworth
Seven Locks Press, 1996. $23.95 Hardcover; $17.95 Softcover
NPG Fellow David Simcox's Review
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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
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
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
