In the past decade, I’ve filed more of those notorious “environmentalist” lawsuits than I can remember. In each, our client was someone who was trying to protect the environment from something someone else thought was a good idea, typically because there was money to be made.
We’ve won most of those cases, and at the end of each we celebrate: Some shred of the natural world is saved; some species granted a stay of execution by extinction. But recently, upon hearing of the arrival of the 300 millionth American, I thought of Sisyphus, that unlucky Greek condemned to roll a rock uphill forever, only to watch it roll back down.
What do 300 million Americans mean for Colorado? Climb something near Denver that would make Sisyphus proud and look around. You will see the Denver basin filled with a sea of humanity, a great bowl sloshing over, west through the cracks of the Front Range, north to Fort Collins, south to Colorado Springs, and east to wherever the Super Slab is slated for construction. We might have smart growth and open space protection, but the rising tide of humanity is relentless.
Consider the facts: In our first national headcount, the 1790 Census, there were around 4 million Americans. Colorado alone passed the 4 million mark by 1999. Today, we are pushing 5 million, 2.3 million or so in the Denver area.
From 1790 on, the center of the U.S. population has marched steadily westward from the Chesapeake Bay to east of St. Louis. People love the West and they move here. The Census Bureau projects another 1.5 million Coloradans by 2030, or roughly a new Denver to “hide” somewhere in our state.
Scientists tell us 300 million Americans means 300 million shopping bags full of natural resources each week to sustain our lifestyle. They estimate it would take the resources of four additional Earth-like planets to allow all 6 billion current inhabitants of this Earth to live like Americans. They also tell us humans are supplanting many of the other species on Earth. The trend holds in Colorado.
Look at the prairie. In 1870, there were 39 million Americans and about as many buffalo. A couple decades on, the buffalo were gone, and there were 60 million of us. Lewis and Clark found 100 million acres of prairie dogs. Today, the count is 1 million acres. We are far more numerous than prairie dogs, a species many still consider a pest. The mountain plover, a bird closely linked with prairie dogs for survival, currently numbers around 10,000. The black-footed ferret, another species dependent on prairie dogs, is nearly extinct, reduced to 18 individuals in 1987. Today, 20 years into a recovery effort, there are maybe 1,000 black-footed ferrets, but they have no place to live. The prairie dog towns have vanished.
Look to the mountains. Grizzly bears and wolves are gone. Colorado heralds its lynx re-introduction effort, but can the 100 or so endangered lynx roaming Colorado’s woods survive with 10 million or more skier days and the accompanying condos?
All together, the current populations of things like mountain plovers, black-footed ferrets and lynx in Colorado couldn’t fill the south stands at the old Mile High Stadium. There is no room for them, because there are so many of us.
Population growth is something environmentalists don’t like to talk about. But this elephant in the corner threatens to kick over all our carefully crafted environmental protection statutes. We simply have to make room for other creatures or we face a future on a lonely planet – lonely, that is, for those of us who desire the company of wildlife.
Albert Camus once opined in a 1955 essay (when there were about half as many Americans) that he thought Sisyphus was happy rolling his rock, continually defying the gods. I think Sisyphus might have been happier still if he had figured out a way to make that rock stay put. For environmental protection to work, we must come to terms with our population growth. Three hundred million is quite enough, thanks.
Jay Tutchton (jtutchton@law.du.edu) is director of the National Wildlife Federation’s environmental law clinic at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law.
