Americans planted trees, organized park clean-ups and hosted community events to promote conservation and sustainability for Earth Day 2019. All those activities are important. But they don't address one of America's biggest environmental challenges — rapid population growth. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the U.S. population has increased from 205 million to 327 million. It'll surge to 404 million by 2060, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Would adding another 77 million people to the United States cause great harm to the environment? It’s a question we need to ask ourselves.It's not too late to put America on a more sustainable path, but that would mean having an honest discussion about what’s driving U.S. population growth. Almost 90 percent of population growth is fueled by immigration, according to Pew Research. Humanely scaling back future levels of immigration would help America pursue a sustainable future.

Earth Day's founder, the late Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisconsin), recognized the need to address immigration levels.

"It's phony to say 'I'm for the environment but not for limiting immigration,' " he noted. "It's just a fact that we can't take all the people who want to come here."  

He's right. Nearly 160 million people around the world want to move to the United States. There's no feasible way to accept them all. Which means Americans need to make hard choices about who we let in and, most importantly, how many. 

While making policy advice is weird for a high schooler, we need to find a way to curb the amount of immigration coming to America. While America strains itself environmentally to sustain its ever growing population, other countries with lower populations where immigrants are coming from may have an easier time lowering their footprint. 

Source: