The Environmental Argument for Reducing Immigration into the United States

Abstract

* Department of Philosophy, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523. Cafaro is author of Thoreau’s Living Ethics: Walden and the Pursuit of Virtue (Athens:University of Georgia Press, 2004). He has had two children and one vasectomy. Staples, a wildlife biologist, has conducted research on the North American lynx and the Amur leopard. He also worked to recover the American chestnut and as a bear technician in Denali National Park before beginning graduate studies in environmental philosophy.The authors thank the spirited audiences who heard versions of this paper at Colorado State University, the University of Colorado, Colorado College and at APA/ISEE sessions in Baltimore (2007) and Pasadena (2008) and refrained from throwing things. Among the dozens of people whose comments have helped improve this article, we particularly wish to thank Larry Cahoone, Jennifer Everett, Brian Treanor, Mark Woods, Tom Wood, Mark Easter, Holmes Rolston, III, Rod Adams, Steven Shulman, Ned Hettinger, Thomas Heyd, Marion Hourdequin, Simon James, Ronnie Hawkins, Kristin Cafaro, Ralph Cafaro, Peter O’Neill, Clare Palmer, Beth Tropman, Pat McKee,Thomas Seiler, Gene Hargrove, and three anonymous reviewers for Environmental Ethics, Robert Hood, Ben Minteer, and Peter G. Stillman. None of them, however, should be presumed to have agreed with us. A serious commitment to environmentalism entails ending America’s population growth and hence a more restrictive immigration policy. The need to limit immigration necessarily follows when we combine a clear statement of our main environmental goals—living sustainably and sharing the landscape generously with nonhuman beings—with uncontroversial accounts of our current demographic trajectory and of the negative environmental effects of U.S. population growth, nationally and globally. Standard arguments for the immigration status quo or for an even more permissive immigration policy are without merit. Americans must choose between allowing continued high levels of immigration and creating a sustainable society.