For the better part of a century, the most important estuary on the East Coast, Chesapeake Bay, has suffered the consequences of rapid population and economic growth in the bay’s watershed. Because of increasing nutrient and sediment pollution, urban runoff and chemical contaminants, the bay’s water has turned murky, beds of submerged aquatic vegetation (bay grasses) have died off, commercial and sports fisheries have been hammered, the iconic blue crab has suffered, and the bay’s legendary oyster harvest has been reduced to a pittance and almost a memory.
It is clear that growth comes at a price. That “smart growth,” as the late physicist Albert Bartlett once quipped, is a pseudo-solution, and “sustainable growth” an oxymoron.
The organizers and sponsors of the recent conference “Growth and the Future of the Chesapeake Bay” on January 13 - 14 at stately Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, understood all this.
As they asked in the pre-conference promotional flyer:
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Can the money that’s been spent on bay and river restoration deliver fishable, swimmable waters in the face of a human population, 17 million strong and growing, that consumes ever more land, energy, and resources?
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Can there be frank talks about the real costs of growth among policymakers?
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Landsat image of Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay (upper right).
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“Frank talks?” What were they thinking? In this age of political correctness and the silencing of free speech whenever it is deemed offensive or unacceptable by the progressive thought police?
Since much of the current population growth and virtually all of the projected future population growth in the Chesapeake Bay watershed are related to immigration, it would have been remiss of the conference organizers not to invite speakers who would address this issue.
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Roy Beck
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They selected two of the very best, both whom I’m proud to say are colleagues and friends of mine: Roy Beck and Philip Cafaro.
A former environmental journalist and author of several books, Roy is the founder and president of NumbersUSA, one of the leaders in the fight in Congress against amnesty and for genuine immigration reform that would enforce the law, reduce overall immigration numbers and give America its only chance at stopping environmentally unsustainable population growth.
Roy was just profiled in The New York Times in December 2014. TheTimes article called him the “genial force behind bitter opposition to immigration overhaul,” who “quietly leads a grass-roots army.” It referred to Roy as:
…perhaps the most powerful member of the small but vocal movement that has helped scuttle every effort at an immigration overhaul for nearly two decades.
