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Opening Arguments

Make room!

Omigod, what are we going to do?

If the USA seems too crowded and its roads too congested now, imagine future generations: The nation's population could more than triple to 1 billion as early as 2100.

That's the eye-popping projection that urban and rural planners, gathered today for their annual meeting in Las Vegas, are hearing from a land-use expert.

"What do we do now to start preparing for that?" asks Arthur Nelson, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, whose analysis projects that the USA will hit the 1 billion mark sometime between 2100 and 2120. "It's a realistic long-term challenge."

Might I suggest, since most of us will not be among that billion, that we try not to panic too much? And, with all due respect to Mr. Nelson, this isn't really something you "plan" for. The population will grow incrementally, not suddenly and dramatically, so we adapt rather than plan. This story sounds like it was written by someone who has mostly experienced big urban centers, which are indeed crowded and congested, and isn't thinking about all those wide open, mostly empty spaces this country has. A billion? Piece of cake.

Of course, if the projection is accurate, and you extrapolate it to the whole world, that means about 18 billion warm bodies will be wandering around begging for the precious food we need for biofuel. Oh, no, wait, we can't handle that many people. Population will actually peak at around 9 billion in 2075. Dr. Ehrlich, phone home. You need to exhume Malthus one more time.

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