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Immigration: The Demographic and Economic Facts8. Effects on Natural Resources and the EnvironmentPublished by the Cato Institute and the National Immigration Forum
Does adding immigrants to the population cause greater natural
resource scarcity for natives? Does immigration cause degradation
of the environment?
The impact of immigrants on the environment, and on supplies
of natural resources and energy, is similar to the impact of any
additional citizens, whether born in the United States or abroad;
immigration raises no special research problems. But the effects
of additional people on the environment is itself a complex
topic, fraught with argument and confusion. A large portion of my
book The Ultimate Resource (revised edition out in early 1996) is
devoted to discussion of just this issue. The relevant
propositions may be summarized as follows:
Supplies of Natural Resources
In the very short run, an additional person necessarily
causes increased cost, higher prices, and increased scarcity. But
the long-term trends for virtually every raw material (including
energy) are toward sharply lower prices and increasing
availability. These trends have occurred during periods of
increasing population. That is, natural resources over the long
run have been getting less scarce rather than more scarce, as
indicated by the fundamental economic measure of cost. The
examples of copper and wheat in Figures 8.1 and 8.2 are typical
of all natural resources.
This process is counterintuitive. Here is a brief
description of the process that brings it about: (1) An
immigrant-swelled increased population leads to greater use of
natural resources than otherwise. (2) Prices of raw materials
then rise. (3) The price rise and the resultant fear about
scarcity impel individuals to seek new lodes of raw materials,
new production technologies, and new substitutes for the
resources. (4) Eventually the price of the service or the
resource in question--for example, the price of energy whether
produced from wood, coal, oil, or nuclear power--falls lower than
it was before the temporary scarcity began. This process requires
some time and is quite indirect. Yet this process has been the
mainspring of economic progress for 5,000 years.
In short, increased demand eventually leads to supplies
greater than would have existed otherwise, rather than to the
scarcity that simple Malthusian theory expects.
This process even applies to land. Increased agricultural
productivity has led to much former farmland no longer being
profitable to farm, with resulting increases in forest and
recreational areas, especially in the South and in the Northeast.
Cleanliness of the Environment
The basic trends in U.S. environmental quality are positive,
accompanying (though not necessarily caused by) increases in
population. The cleanliness of the water we drink in the United
States has been improving in past decades by every reasonable
measure of quantity and purity (see Figure 8.3). The air, too,
has been getting less polluted (see Figures 8.4 and 8.5).
So the weight of the evidence suggests that, though
additional people cause more pollution in the short run, in the
long run additional people lead to less pollution, strange as
that may sound at first to the noneconomist.
Most laypersons will read these statements with a mixture of
amazement and disbelief; no short presentation of the evidence
can be convincing. I again refer you to my book, The Ultimate
Resource, which devotes a good deal of attention to this topic,
or to an edited volume (Simon 1995), which devotes several
chapters to it. Or you may examine the latest issue of the Annual
Report of the Council on Environmental Quality, where you will
find ample official documentation of these propositions. This may
be especially convincing because the CEQ has long emphasized
deteriorating trends rather than improving ones.
Conclusion
As population size and average income have increased in the
United States, the supplies of natural resources and the
cleanliness of the environment have improved rather than
deteriorated. These data do not by themselves prove a causal
connection. But they offer very strong evidence that there is not
a causal connection in the other direction; more people do not
imply deterioration.
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