This month's challenge by an anti-immigration slate in a Sierra Club board of directors election offers journalists a chance to examine the connections between population growth and environment in the United States. Question is: How many might take it?

The U.S. population-environment nexus is seldom looked at by American media. Once again, it is likely to be ignored in favor of a "food fight" within (and against) one of the leading advocacy organizations in the environmental movement.

Sierrans in 1998 rejected a similar challenge to the group's board and political philosophy by a 60-40 margin, and this year's outcome may not be dramatically different. The results are to be tallied April 21.

No rehashing the challenge story itself here -- it has been covered well enough elsewhere, and involves many players, lots of history, and many complexities of Sierra politics, environmental movement politics, and anti-immigration politics. You can read more in USA Today or the Christian Science Monitor.

The bid is clearly a challenge to the forces currently in charge of the Sierra Club -- a board majority and Executive Director Carl Pope -- who picture the attempt as a "hostile takeover." The charge has some truth -- the three candidates on the challenge slate all joined Sierra Club just before the election. But they have allies on the current board, such as Ben Zuckerman and Paul Watson. Insiders charge the challengers are "racist," since some anti-immigration groups with white supremacist overtones have joined the fray. The challengers deny that, and charge Sierra's leaders with being anti-democratic.

The challenge comes as a diversion just as Sierra's leaders are trying to focus the 700,000-member organization's resources on defeating President Bush.

With so many other issues muddying the water, it certainly seems the wrong forum and the wrong time to be trying to start serious discussion of how population growth affects the U.S. environment. Yet the issue is worth addressing.

The flap only illustrates why it is so hard for U.S. environmental groups -- much less journalists -- to take on the population issue. There are just too many secondary agendas; questions of ethics and values; religious, social, ethnic, gender, and class sensitivities; political landmines; and just plain taboos. Those make calm and reasonable discussion difficult.

The few groups that specialize in population issues have generally sought a factual, informative, low-key, unemotional approach -- perhaps why Zero Population Growth changed its name to Population Connection.

It would be easy enough to think that population growth was no longer an important issue in the United States since the nation's total fertility rate fell below replacement level in the mid-1970s and has hovered near it (now slightly above) ever since. But in actuality, the U.S. has one of the highest population growth rates (and fertility rates) among the industrialized nations -- with population climbing from 248.7 million in 1990 to 281.4 million in 2000 (and today an estimated 292.7 million).

Why? Immigration is certainly part of the answer, but maybe not the most important part. It turns out that immigration still accounts for less than half the current annual population increase, even when illegal immigrants are included. The rest is natural increase -- births minus deaths. Part of the explanation is that Americans are not dieing fast enough, partly because the population "bulge" of baby-boomers has yet to reach the age of high mortality, and partly because better health care extends life expectancies. Americans' gross and age-adjusted mortality rates have trended steadily downward during the last century.

The fact that the overall national fertility rate is close to replacement level is actually only half the story. Fertility for whites is below replacement level, while fertility for many minority and immigrant groups is well above it. The implications of this are made clear in the "nightmare scenario" graphic used by Support U.S.Population Stabilization (see graphic) -- by 2050, the majority of the U.S. population could consist of people who immigrated since 1970 and their descendants. This is what bothers the racists. As much as they might want it not to be so, it is a future to which the nation is already largely committed -- like global warming in a way. If they would lower the fertility of immigrant groups, they will probably have to provide them jobs, education, health care, and Social Security.

The essential logic of the Sierra challengers is simple: human population growth consumes and stresses the natural environment -- and immigration is a major factor in U.S. population growth. But the simplicity is deceptive: they are offering simple answers to complicated questions.

When it comes to environmental impact, a number of factors other than population are equally important. Americans have an environmental impact disproportionate to that of other nations also because of our higher technological development and standard of living. We have more cars and air conditioners than other nations, and we have more of them than we used to.

It is also worth remembering how geographically specific population growth and environmental conditions are within the U.S. Much of the immigrant population is focused in specific areas or regions. During the 1990s, according to the Population Reference Bureau, some 65 percent of all immigrants settled in just 10 U.S. metropolitan areas. Likewise, much of the "sprawl" and new development is focused in specific areas (See http://www.sprawlcity.org/hbis/index.html).

So whether you are talking about New York City, Houston, or Los Angeles, the sprawl depends as much on local land-use decisions as on raw population growth. And the 2000 Census confirmed that for many areas migration from other U.S. regions may be as important as international migration. The existing U.S. citizenry is migrating away from Frost-Belt states and into less crowded regions like the Rockies.

The point is that the connection between environment and migration is quintessentially a local and regional story -- and thus a prime opportunity for local journalists, whether their beat is environment, health, zoning, business, or government. Each journalist must ask what the story means for his or her area -- whether it is the migration of African Americans back to the South, the exodus of minorities to the suburbs, the flow of retiring boomers to Florida and Sun Valley, or immigration from Mexico to L.A.

No change in national immigration policy will have much real effect on any national environmental problem. If we want to keep BLM lands as graze for cattle and jackrabbits instead of pump jacks and gas wells, there is already a political and bureaucratic process for deciding that. If we want to keep the Douglas Firs of the Cascades for owl roosts instead of two-by-fours, there is an established process for deciding that. If we want to fix air pollution we can tighten standards for cars and trucks and require power plants to install pollution controls.

There is also a process for making immigration decisions; there are a number of immigration reform bills pending in Congress right now. It is largely a measure of the failure of anti-immigration groups like Fairness in American Immigration Reform, FAIR, in the government policy arena that they have resorted to trying to influence the outcome of a Sierra Club election.

Resources

"Sierra Club Could Add Immigration to Green Agenda," USA Today, March 7, 2004, by Traci Watson (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-03-07-sierra-club_x.htm).

"CU Prof, Sierra Club Hopeful, Seen As Anti-Immigration," Ithaca Journal, February 28, 2004, by Jennie Daley (http://www.theithacajournal.com/news/stories/20040228/lovcalnews/40092.html).

"A Reality Check for the Sierra Club," Denver Post, February 25, 2004,by Al Knight, http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~148~1976701,00.html.

"Immigration Dispute Spawns Factions, Anger in Sierra Club," Seattle Times, February 18, 2004, by Florangela Davila, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001859863_sierra18m.html.

"Immigration Debate Fuels Battle Over Sierra Club's Fate," Associated Press in Boston Globe, February 18, 2004, by Terence Chea, http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/02/18/immigration_debate_fuels_battle_over_sierra_clubs_fate/.

"Board Election Divides Sierra Club," San Francisco Chronicle, February 11, 2004, by Glen Martin, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/02/11/MNGRA4U14O1.DTL.

"A 'Hostile' Takeover Bid at the Sierra Club," Christian Science Monitor, February 20, 2004, by Brad Knickerbocker, http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0220/p01s04-ussc.html.

Groundswell Sierra: Lawrence Downing, LawrenceDowning@GroundswellSierra.org, http://www.groundswellsierra.org/.

Support U.S. Population Stabilization (SUSPS): http://www.susps.org/.

Population Reference Bureau: Ameristat, http://www.ameristat.org/.

Immigration Statistics: http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/aboutus/statistics/.

National Center for Health Statistics: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/default.htm.

Center for Immigration Studies: http://www.cis.org/index.cgi.