Why Won't Greenies Admit Immigration's Global Warming Impact?
Bret L
Immigration's Global Warming Impact?
By Steve Sailer
>> "Of the millions of Greenies who claim to be deadly serious about Saving the World from global warming by limiting carbon emissions, how many are really sincere?
There’s one surefire test of sincerity: Do they demand reductions in
immigration to the U.S.?
Answer: almost none of them do.
A Google search for “carbon emissions” brings up 3,680,000 web pages.
(August 8, 2010). Add “immigration reduction” to the search, however,
and the hit count falls to 114.
The causes of global warning are disputed, but let’s assume for the
sake of analysis that human output of “greenhouse gases” does indeed
cause global warming. It ought to be close to self-evident that
immigration to America increases this country’s—and the world’s—output
of those gases.
The logic is very simple: If immigrants from poor countries
successfully assimilate to American norms of earning and consuming,
they, and their descendents, will emit vastly more carbon than if they
stayed home.
According to the UN’s International Energy Agency, residents of
America in 2007 put out an average of 19.1 tons of carbon dioxide, the
chief greenhouse gas, by fossil fuel combustion—e.g., by driving
around, by being warm in winter and cool in summer, and by watching
TV.
In contrast, the residents of Mexico each emit 4.1 tons per year. In
other words, the typical inhabitant of America churns out 4.6 times as
much carbon dioxide as the typical inhabitant of Mexico.
So, if an average Mexican immigrates to the U.S. and fully assimilates
to average American patterns of earning and spending, he will emit 4.6
times as much carbon dioxide as if he stayed home in his own country.
(Even more important are the impact of his descendents, which we’ll
get to below).
This table gives a sampling of the carbon emissions per capita of
immigrant importing and exporting countries.
For example, Australians, in the grand tradition of Mad Max, pump out
an American-like 18.7 tons of carbon dioxide per year. Therefore, if
an average Australian moves to the U.S. and adopts the average
American’s way of life, the net effect on global carbon emissions
would be negligible: i.e., the “Immigration Multiplier” is barely
above 1.0.
The right hand column in the table lists the number of adults who want
to immigrate to each country according to a vast Gallup poll of
259,542 people in 135 countries. Around the world, no less than 700
million adults—one out of six of the total—want to emigrate. America
is the first choice of 165,000,000. Plus 60,000,000 others prefer to
move to Australia or Canada, which are both America Jr. from the
perspective of per capita carbon emissions.
In contrast to the Immigration Destination Countries, which typically
emit much carbon per person, the Immigration Source Countries don’t.
Thus the Immigration Multiplier for Mexico is 4.6 because residents of
Mexico pump out only 22 percent as much carbon per person as residents
of America. The -15,000,000 in Mexico’s right hand column means that
in the Gallup survey, 20 percent of the adults still left in Mexico
said they would like to leave. That equates to 15,000,000 adults (n.b.
this is not counting children and future offspring).
Of course, it’s also important to remember that not all immigrants
come from Mexico. Many Americans don’t realize it, but by Third World
standards, Mexicans on average aren’t particularly poor. According to
the CIA World Factbook, there are no less that 5,366,204,659 people
living in countries with lower average per capita incomes than Mexico.
To put it another way, 79% of world lives in countries poorer than
Mexico.
(Of course, the Mexican average is a little skewed by the World
Richest Man, Carlos Slim, major creditor of the New York Times, and
his fellow oligarchs.)
It’s commonly implied in the MSM that Mexicans immigrate to the U.S.
to avoid seeing their children die of starvation. Yet, life expectancy
in Mexico (76.3 years) is now essentially as high (97.5 percent) in
the U.S.
No, Mexicans don’t immigrate to America to live longer—they immigrate
to live larger: to have a large vehicle, a large house, a large TV,
and a large family. All of which equate to large carbon emissions.
American white liberals tend to imagine that Mexico has a donkey-based
economy, and thus that Mexicans must be blank slates who would
naturally follow white liberals’ advice.
Bunk. Stemming from the discovery of oil in Mexico (by the great
American geologist Everette Le DeGolyer in 1910), Mexico has long
been, by Third World norms, car-crazy and energy-profligate. The
government of Mexico has subsidized gasoline purchases for decades.
When my Southern California family drove to Mexico in the 1960s, we’d
debate whether to fill up in San Diego or wait until Tijuana for the
cheap (but noxious) Pemex gas.
To return to my theme: In most other immigrant-exporting countries,
the carbon emission immigration multiplier is substantially higher
than that of Mexico. For instance, if a normal Dominican immigrates to
America and successfully assimilates his carbon emissions would
increase 9.7 times. For most Central Americans, the Immigration
Multiplier is around 20X. For Haitians, it’s 79.3X.
But because Mexicans comprise the single largest group of immigrants,
and because their carbon Immigration Multiplier appears to be fairly
typical, I’ll use Mexicans to illustrate the effects of immigration.
When I’ve brought these inconvenient truths up in discussions, on the
rare occasions when Save the Worlders respond logically, they
sometimes dredge up the response that Mexico will, surely Real Soon
Now, emit as much carbon per capita as the U.S.
I don’t see much evidence for that in the UN figures. Mexico’s per
capita carbon emissions were estimated to be 18 percent as high as
America’s in 1982, and 22 percent as high a quarter of a century later
in 2007. At that rate, it would take many generations to close the
gap.
Global warming activists haven’t found many other objections to
sputter. Their thought processes tend to be restricted to Immigration
Good! Carbon Bad! Does not compute… These are HateStats!
This is representative of the kind of childishness that passes for
political discourse in America today. The feuds of junior high school
girls are more reality-based than what passes for current elite
discourse, which consists largely of 99 percent fact-free status
posturing.
Why this intellectual decline? At present, Americans are, by
historical standards, extraordinarily rich. Thus, we assume we will
always be able to afford to indulge in petulance rather than use facts
and logic.
Of course, we aren’t quite as rich as we thought we were three years
ago. But our intellectual maturity hasn’t caught up yet.
So let’s examine some logical objections to my argument for the global
warming worriers.
Consider a very simplified model in which an immigrant from Mexico
will either succeed or fail at assimilating to American norms on two
dimensions: Earning and Consuming.
Let’s start with the upper left hand corner of this quadrant: American
Dream. In this scenario, the typical Mexican who immigrates to the
U.S. achieves the American Dream. He succeeds at consuming like an
American (e.g., big SUV, big air-conditioned house in suburbs, big TV,
and so forth) and also (this is important) earning like an American.
Therefore, his contribution to global greenhouse gas emission will be
vastly greater than if he stayed home in Mexico. Even more
importantly, so will his descendants’ carbon emissions.
In the lower right corner, we see the opposite outcome: Undercaste.
Here, the Mexican immigrant fails to earn a better life for himself
and his offspring. He does not succeed at assimilating to American
norms of earning and consuming. He and his descendents ride the bus to
their low-productivity jobs. Under this scenario, Mexican immigrants
don’t pay enough taxes to make up for all the social services they
consume and all the damage they do to the public schools. Yet, at
least from a greenhouse gas perspective, an Undercaste outcome would
be great news.
But, we are constantly admonished that that it’s racist to even
entertain the thought that many Mexicans are unlikely to fully
assimilate.
In the lower left corner is the unspoken liberal assumption about the
impact of Mexican immigration: Ecotopia. This logical possibility is
the favorite of the sort of white liberals who have farm simulators on
their iPhones. Of course, it is the least logical or possible.
They assume Mexican immigrants rapidly achieve American levels of
income to pay the taxes for all the social programs that progressives
favor. Yet, for unexplained reasons, the Mexican immigrants and their
progeny choose to live like Portland trustfunders whose hobby is a
“sustainable” lifestyle based on walking to Whole Foods for heirloom
tomatoes. On the rare occasions when these Mexican immigrant families
drive anywhere, it would be in their vegetable oil-powered Toyota
Prius hybrid.
The Ecotopia assumption is the only logical way to square enthusiasm
about immigration with alarmism about greenhouse gases.
Of course, this view is seldom articulated fully—because it’s absurd
to anybody who knows any Mexicans other than that cool guy from
Cuernavaca they met at film school.
It’s not a coincidence that perhaps the finest contribution by
Chicanos to American popular art in the mid-20th Century was the
customized lowrider car. Mexicans love cars—the bigger the better.
In contrast, how many Mexicans do you see driving Prius hybrids? As
far as I can tell, Toyota hasn’t yet bothered selling its Prius in
Mexico (population 112,000,000). Nor do many Mexican-Americans want
one either. A poll of readers of Prius Chat found that only 3 percent
were Hispanic. If you are familiar with the ethnic layout of Los
Angeles County, you’ll enjoy this map of Prius registrations by zip
code.
Whatever stereotypes Larry David’s environmentalist ex-wife entertains
about flyover folks’ lack of environmental sensitivity are much truer
of Mexican immigrants.
But that never comes up in global warming worriers’ conversations—
because they never pay attention to Mexicans.
In the upper right corner of the quadrant, the worst of both worlds
happen: Bush Bubble. In this scenario, the Mexican immigrant and his
offspring spend like an American—buying a big house, a big vehicle,
and a big TV, all on credit—but earn like a Mexican. They eventually
default on their mortgages.
And, indeed, this is roughly what happened in the exurbs of California
during the Bush Bubble years: a baby boom, a housing and spending
bubble, and a crash of defaults.
Moreover, the more you think about the impact of Mexican immigration,
the worse it is for carbon emissions. Immigration contributes both
directly and indirectly to sprawl. Mexican immigration to cities tends
to drive Americans, including blacks and American-born Hispanics, to
the exurbs to find decent public school districts—at the cost of long
commutes for parents. For example, immigration into Los Angeles, with
its mild climate, spawned an enormous housing bubble in the hot Inland
Empire, where air conditioning costs are high.
As Joel Kotkin has often pointed out, most immigrants in the 21st
Century want to spend as little time in the inner city as possible and
instead move directly to a suburb or exurb.
Finally, Mexican immigrants tend to have higher birthrates in America
than they would have had if they stayed home. In California in 2005,
foreign-born Latinas were having babies at a rate of 3.7 children per
lifetime versus about 2.4 for women in Mexico and 1.6 for American-
born white women in California.
On the whole, we can be sure that immigration’s overall effect will be
some combination of American Dream, Undercaste, and Bush Bubble. It’s
not a coincidence that Ecotopias, such as Portland, are found far from
the Mexican border.
Let’s assume for the sake of calculating immigration’s impact on
carbon emissions in 2050 that the optimists are right and American
Dream is the standard outcome.
When the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming is finally
brought to the attention of global warming activists, many scoff at
the idea that immigration could have any sizable impact on the U.S.
population.
But that is simply ignorance. The Pew Research Center reported in
2008:
“If current trends continue, the population of the United States will
rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005, and 82% of the
increase will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and
their U.S.-born descendants, according to new projections developed by
the Pew Research Center.”[Immigration to Play Lead Role In Future U.S.
Growth, by Jeffrey Passel and D'Vera Cohn, February 11, 2008]
So, that’s 116 million additional people in America due to immigration
from 2005 onward. (Perhaps another 50 or 60 million of that forecasted
population of 438 million would be due to immigration from 1965-2004.)
Assuming that these immigrants emit carbon at the American average,
the U.S. in 2050 will emit 39 percent more carbon than if an
immigration moratorium had been imposed in 2005.
Confronted with this logic, global warming activists tend to say:
Well, All We Have To Do is cut emissions per capita even more to make
up for immigration.
But immigration means that we’re falling behind by about one-third
before we even begin to cut. How does that make sense if we have to
Save the World?
Each American would have to personally reduce his or her carbon
emissions by 28 percent by 2050, simply to make up for post-2005
immigration. And that’s just to keep the national carbon emission
total flat. Lowering U.S. emissions becomes even more difficult due to
immigration.
Conclusion: When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is
to stop digging.
America is widely denounced for accounting for about 20 percent of
world carbon dioxide outputs. Yet, the 2005-2050 addition to the
American population caused by immigration would alone account for an
additional eight percentage points of the global total.
The net effect of post-2005 immigration to America (taking into
account what the immigrants would have emitted back home in Mexico or
other countries), is six or seven points. In other words, by 2050,
post-2005 immigration to the U.S. will have the impact on greenhouse
gases of another one-third of an America coming into existence.
The impact by 2100 will be significantly greater.
Bottom line: U.S. immigration restriction is a relatively simple and
sure way to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.
That it almost never comes up in current debate says a great deal
about what might laughingly be described as modern “thought”.<<
Glanbrok
> By Steve Sailer
Only a moron would fail to realize the effect that quoting that chimp-
with-a-keyboard has on your own credibility, Brats.
> Answer: almost none of them do.
Have you blown your nose today?
Boon
> It’s not a coincidence that perhaps the finest contribution by
> Chicanos to American popular art in the mid-20th Century was the
> customized lowrider car.
So Sailer thinks that the lowrider car is more important contribution
to art than Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo? What a lowbrow, white-trash
douchebag.
>Mexicans love cars—the bigger the better.
And where are the poll results that indicate this?
>
> In contrast, how many Mexicans do you see driving Prius hybrids?
Probably quite a few...if someone bothered to keep count. I'm sure
Sailer hasn't.
As
> far as I can tell, Toyota hasn’t yet bothered selling its Prius in
> Mexico (population 112,000,000).
Are you sure about that, Sailer? I just saw a Prius with Sonoran
plates today.
Nor do many Mexican-Americans want
> one either.
And Sailer would know this how? Where are the results of said poll?
A poll of readers of Prius Chat found that only 3 percent
> were Hispanic.
And how many Hispanics respond to polls?
Sailer is a sloppy, irresponsible thinker who just makes shit up, as
anyone can plainly see. As a person who lies about audio products,
it's no wonder you idolize him.
>
> read more »
No thanks. Sailer is an uninformed idiot who barely scrapes enough
money together to pay for someone to host his site. He will die in
oblivion, just like all of you paranoid losers.
Clyde Slick
> On Aug 9, 7:32 pm, Bret L <ixtarbru...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> A poll of readers of Prius Chat found that only 3 percent
>
> > were Hispanic.
>
they probably weren't any more than 3% on pickup chat,
Boon
It's just more of Sailer's (and Bratzi's) ignorance about statistics.
Since when does a poll of readers on an online chat group correlate
with sales demographics? This just proves once again that a little
knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Clyde Slick
LOL! then we have nothing to fear, they are not up to a minimal level.
Bret L
> On Aug 9, 7:32 pm, Bret L <ixtarbru...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > It’s not a coincidence that perhaps the finest contribution by
> > Chicanos to American popular art in the mid-20th Century was the
> > customized lowrider car.
>
> So Sailer thinks that the lowrider car is more important contribution
> to art than Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo? What a lowbrow, white-trash
> douchebag.
Diego de Rivera is a subject of very interesting commentary by our
favorite Professor. He talks of doing research in a certain building
in the Federal District (i.e.Mexico City) where he was a friend of a
Mexican official of some importance. The building was painted inside
by Senor Rivera. RPO asked the official how he could stand working
around such trashy 'art', and was told that amongst other reasons the
official had known the artist personally and would never believe
anything the old perv ever said or did. Sadly this talk is one that
has never been transcribed; I may do this myself at some date.
I don't consider lowriders art, BTW, just bad design.
>
> >Mexicans love cars—the bigger the better.
>
> And where are the poll results that indicate this?
A drive down Southwest Blvd, up 7th Street and through the Argentine
district past Mickey's Surplus in KCK establishes this pretty well,
although the younger ones often favor ricers with fart cans and
circular sanitary pad tires on garishly chromed 20" wheels.
>
>
>
> > In contrast, how many Mexicans do you see driving Prius hybrids?
>
> Probably quite a few...if someone bothered to keep count. I'm sure
> Sailer hasn't.
>
> As
>
> > far as I can tell, Toyota hasn’t yet bothered selling its Prius in
> > Mexico (population 112,000,000).
>
> Are you sure about that, Sailer? I just saw a Prius with Sonoran
> plates today.
Actually Vinylsnatch, even a broken clock such as yourself is right
twice a day. It turns out Toyota de Mexico does list the Prius on its
web site.
How popular is the Prius there and what percentage of Mexicans who
actually buy one are MINOs-Mestizos In Name Only, pure Spanish or
other Euro Mexicans with no or only very little indio blood, which are
all the high class ones so to speak? Since you are interested, you do
the research and let Steve know he is wrong. See what he says.
>
>
> And how many Hispanics respond to polls?
That sounds like prejudice to me.
Clyde Slick
>
> How popular is the Prius there and what percentage of Mexicans who
> actually buy one are MINOs-Mestizos In Name Only, pure Spanish or
> other Euro Mexicans with no or only very little indio blood, which are
> all the high class ones so to speak? Since you are interested, you do
> the research and let Steve know he is wrong. See what he says.
>
>
Bratzi is a HBINO
Human being in name only.