Below is a recent letter to the editor of the Denver newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News. It’s from Dave Gardner of Save the Springs in Colorado Springs. It’s an excellent response to the typical growth industry rhetoric, this time concerning “listless” population growth. It reminds me of our recent mayor’s comments to the Sun that Mount Vernon had been “stagnant” until he began pushing for residential development, leading to today’s “vibrant housing market” giving us “the kind of growth we need.”

I recommend Save the Springs as a great informational resource for those interested in pursuing further a rational approach to growth.

—

DEPENDING ON POPULATION GROWTH FOR PROSPERITY IS A DEAD-END

This is a letter I sent to the Rocky Mountain News in response to a story about Colorado population statistics. The first paragraph was published in the News on January 2. I thought you might like to read it in its entirety. Feel free to pass it on to anyone who could benefit from some critical thought about population growth and economic development.

In his story about population growth (Colorado ranks 11th in growth, 12/22/05), reporter John Aguilar did our citizens a disservice by labeling our state’s most recent 1.4% annual growth rate as “another year of listless population growth.” [EMPHASIS ADDED] Give Mr. Aguilar a calculator, please! If our population growth were to remain at this listless level (its expected to rise), our state’s population would double to over 9 million by 2055, and would hit 18 million around the turn of the century. A more likely scenario? This doubling will happen in just 38 years if we keep up the average growth rate of the past five years. That would mean 37 million people in the state of Colorado by 2119, and 74.5 million just 38 years later. That will require us to do much more than suck Lake Powell dry. We cannot build enough dams or seed enough clouds to supply water to that population. This listless rate of population growth is taking us nowhere we want to go!

An interesting quote in the story came from state demographer Elizabeth Garner: “There just haven’t been the jobs to bring people here. This underscores the simple truth that we cannot create or recruit jobs in a vacuum. If we steal jobs from other states, we are stealing residents from those states, too. People will move to where the jobs are. So job recruiting and creation is actually causing our state’s population to swell. We should be careful what we wish for. If we are to act responsibly toward the future of our children and grandchildren, we should base our prosperity on more innovative means of economic development. Traditional, archaic economic development will ultimately cost our state billions and billions of dollars due to its impact as a population-growth machine on our natural resources, environment and infrastructure.

Dave Gardner
Founder & Chair, SaveTheSprings

A sustainable approach to our environment & quality of life - for current & future generations
Visit us at www.savethesprings.org