300 Million People And Counting
Late afternoon in Maricopa, Ariz. is the picture perfect time for the annual homecoming parade in a city that more and more people are calling home.
The city is only three years old, but Mayor Kelly Anderson has lived on a farm in what is now Maricopa all his life. So far, he is the city's first and only mayor. Houses are springing up where he said six months ago, there were none.
Maricopa is a microcosm of the population surge occurring in much of the United States — the fastest growing in the industrialized world.
There are one million new residents every four months. The census bureau predicts we'll reach 300 million people some time the week of October 16th.
"When I was a kid there weren't any houses," Kelly told CBSSunday Morning correspondent Thalia Assuras as he showed her where he grew up. "I rode my bike through that area and we had a fishing pond on the north end of the farm and life was good. It's good now."
Life in Maricopa is rapidly changing. It's population jumped from just 1,500 when Anderson took the helm to 25,000. By the end of the decade Maricopa is expected to explode to more than one hundred thousand.
"It's really fast. At one point the city was permitting 800 permits a month," Anderson said. "And we do the creative math; it's about three people per hour. It's really phenomenal when you think about it."
The growth is so rapid that city hall is housed in temporary trailers. Municipal planners are scrambling to keep ahead of potential transportation and traffic problems as they shape their city. Council member Will Dunn was born here and recently returned with his young family.
"We came here to get away from the growth. It came with us," he said. "We decided at that point, we're gonna work with it."
Dunn has capitalized on the population rise with his pet store. He also sells flowers, saddles and even birds.
"You kinda had to make the choice when this whole explosion happened," he said. "You had to decide whether you're gonna just be mad that people's taking over your area. Or you're gonna say, 'You know what, here's an opportunity.'"
William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, said there are three reasons for U.S. population growth: the birth rate is relatively high, we're healthier and living longer, but mostly, it's immigration. He said there is a net increase of one immigrant — legal or illegal — every 30 seconds.
"I have predicted that the 300-millionth American will be a boy born in Los Angeles County to a Mexican mother," he said. "It's not only a prediction, but I think it's, it's more symbolic of what the population will look like in the next several years. The 300-millionth American represents going back to our melting pot roots in a way, because we're now bringing in much of our growth from immigrants, the children of immigrants, and a diversity to our population which we haven't seen in a long time."
Immigration has been a hot button political issue leading into the midterm elections. Frey said that because the 300-millionth American is likely to either be an immigrant or child of an immigrant, some people will "mixed up with all kinds of other issues associated with the illegal immigration debate, with the rancor that sometimes comes along with this in some states where immigrants are a new phenomenon."
In other years the country reached population milestones, like in 1967 when the population hit 200 million, much fanfare surrounded the achievement. That year, a census clock kept track of the increase and President Lyndon Johnson visited the census bureau to commemorate the occasion.
Life magazine documented the birth of the 200 million America. Robert Ken Woo Jr. was born Nov. 20th 11:03 a.m. in Atlanta, Ga.
"I've always considered it an honor and something that I've been proud of, at the same time recognizing that I had absolutely nothing to do with receiving it," Woo, a lawyer in Atlanta and father of three, said. "And it was just a completely random, random happening."
Woo's birth prompted then Sunday Morning anchor Charles Kuralt to look back at how fast America had grown. He went to one of the earliest colonial towns, Plymouth, where the pilgrims arrive on the Mayflower in 1620.
"When the embattled farmers stood here, by the old north bridge in concord, and fired the shot heard round the world, there were 3 million of us, mostly farmers," Kuralt said then. "Think of it: 3 million people; one for every square mile of what was to become, in the course of human events, a nation."
It took until 1915 to reach 100 million. The streets were still filled with horse and buggies and Ellis Island was filled with immigrants. In 1967, the U.S. was growing up from the inside and only six percent of Americans were foreigners. Alarm bells were sounding over the population boom.
The 1960s-era T.V. series "Lost in Space" tasked the Robinson family with finding a new planet for humans because of overcrowding on earth. In 1972 a population commission chaired by John D. Rockefeller III expressed great concern.
"The population growth of the current magnitude has aggravated many of the nation's problems and made their solution more difficult," he said then.
Cautionary tones persist today. Vicki Markham of the Center for Environment and Population says a new scientific study shows that Americans are making a deep, damaging, ecological imprint on the environment.
"We have never had an America where we had so many people consuming so many natural resources, with so much environmental impact," she said. "When you take all the Americans, our everyday actions do cause there to be an imprint, just like when you have an imprint of your foot on the beach. It is not without effect."
Densely populated coastal regions, urban sprawl and more cars cause climate changes and place increased demands on resources like energy and water. Markham said there is already evidence that the country is reaching it's "ecological limits to some degree."
Frey, the demographer says that population growth is not necessarily the cause of environmental degradation. He said Americans simply consume too much. He says 400 million people — which he predicts will be reached in 2043 — is manageable.
"I think we're much better equipped in this country because of our wealth, because of our scientific prowess and just because of the land and resources we have here to enable that kind of growth," he said. "I don't think it's doom and gloom"
Maricopa mayor Kelly is banking on Frey's prediction of sustainable growth.
"You plant a seed, whether it's a cotton seed or flower seed, you plant a seed of economic growth or prosperity, and it's another way to look at it, another way to look at farming," he said.