Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

Thank you for your excellent editorial. Unfortunately, there is a sad irony here. Your editorial board is similarly in denial about one of the United States’ major obstacles to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Our population, now about 310 million, will skyrocket to 438 million by 2050, according to the Pew Research Center. According to Pew, mass immigration will be responsible for four-fifths of that growth.

Since the United States has the largest per capita resource use and greenhouse emissions of any major industrialized nation, and since a large plurality of immigrants come from nations with much smaller per capita footprints, mass immigration is unfortunately a lose-lose for the planet. Your credibility would be helped by addressing your own denial issues.

David C. Holzman
Lexington, Mass., Oct. 18, 2010

Note from KBJ: Trying to hold the editorial board to a standard of consistency is like trying to grab an eel. The board emotes; it doesn't reason.