Tracts of new houses stretch for tens of miles from city centers, gobbling up open land while straining water, power, and road systems. Meredith Burke, a demographer and UU from Santa Barbara, California, says that while developers are often blamed for sprawl, the real culprit is population growth. And the growth continues. By 2050 world population is expected to reach 8.9 billion, nearly a 50 percent increase over today's population of six billion. Brown says severe water and food shortages are probable.
Activists take different approaches to the problem.
On the other hand, Burke, who has consulted for the World Bank and Genentech, says the US should get its own house in order by drastically curbing immigration. Sanford Cloud, president of the National Conference for Community and Justice, says that by 2050, racial minorities will make up half the US population. And along with the racial shifts will come religious ones, with Muslim and Buddhist numbers growing in relation to those of Christians and Jews. Cloud says these changes will provide a major test for Unitarian Universalists, for whom tolerance and the celebration of diversity are primary tenets. We'll need to reach out and engage others who are different, and try to understand others who are different.