What We Can Do?

Contrary to the stereotype of the Texas culture demanding excessive elbow room for its individualistic citizens, the average Texan requires less developed land per person than the average American nationwide. But the decades-long tidal wave of human migration into Texas has crashed down mainly on the wetter eastern third, particularly inside and near the Dallas-San Antonio-Houston “Urban Triangle.” Besides the increased congestion’s deterioration of human quality of life there, some experts conclude that the surviving “biocapacity” of the eastern bio-regions already is too small to sustainably handle the current size of the population.

State and local officials can hope only to slow population growth in their jurisdictions if the national population continues to increase by some 2.0 to 3 million additional residents each year. U.S. population growth in recent decades has been driven primarily by migration from other countries (and the net births over deaths of those who come). Over the last two decades, authorized permanent migration has averaged around a million a year, with illegal migration varying from a few hundred thousand a year to more than a million.