protect our future by setting a goal of stabilizing the U.S. population at or below one-third of a billion people.

Demographers expect the U.S.population to approach one-half billion people within fifty years. These forecasts are based on current immigration and women's-health-care policies and practices. Unlike the rest of the developed world, which has largely settled into slowing population growth, in the last two decades the U.S. has seen an unprecedented resurgence in population growth, adding 60 million between 1990 and 2010. The growth we have already undergone, however, pales in comparison to the growth expected in the next five decades. I believe that Americans can solve any problem about which they can come to a consensus, but I also believe that most of our problems will be much harder to solve with a population of half-a-billion than one which is not much bigger than our population today.