D. Rick Van Schoik, Southwest Center for Environmental Research and Policy

Funny you should ask. Our annual policy conference, the Border Institute Series, this year will address "Transboundary Ecosystem Management." Here's the agenda webpage. If you check the page in mid-April, the papers we've commissioned for the conference from border-region biodiversity experts will be posted.

I have been in a similar situation and often the interpretive role of the conservation biologist works. By explaining the reason, timing, location rationale, etc., for a conservation measure, I was usually able to put several protections in place. I even had one landowner write a check to our effort after we explained what and why we were doing it.

The 300 million of us Americans indeed have an ecological footprint larger than any other and the exporting of our consumptive model to others through our media encourages them to aspire to our waste. But a billion Indians and a billion Chinese and a billion Southeast Asians are well on their way to simply overwhelming their habitats. I think we are both right by this formula: Environmental impact is equal to population times affluence level times the contribution, either positive or negative, of technology.

Our government vacillates on the issue. While never a leader, Democratic administrations fund the U.N. and other world population programs; then the Republican administrations remove and inhibit the funding. The voluntary negative population "problem" will appear here within the century. We won't need the government to implement it through taxes or incentives.

All "states" go through a transition from high death and birth rates, to lower death and still high birth rates, to lower death and birth rates. Some even have lower birth rates than death rates. The issue of the last decades and for the decades to come is population growth from more than 6 billion now to more than 9 or 10 billion in your lifetime. The graying of the world population and negative population growth are indeed problems, but problems for our children.

Come to a large city in California and see if you have an opinion on that. I find that people adjust their view several times when exposed to large numbers of immigrants and then after they know and value many immigrants.

I went to the Naval Academy and was a SEAL. I got a Master's degree here at San Diego State University where I teach and I did post-graduate studies in philanthropy at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and in sustainability at Tufts University. I also attended the first Natural Resources Leadership Institute. Each in its own way shaped my thinking today. For example, my special operations training in the Navy helps me teach international environmental security.

Yes, we accept interns. As to the second question: While we need both, the growth in monster electricity-dependent homes is increasing as the fuel efficiency for cars increases. If we could build greener houses and locate our homes closer to mass transit or our jobs, we'd solve several problems at once.

I have worked in tropical countries where a large stump fee is attached to each tree. The cutter, even if it's a poor farmer, has to pay a fee or implement some conservation measure. I also believe in co-cropping, planting crops, or harvesting meats within a forest that has a few highly valued trees removed. Shade coffee, many spices, and valuable dyes grow well under jungle canopy.

I have been in three situations where cats were decimating the local Least tern (Sterna antillarum) colonies. In the one where we were not allowed to do anything, the whole colony was abandoned and lost. In the second, where we trapped feral cats, the colony was half successful, because we still had domestic cats to contend with. In the third, where I was allowed to shoot feral dogs and cats, we won, the birds won, the local community won by not being exposed to the dangers inherent in wild dogs and cats, and several diseased animals won by being put out of their misery.

Each day, air pollution belched or burned in China and Africa reaches California and Texas, respectively, so it would not be too long before vaporized poisons from war zones around the world reach us. But my understanding of uranium weapons is that the contamination is limited to a small area due to the extraordinary density of the material.

NAFTA failed to have worker and environmental rights as part of the treaty and the side agreements that are supposed to address those issues are underfunded, don't have regulatory teeth, and are subject to national and international politics. Worker hours, conditions, pay, exposure to occupational hazards, etc., are a huge part of environmental concern in the region.

One of the organizations created by NAFTA is responsible for ensuring that local and national laws are followed in the siting and operation of industry following the signing of the agreement. But you can imagine what a big job that is and all the issues involved. That's one reason our organization, the Southwest Center for Environmental Research and Policy, exists -- to study, understand, and explain emerging situations like the exporting of natural gas to Mexico so they can convert it to electricity that is used in California. Are we essentially exporting our pollution to them? Does it have a transboundary effect if we allow private industry to do these types of things? These are the questions we answer.