Call me unfriendly, but 300 million is too many Americans. Unless the United States institutes a serious population policy, our quality of life will collapse into a paralysis of congestion, ugliness and stress. Some parts of the country are already there.

It's not as if no one has thought of this before. In 1969, Richard Nixon warned Congress that if the population continued growing at its current rate, the nation's "capacity to educate youth, to provide privacy and living space, to maintain the processes of open, democratic government may be grievously strained." The U.S. population was then only 200 million.

As I rummage through my "population" folder, I come across a middle-range U.S. Census Bureau forecast from 1996 that America's population wouldn't reach 300 million until 2011. The bureau's most extreme "high-series" projection said the population would hit that mark next year, so by passing 300 million this week we're a bit ahead of schedule in our population explosion. By the way, the "high-series" projection gives us a short 23 years from today to tally 400 million.

If trends continue, California will grow by 13 million people from 2000 to 2030 -- which is like having everyone in Illinois move there. Many Californians are escaping the congestion by moving to Colorado, Utah, Arizona and other Western states that don't have much water. In the Northeast, meanwhile, the people density now exceeds that of Haiti, according to Negative Population Growth, a group seeking to stabilize, then reduce, the U.S. population.

So what are we doing about it? As of now, nothing.

There are two reasons why our leaders in Washington don't get into the issue -- other than their indifference to future generations. One is that it steps into the thorny immigration debate. Immigration accounts for about 40 percent of the population gains, more than that if you account for the higher birth rates among recent immigrants. In the most densely populated state, New Jersey, immigrants are responsible for 85 percent of the population growth since 2000.

Another reason for the silence is that population has gotten mixed up in the abortion issue. Some abortion foes insist that that Roe v. Wade has produced a sharp population decline. Of course, there isn't a population decline. Population is surging, and even native-born Americans are replacing themselves. The United States is not Europe, where birth rates have fallen to troubling levels (and where, incidentally, the rates of abortion are far lower).

Spare me the Babbittry about the purported benefits of population growth. Gregg Easterbrook, of the Brookings Institution, writes that while a burgeoning population brings more sprawl, it also brings "more love." I happen to think that there would be a lot more love if there were less traffic.

Easterbrook also argues that if immigration were "banned or severely curtailed," the U.S. economy would lose "vibrancy." The more-the-merrier crowd sees 100 million new Americans as 100 million new customers. Others see something less positive -- a paved-over America, devoid of countryside and clean air. (But hey, what a market!)

Negative Population Growth (www.npg.org) thinks that the optimal number for sustaining a decent quality of life in the United States is 150 million. That is half of what we now have, but in case you think that it's a crazy low figure, consider that the U.S. population was 150 million as recently as the 1950s, which many regard as a golden age of American contentment.

Few talk about "banning" immigration. How about just controlling it? I have no problem with the quality of today's immigrants -- it's the numbers. And I don't care what color Americans are in 2050. I just don't want 400 million of them. Okay?

Froma Harrop is a Journal editorial writer and syndicated columnist. She may be reached by e-mail at: fharrop@projo.com.