🚀 go-pugleaf

"Enough Already" <enough_already@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:1104983948.043483.62450@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> In his January 5th State of the State address, Arnold Schwarzenegger
> happily called for the building of more homes, roads and power plants,
> and claimed that these things are compatible with preserving
> California's environment. But he's gravely mistaken. Human population
> growth has put nature under siege for centuries and the pressure keeps
> rising despite the best technology. Arnold did admit that conservation
> alone won't solve our resource shortages, but he made no mention of
> WHY.
>
> The "why" of the matter is the same reason we're in an endless race to
> create more jobs, many of them menial. There are too many people and
> too much redundant labor. Perpetual growth economies must constantly
> strive to create jobs and raise output (GNP) but few people question
> the ultimate purpose of it. For example, construction jobs created to
> coddle growth are just one of the bigger pyramid schemes embedded in a
> growth-addicted economy. This is not real wealth creation; it's
> overpopulation feeding off itself.
>
> Housing keeps getting more expensive because demand keeps rising and
> there's less (aesthetically acceptable) land to build on each day.
> Opening up more land for construction - the typical Republican mandate
> - only impacts the environment more.
>
> The legacy of Arnold's political party, exemplified by Takers like
> Richard Pombo, clashes with Arnold's apparent interest in protecting
> nature. Population growth aka economic growth must stop and stabilize
> as soon as possible. It can't be "managed" at infinitely higher levels.
> The cost of living is rising in no small part because resources are
> getting physically scarcer and harder to procure. Various economic
> theories attempt to mask this reality but it's simple mathematics.
>
> California is projected to have 50 million people by 2025 and parts of
> the state are already crowded slums in the eyes of many. With so many
> people, it's harder and harder to get away from it all because
> everyone's following you there! Even if we somehow manage to maintain a
> "clean" environment with many more people, overcrowding will continue
> to spoil aesthetic aspects of nature. Wilderness parks are looking more
> and more like amusement parks or even urban settings.
>
> Arnold is a gutsy politician who likes serious reforms, but he'll never
> take a stand on the ultimate reform needed by the human race;
> significantly more birth control (to balance lower death rates) and the
> admission that Man must live within finite means. We can't keep
> pretending a more crowded world is a better world.
>
> E.A.
>
> http://enough_already.tripod.com/
> If any other species behaved like Man we'd call it a plague.
>

The fact of the matter is, California is _expected_ to undergo significant
population growth in the next 20 years. The communities where this growth is
projected to go have already made plans to accomodate the expected influx.
The _problem_ these communities face is that they are near enough to the job
centers that people can make the daily trip back and forth to work, but the
road that goes from the housing centers to the job centers are by and large
rural two-lane farm roads that have been in place for decades. These roads
will see more cars in an hour than they were designed to see in a day, once
the homes are built.

You can bury your head in the sand and scream about the environment while
the impact on the environment becomes progressively greater as cars standing
in long lines traverse sorely over used farming roads and people die as a
result of horrendeous wrecks, or you can help preserve what is left of the
environment by calling for environmentally sensitive roads that not only
cross the new communities, but also connect those communities to the job
centers. An environmentally sensitive road will have undercrossings so
animals can migrate back and forth, it will not have exits where there are
never going to be homes. We can build new homes in one area, and refuse to
build them in others, but still have a road cut across the area where there
are no homes, but that road has no exits in the middle, only at the ends.
For example, I live in a community that is 20 miles from a job center, but
the roads that go there take over 60 miles and two hours due to traffic. The
short route is through a national forest and/or a wilderness area. If a road
was built that had no exits except at each end, and could accomodate the
wildlife in the area by having underpasses or overpasses if that would be
better, then the wilderness could be preserved, and humanity's needs of
getting from one place to another could be met. The compromise is that the
wilderness would not be impacted any more than is absolutely necessary.

Plan B, which seems to be the environmentalist's plan of choice, is to build
no roads, no homes, nothing. Ever. Period. That approach is simply
unreasonable. Of course, the plan that calls for building everything we can
everywhere we can withoug regard for anything is equally unreasonable, but
at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. The actual course of action is
a plan somewhere between these two.