California prides itself as being among the world’s leaders in pursuing policies and enacting laws intended to arrest or mitigate environmentally damaging human activity. Over recent decades there has been a steady stream of pro-environmental legislation and policies flowing from the Golden State.
The state has boldly defied President Donald Trump’s administration’s crusade to discredit environmental science, rescind environmental regulations and exploit with abandon what remains of Nature.
California has pledged to abide by the Paris Climate Agreement, has refused to roll back fuel mileage standards, and has sedulously sued the Trump administration over environmental regulatory retrenchments.
And yet, it is curiously contradictory, bipolar even, that California’s legislators and Gov. Gavin Newsom persistently push policies that will increase the single greatest source of environmental degradation — human population.
Citing a housing shortage “crisis,” Newsom and the Legislature have passed laws overriding local zoning and building ordinances in order to force communities to increase housing densities and, ergo, population.
Newsom’s stated goal is 3.5 million new housing units statewide within ten years. Most of those would be built in existing urban areas, many of which already suffer overcrowding.
California is struggling to accommodate its current population of 40 million residents. Another 3.5 million housing units, at the national average of 2.6 persons per unit, would add more than 9 million more residents to a state that has come one rainy winter away from draconian water rationing, has electricity and natural gas limitations, soul-sucking traffic congestion, and catastrophic wildfires incinerating urban areas that have encroached ever deeper into wildlands.
Climate change worsens California’s overpopulation problem. As the state’s climate gets warmer, wildfires become more frequent and massive. Energy demands get heavier.
As droughts become more frequent and lengthier, the Sierra snowpack, which provides 30 percent of the state’s water supply, becomes less reliable. Normally, that snowmelt delivers an amount of water equivalent to the total amount used annually by all of California’s cities.
How many desal plants would be needed to make up that much water? Or, will residents be happy with a water ration of 50 gallons per day?
Californians who oppose the state’s people-packing policies are typically disparaged as NIMBYs. That is an arrogantly sanctimonious indictment. There is nothing immorally selfish about wanting to keep your home and community as comfortable and pleasant as you expected it to be when you moved in.
Forcing unwanted changes on your home and community that diminish your enjoyment of them is what is immoral. That is exactly what Newsom and his fellow people-packers are doing.
Did you elect these officials to protect your interests or those of 9 million people who aren’t even residents of the state? It’s not as if there are 9 million Californians who are homeless. The state’s homeless population is about 140,000. So why do we need 3.5 million more homes?
One argument is that people who can’t find suitable, affordable housing here will leave the state. Why is that a bad thing?
California’s safe carrying capacity for human population has been estimated to be about 10 million. Even, if it were twice that number, the state is currently grossly overpopulated at 40 million.
State officials should be working to reduce the state’s population to safe, sustainable levels, not packing in more people on top of those already here.
“It’s the economy stupid!” Yes, isn’t that typically the rationale for engaging in short-sighted policies that placate the present at the expense of the future? If people leave California and employers who need their labor follow them out, the state’s economy isn’t going to collapse.
Forty years ago, the state’s population was about half of what it is today and the economy was certainly not moribund — but traffic was less intolerable, public places less crowded, gardens were greener, schools were better, and overall it was a much more pleasant place to live.
If California housing is so unaffordable, who is buying it? If rents are so high, who is renting? How much vacant housing stock is there in California because prices are too high?
No matter the price of housing, there will be plenty of people who want to live in California. That demand won’t subside until the state becomes so repulsively overcrowded that no one wants to be here. The rational approach to prevent that unpleasant outcome and to preserve the livability of the state is to limit its population. You don’t do that by forcing more housing on the current residents.
The question for California’s citizens is what do you really want? Do you really want to give up your neighborhoods and your communities to the people-packers? Are you all in for more traffic, less water, high-rise apartments shadowing your neighborhoods, more crowds, more pollution and the general deterioration of your lifestyle?
If not, keep in mind that this is a direct democracy state. We have a ballot initiative process that allows the people to make law. If Newsom and other misguided politicians try to override our local wills, we can override them.
Let’s have a ballot initiative calling for the repeal of all those recent state laws that force growth on local jurisdictions. Additionally, it would direct the governor and Legislature to pursue policies that encourage the reduction of the state’s population to a reasonably sustainable level — capped at 20 million.
— Randy Alcorn is a Santa Barbara political observer. Contact him at randyaalcorn@gmail.com, or click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.