by Carolyn Chase
an Diego IS a special place. For this Earth
Day issue, we are proud to offer four profiles of special communities working
to save or restore special places in our county for future generations.
I wish could have brought you 20 more - because those people are out there
and they all the help and support we could give them. I think of them as
the Lorax people (remember the story by our own Dr. Suess, "I Am the
Lorax, I Speak for the Trees"). And more are needed, more than ever.
We can and must do better to protect the natural places that remain. We
must restore sites that have been polluted, and design systems that break
an unhealthy relationship with growth.
Writer Edward Abbey observed, "Uncontrolled
growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." Everyone can comprehend
this quickly and realize that uncontrolled growth can be threatening to
our survival.
But what does this imply? That all growth is
bad? That we should have no growth? No. Everyone also senses that some kinds
of growth are natural. All life grows. But what kind of growth? How do we
grow? Where do we grow? How is it controlled? How can we plan for healthy
growth?
Hunter Lovins and Michael J. Kinsley of the
Rocky Mountain Institute put it this way:
Clearly, we must have a new kind of growth
different from the sprawling, wasteful and polluting patterns we've seen
in the past. Preventing "Los Angelization" is still a real issue
here. Some would say, it has never been more urgent. The fact that Peter
Navarro (of Prevent Los Angelization Now) wasn't the right person to lead
the effort doesn't mean that the problems were unimportant.
I attended a SANDAG (San Diego Association
of Governments) regional planning workshop entitled "Population Growth,
Land Use and Visions for 2050" last month (see article on page 14).
They say that it is "likely" that 5 million people will be living
in the County by 2050. Their version of the future is a clever variation
on the lofty 'Build it and they will Come,' our local version is: 'They
are Coming, You Have to Build It.' Neither one may be a healthy or sustainable
way to relate to the future.
But as bureaucrats sensitive to the winds of
short-term politics, it suits their purposes to choose a time comfortably
far into the future when many of us will be gone. My first point in my small
discussion group was: 'I'm worried about the next million.'
I know that most people don't have the time
to delve into how our civic infrastructure operates and Lord knows, the
government does not make it easy. But when you do take some time to look
around and see where our society operates with respect to its land and water
and waste... Well, my assessment is that the "evolutionary consciousness"
of our culture is that of a toddler: prone to tantrums and still pooping
in our pants.
We act as if someone else should be responsible
for it all, and then whine when we're presented the bill. Why do we think
the bills keep going up? It's not just wasteful bureaucratic expansion;
we have to keep paying the bills to invest in systems to support more growth.
It's like a Ponzi scheme, where the last unlucky sucker in line is stuck
with a massive loss. And guess where the public of San Diego is stuck? We're
still all picking up the tab for last round of growthmania - remember the
Savings and Loan debacle? But I digress...
"The word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear,
UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to better.
It's not.
