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  ere in Southern California we
have a tendency to think that everything, and everyone, lives
in its own climate controlled vacuum. From the cars we drive
to municipal planning and politics, we are adhering to a new
math based on the faith that 1 + 1 will always equal one. This
allows us to continue withdrawing from the planetary ATM without
ever having to worry about the balance.
 Take
water for example. We live in a desert, and as we all know a
desert is a biome that occurs in areas with low precipitation.
Accompanying this climate is a lack of water. Granted, San Diego
County is semi-arid, so there is very limited supply of fresh
water and access to this water makes all the difference in the
game of survival. While the agencies entrusted to bring water
to the region call for water conservation, other agencies are
approving massive housing developments that will drain even more
of this life giving resource.
More evidence
of this "living in a vacuum" mentality is the fact
that these developments and this includes homes, shopping malls,
and business parks continue to landscape with water hungry nonnatives.
And then there is the question of lawns, which use more water
in a year than native vegetation requires for a lifetime. The
Colorado river no longer runs to the Sea of Cortez, yet there
is enough water for a new golf course every year. The question
facing us all is, how much of a good thing is too much?
To plant all
these beautiful ornamental plant species, native plants are removed.
Removing indigenous species means erasing native habitat, which
equates with a drop in native songbird population and an increases
in the number of coyotes being forced to relocate to established
neighborhoods, subsisting on feral cats and domestic pets. Meanwhile,
the domestic cats are doing their part to eradicate native song
bird population.
Continually
building homes for the growing number of human beings claiming
the "right" to crowd in beside us means that something
has to give. By just walking out your front door you will see
that it is native flora and fauna that is currently paying the
price. First we replace the plants, then we poison the "pests,"
and finally we water the hell out of it so we can have pretty
plants all in a row. Isn't it ironic that people moved to Southern
California, only to erase it?
SANDAG declares
that 1 million more people are going to move into the county
in the next few years. Yet this body of elected officials refuse
to consider this as overpopulation, even when the infrastructure
can't accommodate the people who are here now. The roads are
crowded with trucks bringing food to the region, while at the
same time agricultural land is decreasing and the need to feed
people increases. Oil prices also continue to rise. But instead
of encouraging mass transit, in a way that actually makes a difference,
coastal cities keep widening the roads and inviting more auto-dependent
residents to the area.
By allowing
development to go unchecked, we are also creating a greater need
for landfills and other places to store our waste. As we have
all seen, a good deal of this waste ends up polluting our beaches
and coastal environments. Earlier this year, when gray whales
washed up on local beaches, the media was more interested in
how people reacted to the sights and smells of such an occurrence,
rather than drawing links between the building environmental
stresses the whales must navigate, and helping residents see
the part coastal runoff might play in the death of these young
whales.
The cumulative
effect of our actions is easily seen when one begins connecting
the dots between the environmental stresses threatening life
on this planet. By linking population growth to urban sprawl,
and the automobiles required to negotiate it, habitat loss, bioinvasion,
and nitrogen pollution one gets a complete picture of how a standard
neighborhood contributes to climate change worldwide.
The game modern
society is playing with environmental quality brings to mind
the classic children's game Ker-Plunk. That's the Milton Bradley
game where you remove a stick without making the marbles fall.
The player with the least number of marbles at the end of the
game wins. In the case of the global environment, there are no
winners once the game is over. I wonder if the proverbial camel
will be around to see its back break. Since I'm throwing out
cliches, I might as well remind everyone that extinction is forever.
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