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When do we start talking about overpopulation?

Observations from the Edge
Robert T. Nanninga
Coast News
September 5, 2007

 

I often ask myself when people, we the people, will wake up to the reality we have created. Sometimes while I watch television, other times while reading the newspaper, most often while driving, still the question persists. As a rule, I am not a pessimist, more of a realist with a misanthropic streak, and very little faith.

It seems as bad as things are, it's only going to get worse. Perhaps it's because I have been conditioned by the Bush Administration to expect the worse, it's certainly a legacy. It's not fear I'm experiencing, it's foreboding.

The San Diego region long ago surpassed the ecological carrying capacity of California's southern environs. The municipalities of coastal California, caught up in their silly lemming games, struggle to accommodate a constant increase in population, yet none have seriously discussed population limitations, nor the effects of failing to do so.

It doesn't help that corporate media would rather discuss the sexual misadventures of a Iowan senator, than the extinction of marine mammals, the role chemical pollution plays in sky-rocketing cancer rates, or the true ecological cost of exponential population growth and the over consumption of our limited natural resources.

Population is what everyone should be talking about. Instead everybody talks about everything else but the long term impact of more than 7 billion people the eating, drinking, and consuming everything else on the planet. Capitalism which favors consumers over citizens, debt over democracy, and profit over preservation, is not served by comprehensive, and honest appraisals of the perpetual growth ideology.

I mean really, are how and where a closeted old man seeks physical pleasure more important than the future well-being of California? Of course not. So why then do "we the people" allow the regional media sources to inundate us with tabloid trivia, as opposed to pertinent news and information vital to to the well-being of residents and business owners.

Last week it was announced that Carlsbad's Design Review Board signed off on further densification of of downtown Carlsbad by supporting a series of proposed revisions to the Village Master Plan, and other city documents, to increase the number of residential units permitted on 1-acre lots. Currently, the maximum is 23 units per acre, and the proposal calls for 45 units per acre. Other changes include lot line build-out and reduced parking requirements.

Scott Molloy, the public policy advocate for the Building Industry Association of San Diego, was there to applaud the decision as a boon to developers and future development. Oceanside, Escondido, and San Marcos are also in the process of doubling the number of their downtown residential units. Encinitas only wishes it could.

Doing everything to accommodate over population means local municipal are only compounding the problems associated with human impact on the environment, guaranteeing they will eventually overwhelm us all.

Go lemmings!

 
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