There’s been a lot of doom and gloom in the news lately. The first was an article last week on the Energy Watch Group’s latest report, which states that global oil production peaked in 2006. It’s only one study, and there have been no additional follow-up reports in the news lately from other groups. Still, given the Hubbert Curve, it’s probably safe to say that we’re either at the peak, past the peak, or looking straight at ahead at the peak. Personally, I think we’ve passed the peak, but we’re still at the top of the plateau– the free fall that will happen isn’t quite here yet, though I would say it probably isn’t all that far off. If you ever wanted to do an “affordable” road trip, now’s the time.

This doesn’t mean we’re going to run out of oil tomorrow– far from it. It does mean that the end of cheap oil is definitely here, and given the talk about $100-a-barrel oil lately, it’s my guess it certainly won’t be too long before the Corporate Media breathlessly opines about prices such as $125, $150, and upwards. The musings about the magic $100 mark have been around for a while, as you can see in this Forbes article from 2004. But the unease has increased now that it’s finally within sight. It certainly doesn’t help that the remaining oil we know of or that can still be easily extracted is in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, and Venezuela, to name a few. Our gummint is tight with the Saudis, but trying to pick a war with Iran, bogged down in Iraq, not about to interfere in Sudan (where the tragedy that is Darfur continues unabated), and ostensibly enemies with Venezuela. There’s oil still in places like the Gulf of Mexico, Canada, and other seemingly benign locales, but not as much as in the more volatile regions worldwide. That does complicate things, doesn’t it?

Speaking of the Gulf, Mexico itself has been a reliable importer of oil to the U.S. Last year, there was an announcement of a supposedly huge find– an underwater field that could potentially be huge. However, just a couple months later was this article, stating that Mexico’s glory days as an oil giant are coming to an end. Not only that, the decline will definitely impact U.S. - Mexico relations in more ways than just petroleum:

Oil income accounts for more than 40 percent of the Mexican federal government’s annual revenues, so the decline of oil output could leave the country’s next president with a nightmarish budget crisis.

How much you wanna bet that fence or no fence (and walls historically don’t work all that well: see the Berlin Wall, Hadrian’s Wall, and China’s Great Wall, among others…), we’ll see an upsurge in impoverished migrants seeking better opportunities elsewhere?

What’s interesting is that for all the talk about “We’ve got plenty of oil! There’s oil shales all over! Colorado has tons of oil in the rocks!”, you don’t see a lot of serious musing about taking that path. In this article discussing the cost of oil, oilman T. Boone Pickens isn’t betting his fortune on oil shale extraction– he’s putting his money and his mouth on wind power. He and others with half a brain know that the cost of extraction isn’t going to be worth it in the long run, and that any smart energy company needs to start investigating and cornering the market on alternative energy sources. There’s also the fact that oil shale extraction is fairly similar to open-pit mining, and has many of the same environmental risks (not the least of which is groundwater pollution). In an era where global warming is the watchword and a resurging environmental movement is afoot, I foresee some companies trying oil shale extraction, but the majority looking elsewhere.

It’s not just oil that’s going to be a problem. As many of you know, it’s been rather dry out West. This isn’t something new; the Western U.S. has historically been drier than the eastern half of the nation. But now in places like Georgia, we’re seeing water woes. Just this past week, most major news outlets carried the story about impending water shortages. I’ve linked to the San Francisco Chronicle out of habit (and also due to the fact that they don’t tend to toss their stories into protected archives as fast as other papers do), but the story is essentially the same:

The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.

A lot of people have pointed to global warming as the culprit. It is, but just to a degree. The above sentence actually has more of the complete story: population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.

Both oil and water are finite resources. Water’s a bit less finite, thanks to the natural cycle (water evaporates, condenses, precipitates, and collects, as most of us learned in grade school. Here’s a pretty simple diagram), but in the end, the water is essentially the same– it just gets “recycled” (unlike oil). Because they’re finite, that means there’s only so much to go around.

So what’s the point, you say? The point is the real culprit here isn’t “global warming”– “global warming” is a consequence. The real problem is overpopulation. It’s something that Al Gore touched on in “An Inconvenient Truth,” but didn’t go into much detail on. I wish he had, because the central issue we’re all going to need to face is the fact that the planet only has so much carrying capacity. Malthus, among others, has discussed this over the years. A managed population could probably have stretched out the petroleum a lot longer than it’s lasted so far. A managed population could probably exist just fine on the amount of water we have. But the exploding population worldwide means more and more people are going to want the same finite resources (and water and oil are just the tip of the iceberg, really).

It doesn’t help when nations like China and India have over 1 billion people each. It doesn’t help when religions like Catholicism and Mormonism exhort their followers to keep pushing out kids by the dozens. It doesn’t help when gummints like ours refuse to responsibly confront topics such as sexuality, contraception, and population control.

It also certainly doesn’t help when states, cities, and counties do a piss-poor job of planning, zoning, and smart growth. At some point we’re all going to need to have a serious talk about all this. We can’t keep building McMansions without responsible planning for infrastructure. We can’t keep allowing highways to be built without addressing mass transit and the future of transportation. We can’t keep draining rivers and lakes and expect that everyone will be able to turn on the tap and get what they want without any problems. We can’t keep allowing suburbs to sprout up where there once was arable land. At some point, the bill comes due. It’s looks increasingly like that bill is going to come due a lot sooner than any of us expect. The earth is home to all of us, and it’s a five-bedroom, four bath home with 100 people in it.

We can discuss global warming til we’re blue in the face. We can wring our hands about the melting polar ice caps. We can mourn the snows of Kilimanjaro all we want. But until we’re willing to have a serious, adult conversation at all levels (and yes, this means you, Mr. Bush) about the whole picture, nothing’s going to change. I believe global warming is real, and that it’s happening. But it’s happening in part because there’s too many people on this planet– we’ve pushed the boundaries of forests and savannah to the brink, we’ve siphoned billions of gallons from ultimately finite rivers, we’ve gobbled up topsoil worldwide. The word “hubris” comes to mind.

I’m not sure what the ultimate solution is, or should be. If you’ve made it this far, feel free to start the discussion that I think we need to have– start it right here. It’s as good a place as any.

California is one of the largest states geographically. It’s also the most populous state in the country. So while California has lots of acreage, it also means there’s tons of people living here. As a native Californian, I’ve lived in/traveled to three cities/metro areas in the state: Sacramento, San Francisco, and of course, Los Angeles. I’ve also lived elsewhere, including the Washington, D.C. area, and I’ve seen how these places have changed over time. Unfortunately, I’ve also seen the effects of unchecked growth and rampant sprawl in these urban areas, and it troubles me.

This past Sunday, in the San Francisco Chronicle, an article written by developer Joseph Perkins (a piece which probably should have been clearly marked and stuck in the Op-Ed section) discusses the need for the Bay Area “to rethink rules on land use” and zoning.

Perkins begins with an authoritative tone, and figures and facts intended to lead the reader into thinking that there is an alarming problem:

The Association of Bay Area Governments projects that the nine-county Bay Area region will add nearly 1.5 million residents by 2030.

Yes, it’s true that the population will continue to grow in the San Francisco Bay Area, just as it will here in the Los Angeles metro area, the DC metro area, California’s Central Valley, and in countless urban and metropolitan areas nationwide.

Perkins then posits the question that he will address in the remainder of his piece:

How and where is the Bay Area going to house its additional 1.5 million residents?

This is a good question, and is a question all of us are going to have to consider, regardless of where we live. So far, so good. But Perkins points to a major part of the problem– he feels that anti-housing activists have obstructed growth, and prevented solutions from coming to the fore. As Perkins puts it,

Yet the no-growth, anti-housing environmental alliance continues … arguing that the Bay Area is “built out,” … that Bay Area home builders have paved paradise and put up a subdivision.

This is where Perkins and I begin to disagree. While I agree that “no growth” is an impossible ideal, I do think quite a few areas around the country are “built” out, and that home builders definitely have paved paradise. To be fair, a newspaper article or Op-Ed piece is a very limited place to explore what is a far more complex issue. But it’s also a lot less simplistic than Perkins would like to pretend it is.

Let’s look at the history and geography for a few moments. Historically, people built their towns and villages near resources. These needs included sources of potable water, easy trade routes (whether by land or water), and arable land and pastures. There also needed to be materials for building homes and businesses, whether the construction was done with wood, stone, or other durable components.

As these hamlets grew into towns, and the towns grew into small cities, more and more natural resources were needed; increased amounts of water, more acres of farmland and pastures, more wood and other building materials, and additional staples.

Over time, many natural resources waxed and waned, but as the population grew, these raw materials slowly became more finite. Since the dawn of the Industrial Age over 200 years ago, the consumption rate has skyrocketed along with the population: a planet that held roughly 1 million people in 1800, and was not yet fully “explored” (take a look at the maps back then– Africa’s borders were detailed, but the center was still not filled in– California was, until the near the end of the Spanish Empire, considered an island.) has now expanded to a world that holds over 6 billion people. China and India alone account for one-third of that total (it’s estimated that China alone accounts for about 20% of the world’s current population).

When you consider that the amount of arable land on the planet was limited to begin with, the shrinking acreage should be a concern for all of us. Deforestation has been a huge problem over the centuries; Spain is an interesting example. While the Iberian peninsula was never a lush green paradise to begin with, it was heavily deforested over the centuries, especially during the Roman era and the period afterwards. Today, Spain contains the only real “desert” in Europe; the semi-desert region of Tabernas, in Almeria (this is where Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns were filmed). While this region didn’t develop due to deforestation, large swaths of Spain are arid, sparsely forested acres.

This isn’t a problem just in Spain; portions of Russia are starting to suffer from deforestation and desertification as well. It’s happening elsewhere too– as the Amazon Basin is rapidly clear-cut, the poor soil is overworked by farmers and ranchers, and then abandoned. While nature will eventually reclaim her own, it will take many generations before the land returns to a shadow of what it once was.

Here in the United States, the virgin forest that once covered the eastern third of the nation has been gone for ages now. Urban regions have grown where there once was farmland. Perkins neglects to mention this in his piece. In the San Francisco Bay Area alone, the orchards and fields of the Santa Clara Valley are today the office complexes, warehouses, parking lots, factories, and McMansions of Silicon Valley. The rivers and marshes have been drained and built over (with potentially disastrous consequences during earthquakes– such areas are far too unstable and have led to enormous damages– witness San Francisco’s Marina district, for example). The fields, groves, and orchards of communities like Dublin, Walnut Creek, and Livermore exist no more; in their place are massive subdivisions.

The same is true here in Los Angeles. During the 1920s, the San Fernando Valley had ranches, citrus and olive groves, and dairy farms. The orange groves and strawberry fields in Orange County were plentiful as late as the 1950s. But gradually over the decades, as the metropolis expanded, annexing numerous communities along the way, these agricultural and rural areas vanished. Today there are still patches and plots here and there, but they are largely ghostly remnants of a past that cannot return. “Paving paradise” doesn’t necessarily have to be about destroying parks and green hills; it can also be about destroying arable land– land that contains topsoil that can never be regained.

This is part of the problem that the San Francisco Bay Area faces, along with other such regions nationwide. Water is another part of the equation. There’s only so much water, and there hasn’t been “new” water since the Earth formed. When you add in measures such as flood control, you end up with problems such as soil erosion, the risks of living in historical flood plains, and the loss of nutrients that flooding can bring to the soil (ancient Egypt flourished thanks to the annual flooding of the Nile, and so did the regions along the Ganges, the Tigris and Euprhates, and China’s Yellow River). Areas that are overdeveloped beyond their carrying capacity (such as Las Vegas and practically all of Arizona) will face severe problems as the amount of potable water becomes scarce.

We are all going to have to explore alternative solutions. Desalination, relaxation of flood control, recycling treated wastewater are possible solutions for our water woes. Building more apartments, developing cities with grid patterns again, constructing and encouraging mass transit, and building smaller and taller homes are ideas we should be exploring to reduce sprawl and maximize land use.

But I digress (slightly!)… Back to Perkins. He reveals a “secret”: “Only 16 percent of the region’s land area has been developed.”

Yep, and the remainder are places like Golden Gate Park, the Marin headlands, the Coast Ranges, and other places of beauty, natural reserves, and often, impractical places to build (see yesterday’s post on the foolhardiness of building in areas such as canyons, ridgetops, and other fun places prone to wildfires, mudslides, and earthquakes– the Oakland Hills are a perfect example). Not practical, not realistic, and not going to happen, Mr. Perkins.

But again, we reach a point where I sort of agree with Perkins. He notes that environmental groups

…suggest that most of 1.5 million additional residents expected in the Bay Area over the next quarter century can be accommodated by smaller-scale, infill housing development.

No, that can’t happen either. This is a problem everywhere. Everyone thinks of solutions and lot of people jump and say, “Infill!” The problem with infill is that the infrastructure is already present, and often operating at capacity. Sure, you can build a bunch of apartments (or more likely, overpriced condos) on a parcel of land in an already developed area, but you can’t widen the streets or add roads. You likely already have a limited amount of water for that area, and an electrical grid that is most likely already operating above and beyond its specifications. Infill is a lovely idea, but it’s also a potential recipe for disaster. It also removes potential parks, gardens, and other public areas from the table– spaces that can add to the regional quality of life.

Perkins closes his article by stating that the environmentalists’ desire to “add an additional 1 million acres of land to the inventory of permanent space over the next three decades,” a decision that will “damp[en] housing production in this region… further escalating Bay Area home prices, and … making the dream of home ownership that much more unattainable for the next generation of Bay Area residents.”

Just as I don’t buy infill as a solution, I also don’t buy this argument. Sure, the Bay Area, among many other places, has exorbitant housing prices. But the outlying regions are being overrun with new houses that are also over-appreciating rapidly as well. Developments that started in the “low 200,000’s” several years back ramped up to values nearly twice as much just a handful of years later. Regardless of where you live in California (and in many other places: the Boston-New York-Washington megalopolis, the L.A. area, or any number of other highly desirable urban areas nationwide), the number of people that can realistically afford to buy a house has dropped sharply over the years.

Now that the bottom is falling out of the housing market, quite a few homes are now languishing on the market. Building new houses on additional acreage is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It would be far wiser to first let the market correct itself, and re-fill these homes at prices that are far more sane. That of course is another problem, one that Perkins touches on briefly (but fails to go into too much depth about): overpricing and a free-for-all sponsored by banks and lenders. Greed has spiraled, leading landlords to push for condo conversions, and developers to push for more McMansions and cookie-cutter developments in suburban tracts. Greed has spiraled, leading lenders to push ridiculous mortgage loans into the hands of people who financially were better off not buying at all. Now the foreclosures and defaults occurring are depressing the market, which in turn is depressing the economy. Greed has spiraled, allowing investors and so-called flippers to overreach; these folks are now suffering the backlash. We haven’t seen the end yet; excess inventory in some markets (witness the glut of condos in Florida) means developers are going to be stuck with quite a few empty houses and condos for some time yet.

I could continue; there’s a lot to say on this subject. But I’m going to wrap things up by stating that I think things aren’t black and white, and they can’t be. I’m as much an environmentalist as any of the environmentalists out there. But I’m also a wee bit more realistic than some. Until the world can get a grip on its population woes, there’s going to have to be some creativity on the part of all interested parties. That means those of us that want to preserve the land are going to have to give a little and get a little. “No growth” is not a realistic goal. “Slow” or “controlled” growth is far more realistic and pragmatic.

Developers will have to give as well. There can’t be rampant over-development of huge parcels of land, and there certainly can’t be more cul-de-sacs and other hallmarks of suburbia. In a 21st century world, we need to move beyond the fantasy of 20th-century life, and declare suburbia dead. There needs to be a stronger balance between the environmental and physical needs of the population, and that means developers need to actually plan, not just throw up a bunch of houses made out of ticky-tacky. This means working with cities and regions on a large-scale smart growth plan.

Cities and local governments are also going to have to stop the political infighting, the bickering, the jostling over revenues, taxes, and other “benefits” of development. The hard choices surrounding development that developers and officials face revolve around infrastructure. Going back to the Bay Area as an example, when BART was first proposed, each county had to vote on whether to participate in the development and support of mass transit. Santa Clara and San Mateo counties chose not to participate; thus BART was never extended past Fremont or Daly City for years. San Jose finally “woke up” and has a light rail system in place, and BART was recently extended to the San Francisco airport, but the fallout remains.

Here in L.A., the bus system isn’t bad, but we blew it by not planning our infrastructure as well as we could. Greed prevailed, allowing the automobile and oil industries to collaborate to destroy the famed “Red Car” system and instead push for the expansion and development of the freeways. Now we’re in the midst of trying to decide how and when to extend the so-called “Subway to the Sea.” But smart planning obviously wasn’t happening at City Hall or in other divisions. During the recent renovation of Santa Monica Boulevard, the remaining Red Car tracks were torn out, which means that should the trolley system ever be reconsidered, the city will have to start all over again, which will add to the headache and expense. I also don’t understand why they didn’t secure funding to install a subway tunnel under Santa Monica as well: should a “subway to the sea” ever become a reality, it would make a lot of sense for the preferred Wilshire Boulevard path to deviate from Wilshire at its intersection with Santa Monica, head down Santa Monica past Century City (which could really use a stop), and travel down to Westwood, where it could then turn right and head back up to Wilshire, with a UCLA/Westwood Village stop. But that’s short-term, short-sighted planning born of greed, indecision, and paralysis for you…

We homeowners, both potential and actual, aren’t off the hook either. We need to stop salivating over houses of 3,000 or 4,000 square feet and start reducing our overall “footprint” on the planet. How many people really need a four or five-bedroom, three bath home anyway? Nowadays Billy and Sally require their own rooms, and Mommy and Daddy really need the library, the office, and the den, in addition to the three-car garage. That’s bunk. Back in the 1940s, the average house was 1200 square feet. Children often shared rooms, even those of different sexes (at least up to a certain age). People didn’t have the outlandish number of material goods they do today. Do we really need all those extra gadgets and toys? Do we really need the lawn (that requires so much water to maintain), or the garden full of non-native plants (that also require more water than we should be sparing)?

Perkins has a vested interest in writing his article; he’s a developer, and he and his pals want to expand their income by buying up land and building homes, the consequences be damned. A lot of us are enabling that, by living beyond our means and trying to keep up with the Joneses. But the era of suburbia is past; we are all going to have to come together and plan smartly for the future.

Yesterday a new report came out on global warming, and it’s rather depressing (it’s not just the Corporate Media that’s reporting on all this; Insurance Journal included an article on the report as well). Regardless, it’s a warning for all of us that global warming isn’t just in the offing; it’s arrived. But the report’s latest focus on water woes isn’t something new. Global overpopulation would’ve eventually led to problems with water anyway. Global warming just means that now we will be able to depend less on water from spring runoff, and areas that are used to relying on massive snowpacks, such as large swaths of Peru and India, will have increasing problems in the very near future.

This is in addition to “normal” conditions, where weather cycles that we are just now beginning to understand impact areas that are now heavily populated. Scientific studies show that the Southwestern U.S. has had cycles of drought, and it seems that we are entering such a period now. Throw in global warming on top of that, and you just exacerbate the problem. The massive growth in areas such as Las Vegas and Phoenix means there’s a sizeable population that has water needs, and unfortunately, I’m not sure how they’re going to resolve it. We in California aren’t immune either– L.A. is essentially a semi-desert, and expanding areas such as Lancaster and Palmdale are out in the desert. The agricultural areas of places like San Bernardino and Riverside are long gone, and their suburbs and exurbs are in desert regions. The shrinking snowpack in the Rockies, the Sierras, and other mountain ranges means rivers like the Colorado are drying up. Lakes Powell and Mead will probably never be completely full again. There’s going to have to be a paradigm shift in how we plan for water use, and it’s going to have to happen now.

The problem is that in the meantime, we’re going to go through quite a bit of pain. Historically, cities and towns were built near sources of water, which meant that originally, when habitation began, the surrounding area was farmland. Since then, a lot of burgs have exploded into metropolises that gobbled up prime agricultural lands. When the planet only has a certain percentage of arable land, and much of that has since been plowed under, it means that trying to provide water and sustenance for over six billion people is going to be difficult. Throw in diminishing natural resources such as petroleum, and quite a few people around the globe are going to be screwed.

Already the fact that nature is out of whack hasn’t gone unnoticed; it’s going to be pretty bad when even the glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating. What does that mean for mountains and their glaciers and snowpacks at lower elevations? Whether you continue to be a naysayer or not, the fact that the environment is rapidly changing isn’t something that can be ignored anymore. Whether the ultimate cause is man-made or not (and I’d say the evidence is in that at the very least, we had a helping hand in reaching this point), it behooves us to press our governments, our industrialists, our innovators, and our scientists to start taking the politics out of the problem, and start coming up with some solutions.

One thing that bugs me is our gummint’s claim that it’s too “expensive” to make any changes in how we deal with the environment (the Kyoto Treaty is just the best-known example); perhaps if we weren’t so busy throwing money away on Iraq and massive outlays for the military, we could use some of that money to invest in scientific innovation and exploring ways to shift from fossil fuels (that’s one of the biggest arguments– industry would have to spend so much money shifting from fossil fuels that our economy would suffer if we followed Kyoto. Yeah, but think about it: fossil fuels aren’t going to be around in a couple more generations. Perhaps it’s time to start shifting anyway?), ways to mitigate the loss of water from annual snowpacks, ways to prevent flooding (better levees, anyone? Katrina was devastating, and that area still isn’t receiving the help it should. It isn’t the first time there’s been massive flooding either; look at 1993, or 1927, or other flood years on the Mississippi), ways to alleviate transportation woes (you think the specter of $4 gas this summer is scary? Wait until it gets prohibitively expensive, and then see if you can financially manage your 30 or 40 mile daily commute), and so forth. Unless nations worldwide start making changes and seeking alternatives now, we’re going to be in for one hell of a bumpy ride.

[I originally titled this one “Brave New Warming,” only to belatedly realize I’d already used that title! Guess creativity only goes so far…]

One of the films up for an Oscar a couple weeks from now is “An Inconvenient Truth.” But whether it wins or not, I know enough people have seen it (or will now) that maybe all of us globally can start seriously figuring out what to do about the environment.

By environment, I’m not necessarily talking solely about saving the trees or blocking all development (although I agree with these two things); I’m talking about determining NOW how we are going to preserve what’s left of the Earth, and how much of humanity survives to see the successes we hopefully can achieve.

While I watched the movie, I was struck by two things: first, it was obviously an ad of sorts for Al Gore– it pushes him out front and made him extremely visible. He says he’s not running, but the movie definitely positions him perfectly for a run should he decide to throw his hat in the ring, or for him to be drafted should other contenders implode (and Joe Biden, just as he did in 1988, seems to have another, possibly terminal, case of foot-in-mouth disease. No, a case of “-isms.” Last time it was plagiarism, this time it’s racism. He could be paving the way…). But more importantly, the second thing is that the movie not only stressed global warming as a factor, but pointed to a problem that a lot of people, especially guys named Pius and Benedict, seem to want to blissfully ignore. That quandary is overpopulation.

Let’s face it, no matter how you slice it, or your political convictions, Gore got it right: the human population has exploded in the last 200 years. We went from approximately 1 million people around 1800 to more than 6 billion (and growing) today. In the meantime, the resources we have are finite, with larger and larger numbers of people wanting a piece of the pie. That’s more than 6 billion people wanting water, shelter, food, energy, and other natural resources. Since more than 70% of the world is water, that leaves just so much land for all these folks. Now figure in the percentage that is arable (and not yet developed), and the percentage that is habitable, and you’ve got one crowded blue marble.

As Gore demonstrated, it’s all interrelated. While Gore is viewed as a political figure and not some respected Nobel-winning scientist, many scientists said he got the facts right [Salon.com article– if you don’t have a membership, click through the ad. It’s an article worth reading]. Gore pointed out that the changes that are happening will impact how we live, and very quickly. Although there’s a lot more to learn, and Gore doesn’t offer complete solutions, the film is definitely worth watching. One thing I liked was how he ended on a positive note: rather than doom and gloom, he stated that while time is short, we still have a limited window of opportunity to try to stem the tide.

Oh, bosh, you say. Global warming is bunk. There are quite a few people who believe that global warming is a myth, or vastly overstated, including one of the few deaf/hard-of-hearing bloggers to broach the topic. Well, there’s quite a few others, including some in from rather unexpected quarters, who believe otherwise. While I’m not sure of the sampling or complete validity of the poll, a survey of hunters and fishers reveals deep concern among sportsmen that nature is out of whack. While these folks may be politically conservative, the article points out something rather logical: because they spend time outdoors, they’re more in tune with what’s happening in the wilderness than the average urban dweller.

It isn’t just subscribers to Field & Stream that are worried; it’s also a small but growing number of religious conservatives. Last November, Joel C. Hunter, the president-elect of the Christian Coalition stepped down, “saying the group resisted his efforts to broaden its agenda to include reducing poverty and fighting global warming.” I applauded his move, and I hope people listen to what he has to say. Whether you are a spiritual/religious person or not, we have inherited the earth from our forefathers, and from whatever deity or force originally created this planet. We are mortal, and thus we are not owners of this sphere, we are merely tenants. Like any good tenant, it is our responsibility to maintain a home that can then be passed on to the next “owners.”

So far we haven’t been very good stewards, in my opinion. Out of necessity, we’ve built our cities and towns near rivers, and polluted them. Cities and towns in many places (the American West being a very good example) were originally sited near scarce natural resources or on prime agricultural land. As these hamlets expanded, the topsoil was sacrificed so that we could have McMansions. Unfortunately, once you destroy top-grade farmland, it’s gone forever. You can’t wait around for nature to fix the problem; that takes generations, which is time we don’t have. As we built our McMansions, we continued in the proud traditions of our ancestors and had large families, even though we don’t need a bunch of extra farmhands anymore. Each of these precious adorable poppets grows up and wants to have a family of their own. Quite a few people choose to listen to the admonitions of elderly white males, some of whom have never had a sex life (or a normal one, at least), and refuse to consider family planning, eschewing it because it’s against “God’s will.” These folks then have tons of kids who then grow up to have tons of kids, and each child wants a home of their own, and the cycle continues.

Even in countries that don’t start with “United,” you have more and more people wanting the same lifestyle and sense of wealth that people in first-world nations do. Even though North America and Europe continue to lead in consuming natural resources, the third-worlders are catching up, and the second world continues to expand as well. When you have 1/3 of the world’s population jammed into two nations, and both consuming their natural resources and wilderness as fast as they possibly can, it’s a recipe for disaster.

In the meantime, some history is being changed. For centuries, Europeans and Americans have searched for the fabled Northwest Passage, a saga that constitutes much of the influences and changes on the Americas, from before Columbus’ day up until very recently. But as this article notes, global warming (or rapid natural changes, if you will), are doing what thousands of explorers couldn’t do: creating an ice-free route through the Arctic. One of the consequences of an ice-free North is the possible demise of those lovely polar bears– a prospect that has the current administration actually contemplating placing them on the endangered list.

Of course, if you’ve paid any attention to the news lately, you know it isn’t just the Arctic that’s having trouble maintain a cool climate– Europe is currently experiencing an extremely warm winter, and it’s having an effect on the Alps. If this continues, it’s very possible we’ll have no future Jean-Claude Killy to astound us. More seriously, it will affect the watershed for the regions in and around the Alps. The same is true in Africa, where the fabled snows of Kilimanjaro are vanishing, and predicted to be gone within a generation. Even more ominously, such warming is impacting the Andes, and already struggling South American nations will face an increasing shortage of water. Forget nuclear holocaust, boys and girls. Don’t worry too much about Iran and Iraq, either. If this continues, expect the wars of the early 21st century to focus on energy sources, but by the end of the century to focus on essentials such as food and water.

No, no, you scream! It isn’t global warming! It’s just a cycle of nature– nothing to worry about! Perhaps that’s true to an extent– at UC Davis, scientists are studying the fossil history of weather. But you know what? It really doesn’t matter in the end whether it’s global warming caused by man, or natural changes that are part of the planet’s cycle. Either way, we will soon face far more serious problems than some dictator’s temper tantrum, or paranoid fantasies about nuclear stockpiles. Regardless of why you think these changes are happening, they’re happening, and we need to find solutions quickly.

Another surprising group that seems to get this are CEOs. While CEOs are generally concerned with the bottom line and are thus rather short-sighted in their pursuit of the dollar, enough of them are looking down the line and realizing that no matter how much profit they raked in last quarter, it’s all gonna be down the drain if they don’t maintain a healthy environment in which their customers can continue to fill their coffers. A group of such executives just asked Smirk to get his priorities straight and start dealing with the crisis. When an executive publicly states that “[t]he science of global warming is clear. We know enough to act now. We must act now,” you know this isn’t some left-wing extremist fantasy. It’s real, and it’s happening.

Oh, but there are these scientists who are convinced none of this is happening! There’s no consensus– the jury’s still out! That may be true to an extent– this is something that is unprecedented, because the more evidence that pours in, the more it appears that we humans have had a hand in this, and thus it’s different from any natural occurrence from eons ago. But now it appears that our gummint, for whatever twisted reasons they had, have applied pressure to downplay the threat of global warming. If this is true (and I, for one, wouldn’t put it past this bunch), it’s a far more criminal act than anything that has occurred in the last six years. This is not just a bunch of dangerous games affecting the nation– it’s an act against life on earth.

Yes, an act against earth is what it is. The changes that are happening just might be altering the natural calendar to the extent that natural systems and the cycles of all living things are thrown out of sync, to the point that some species will fail to propagate, with the consequence of extinction for some, and reduced numbers for many more. This is very serious, because the ecosystem is like a giant piece of fabric: you pull out a few threads here and there, and they weaken the threads around them. Soon you have little holes, which erode the fabric and hasten its eventual disintegration. Each thread is interwoven with another, and if the support system for one thread disappears, then that thread is potentially lost.

It isn’t just the living species of the land and air that will suffer: the sea is being harmed as well. Little Nemo isn’t going to have a home much longer, it seems, since a scientific report suggests that in as little as two generations, the Great Barrier Reef will die. This is symptomatic of what is happening in the world’s oceans, where an intricate ecosystem depends largely on the survival of varied species that live together, play together, eat together, and devour each other together.

A major report to be released tomorrow strongly suggests that mankind is at least partially responsible for this mess. The rising tide of voices and evidence is finally pushing our gummint to admit that maybe, just maybe, perhaps, there’s something to it. The Democrats are starting to push back and demand some answers and explanations for the fudging that’s gone on so far. That’s fine by me, but rather than another investigation condemning the administration, I’d like to see some real bipartisan and international cooperation. I have very strong opinions politically; most of you know that. But I think in the end none of these other issues matter: abortion, religion, education, affirmative action, sexism, racism, class inequality, global thermonuclear war. If we don’t figure out how to save the environment now, none of this other stuff matters. In 2005 in the wake of Katrina and other natural disasters, I thought the Time “Person of the Year” should’ve been Mother Nature. It may yet be her turn at the end of this year. She’s a powerful bitch, Mother Nature; you don’t fool around with her. If we humans pass from the scene, she will not care; she will simply rebuild. We consider ourselves important, but in the scheme of things, we’re expendable. Whether Mother Nature’s answer is to create famine and drought, or other equally drastic ways of reducing our numbers, she will eventually begin again.

I’m not sure what the ultimate solutions will be. I’m not a total pessimist– I don’t think humanity will be extinct a hundred years hence. But I do think we’re at the tipping point, or past it, and that most likely what will happen is the population will have to drastically contract and the “era of limits” politicians like Clinton trumpeted is going to have to be a reality. A true Era of Limits– not just pseudopolitical resolutions to “reform” welfare or shrink the government, but an era where we wisely harbor and use the limited resources that will exist. The problems we face now– rising sea levels (which will obliterate many cities and towns in low-lying areas), melting snow and ice, dying seas and farmlands– are merely canaries in the mine. In esssence, we’re now at the fork in the road, literally, and we can’t go back; we also can’t stay where we are. One path leads to global devastation; another leads to a softer, if rather bumpy, landing.

The canaries are dying; will we?