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ALPERN AT LARGE - We all kind of knew all along that water, money, land, electricity, and human resources were, are, and shall always be FINITE, and therefore cannot be taken for granted.
What we may not all know is that California, particularly Southern California, is a desert that is livable because of water relocation from the Sierras, and because of key reservoirs and canals built to turn desert brown into green.
Now we have the fires from Hades that—despite so much of it being unavoidable because of the perfect nightmarish combination of dry air, heat, winds, and low water in the ground and flora of Southern California force us (at least the adults in the state and nation to revisit and confront our immature and unsustainable growth:
1) Water conservation and proper management is supposed to be the foundation of human civilization, and not some growth industry to promote political and human behavior
2) More canals and reservoirs aplenty to trap the El Niño and La Niña winter waters that create new gigantic lakes is long overdue, and to avoid their creation is to exploit and shirk the responsible need to build, build, build before any new homes can even be responsibly planned.
3) There are environmentalists and faux-environmentalists, and only those who treat water conservation and infrastructure policy should get the final say in what is built, with those treating water conservation and climate change as some sort of theological path to nowhere NOT getting that final say.
4) We cannot afford to house, feed, and otherwise support the flood of homeless individuals arriving from the rest of the nation.
5) We cannot afford to house, feed, and otherwise support the flood of illegal immigrants arriving from other nations.
6) We cannot afford projects such as the High-Speed Rail Project as it is now being built, and certainly not how it was promised versus what we now have to contend with.
7) Mass/rapid transit can only work if it is safe, clean, and efficient, and we cannot afford to have it be any sort of magnet for homeless and/or criminal individuals.
8) Cars cannot be dismissed as evil and forced into more traffic conditions than necessary. Those who drive them are not evil, and deserve accommodations as much as those who use public transit.
9) Jacking up gasoline costs for state funds (the absolutely #1 reason for our high state costs compared to other states) is neither fair nor humane nor sustainable.
10) If we want clean energy than a massive push for nuclear energy is decades overdue.
Until we pursue a 21st Century water, fuel, and transportation/infrastructure plan we will see more nightmares such as that we’re going through. Sacramento’s leadership and city/county leadership have long abandoned what was politically, economically, and scientifically necessary to create the 20th Century utopia that was California.
There will continue to be unavoidable disasters, but what we’re seeing now could have been partially mitigated and prevented.
Don’t blame Trump, and perhaps don’t even blame Newsom.
Until each and every one of us gets with reality, and confronts what built this fair state from the desert it once was, we’ll be avoiding what’s needed to “make California great again”.
(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D, is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties, and is a proud husband and father. He was active for 20 years on the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) as a Board Member focused on Planning and Transportation, and helped lead the grassroots efforts of the Expo Line as well as connecting LAX to MetroRail. His latest project is his fictional online book entitled The Unforgotten Tales of Middle-Earth, and can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)
