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The Aftermath of the Overpopulation in California
California is changing, and not always for the better. water is becoming scarce, open spaces are filling in, traffic, pollution, and overcrowding are all common concerns that affect daily life in California and the biggest factor contributing to California’s decline is simply; too many people. Much of L.A. County in earlier days was characterized by ranches and agricultural land, including numerous citrus groves and open space, but little by little it has given way to vast residential and commercial development. In 1940, more than 53,000 people called the seaside community of Santa Monica home. Today the population is more than 90,000 as the city continues to cater to more and denser development. With relentless growth, hundreds of miles of California coastline have been developed.
Once vast open space, the Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica now are highly built up as are Hollywood and Beverly Hills. In earlier days, Beverly Hills was home to a Lima Bean farm today the Beverly Center a mega shopping destination, sits on land that had previously been enjoyed as an amusement park. post-World War II exuberance and pent-up demand spawned suburban tract homebuilding that has continued for decades with today’s larger single-family homes adding significantly more square footage. San Francisco – once the gem of Northern California, has fallen victim to overcrowding and urban sprawl.
One of San Francisco’s greatest treasures; Golden Gate Park is now surrounded by dense urban life. The last remaining wilderness area in San Francisco; San Bruno Mountain, is also encircled by development. The Bay Area with its sprawling subdivisions even inspired a popular 1960s song with the lyrics: … they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look the same – (“Little Boxes”, Pete Seeger)
Crowds have become commonplace in California. the 1950s and 60s were known as the Golden Age of air travel. closed in 1959, the Glendale Grand Central Terminal was the first Airport to offer service between Southern California and New York. today San Francisco International Airport and LAX are among the top ten busiest airports in the United States. California schools once among the best in the nation now suffer from overcrowding. In 1946, there were 2.3 million registered vehicles today there are more than 31 million. More traffic and ever-expanding freeways have become the norm in many California cities today. Besides producing untold driving angst, the relentless traffic and congestion in California cost lives and billions of dollars in increased public health expenses according to the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. Even in non-urban areas traffic can be a problem, for example, the traffic on I-80 from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe in both summer and winter can be horrendous. As the population continues to rise California historically one of America’s bread baskets continues to lose more and more farmland.
California’s Central Valley includes the San Joaquin Valley, the Sacramento Valley, and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. This area produces about 25% of the nation’s food on about 1 percent of all U.S. farmland. At the current rate of farmland loss in the San Joaquin Valley, an estimated 500,000 acres will be lost to development by 2050. Increased population has also changed the way we farm and raise animals for food, some of these changes have led to environmental problems and health concerns. For example, large industrial operations and overcrowded feed Lots have led to nitrate pollution and more than 100,000 square miles of polluted groundwater in California. Increasingly developments are built in areas with steep mountainous terrains opening up the potential for devastation in the event of natural disasters. Rapid population growth in fire-prone areas has led to the loss of lives, livestock, resources, and property and it is often the cause of the devastation. Also devastating are the floods, erosion, and landslides following a fire.
Development in coastal and low-lying areas, common in California is also prone to natural disasters. For example, a magnitude 9.2 earthquake in Alaska generated a 20-foot tsunami wave that flooded low-lying areas and river valleys in Northern California killing 11 people. California has spent billions of dollars to bring water to what was previously desert. Increasing human demand has been at the root of water shortages and is the motive behind the need to seek out new resources. Known for its natural beauty and lauded by naturalist John Muir, Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park was flooded for a dam to provide water to San Francisco and surrounding areas, today there was a movement to remove the dam built in the early 1900s and restore the earlier pristine environment, how this proposal will play out with ever-increasing water demands is unknown.
Drought conditions common in California, further exacerbate California’s water shortages. According to the NASA Earth Observatory, in 2010 Lake Mead reached its lowest levels since 1956. In California electricity consumption alone is projected to increase by 15% by 2024, primarily due to population growth. Surfing is synonymous with California, but pristine beaches were from an earlier time, today surfers have to be cautious. According to Heal the Bay’s 23rd annual beach report card, 14 California beaches got D or F grades due to high bacteria counts, commonly linked to urban runoff which can cause stomach flu, ear infections, and skin rashes. Shipping at the Port of Los Angeles has grown from 633,000 units in 1982 to 7.9 million units in 2013. While many think of smokestacks and their accompanying air pollution as a thing of the past, they’re still with us, but today air pollution assaults our environment and lungs in insidious new ways. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the single largest source of air pollution in Southern California with asthma rates for children living in port-adjacent communities almost twice as high as the rest of the U.S. California has eight of the ten most polluted cities in the country. In an earlier California, schoolchildren didn’t have to contend with the chemicals that some students are exposed to today. The air outside California schools in Berkeley, Beverly Hills, Coachella, Fresno, La Quinta Long Beach, San Mateo, Visalia, and Wilmington registered high levels of benzene chloroform or carbon tetrachloride; concentrations high enough to cause serious illness or increased cancer risk with long-term exposure.
Smog hasn’t gone away, even with advances in clean energy technology because of the rapid level of population growth in the state. As the population continues to rise, so does our waste. Of California’s 29.3 million tons of waste generated in 2012, 99% went into California landfills with approximately 1% exported to landfills in other states. Although the state has a goal of 75% recycling, the average Californian still generates about 4.3 pounds of trash daily, and more than half of that trash ends up in landfills. Despite recycling efforts and good intentions, with a large population, a significant amount of trash also winds up on beaches and in the Pacific Ocean. There’s little way around the fact that nearly 40 million people, all consumers, will generate a lot of waste of all kinds and, it is discouraging to learn that according to the London School of Economics study, if each of us living in a highly developed country reduced our carbon footprint by 40 % over 40 years, all of that will be canceled by our present population growth rates alone. California is the most populous state in the nation and the human population continues to increase.
Increasing population means more demands on resources such as land and water which are needed by native plants and animals too. According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, habitat loss due to human population growth presents the single greatest problem facing native plants and animals in California. California has an estimated 6,500 plant varieties native to the state, many found nowhere else in the world. These plants are essential to healthy ecosystems and natural processes, providing valuable renewable materials and other benefits. Loss of habitat and habitat fragmentation are contributing to the decline of many native plant populations. Some 26 species of California plants may now be extinct in the state and some plants have been so severely reduced that they are at risk of extinction. Some of California’s iconic redwood trees are more than 2,000 years old but today more than 95% of the old-growth redwood forests are gone. The Giant Sequoias are the largest trees on earth and among the oldest living things in California found only in the Sierra Nevada air pollution from the neighboring Central Valley threatens them.
Today California has 300 endangered or threatened animal and plant species, with habitat destruction due to overpopulation a major cause. By 1987, the entire surviving population of condors in the wild had plummeted to a mere 22. Through tremendous efforts today numbers are higher, but the Condor remains one of the rarest birds in the world. Human development continues to impact California’s mountain lion habitat. Freeways cut off the mountain lions’ range and can prove lethal when the big cats try to cross them, residential development further fragments their habitats, and pesticides and other chemicals people use can poison them, all these factors contribute to the decline of these apex predators. The California grizzly also known as Golden Bear, dominates the state flag but is nowhere to be found in the 31st state to join the union. It was hunted to extinction by earlier California residents. This is one more cautionary tale for us, are we going to continue down an unsustainable path of growth and development? or can we take the necessary steps to solve the overpopulation problem we face? What can we as individuals do to help save some of America and some of California for tomorrow?
Individuals can make a difference in terms of the personal choices we make as parents and consumers and in how we work to affect broader political and economic policies. We can be advocates and educators on behalf of California, U.S., and world population stabilization. Personal decisions to limit our demographic impact by limiting our families to a sustainable size, or using resources more judiciously will make no difference unless people and large enough numbers think it is important enough to behave similarly. Take a stand and speak out forcefully to news media, politicians, and environmental groups. Tell the media that the environment is important to you and that overpopulation especially in California threatens to overwhelm it. Make politicians and environmental groups accountable. Tell them that they will get neither your donations, nor your votes or membership unless they acknowledge the connections between immigration, overpopulation, and the natural environment California is still one of the best and most beautiful places in the world, help us preserve all that we can for the future.
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