climateadaptation:NYTimes is running spectacular coverage of California’s mega-drought. In this arti

climateadaptation:NYTimes is running spectacular coverage of California’s mega-drought. In this article, the Times questions if “constant growth” (vs a sustainable population and flat economy) is part of the problem. “Mother Nature didn’t intend for 40 million people to live here,” said Kevin Starr, a historian at the University of Southern California who has written extensively about this state. “This is literally a culture that since the 1880s has progressively invented, invented and reinvented itself. At what point does this invention begin to hit limits?”California, Dr. Starr said, “is not going to go under, but we are going to have to go in a different way.”An estimated 38.8 million people live in California today, more than double the 15.7 million people who lived here in 1960, and the state’s labor force exploded to 18.9 million in 2013 from 6.4 million people in 1960.California’s $2.2 trillion economy today is the seventh largest in the world, more than quadruple the $520 billion economy of 1963, adjusted for inflation. The median household income jumped to an estimated $61,094 in 2013 from $44,772 in 1960, also adjusted for inflation.“You just can’t live the way you always have,” said Mr. Brown, a Democrat who is in his fourth term as governor.“For over 10,000 years, people lived in California, but the number of those people were never more than 300,000 or 400,000,” Mr. Brown said. “Now we are embarked upon an experiment that no one has ever tried: 38 million people, with 32 million vehicles, living at the level of comfort that we all strive to attain. This will require adjustment. This will require learning.” -- source link

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