"Smart Growth" ­ How Does this New Mantra Relate to the Carrying Capacity of a Region?

For more than three decades, modern society has been inundated with doom-sayers predictions about running out of resources, about an end to civilization as we know it, and even extinction of Homo sapiens. One of the first to discuss the consequences of human population growth was Thomas Malthus in 1803. More recently, Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, published in 1968, brought the concept of Limits to Growth to the forefront for many. So far, the doom hasn't materialized, at least not in the affluent part of this planet. What happened with all those predictions? Are the doom-sayers wrong and are humans exempt from certain natural laws, or is society merely desensitized to bleak messages of humankind's imminent demise? After all, hasn't technological progress served us well so far? Aren't we in control, and haven't we been able to change the "carrying capacity" of our environment for thousands of years so that this planet has been able to accommodate an ever growing number of humans? Have we found a new way of proving the doom-sayers wrong for good with "Smart Growth?"

It might be worth looking at the unspoken assumptions under which our culture seems to operate. Somewhat oversimplified, these assumptions can be described as:

Planet Earth was made for us.

The natural environment is a resource for humans.

Material and economic growth is necessary for a growing human population.

Technological progress provides solutions for everything.

Natural laws applicable to other species do not apply to us.

Few people bother to question these assumptions. Until these core beliefs and values embedded in our culture are transformed, just as the underlying cultural assumptions about slavery were questioned and ultimately proven to be wrong, urban planners and elected officials will continue to act out the myth that growth is necessary for healthy economies and quality of life.

If we carried the underlying assumptions of "growth" in general terms to the ultimate conclusion, and assuming that humans had instantaneous access to every habitable planet in the universe, the six billion plus people living on this planet now, doubling every 35 years or so, would fill a second planet within a generation. After seventy years, four planets would be full, and so on. At this doubling rate, a billion planets would be full by the year 3000. Scaling this down to the growth projections for California or those of the Association of Bay Area Governments and Napa County, it becomes pretty obvious how the ever-accelerating loss of our quality of life will impact us within our own life times.

What does "smart growth", as defined by urban planners, and elected officials, mean within this context? In my view, it means that it will take 50 rather than 35 years to replace every piece of space used by coyotes, steelhead trout, red-legged frogs, mountain lions, valley oaks, native bunch grasses, and swallow-tail butterflies with parking lots, roof tops, feedlots, and croplands. If we successfully fought every second attempt to augment our drinking and irrigation water supplies with Colorado River water or State Water Project supplies and managed to stop sewer treatment plant expansions in three out of four attempts, we would still not be able to come to coexist with other forms of life that make our survival possible.

Individual actions that are effective on the micro-scale, such as defeating environmentally irresponsible development (a.k.a. "growth"), have to go hand in hand with attempting to transform unquestioned assumptions and core beliefs that are the underlying cause of dysfunctional societal choices.

Rainer Hoenicke is an Environmental Scientist living in Napa and working on restoring the San Francisco Estuary and its surrounding watersheds. This is the first of several articles about basic Ecology that will appear in Semper Virens.