From– Brent Thompson, Gold Beach resident
10 August 2020 .
To Governor Newsom of California,
People living in California and other overpopulated states have lost a basic freedom Americans traditionally took for granted. That freedom is: freedom of movement. In urban areas heavy traffic is an all day phenomenon which often makes us schedule activities and errands until traffic is less. What that means is that we have too many people in California and therefore in the US. There used to be talk of concepts such as “carrying capacity”, sustainability”, and/or “national optimum population”. Why are these terms and discussions regarding their principles no longer in vogue? But what is permanently in “vogue” is the complaining about omnipresent traffic jams, water shortages, teeming airports, mountains of garbage, ever more vehicles cooling off on hot days, wild life “kill-offs”, and an increasingly anonymous and impersonal society. These problems are like the weather—–everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it. What the above problems mean is that there are too many people in California and the US to maintain the freedom of movement and the availability of resources that used to be taken for granted. California has probably 15 million too many people and the US probably 100 million too many people for basic freedom of movement and the avoidance of resource shortages to be possible. . Since the great bulk of our population growth is from immigration and the families of immigrants, immigration quotas need to be radically reduced and current laws enforced or California will evolve into having 24 hour traffic jams, another tier of teeming airports, even more severe water shortages, more wild life killing sprawl, and, of course, a greater contribution to global warming with the additional millions of future heavy consumers brought into the country every 10 years. There is much talk about immigrant rights, but over looked are what should be the rights of people already in the US. We are overlooking the right for our descendants to have a decent quality of life. We have so much chaos from such a rapidly growing and changing society that we fail to take care of millions of people already here. Our leaders in Congress have clearly failed us by not dealing with the problems caused by ever more people needing ever more goods, services, and housing and our disproportionate contribution to global warming. But will leaders in governors’ quarters and Congress ignore these realities forever? That is up to them and all of us citizens any of whom have a right to be “no growth”. And it is obvious that “no growth” is what is needed most. And of course, declaring sanctuary cities and sanctuary states only fuels more growth because rightly it is perceived that there are no consequences to “cutting the line” in immigration. Pity isn’t it? Will you like a California with 60 million people? Unless there is a change of policy, you’ll help bring that about, Governor Newsom. A great legacy for the 22nd century isn’t it?
Brent Thompson