Reply #39: Okay, I don't see anything overt about walls, so I won't start [View All]

[Snow]

throwing a fit at you. And IMHO your emphasis on improving economics in poor countries, ie Central America, is the way to go. My argument about population shift I keep harping on because other than immigration, the US has stable population. But in sort of answer to your question, I frankly don't have enough information to judge whether the shift is harmful to the environment. My inclination is to say that dirty big companies, whether industrial or agricultural, are a lot more harmful, and that needs dealing with much more urgently. The only way to start to do that is by throwing bush and company out, and that's coming, we all hope.

Okay, let me ruminate on the consequences of bunches of immigrants. It's mostly the space they take up and the resources they use, right? So some of what's going on is that southern california and texas are getting more crowded...maybe a lot more crowded pretty damn quickly. I suspect the new arrivals aren't buying new houses out in the suburbs; they're moving into Watts and similar places, assuming they're here more-or-less to stay and not doing the seasonal worker two-step. So they're going into existing housing; where's the pressure? Hmmm.

In LA, the so-called inland empire and the high desert, like Apple Valley are burgeoning - they're cheap and you can get a lot for your money, even if you're living in the desert. I'm guessing the Central Americans who buy houses in, say, San Bernardino, have been here a few years, most likely have papers & all. Or, alternatively, people moving out are doing a white-flight thing. Either way you have expansion of the city, with all the pressures on resources that creates. And while I could argue that the new arrivals are less wasteful of the earth than Americans, the truth is they probably adapt the American whole-hog lifestyle within a few years. One way to control all this is the whole free-market philosophy - demand for housing etc drives prices in the area up so much that the pressure is taken off because people get sticker shock & go live somewhere else. That seems to be about all that's happening in LA at the moment, and I don't know how effective it'll be.

So, anyway, there's your long answer - I don't really understand the issue very well.