Is California overpopulated? (standard of living, legal, food)

[SOUTHEAST1er]

Defiently overpopulated, not enough water. But atleast the vast majority of the population is located in a single area.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by SeanAaron

How would California feed 100 million people and maintain a suitable viable natural environment in which animals such as Cougars could have enough room to roam?

I dont think people are learning. Maricopa County, Arizona seems to be following Los Angeles County's example with the insane suburban growth

Cougars / Mtn Lions, not to mention other large predators, are actually increasing in population and expanding their ranges.

Ten years from now, if current trends continue, there will be serious encounters on the valley floors / coastal lowlands in the midst of suburban and urban areas.

It will end up like some places back east where attacks unheard of a few years ago are now commonplace.

If you add in the long term depopulation that is now inevitable, things are going to get, um, a bit "interesting" for people now being born.

Got Weatherby?

[AnUnidentifiedMale]

Definitely not overpopulated. Technology can solve many of our problems, and already has in certain areas.

Using the Census Bureau's definition of an "urbanized area", only about 5% of California is urbanized. There's a map on this page, if you have any doubts:

United States urban area - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Steve97415]

View Poll Results: Is California overpopulated?
Yes, California has far too many people 11 44.00%
California is fine 10 40.00%
No, California needs more people 3 12.00%
California needs population control, like China 1 4.00%

So it looks like so far, 11 rationalists, 10 denialists, 3 Mormons and 1 authoritarianist have taken the poll.

[UB50]

We need to limit sprawl. The adaptive reuse plan that LA has adopted is one good way to do that.

[SeanAaron]

Cougars may be increasing but is the habitat there for them? That may be why attacks are increasing (sprawl fueled by insane growth, destroying their habitat) so they resort to hunting (easy prey) people.

[SEAandATL]

Originally Posted by EscapeCalifornia

Really? Does Japan also stubbornly refuse to build out its infrastructure to accommodate the population increases like California does?

If only California had a train system and built everything vertically like Japan.

[Curmudgeon]

In terms of land mass, California is not overcrowded. However, the "choice," urban areas in which most people care to live certainly are and the sprawl is spreading. Even desirable mountain locations are fast becoming built up with predictable results in terms of their impact on habitats, air quality and availability of water. In the central valley, farmland increasingly disappears to accomodate growth.

However, California can certainly accomodate many millions of desert lovers if ways are found to keep them hydrated and fed. But continued growth will require more and more employment opportunities and between corporate off-shoring and California's punitive business taxes and regulations, that's decidedly problematic.

[CAVA1990]

What's that they say "all hell needs is water and a few good people" ?

[nightbird47]

Originally Posted by SeanAaron

California has some of the most beautiful and diverse environmental areas in the world, I would hate to see them paved over in the name of progress. Something tells me that Orange County pre-sprawl, was a much more pleasant place to live, I even hear Orange County had orange groves back then

When I first moved to Orange County there were still groves in the outlying areas and fields where crops were grown in Huntington Beach. I saw all that dissapear. I saw the traffic become worse and worse. It became a different place.

Worse, when I first moved to Riverside there were many groves and far far less people. The population of the city was 79k when I first moved there. Now its over 300 k. The farms are gone, all the county land has been divied up between cities, and except for successful resistance by those who had lived there for a long time, the acre and half acre properties in Riverside would have been postage stamp lots with new quicky houses on them. The things that are the same is the electric grid, and you can count on at least one power outage in the summer. The roads are still your basic preboom roads, except rushhour starts at 6 and ends at 10 now. People are more angry and there is more violence. Its still more laid back than LA and less fashion/status conscious than the OC, but its not the same place.

I moved because I couldn't afford to live in California, because even if you can find a small town, its still costly. But I don't want to see the state turn into socal. I don't want to see all the desert vistas dissapear into houses and every mountain and hill have straight lines at the top. Socal has destroyed so many places that had beauty already. Maybe you can drive for and hour or two to see open land, but how often can you do that?

I am sad for our state. It would be a very good thing if cities imposed drastic water regulations and those for use of resourses, and people had to deal with the truth that you can't stuff that many people into an area that can not support them without hauling in most of the water supply.

When I go back to visit I feel like a stranger, and wish I could go and visit Shingletown, a very little town above Redding in the Cascades instead because that is the California I'd like to remember.