Posted on 02/13/2005 2:41:55 PM PST by calcowgirl
I believe that would be the Global Biodiversity Assessment as cited by the treaty.
Dan Walters: As population soars, politicians need to deal with effects now By Dan Walters -- Bee Columnist Published 2:15 am PST Tuesday, February 8, 2005
Population expansion is an old story for California, but there have been periods of faster and slower growth. The end of the post-World War II baby boom in the 1960s, for example, presaged a very low-growth period in the 1970s - one that misled California's political leaders into slowing development of highways and other infrastructure to a crawl.
By 1980, California's population growth rate soared anew, driven by a new wave of immigration from Southeast Asia, Latin America and other foreign locales, and a new baby boom, especially among immigrant mothers.
California developed a very steady pattern of growth during the 1980s: 500,000-plus births each year (a baby a minute) and about 300,000 foreign immigrants, offset by 200,000-plus deaths for a net increase of 600,000. This pattern ran for a decade, raising California's population by almost exactly 6 million in the 1980s.
Population growth dipped a bit in the 1990s, not because the underlying factors changed, but because more than a million Californians packed up and left the state in the early 1990s during the worst recession in a half-century. But as the economy improved, the outflow of bodies ebbed, and because immigration and births remained high, growth resumed its previous pattern.
In the past couple of years, demographers and politicians have wondered whether California would see another growth dip as birthrates declined. Some school districts began experiencing enrollment drops, which added to the speculation that California wasn't destined for the continued high growth rates that had been projected earlier.
The latest population numbers drawn up by the state's respected demographic researchers, however, indicate that the hopes - or fears - of lower growth are misplaced. The numbers, covering the year that ended July 1, almost exactly mirror the pattern that developed in the 1980s and has continued, except for the recession, ever since.
The Department of Finance Demographic Research Unit estimates that during the 2003-04 period, 551,000 births and 283,600 in net immigration, offset by 235,000 deaths, produced a net growth of 599,000, bringing the state's population to 36.6 million.
There are several ways to put that number in perspective, but two of them sharply illustrate its dimensions: It's roughly 20 percent of all the population growth in the United States, and over just one decade, it would be the equivalent of adding the entire population of Indiana, the 14th-most-populous state, to California.
What it means, most of all, is that we would be very foolish to repeat the mistakes of the 1970s and fail to adjust public policy to the simple fact that every year we can expect 600,000 more people. They will need 200,000 more units of housing and a quarter-million more jobs, will add about 500,000 more cars and trucks to already crowded highways and roads, send tens of thousands more kids to school, and will demand retail stores, water, health care and recreation.
Political action to meet those demands is more than overdue - especially since politicians have so often ignored the effects of the 50 percent increase in population we've already experienced since 1980. Our increasingly congested highways are just the most obvious example of how growth's impacts have been sidestepped.
The odd thing is that individually, California politicians know that population growth and its effects, including ever-greater levels of cultural diversity, are the most important challenge facing the state. They wax nostalgic about how their predecessors in the 1950s and 1960s faced similar pressures and met them with historic infrastructure improvements, including hundreds of miles of new roadways, vast new water projects and school-and college-building on a massive scale.
That individual understanding, however, gets buried in a political system that focuses on minutiae of the moment. As the new population data were being released Monday, the state Assembly conducted a brief session that consisted almost entirely of feel-good resolutions and ceremonies. By the time legislators convene again on Thursday to do more of the same, California will have added 5,000 more human bodies.
Guess you just have to ask the right people.
What's the question?
How to get around the Bee's registration.
Now that that's settled, I'm outta here! Gotta git up early tamarrah!!! G'nite Y'all...
I'm getting up at 3:30 cause I have to be to work at 5. What time you getting up old man?
What a plan! Take all of the accumulated amounts that have been diverted from the Transportation account to supplement General Fund spending (including any amounts to be spent/raided prior to July 1, 2007, per ACAX1 4 introduced by Keene, Arnold's "Spending Control" measure) and turn it into long term debt, to be paid over 15 years. Then, since the highways are in such terrible shape, and we have spent all the transportation money on "the children" or some other social program, Arnold will sell toll roads to the people. When added to raided education funds that are also being proposed as 15 year debt, it looks like this will exceed my original $10 billion estimate.
Mercury News, Feb 5, 2005
Transportation funding shortfall worst that state has ever faced
BILLIONS DIVERTED TO OTHER USES MAY NEVER BE COMPLETELY REPAIDCalifornia's budget crisis is delaying or downsizing dozens of key transportation projects across the state, from expanding BART to uncorking nasty bottlenecks. Some rural counties are downgrading from asphalt to gravel as they resurface roads.
The transportation crisis is called the worst California has faced, with the state up against a $12 billion annual shortfall in the money needed to build more transit and expand highways, not to mention fill potholes.
(snip)
Regional, county and state officials complained for more than three hours, upset with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and before him Gray Davis for diverting more than $5 billion away from transportation to bail out the state's general fund. The state has frozen almost all new projects for the past two years and expects to have little if any cash to spend through 2007.
"We're literally bankrupt,'' said state Sen. Tom Torlakson, D-Concord.
A state report six years ago revealed an annual need of $16 billion for transportation, but today only $4 billion is available. An additional $1.8 billion a year is needed for safety improvements and storm-related repairs, but only $900 million was available last year. The Bay Area faces an $8 billion shortfall for transportation projects on the drawing board, and San Jose has 200 miles of city streets in need of major repairs, but no money to make them. (snip)
Three years ago, state voters approved a measure to earmark sales tax revenue on gasoline purchases for transportation. But an out clause allowed Gov. Davis, and then Schwarzenegger, to divert more than $5 billion to the general fund in a financial emergency. State officials say those funds will likely again be diverted next year, to the tune of another $1.3 billon.
Schwarzenegger has said he will pay back those funds over the next 15 years [IF people are dumb enough to vote for his "spending control" reform!! It's MORE borrowing!]. If the governor fulfills that promise -- and few are banking on it -- it will still have a ripple affect, delaying work on numerous hot spots.
I strongly believe that wealways have to look for alternatives and for mass transportation. That's clear. But that does not mean that an era of highway building is over unless we have a great replacement for it. Nothing is over. I think that we see right now there is many, many freeways that have congestion problems that need to build extra lanes.We have, as a matter of fact, we're going to make an announcement really soon where we're going to look at our whole infrastructure and transportation and we have a very creative way of financing it. We don't just rely on Prop. 42 money because that money is, even though it is a billion and a half dollars or sometimes more. But the fact of the matter is that is not enough to really create the infrastructure that we are talking about. We want to approach it in a very radical way and then look at all kinds of transportation, if it is trains, if it is how do we move goods from the Long Beach harbor and from various different harbors on land and get it going.
Because, as you know, that transportation is the key thing for moving goods and for moving people. That's the power of our economy. And so we have to concentrate on that.
Arnold says proposition 42 money is a billion and half. That is the amount that is leftover after they spend the money on things for which it was not intended.
And toll roads will facilitate the movement of goods and services? Flawed logic.
You're right, of course, its an assessment.
BTW did you hear Dr. Michael Coffman on KSCO saturday? He is one of the people that helped to alert Americans about the GBA.
Take a look at post time... I got up about 6 minutes ago!!!
Even the danged Yoonyuns "get it!"
The Unions get one half of the equation. They want to close the Prop 42 loopholes and restore their funding. However, in their interest, they will also support the continued borrowing for a couple of years, and probably toll roads as well.
We will now have a campaign sold to the voters as "spending control" and "closing loopholes", only to sink another $10 billion in debt. There will be no opposition as the left will support it for their benefit, and the Republicans will either blindly line up behind the (R)Initiative, or be silent again to not disrupt the party "unity". What a sad situation.
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