Unfortunately, California is a popular place for foreigners of varying legality to relocate which has given us more than 10 million foreigners as fellow [...]]]> Whenever Democrat 2020 candidates yap about America offering open borders to the world, it’s clear that they have never considered the environmental carrying capacity of our little space on the planet.

Unfortunately, California is a popular place for foreigners of varying legality to relocate which has given us more than 10 million foreigners as fellow residents.

There’s no question this state is overpopulated in an environmental sense, and water supply is the most immediate and vital issue in this regard. While much of the state’s water goes to agriculture, public service messages will likely be appearing soon on TV urging California residents to conserve water.

So I’m back to catching shower warm-up water in a five-gallon bucket and using it to keep the camellia bush alive.

Wednesday’s Sacramento Bee front-paged the bad news:

Democrats once claimed they supported the environment, but 2020 candidate Joe Biden recently asserted, “We should be able to increase to three million people the people who could come for family reunification” (Joe Biden: ‘Absolutely Bizarre’ to Suggest Limit on U.S. Capacity to Absorb Immigrants, Breitbart.com, February 18, 2020). And family unification is just one category of immigration.

Of course the whole reason foreigners come to America is to increase their income and consumption of consumer goods and physical resources generally. Only the favored phraseology is to “come for a better life.”

Meanwhile, the news shows severe flooding in Mississippi.

But California is dry.

Sierra snowpack withering in California’s dry winter. New satellite image shows the bad news, Sacramento Bee, February 18, 2020

The image is disturbing and leaves little doubt about California’s growing predicament: The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is a sad whisper of it was a year ago, a withering testament to the lack of precipitation in the state’s increasingly dry winter.

The National Weather Service tweeted satellite images of the Sierra on Tuesday, showing the stark difference between this year and the above-average snowfall from 2019. The mountain snowpack — a crucial element in the state’s annual water supply — is 53 percent of normal for this time of year, according to the Department of Water Resources.

The immediate forecast isn’t promising. NWS meteorologist Emily Heller said there’s a chance of “some light mountain snow this weekend” — perhaps a couple of inches at elevations of 6,000 feet or above. Even that measly forecast is uncertain.

“It’s too early to get everybody’s hopes up,” Heller said.

Three years after former Gov. Jerry Brown declared the official end of the last drought, the lack of precipitation is putting the state on edge all over again.

California needs a healthy snowpack to replenish its water supply in summer and fall, when the precipitation disappears altogether and the state relies on water in its reservoirs. On average, the snowpack provides about 30 percent of the state’s water needs.

The state also needs moisture in the soil to tamp down the wildfire risk. The historic five-year drought killed tens of millions of trees, helping set the stage for the horrific fire seasons of 2017 and 2018. (Continues)

Plus, the power outage could last [...]]]> Here in northern California on Wednesday morning, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has turned off power to hundreds of thousands of customers because of weather forecasts showing wildfire-producing high winds. Its spokes-minions have been appearing on media, portraying the company as sympathetic to rate-payers and concerned about their safety.

Plus, the power outage could last several days so PG&E can check its infrastructure or something. Of course it’s very disruptive to normal life.

My electricity is obviously still on, but it could be shut down whenever PG&E decides. I’ve been filling containers with water since that necessity also needs power to be delivered.

Fox reporter William La Jeunesse reported (video following):

This is the new reality for California after last year’s wildfires caused by downed power lines and electrical equipment forced the state’s largest utility into bankruptcy. Now the pro-active response is to cut power when the forecast calls for high wind. Right now, 200,000 around San Francisco are without electricity. The next phase begins around noon near San Jose; a third shutdown anticipated later today in southern California. In all, half the state’s counties will be affected.

La Jeunesse did mention bankruptcy, but not the dollar cost for the company which was enormous. Here’s a report from a few weeks ago:

PG&E Agrees To Pay $11 Billion Insurance Settlement Over California Wildfires, NPR.org, September 13, 2019

Utility giant PG&E has agreed to a second large settlement over devastating Northern California wildfires, saying it will pay $11 billion to resolve most insurance claims from the wine country fires in 2017 and massive Camp Fire in 2018.

“These claims are based on payments made by insurance companies to individuals and businesses with insurance coverage for wildfire damages” in those catastrophic blazes, PG&E said in announcing the deal.

The settlement will require the approval of a bankruptcy court, as PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January and recently entered into a Chapter 11 reorganization plan.

While the $11 billion sum is large, it’s far smaller than the roughly $20 billion that the insurance companies had initially wanted, after paying out billions to California wildfire victims. (Continues)

So is it suspicious to think the power shutdowns are all about PG&E protecting its bottom line rather than concern for public safety? Probably not.

One memorable example of overpopulation was the government’s reallocation of Beijing-area water for the 2008 Summer Olympics [...]]]> Introduced in 1979, China’s one-child policy was seen abroad as an overreach of communist government controlling the people, even though that nation has basic resource problems that should have brought environmental limits more gently into the public conversation.

One memorable example of overpopulation was the government’s reallocation of Beijing-area water for the 2008 Summer Olympics from agriculture and general use to the sports events and guests — since nothing screams “third world” like insufficient water for a big international celebration.

Beijing is known for its polluted air, but water supply may be a more pressing environmental problem.

Yet shrinking demographics may have persuaded Beijing to not only trash the one-child policy but to mandate two-kid families for economic reasons — it’s being seriously considered. Good luck with that.

Tucker Carlson recently analyzed the complicated China situation with expert Gordon Chang:

Spare Audio:

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, every day China edges closer to overtaking the United States as the world’s richest country, but just because they are getting stronger economically doesn’t mean the Chinese people are more free. They are not. China is still imprisoning its Muslim population in the west. Ordinary Chinese still lose access to travel or education if the government says they have poor social credit and now a hacker has discovered a bizarre Chinese database that evaluated millions of Chinese women on whether they were quote, “breed ready.”

Gordon Chang is a columnist and author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” can’t come too soon. He joins us tonight. Gordon, thanks very much for coming on. What does “breed-ready” mean, and why would the Chinese government be assessing that?

GORDON CHANG: Well, breed-ready means they are able to breed children. And the reason why is because China has declining demography.

You know, if you start to look at some of the statistics, they are really frightening. So for instance, last year, their birth rate fell about 12%. Perhaps to the lowest rate in the history of the People’s Republic going back to 1949.

And we are seeing that the workforce has already topped out. The population as a whole will top out soon. China’s officials are just in a panic.

CARLSON: So they are identifying women who are breed-ready but then what do they do with that information? Is there going to be a coercive breeding program in China?

CHANG: There very possibly could be because some Chinese officials are now talking about having a two-child policy which is not a maximum two children, but they are talking about requiring couples to have two children.

Now, of course, China is not there yet. But you can see where they are going largely because they have been taken by surprise by a collapsing demography. They shouldn’t have been. People have been warning Chinese officials about this for the last 15 years. But they have sort of sloughed off the warnings but, you know, a couple of years ago they really started to see the consequences of declining demography.

CARLSON: But I mean, I have been hearing from Democrats in this country who are very concerned about having any kids because of global warming, it sounds like the Chinese aren’t as concerned about global warming as we are.

CHANG: No, and largely because every social problem, every economic problem they have, almost all of them are made worse by declining demography and the Chinese leaders start to notice and that’s starting with their economy because, you know, they grew during what was called the demographic dividend years. That was expanding workforce. Now, the workforce since 2011 has started to get smaller and it’s gotten smaller fast.

CARLSON: So we have the same demographic problems here, obviously and so does Western Europe declining below replacement rate. We just import new people from the developing world. Has it occurred to the Chinese to do that?

CHANG: No, you know, the Chinese don’t want to do that because they have a system and then basically, it’s based on racial superiority where they do view the rest of the world in inferior terms.

And you know, Tucker, on demography, within maybe three years, for the first time in at least 300 years, maybe all of recorded history, China is not going to be the world’s most populous society.

The world’s most populous society will be India and the Chinese both disdain the Indians because of this racial superiority view but also, they fear India. So people are concerned that China is seeing a closing window of opportunity and will lash out on that Himalayan border.

CARLSON: So, very quick, you just said something that almost nobody ever says which is that China may be the most racist country in the world, maybe after North Korea, but certainly, it is right up there.

The country is based on racial superiority and yet liberals in this country suck up to China constantly. Why does no one ever point that out?

CHANG: You know, that, to me, is a mystery because this nation of Han superiority is bred into the Chinese political system and you see it, for instance, they put on a skit on the China Central Television’s program, 900 million people saw it that depicted Africans as primates and it is just incredible, Tucker.

CARLSON: It’s unbelievable. But Jerry Brown is happy to call them wonderful, and so is Dianne Feinstein. Unbelievable. Gordon Chang, it is great to see you. I hope we will see you again soon, thanks.

For example, California’s severe five-year drought from 2011 [...]]]> It once was the case that at least some liberals supported immigration limits because of the harmful effects of excess population on the environment as a primary reason. But many have forgotten because politics have become more important than preserving the nation’s natural resources that support life.

For example, California’s severe five-year drought from 2011 to 2017 was a brutal reminder that nature still rules, and states that are part desert shouldn’t engage in endless growth: most residents had to observe water consumption limits which meant shorter showers and investing in efficient plumbing devices. At the extreme, some residents in Porterville, California ran out of water and needed to have it trucked in. California’s growing population, long on the brink of 40 million, means that the limited water supply must be divided into ever smaller shares. And civilization cannot survive without water.

Below, drought is a major concern in overpopulated California.

But the Open Borders urge is strong within Democrat politicians since diverse foreign voters tend to be the biggest supporters of the big government policies D-pols enact.

Tucker Carlson recently interviewed a rare liberal who thinks immigration should be limited, Prof. Phil Cafaro, author of the 2015 book How Many Is Too Many.

As it happens, I reviewed that book in The Social Contract: see ‘How Many Is Too Many?’ – A progressive considers limiting immigration.

I found the book acceptable in some ways, but not all. Regarding the important issue of the Sierra Club’s perfidy where it secretly sold out the environment for a $100 million bribe, Cafaro is squirrelly at best. As I wrote in my review:

However, the treatment of the struggle for reform in the Sierra Club starting in 1998 leaves out vital elements, and they are important. Were any of the reformers interviewed? Apparently not. The book quotes Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope as saying that he had once believed that immigration should be reduced for environmental reasons, but that the issue could not be debated in the organization “without stirring up racial passions.”

That’s an odd thing for a professional defender of the environment to say: Well, we wanted to protect America’s environment, but people got angry so we won’t talk about immigration any more. In fact, the Sierra Club supported the terrible 2013 Senate Gang of Eight bill that would have doubled legal immigration in perpetuity.

So it’s not David Brower’s Sierra Club any more, and the reason was leftist politics combined with big money—over $100 million secretly donated by Wall Street investor David Gelbaum over the years 2000 and 2001. But the gift came with strings attached: “I did tell Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.” (“The Man Behind the Land,” Los Angeles Times, October 27, 2004)

But that secret bribe was not known to the grassroots reformers (and I was one of them) who worked for eight years within the Sierra Club’s democratic structures to return the issue of excessive immigration to its proper place as being understood as a negative force on the environment. Had we known that the fix was in, we would not have wasted so much time trying to fix a deeply corrupt organization.

So Cafaro blew off the most contentious environmental issue in decades apparently because he didn’t want to remind environmentalists about how rotten the top organization is. It would have been nice if Tucker Carlson had been more informed — he mentioned the Sierra Club but only in reference to the recent destructive wildfires.

Tucker Carlson Tonight Transcript, Fox News, December 6, 2018

TUCKER CARLSON: So, there are a lot of divisions on the Left, not often aired in public. They do disagree with each other. If there’s one issue that unites almost everybody on that side though, it’s immigration.

And the principle they’ve united behind is that anybody from anywhere on the globe should be allowed to come into the United States, no questions asked. If you don’t believe that pay attention. For example, look at the theater surrounding the recent migrant Caravan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANIE LEIGH RUHLE, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT, ANCHOR, MSNBC LIVE: All of this for a group of people, a lot of whom are mothers and children, who pose no imminent threat.

VAN JONES, AMERICAN NEWS COMMENTATOR, AUTHOR, NON-PRACTICING ATTORNEY, DREAM CORPS CO-FOUNDER: The President of the United States has decided that a couple thousand scared, sick, you know, people fleeing violence are a bigger threat to the United States than ISIS.

MARIA CARDONA, LATINOVATIONS FOUNDER, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST, CNN/CNN EN ESPANOL POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Guess what, Ben? It’s in our laws that people are allowed to come to our borders and ask for asylum.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: So, this is a new thing. It seems like they’ve always had this view, but no. Many on the lift — Left, used to be skeptical of mass immigration, partly for economic reasons because it undermined the wages of workers. But there were others, many others, who had environmental concerns too about letting a lot more people into the country.

Phil Cafaro is the Author of How Many Is Too Many?: The Progressive Argument to Reducing Immigration into the United States. And he joins us tonight.

Mr. Cafaro, thank you very much for coming on. Having you is the result of a long nationwide search to find someone with your views, because I remember so well as a kid that Democrats were really concerned, some were, Liberals, about overpopulation and the effects on the natural environment.

And I always kind of agreed with that. Tell me your concerns about mass immigration and its effect on the environment.

PHILIP CAFARO, HOW MANY IS TOO MANY AUTHOR, PHILOSOPHER, PROFESSOR: Well, Tucker, I’m not sure I’m the last Liberal in — in the country who’s concerned about immigration-driven population growth. But we are a minority–

CARLSON: Good.

CAFARO: –among environmentalists. I — I’ll give you that.

CARLSON: Yes. So, I see like the Sierra Club, which used to care about the Sierras. Huge fire breaks out in the Sierras last summer, started inadvertently by an illegal immigrant or the — the degradation of marijuana farming in Northern California, which really does poison the soil, and they say literally nothing because their concern for open borders overrides their concern for the environment.

What is that about?

CAFARO: Well, I think you’re absolutely right. If you go back to the — the birth of the Environmental Movement 50, 60 years ago, there was so much concern and — and focus on population issues because people saw the connections between–

CARLSON: Yes.

CAFARO: –overuse of resources, between too much pollution, and — and the sheer numbers of people. And — and environmentalists used to talk about that. I think what happened between then and now is back then most of our population growth was coming from the number of children we were having–

CARLSON: Right.

CAFARO: –native Americans. Whereas today, population growth in the U.S. is primarily driven by high levels of immigration. So, people, for whatever reason, weren’t as comfortable saying we needed to limit immigration, as they were saying we need to limit how many — how many kids we have.

CARLSON: So–

CAFARO: I think that’s a mistake though because either way–

CARLSON: I agree with that.

CAFARO: –you’re — you’re driving population growth and that has environmental consequences.

CARLSON: So quickly, and I wish we had more time for this, because I think it’s fascinating and I would urge people to buy your book on this, what’s the response you get from your fellow Liberals when you — when you say, “Wait a second. You know, there are environmental effects of letting all these people in,” what do they say to you?

CAFARO: Well, mostly what I get are — are people who — most people say, “Well, I didn’t realize that. I — I hadn’t thought about that.”

CARLSON: Yes.

CAFARO: Because, as you say, environmentalists have stopped talking about it. But the — the responses really run the gamut from, you know, how long have you been a racist to–

CARLSON: Yes.

CAFARO: –oh, thank you so much for talking about that. I’ve — I’ve been thinking that myself, and — and I’m just not comfortable talking about it.

CARLSON: Exactly.

CAFARO: So, it’s an interesting thing to talk and write about because you do get such a wide range of responses.

CARLSON: Yes. I mean, spend a week in a crowded, dirty country, and you’ll find that you don’t want to live in a place like that, I think. Phil Cafaro, thank you very much for your positions and for explaining them to us.

CAFARO: Thanks for having me, Tucker. I appreciate it. Thanks.

California’s [...]]]> Water supply continues to be a worrisome thing in California, where the memory of the historic five-year drought remains strong. Now we learn that the drought plus overuse of groundwater has caused so much subsidence in the Central Valley that a large stretch of a gravity-run canal no longer works.

California’s land subsidence has been worsening for years, and the ground apparently hasn’t stopped sinking just because we’ve had a couple years with rain.

The state is environmentally overpopulated at nearly 40 million persons, particularly regarding water.  Plus, California has the nation’s highest proportion of foreign-born at 27 percent.

Below, the Sacramento Bee front-paged the canal-failure story a few days ago, because water supply is serious news in California.

Naturally, it will cost a fortune to fix the 152-mile canal — a cool $350 million.

The Valley floor is sinking, and it’s crippling California’s ability to deliver water, Sacramento Bee, July 13, 2018

Completed during Harry Truman’s presidency, the Friant-Kern Canal has been a workhorse in California’s elaborate man-made water-delivery network. It’s a low-tech concrete marvel that operates purely on gravity, capable of efficiently piping billions of gallons of water to cities and farms on a 152-mile journey along the east side of the fertile San Joaquin Valley.

Until now.

The Friant-Kern has been crippled by a phenomenon known as subsidence. The canal is sinking as the Valley floor beneath it slowly caves in, brought down by years of groundwater extraction by the region’s farmers.

Along a 25-mile stretch of Tulare County rich with grapevines and pistachio trees, the canal has fallen so far — a dozen feet since it opened in 1951 — that it has lost more than half of its carrying capacity downstream from the choke point. Water simply can’t get through like it’s supposed to.

“It ponds up; you lose capacity and that ability to move water through the system,” said Douglas DeFlitch, chief operating officer at the Friant Water Authority. The authority operates the canal for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Central Valley Project.

Although subsidence has been a problem for decades, it accelerated as groundwater pumping expanded during the recent drought. Now it’s reaching a crisis point on the Friant-Kern, and California voters are being asked to fix it.

A proposition on the November ballot would raise billions of dollars for a variety of water projects around the state, including roughly $350 million to repair the Friant-Kern.

Proposition sponsor Gerald Meral, a prominent environmentalist, said it’s in Californians’ interests to ensure the flow of water to the east side of the Valley. The Friant-Kern brings water to the city of Fresno, numerous small towns and 17,000 farmers.

“Keeping 1 million acres of land in the Friant service area (in production) is a public good,” said Meral, a former deputy secretary of the state Natural Resources Agency.

So far no organized opposition has emerged to Meral’s proposition.

The Friant-Kern’s woes illustrate the enduring nature of California’s water problems. The epic five-year drought is officially over, but not everywhere. Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2017 declaration ending the drought omitted four counties where groundwater has been severely depleted: Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Tuolumne. The stricken canal serves two of those counties, Fresno and Tulare, along with Kern County.

It’s a problem that feeds on itself. If the canal can’t do its job, farmers downstream likely will pump more groundwater during dry years. A 2014 state law, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, requires farmers to rein in their pumping, but the restrictions don’t fully kick in until 2040. Because farmers use some of the water from the canal to replenish groundwater, fixing the Friant-Kern would help coax the aquifers back to health.

During the drought, groundwater became a lifeline in this part of the Valley. Friant area farmers normally get water from the San Joaquin River, stored behind Friant Dam, but reservoir levels fell so low that the Central Valley Project didn’t deliver a drop of river water to Friant farmers in 2014 and 2015.

(Continues)

The first hour was dedicated to calls from three categories of immigrants only — illegal aliens, those here for fewer than five years and residents [...]]]> I happened to click on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal viewer call-in show this morning (Wednesday, 1/3) and discovered the whole three hours was about immigration — it was an immersive experience.

The first hour was dedicated to calls from three categories of immigrants only — illegal aliens, those here for fewer than five years and residents here for longer than five years.

The sense of entitlement among callers was overwhelming, even from the illegals. Every immigrant and alien seemed to regard residence in the United States as their right, and they had plenty of excuses and rationalizations for that belief. A Dominican complained that immigrants have to work harder than citizens, even though that’s to be expected because families with long histories in the country have accumulated capital. Some of the other callers didn’t make amy sense at all with their beliefs and conspiracy theories. Or didn’t speak understandable English.

The complaints about the country were numerous, some with a spoken or unspoken observation that Americans were racist for not wanting open borders. I didn’t hear any concern for the future of the country — such as the environment and whether the US can supply water and food for endless population growth hitting unimaginable numbers in the future.

The next segment was an interview with wall Street Journal journalist Laura Meckler, who presumably was supposed to be the objective voice, although not so much.

The advocates segment at least had Dan Stein of FAIR, who is a good debater and explainer versus the director of AILA, the evil immigration lawyers association.

The final segment was an open phones piece asking the question, “What are your immigration priorities for 2018?” It had the common C-SPAN symptom of very dumb comments and really intelligent calls. Discussing immigration diversity can be so tiring.