When I was a kid growing up in the mountains of southern California in the 1960s, one of the most magnificent sights, then common, was to see a full-grown California condor soaring overhead. My father, a professional pilot, and I used to fly alongside the giant birds at 8,000 feet where they would soar in thermals for hours without flapping their wings once. We wondered how they learned to do that. Then, all of a sudden, the condors disappeared—victims of the huge influx of humans greedy for space and resources. It happened so fast. Now, forty years later, these amazing birds are making a very slow return and our state is all the better for it. The unfortunate thing is that the condor’s long-term trip to the nearly-extinct species list didn’t have to happen.
Thanks to modern physics, we now know more about the universe than we do about our own planet, but things are changing rapidly. Every day, scientists discover cures for diseases, treatments for ailments, and concoctions that improve life in some way, often developing them from the most insignificant looking plants and animals right under our feet. Who would have thought that a substance derived from an ordinary willow tree’s bark would become the world’s most ubiquitous painkiller? (And think of all the other uses for aspirin that have since been discovered.) Unfortunately, we humans are destroying potential cures faster than they can be discovered through our own ignorance and blind quest for “progress,” in many cases a euphemism for commerce. Every tree that is cut down in the Amazon is murdering a unique interdependent ecosystem teaming with hundreds of species of plants and animals that we have little data on. Are we not sewing the seeds of our own destruction through the destruction of other species?
On the PBS show “Nature” the other day, there was a segment on a rare turtle that spends the winter frozen in ice and snow. Their hearts stop beating and their metabolic functions virtuously cease; normally one would think of them as dead. However, with the thaw, the turtles’ hearts start up and they come alive and waddle away into the green fields of early spring. How do they do that? Is there something in these turtles’ ability that can be applied to the good of humankind? If we destroyed the habitat of these creatures with a ski lift or a golf course, we would never know.
Right here in Santa Clara County, there has been a vicious ongoing battle between the forces of commerce and the protectors of the habitats of some seemingly-insignificant creatures like the rare California tiger salamander and the red-legged frog. The fact that these animals are on the endangered species list seems to have no effect on the opinion of some who would willingly destroy them for profit. Who cares about a slimy little salamander when we could easily crush them with our developers’ jackboots and build another resource-swallowing golf course or cookie-cutter big-house, small-lot, no-tree housing development?
But, what if someday in the not-too-distant future, biologists discover that the rare and precious little California tiger salamander is the only living thing on earth that secretes an enzyme that destroys cancer cells, and that we could easily synthesize it? Or maybe they discover that the pond scum (the real stuff, not some dubious members of the legal profession) of the red-legged frog’s habitat uniquely contains a microscopic growth that stops Alzheimer’s disease. Anything is possible as science develops, so aren’t we smart to protect the fragile environments where even the rarest, lowliest plants and animals can thrive?
Yawn.
Come on! There is more going on in SJ than salamanders, frogs, votes against gay marriage, and admiration of Gen. Lee.
How about something other theaters and mayoral garbage? How about a few guest bloggers from some of the other races?
#2
What about Phil Hammer’s piece on today’s editorial page?
He claims the Mercury News articles on the Rep have been distorted and misleading.
If the situation is a good as Mr. Hammer describes, why don’t each of the 28 board members of the Rep go out and raise the money from their friends, family, and coworkers. Each board member would need to bring in $35,714. Isn’t fundraising the primary job of a board member?
This approach would be more productive than the current PR campaign the Rep is running to get the city to pay their bills.
#3 I’d be the first to believe that The Mercury is exaggerating, however, if it is a fact that The Rep is requesting $1M, that doesn’t sound like an exaggeration.
Seems to me that non-profits have created their own demise, and need a big brother watching them. Since the venues for the non-profits are in District 3, perhaps that district’s coucilperson is the logical one. There should be a quarterly financial report from the non-profit to the councilperson’s office.
I have little sympathy for an organization which Mr. Hammer states has been existing for 25 yrs. Maybe I could be more sympathetic if the request was for $10 T, $50T, but $1M! Kudos to Sobrato for keeping his wallet closed this time.
Jack and Gil,
Too bad there aren’t more people that think like you! Keep on fighting the good fight. We all benefit from it.
I was hoping to read that JMO had waded in with his comments about the environment and ecology.
#6
Why?
#6 NSJ
He may be too busy. I think I saw a guy that looked a lot like him driving a bulldozer down 1st Street. He was mumbling somthing about the Rep and the Fallon House and how he would fix both those wacky artists and preservationists.
Jack,
Your global concerns are refreshing on this beautiful Sept. morning.
I have been a member of the Sempervirens Fund, Board of Directors for 12 years. I have had the privilage and honor to have met many of our caring and devoted doners. Since 1900 together, we have saved 21,000 acres of Redwood Forest in the santa Cruz Mtns. These forests are preserved in perpetuity and added to our growing State Parks in our Santa Cruz Mtns.
In the summer of 2000 Sempervirens Fund along with 8400 supporters, purchased 1340 acres of untouched 100 year old forest, for 13 million dollars. The purchase was completed in Oct. of 2004. It had been under careful stewardship of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District. This magnificent Redwood Forest has made Castle Rock State Park 1/3 larger.
What has not been published, and only now, thanks to your posting, I am making public, is that 4years ago, several Board members and doners were hiking this forest. It was one of those foggy perfect days in the deep forest. We came across a beautiful salamander. Bright Lemon Yellow body with black dots perfectly poitioned all over it’s body, four toes on each foot and a very long tail. It was covered with a clear protective coating. I captured this beautiful salamander with my macro lens. We left it undistured and untouched. As I looked thru the lens at it’s beautiful facial features, I knew this was a very special species.
I have researched our “Sally” for 5 years with the formost experts, and I have yet to find any one that has seen this species or heard of such a salamander.
“Sally” is still out there in “our” misterious Redwood forest, doing what Salamanders do best, thanks to 8400 caring supporters. It gives me the greatest of pleasure to announce to all that “Sally” was alive and well. I remain forever grateful to all of you that support what is represented on this post today. Thank you for caring Jack!
The Village Black Smith
Sorry to differ with you Greg but San Jose has plentyof places for people to live and guess what??? If we run out of places to live then they’ll have to live elsewhere.
Yes, keep on fighting the good fight, indeed. The impact selfish humans have on our delicate environment demands the vigilance of people willing to stand up to greedy developers. Fortunately for Mr. VanZandt and his story, no such people were apparently around during his childhood to question the construction of his mountain home or put a stop to the development of his dad’s favorite airport. Who knows, perhaps that long ago developed airfield eradicated the one species that could have provided us humans with a cure for sanctimony.
Greg,
#12 is right. Why should San Jose build more bedrooms for your workers in MV? Where is your high density condo towers next to the MV train station? Practice what you preach.
San Jose needs to balance jobs with housing, and at the moment we have a huge jobs deficit.
Those who think the solution is to build more housing in San Jose are unclear on what the problem is. We have finite resources—land, water, etc. We can’t keep builidng housing development after housing development and expect to be able to sustain them. We can barely keep services flowing to those folks who already live here now—how are we going to be able to provide those services to more and more people?? Common sense has left the building but it had better return soon before we sink under our own weight.
Jack-
You pose the question as though the developers got piles of profit for building empty homes.
Those homes are being built to so that real live people with real live families have a place to live.
It isn’t as simple as a battle of good verus evil. We need to preserve habitat for endangered species AND we need to find places for people to live. That’s what makes it tough.
Planner#14: the problem is even mnore basic: as longs as the human population constinues to grow, humankind will consume more and more of our limited resources.
China and India continue to grow willy nilly. Western civilization birth rates decline from past levels, but we will reach a point of non-sustainability if we keep breeding. Then the California condors will have plenty of our rotting corposes to eat, and they’ll leap off the endangered species list.
Maybe one of Jack’s salamanders secretes a hormone that could be taken orally and would prevent human pregnancy for five years per dose. Nah, it would take Gil’s big yellow salamander to do that, but he can’t find it any more. Sob.
Greg #11 is right—we need to find that ever elusive balance of sustainable development with minimum damage to our ecosystem. The person who finds it should carry home most of the Nobel prizes that year.
#13, #12-
I don’t believe that any city should have to provide the homes for another city’s jobs surplus. Including mine. Mountain View needs to build more homes, as do most cities in the area.
Planner misses the point. Housing developments do not spontaneously generate people. People come from other people, through births. They do no cease to exist just because we forgot to plan for them.
They may move to the central valley where they have larger lawns and use even more water, but that is hardly a global solution.
Gil #1
Thanks for your post and your years of dedicated service to the Sempervirens Fund.
Greg #11
I agree with John Michael O’Connor #15 when he says that we must find a balance point between the need for housing and ecological concerns. We also have to know when to say enough is enough. Will anybody, other than property speculators, be better off in San Jose if the population doubles?
Frustrated #10
People commonly did a lot of things in the 50s and 60s that turned out to be a bad idea, like smoking, stuffing houses with asbestos, fogging DDT on any insect that moved and dumping deadly industrial waste anywhere and everywhere. Fortunately, we have crawled a couple of rungs up the ladder out of the abyss of ignorance and are developing a conciousness about the world we live in based on advances in scientific knowledge.
And thanks for your interest in my family’s history. My father’s favorite airfield was probably Alameda NAS or Moffett Field because nobody was shooting at him there. I know it wasn’t Pusan, Korea, the bucking deck of the USS Hornet in the Sea of Japan or the base where he awaited the order to bomb Cuba in October, 1962; an order that, fortunately, never came, thanks to a president who learned from his and others’ mistakes and used his brain to solve problems, unlike the current occupant of the White House. To address your specific point, I don’t think the military was environmentally friendly then, and I am sure it isn’t now.
Abbie Hoffman said it best when he opined that “Sacred cows make the best hamburger.” Hardly a vegetarian cure for sanctimony or garden-variety hypocrisy, but perhaps soybeans can be genetically altered to produce tofu that has the same effect.
More mistakes or incompentence by City Council , city staff and Chamber that what keeps San Jose struggling as a city and we do not have decent city services etc
Mercury News should investigate who and why we lost.
The issue here is not will we grow but it is will we grow in an intelligent, well planned manner or will we continue to grow in the way we have grown for the past 60 years-smart growth vs. growth for the sake of growth.
Jack-
Overall, the population will double, whether we like it or not. We’re all living longer and having more kids.
The question is not “how many people should we have”, but “where should people live.”
Right now, the answer is that people live in the central valley, and drive here. It’s much worse by your own measures.
Each person in a new central valley home takes up more space than a person in a silicon valley condominium. A single family home paves over 1/5 of an acre of farms. A condo might pave over 1/20 or 1/100.
As a result, more farms are lost, more cars are on the road for longer hours, more pollution goes into the air, and native species have less habitat.
That isn’t good for anyone, either. If we say “enough is enough”, it just means “goodbye Central Valley farmland”.
Maybe we need to think about how many kids we are having. Maybe “enough is enough” applies to more than just how many houses we will build.
Wondering,
You’ll be happy to know that the left’s pro-abortion, birth control, anti-children message has been so successful and well received in the west that each and every western country (including the US if you subtract out the illegal aliens pouring in) are in a population death spiral.
The only silver lining is that those on the left are reproducing at an even slower rate so there are fewer and fewer of them around with each passing year.
Feel better?
#21
I’m sure you are happy that people are needlessly dying due to a poorly planned war in Irac and controls on stem cell research. Our murder rate has also gone through the roof and our prisons are overflowing because a bunch of unwanted children were brought into this world because we would rather have cheap labor than educate people about birth control. As a Republican, I hope you don’t think that you speak for all of the party.
#21 Novice
So you talk like you are pro-life, pro-children ? So how much do you donate to medical research that could save thousands of lives each year? How many black crack babies have you adopted? How much time have you spent protesting the death penalty or war? Protecting children and life in general are good causes. I’m sure you say you support these values, but I hope you do more about it than just giving us lip service. Good luck in your efforts showing your love for mankind.
Novice-
We have never refused a post of yours. We probably never received it.
All views are welcome here, even if they conflict with an author’s POV – a blog wouldn’t work otherwise – although we do run all comments through the Cuban government for review.
Jack,
I spent the week end at Boulder Creek Country Club with my son and several friends. We played golf and were awed at the complexity of the weather and forest interacting as we simply observed.
While driving to Big Basin within the forest of very tall and majestic Redwoods, the thought occurred to me.
We lost so many innocent wonderful people in the horrific air strikes on the twin towers. Only to electively loose near that many of our young and brave sons and daughter, in a war that to me, has made no sence. Why?
There was no anger , only the pain, of not understanding the reasons for such a lose of human lives.
Spending billions in Iraq cities with a war unwon, while we in this country continue to cry for the loses of our Katrina survivors.
I also reasoned that the Minute Men and National Guard were not there to keep Farmworking people out, but rather to keep the people that are here in. The Berlin Wall was such an obstical, was it not?
The thought of some one cutting down a 600 year old Redwood tree, sending it to China, only to have it return as a million tooth picks, befuddles me. Who makes these choices?
Tomorrow the Fire House One Bell will toll for the lives lost at the Twin Towers.
When we poured the bronze, that my son had made that would become the Clapper and voice of our 3000 lb San Jose Fire Bell . We said a prayer for all those that risk their lives to serve and protect. I am blessed to have a son in Paul that servived an equaly heinious assult with in our our community. God Bless us all this day.
The Village Black Smith & Son
http://www.bronzemanufacturer.com
Dearest SJI Editorial Leaders,
Your refusal to post my replies to 22, 23, is perplexing – not sure what to make of it since there was little in my posts to be offended by.
But such is the ease with which the intellectually lazy ‘liberal’ tags those challenging his world view as racist and the effortlessness with which he brands alternative points of view as ‘hate speech’.
Just out of curiousity, has SJI recently outsourced the screening of posts to the UC Berkeley students whom were caught stealing newspapers that published ideas the students deemed offensive?